ReHacked vol. 255: Inside the Proton, European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-end encryption and more
The European Court of Human Rights yesterday banned a general weakening of secure end-to-end encryption. The judgement argues that encryption helps citizens and companies to protect themselves against hacking, theft of identity and personal data, fraud and the unauthorised disclosure of confidential information. Backdoors could also be exploited by criminal networks and would seriously jeopardise the security of all users' electronic communications. There are other solutions for monitoring encrypted communications without generally weakening the protection of all users, the Court held. The judgement
cites using vulnerabilities in the target’s software or sending an implant to targeted devices as examples.
Make a donation - support Ukraine. My favourite: Support the Armed Forces of Ukraine | via National Bank of Ukraine. More options if you want alternatives. Also, very important Come Back Alive Foundation - Charity Organization.
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Access Over 181,000 USGS Historical Topographic Maps #nature #history #maps #mapporn
In collaboration with the US Geological Survey (USGS), we recently updated Esri’s online USGS historical topographic map collection with over 1,745 new maps, bringing the total number of maps in our collection to over 181,000 (181,008 to be exact). We also corrected a number of maps that our users reported as having georeferencing or other errors.
These maps are part of the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC) which includes all the historical topographic quadrangle maps (quads) that had been printed since the USGS topographic mapping program was initiated in 1879. More about this below.
Esri’s USGS historical topographic map collection contains historical quads (excluding orthophoto quads) dating from 1884 to 2006 with scales ranging from 1:10,000 to 1:250,000. The scanned maps can be used in ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Enterprise. They can also be downloaded as georeferenced TIFs for use in other applications.
Poland’s new prime minister said Tuesday he has documentation proving that state authorities under the previous government used the powerful Pegasus spyware illegally and targeted a “very long” list of hacking victims.
Donald Tusk made the announcement during a news briefing alongside President Andrzej Duda, a political opponent aligned with the previous ruling party. The use of Pegasus was alleged to have occurred under the government led by the right-wing Law and Justice party.
The adult consequences of being bullied in childhood - ScienceDirect #psychology #health #society
Most studies examining the impact of bullying on wellbeing in adulthood rely on retrospective measures of bullying and concentrate primarily on psychological outcomes. Instead, we examine the effects of bullying at ages 7 and 11, collected prospectively by the child's mother, on subjective wellbeing, labour market prospects, and physical wellbeing over the life-course. We exploit 12 sweeps of interview data through to age 62 for a cohort born in a single week in Britain in 1958. Bullying negatively impacts subjective well-being between ages 16 and 62 and raises the probability of mortality before age 55. It also lowers the probability of having a job in adulthood. These effects are independent of other adverse childhood experiences.
How Showmax, an African streaming service, dethroned Netflix - Rest of World #internet
Showmax has displaced Netflix to become the most popular streaming platform in Africa, while Amazon’s Prime Video is cutting back in the region.
The South African company is winning because of its deep understanding of the local audience and strategic global partnerships.
Showmax will need to navigate several challenges to meet its ambitious goal of 50 million subscribers and $1 billion in revenue over the next five years, analysts say.
Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing’ Imaginable | Quanta Magazine #nature #physics
Recently, a team led by Juan Rojo of the National Institute for Subatomic Physics in the Netherlands and VU University Amsterdam analyzed more than 5,000 proton snapshots taken over the last 50 years, using machine learning to infer the motions of quarks and gluons inside the proton in a way that sidesteps theoretical guesswork.
The new scrutiny picked up a background blur in the images that had escaped past researchers. In relatively soft collisions just barely breaking the proton open, most of the momentum was locked up in the usual three quarks: two ups and a down. But a small amount of momentum appeared to come from a “charm” quark and charm antiquark — colossal elementary particles that each outweigh the entire proton by more than one-third.
Australian researchers discover what turned Earth into a snowball 700m years ago - The University of Sydney #nature #history
Dr Dutkiewicz said: “Various causes have been proposed for the trigger and the end of this extreme ice age, but the most mysterious aspect is why it lasted for 57 million years – a time span hard for us humans to imagine.”
The team went back to a plate tectonic model that shows the evolution of continents and ocean basins at a time after the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Rodina. They connected it to a computer model that calculates CO2 degassing of underwater volcanoes along mid-ocean ridges – the sites where plates diverge and new ocean crust is born.
They soon realised that the start of the Sturtian ice age precisely correlates with an all-time low in volcanic CO2 emissions. In addition, the CO2 outflux remained relatively low for the entire duration of the ice age.
Dr Dutkiewicz said: “At this time, there were no multicellular animals or land plants on Earth. The greenhouse gas concentration of the atmosphere was almost entirely dictated by CO2 outgassing from volcanoes and by silicate rock weathering processes, which consume CO2.”
Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show #privacy #ai #society #psychology
Mozilla dug into 11 different AI romance chatbots, including popular apps such as Replika, Chai, Romantic AI, EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate, and CrushOn.AI. Every single one earned the Privacy Not Included label, putting these chatbots among the worst categories of products Mozilla has ever reviewed. The apps mentioned in this story didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
You’ve heard stories about data problems before, but according to Mozilla, AI girlfriends violate your privacy in “disturbing new ways.” For example, CrushOn.AI collects details including information about sexual health, use of medication, and gender-affirming care. 90% of the apps may sell or share user data for targeted ads and other purposes, and more than half won’t let you delete the data they collect. Security was also a problem. Only one app, Genesia AI Friend & Partner, met Mozilla’s minimum security standards.
100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born - IEEE Spectrum #history
It’s true that the businesses that formed IBM began in the late 1800s. But it’s also true that a birth occurred in February 1924, with the renaming of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. as the International Business Machines Corp. And a hundred years after that event, it serves as an important reminder that the world of computing and IT that IBM played a pivotal role in building has a longer history than we are likely to think. “Data processing” was coined over a century ago, while “office appliance” was in use in the 1880s. From the 19th century, through the 20th, and into the 21st, IBM was there, making HP, Microsoft, and Apple appear more like children or grandchildren of the IT world; Facebook, Google, and Twitter/X more like great-grandchildren. So let’s take a moment to contemplate the origins of an iconic corporation.
Nokia Made Too Many Phones #hardware #history
The phone market in 2000-10 was crazy, but Nokia’s strategy was even crazier. Just in the year ‘05 alone, it launched more than fifty models, more than the number of iPhone models Apple has shipped in sixteen years since the first. Granted, many of the Nokia models were barely different from each other, but nonetheless, Nokia was creating an absurd number of categories.
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