FCC Receives 22 million Comments on Net Neutrality

Nearly 22 million comments were filed with the U.S. government on Net Neutrality, a massive display of direct democracy that's been dogged by charges of faked submissions and the possibility that results were decided months ago. Yesterday, 8/30 was the final day consumers could voice their opinion to the Federal Communications Commission on the changes to Net Neutrality rules, which the current chairman has said he wanted to nix. The rules were put into effect during the Obama administration in 2015 to prevent Internet providers from adjusting the speeds of big-time users, say by charging more for Netflix and Hulu or slowing them down.

But under the Trump presidency, the current FCC chairman has sought to abolish the rules, which he says stymie investment by telecom providers.Egged on by advocates like HBO's John Oliver, Internet users have been urged to speak to the FCC by submitting a comment, adding consumer voices to the more regular lobbying efforts of big Net Neutrality advocates Amazon and Netflix. Large Internet Service Providers such as AT&T and Comcast have advocated for the rules' repeal. The process has been muddied by both sides' complaints that fake comments were submitted. Researcher Emprata studied the comments on behalf of the telecom industry, and said 60% were against repeal. But it also gave a detailed analysis of what seems to have been generated by faked, multiple, or form submissions. For instance, it 7 million of the comments came from temporary (fake) e-mail addresses. Among the sliver of comments that were unique, non-form letters, more (1.77 million) were against the repeal than for the repeal (24,000), the study found.

Student Driverless Car Competition in Germany

In the Formula Student competition in Germany, students build a single seat formula racecar with which they can compete against teams from all over the world. The competition is not won solely by the team with the fastest car, but rather by the team with the best overall package of construction, performance, and financial and sales planning.

Formula Student challenges the team members to go the extra step in their education by incorporating into it intensive experience in building and manufacturing as well as considering the economic aspects of the automotive industry. Teams take on the assumption that they are a manufacturer developing a prototype to be evaluated for production. The target audience is the non-professional Weekend-Racer. The racecar must show very good driving characteristics such as acceleration, braking and handling. It should be offered at a very reasonable cost and be reliable and dependable. Additionally, the car's market value increases through other factors such as aesthetics, comfort and the use of readily available, standard purchase components.



Credits:
Post settings Labels Schedule Permalink Location Options

LockShare Updates Breaks Locks

The Internet of Things refers to previously "dumb" devices that now can connect through the Internet to do amazing things. One example of this is door locks for guest houses (like AirBnB.) The owner of a home can give a passcode to an individual which will get them through the front door. But no one wants all occupants to have access to every room, so internal door locks can be set individually. When a user's stay is over, the passcode is reset so that the individual is "locked out" after their stay ends.

All of that is fine and well except when an update goes bad. Recently the company "LockState" sent an update to all of its locks. Some locks, however, received bad code and stopped talking to the LockState servers. This makes the devices essentially inoperable. The only solution is to replace the locks.

Here is the message that the company had to send to owners of broken locks:

Credits:

• https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/500-smart-locks-arent-so-smart-anymore-thanks-to-botched-update/
• http://www.cetusnews.com/tech/LockState-Accidentally-Breaks-500-Smart-Locks-Often-Used-By-Airbnb-Hosts.HyX8uGayuW.html

Something or Nothing #1: Orbit Wheels

Orbit wheels are almost like skateboards and inline skates, but offers more freedom and simplicity than either of the two. The design involves two wheels, and a footrest in the middle. They are designed for use with two feet, giving you unlimited capabilities to different tricks and maneuvers which can be as creative as your imagination. Orbitwheel skates aren’t quite rollerblades, they aren’t quite skateboards and they aren’t quite a trip to the emergency room, but they’re pretty close to all three. They’re essentially wheels that you slip your feet through the middle of, letting you scoot around sideways until you go over a curb or a rut and end up on the ground. They’re available now for a kind-of-ludicrous price of $99.99 if you’re so inclined, but with more freedom and simplicity than either, the Orbitwheel is a brand new concept for wheeled sports.

Each wheel around each footrest rotates sideways to give the user momentum. Orbit wheels are simple to use compared to skateboards and inline skates. Once you have placed your foot on the foot rest, then you are ready to go. Orbit wheel does not require strapping and the wheels are moved by a sideways motion of the feet. Once your orbit wheel is in motion, then you’ll move as if you are on skateboard, with your effort being the back and forth movement of the feet on the sideways. The main advantage in terms of efficiency and portability, is the ability of the wheel being large enough to be used on a sidewalk and ground terrain and at the same time being thin enough to be carried around easily without the need of folding them down.



Credits:
https://www.orbit-wheel.com/

Justice Dept Demands UP Addresses of Millions Anti-trump Users

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has formally requested that the IP addresses of 1.3 million people that visited an anti-Trump protest organizing website, disruptj20.org, be handed over – along with their contact information, email addresses and content, and photograph uploads. DreamHost, a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider, has explained in a blog post that the request came through a few months ago, and that they are challenging the request.

