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After it was revealed that more than 7 million people in the UK are living in poverty despite being part of a working family, the government has promised it will take action by redefining it again.newsarse_feed
Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that she wants a Brexit of many colours that will eventually be made into an award-winning stage musical.political_betting_feed
You can watch live here.
In the Commons today there is the debate on the Labour motion on the triggering of Article 50 and its neat amendment by the Government to accept the principle but links in a statement on the referendum outcome itself.
Whether TMay is able to set the process of extraction going by her self-imposed end March deadline isn’t clear. Her problem remains that a sizeable group of her own backbenchers are against her and that she does not have a Commons majority for doing it her way.
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Android 7.1.1 came out for Nexus and Pixel devices this week, and while the Pixels just got a minor update from 7.1 to 7.1.1, the Nexus devices are moving from 7.0 to 7.1.1. This finally brings the older Nexus phones on par with Google's new flagships, the Pixel and Pixel XL.
When the Pixel phones (buy now) were first released, there was a good bit of confusion as to which new features were Pixel exclusive and which were Android 7.1 features that would be coming to all devices. To help clear things up, Google passed along a list in early October outlining which features went where. Now that we can compare the finished Android 7.1 product to that list, we have noticed a few differences. Here's the full software feature list as it stands today.
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Enlarge (credit: HBO)
This week on Decrypted we immersed ourselves in the Westworld season finale, "The Bicameral Mind." It was a mixed bag with some great moments and some unfortunate missteps. Though most plotholes were closed, several of our (anti)heroes did things that seemed way out of character. What does it all mean?
My guest is Evan Narcisse, cultural critic and senior staff writer at io9.com. He also just started work on a Marvel Comics project you miiiiight know (sorry, I cannot reveal anything under pain of death). Evan is immersed in the culture of gaming and superheroes, so I knew he would have fantastic insights about this crucial final episode.
Topics discussed: We just don't care that William and MIB are the same person (seriously why is this such a big deal); how Maeve's final revelation completely sold her character short (and also made no sense given her past actions); why Bernard why (you were our favorite character and now you're a blob); the differences between Arnold and Ford's ideas about consciousness (or lack thereof); W.E.B. Dubois' idea of double consciousness (and why it completely fits robot consciousness in this story); robots and slavery (and some of the not-so-subtle racial subtexts); the trouble with Dolores (it's still not clear why she's leading the rebellion); and how much we want Felix to be promoted (go Felix go!).
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Millions of people visiting mainstream websites over the past two months have been exposed to a novel form of malicious ads that embed attack code in individual pixels of the banners.
Researchers from antivirus provider Eset said "Stegano," as they've dubbed the campaign, dates back to 2014. Beginning in early October, its unusually stealthy operators scored a major coup by getting the ads displayed on a variety of unnamed reputable news sites, each with millions of daily visitors. Borrowing from the word steganography—the practice of concealing secret messages inside a larger document that dates back to at least 440 BC—Stegano hides parts of its malicious code in parameters controlling the transparency of pixels used to display banner ads. While the attack code alters the tone or color of the images, the changes are almost invisible to the untrained eye.
Left: Clean picture; middle: picture with malicious content; right: malicious version enhanced for illustrative purposes. (credit: Eset)
The malicious script is concealed in the alpha channel that defines the transparency of pixels, making it extremely difficult for even sharp-eyed ad networks to detect. After verifying that the targeted browser isn't running in a virtual machine or connected to other types of security software often used to detect attacks, the script redirects the browser to a site that hosts three exploits for now-patched Adobe Flash vulnerabilities.
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Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)
A new report from IDC shows Apple Watch sales have slumped since last year. The report estimates that Apple has sold 1.1 million Watch units in the third quarter of 2016, down 71 percent from a year ago. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly told Reuters that sell-through, or the number of Apple Watches that reach consumers rather than the number on store shelves, reached a new high.
"Sales growth is off the charts," Cook said. "In fact, during the first week of holiday shopping, our sell-through of Apple Watch was greater than any week in the product’s history. And as we expected, we’re on track for the best quarter ever for Apple Watch."
Apple also expects the holiday shopping season to be big for the Watch. This could prove to be true, since it is arguably the most complementary device in Apple's lineup and more suited as a gift than an iPhone. Apple generally doesn't talk about Apple Watch sales on its earnings calls, nor does it reveal exact sales numbers for the device. The Watch remains in an "other products" category (along with the iPod and Apple TV), rather than standing on its own in the company's sales figures.
bbc_science_news_feedbbc_science_news_feedars_technica_uk_feedNote: These leaks all point to Starbucks in the US, though hopefully the UK will be included as well, especially if a new Pokémon is involved.
Since launching earlier this year, Pokémon Go has already gotten people into stores, restaurants, and cafés to capture Pokémon and earn other perks. After discovering hints that Pokémon Go may someday offer perks at specific, promoted locations, app data miners have long suspected that this was only the beginning.
One of many images that have been posted today that apparently confirm the Starbucks/Pokémon Go crossover.
