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Submission + - Ocean Spray Emits More PFAS Than Industrial Polluters, Study Finds (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ocean waves crashing on the world’s shores emit more PFAS into the air than the world’s industrial polluters, new research has found, raising concerns about environmental contamination and human exposure along coastlines. The study measured levels of PFAS released from the bubbles that burst when waves crash, spraying aerosols into the air. It found sea spray levels were hundreds of thousands times higher than levels in the water. The contaminated spray likely affects groundwater, surface water, vegetation, and agricultural products near coastlines that are far from industrial sources of PFAS, said Ian Cousins, a Stockholm University researcher and the study’s lead author. “There is evidence that the ocean can be an important source [of PFAS air emissions],” Cousins said. “It is definitely impacting the coastline.”

The Stockholm researchers several years ago found that PFAS from ocean waves crashing are released into the air around shorelines, then can travel thousands of kilometers through the atmosphere before the chemicals return to land. The new research looked at levels in the sea spray as waves crash by testing ocean samples between Southampton in the UK and Chile. The chemicals’ levels were higher in the northern hemisphere in general because it is more industrialized and there is not much mixing of water across the equator, Cousins said. It is unclear what the findings mean for human exposure. Inhalation of PFAS is an issue, but how much of the chemicals are breathed in, and air concentrations further from the waves, is still unknown.

Submission + - Dutch Privacy Watchdog Recommends Government Organizations Stop Using Facebook (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Dutch privacy watchdog AP on Friday said it was recommending that government organizations should stop using Facebook as long as it is unclear what happens with personal data of users of the government's Facebook pages. "People that visit a government's page need to be able to trust that their personal and sensitive data is in safe hands," AP chairman Aleid Wolfsen said in a statement. Junior minister for digitalization Alexandra van Huffelen said Facebook parent company Meta had to make clear before the summer how it could take away the government's concerns on the safety of data. "Otherwise we will be forced to stop using Facebook, in line with this advice," she said.

Submission + - A Chess Formula Is Taking Over the World (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In October 2003, Mark Zuckerberg created his first viral site: not Facebook, but FaceMash. Then a college freshman, he hacked into Harvard’s online dorm directories, gathered a massive collection of students’ headshots, and used them to create a website on which Harvard students could rate classmates by their attractiveness, literally and figuratively head-to-head. The site, a mean-spirited prank recounted in the opening scene of The Social Network, got so much traction so quickly that Harvard shut down his internet access within hours. The math that powered FaceMash—and, by extension, set Zuckerberg on the path to building the world’s dominant social-media empire—was reportedly, of all things, a formula for ranking chess players: the Elo system.

Fundamentally, what an Elo rating does is predict the outcome of chess matches by assigning every player a number that fluctuates based purely on performance. If you beat a slightly higher-ranked player, your rating goes up a little, but if you beat a much higher-ranked player, your rating goes up a lot (and theirs, conversely, goes down a lot). The higher the rating, the more matches you should win. That is what Elo was designed for, at least. FaceMash and Zuckerberg aside, people have deployed Elo ratings for many sports—soccer, football, basketball—and for domains as varied as dating, finance, and primatology. If something can be turned into a competition, it has probably been Elo-ed. Somehow, a simple chess algorithm has become an all-purpose tool for rating everything. In other words, when it comes to the preferred way to rate things, Elo ratings have the highest Elo rating. [...]

Elo ratings don’t inherently have anything to do with chess. They’re based on a simple mathematical formula that works just as well for any one-on-one, zero-sum competition—which is to say, pretty much all sports. In 1997, a statistician named Bob Runyan adapted the formula to rank national soccer teams—a project so successful that FIFA eventually adopted an Elo system for its official rankings. Not long after, the statistician Jeff Sagarin applied Elo to rank NFL teams outside their official league standings. Things really took off when the new ESPN-owned version of Nate Silver’s 538 launched in 2014 and began making Elo ratings for many different sports. Some sports proved trickier than others. NBA basketball in particular exposed some of the system’s shortcomings, Neil Paine, a stats-focused sportswriter who used to work at 538, told me. It consistently underrated heavyweight teams, for example, in large part because it struggled to account for the meaninglessness of much of the regular season and the fact that either team might not be trying all that hard to win a given game. The system assumed uniform motivation across every team and every game. Pretty much anything, it turns out, can be framed as a one-on-one, zero-sum game.

Submission + - Propellantless propulsion drive just produced enough thrust to counter gravity (thedebrief.org)

Submitted by garyisabusyguy
garyisabusyguy writes: Dr. Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, has revealed that his company’s propellantless propulsion drive, which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to counteract Earth’s gravity.

