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gollum123 shares a report from the BBC: Last month, the Swiss unveiled a smart new banknote to stash in their wallets. The purple 1,000 franc bill was the latest in the Swiss National Bank (SNB) series to undergo a revamp. But this revamp comes as other nations are phasing out their high-value notes and as cash usage declines in European nations, albeit at greatly differing rates. In Switzerland, cash remains the dominant payment method. Here, there's an assumption everyone carries cash, even in an increasingly digital economy. Most don't get caught out buying a sandwich or paying for a haircut when the card payment machine is out of order. If you have to pay for a coffee with a 100 franc note, no need to apologize -- no one will ask if you have something smaller. And for those big-ticket items, some banks even allow you to withdraw up to 5,000 francs per day (or 10,000 a month) at the cash machine without advance notice. Buying a car that costs tens of thousands with cash is also not that unusual.

Why then do the Swiss prefer cash? Two simple reasons are that cash is widely considered to be part of their culture and people believe that using it allows them to track their spending more easily. In Basel, 53-year-old Chris Troiani confirmed this, saying many people she knows still prefer the reassurance of carrying big bills in their wallet. There's also the identity factor: the Swiss identify with cash in part because of how they see themselves. This is a nation which values privacy and doesn't like being told what to do. They see themselves as different to their European neighbors and closely guard those traditions which set them apart, such as languages, political system and currency.

In a study that raises profound questions about the line between life and death, researchers have restored some cellular activity to brains removed from slaughtered pigs. From a report: The brains did not regain anything resembling consciousness: There were no signs indicating coordinated electrical signaling, necessary for higher functions like awareness and intelligence. But in an experimental treatment, blood vessels in the pigs' brains began functioning, flowing with a blood substitute, and certain brain cells regained metabolic activity, even responding to drugs [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. When the researchers tested slices of treated brain tissue, they discovered electrical activity in some neurons.

The work is very preliminary and has no immediate implications for treatment of brain injuries in humans. But the idea that parts of the brain may be recoverable after death, as conventionally defined, contradicts everything medical science believes about the organ and poses metaphysical riddles. "We had clear lines between 'this is alive' and 'this is dead,'" said Nita A. Farahany, a bioethicist and law professor at Duke University. "How do we now think about this middle category of 'partly alive'? We didn't think it could exist." For decades, doctors and grieving family members have wondered if it might ever be possible to restore function to a person who suffered extensive brain injury because of a severe stroke or heart attack. Were these brains really beyond salvage?

The BBC reports that Ecuador's foreign minister Jose Valencia has been sharing complaints about Julian Assange's conduct during his stay in Ecuador's embassy -- for example, that Julian Assange "damaged the facilities by riding his skateboard and playing football, despite being told not to do so." Cleaning staff, Mr Valencia said, had described "improper hygienic conduct" throughout Assange's stay, an issue that a lawyer had attributed to "stomach problems". One unnamed senior Ecuadorean official told AP news agency that other issues included "weeks without a shower" and a "dental problem born of poor hygiene". Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo then complained that Assange had been allowed to do things like "put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature...."

Assange's stay at the embassy cost Ecuador some $6.5m (£5m) from 2012 to 2018, Mr Valencia said.
NPR reports that Julian Assange's cat also "arguably played a small role in Ecuador's decision to end its asylum agreement," citing remarks from Ecuador President Lenin Moreno: Moreno explained that Assange treated his hosts disrespectfully; late last year the embassy implemented a series of rules for Assange, including a requirement to be responsible for the "well-being, food, hygiene and proper care of your pet." If Assange didn't, the embassy threatened to put the cat in a shelter. In other words, it is likely that Assange didn't effectively clean up after his cat's own wiki-leaks...

The New Yorker reported in 2017 that Assange's interest in the cat was less as an animal lover and more as a master of his own brand. "Julian stared at the cat for about half an hour, trying to figure out how it could be useful, and then came up with this: Yeah, let's say it's from my children," the magazine quoted one of Assange's friends as saying. "For a time, he said it didn't have a name because there was a competition in Ecuador, with schoolchildren, on what to name him. Everything is P.R. -- everything."
Journalist James Ball, an early WikiLeaks employee (who left after three months) said Thursday on Twitter that he'd "genuinely offered to adopt" the cat -- but it was "reportedly given to a shelter by the Ecuadorian embassy ages ago."

Assange's legal team, however, tweeted in November that Assange had been outraged by embassy threats to send the cat to the pound, and asked his lawyers "to take his cat to safety. The cat is with Assange's family. They will be reunited in freedom."

"New York City officials on Tuesday declared a public health emergency and ordered mandatory measles vaccinations" in an area where most of the state's 285 measles cases have occurred. The Washington Post reports: New York's mandatory vaccination order in four Brooklyn zip codes is by far the toughest action to date by state or local officials, as the disease's tally grows to 465 cases in 19 states. Officials there and elsewhere have sought to bar unvaccinated children from schools and other public places but have had limited success... The mandate orders all unvaccinated people in four zip codes to receive inoculations, including children as young as 6 months. Anyone who resists faces a misdemeanor charge and could be fined up to $1,000.
Long-time Slashdot reader Major Blud shares a BBC report that under the order, "any person living in the affected areas who has not been vaccinated must be immunised within 48 hours."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Scientists have taken cancer apart piece-by-piece to reveal its weaknesses, and come up with new ideas for treatment. A team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute disabled every genetic instruction, one at a time, inside 30 types of cancer. It has thrown up 600 new cancer vulnerabilities and each could be the target of a drug. Cancer Research UK praised the sheer scale of the study.

The researchers disrupted nearly 20,000 genes in more than 300 lab-grown tumors made from 30 different types of cancer. The results, published in the journal Nature, revealed 6,000 crucial genes which at least one type of cancer needs to survive. Some were unsuitable for developing cancer drugs, as they are also essential in healthy cells. Others are already the target of precision drugs like Herceptin in breast cancer -- the team called this a "sanity check" that proves their method works. And yet more are beyond current science to develop suitable drugs, so the researchers narrowed down a shortlist of 600 potential new targets for drugs to attack.

