“NASA scientists have just published a commentary article in Nature calling for a framework for reporting extraterrestrial life to the world,” reports Cosmos magazine (in an article shared by Slashdot reader Tesseractic):
“Our generation could realistically be the one to discover evidence of life beyond Earth,” write NASA Chief Scientist James Green and colleagues. “With this privileged potential comes responsibility. As life-detection objectives become increasingly prominent in space sciences, it is essential to open a community dialogue about how to convey information in a subject matter that is diverse, complicated and has a high potential to be sensationalised…”

Green and colleagues argue that…we should reframe such a discovery, so it isn’t presented as a single moment when aliens are announced to the world. Instead, it should be seen as a progressive endeavour, reflecting the process of science itself. “If, instead, we recast the search for life as a progressive endeavour, we convey the value of observations that are contextual or suggestive but not definitive and emphasise that false starts and dead ends are an expected part of a healthy scientific process,” they write. This will involve scientists, technologists and the media talking to each other to agree firstly on objective standards of evidence for life, and secondly on the best way to communicate that evidence.

This, they say, should preferably be done now before a detection of life is made, rather than scramble to put it together in the aftermath.

“The team kickstarts the conversation by proposing a ‘confidence of life detection’ (CoLD) scale, which contains seven steps taking us from first exciting potential detection of life to definitive confirmation,” Cosmos points out. (With the stages including the discoveries of unquestionable biosignatures, a habitable environment, and then corroborating evidence.) Cosmos argues that “This is an increasingly important conversation to have — because experts think that the odds aliens exist are high.”

And they close their article by quoting NASA’s team. “Whatever the outcome of the dialogue, what matters is that it occurs. In doing so, we can only become more effective at communicating the results of our work, and the wonder associated with it.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – NASA Proposes New Methodology for Communicating the Discovery of Alien Life

“In a world of inequality, we are well accustomed to rich, powerful, connected people getting preferential treatment…” argues an opinion piece in the Washington Post.

“The notable exception is Wikipedia.”

There, VIPs have been shouting “Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?!” for years, only to be told either, not really, or, don’t care, and then instructed…to take their objections to a Talk page where the community can weigh in…

One reason the project is different from other digital platforms for VIPs is the absence of a mechanism for “escalating the case to leadership,” as one internal Facebook memo, recently published by the Wall Street Journal, euphemistically described the process of Facebook’s giving special treatment… The closest approximation to a Wikipedia power player would be Jimmy Wales, the chairman emeritus of the foundation that supports Wikipedias in more than 250 languages and the face of the project for its 20 years of existence. But Wales is not actually in control of anything. When he gets personally involved in helping a petitioner, a crowd of editors track his movements to ensure that he not hold special influence. This tradition began way back in Wikipedia’s history, when Wales insisted that the birth date on his own article, and his birth certificate, was wrong. The editors did not take his word for it…

With no bigwig to enlist, people who object to what appears on their article page try to navigate Wikipedia on their own, an often-treacherous experience. In the early days of Wikipedia, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins edited the article about him to correct an error. He confirmed in an email to an editor, Alienus, that “yes, the person who purported to be me is indeed me! But thank you very much for checking. I am bowled over by how good Wikipedia generally is.” That same editor followed up, however, by questioning a change Dawkins had made to his article to reduce the number of journals he edits from four to two and to remove any mention of one, Episteme Journal. “Do you have any citations to support this change?” Dawkins was flabbergasted: “It is unreasonable to ask for a positive citation to demonstrate that I did NOT found a journal called Episteme. I am telling you that I never founded a journal called Episteme. I didn’t even know that a journal called Episteme existed.” Turned out an editor had made an error; the sentence was removed permanently.
The article — by Wikipedia editor Noam Cohen — opens with the story of John C. Eastman, a lawyer advising president Trump, and his argument with Wikipedia editors over his biography (an argument still archived on the biography’s “Talk” page).

Eastman complains that their supporting references — which included the New York Times — were biased against him, and yet rather than allowing him to delete them “I had to ask permission from some unknown twentysomething.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Richard Dawkins, Jimmy Wales – Unlike Facebook, No One Gets Special Treatment on Wikipedia

“New Android malware can root infected devices to take complete control and silently tweak system settings, as well as evade detection using code abstraction and anti-emulation checks,” reports BleepingComputer.