“The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred,” Buhler told The Debrief. “This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass.”

“There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before,” Buhler added. “It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years until the next thing comes.”

Submission + - IMF sounds alarm on ballooning US national debt: 'Something will have to give

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

Under current policies, public debt in the U.S. is projected to nearly double by 2053. The IMF identified “large fiscal slippages” in the U.S. in 2023, with government spending surpassing revenue by 8.8% of GDP – a 4.1% increase from the previous year, despite strong economic growth.

If this trend continues, the Congressional Budget Office anticipates the national debt will grow to an astonishing $54 trillion in the next decade. Higher interest rates are also compounding the pain of higher debt.

Should that debt materialize, it could risk America’s economic standing in the world.

The IMF is talking down to Washington like we’re a Third World country because that’s the direction Washington is taking us.

Interest payments alone on the current debt is $1.6T/year.

Submission + - British Columbia bans autonomous cars

Submitted by Baloo Uriza
Baloo Uriza writes: In a rare display of sanity in the automotive space, British Columbia has banned autonomous cars from its highways, after years of watching autonomous cars hamper emergency response efforts in California and outright kill a pedestrian in Arizona. Let's hope this regulatory trend continues, and moves into the human space by pulling licenses of drivers with a known history of poor driving.

Submission + - FBI says Chinese hackers preparing to attack US infrastructure (reuters.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure and are waiting "for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow," FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday.

An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at
Vanderbilt University.

China is developing the "ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing," Wray said at the 2024 Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats. "Its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic."

Wray said it was difficult to determine the intent of this cyber pre-positioning which was aligned with China's broader intent to deter the U.S. from defending Taiwan.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan strongly objects to China's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future.

Submission + - 'Reddit Is Taking Over Google' (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you think you've been seeing an awful lot more Reddit results lately when you search on Google, you're not imagining things. The internet is in upheaval, and for website owners the rules of "winning" Google Search have never been murkier. Google's generative AI search engine is coming from one direction. It's creeping closer to mainstream deployment and bringing an existential crisis for SEOs and website makers everywhere. Coming from the other direction is an influx of posts from Reddit, Quora, and other internet forums that have climbed up through the traditional set of Google links. Data analysis from Semrush, which predicts traffic based on search ranking, shows that traffic to Reddit has climbed at an impressive clip since August. Semrush estimated that Reddit had over 132 million visitors in August 2023. At the time of publishing, it was projected to have over 346 million visitors in April 2024.

None of this is accidental. For years, Google has been watching users tack on "Reddit" to the end of search queries and finally decided to do something about it. Google started dropping hints in 2022 when it promised to do a better job of promoting sites that weren't just chasing the top of search but were more helpful and human. Last August, Google rolled out a big update to Search that seemed to kick this into action. Reddit, Quora, and other forum sites started getting more visibility in Google, both within the traditional links and within a new "discussions and forums" section, which you may have spotted if you're US-based. The timing of this Reddit bump has led to some conspiracy theories. In February, Google and Reddit announced a blockbuster deal that would let Google train its AI models on Reddit content. Google said the deal, reportedly worth $60 million, would "facilitate more content-forward displays of Reddit information," leading to some speculation that Google promised Reddit better visibility in exchange for the valuable training data. A few weeks later, Reddit also went public.

Steve Paine, marketing manager at Sistrix, called the rise of Reddit "unprecedented." "There hasn't been a website that's grown so much search visibility so quickly in the US in at least the last five years," he told Business Insider. Right now, Reddit ranks high for product searches. Reddit's main competitors are Wikipedia, YouTube, and Fandom, Paine said, and it also competes in "high-value commercial searches," putting it up against Amazon. The "real competitors," he said, are the subreddits that compete with brands on the web.

Submission + - Cops Can Force Suspect To Unlock Phone With Thumbprint, US Court Rules (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The US Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination does not prohibit police officers from forcing a suspect to unlock a phone with a thumbprint scan, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling does not apply to all cases in which biometrics are used to unlock an electronic device but is a significant decision in an unsettled area of the law. The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had to grapple with the question of "whether the compelled use of Payne's thumb to unlock his phone was testimonial," the ruling (PDF) in United States v. Jeremy Travis Payne said. "To date, neither the Supreme Court nor any of our sister circuits have addressed whether the compelled use of a biometric to unlock an electronic device is testimonial."

A three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit ruled unanimously against Payne, affirming a US District Court's denial of Payne's motion to suppress evidence. Payne was a California parolee who was arrested by California Highway Patrol (CHP) after a 2021 traffic stop and charged with possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, fluorofentanyl, and cocaine. There was a dispute in District Court over whether a CHP officer "forcibly used Payne's thumb to unlock the phone." But for the purposes of Payne's appeal, the government "accepted the defendant's version of the facts, i.e., 'that defendant's thumbprint was compelled.'"