Major Blud writes: A newly discovered extinct species of human has been found in the Philippines. It's been named Homo Luzonensis after the island of Luzon where it was found. Homo Erectus has long thought to have been the first member of our direct line to leave the African homeland -- around 1.9 million years ago. The physical features of Homo Luzonensis are a mixture of those found in very ancient human ancestors and in more recent people. This could mean primitive human relatives left Africa and made it all the way to South-East Asia, something not previously thought possible, since Luzon was only ever accessible by sea. The paper detailing the discovery has been published in the journal Nature.

Sony has unveiled a display that contains 16 times as many pixels as a 4K TV and 64 times as many as a regular 1080p high definition TV. "This will let viewers stand close to the unit -- which is longer than a bus -- without its image looking blurred," report the BBC. From the report: The 63ft by 17ft (19.2m by 5.4m) screen is currently being installed at a new research center that has been built for the Japanese cosmetics group Shiseido in the city of Yokohama, south of Tokyo. It is so large it will stretch between the first and second floors. The development was announced by Sony at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show, which is currently being held in Las Vegas.

Sony had previously designed a separate 16K display that went on show at Tokyo's Haneda Airport in 2014, but that looked like it was made up of dozens of smaller screens rather than presenting a single seamless picture. The new "super-size" installation has in fact been created out of several modular panels, but because they do not have bezels they can be fitted together without any visible gaps to create the impression of being a single screen. The innovation does not require a backlight, but goes much brighter than OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens while still delivering similar deep blacks. At present, however, the high manufacturing costs involved make it too expensive for widespread use.

dryriver shares a report from the BBC: In the 1960s it took five hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles, and just 45 minutes to hop from New York to Washington, DC. Today, these same flights now take six-plus hours and 75 minutes respectively, although the airports haven't moved further apart. It's called "schedule creep," or padding. And it's a secret the airlines don't want you to know about, especially given the spillover effects for the environment. Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations.

"On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding," says Captain Michael Baiada, president of aviation consultancy ATH Group citing the U.S. Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report. The figure used to be 40% but padding -- not operational improvements -- boosted on-time arrival rates. 'By padding, airlines are gaming the system to fool you." He says if instead airlines tackled operational issues, customers would directly benefit. "Padding drives higher costs in fuel burn, noise and CO2 which means if airline efficiency goes up, costs go down, benefitting both the environment and fares."

This week the BBC reported on teenaged "hackers dragged from a world of crime to fight for the other side" at "a fairly ordinary looking cyber-security company" in southwest England. Bruce66423 shared their report: Bluescreen employs hackers the authorities have deemed worthy of a second chance, who pit their wits against some of the anonymous online criminals they used to see as brothers in arms... Bluescreen IT has a direct link with the police to find hackers in need of direction. These are young men who have been accused of serious crimes, but instead of being taken through the criminal justice system, they've been given a second chance. About 15 people work in the Security Operations Centre, a handful of whom have been referred to the company as hackers who aren't malicious in nature and are deemed capable of reform...

There's a relaxed atmosphere when you walk into the Security Operations Centre, but it's serious work. Three monitors on the wall detail which of Bluescreen's clients are being attacked, and how serious the threat is. The clients, mostly smaller and medium-sized businesses from around the South West, are given codenames like "Black Mamba" or "Green Starfish" -- usually a colour and an animal... Bluescreen sees itself as a place to develop young people, give them a second chance, and be a haven for those with nowhere else to go. "It makes me really proud when they achieve industry-recognised qualifications," said the company's chief operating officer, Richard Cashmore.
A 16-year-old named Jack stole personal information from about 1,000 people. Years later, when he was 19, "the police sent five squad cars, a tech team and a riot van to his home.... Another employee, Cameron, was arrested on his way to school when he was just 14 years old. "Officers from the National Crime Agency had planned the sting so that Cameron would be out of the house, and unable to destroy his hard drives in the event he heard them coming."

As "apprentices" they start at £650 a month, reports the BBC, but "after five years of experience they could easily be earning close to £50,000 a year."

"A test of UK university defences against cyber-attacks found that in every case hackers were able to obtain 'high-value' data within two hours," writes the BBC.

Bruce66423 shares their report: The tests were carried out by "ethical hackers" working for Jisc, the agency providing internet services to the UK's universities and research centres. They were able to access personal data, finance systems and research networks....

The simulated attacks, so-called "penetration testing", were carried out on more than 50 universities in the UK, with some being attacked multiple times. A report into their effectiveness, published by Jisc (formerly the Joint Information Systems Committee) and the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), showed a 100% success rate in getting through the cyber-defences. Within two hours, and in some cases one hour, they were able to reach student and staff personal information, override financial systems and access research databases.

The tests were carried out by Jisc's in-house team of ethical hackers, with one of the most effective approaches being so-called "spear phishing"...where an email might appear to be from someone you know or a trusted source but is really a way of concealing an attack, such as downloading "malware".

An anonymous reader quotes the BBC: British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering has shown that it can extract CO2 in a cost-effective way. It has now been boosted by $68m in new investment from Chevron, Occidental and coal giant BHP... With its new funding, the company plans to build its first commercial facilities. These industrial-scale direct air capture (DAC) plants could capture up to one million tonnes of CO2 from the air each year....

Carbon Engineering's process is all about sucking in air and exposing it to a chemical solution that concentrates the CO2. Further refinements mean the gas can be purified into a form that can be stored or utilised as a liquid fuel.... Carbon Engineering says the liquid can be used in a variety of engines without modification. "The fuel that we make has no sulphur in it, it has these nice linear chains which means it burns cleaner than traditional fuel," said Carbon Engineering's Dr Jenny McCahill. "It's nice and clear and ready to be used in a truck, car or jet."

