Smoothies (and smoothie bowls) may be one step away from baby food, but unlike the stuff in the tiny jars, you get to control what goes in it. (Which probably means ending up with something closer to “Tutti Frutti” than “Turkey Dinner With Vegetables,” but to each their own).
Source: LifeHacker – Earn ,000 to Serve as a Smoothie Sommelier
In prior years, this annual series covered individual apps. This year, we are looking at all-in-one solutions in addition to strategies to help in 2021. Welcome to day 20 of 21 Days of Productivity in 2021. I am a digital pack-rat. So many of us are. After all, who knows when we[he]#039[/he]ll need that email our partner sent asking us to pick up milk on our way home from work in 2009?
Source: LXer – How I de-clutter my digital workspace
schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: The largest biotech firm in the world wasted no time in offering to build and run COVID testing labs in Washington, contacting its governor right after the first major COVID outbreak in the U.S. occurred there. The Chinese company, the BGI Group, made the same offer to at least five other states, including New York and California, 60 Minutes has learned. This, along with other COVID testing offers by BGI, so worried Bill Evanina, then the country’s top counterintelligence officer, that he authorized a rare public warning. “Foreign powers can collect, store and exploit biometric information from COVID tests” declared the notice. Evanina believes the Chinese are trying to collect Americans’ DNA to win a race to control the world’s biodata. Jon Wertheim speaks to Evanina and others for an investigation into how personal data, particularly biodata, has become a precious commodity and in the wrong hands, poses threats to national security and the economy.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – US Intelligence Officials Say Chinese Government Is Collecting Americans’ DNA
Enlarge (credit: Lobanovgo | Getty Images)
In 2010, British designer Harry Brignull coined a handy new term for an everyday annoyance: dark patterns, meaning digital interfaces that subtly manipulate people. It became a term of art used by privacy campaigners and researchers. Now, more than a decade later, the coinage is gaining new, legal, heft.
Dark patterns come in many forms and can trick a person out of time or money, or into forfeiting personal data. A common example is the digital obstacle course that springs up when you try to nix an online account or subscription, such as for streaming TV, asking you repeatedly if you really want to cancel. A 2019 Princeton survey of dark patterns in e-commerce listed 15 types of dark patterns, including hurdles to canceling subscriptions and countdown timers to rush consumers into hasty decisions.
Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Lawmakers take aim at insidious digital “dark patterns”
Uri Herrera announced today the general availability of Nitrux 1.3.7, a new monthly maintenance release of this Ubuntu-based distribution built around the gorgeous and modern KDE Plasma desktop environment.
Source: LXer – Nitrux 1.3.7 Released with New Default Applications Menu, KDE Plasma 5.20.5
POVO Multifunctional Car Tool| $10 | Amazon | Promo code WF6FCFTW
Source: Gizmodo – Get 50% off This 9-in-1 Car Charger Which Also Functions as a Seatbelt Cutter and Window Breaker
While the AMD Linux graphics driver for some time has been supporting FreeSync over DisplayPort connections, FreeSync displays connected via HDMI have not been supported. But now we are finally seeing the start of patches at least as far as HDMI pre-v2.1 support is concerned…
Source: Phoronix – AMD FreeSync HDMI Patch Appearing For Their Open-Source Linux Driver
Enlarge / A view of the tent the adventurers stayed in as the rescuers found it on Feb. 26, 1959. The tent had been cut open from inside, and most of the skiers had fled in socks or barefoot. (credit: Anonymous | USSR investigators)
By the time the rescue team helicoptered to the remote Dyatlov Pass in late February 1959, the nine Russian adventurers—seven men and two women, all highly experienced cross-country skiers—had been dead for nearly a month. Nothing about the scene seemed right. The adventurers’ tent had been sliced open from the inside, and in its husk lay rucksacks, neatly arranged boots, and a plate of sliced pork fat. The rescuers found the victims themselves over half a mile downslope from their camp, some of them barefoot and almost naked. The primary cause of death was hypothermia—temperatures would have been well below zero degrees Fahrenheit the night they fled—but two of the deceased were missing their eyes, and another her tongue. Four had suffered severe trauma to their heads and chests, as if they’d been in a car crash. These were not injuries consistent with a death by avalanche.
Over the decades, what became known as the Dyatlov Pass incident has prompted many a conspiracy theory. It must have been aliens that made the Russians flee to an icy death, as evidenced by the fact that some of the adventurers’ clothes bore traces of radioactivity. Or a Yeti had stumbled upon the camp. Or, more plausibly, the local humans didn’t appreciate the group’s intrusion on their lands. In the end, none of these were particularly convincing to the Russian government, which officially blamed an avalanche as the culprit, all those curious circumstances notwithstanding.
Now, more than 60 years later, scientists say they’ve got new evidence to back up that claim, but with a twist: The killer was probably a peculiar kind of avalanche. Inspired by previous work that modeled realistic snow for the Disney film Frozen, the researchers simulated how a relatively tiny avalanche could have struck the camp, forcing the adventurers to flee, and severely injuring some of them.
Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – 9 Russian adventurers mysteriously froze to death—a new theory explains why
As part of work on GNOME 40, the GNOME Shell is seeing some big refinements like shifting of its workspaces to be horizontally laid out, which has now been merged…
Source: Phoronix – GNOME Shell Merges Its New Horizontal Workspaces
KDE Plasma 5.21 Beta released last week while the official Plasma 5.21 stable release is slated for 16 February. As such, KDE developers have been very busy working on fixes for this big desktop update bringing better Wayland support and other enhancements and new features…
Source: Phoronix – KDE Ends Out January With A Lot Of Fixes For Plasma 5.21
Poland has implemented the controversial near-total abortion ban, setting off another round of protests in Warsaw and nearby cities late Wednesday.