Payne's Fifth Amendment claim "rests entirely on whether the use of his thumb implicitly related certain facts to officers such that he can avail himself of the privilege against self-incrimination," the ruling said. Judges rejected his claim, holding "that the compelled use of Payne's thumb to unlock his phone (which he had already identified for the officers) required no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking." "When Officer Coddington used Payne's thumb to unlock his phone—which he could have accomplished even if Payne had been unconscious—he did not intrude on the contents of Payne's mind," the court also said.

Submission + - Colorado Bill Aims To Protect Consumer Brain Data (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Consumers have grown accustomed to the prospect that their personal data, such as email addresses, social contacts, browsing history and genetic ancestry, are being collected and often resold by the apps and the digital services they use. With the advent of consumer neurotechnologies, the data being collected is becoming ever more intimate. One headband serves as a personal meditation coach by monitoring the user’s brain activity. Another purports to help treat anxiety and symptoms of depression. Another reads and interprets brain signalswhile the user scrolls through dating apps, presumably to provide better matches. (“‘Listen to your heart’ is not enough,” the manufacturer says on its website.) The companies behind such technologies have access to the records of the users’ brain activity — the electrical signals underlying our thoughts, feelings and intentions.

On Wednesday, Governor Jared Polis of Colorado signed a bill that, for the first time in the United States, tries to ensure that such data remains truly private. The new law, which passed by a 61-to-1 vote in the Colorado House and a 34-to-0 vote in the Senate, expands the definition of “sensitive data” in the state’s current personal privacy law to include biological and “neural data” generated by the brain, the spinal cord and the network of nerves that relays messages throughout the body. “Everything that we are is within our mind,” said Jared Genser, general counsel and co-founder of the Neurorights Foundation, a science group that advocated the bill’s passage. “What we think and feel, and the ability to decode that from the human brain, couldn’t be any more intrusive or personal to us.” “We are really excited to have an actual bill signed into law that will protect people’s biological and neurological data,” said Representative Cathy Kipp, Democrat of Colorado, who introduced the bill.

Submission + - Northrop Grumman working with Musk's SpaceX on U.S. spy satellite system (reuters.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman is working with SpaceX, the space venture of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, on a classified spy satellite project already capturing high-resolution imagery of the Earth, according to people familiar with the program.
The program, details of which were first reported by Reuters last month, is meant to enhance the U.S. government's ability to track military and intelligence targets from low-Earth orbits, providing high-resolution imagery of a kind that had traditionally been captured mostly by drones and reconnaissance aircraft.

The inclusion of Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), opens new tab, which has not been previously reported, reflects a desire among government officials to avoid putting too much control of a highly-sensitive intelligence program in the hands of one contractor, four people familiar with the project told Reuters. "It is in the government's interest to not be totally invested in one company run by one person," one of the people said.

It's unclear whether other contractors are involved at present or could join the project as it develops. Spokespeople at Northrop Grumman and SpaceX didn't respond to requests for comment.
Northrop Grumman is providing sensors for some of the SpaceX satellites, the people familiar with the project told Reuters. Northrop Grumman, two of the people added, will test those satellites at its own facilities before they are launched.A t least 50 of the SpaceX satellites are expected at Northrop Grumman facilities for procedures including testing and the installation of sensors in coming years, one of the people said.
In March, Reuters reported that the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, in 2021 awarded a $1.8 billion contract to SpaceX for the classified project, a planned network of hundreds of satellites. So far, the people familiar with the project said, SpaceX has launched roughly a dozen prototypes and is already providing test imagery to the NRO, an intelligence agency that oversees development of U.S. spy satellites.

Submission + - Light-pole installation blamed for 3-state 911 outage (cnn.com)

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: CNN reports:

The outage of 911 systems in [Nevada, South Dakota, and Nebraska] Wednesday [April 18] evening was caused by the installation of a light pole, according to Lumen, a company that supports some of those systems.

The article goes on to say:

Molzen declined to elaborate on exactly how the light pole installation resulted in the 911 outage, or where the pole was located. The 911 director in Douglas County, Nebraska, which encompasses Omaha, said in a statement Lumen informed the county the outage was related to a “fiber cut.”

My questions is: If a city/locality contracts out its 911 system, shouldn't it have a reliable backup in place?



The outage in Del Rio, Texas at about the same time is not related.