CO2 can also be used to flush out the last remaining deposits of oil in wells that are past their prime. The oil industry in the US has been using the gas in this way for decades. It's estimated that using CO2 can deliver an extra 30% of crude from oilfields with the added benefit that the gas is then sequestered permanently in the ground... There is a big worry that with large investments from the fossil fuel industry, the focus of Carbon Engineering's efforts could be turned to producing more oil, not just tackling climate change. Carbon Engineering says that if governments want to invest in its process they are very welcome to do so. If they're not ready to stump up the cash, the company is happy to take funding from the energy industry as time is so short, and the need for the technology is so great.

"BBC Culture reports on DJ Denniz Pop (born Dagge Volle), who couldn't sing, play an instrument, or write a song but could mathematically craft a song from stitching together electronically programmed sounds and beats," writes Slashdot reader dryriver. "Pop was the musical brains behind acts ranging from the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Ace Of Base to Britney Spears, and trained Max Martin who wrote 22 Billbooard #1 hits for the likes of Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Katy Perry, P!nk, Justin Timberlake, Ariana Grande and Maroon 5 using a technique called 'Melodic Math.'" From the report: In a basement in Stockholm's suburbs, Pop brought together an elite team of eight songwriters and producers for a new venture -- Cheiron Studios -- in 1992. Over the next eight years they would go on to sell hundreds of millions of records through the likes of Ace of Base, 5ive, Robyn, Boyzone, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, *NSYNC and Britney Spears. The secret of their songwriting success was to marry the melody to the beat, not work against it, and to have a big chorus. The team at Cheiron followed Pop's example, experimenting in clubs across the capital with up to a hundred different versions of each new track -- meticulously documenting the combinations of beats and melodies that made the club crowds go wild. Through these experiments, an entirely new genre of music blossomed, one that seemed tailor-made for the age of manufactured boybands and girl groups. Having grown up in socialist Sweden, Pop's approach to writing music was almost utilitarian. Like so many Swedish success stories -- IKEA, H&M, Volvo and Spotify -- the Cheiron team wanted their product to appeal to the maximum amount of people, which in a country with a population of only nine million meant focusing outside the nation's borders. Pop designed his music to reflect the lives of the people who bought more music than anyone else -- American teenagers -- at least as far as he understood them from his basement in faraway Stockholm.

Online retail giant Amazon and the governments of eight South American countries have been given a final deadline to reach an agreement over how to use the ".amazon" web address extension after a seven-year dispute. From a report: What will happen next? It's a name that evokes epic proportions: the world's largest rainforest; a global tech company; and now a diplomatic saga nearing its end. This is the battle of the Amazon and it starts back in 2012. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that polices the world wide web's address system, decided to expand its list of generic top-level domains (gTLD) - the bit that comes after the dot in a web address. The new rules allowed companies to apply for brand new extensions, offering internet users and businesses more ways to personalise their website name and addresses. But eight countries containing the Amazon rainforest objected to the retail giant's plans concerning the new .amazon domain name.

In the 1960s it took five hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles, and just 45 minutes to hop from New York to Washington, DC. Today, these same flights now take six-plus hours and 75 minutes respectively, although the airports haven't moved further apart. BBC: It's called "schedule creep," or padding. And it's a secret the airlines don't want you to know about, especially given the spillover effects for the environment. Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations.

It might seem innocuous enough to the passenger -- after all, what it can mean is that even though you take off late, you're pleasantly surprised to arrive on time at your destination. However, this global trend poses multiple problems: not only does your journey take longer but creating the illusion of punctuality means there's no pressure on airlines to become more efficient, meaning congestion and carbon emissions will keep rising. "On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding," says Captain Michael Baiada, president of aviation consultancy ATH Group citing the US Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report.

A flaw in Huawei Matebook laptops, found by Microsoft researchers, could have been used to take control of machines. From a report: The "sophisticated flaw" had probably been introduced at the manufacturing stage, one expert told BBC News. Huawei is under increasing scrutiny around the world over how closely it is tied to the Chinese government. The company, which denies any collusion with Beijing, corrected the flaw after it was notified about it in January. Prof Alan Woodward, a computer security expert based at Surrey University, told BBC News the flaw had the hallmarks of a "backdoor" created by the US's National Security Agency to spy on the computers of targets. That tool was leaked online and has been used by a wide variety of hackers, including those who are state-sponsored and criminal gangs. "It was introduced at the manufacture stage but the path by which it came to be there is unknown and the fact that it looks like an exploit that is linked to the NSA doesn't mean anything," Prof Woodward said.

dryriver shares a report from the BBC: Tracking airplanes anywhere in the world just got a lot easier. The U.S. firm Aireon says its new satellite surveillance network is now fully live and being trialled over the North Atlantic. The system employs a constellation of 66 (Iridium) spacecraft, which monitor the situational messages pumped out by aircraft transponders. These report a plane's position, altitude, direction and speed every eight seconds. The two big navigation management companies that marshal plane movements across the North Atlantic -- UK Nats and Nav Canada -- intend to use Aireon to transform their operations. The more detailed information they now have about the behavior of airplanes means more efficient routing can be introduced. This ought to reduce costs for airlines. Passengers should also experience fewer delays. Aireon has receivers riding piggyback on all 66 spacecraft of the Iridium sat-phone service provider. These sensors make it possible now to track planes even out over the ocean, beyond the visibility of radar -- and ocean waters cover 70% of the globe. The rapid-fire nature of the messaging also means aircraft visibility is virtually continuous. Existing data links only report ocean-crossing aircraft positions every 14 minutes. '

Canada is warming on average at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, a new scientific report indicates. From a report: The federal government climate report also warns that changes are already evident in many parts of the country and are projected to intensify. Canada's Arctic has seen the deepest impact and will continue to warm at more than double the global rate. The report suggests that many of the effects already seen are probably irreversible. Canada's annual average temperature has increased by an estimated 1.7C (3F) since 1948, when nationwide temperatures were first recorded. The largest temperature increases have been seen in the North, the Prairies, and in northern British Columbia. Annual average temperature in northern Canada increased by approximately 2.3C.

