ReHacked vol. 227: Will Browsers Be Required By Law To Stop You From Visiting Infringing Sites?, NASA Mission Update: Voyager 2 Communications Restored and more

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Will Browsers Be Required By Law To Stop You From Visiting Infringing Sites? | Techdirt #privacy

In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list.

The post explains why this is an extremely dangerous approach:

A world in which browsers can be forced to incorporate a list of banned websites at the software-level that simply do not open, either in a region or globally, is a worrying prospect that raises serious concerns around freedom of expression. If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder for browsers to reject such requests from other governments.

NASA Mission Update: Voyager 2 Communications Pause #space #engineering

The agency’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar “shout” more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.

Remote work requires communicating more, less frequently | Ben Balter #career

TL;DR: Remote work requires communicating more, less frequently, because asynchronous communication involves less frequent, but richer communication, meaning there is less time talking about the work and more time doing it, allowing the system to optimize for throughput and flow.

AI coloured photos of Helsinki from late 1800’s #history

Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC - Doc Pop's Blog #history #culture #fun

The Remote Lounge was a high tech bar in NYC’s Bowery District from 10/2001 to 11/2007. The bar’s gimmick was that it was packed full of monitors and closed circuit television cameras. Each CCTV camera was mounted on a servo and could be controlled by anyone in the bar via any of the terminals throughout the bar. Each terminal had a joystick (for controlling a camera), a camera button (which would capture an image and upload it to the RemoteLounge.com), a next button (for switching to another camera), a chat button, and a land line phone. So you could cycle through the bar until you found someone sitting near a camera, then you could request to chat with them via the phone.

Cult of the Dead Cow Hacktivists Give Life to 'Privacy-First' App Framework #privacy #software

One of the longest-running US hacktivist groups, the "Cult of the Dead Cow" (which goes by cDc), plans to launch a privacy framework dubbed Veilid, for creating applications that evade the omnipresent gaze of targeted advertising and other trackers.

The group — which claims several high-profile members and former members, like Twitter whistleblower Peiter "Mudge" Zatko and politician Beto O'Rourke — says the initiative is intended to be an "open-source, peer-to-peer, mobile-first networked application framework." It has formed a website for its creation, where interested potential users are able to find answers to frequently asked questions as well as contact information for app support as well as for media and press.

Hackers manage to unlock Tesla software-locked features worth up to $15,000 | Electrek #security #software

A group of hackers have exposed an exploit that can unlock Tesla’s software-locked features worth up to $15,000.

Free heated seats and Full Self-Driving package, anyone?

Software-locked features that need to be activated by the owner paying or subscribing to a service are becoming increasingly popular in the auto industry.

Tesla has been on board that trend very early since it produced virtually all its vehicles with the same hardware and owners can unlock features later through software updates.

This includes features like heated seats, acceleration boost, and even Tesla’s Full Self-Driving package, which costs $15,000.

Many people feel their jobs are pointless | | UZH #society #psychology #career

In recent years, research showed that many professionals consider their work to be socially useless. Various explanations have been proposed for the phenomenon. The much-discussed “bullshit jobs theory” by the American anthropologist David Graeber, for example, states that some jobs are objectively useless and that this occurs more frequently in certain occupations than others.

Other researchers suggested that the reason people felt their jobs were useless was solely because they were routine and lacked autonomy or good management rather than anything intrinsic to their work. However, this is only one part of the story, as a recent study by sociologist Simon Walo of the University of Zurich shows. It is the first to give quantitative support to the relevance of the occupations.

When This Beetle Gets Eaten by a Frog, It Heads for the 'Back Door' | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine (2020) #nature

In a video taken by ecologist Shinji Sugiura, a tiny aquatic beetle known as Regimbartia attenuata pulls off a death-defying feat to rival Houdini.

First, a frog snags the beetle and gulps it down whole. For a tense 115 minutes, nothing happens. Then, the great reveal: The same shiny insect wiggles its way out of the amphibian’s anus, leaving both frog and beetle alive and seemingly no worse for the wear.

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