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Facebook Bows to Singapore's 'Fake News' Law, Posts 'Correction' Published on December 01, 2019 at 11:04AM An anonymous reader quotes the BBC: Facebook has added a correction notice to a post that Singapore's government said contained false information. It is the first time Facebook has issued such a notice under the city-state's controversial "fake news" law. Singapore claimed the post, by fringe news site States Times Review, contained "scurrilous accusations". The note issued by the social media giant said it "is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information". Facebook's addition was embedded at the bottom of the original post, which was not altered. It was only visible to social media users in Singapore... Critics say the law threatens freedom of expression. Amnesty International said it would "give authorities unchecked powers to clamp down on online views of whic...

Apple's and Microsoft's 2019 Holiday Ads: Naughty Or Nice? Published on December 01, 2019 at 08:04AM Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In Apple's 2019 holiday ad The Surprise (YouTube, 11.8M views), the reveal at the end is that two young girls thought to have been frittering away time on their iPads have been making an unforgettable, heartwarming tribute to their recently passed grandmother that brings tears to their grandpa's eyes. "This is a master class in comfy reassurance commercialism," writes Fast Company's Jeff Beer. "It's something we see all the time in advertising, where a product of convenience pitches itself as a problem-solver, simultaneously making you feel less guilty for needing it. Better meals. A cool, organized house. A clean house. Screen time. The emotional journey from haggard travel to family loss to inspirational kids, all set to the soundtrack from perhaps the most tear-inducing scene Pixar ever made? It's a...

Ask Slashdot: Is Your Company Using Linux Desktops? Published on December 01, 2019 at 06:04AM SomeoneFromBelgium writes: Yesterday I spoke to a friend of mine who works for a company developing mostly integrated network solutions which are purely Linux-based. He complained that he was unable to convince his IT department to provide him and his fellow developers and testers with a Linux desktop. They stated that "it was more secure when using a VM". We both agreed that the more likely problem is that the IT department is solely geared towards a Windows desktop environment and that they have neither the skills nor the inclination to support any other platform. This got me wondering: is this also your experience? I bet Slashdot's readers have stories to tell, with enlightening experiences in corporate workplaces over the years gone by. So feel free to share your thoughts, opinions, and anecdotes in the comments. And is your company using Linux desktops? Read more of thi...

How Russian Trolls Spread Propaganda Using Uplifting Tweets Published on December 01, 2019 at 05:04AM Two associate professors of communication at Clemson spent two years studying online propaganda and state-affiliated disinformation campaigns on social media. This week in Rolling Stone they explain how professional trolls share uplifting "Trojan horse" tweets meant to gain hundreds of thousands of followers, and then "use that following to spread messages promoting division, distrust, and doubt." Professional disinformation isn't spread by the account you disagree with -- quite the opposite. Effective disinformation is embedded in an account you agree with. The professionals don't push you away, they pull you toward them... The quality of Russia's work has been honed over several years and millions of social media posts. They have appeared on Instagram, Stitcher, Reddit, Google+, Tumblr, Medium, Vine, Meetup, and even Pokemon Go, demonstrating not onl...

Genetically-Engineered Microbe No Longer Needs to Eat Food To Grow Published on December 01, 2019 at 04:04AM "Synthetic biologists have performed a biochemical switcheroo," reports Science magazine: They've re-engineered a bacterium that normally eats a diet of simple sugars into one that builds its cells by absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2), much like plants. The work could lead to engineered microbes that suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into medicines and other high-value compounds. "The implications of this are profound," says Dave Savage, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the work. Such advances, he says, could "ultimately make us change the way we teach biochemistry...." In all, the evolved bacteria picked up 11 new genetic mutations that allowed them to survive without eating other organisms, the team reports today in Cell. "It really shows how amazing evolution can be, in that it can change...

Can AI Predict the Stock Market? No, But the Attempt Was Interesting Published on December 01, 2019 at 03:04AM "We all want to be rich by having a computer just generate piles of money for us," writes long-time Slashdot reader TekBoy. "Here's one man's attempt at using AI to predict the market. From the article (by tinkerer/writer/network guy Jason Bowling): Models that did great during their initial training and validation runs might do ok during runs on later data, but could also fail spectacularly and burn all the seed money. Half the time the simulation would make money, and half of the time it would go broke. Sometimes it would be just a few percentage points better than a coin toss, and other times it would be far worse. What had happened? It had looked so promising. It finally dawned on me what I had done. The results cycling around 50% was exactly what you'd expect if the stock price was a random walk. By letting my program hunt through hundreds of ...

