ReHacked #96: What a scam academic and scientific publishing is, Oracle's JDK 17 - Free Again for Commercial Use, COVID-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vitamin D3 Status and more
If the paper is selected for publication, the researcher signs over their copyright in it – life plus 70 years – to the journal, for free.
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Pluralistic: 28 Oct 2021 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow #copyrights
It's hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is. It's run by an oligopoly of wildly profitable companies that coerce academics into working for free for them, and then sell the product of their labors back to the academics' employers (often public institutions) for eye-popping sums.
Here's how that works: a publicly funded researcher (often working for a public institution) does some research. In order to progress up the career ladder and secure more funding, they need to publish their research in a prestigious journal. That journal asks other publicly funded researchers (chosen by a volunteer editorial board of publicly funded researchers) to peer-review and edit the paper. If the paper is selected for publication, the researcher signs over their copyright in it – life plus 70 years – to the journal, for free.
Oracle's JDK 17 - Free Again for Commercial Use #software
The Oracle JDK is available free of charge for production use again - under the new "Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions" (NFTC) license. This move reverses a 2018 decision to charge for Oracle JDK production use and does not affect Oracle‘s OpenJDK distribution. The NFTC applies to the recently released version 17 of Oracle JDK and future versions.
MayVaneDay Studios #link #zeronet #web1.0
Results: One population study and seven clinical studies were identified, which reported D3 blood levels preinfection or on the day of hospital admission. The two independent datasets showed a negative Pearson correlation of D3 levels and mortality risk (r(17) = -0.4154, p = 0.0770/r(13) = -0.4886, p = 0.0646). For the combined data, median (IQR) D3 levels were 23.2 ng/mL (17.4-26.8), and a significant Pearson correlation was observed (r(32) = -0.3989, p = 0.0194). Regression suggested a theoretical point of zero mortality at approximately 50 ng/mL D3.
Conclusions: The datasets provide strong evidence that low D3 is a predictor rather than just a side effect of the infection. Despite ongoing vaccinations, we recommend raising serum 25(OH)D levels to above 50 ng/mL to prevent or mitigate new outbreaks due to escape mutations or decreasing antibody activity.
Are We on the Verge of Chatting with Whales? | Hakai Magazine #nature #futurism
It started in 2017 when an international group of scientists spent a year together at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the Radcliffe Fellowship, a program that promises “an opportunity to step away from usual routines.” One day, Shafi Goldwasser, a computer scientist and cryptography expert also from Israel, came by the office of David Gruber, a marine biologist at City University of New York. Goldwasser, who had just been named the new director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at the University of California, Berkeley, had heard a series of clicking sounds that reminded her of the noise a faulty electronic circuit makes—or of Morse code. That’s how sperm whales talk to each other, Gruber told her. “I said, ‘Maybe we should do a project where we are translating the whale sounds into something that we as humans can understand,’” Goldwasser recounts. “I really said it as an afterthought. I never thought he was going to take me seriously.”
Get started | Learning Music (Beta) with Ableton #learning #fun
bvolpato/awesome-userscripts: 📖 A curated list of Awesome Userscripts. #software
A curated list of Awesome Userscripts.
User scripts can improve your browsing experience, and open a lot of possibilities to make the sites you visit better by adding features, making them easier to use, or taking out the annoying bits.
Chatcontrol Explained - Peertube of European Pirates #video #privacy
As teens left Facebook, company planned to lure 6-year-olds, documents show | Ars Technica #socialnetworks #internet
Facebook has a demographic problem. Even before investigations revealed that the company’s products were destroying teens’ mental health, interest in its flagship product was dropping off a cliff. Since 2019, teen usage of the app has declined by 13 percent, and over the next two years, it’s expected to drop another 45 percent.