Their suspicions were proven by a leak from Starbucks employees on Tuesday. The leak confirms that the coffee chain will launch a Pokémon Go promotion across the United States starting Thursday, December 8. The news, posted on Reddit and reported by TheNextWeb, came in the form of an internal document describing the promotion, including Starbucks' upcoming, limited-time Pokémon-themed beverage.
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In January of 2015, as the Defense Department was chafing under the sequestration of its budget, the Pentagon leadership got some great news. A study prepared by the Defense Business Board (DBB) and a team from the global management consulting giant McKinsey and Company found that even with "moderate" changes to business practices, the DOD could save $125 billion over five years.
That would be enough to fully fund operations for 50 Army brigades, 10 Navy carrier strike group deployments, or 83 wings of F-35 fighter aircraft (one wing being about 36 aircraft—purchase price not included) for each of those five years. And all that savings could be had simply by fixing the military's bureaucratic back-office, according to the study—a force of more than one million uniformed government, civilian, and contractor employees. DOD's bureaucratic force is now almost as large as the military's active duty force itself, which stands at 1.3 million soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen.
That good news, however, did not fall upon welcoming ears. DOD officials had no real idea how much bureaucratic overhead was costing them, as the costs were never accurately measured. When they saw the numbers from the DBB, the Washington Post reports, some of the Pentagon's leadership was afraid of a legislative backlash. After DOD officials had complained for years about not having enough money to Congress, the department feared findings would trigger further cuts to the DOD's budget. So the data for the study was designated as sensitive, and an overview of the report that had already been published to the Defense Business Board website was pulled.
bbc_technology_news_feedandrew_hickey_feedSo, last week, the Lib Dems won the Richmond Park by-election.
Some context for foreigners, or those who don’t follow politics very much — the Lib Dems were, until about ten years ago, a formidable by-election fighting machine. We didn’t do well in general elections, but give us a single local seat to fight, and we would do much, much, better.
That had changed, though, by the time I joined the party in 2006, which was the last year we’d gained a seat in a by-election. And the last year we gained a seat *from the Tories* in a by-election had been in 2000. As a result, and given the poorer-than-expected result in 2010 and the utterly catastrophic one in 2015, 2006 was the last year we made net gains in Parliamentary representation.
Until last week, when new Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney overturned a majority of 23,000 in Richmond Park.
I give you that history to provide some context as to why, to Lib Dems at least, this is worth noting.
The first thing to note about it is that this makes the calls for a “progressive alliance” seem much more valid than they did even a month ago. Both the Greens and the Womens’ Equality Party decided not to stand (the former in return for us not standing in a couple of council seats they’re targeting in the next council elections) and both parties’ leaders came out to campaign for Olney. MoreUnited — a group I have been pretty brutal about in the past — actually did something useful, backed Olney, and got a hundred volunteers out doorknocking and leafletting.
Even Labour, who did put up a candidate (and a candidate who campaigned explicitly as an anti-Lib Dem one, rather than an anti-Tory one), got involved — there were many Labour members who campaigned for the Lib Dems in what they knew was a seat that was unwinnable for Labour, and the final Labour vote was lower than the number of Labour members in the constituency. Apparently the decision to put up a candidate at all was one imposed by Labour centrally, rather than by the local party…
(Similarly, though, there was a regressive alliance, with both the Tories and UKIP backing the former MP, Zac Goldsmith, who had stupidly resigned to stand as an independent over a point of principle, forgetting that this was a principle (not expanding Heathrow Airport) shared by all his opponents…)
Now, the point of this isn’t that the Lib Dems are automatically going to win everywhere from now on — there’s another by-election this week where we’ll be lucky to come fourth. Richmond Park, while it had a substantial Tory majority, was in many ways as straightforward a choice as it gets. On one side was an “independent” backed by both the Tories and UKIP (a party fast heading towards outright fascism), a billionaire’s son with an obscene fortune, who supported Brexit in one of the most Remain-leaning constituencies in the country, who went to Eton, whose only job before becoming an MP was as editor of a magazine his uncle gave him as a present, who had spent ten years avoiding paying more than half a million pounds a year in tax, and who had a few months earlier run a disgracefully racist campaign to become London Mayor. On the other side, a woman who’d been to a comprehensive school, who was backed by the Lib Dems, Greens, and Women’s Equality Party, and who has actually had jobs that weren’t given to her by her uncle, and who has never used images of terrorist atrocities to smear a Muslim opponent.
So this was a very clear-cut case. There will be other, much less clear-cut, cases where “progressive alliances” make less sense. There are, after all, a lot of Lib/Lab marginals, Lab/SNP marginals, and so on. There are also very real differences in policy between the various parties that might be categorised as “progressive”, including on some of the most crucial issues facing us.
But what this suggests is that local, constituency-based, collaboration between parties *can* work. What kind of collaboration that can be would depend very much on the constituency. In some constituencies that might involve some parties stepping aside for each other — for example in Brighton Pavillion, the Lib Dems, who came fifth last time and lost their deposit, might stand aside for Caroline Lucas to ensure the Greens keep their one MP, while the Greens might stand aside in return in Torbay, where *they* came fifth and lost their deposit, and support the left-wing environmentalist former Lib Dem MP, Adrian Sanders, who lost by a tiny margin.