Source: TG Daily – Protests Continue as Poland Implements Controversial Near-Total Abortion Ban
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: President Joe Biden today created a task force that will conduct a 120-day review of scientific integrity policies across the U.S. government, including documenting instances in which “improper political interference” interfered with research or led to the suppression or distortion of data. The review is part of a lengthy memorandum from Biden on his plans for “restoring trust” in government by emphasizing scientific integrity and the use of evidence in policymaking. The memo also calls on federal research agencies to name Chief Scientific Officers, and for all agencies to spend 90 days reviewing the role of dozens of panels that provide scientific advice to government. Agencies will also determine if they want to recreate technical advisory panels dismantled under former President Donald Trump.
“Scientific and technological information, data, and evidence are central to the development and iterative improvement of sound policies,” states the memo. “Improper political interference in the work of Federal scientists or other scientists who support the work of the Federal Government and in the communication of scientific facts undermines the welfare of the Nation.” Today’s memo largely restates policies outlined in laws passed by Congress and in memos released by former President Barack Obama in 2009 and by his science adviser, John Holdren, in 2010. In general, those policies attempt to create uniform practices across the federal government for handling and sharing data, using technical evidence, and insulating researchers from political concerns.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Biden Orders Sweeping Review of Government Science Integrity Policies
We can use Cloudwatch to view and analyze metrics for SNS Topics we have in our account. In this article, we will see steps to create an alarm for the “NumberOfNotificationsDelivered” metric for the existing SNS Topic.
Source: LXer – How to create Cloudwatch alarms for an SNS Topic on AWS
The last Matrix movie came out before Engadget even existed, but this year the film series is back. The Matrix 4 is one of the movies WarnerMedia is premiering on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time, however fans are still wondering what the off…
Source: Engadget – Alleged ‘Matrix 4’ leak suggests a new title: ‘Matrix Resurrections’
Systemd comes with many built-in features to manage the system logs. In this guide, we explain how you can manage system journals, logs and take action on them such as rotating, archiving, and clear logs. We also explain the manual systems journal clean method and using config file changes.
Source: LXer – A Guide to systemd journal Maintenance With Examples
Getting started is hard, no matter what subject it is, and especially if you don’t want to spend money. You want to find Python learning resources that are both free and of the highest possible quality. This article contains tip tips to get started properly and learn Python for free. It also explains thoroughly where and how to get help if you get stuck.
Source: LXer – Learn Python for Free with These 6 Tips
“Researchers from the fields of print media technology, chemistry, physics, acoustics, electrical engineering, and economics from six nations developed a continuous, highly productive, and reliable roll production of loudspeaker webs,” reports project manager Georg C. Schmidt. [For those unfamiliar with roll-to-roll processing, it is the process of creating electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastic or metal foil, which, among other things, reduces manufacturing cost.]
This is an improvement upon the 2015 T-Book — a large-format illustrated book equipped with printed electronics that outputs sound through a speaker invisibly located inside the sheet of paper. “The T-Book was and is a milestone in the development of printed electronics, but development is continuing all the time,” says Prof. Dr. Arved C. Hubler, under whose leadership this technology trend has been driven forward for more than 20 years. Phys.Org reports: Not only did they use the roll-to-roll (R2R) printing process for this, but they also developed inline technologies for other process steps, such as the lamination of functional layers. “This allows electronics to be embedded in the paper — invisibly and protected,” says Hubler. In addition, he says, inline polarization of piezoelectric polymer layers has been achieved for the first time and complete inline process monitoring of the printed functional layers is possible. The final project results were published in the renowned journal Advanced Materials.
The potential of loudspeaker paper was extended to other areas of application in the T-Paper project. For example, meter-long loudspeaker installations can now be manufactured in web form or as a circle (T-RING). “In our T-RING prototype, an almost four-meter-long track with 56 individual loudspeakers was connected to form seven segments and shaped into a circle, making a 360-degree surround sound installation possible,” says Schmidt. The speaker track, including printed circuitry, weighs just 150 grams and consists of 90 percent conventional paper that can be printed in color on both sides. “This means that low-cost infotainment solutions are now possible in museums, at trade shows and in the advertising industry, for example. In public buildings, for example, very homogeneous sound reinforcement of long stretches such as corridors is possible. But the process technology itself could also become interesting for other areas, such as the production of inline measurement systems for Industry 4.0,” says the project manager, looking to the future.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Surround Sound From Lightweight Roll-To-Roll Printed Loudspeaker Paper
A small cluster of pro-Huawei Twitter bots reportedly launched a smear campaign attacking the Belgian government’s plan to box out “high-risk” suppliers like Huawei from building the country’s 5G network, according to the latest report from social media research firm Graphika.
Source: Gizmodo – A Network of Twitter Bots Reportedly Launched a Smear Campaign on Belgium’s Huawei 5G Ban
NASA will conduct a second hot fire test for the Space Launch System’s rocket core stage as early as the fourth week of February. It will be part of the rocket’s Green Run series of tests meant to assess the core stage and ensure it’s ready for the A…
Source: Engadget – NASA’s SLS rocket will go through a second and longer hot fire test
Do you want to detect if your Linux server has GUI? This guide explains various commandline methods to check if GUI is installed in Linux.
Source: LXer – How To Check If GUI Is Installed In Linux From Commandline