“Aging up is a real issue” a researcher wrote in an internal memo revealed last week. Perhaps that’s why Facebook was considering new products targeted at children as young as six years old, according to a new document handed over to Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Luton man left shocked as his house is ‘stolen’ - BBC News #world #crime #security
Mr Hall said: "We then tried to access the Land Registry documentation online to find out whose name appeared... and it is, in fact, as of 4 August, this man's name.
"At that point the police said, 'Well, there's nothing further we can do here. This is a civil matter; you need to leave the house and contact your solicitors.'"
He then tried to contact police online, but received the same response.
"I was shocked - having seen the house in the state it was, I was in a bit of a state of shock anyway - but then to be told by the police they didn't believe a criminal offence had been committed here was just unbelievable," he said.
The BBC put Mr Hall in touch with Bedfordshire Police's fraud squad, which has begun an investigation.
A spokeswoman said there had been no arrests.
You and Yours obtained the driving licence used to impersonate Mr Hall, details of a bank account set up in his name to receive the proceeds of the sale, and phone recordings of the house being stolen.
A truly Open Source MongoDB alternative - getmango #software
MongoDB is a life-changing technology for many Developers, empowering them to build applications faster than using relational databases.
However, MongoDB abandoned its Open Source roots, changing the license to SSPL making it unusable for many Open Source and Commercial Projects.
MangoDB is going to be a perfect solution for those looking for MongoDB development experience available as fully Open Source Software.
Developer Tools secrets that shouldn’t be secrets | Christian Heilmann #software #webdev
Console is much more than `log()`!
Brown Physics Student Manfred Steiner Earns Ph.D. at Age 89 | Physics | Brown University #science
At 89-years-old Manfred Steiner is finally what he always wanted to be: a physicist. On September 15, 2021, Steiner successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, “Corrections to the Geometrical Interpretation of Bosonization” in Brown University’s Department of Physics with Professor Brad Marston serving as his adviser and Professors James Valles and Antal Jevicki serving as readers. “It’s an old dream that starts in my childhood,” says Steiner, “I always wanted to become a physicist.”
Trump's new social media platform found using Mastodon code: Our statement - Official Mastodon Blog #internet #software #socialnetworks #copyrights
From media reports and individual findings that various people have presented to us, it seems that the new social media platform owned by the former president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, so-called Truth Social, is using Mastodon’s source code with various visual adjustments. The platform has not formally launched yet, but it was made accessible ahead of time. Users were quick to note that the terms of service included a worrying passage, claiming that the site is proprietary property and all source code and software are owned or controlled by them or licensed to them.
Research: People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teammates over skill competency | Binghamton News #psychology #career
People who are friendly and trustworthy are more likely to be selected for teams than those who are known for just their skill competency and personal reputation, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.
While people who are both trustworthy and competent are the most sought after when it comes to team assembly, friendliness and trustworthiness are often more important factors than competency.
“We assume that people are selected for important task forces and teams because of the knowledge, skills and abilities they bring to the table. However, this research suggests that people may often get picked because team members feel comfortable with them,” said Cynthia Maupin, assistant professor of organizational behavior and leadership in Binghamton University’s School of Management. “People may be willing to sacrifice a bit in terms of performance in order to have a really positive team experience.”
When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Isaac Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost | The New Yorker #culture #scifi #art #longread
The novels conspicuously lack aliens, mysticism, and other space-opera standbys, not least battle scenes. (“I was so sorry afterward I had not counted the number of spaceships that had exploded,” Asimov wrote in a withering review of the 1978 movie “Battlestar Galactica.”) Their appeal is subtler, relying on the tension between Seldon’s plan and the individuals caught in its weave. They are ordinary scholars, traders, politicians, and scientists: the tale spans light-years and millennia, but never forgets its human proportions.
This is no invitation to cinematic extravagance. Asimov’s saga has been enormously popular since the publication of its first trilogy—“Foundation” (1951), “Foundation and Empire” (1952), and “Second Foundation” (1953)—which sold millions of copies. (Asimov kept writing prequels and sequels until his death, in 1992.) Yet the series’ onscreen presence has been restricted to its influence on other science-fiction sagas, especially “Star Wars.” Zealously noting these homages, Asimov fans have waited decades for their own epic.
Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corporations! – Daniel Lemire's blog #internet #socialnetworks #psychology #privacy
As the user, you are no longer in control. The corporation is wrestling back full control of what you get to watch and read.
TikTok is one such tool where you just open the application and watch whatever they want you to watch. You become some kind of automaton.
Of course, deciding what people watch and read is valuable. It is a great way to make money. But it also becomes a politically valuable power. And so, it now seems unavoidable that multiple countries in the world will regulate these sites to make sure that you watch the right “things”.
Reporter who notified Missouri officials of website flaw did 'nothing out of line,' emails show #security
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who notified Missouri officials of a website flaw that exposed public-school teachers’ Social Security numbers told the state he would hold back on publishing his discovery for up to 48 hours and provided the state with details about how he found the flaw, records obtained by StateScoop show. In doing so, he followed the widely accepted steps in disclosing a vulnerability, according to a person who wrote the international standards for vulnerability disclosure.
On the morning of Oct. 12, the reporter, Josh Renaud, emailed the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, to notify officials of the vulnerability in a search tool for educators’ professional credentials, which could access records for about 100,000 individuals. Renaud sent the message to DESE a day after verifying his findings with Shaji Khan, a computer-science professor at the University of Missouri—St. Louis.
Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages | Eurasianet #blockchain
Kazakhstan’s national grid operator has begun rationing electricity to the country’s biggest consumers, likely targeting cryptocurrency mining farms. Facing a sudden energy shortage, officials must be regretting their recent embrace of the crypto industry.
Nur-Sultan has struggled to land on a consistent policy toward cryptocurrencies and mining – the series of electricity-hungry calculations made by networked computers to verify and record cryptocurrency transactions.
Only three years ago, the National Bank called for a ban on trading cryptocurrencies and mining them.
Much of what you've heard about Carter and Reagan is wrong - by Noah Smith - Noahpinion #economy #history #longread
… you’ve probably heard a story of the late 1970s and early 1980s that goes something like this: “In the 70s, Carter’s liberal big-government policies resulted in runaway inflation. Reagan came in and defeated inflation, and produced an economic boom with deregulation and tax cuts. Reagan also embarked on a massive defense spending binge which, although it increased the deficit a lot, forced the USSR to bankrupt itself trying to keep up, and thus won the Cold War.”
That might sound like a straw man, but the narratives we tell each other about the past often consist of exactly such straw men. And debunking those narratives might feel like shooting at easy targets, but it’s helpful for taking a closer look at history.
Anyway, the above narrative is almost entirely wrong. Carter was a deregulator who didn’t increase deficits much, and appointed the Fed chair who beat inflation. Reagan didn’t do much deregulating, nor did he increase defense spending much as a share of GDP — and the USSR didn’t fall because of the arms race.
Much of what you've heard about Carter and Reagan is wrong
If you, like me, grew up in the United States of America, you’ve probably heard a story of the late 1970s and early 1980s that goes something like this: “In the 70s, Carter’s liberal big-government policies resulted in runaway inflation. Reagan came in and defeated inflation, and produced an economic boom with deregulation and tax cuts. Reagan also emba…
The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company | Listen Notes #internet #programming #software #longread
I only spend 10%~20% of my time (likely close to 10%) on engineering nowadays — 80% of engineering time is used to iterate on existing features/infra/internal tools, while 20% is to experiment on new things. Most of my time is spent on talking to other human beings, replying emails (30%~40% of my time), and thinking (!!!), which is not considered as “real work” by engineers :) I usually stay in office for 4~8 hours/day, but I work from iPhone (e.g., reply emails, ChatOps from Slack…) and think about Listen Notes a lot when I’m not in office.
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