Submission + - Dual standards at YouTube expose viewers to scams

Submitted by NewtonsLaw
NewtonsLaw writes: Almost everyone knows of at least one YouTube channel that has been unfairly demonetized or even entirely deleted by YouTube for nothing more than an allegation of "misleading" or "misinformation". The corporation claims that it does this to keep users of the platform safe.

However, this standard is almost never applied to advertisers, as witnessed by
this video which has also been running as a pre-roll/mid-roll ad recently and falsely offers access to Netflix, PrimeTV, Disney+ and Hulu without any monthly subscription.

Both the ad and the video that is played during the ad have been reported to @teamyoutube on X and via the report functions on the website but it continues to run and it will likely continue to do so until the advertiser has spent their budget.

This kind of hypocrisy does not endear the platform to its "partners" and also leaves happless users vulnerable to scams such as this.

The official response from @teamyoutube is simply that they investigate all reports — yet this is just the latest in a long list of ads for scam products such as free energy generators, drones that claim premium features but turn out to be toys and other products that are nothing like those being advertised.

Submission + - House Passes Bill Requiring Warrant To Purchase Data From Third Parties (thehill.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The House on Wednesday approved a bill that would limit how the government can purchase data from third parties — legislation that scored a vote after negotiations with a group of GOP colleagues who briefly tanked a vote on warrantless spy powers. Dubbed the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale, the legislation passed 219-199. It requires law enforcement and other government entities to get a warrant before buying information from third-party data brokers who purchase information gleaned from apps. [...] Senior administration officials said the measure would blind U.S. intelligence outfits from getting information easily purchased by foreign intelligence operations.

“In practice, these standards make it impossible for the [intelligence community], law enforcement to acquire a whole host of readily available information that they currently rely on,” an administration official said. “Covered customer records as defined in the bill is very broad and includes records pertaining to any U.S. person or indeed any foreigner inside the United States. And as a practical matter, there’s often no way to establish whether a particular individual was in the U.S. at a particular time a piece of data was created. Unless you did one thing, which is paradoxically to intrude further into their privacy just to figure out whether you could obtain some data.” “It can be impossible to know what’s in a data set before one actually obtains a data set,” the official continued. “So you’d be barred from getting that which you don’t even know.”

Submission + - Woman wheels corpse into Brazil bank to sign for loan (reuters.com)

Submitted by ateu
ateu writes: RIO DE JANEIRO, April 17 (Reuters) — A woman brought a 68-year-old man in a wheelchair into a bank branch and tried to get him to sign for a loan, but he had been dead for hours, Brazilian police said on Wednesday.
Erika Vieira Nunes wheeled the cadaver into the bank in a Rio suburb on Tuesday and told the teller the man wanted a loan for 17,000 reais ($3,250), security camera video showed.
She held a pen and moved his hand forward to no response.

Submission + - Section 702 reauthorization bill (RISAA) (eff.org)

Submitted by mockojumbie
mockojumbie writes: "any company or individual that provides ANY service whatsoever may be forced to assist in NSA surveillance, as long as they have access to equipment on which communications are transmitted or stored—such as routers, servers, cell towers, etc. That sweeps in an enormous range of U.S. businesses that provide wifi to their customers and therefore have access to equipment on which communications transit. Barber shops, laundromats, fitness centers, hardware stores, dentist’s offices"
https://www.zwillgen.com/law-e...

Submission + - EU: Meta cannot rely on "Pay or Okay" (noyb.eu)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Today, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has issued its first decision on "Pay or Okay" in relation to large online platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. Meta offers users a choice: "consent" to tracking, or pay over €250/year to use its sites without invasive monetization of personal data. The EDPB is quoted as saying "In most cases, it will not be possible for large online platforms to comply with the requirements for valid consent if they confront users only with a binary choice between consenting to processing of personal data for behavioral advertising purposes and paying a fee".

Submission + - Post Office chief exonerated of all misconduct claims (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Post Office chief executive Nick Read exonerated of all misconduct claims after report

In a statement, the Post Office said: “Over the last few months an independent barrister has been investigating a Speak Up complaint into various allegations, which included a number of misconduct allegations against our CEO, Nick Read.

“Following several interviews and examination of documents by the barrister, Nick has been exonerated of all the misconduct allegations and has the full and united backing of the Board to continue to lead the business.

“The Board regards the Speak Up process as critical to the open and supportive culture it wants to encourage at the Post Office.

“The integrity of that Speak Up process relies on confidentiality for whistleblowers and therefore we will not be providing further detail on this or any other Speak Up investigation.

“It is unacceptable that this specific process was referred to in the public domain but notwithstanding that, Post Office wants to make clear that Speak Up allegations will always be thoroughly and consistently investigated, whoever they are aimed at.”

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