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Submission + - Pupil response to imagined subjects reveals aphantasia (unsw.edu.au)

Submitted by drinkypoo
drinkypoo writes: Researchers at UNSW Sydney have discovered that aphantasia, or lack of visual imagination, can be detected by lack of pupillary response. Pupillary response to both real and imagined objects was measured and compared, and the response to imagined objects was larger in those reporting greater vividness of imagery.

Comment Hesse (Score 1) 106

Ignoring some very important sci-fi books (Early Gibson, Shockwave Rider, etc.) I would promote Hermann Hesse as one of the more important authors. I always felt like I learned something about life when I read one of his books. And as short as it is, it took several years to finish Siddhartha, the insights into the human condition took a lot of processing for a younger me. I don't know if they're better books than Mockingbird, but certainly equal.

Comment Gideon the Ninth (Score 1) 112

by SpaceGhost (#62134149) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Books You Liked Reading This Year?

I've really enjoyed Gideon the Ninth (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fbook%2Fshow%2F42036538-gideon-the-ninth). I think it was Gizmodo that suggested it, characterizing it as "Lesbian Necromancers in Space." It's hyper-gothic, and the protagonist is delightful.

Submission + - What do you use for backups at home? 1

Submitted by serviscope_minor
serviscope_minor writes: I am curious as to what other slashdotters use for backing up of home machines (and possible family and/or friends). I moved away from the "bunch of disks with some off site" method. I found most of the methods generally had one or more of the following problems: poor Linux support, weak security (e.g. leaking file names), outrageously expensive, hard to set up, tied to a single storage supplier I don't fully trust, entirely proprietary (which makes me doubt long term stability), lack of file history, reputation for slowness, and so on.

My current solution is unixy: separate tools for separate jobs. Borg for backups to a local machine. Rclone for uploading to business cloud storage, versioned cloud storage to provide resistance against bitrot and other corruption.

I am interested about what other slashdotters use, why and what your experience has been given more than superficial testing.

Submission + - SPAM: On-Premises Dining Linked To COVID-19 Spread

Submitted by Thelasko
Thelasko writes: Mandating masks was associated with a decrease in daily COVID-19 case and death growth rates within 20 days of implementation. Allowing on-premises restaurant dining was associated with an increase in daily COVID-19 case growth rates 41–100 days after implementation and an increase in daily death growth rates 61–100 days after implementation.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Best Secure Linux Distros for Enhanced Privacy & Security (linuxsecurity.com)

Submitted by b-dayyy
b-dayyy writes: As we transition to an increasingly digital society, privacy and security have become areas of central concern – not a day goes by that we aren’t bombarded with security news headlines about hacks, breaches and the increasingly common and worrisome practice of storing and monitoring sensitive personal information, often without users’ consent.

Luckily for us Linux users, the general consensus among experts is that Linux is a highly secure OS — arguably the most secure OS. While all Linux “distros” — or distributed versions of Linux software — are secure by design, certain distros go above and beyond when it comes to protecting users’ privacy and security. We’ve put together a list of our favorite specialized secure Linux distros and spoken with some of their lead developers to find out first-hand what makes these distros so great. This article aims to help you evaluate your options and select the distro that best meets your individual needs.

Submission + - Wall Street monitoring Redditt stock forums (cnn.com)

Submitted by Registered Coward v2
Registered Coward v2 writes: Wall Street has decided if you can't beat them, at least watch them. They're paying for data that shows which stocks are most talked about on Reddit stock forums, ostensibly to allow them to adjust their positions or take advantage of opportunities to trade based on Reddit.

Nothing could go wrong there, since Reddit would decide to seed the data with misinformation, or simply pipe the data into a filter and produce their own free list...

Submission + - From Earth to orbit with Linux and SpaceX (zdnet.com)

Submitted by mrflash818
mrflash818 writes:

The Falcon 9's onboard operating system is a stripped-down Linux running on three ordinary dual-core x86 processors. The flight software itself runs separately on each processor and is written in C/C++.

Submission + - Medical Device Jailbreak Could Help Solve the Dangerous Shortage of Ventilators (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Security researcher Trammell Hudson analyzed the AirSense 10 — the world’s most widely used CPAP — and made a startling discovery. Although its manufacturer says the AirSense 10 would require “significant rework to function as a ventilator,” many ventilator functions were already built into the device firmware. Its manufacturer, ResMed, says the $700 device solely functions as a continuous positive airway pressure machine used to treat sleep apnea. It does this by funneling air into a mask. ResMed says the device can’t work as a bilevel positive airway pressure device, which is a more advanced machine that pushes air into a mask and then pulls it back out. With no ability to work in both directions or increase the output when needed, the AirSense 10 can’t be used as the type of ventilator that could help patients who are struggling to breathe. After reverse-engineering the firmware, Hudson says the ResMed claim is simply untrue.

