Six Arab countries are urging the UN Security Council to exercise “maximum efforts” to persuade Yemen’s Houthi rebels to allow the United Nations to inspect a tanker moored in the Red Sea while loaded with over a million barrels to prevent “widespread environmental damage, a humanitarian disaster and the disruption of maritime commerce”. In a letter to the council circulated on Thursday, they warned that in the event of an explosion or leak “the possibility of a spill of 181 million litres of oil in the Red Sea would be four times worse than the oil disaster of the Exxon Valdez Exxon, which took place in Alaska in 1989”.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, is a short burst of electromagnetic energy. Such a pulse's origin may be a natural occurrence or man-made and can occur as a radiated, electric, or magnetic field or a conducted electric current, depending on the source. EMP interference is generally disruptive or damaging to electronic equipment, and at higher energy levels a powerful EMP event such as a lightning strike can damage physical objects such as buildings and aircraft structures. The management of EMP effects is an important branch of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) engineering. Weapons have been developed to deliver the damaging effects of high-energy EMP.
Although Japanese carriers originally planned to roll out 5G networks and services to coincide with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in July, trade wars and accelerated global 5G launches created some uncertainty around the scope and timing of Japan’s commercial 5G launch. This week, as the Olympics themselves face a delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Japan’s top carriers are kicking off 5G service without the guarantee of a summertime promotional push. Today, carrier KDDI announced that it will offer “au 5G”-branded service in parts of 15 Japanese prefectures starting on Thursday, March 26
My current efforts are focused on raising awareness around pay for success deals, privatized welfare, Blockchain contracts, smart cities, and predictive analytics derived from Internet of Things sensors. These elements are combining to create predatory human capital investment markets within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. I’m excited to talk to you about these goals, particularly target 16.9, digital identity, and how it relates to global finance and the profiling of families.
Microsoft says attackers are exploiting a previously undisclosed security vulnerability found in all supported versions of Windows, including Windows 10. But the software giant said there is currently no patch for the vulnerability. The security flaw, which Microsoft deems “critical” — its highest severity rating — is found in how Windows handles and renders fonts, according to the advisory posted Monday. The bug can be exploited by tricking a victim into opening a malicious document. Once the document is opened — or viewed in Windows Preview — an attacker can remotely run malware, such as ransomware, on a vulnerable device.
The personal details of more than 538 million users of Chinese social network Weibo are currently available for sale online. In ads posted on the dark web and other places, a hacker claims to have breached Weibo in mid-2019 and obtained a dump of the company's user database, allegedly containing the details for 538 million Weibo users. Personal details include the likes of real names, site usernames, gender, location, and -- for 172 million users -- phone numbers.
Government launches TraceTogether mobile app that taps Bluetooth signals to capture data of other participating devices in close proximity, enabling the encrypted information to be extracted to facilitate contact tracing should users contract the coronavirus. The app is able to estimate the distance between TraceTogether smartphones as well as the duration of such interactions. The data then is captured, encrypted, and stored locally on the user's phone for 21 days, which spans the incubation period of the virus.
Question: "What changes are we going to have to make to how businesses operate to maintain our economy while providing social distancing?" Answer: "The question of which businesses should keep going is tricky. Certainly food supply and the health system. We still need water, electricity and the internet. Supply chains for critical things need to be maintained. Countries are still figuring out what to keep running. Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it." From Bill Gates' Reddit AMA
Army scientists have developed a radically new quantum device that can store many quantum excitation patterns at once, opening the door for the creation of a quantum network. A quantum network is the Holy Grail for scientists because it likely can never be wiretapped and it would offer extraordinarily powerful computing and sensing capabilities. Researchers from the Quantum Science Group at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory constructed a test-bed quantum networking apparatus, consisting of millions of rubidium atoms trapped within laser beams and cooled to nearly absolute zero. There is a worldwide race between research groups to develop quantum devices that can perform ultra-secure networking and computation. The lab's new results are a big step toward achieving these goals, researchers said.
A Google spokesperson suggested that if only the Democratic Party had taken the time to claim its Knowledge Panel then we wouldn't be in this mess. "Most images in Knowledge Panels are automatically generated from pages on the web," wrote the spokesperson over email. "When errors are reported, we fix them quickly. We encourage people and organizations to claim their Knowledge Panels, which allows them to select a representative image."
Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter warned on Monday that more videos and other content could be erroneously removed for policy violations, as the companies empty offices and rely on automated takedown software during the coronavirus pandemic. In a blog post, Google said that to reduce the need for people to come into offices, YouTube and other business divisions are temporarily relying more on artificial intelligence and automated tools to find problematic content.
