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A remarkable first-person story in today's Washington Post: I used to call it the "scamdemic." I thought it was an overblown media hoax. I made fun of people for wearing masks. I went all the way down the rabbit hole and fell hard on my own sword, so if you want to hate me or blame me, that's fine. I'm doing plenty of that myself. The party was my idea. That's what I can't get over. Well, I mean, it wasn't even a party — more like a get-together. There were just six of us, OK? My parents, my partner, and my partner's parents... Some people in my family didn't necessarily share all of my views, but I pushed it. I've always been out front with my opinions. I'm gay and I'm conservative, so either way I'm used to going against the grain... I told my family: "Come on. Enough already. Let's get together and enjoy life for once." They all came for the weekend. We agreed not to do any of the distancing or worry much about it... We cooked nice meals. We watched a few movies. I played a few songs on my baby grand piano. We drove to a lake about 60 miles outside of Dallas and talked and talked. It was nothing all that special. It was great. It was normal... I have no idea which one of us brought the virus into the house, but all six of us left with it. It kept spreading from there.... I was sweating profusely. I would wake up in a pool of sweat. I had this tingling feeling all over my body, this radiating kind of pain... Then one day I was walking up the stairs, and all of the sudden, I couldn't breathe. I screamed and fell flat on my face. I blacked out. I woke up a while later in the ER, and 10 doctors were standing around me in a circle. I was lying on the table after going through a CT scan. The doctors told me the virus had attacked my nervous system. They'd given me some medications that stopped me from having a massive stroke. They said I was minutes away. I stayed in the hospital for three days, trying to get my mind around it. It was guilt, embarrassment, shame. I thought: "OK. Maybe now I've paid for my mistake." But it kept getting worse. Six infections turned into nine. Nine went up to 14. It spread from one family member to the next, and it was like each person caught a different strain... My father is 78, and he went to get checked out at the hospital, but for whatever reasons, he seemed to recover really fast. My father-in-law nearly died in his living room and then ended up in the same hospital as me on the exact same day. His mother was in the room right next to him because she was having trouble breathing. They were lying there on both sides of the wall, fighting the same virus, and neither of them ever knew the other one was there. She died after a few weeks. On the day of her funeral, five more family members tested positive... They put my father-in-law on a ventilator, and he lay there on life support for six or seven weeks. There was never any goodbye. He was just gone. It's like the world swallowed him up. We could only have 10 people at the funeral, and I didn't make that list.

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A game critic for the Los Angeles Times remembers his reaction to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. "What a disappointment — if only it had been built for video game consoles." This leads to this epiphany: For all the deserved attention "The Mandalorian" series on Disney+ has received, the just-released game "Star Wars: Squadrons" reminds us that some of the best "Star Wars" stories in recent years have been in the video game space.... This is a work, in fact, that doesn't suffer from an action-focused, little-narrative approach — every second I've spent with this game has fulfilled the sort of personal "Star Wars" fantasy that's enhanced by giving the audience a bit of autonomy. It's also, for those privileged enough to own a virtual reality headset, the VR experience I've had at home that most represents what it's like to be in a theme park. Rather than throwing spectacle after spectacle at me, it lets me partake in them, to scratch the itch of being in the center of intergalactic, aerial dogfights. But less than emphasizing awe, "Squadrons" centers on the feel of controlling a ship, making me feel a part of something bigger. Sure, that's just digital, fictional warfare, but "Squadrons" understands the appeal of "Star Wars" is that it's open to everyone, and any of us can be ace pilots if given the chance. We don't admire; we act. There is nostalgia at play. The game recalls some of the LucasArts spaceflight simulators of yore that I obsessed with in my suburban Chicago basement, but there's a sense of swiftness and polish that makes this game as appealing as a coin-op arcade machine. And yet it's also in possession of confidence, a depth that I'll need to master if I really want to go hard in multiplayer battles. As a solo player without many friends who play multiplayer games — OK, fine, none — I'm not so sure I'll take the time to learn each individual ship and its advantages or disadvantages. But I'm not sure I need that because "Squadrons" has me smiling throughout, even if I accidentally turn my X-wing into an asteroid. While throwing me into larger-than-life moments — disable a giant, Imperial starship and help lead a capture of it — "Squadrons" succeeds in making them feel livable and conquerable. In other words, by focusing so intently on the act of spaceflight, I don't feel like a tourist in the "Star Wars" universe, thrown a litany of "greatest hits" moments. Instead, "Squadron's" single-focus obsession allows my imagination to run free rather than have to wonder where I am, who I am or what I'm supposed to do now. I can just fly. And shoot. And it feels great.