According to a new study published in the journal Acta Tropica, listening to electronic music -- specifically dubstep, produced by U.S. artist Skrillex -- could protect against mosquito bites. The BBC reports: Sound is "crucial for reproduction, survival, and population maintenance of many animals," says a team of international scientists specializing in mosquitoes and the diseases they carry. They subjected adults of the species Aedes aegypti, known as the yellow fever mosquito, to electronic music to see whether it could work as a repellent. Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites, a track by Skrillex which features on his Grammy-award winning album of the same name, was chosen because of its mix of very high and very low frequencies.

"In insects, low-frequency vibrations facilitate sexual interactions, whereas noise disrupts the perception of signals from conspecifics [members of the same species] and hosts," the scientists said. Female adult mosquitoes were "entertained" by the track and attacked hosts later and less often than those in a dubstep-free environment. Scientists said "the occurrence of blood feeding activity was lower when music was being played." The scientists also found that mosquitoes exposed to the song had sex "far less often" than mosquitoes without music. "The observation that such music can delay host attack, reduce blood feeding, and disrupt mating provides new avenues for the development of music-based personal protective and control measures against Aedes-borne diseases."

"It's like a time capsule of the end of the world," reports USA Today: 66 million years ago, in what's now North Dakota, a group of animals died together, only a few minutes after a huge asteroid smashed into the Earth near present-day Mexico. Scientists Friday announced the discovery of the jumbled, fossilized remains of the animals, all killed when a tsunami-like wave and a torrent of rocks, sand and glass buried them alive.

This graveyard of fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur is a unique, first-of-its-kind discovery from the exact day that life on Earth changed forever, according to the study lead author Robert DePalma, a curator at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History... DePalma added that the find provides spectacular new detail to what is perhaps the most important event to ever affect life on Earth... The asteroid impact and resulting mass extinction, which scientists call the K-T boundary, marked the end of the Cretaceous Era. The aftereffects of that infamous asteroid collision killed 75 percent of all species on Earth, including the dinosaurs. It's the planet's most recent mass extinction.
Scientists believe the asteroid was 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) wide, the BBC reports, and that it "hurled billions of tonnes of molten and vaporised rock into the sky in all directions - and across thousands of kilometres." DePalma argues that moment "is tied directly to all of us -- to every mammal on Earth, in fact. Because this is essentially where we inherited the planet.

"Nothing was the same after that impact. It became a planet of mammals rather than a planet of dinosaurs."

"Mark Zuckerberg says regulators and governments should play a more active role in controlling internet content," according to the BBC, calling for new laws governing harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability.

An anonymous reader quotes their report: In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Facebook's chief says the responsibility for monitoring harmful content is too great for firms alone... "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," Mr Zuckerberg writes... In brief, Mr Zuckerberg calls for the following things:

- Common rules that all social media sites need to adhere to, enforced by third-party bodies, to control the spread of harmful content

- All major tech companies to release a transparency report every three months, to put it on a par with financial reporting

- Stronger laws around the world to protect the integrity of elections, with common standards for all websites to identify political actors

- Laws that not only apply to candidates and elections, but also other "divisive political issues", and for laws to apply outside of official campaign periods

- New industry-wide standards to control how political campaigns use data to target voters online

- More countries to adopt privacy laws like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force last year

- A "common global framework" that means these laws are all standardised globally, rather than being substantially different from country to country

- Clear rules about who's responsible for protecting people's data when they move it from one service to another
Zuckerberg believes the same regulations should apply to all web sites to make it easier to stop the spread of "harmful content." He also says Facebook will be creating "an independent body so people can appeal our decisions" when content is taken.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A French coastal community has finally cracked the mystery behind the Garfield telephones that have plagued its picturesque beaches for decades. Since the 1980s, the Iroise coast in Brittany has received a supply of bright orange landline novelty phones shaped like the famous cartoon cat. Anti-litter campaigners have been collecting fragments of the feline for years as they clean the beaches.

But now, the source of the problem has been found -- a lost shipping container. Last year, campaigners from the Ar Vilantsou anti-litter group made the novelty phone a symbol of the plastic pollution on the beaches of the Finistere region -- part of which is a designated marine park. Once a common household item, its eyes open when the landline receiver is picked up, and thousands were made and sold during the 1980s. Collectors still buy and sell the vintage Garfield phone online today. The beach-cleaning teams had long suspected that a lost shipping container -- perhaps blown overboard -- had regurgitated its precious orange cargo. But they had never been able to find it.

More than 100 police officers were deployed to break up a mass brawl reportedly organized by two rival YouTube stars in Berlin. The BBC reports: The fight broke out on Thursday evening on Alexanderplatz square in the German capital, police said, adding that nine people were arrested. More than 400 people had gathered after two social media influencers reportedly urged their fans to join a face-off. As tensions escalated, a large melee involving around 50 people erupted. Officers used pepper spray and tear gas after attempts to disperse the crowds with loudspeakers failed. As police intervened, clashes spilled over in a nearby subway, where rocks picked up from railway lines were reportedly thrown. The YouTubers who reportedly started this mess are named "Thatsbekir" and "Bahar Al Amood," both of which denied that they were at fault for the brawl in social media posts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Officials in San Francisco have proposed a new law to ban e-cigarette sales until their health effects are evaluated by the U.S. government. The law appears to be the first of its kind in the U.S. and seeks to curb a rising usage by young people. Critics, however, say it will make it harder for people to kick addiction. A second city law would bar making, selling or distributing tobacco on city property and is aimed at an e-cigarette firm renting on Pier 70. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its proposed guidelines, giving companies until 2021 to apply to have their e-cigarette products evaluated. A deadline had initially been set for August 2018, but the agency later said more preparation time was needed. San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera, one of the co-authors of the bill, which is yet to be approved, said reviews should have been done before they were sold. Juul, one of the most popular U.S. e-cigarette firms, rents space on Pier 70. It said in a statement: "This proposed legislation begs the question -- why would the city be comfortable with combustible cigarettes being on shelves when we know they kill more than 480,000 Americans per year?"