French antitrust authorities ordered Apple on Monday to pay a 1.1 billion euro ($1.23 billion) fine for anti-competitive behaviour. The French competition authority said the iPhone-maker was guilty of creating cartels within its distribution network and abusing the economic dependence of its outside resellers. Two of Apple’s wholesalers were also fined for agreeing on prices: Tech Data and Ingram Micro. The French authority said this penalty - totalling 1.24 billion euros - was the largest ever handed down in one case.
The director general of MI5 has called on tech companies to create methods which would allow the security services to access the secret, encrypted messages of people suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in the UK. Speaking to ITV, Sir Andrew Parker says while the real world is regulated and policed, he finds it "mystifying" the same does not apply to cyberspace, calling it "a wild west, unregulated [and] inaccessible to authorities."
Cellphones carry 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats. "When's the last time you cleaned your cellphone?"asked Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona. While toilets tend to get cleaned frequently, because people associate the bathroom with germs, cellphones and other commonly handled objects - like remote controls - are often left out of the cleaning routine. Cellphones pick up germs all the time, Gerba said. "I see people talk on their phone on toilets."
Microsoft announced on Friday that Bill Gates is leaving the board. CNBC reports: "I have made the decision to step down from both of the public boards on which I serve -- Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway -- to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tackling climate change," Gates said on LinkedIn. "The leadership at the Berkshire companies and Microsoft has never been stronger, so the time is right to take this step."
The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday said it wishes to re-evaluate its decision to award the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar cloud contract with Microsoft, signaling a potential victory for Amazon in its protest of the award. The department "wishes to reconsider its award decision in response to the other technical challenges presented by AWS," it said in a court filing, referring to Amazon Web Services. The agency said it does not anticipate needing to discuss the matter with either AWS or Microsoft. The contract -- called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI -- involves providing cloud storage of sensitive military data and technology, such as artificial intelligence, to the Department of Defense, and could result in revenue of up to $10 billion over 10 years. Amazon Web Services lost the contract to Microsoft's Azure cloud business in October, a decision that surprised many industry experts given Amazon's leadership in the industry. Amazon filed a suit with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims contesting the decision, arguing that it was politically motivated by President Donald Trump's dislike of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, which Bezos owns.
The European Union announced an ambitious plan on Wednesday that would require manufacturers of electronic products, from smartphones to tumble driers, to offer more repairs, upgrades and ways to reuse existing goods, instead of encouraging consumers to buy new ones. The “right to repair,” part of a wide-ranging policy package known as the Green Deal that was introduced this month, is the latest example of the European Union’s ambitions to promote more sustainable economic growth and to prevent waste.
The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) has issued updated guidelines for exposures to RF/microwave radiation. “The guidelines have been developed after a thorough review of all relevant scientific literature, scientific workshops and an extensive public consultation process. They provide protection against all scientifically substantiated adverse health effects due to EMF exposure in the 100 kHz to 300 GHz range,” according to Eric van Rongen, the chairman of ICNIRP. “We know parts of the community are concerned about the safety of 5G and we hope the updated guidelines will help put people at ease,” he said. Van Rongen is with the Health Council of the Netherlands. The new guidelines are published in Health Physics and are open access. A copy is available here. They were last updated in 1998. The ICNIRP press release is here.
On December 23, 1947, Bardeen and Brattain were working without Shockley when they succeeded in creating a point-contact transistor that achieved amplification. By the next month, Bell Labs' patent attorneys started to work on the patent applications. Bell Labs' attorneys soon discovered that Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and patented in 1930 by Julius Lilienfeld, who filed his MESFET-like patent in Canada on October 22, 1925. Shockley publicly took the lion's share of the credit for the invention of transistor; this led to a deterioration of Bardeen's relationship with Shockley. Bell Labs management, however, consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Shockley eventually infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain, and he essentially blocked the two from working on the junction transistor.
In this highly unauthorized account of the Big Five's origins, Rob Larson sets the record straight, and in the process shreds every focus-grouped bromide about corporate benevolence he could get his hands on. Those readers unwilling to smile and nod as every day we become more dependent on our phones and apps to do our chores, our jobs, and our socializing can take heart as Larson provides us with maps to all the shallow graves, skeleton filled closets, and invective laced emails Big Tech left behind on its ascent to power. His withering analysis will help readers crack the code of the economic dynamics that allowed these companies to become near-monopolies very early on, and, with a little bit of luck, his calls for digital socialism might just inspire a viral movement for online revolution.