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Deep Sleep May Help the Brain Clear Alzheimer's Toxins Published on November 01, 2019 at 09:00AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The brain waves generated during deep sleep appear to trigger a cleaning system in the brain that protects it against Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. Electrical signals known as slow waves appear just before a pulse of fluid washes through the brain, presumably removing toxins associated with Alzheimer's, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science. The finding could help explain a puzzling link between sleep and Alzheimer's, says Laura Lewis, an author of the study and an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at Boston University. The finding also suggests that people might be able to reduce their risk of Alzheimer's by ensuring that they get high-quality sleep, says William Jagust, a professor of public health and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, ...

AirPods Pro Teardown Confirms That They're Just As Disposable As Ever Published on November 01, 2019 at 07:40AM iFixit's teardown of Apple's latest AirPods reveals just how difficult it will be to fix them if they break. "The organization awarded the noise-canceling buds a big fat zero repairability score, noting that their 'non-modular, glued-together design and lack of replacement parts makes repair both impractical and uneconomical,'" reports The Verge. "That's the same score as both versions of the original AirPods." From the report: The teardown does reveal a couple of interesting details about the design of the earbuds. First is the fact that they're a whole third heavier than the original AirPods, thanks to new features like active noise-cancellation, and an inward-facing microphone. The teardown also notes that the one user-replaceable part of the earbuds, the silicone ear-tip, uses a custom design that makes them incompatible w...

Incognito Mode For Google Maps Arrives On Android Published on November 01, 2019 at 07:20AM Incognito Mode for Google Maps is rolling out to Android users to prevent your search queries and real-time tracked location from being recorded onto your Google account. Engadget reports: It's not something you'll want to use all the time as some features will be disabled, and it's important to note that it doesn't turn off all tracking. The places you go won't be saved to your Location History (if you have that enabled), your searches won't be saved to your account and it won't use your information to personalize the experience. Still, you could be tracked by internet service providers, other apps, or if you're using Assistant and other Google services. Similar to incognito on Chrome, it's more useful as a depersonalized look at recommendations than as a full-fledged privacy protector, and a way to make sure that whatever you're searching for in this i...

Helvetica's Evil Twin, Hellvetica, Will Haunt Your Nightmares Published on November 01, 2019 at 07:00AM Freshly Exhumed shares a report from Fast Company: Hold your favorite graphic design tome close. We now know what the classic typeface Helvetica would look like if it came from the underworld. Yes, it will keep type enthusiasts up at night. The design darling Helvetica -- that ubiquitous sans-serif typeface developed by Max Miedinger in 1957, representative of the crisp Swiss design aesthetic of that period, and star of its own documentary by the same name -- has made a deal with the kerning devil. The results aren't pretty. They're not meant to be. Zack Roif and Matthew Woodward, both associate creative directors at the international advertising agency R/GA, have released a new typeface available free to download, Hellvetica, and it will make all your worst kerning nightmares come true. While each character has the same form as the classic typeface it's riffing on,...

Uber Allegedly Paid $100K Ransom and Had Hackers Sign NDAs After Data Breach Published on November 01, 2019 at 06:20AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: New details about how Uber responded to a massive hack attack in 2016 raise questions about the way it handled sensitive customer information. Instead of reporting the hackers to police, the company allegedly paid $100,000 in exchange for a promise to delete 57 million user files the men stole off a third party server, prosecutors said. Within weeks of paying the ransom, Uber employees showed up at Brandon Glover's Winter Park, Florida, home and found Vasile Mereacre at a hotel restaurant in Toronto, Canada, the Justice Department said. The pair admitted their crimes, but Uber didn't turn them over to the cops. Instead, they had the hackers sign non-disclosure agreements, promising to keep quiet. The two hackers pleaded guilty on Wednesday. But there was a third person involved who was unknown to Uber, U.S. a...