Munky101 tipped us off to some interesting comments from New York's activist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. TechCrunch reports: It's impossible to discuss the seismic shift toward automation without a conversation about job loss. Opponents of these technologies criticize a displacement that could someday result in wide-scale unemployment among what is often considered "unskilled" roles. Advocates, meanwhile, tend to suggest that reports of that nature tend to be overstated. Workforces shift, as they have done for time immemorial. During a conversation at SXSW this week, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered another take entirely.

"We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work," she said in an answer reported by The Verge. "We should be excited by that. But the reason we're not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don't have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem... We should be excited about automation, because what it could potentially mean is more time educating ourselves, more time creating art, more time investing in and investigating the sciences, more time focused on invention, more time going to space, more time enjoying the world that we live in," The Verge quoted Ocasio-Cortez as saying. "Because not all creativity needs to be bonded by wage."

And Ocasio-Cortez cited Bill Gates' suggestion (first floated in a presentation on Quartz) that a robot tax might be a way to make that vision real. "What [Gates is] really talking about is taxing corporations," she reportedly said. "But it's easier to say: 'tax a robot.' "
Science fiction writer William Gibson called her comments "shockingly intelligent" for a politician. Fast Company adds that robots "have put half a million people out of work in the United States, and researchers estimate that bots could take 800 million jobs by 2030" -- then quotes Ocasio-Cortez's assessment of the unfair state of labor today.

"We should be working the least amount we've ever worked, if we were actually paid based on how much wealth we were producing, but we're not," she said. "We're paid by how little we're desperate enough to accept. And then the rest is skimmed off and given to a billionaire."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: I've had one desire since I was born; to see my body ripped and torn. The lyrics of death metal band Bloodbath's cannibalism-themed track, Eaten, do not leave much to the imagination. But neither this song -- nor the gruesome lyrics of others of the genre -- inspire violence. That is the conclusion of Macquarie University's music lab, which used the track in a psychological test. It revealed that death metal fans are not "desensitized" to violent imagery. The findings are published in the Royal Society journal Open Science. How do scientists test people's sensitivity to violence? With a classic psychological experiment that probes people's subconscious responses; and by recruiting death metal fans to take part. The test involved asking 32 fans and 48 non-fans listen to death metal or to pop whilst looking at some pretty unpleasant images.

Lead researcher Yanan Sun explained that the aim of the experiment was to measure how much participants' brains noticed violent scenes, and to compare how their sensitivity was affected by the musical accompaniment. To test the impact of different types of music, they also used a track they deemed to be the opposite of Eaten. "We used 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams as a [comparison]," said Dr Sun. Each participant was played Happy or Eaten through headphones, while they were shown a pair of images -- one to each eye. One image showed a violent scene, such as someone being attacked in a street. The other showed something innocuous -- a group of people walking down that same street, for example. "If fans of violent music were desensitized to violence, which is what a lot of parent groups, religious groups and censorship boards are worried about, then they wouldn't show this same bias. "But the fans showed the very same bias towards processing these violent images as those who were not fans of this music."

Facebook is suing Andrew Gorbachov and Gleb Sluchevsky, of Ukraine, who worked for a company called Web Sun Group that developed "data-grabbing" quizzes for its social media site. The malicious quiz apps were used to harvest thousands of users' profile data. "The firm says anyone who wanted to take the quizzes was asked to install browser extensions, which then lifted data ranging from names and profile pictures to private lists of friends," reports the BBC. "These were installed about 63,000 times between 2016 and October 2018, it says." From the report: The quizzes, with titles such as "What does your eye color say about you?" and "Do people love you for your intelligence or your beauty?", gained access to this information via the Facebook Login system -- which enables connections between third party apps and Facebook profiles. While the system is intended to verify that such connections are secure, in this case, Facebook says, users were falsely told the app would retrieve only a limited amount of public data from their profiles. "In total, defendants compromised approximately 63,000 browsers used by Facebook users and caused over $75,000 in damages to Facebook," the company said in court documents first published by online news site The Daily Beast. The documents accuse the two men of breaking US laws against computer hacking as well as breaching Facebook's own terms of use.

Humans will always make the final decision on whether armed robots can shoot, the US Department of Defense said today. From a report: The statement comes as plans emerge for gun platforms that can choose their own targets on the battlefield. The plans seek to upgrade existing aiming systems, using developments in machine intelligence. The US said rules governing armed robots still stood and humans would retain the power to veto their actions. The defense department's plans seek to upgrade the current Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (Atlas) used on ground combat vehicles to help human gunners aim. The military is seeking commercial partners to help develop aiming systems to "acquire, identify, and engage targets at least three times faster than the current manual process."

China's aviation regulator today grounded nearly 100 Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 aircraft operated by its airlines, more than a quarter of the global fleet of the jets, after a deadly crash of one of the planes in Ethiopia. From a report: However, a U.S. official said it was unclear what information the Chinese regulator was acting on because the investigation of Sunday's crash, the second involving the latest version of the narrowbody jet, was in the early stages. Speaking on condition of anonymity as the topic is sensitive, the U.S. official said there were no plans to follow suit, as the jet had a stellar safety record in the United States and there was a lack of information on what caused the Ethiopian crash.

dryriver quotes the BBC: A doctor in California told a patient he was going to die using a robot with a video-link screen. Ernest Quintana, 78, was at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont when a doctor — appearing on the robot's screen — informed him that he would die within a few days. A family friend wrote on social media that it was "not the way to show value and compassion to a patient". The hospital says it "regrets falling short" of the family's expectations.

Mr Quintana died the next day.

PolygamousRanchKid quotes the BBC: Will Marshall's "Planet" company operates the world's largest satellite imaging network, with 150 spacecraft able to fully picture Earth on a daily basis. He warns EU withdrawal will do immense harm to Britain's space industry. The UK will be "lost in space", he says.

The UK Space Agency responded by saying home businesses had a positive outlook. The most recent survey of confidence across the sector found that three-quarters of organisations expected growth over the next three years, it added.