Cybersecurity company Lookout said on its blog that they’d spotted the malware on Google Play “and prominent third-party stores such as the Amazon Appstore and the Samsung Galaxy Store…. To protect Android users, Google promptly removed the app as soon as we notified them of the malware.”
We named the malware “AbstractEmu” after its use of code abstraction and anti-emulation checks to avoid running while under analysis. A total of 19 related applications were uncovered, seven of which contain rooting functionality, including one on Play that had more than 10,000 downloads…

This is a significant discovery because widely-distributed malware with root capabilities have become rare over the past five years. As the Android ecosystem matures there are fewer exploits that affect a large number of devices, making them less useful for threat actors… By using the rooting process to gain privileged access to the Android operating system, the threat actor can silently grant themselves dangerous permissions or install additional malware — steps that would normally require user interaction. Elevated privileges also give the malware access to other apps’ sensitive data, something not possible under normal circumstances…

AbstractEmu does not have any sophisticated zero-click remote exploit functionality used in advanced APT-style threats, it is activated simply by the user having opened the app. As the malware is disguised as functional apps, most users will likely interact with them shortly after downloading… By rooting the device, the malware is able to silently modify the device in ways that would otherwise require user interaction and access data of other apps on the device.

“Apps bundling the malware included password managers and tools like data savers and app launchers,” reports BleepingComputer, “all of them providing the functionality they promised to avoid raising suspicions…”

Lookout’s blog post said they’d spotted people affected by the malware in 17 different countries.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Newly-Discovered ‘AbstractEmu’ Malware Rooted Android Devices, Evaded Detection

The Oracle JDK “is available free of charge for production use again,” reports InfoQ, under a new “Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions” license.

The move, announced in mid-September, “reverses a 2018 decision to charge for Oracle JDK production use and does not affect Oracle’s OpenJDK distribution,” they write, noting that the new license “applies to the recently released version 17 of Oracle JDK and future versions.”

Donald Smith, Senior Director of Product Management at Oracle, explained the reason for this decision in a recent blog post, writing:

“Providing Oracle OpenJDK builds under the GPL was highly welcomed, but feedback from developers, academia, and enterprises was that they wanted the trusted, rock-solid Oracle JDK under an unambiguously free terms license, too. Oracle appreciates the feedback from the developer ecosystem and are pleased to announce that as of Java 17 we are delivering on exactly that request.”
Smith explicitly stated that the No-Fee Terms and Conditions license “includes commercial and production use” [although the license does not seem to highlight this fact] and stated that “redistribution is permitted as long as it is not for a fee.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Oracle’s JDK 17 – Free Again for Commercial Use

From the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

In 1947, more than 4 million Americans owned $3.4 billion in saving deposits held not by a bank or credit union, but by the United States Postal Service. It’s a largely forgotten part of American banking (and postal) history that the USPS ran the Postal Savings System for 56 years, from 1911 to 1967… [T]o this day postal services around the world provide small-scale financial services, from check cashing to savings accounts to e-commerce solutions, such as allowing refunds for returned goods to be deposited directly into a consumer’s postal account. In September, the U.S. Postal Service took the first steps toward restoring its place in Americans’ financial lives: At four East Coast post offices, customers can now get paychecks or business checks worth up to $500 cashed for a flat fee of $5.95….

Postal banking has the potential to reorient the American financial landscape for the benefit the most vulnerable. A fifth of Americans are considered “unbanked” or “underbanked,” often relying on unscrupulous payday lenders because they lack the week-to-week security to set even a little aside in a traditional account. According to a 2014 USPS report, in 2012 alone these “alternative financial services” wrung $89 billion in interest and fees out of the poorest Americans… Postal banking also has a bipartisan pedigree. While it has most recently been a centerpiece of the progressive platforms of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., it has also been promoted by reformist conservatives as a way to get and keep capital in local communities, rather than having it held in the coffers of multinational conglomerates.

And finally, an expansion into basic financial services may be essential to the very survival of the U.S. Postal Service. As Amazon and private shipping companies continue to press their advantage, the Postal Service can press its own: thousands of locations in every nook and cranny of the country, along with broad community trust.

This modest pilot “is the foundation for more expansive contemplated postal banking services that could include bill-paying services, ATM access and money-order and wire-transfer capabilities,” argues a follow-up piece in the same newspaper:

Local bank branches are shuttering in communities all across our country, and mainstream banks are failing to offer financial services that meet the needs of many communities… Robust postal banking, which should ultimately include checking and savings accounts as well as loan options, could step into the breach and provide equitable, accessible and affordable financial services to people who lack access to traditional bank services and would otherwise have to turn to high-cost and low-value fringe financial institutions… Underbanked households have an average annual income of $25,000 and typically spend approximately 10% of their income on fees and interest to fringe financial institutions simply to access their money — an amount equal to what the average household spends on food annually…

Postal banking provides an economic lifeline to countless Americans living in banking deserts. The Postal Service’s 34,000 facilities service every ZIP code in the country. More than two-thirds of the census tracts that have a post office do not have a bank branch. Postal banking also provides transparent and equitable services and costs. Traditional bank fees and requirements — such as minimum balance requirements, activity fees and overdraft charges — exclude low-income and small-balance customers… Postal banking is a key pathway from poverty to economic mobility for millions of Americans and also produces significant revenue and opportunities for the Postal Service to flourish and expand its business model.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Why America is Experimenting With ‘Postal Banking’