The company explain that this “information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment. That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.” The company explain that this “information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment. That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.” The DoJ’s request, then, is highly irregular. Such massive online warrants are normally used when it comes to illegal sexual imagery, drug distribution sites, terrorism, or caches of pirated movies. The right to arrange protests is rarely, if ever, investigated in this way.

Credits: http://www.iflscience.com/technology/justice-department-know-identities-million-antitrump-web-users/

New MIT Algorithm Helps with Sleep Disorders

More than 50 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders, and diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s can also disrupt sleep. Diagnosing and monitoring these conditions usually requires attaching electrodes and a variety of other sensors to patients, which can further disrupt their sleep. To make it easier to diagnose and study sleep problems, researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have devised a new way to monitor sleep stages without sensors attached to the body. Their device uses an advanced artificial intelligence algorithm to analyze the radio signals around the person and translate those measurements into sleep stages: light, deep, or rapid eye movement (REM).

The goal of two MIT researchers "is [to develop] health sensors that will disappear into the background and capture physiological signals and important health metrics, without asking the user to change her behavior in any way.” This is coming from technology the MIT team developed to record vital signs without sensors. MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have previously developed radio-based sensors that enable them to remotely measure vital signs and behaviors that can be indicators of health. These sensors consist of a wireless device, about the size of a laptop computer, that emits low-power radio frequency (RF) signals. As the radio waves reflect off of the body, any slight movement of the body alters the frequency of the reflected waves. Analyzing those waves can reveal vital signs such as pulse and breathing rate.

There a Frickin' Eclipse Today

On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will appear over a 70-mile wide path that crosses the country from Oregon to South Carolina. During the total eclipse, researchers will be able to see the faintest regions of the sun, as well as study the sun’s effects on Earth’s upper atmosphere. The exceptionally long path over land of this total eclipse will provide an unprecedented opportunity for cross disciplinary studies of the sun, moon, Earth, and their interactions. Stars and planets will also be visible. NASA is supporting research using balloons, ground measurements, and planes that “chase” the eclipse, all of which can help scientists take continuous measurements of the sun and the eclipse’s effects on Earth for relatively long periods of time.

During a total eclipse, the lower parts of the sun's atmosphere, or corona, can be seen in a way that cannot completely be replicated by current human-made instruments. The lower part of the corona is key to understanding many processes on the sun, including why the sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface, as well as the process by which the sun sends out a constant stream of solar material and radiation, which can cause changes in the nature of space and impact spacecraft, communications systems, and orbiting astronauts. Total solar eclipses are also an opportunity to study Earth under uncommon conditions: In contrast to the global change in light that occurs every day at dusk and dawn, a solar eclipse changes illumination of Earth and its atmosphere only under a comparatively small region of the moon’s shadow. This localized blocking of solar energy is useful in evaluating our understanding of the sun’s effects -- temperature, for example -- on our atmosphere. Of particular interest is the impact on Earth’s upper atmosphere, where solar illumination is primarily responsible for the generation of a layer of charged particles called the ionosphere.

Click here for the video

Credits: http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2017/08/19/united-states-solar-eclipse-nyc-protection-science-next-eclipse.html

Racists Outed, Shamed, and Fired via Twitter

In the 1920s and 1930s, KKK members terrorized communities by concealing their identities with hoods and robes as they burned crosses and committed other despicable acts against others. Today, however, members of alt-right, neo Nazi, and white supremacists groups do not don the traditional apparel. In Charlottesville, the protesters against the removal of Civil War statues were exposed and in plain view. There are a lot of pics and videos of members from that march. A Twitter account, "Yes, you're a racist..." was started in 2012. Pictures of people in public from rallies and protests are published there, asking anyone to identify the individuals. When the founder confirms the identity, the individual's name and identity is publicly revealed.

After the events in Charlottesville, the site identified three individuals. One was from Berkeley, California, at a hot dog stand called Top Dog. The shop has a political bent of its own, as it’s well-known in Berkeley for the libertarian stickers and articles posted on its walls, and website. The employee resigned after the public back-lash from his participation in Charlottesville. After the "outing" of this individual, the Twitter account soon identified students enrolled at the University of Nevada and Washington State University, leading both of the schools to issue statements condemning racism.

pic.twitter.com/gCsKyqfPlN

Credits: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2017/08/14/charlottesville-white-nationalist-demonstrator-fired-from-libertarian-hot-dog-shop/?utm_term=.742af5304c0e

Four Planets Found Orbiting Nearest Star

A new study by an international team of astronomers reveals that four Earth-sized planets orbit the nearest sun-like star, tau Ceti, which is about 12 light years away and visible to the naked eye. These planets have masses as low as 1.7 Earth mass, making them among the smallest planets ever detected around nearby sun-like stars. Two of them are super-Earths located in the habitable zone of the star, meaning they could support liquid surface water. The planets were detected by observing the wobbles in the movement of tau Ceti. This required techniques sensitive enough to detect variations in the movement of the star as small as 30 centimeters per second.