In other seats, such collaboration might be more subtle. In a Labour/Tory marginal, for example, the Lib Dems might still stand a candidate but not campaign at all. That might, in some cases, actually be better for Labour than the Lib Dems not standing — there are a number of centrist and centre-right small-l liberals who will choose the Lib Dems over the Tories, but who would vote Tory over Labour (no, I don’t understand why, but they exist in relatively large numbers). Taking those votes away from the Tories, while giving Labour a clear run at squeezing the left-liberal vote, would actually give Labour a better chance.
All of this, though, would have to be done at a local level, and without any consideration of formal country-wide pacts, or it just wouldn’t work. The Lib Dems need to be able to attack Labour in the North of England (where Labour are the right-authoritarian establishment party), and the reverse is true. The Greens need to protect their identity as an environmentalist party, and not be swallowed up in Labour’s “movement”.
We need to keep every party’s identity separate. There are *many* Labour MPs I’d like to see out of Parliament — just not if they were replaced by an even worse Tory.
But something like this needs to happen if we’re not to have another right-authoritarian Tory majority government at the next election. Remember that the terrible electoral system we have is biased against the Labour party, though not anywhere *near* as much as it is against the smaller ones. Only three Labour leaders have ever won majorities — Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson, and Tony Blair. The first took the Second World War to get in power. The second and third were after periods of thirteen and eighteen years, respectively, of Tory rule, and required some of the most inept, stupid, lazy decisions ever made by a government in order to dislodge a Tory majority.
The lesson of Richmond Park, though, is that even in that terrible system, local, concentrated, specific collaboration can allow the forces of progress to defeat the forces of reaction. Now we need to replicate that.
This blog post was brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?
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Date: December 7, 2016
Location: Germany
Tags: Technology, transportation, train, steam locomotive, steam engine
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(credit: Servizi Multimediali)
A Guardian investigation has prompted Google to change some of its autocomplete suggestions. For instance, no more will "evil" be suggested when Web surfers type "are Jews." The search engine no longer recommends "evil" when "are women" is typed, either.
Google said it made the changeover after a Guardian story called out the search giant. However, the company said it didn't fix everything the Guardian found, like eliminating "bad" when somebody typed in the search field "are Muslims."
“Our search results are a reflection of the content across the Web. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query," the company told the Guardian. "These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs—as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas, and cultures."
ars_technica_uk_feedFrom the toilet to the tank–biofuels from sewage. Credit: PNNL
Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL) have developed a new method for treating human sewage to create a biocrude oil product that can be refined into a fuel akin to gasoline, diesel, or jet fuels.
The process is called hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), and it has been described as a sped-up version of the way the Earth naturally creates crude oil. Researchers apply a considerable amount of heat and pressure to wastewater, breaking down its chemical components into biocrude and an aqueous liquid in minutes.
PNNL says that wastewater treatment plants handle approximately 34 billion gallons of sewage every day. In a Reddit AMA held last week, Justin Billing, one of the scientists on the project, noted that sewage traditionally has three destinations—being turned into fertilizer or soil additive, going in a landfill, or being incinerated. Some wastewater treatment plants (though not all) will also use anaerobic digestion, which “reduce[s] the volume of solids and mitigates the toxic load while also producing methane that can be used for heat and power at the plant," Billings says. But anaerobic digestion alone can’t solve the whole equation. “From a capital intensity perspective it is reasonable to consider a hydrothermal process like HTL when designing, upgrading, or expanding existing facilities,” he suggested.
the_mary_sue_feedSomething I know I sorely missed while watching through Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life was the classic title sequence. Here, YouTube user rose tyler (nice name) shares a “fixed” version of the title sequence. It’s everything I wanted, really.
This video of runaway cars slowly sliding down an icy hill in Montreal is enough to make you just sit there and say, “No no no no no no no.” Bonus: listen to it with Blue Danube Waltz in the background. (via Boing Boing)
What’d you see today, friend?
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Enlarge (credit: myke lyons)
Pollution can seem like a vague, general problem, but sometimes it is specific and personal. People with asthma living in some major cities know to keep tabs on the ozone report in the weather forecast, for example. And frequent anglers should be keenly aware of how much of their catch they put on the dinner table because of mercury contamination in fish. Mercury is a problem for marine fish, as well—particularly the ever-popular tuna.
Mercury emitted by burning coal finds its way from the atmosphere into seawater, but an additional step is necessary to weaponize the heavy metal. Bacteria convert mercury into methylmercury by attaching a carbon atom and three hydrogens, making a molecule that freely wanders into biological tissue and hangs around.
Since predators are made up of all the many critters they eat, this mercury accumulates to greater and greater levels at each step in the food chain. The meaty tuna sits at the top of its food chain, and that means it can contain a lot of accumulated mercury. Because of how much tuna is consumed in the US, the fish actually accounts for about 40 percent of the mercury ingested from fish.
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