FedEx Warned Not To 'Invade' New York City With Sidewalk Robots Published on December 01, 2019 at 02:04AM "FedEx delivery robots invade New York City streets," read one newspaper's headline, describing the six-wheeled "SameDay" bots that the company is testing in four cities. But this week New York City told them they're not welcome, CNN reports: The delivery robot, called Roxo, is not actually being tested in New York, but was visiting the city for a special event, a FedEx spokesperson told CNN. Nevertherless, lawyers for the New York City Department of Transportation delivered a cease-and-desist letter to FedEx on Monday, warning that the robots were violating multiple traffic provisions... Motor vehicles are not permitted to operate on New York City sidewalks, and no motor vehicles may be operated without "having at least one hand" on the the steering mechanism any time the vehicle is moving, according to the letter. "FedEx's ...

'Pre-Crime' AI Is Driving 'Industrial-Scale Human Rights Abuses' In China's Xinjiang Province Published on December 01, 2019 at 01:04AM Long-time Slashdot reader clawsoon writes: Among Sunday's releases from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on leaked Chinese documents about the detention of Xinjiang Uighurs — which they are calling the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since World War II — is a section on detention by algorithm which "is more than a 'pre-crime' platform, but a 'machine-learning, artificial intelligence (AI), command and control' platform that substitutes artificial intelligence for human judgment...." "The Chinese have bought into a model of policing where they believe that through the collection of large-scale data run through AI and machine learning that they can, in fact, predict ahead of time where possible incidents might take place, as well as identify possible...

The File /var/lib/dbus/machine-id Matters For Your Privacy (and Devuan Fixed It) Published on December 01, 2019 at 12:04AM Long-time Slashdot reader jaromil (Denis "Jaromil" Roio) writes: A few days ago Devuan ASCII 2.1 was announced and one update has been overlooked by most media outlets: our dbus patch to re-generate machine-id at every boot. This patch matters for everyone's privacy and I hope more distributions will follow our example, let alone Debian. We are dealing with important privacy implications: non-consensual user tracking is illegal in many countries and is not even mentioned in the machine-id documentation so far. "In theory, the machine-id should be a persistent identifier of the current host," explains the README documentation. "In practice, this causes some privacy concerns..." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jimmy Wales New Social Network Skyrockets To 345,000 Members, Will Hire Journalists Published on November 30, 2019 at 11:04PM Jimmy Wales' new social network WT.Social started November with just 1,500 members. Four weeks later, it's skyrocketed up to 345,680 members -- and that's just the beginning. Next year Wales plans to hire journalists, with the site's users acting as their "editors-in-chief," fulfilling the dreams Wales had for the site's earlier incarnation as a crowd-sourced news platform Wikitribune, reports the journalism magazine Press Gazette: Wikitribune originally employed about ten to 12 journalists who created content and hit publish on stories for the site. But the whole editorial team was laid off in October last year after Wales told them costs were unsustainable with not enough money coming in from crowdfunding and no major investors. [On WT.Social] he instead enabled thousands of users to publish articles, a right that had previously...

Earth is Getting Windier -- Which Helps Wind Turbines Generate More Green Energy Published on November 30, 2019 at 10:04PM "The world is getting windier," reports WBUR, citing a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. And they add that this could actually be a boon to wind farm operators, "since faster wind means more efficient wind turbines." Researchers analyzed decades of weather data and determined global wind speeds have risen dramatically over the past 10 years... Princeton University scholar Timothy Searchinger, one of the study's authors, says researchers expect wind speed to continue to increase, he says, which has multiple positive effects. Green energy through wind turbines will see these impacts. "When you increase the wind speed by a little bit, you still increase the power quite a lot," he says... As a result of increasing wind speed, the average wind turbine generated roughly 17% more electricity in 2017 than it did i...

Netflix Cancels Rebooted 'Mystery Science Theatre 3000' Published on November 30, 2019 at 09:04PM Netflix's reboot of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 made this year's "Best Of" lists from both The New York Times and Rotten Tomatoes. Yet apparently their bosses didn't like them, and have shot them into space. Forbes reports: In a controversial move poisoning Thanksgiving for many indie comedy fans, Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Jonah Ray tweeted that Netflix has cancelled the young reboot after two seasons... The reprise of Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- whose maiden incarnation made hordes of fans airing on Comedy Central and Syfy throughout the '90s -- ran on Netflix for two seasons and 20 episodes beginning in 2017 after a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign by creator Joel Hodgon fueled its return. "We don't know what the future holds for the show," Ray added in a later tweet, "it always seemed to figure out how to survive. F...