"We are now finally crossing a threshold where, through very sophisticated modeling of large combined data sets from multiple independent observers, we can disentangle the noise due to stellar surface activity from the very tiny signals generated by the gravitational tugs from Earth-sized orbiting planets," said coauthor Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. The outer two planets around tau Ceti are likely to be candidate habitable worlds, although a massive debris disc around the star probably reduces their habitability due to intensive bombardment by asteroids and comets. The researchers painstakingly improved the sensitivity of their techniques and were able to rule out two of the signals the team had identified in 2013 as planets. "But no matter how we look at the star, there seem to be at least four rocky planets orbiting it," Tuomi said. "We are slowly learning to tell the difference between wobbles caused by planets and those caused by stellar active surface. This enabled us to essentially verify the existence of the two outer, potentially habitable planets in the system."

Credits: https://www.cnet.com/videos/4-new-earth-sized-exoplanets-found-orbiting-nearest-sun-like-star/

DIY Portable Air Conditioner

It's hot and fans only blow hot air around the room. What about making yourself a portable air conditioner? Could be a pretty cool deal. It's not a long term perfect solution, but for about $20 and some ice, it might be pretty cool.



Credits: https://www.cnet.com/videos/beat-the-summer-heat-with-this-diy-air-conditioner/

China Successfully Tests Hack-proof Quantum Satelite

In the first trial of a communication system designed to be hack-proof, China has sent a stream of quantum encryption keys from a satellite to earth. The trial marks the first time space-to-ground quantum key distribution (QKD) technology has been successful, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The laws of quantum mechanics mean that any attempt to intercept communications will introduce anomalies that can be detected immediately.

QKD uses quantum mechanics to guarantee secure communication for two parties to share secret keys for encrypting and decrypting messages. If intercepted or measured, the quantum state of the key will change, and the information will self-destruct according to the system’s designers. News of the test – detailed in the journal Nature – comes a year after China launched the world’s first quantum satellite, called Micius, and has been hailed as a milestone by reviewers.

Credits:
http://www.computerweekly.com
https://youtu.be/aO2vNigfbDA 
http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/

200 million Voter data leaked this summer

A data-analytics firm hired by the Republican National Committee last year to gather political information about US voters accidentally leaked the sensitive personal details of roughly 198 million citizens earlier this month, as its database was left exposed on the open web for nearly two weeks. Deep Root Analytics, a conservative data firm contracted by the RNC as part of a push to ramp up its voter-analytics operation in the wake of Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 presidential election, stored details of about 61% of the US population on an Amazon cloud server without password protection for those two weeks.

The data, according to UpGuard's analysis, "included 1.1 terabytes of entirely unsecured personal information compiled by DRA and at least two other Republican contractors, TargetPoint Consulting, Inc. and Data Trust. In total, the personal information of potentially near all of America's 200 million registered voters was exposed, including names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details, as well as data described as 'modeled' voter ethnicities and religions." The information did not include highly sensitive information like Social Security numbers, and much of it was publicly available voter-registration data provided by state government officials, a company spokesman told Business Insider.

But the exposed database combined people's personal information and political inclinations — including proprietary information gathered via predictive modeling tools — to create a detailed profile of nearly 200 million Americans that would be a "gold mine" for anyone looking to target and manipulate voters, said Archie Agarwal, the founder of the cybersecurity firm ThreatModeler. "This is the mother lode of all leaks," Agarwal said Monday. "Governments are made or broken on this. I don't even have the words to describe it."



Credits: http://www.businessinsider.com/deep-root-leaks-voter-data-russia-2017-6

Security Robot Commits Suicide

It’s easy to get downtrodden about the world. For one robot, it seems that things got a bit too much, and it appears to have thrown itself into a fountain in a somber act of robot suicide. The robot was a Knightscope K5, employed as a security robot at communications agency GMMB in Washington DC. These robots are equipped with cameras to provide a more physical presence than a regular security camera.

They’re also designed to move autonomously, which seems to be how this robot ended up in a fountain. A few posts on Twitter documented the final moments of this K5 robot, as it ended up face down in a watery grave. RIP K5. We barely knew ye. Or maybe it was just being baptized. This isn’t the first time K5 has run into trouble. In April, a drunk man managed to knock down one of the 300-pound robots. And last year, a K5 accidentally ran over a 16-month-old toddler and then drove off, in what’s surely one of the first robotic hit and runs.

Credits: http://www.iflscience.com/technology/security-robot-commits-suicide-in-fountain-because-the-world-is-terrible/