Dr Marshall holds particular scorn for the UK government's actions on Galileo, the EU version of the Global Positioning System (GPS). Ministers have decided to walk away from the project because Brussels says a future Britain, as a "third country" outside the EU, cannot be involved in the system's most secure elements — this despite the UK having already invested £1.5bn in Galileo. London says it will build its own sat-nav system instead, but Dr Marshall calls this a "pie in the sky" plan that has significant economic and security implications.

Instagrammers love the colorful homes in Paris's Rue Cremieux. But residents of Rue Cremieux have now had enough and are calling on the city council to restrict access at certain times. From a report: Residents have asked the city council to provide a gate that can be closed at peak times -- evenings, weekends and at sunrise and sunset, when good light attracts people searching for a perfect Instagram picture. One resident told radio station France Info: "We sit down to eat and just outside we have people taking photos, rappers who take two hours to film a video right beneath the window, or bachelorette parties who scream for an hour. Frankly, it's exhausting."

A study into the amount people pay for mobile data has found that the UK has some of the most expensive prices in Europe. From a report: The research, from price comparison site Cable.co.uk, found that one gigabyte (GB) of data cost $0.26 in India but $6.66 in the UK. The US had one of the most expensive rates -- with an average cost of $12.37 for the same amount of data. The results were "disappointing" said Cable's telecoms analyst Dan Howdle. "Despite a healthy UK marketplace, our study has uncovered that EU nations such as Finland, Poland, Denmark, Italy, Austria and France pay a fraction of what we pay in the UK for similar data usage. It will be interesting to see how our position is affected post-Brexit," he said. The study compared mobile data pricing in 230 countries around the world. The UK ranked 136th in the list. The global average was $8.53 for 1GB.

AppleHoshi writes: The BBC is reporting that an accidental fire at Tesla's Gatwick Service Centre in the U.K. has damaged "at least half" of the facility. Initial reports are that the fire did not begin in the service area itself, but started in a parts storage area and spread from there. The fire was extinguished within three hours and no staff or customers were injured.
The fire "was not caused by Tesla cars, chargers or batteries," according to the West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service.

dryriver writes: BBC Future reports on a geoengineering technique called "marine cloud brightening" that makes marine Stratocumulus clouds -- which currently reflect almost 30% of total Solar radiation back into space -- whiter, causing them to reflect more sunlight away from earth. Professor Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University, a well-known 1970s wave and tidal power pioneer, has designed an unmanned hydro-foil ship, computer-controlled and wind-powered, which pumps an ultra-fine mist of sea salt toward the cloud layer, causing it to turn white: "'Spraying about 10 cubic meters per second could undo all the [global warming] damage we've done to the world up until now,' Salter claims. And, he says, the annual cost would be less than the cost to host the annual UN Climate Conference -- between $100-$200 million each year. Salter calculates that a fleet of 300 of his autonomous ships could reduce global temperatures by 1.5C. He also believes that smaller fleets could be deployed to counter-act regional extreme weather events.

Hurricane seasons and El Nino, exacerbated by high sea temperatures, could be tamed by targeted cooling via marine cloud brightening. Salter boasts that 160 of his ships could 'moderate an El Nino event, and a few hundred [would] stop hurricanes.' The same could be done, he says, to protect large coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef, and even cool the polar regions to allow sea ice to return. So, what's the catch? Well, there's a very big catch indeed. The potential side-effects of solar geoengineering on the scale needed to slow hurricanes or cool global temperatures are not well understood. According to various theories, it could prompt droughts, flooding, and catastrophic crop failures. Another major concern is that geoengineering could be used as an excuse to slow down emissions reduction, meaning CO2 levels continue to rise and oceans continue to acidify -- which, of course, brings its own serious problems."

A pair of Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers sent up to the International Space Station in August 2017 as an experiment have still not come back to Earth, three months after their intended return. From a report: Together they make up the Spaceborne Computer, a Linux system that has supercomputer processing power. They were sent up to see how durable they would be in space with minimal specialist treatment. After 530 days, they are still working. Their return flight was postponed after a Russian rocket failed in October 2018. HPE senior content architect Adrian Kasbergen said they may return in June 2019 if there is space on a flight but "right now they haven't got a ticket." The company is working with Nasa to be "computer-ready" for the first manned Mars flight, estimated to take place in about 2030. The company is also working with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Children's charity the NSPCC has accused YouTube of failing to tackle dangerous content on its youth channel. From a report: YouTube Kids, dubbed as a safer, child-friendly version of the video-sharing site, has been criticised by parents for failing to remove cartoons that contain clips depicting suicide methods on its platform. The clips show a YouTuber demonstrating a suicide method. Google told the BBC it works hard to remove such content. "We have strict policies that prohibit videos which promote self-harm. We rely on both user-flagging and smart-detection technology to flag this content for our reviewers," the firm said in a statement. "We are always working to improve our systems and to remove violat[ing] content more quickly." It is unclear how or why the clips depicting suicide methods were embedded in children's cartoons. The BBC has received no response from the YouTuber. It also asked Google, which owns YouTube, if it had spoken to him directly but did not get a reply.

The UK's NHS has been told to stop using pagers for communications by 2021, in order to save money. The health service still uses about 130,000 pagers, which is about 10% of the total left in use globally. From a report: They cost the NHS about $8.6 million a year, because only one service provider supports them. Health Secretary Matt Hancock called them "outdated" and said he wanted to rid the NHS of "archaic technology like pagers and fax machines". However, many in the medical industry say that pagers are quick and reliable - especially in emergencies -- and proposed replacements have their own shortcomings.