The Bonkers, Bristly Story of How Big Toothbrush Took Over the World Published on November 30, 2019 at 05:15PM In a few decades, two warring toothbrush giants have carved out a market worth billions, with the help of a little science and some clever marketing. But where does it go next? From a report: Not so long ago a toothbrush was a humble thing. A stick, in essence, with some bristles on the end. But with the rise of the electric toothbrush, they've become high-tech accessories. You can buy toothbrushes with associated apps, toothbrushes that automatically access the internet and order you new accessories when they divine that you need them and, for some reason, toothbrushes that are artificially intelligent. They can cost as much as a flatscreen TV or an engagement ring. An estimated 23 million people in Britain now use electric toothbrushes. Their rise is partly driven by our -- somewhat belated -- national realization that oral health is important, and by the fact that we ...

Wild Silkworms Produce Proteins Primed for Bioprinting Published on November 30, 2019 at 02:30PM A mix of silkworms' proteins acts as a scaffold for 3-D-printed tissues and organs. From a report: Many research groups are testing "ink" made from silk proteins to print human tissues, implants and perhaps even organs. The process is a less costly alternative to conventional 3-D printing with collagen, a key protein in the body's natural scaffolding. Researchers in Assam, a state in India, are investigating using local silkworm species for the task -- they recently submitted a patent for bioinks using a combination of proteins extracted from local species Antheraea assamensis and Samia ricini, as well as the commonly used Bombyx mori. The scientists have woven them into synthetic structures ranging from blood vessels to liver lobes; in a paper published in September in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, they described mimicking the cartilage of an entire ear. Silk ...

Study Reveals Music's Universal Patterns Across Societies Worldwide Published on November 30, 2019 at 10:31AM From love songs to dance tunes to lullabies, music made in disparate cultures worldwide displays certain universal patterns, according to a study by researchers who suggest a commonality in the way human minds create music. From a report: The study focused on musical recordings and ethnographic records from 60 societies around the world including such diverse cultures as the Highland Scots in Scotland, Nyangatom nomads in Ethiopia, Mentawai rain forest dwellers in Indonesia, the Saramaka descendants of African slaves in Suriname and Aranda hunter-gatherers in Australia. Music was broadly found to be associated with behaviors including infant care, dance, love, healing, weddings, funerals, warfare, processions and religious rituals. The researchers detected strong similarities in musical features across the various cultures, according to Samuel Mehr, a Harvard University r...

With Suction Cups and Lots of Luck, Scientists Measure Blue Whale's Heart Rate Published on November 30, 2019 at 07:30AM Using a bright orange electrocardiogram machine attached with suction cups to the body of a blue whale, scientists for the first time have measured the heart rate of the world's largest creature and came away with insight about the renowned behemoth's physiology. From a report: The blue whale, which can reach up to 100 feet (30 meters) long and weigh 200 tons, lowers its heart rate to as little as two beats per minute as it lunges under the ocean surface for food, researchers said. The maximum heart rate they recorded was 37 beats per minute after the air-breathing marine mammal returned to the surface from a foraging dive. "The blue whale is the largest animal of all-time and has long fascinated biologists," said Stanford University marine biologist Jeremy Goldbogen, who led the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Acade...

Walmart Dodged US Tax on $2 Billion by Routing Cash Through Multiple Countries, Whistleblower Says Published on November 30, 2019 at 04:31AM Walmart, the world's biggest retail company, underpaid US taxes on nearly $2 billion worth of offshore cash, according to whistleblower documents filed by a former Walmart executive to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2011, and recently obtained by Quartz. From the report: The firm avoided nearly $200 million in taxes on that money and "dramatically" overstated its foreign tax credits in 2009 and 2010 by routing payments from Luxembourg to the United States via the United Kingdom and not declaring they came from a tax haven, the whistleblower wrote. If Walmart claimed all the tax credits, it could have improperly avoided paying close to $600 million in total via the maneuvers, according to the files. The whistleblower argued in the documents that the company should owe all that money to the IRS. A second former executive, who ...