To demonstrate his findings, Hudson on Tuesday is releasing a patch that he says unlocks the hidden capabilities buried deep inside the AirSense 10. The patch is dubbed Airbreak in a nod to jailbreaks that hobbyists use to remove technical barriers Apple developers erect inside iPhones and iPads. Whereas jailbreaks unlock functions that allow the installation of unauthorized apps and the accessing of log files and forensic data, Airbreak allows the AirSense 10 to work as a bilevel positive airway pressure machine, a device that many people refer to as a BiPAP. “Our changes bring the AirSense S10 to near feature parity with BiPAP machines from the same manufacturer, boost the maximum pressure output available, and provide a starting point to add more advanced emergency ventilator functionality,” Hudson and other researchers wrote on their website disclosing the findings.

Submission + - To conserve bandwidth, streaming providers and apps should disable autoplay 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We keep seeing stories about how providers are slowing down their streaming speed to reduce bandwidth usage during this period when many are being asked to stay at home. In case you have missed them, here are a couple of examples:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Few.com%2Ftv%2Fnetflix-coro...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%2Fyo...

But it seems that many are totally ignoring a very obvious way to reduce usage significantly, and that is by disabling autoplay on their web sites and in their apps. To give an example, a couple of days ago I was watching a show on Hulu, and either I was more sleepy than I thought or the show was more boring than I had expected (probably some combination of both), but I drifted off to sleep. Two hours later I awoke and realize that Hulu had streamed two additional episodes that no one was watching. I searched in vain for a way to disable autoplay of the next episode, but if there is some way to do it I could not find it.

What I wonder is how many people even want autoplay? I believe Netflix finally gave their users a way to disable it, but they need to affirmatively do so via a setting somewhere. But many other platforms, including the aforementioned Hulu, give their users no option to disable autoplay. That is also true of many individual apps that can be used on a Roku or similar device. If conserving bandwidth is really that important, then my contention is that autoplay of the next episode should be something you need to opt in for, not something enabled by default that either cannot be disabled, or that forces the user to search for a setting to disable.

Submission + - LoRaWAN networks are getting popular but come with big risks (zdnet.com)

Submitted by JustAnotherOldGuy
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Security experts have published a report today warning that the new and fast-rising LoRaWAN technology is vulnerable to cyberattacks and misconfigurations, despite claims of improved security rooted in the protocol's use of two layers of encryption. LoRaWAN stands for "Long Range Wide Area Network." It is a radio-based technology that works on top of the proprietary LoRa protocol. LoRaWAN takes the LoRa protocol and allows devices spread across a large geographical area to wirelessly connect to the internet via radio waves. But broadcasting data from devices via radio waves is not a secure approach. However, the protocol's creators anticipated this issue. Since its first version, LoRaWAN has used two layers of 128-bit encryption to secure the data being broadcast from devices — with one encryption key being used to authenticate the device against the network server and the other against a company's backend application. In a 27-page report published today, security researchers from IOActive say the protocol is prone to misconfigurations and design choices that make it susceptible to hacking and cyber-attacks. The company lists several scenarios it found plausible during its analysis of this fast-rising protocol:

Submission + - Billie Eilish won multiple Grammys using budget studio gear, Logic Pro X (engadget.com)

Submitted by SpaceGhost
SpaceGhost writes: Per Engadget, Ms. Eilish and her old brother produced her massively popular album with minimal studio gear out of a bedroom studio in her parents house. They used equipment that many aspiring artists could afford (about $1000 worth of Yamaha monitors for instance, and at first a $100 microphone.)

Submission + - Earth's magnetic north is shifting at an 'unprecedented' rate of 30 miles a year (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by pgmrdlm
pgmrdlm writes: The Earth's magnetic North Pole is travelling at an unprecedented rate and is picking up speed as it moves towards Siberia, according to new satellite data.

The magnetic North Pole is the wandering point on the surface of Earth's Northern Hemisphere at which the planet's magnetic field — created by molten iron within the planet’s core — points vertically downwards.

The latest World Magnetic Model, which tracks the movement of the Earth’s magnetic field, shows that the magnetic north is moving at a rate of 30 miles per year.

This is the fastest recorded shift of the Earth's north since the mid-16th century and could cause havoc for aviation and navigation systems, including smartphone apps that use GPS.

‘The magnetic North Pole wandered slowly around northern Canada from 1590 to around 1990 and then accelerated over the past 20 years moving from around 10 km (6.2 miles) per year to over 50 km (31 miles) per year,’ Ciaran Beggan of the British Geological Survey told MailOnline.

‘In contrast, the south magnetic pole has barely moved much in the past 100 years as the flow of the outer core there is much more sedate.'

After circling northern Canada for hundreds of years, the approximate location of the magnetic north pole started moving speedily towards Siberia at around the turn of the century.

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