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group Are Merging To Become World's Fourth-Largest Automaker Published on November 01, 2019 at 05:40AM williamyf writes: This puts Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Chrysler, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, and Vauxhall under a single corporate parent and merges operations. PSA Group boss Carlos Tavares will be CEO of the 11-person board, with FCA's John Elkann as chair. Fiat Chrysler and PSA said that the 50:50 merger should save more than $4 billion a year from "run-rate synergies without any plant closures." Why is this news for nerds and stuff that matters? Because there are car nerds too, and cars use a lot of software nowadays. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's Network Congestion Algorithm Isn't Fair, Researchers Say Published on November 01, 2019 at 01:41AM Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University say a Google algorithm designed help reduce internet congestion is mathematically unfair, resulting in network management systems that may disadvantage some traffic over others. From a report: Several years back, Google began work on a new open source congestion control algorithm (CCA) designed to improve the way the internet functions. The result was BBR, short for Bottleneck Bandwidth and RTT (Round-Trip Time). The goal of the project: to improve how network packets travel between servers to mitigate congestion on the internet. CCAs have long been used to help manage congestion -- ideally while treating all traffic equally. But in a study unveiled last week at the Internet Measurement Conference in Amsterdam, researchers revealed that BBR doesn't actually do a very good job of that last part. In fact, they found that durin...

Complaints Mounting About iOS 13.2 Being 'More Aggressive at Killing Background Apps and Tasks' Published on November 01, 2019 at 01:03AM Apple's iOS 13 has had a rocky start since its release last month, with it being among the most buggy Apple software releases in recent memory. Now, iPhone owners are complaining of yet another issue that may be bug-related. From a report: A growing number of iPhone and iPad users have complained about poor RAM management on iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, leading to apps like Safari, YouTube, and Overcast reloading more frequently upon being reopened. We've lightly edited some of the comments to correct things like capitalization. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you can believe it, there was a time in mankind’s short and brutish history when people were skeptical of Apple’s AirPods , myself included. We ridiculed the odd-looking wireless buds protruding in impossible directions from early adopters’ skulls, their ears housing buds seemingly hoping to be reunited with the rest of their 3.5mm headphone cable. The audio accessory spawned knockoff after knockoff, failed attempts from competitors, and enough memes and class warfare jokes to keep everyone laughing until this week, when Apple debuted its noise-canceling $249 AirPods Pro . Let’s be clear: These are fantastic, and probably the best Apple product since it decided tablets should be a thing. It’s the company at its finest, refining an idea until it’s close to perfect. Thank goodness they don’t come in black — what else would I complain about? You can peg them as AirPods even before you open the case. While larger than classic AirPods, the AirPods Pro case maintains its p...

Defense Innovation Board Unveils AI Ethics Principles For the Pentagon Published on November 01, 2019 at 12:23AM The Defense Innovation Board, a panel of 16 prominent technologists advising the Pentagon, today voted to approve AI ethics principles for the Department of Defense. From a news article: The report includes 12 recommendations for how the U.S. military can apply ethics in the future for both combat and non-combat AI systems. The principles are broken into five main principles: responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable. The principles state that humans should remain responsible for "developments, deployments, use and outcomes," and AI systems used by the military should be free of bias that can lead to unintended human harm. AI deployed by the DoD should also be reliable, governable, and use "transparent and auditable methodologies, data sources, and design procedure and documentation." "You may see resonances of the word fairness i...

Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo Are the Top 3 Plastic Polluters on the Planet Published on October 31, 2019 at 11:44PM An annual global audit from the Break Free From Plastic movement has found the largest sources of plastic pollution. Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo are the top three most identified companies as sources of plastic pollution around the globe. From a report: As part of their audit, Break Free From Plastic conducted 484 cleanups in 50 countries, on six continents. According to the audit, part of the problem is that plastic is not recyclable. Only 9% of plastic produced since 1950 has been recycled. The rest is incinerated, in landfills or left pollution in oceans, land and other areas. When plastic is burned it causes toxic pollution. If not incinerated or recycled, it breaks down into microplastics, which cause harm to ocean life. 43% of collected plastic was marked with a clear consumer brand, like Coca-Cola or PepsiCo. Break Free From Plastic blames our "throwawa...

WhatsApp Hacked To Spy on Top Government Officials at US Allies Published on October 31, 2019 at 11:11PM Senior government officials in multiple U.S.-allied countries were targeted earlier this year with hacking software that used Facebook's WhatsApp to take over users' phones, Reuters reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the messaging company's investigation. From a report: Sources familiar with WhatsApp's internal investigation into the breach said a "significant" portion of the known victims are high-profile government and military officials spread across at least 20 countries on five continents. The hacking of a wider group of top government officials' smartphones than previously reported suggests the WhatsApp cyber intrusion could have broad political and diplomatic consequences. WhatsApp filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Israeli hacking tool developer NSO Group. The Facebook-owned software giant alleges that NSO Group built and sold a ha...