hackingbear writes: In a tweet, President Trump said he wanted "5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. I want the United States to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies. American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind." While he did not specifically mention China's Huawei, many interpreted the comments as Mr Trump taking a softer stance on the firm. The U.S. has been pressuring allies to block out the Chinese telecom giant from their future 5G mobile networks, but the tactic meets considerable resistance. "Mr. President. I cannot agree with you more. Our company is always ready to help build the real 5G network in the U.S., through competition," Huawei President Ken Hu replied in a tweet, mocking Trump's frequent usages of the word "real." Huawei is the second biggest holder of 5G patents after Samsung and the top contributor to the 5G standard, and is setting its sight on 6G.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Current digital technology gives us flawless music quality without physical deterioration. Music is easy to copy and upload, and can be streamed online without downloading. Since our digital music is less tangible than vinyl or CDs, surely it must be more environmentally friendly? Even though new formats are material-free, that doesn't mean they don't have an environmental impact. The electronic files we download are stored on active, cooled servers. The information is then retrieved and transmitted across the network to a router, which is transferred by wi-fi to our electronic devices. This happens every time we stream a track, which costs energy. Once vinyl or a CD is purchased, it can be played over and over again, the only carbon cost coming from running the record player. However, if we listen to our streamed music using a hi-fi sound system it's estimated to use 107 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, costing about $20 to run. A CD player uses 34.7 kilowatt hours a year and costs about $7 to run.

So, which is the greener option? It depends on many things, including how many times you listen to your music. If you only listen to a track a couple of times, then streaming is the best option. If you listen repeatedly, a physical copy is best -- streaming an album over the internet more than 27 times will likely use more energy than it takes to produce and manufacture a CD. If you want to reduce your impact on the environment, then vintage vinyl could be a great physical option. For online music, local storage on phones, computers or local network drives keeps the data closer to the user and will reduce the need for streaming over distance from remote severs across a power-hungry network.

The founder of Huawei has said there is "no way the US can crush" the company, in an interview with the BBC. From the report: Ren Zhengfei, founder and president of Huawei, described the arrest of his daughter Meng Wanzhou, the company's chief financial officer, as politically motivated. The US is pursuing criminal charges against Huawei and Ms Meng, including money laundering, bank fraud and stealing trade secrets. Huawei denies any wrongdoing.

Mr Ren spoke to the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in his first international broadcast interview since Ms Meng was arrested -- and dismissed the pressure from the US. "There's no way the US can crush us," he said. "The world cannot leave us because we are more advanced. Even if they persuade more countries not to use us temporarily, we can always scale things down a bit." However, he acknowledged that the potential loss of custom could have a significant impact. [...] Mr Ren warned that "the world cannot leave us because we are more advanced". "If the lights go out in the West, the East will still shine. And if the North goes dark, there is still the South. America doesn't represent the world. America only represents a portion of the world."

Long-time Slashdot reader kbahey writes: The increased reliance on machine-learning techniques used by thousands of scientists to analyze data, is producing results that are misleading and often completely wrong, according to the BBC.

Dr. Genevera Allen from Rice University in Houston said that the increased use of such systems was contributing to a "crisis in science".

She warned scientists that if they didn't improve their techniques they would be wasting both time and money. Her research was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

This is the oft-discussed 'reproducibility problem' in modern science.
The BBC writes that this irreproducibility happens when experiments "aren't designed well enough to ensure that the scientists don't fool themselves and see what they want to see in the results." But machine learning now has apparently become part of the problem.

Dr. Allen asks "If we had an additional dataset would we see the same scientific discovery or principle...? Unfortunately the answer is often probably not.â

This weekend the BBC reports on the site of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion -- where "robotic cranes are dismantling 33-year-old, radioactive wreckage" -- investigating an area of more than 4,000 square kilometres [2,485 square miles] that's been abandoned since 1986. "That could be about to change..."

An anonymous reader summarizes their report: "Every community within a 30km radius [18.9 miles] of the plant was evacuated and abandoned; no one was allowed to return here to live." Yet the BBC visits a tiny community of 15 who reclaimed their homes in 1986 -- part of a population of 200 "self-settlers" deep in the exclusion zone, "an ageing population cut off from the rest of the country.... Almost every family forced to leave here was given an apartment in a nearby town or city. For Maria and her [88-year-old] mother, though, this cottage, with the garden wrapped around it, was home. They refused to abandon it. 'We weren't allowed to come back, but I followed my mum.'"

Parts of the exclusion zone in Ukraine and Belarus have become "a post-human nature reserve", home to prowling wolves and dozens of wild horses. Yet Professor Jim Smith from the UK's University of Portsmouth explains that "Most of the area of the exclusion zone gives rise to lower radiation dose rates than many areas of natural radioactivity worldwide." In fact, the abandoned nuclear-worker city of Pripyat was recently deemed safe to visit for short periods, "and has now become one of Ukraine's most talked about tourist attractions. An estimated 60,000 people visited the exclusion zone last year, keen to witness the dramatic decay."

And beyond the 18.9-mile line is Narodichi, a town of more than 2,500 people, where people "were quietly allowed to return home a few months after the disaster." Still considered an officially contaminated district -- and still in the "exclusion zone" -- it's a semi-abandoned area where all agriculture is banned, and the land can't be developed. 130 children attend Narodichi's kindergarten, but the kindergarten manager says half their parents are unemployed, "because there is nowhere to work." One of the least-contaminated areas in the exclusion zone, "Three decades of research have concluded that much of it is safe - for food to be grown and for the land to be developed." The BBC argues that "Fear of radiation could actually be hurting the people...far more than the radiation itself. "

An anonymous reader shares a report: Any sports fan will know, or at least appreciate, the disappointment of going to watch your team only to find that a top player has been left out. But what if you could pay an extra bit of money for your ticket -- say, 5-15% on top of the normal price -- and insure the cost of your ticket against such a situation? If your favourite player does not play, for whatever reason, you get your money back. That's the intriguing premise behind Fansure, a start-up currently based in Belmont, California. When I spoke to the firm's marketing manager, Tara Fan, she explained it in the context of a basketball game: "Some tickets are $300-$400 to go to a game. Typically, you're paying that to see someone like LeBron James, or Kevin Durant, or someone like that." It works like this: You buy the ticket as normal. Then, at least 48 hours before the game, you go to Fansure, and you pay them an added percentage. The amount reflects what Fansure thinks is the likelihood of your selected player appearing or not.