ACLU Sues FBI, DOJ Over Facial-Recognition Technology, Criticizing 'Unprecedented' Surveillance and Secrecy Published on October 31, 2019 at 10:20PM The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday sued the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI for records detailing their use of facial-recognition software, arguing that the agencies have secretly implemented a nationwide surveillance technology that threatens Americans' privacy and civil rights. From a report: ACLU attorneys asked a federal court in Massachusetts to order the agencies to release documents about how the government uses and audits the software, how officials have communicated with companies that provide the software, and what internal guidelines and safeguards regulate its use. "These technologies have the potential to enable undetectable, persistent, and suspicion-less surveillance on an unprecedented scale," the attorneys wrote. "Such surveillance would permit th...

Fedora 31 Released Published on October 31, 2019 at 09:40PM Fedora 31 has just rolled out the door. From a report: Is it an exciting release? No, not really. Sure, enthusiasts will find themselves thrilled withe inclusion of the GNOME 3.34 desktop environment (with Qt Wayland by default), Linux 5.3 kernel, and Mesa 9.2, but otherwise, it is fairly boring. You know what? That's not a bad thing. In 2019, Fedora is simply a mature and stable operating system that only needs to follow an evolutionary path at this time -- not revolutionary. It stands alone as the world's best desktop Linux distribution. "Fedora 31 Workstation provides new tools and features for general users as well as developers with the inclusion of GNOME 3.34. GNOME 3.34 brings significant performance enhancements which will be especially noticeable on lower-powered hardware. Fedora 31 Workstation also expands the default uses of Wayland, including allowing Firefox to run natively on Wayland under GNOME in...

Spain and GitHub Are Blocking an App That Helped Protesters Organize Published on October 31, 2019 at 09:05PM An anonymous reader shares a report: People are rioting in the streets of Barcelona. For the last month, hundreds of thousands of people have joined demonstrations in Spain to voice their objection to the jailing of Catalan separatist leaders and support Catalonian independence. As with almost all modern activist and public protest movements, activists are using social media and apps to communicate with and organize public actions. But this week, in a move that puts the Spanish government on par with censorship-heavy places like China and Russia, the country requested that Github block access to one of those apps, by revoking local access to its Github repository. Github, which is owned by Microsoft, complied with the order. According to Spanish news outlet El Confidencial, last week the government ordered takedowns of websites and app made by Tsunami Democratic, an activist ...

Fox News Breaking News Alert Divided House passes Dem-backed guidelines for Trump impeachment as Republicans fume 10/31/19 8:33 AM

China-Linked Hackers Target Military, Government Texts, FireEye Says Published on October 31, 2019 at 08:35PM A state-linked Chinese hacking group is using malware to steal SMS text messages from high-ranking military and government targets, according to cybersecurity company FireEye. From a report: The hacking technology, known as MESSAGETAP, "allows China to efficiently steal data from multitudes of sources from one location," Steven Stone, FireEye's director of advanced practices, said in a statement. "Espionage-related theft and intrusions have been long occurring, but what is new is the vast scale due to the use of this tool." The company's finding, released in a blog on Thursday, underscores the growing concerns about China's use of technology for espionage and the theft of intellectual property. Telecommunications pose a special concern, as the U.S. seeks to persuade its allies not to build their next-generation networks with tools from Chinese ...

From the vantage point of space aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan captured this image of a California wildfire. via NASA https://ift.tt/2C0WleU

Zuckerberg Doubles Down on Facebook Political Ads Policy After Twitter Ban Published on October 31, 2019 at 07:48PM Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has ardently defended Facebook's controversial political advertising policy hours after Twitter took a shot at its rival while announcing it will ban all political ads from its platform. From a report: "Although I've considered whether we should not carry [political] ads in the past, and I'll continue to do so, on balance so far I've thought we should continue," Zuckerberg told investors on a quarterly earnings call. "Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates," he added. Facebook directed The Hill to Zuckerberg's remarks in response to an inquiry about Twitter's announcement. Zuckerberg and Facebook have been hit with a firestorm of criticism this month over its policy allowing...