Someone like Durant for instance, rarely misses a game for the Golden State Warriors and so the premium would be relatively low. "It would only be, I would say, 8% of your ticket price," Ms Fan explained. "It's like... $30 to cover a $400 ticket. And so that's where the benefit rolls out." If Durant plays, you've wasted your $30, which Fansure pockets. If he doesn't, you still get to go and enjoy the game, and Fansure will refund you the entire amount of the ticket (but keeps the bit you paid for insurance).

So you think the dating scene is like a meat market? Well, wait till you hear about the latest matchmaking app. From a report: Following the example of Tinder, UK farming start-up Hectare has launched its own equivalent for livestock and called it Tudder. The app features data profiles of animals from 42,000 UK farms in an effort to help farmers find the perfect breeding partner for their cattle. Farmers can view pictures of bulls or cows and swipe right to show interest. Hectare Agritech, which also runs online grain marketplace Graindex, says its aim is "reinventing farm trading - and making farmers' lives easier". It says it has raised more than $3.8 million from investors and organisations, including grant funding from government schemes, while tennis player Andy Murray is listed as one of its investors.

Giving jobless people in Finland a basic income for two years did not lead them to find work, researchers said. From a report: From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of $685. The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs, and support them if they had to take insecure gig economy work. While employment levels did not improve, participants said they felt happier and less stressed. When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. It immediately attracted international interest - but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.

All graphic images of self-harm will be removed from Instagram, the head of the social media platform has told the BBC. From a report: The move comes after the father of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017, said Instagram had "helped kill" his daughter. Molly's family found she had been viewing graphic images of self-harm on the site prior to her death. Adam Mosseri said Instagram was trying to balance "the need to act now and the need to act responsibly". He added the site was "not where we need to be on the issues of self-harm and suicide". When asked by the BBC's Angus Crawford when the images would be removed, Mr Mosseri replied: "As quickly as we can, responsibly." Molly's father Ian Russell welcomed Instagram's commitment and said he hoped they would act swiftly to implement their plans.

Photo-sharing website Flickr is starting to delete users' photos after changing its terms and conditions. The firm announced in November that it would no longer be allowing its members one terabyte of free storage. From a report: Under the new rules, there is a limit of 1,000 photographs for those who do not subscribe to the service at a cost of $49.99 per year. One terabyte would store around 200,000 photos with an average size of 5MB. Flickr was acquired by another photo platform called SmugMug in April 2018. The price it paid to former owner Verizon was not disclosed. In a blog in November announcing the changes, Flickr said that "storing tens of billions of Flickr members' photos is staggeringly expensive". It also said by introducing the free storage in 2013, Flickr's original owner Yahoo had "lost sight of what made Flickr truly special" as new users were attracted by the storage rather than the photography.

At least 14 UK police forces have made use of crime-prediction software or plan to do so, according to Liberty. From a report: The human rights group said [PDF] it had sent a total of 90 Freedom of Information requests out last year to discover which forces used the technology. It believes the programs involved can lead to biased policing strategies that unfairly focus on ethnic minorities and lower-income communities. And it said there had been a "severe lack of transparency" about the matter. Defenders of the technology say it can provide new insights into gun and knife crime, sex trafficking and other potentially life-threatening offences at a time when police budgets are under pressure.

Confidential data about more than 14,000 people diagnosed with HIV, including foreign visitors, has been stolen in Singapore and leaked online. From a report: Authorities revealed details about the 2016 health data breach on Monday. They believe an HIV-positive American whose partner was a senior Singaporean doctor is behind the leak. The hack comes just months after the records of 1.5m Singaporeans, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, were stolen last year. Confidential information including names, addresses, HIV status and other medical information is reportedly included in the latest breach. Officials say the details of 5,400 Singaporeans and 8,800 foreigners dating up to January 2013 have been compromised.

"The BBC has an article detailing new efforts to replace plastics used in products and construction with newer, less environmentally harmful alternative materials," writes Slashdot reader dryriver. The new products mentioned in the report include: Stone Wool: To transform one of the world's most abundant resources into something with utility and sustainability takes a special kind of alchemy. Stone wool comes from natural igneous rock -- the kind that forms after lava cools -- and a steelmaking byproduct called slag; these substances are melted together and spun into fibers, a little like candyfloss.

Mycotecture: Mushrooms aren't just a flavor-packed addition to ravioli or ragu (or a sparkplug to the occasional psychedelic adventure); soon, tree-hugging fungi and forest-floor toadstools may replace materials like polystyrene, protective packaging, insulation, acoustic insulation, furniture, aquatic materials and even leather goods.

Urine Bricks: Cement, concrete's primary ingredient, accounts for about 5% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers and engineers are working to develop less energy-intensive alternatives, including bricks made with leftover brewery grains, concrete modeled after ancient Roman breakwaters (Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock to form mortar, a highly stable material), and bricks made of, well, urine. As part of his thesis project, Edinburgh College of Art student Peter Trimble was working on an exhibit that was supposed to feature a module on sustainability. Almost by accident, he created "Biostone": a mixture of sand (incidentally, one of Earth's most abundant resources), nutrients, and urea -- a chemical found in human urine.

A greener particleboard: Despite what it sounds like, particleboard -- those rigid panels made of compressed and veneered wood chips and resin used in furniture and kitchen cabinetry throughout the world -- hasn't actually a place in the green-building pantheon. That's because the glue that binds particleboard's wood fibers traditionally contain formaldehyde, a colorless, flammable, strong-smelling chemical and known respiratory irritant and carcinogen. That means your faux-wood Ikea shelf is quietly "off-gassing" toxins into the air. One company, NU Green, created a material made from 100% pre-consumer recycled or recovered wood fibre called "Uniboard." Uniboard saves trees and avoids landfill, while also generating far fewer greenhouse gases than traditional particleboard, and contains no toxins. That's because Uniboard has pioneered the use of renewable fibers like corn stalks and hops, as well as no added formaldehyde (NAF) resin instead of glue.