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What happens when we return items to Amazon? "Perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill," according to Marketplace, an investigative consumer program on Canada's public TV: Experts say hundreds of thousands of returns don't end up back on the e-commerce giant's website for resale, as customers might think. Marketplace journalists posing as potential new clients went undercover for a tour at a Toronto e-waste recycling and product destruction facility with hidden cameras. During that meeting, a representative revealed they get "tons and tons of Amazon returns," and that every week their facility breaks apart and shreds at least one tractor-trailer load of Amazon returns, sometimes even up to three to five truckloads... To further investigate where all those online returns end up, Marketplace purchased a dozen products off Amazon's website — a faux leather backpack, overalls, a printer, coffee maker, a small tent, children's toys and a few other household items — and sent each back to Amazon just as they were received but with a GPS tracker hidden inside... Of the 12 items returned, it appears only four were resold by Amazon to new customers at the time this story was published. Months on from the investigation, some returns were still in Amazon warehouses or in transit, while a few travelled to some unexpected destinations, including a backpack that Amazon sent to landfill... Marketplace asked Amazon what percentage of its returns are sent to landfill, recycling or for destruction. The company wouldn't answer. A television investigation in France exposed that hundreds of thousands of products — both returns and overstock — are being thrown out by Amazon. As a result of public outcry, a new French anti-waste law passed earlier this year will force all retailers including e-giants like Amazon to recycle or donate all returned or unused merchandise. Shortly after the show aired in 2019, Amazon also introduced a new program in the U.S. and U.K. known as Fulfillment by Amazon Donations, which Amazon says will help sellers send returns directly to charities instead of disposing of them. No such program exists in Canada.

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"Astrobiologists have identified 24 exoplanets that aren't just potentially habitable, they're potentially superhabitable, exhibiting an array of conditions more suitable to life than what's seen on Earth..." reports Gizmodo: For exoplanets to be superhabitable, they should be older, larger, heavier, warmer, and wetter compared to Earth, and ideally located around stars with longer lifespans than our own. So yeah, not only is Earth inferior, so too is our Sun, according to the new research... As the new study points out, planets marginally older than Earth have a greater chance of being more habitable. When planets get old, "exhaustion of internally generated heat may result in eventual cooling, with consequences for global temperatures and atmospheric composition," write the authors. Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but planets between the ages of 5 billion and 8 billion years are likely to be more habitable, simply from a probabilistic standpoint... To be clear, many of the criteria, such as atmospheric oxygen, plate tectonics, geomagnetism, and natural satellites, are currently beyond our ability to detect. What's more, only two of these planets, Kepler 1126 b and Kepler-69c, are scientifically validated planets, the remainder being on the list of unconfirmed Kepler Objects of Interest. Consequently, some of these "exoplanets" might not even be planets at all... There are other limitations to consider as well. The authors are naturally biased towards Earth-like conditions, given that our planet provides the only known example of habitability. Life may proliferate under conditions not yet understood, and it's important to keep that in mind... We also don't know about the potential knock-off effects of these conditions. They sound good on paper, but the reality could be vastly different, as these environmental characteristics could collectively result in conditions wholly unsuitable for life. "What's useful here is the criteria for planets that may not look exactly like Earth, but could be even more awesome locations for life," writes CNET. "This could help us direct the resources of next-generation space telescopes like NASA's much-delayed James Webb."

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Following up on speculation from Eric Raymond and ZDNet contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, open source advocate Jack Wallen imagines what would happen if Microsoft just switched over altogether from Windows to a Linux distro named "Microsoft Linux": A full-on Linux distribution released by Microsoft would mean less frustration for all involved. Microsoft could shift its development efforts on the Windows 10 desktop to a desktop that would be more stable, dependable, flexible, and proven. Microsoft could select from any number of desktops for its official flavor: GNOME, KDE, Pantheon, Xfce, Mint, Cinnamon... the list goes on and on. Microsoft could use that desktop as is or contribute to it and create something that's more in-line with what its users are accustomed to... [U]sers would very quickly learn what it's like to work on a desktop computer and not have to deal with the daily frustrations that come with the Windows operating system. Updates are smoother and more trustworthy, it's secure, and the desktop just makes more sense. Microsoft has been doing everything in its power to migrate users from the standard client-based software to cloud and other hosted solutions, and its software cash cow has become web-centric and subscription-based. All of those Linux users could still work with Microsoft 365 and any other Software as a Service (SaaS) solution it has to offer — all from the comfort and security of the Linux operating system... If Microsoft plays its cards right, the company could re-theme KDE or just about any Linux desktop in such a way that it's not all that different from the Windows 10 interface. Lay this out right, and consumers might not even know the difference — a "Windows 11" would simply be the next evolution of the Microsoft desktop operating system. Speaking of winning, IT pros would spend less time dealing with viruses, malware, and operating system issues and more time on keeping the network (and the servers powering that network) running and secure... Microsoft would be seen as finally shipping an operating system worthy of the consumer; the consumer would have a desktop operating system that didn't deliver as many headaches as it did moments of actual productivity and joy; and the Linux community would finally dominate the desktop.

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"Anyone who has ever fallen in love with technology knows the amount of control that it gives you," says Cory Doctorow. But in a new interview about his recently-released scifi novel Attack Surface, he argues that many Silicon Valley employees are now having second thoughts: If you can express yourself well to a computer it will do exactly what you tell it to do perfectly, as many times as you want. Across the tech sector, there are a bunch of workers who are waking up and going: "How did I end up rationalising my love for technology and all the power it gives me to take away that power from other people?" As a society, we have a great fallacy, the fallacy of the ledger, which is that if you do some bad things, and then you do some good things, you can talk them up. And if your balance is positive, then you're a good person. And if the balance is negative, you're a bad person. But no amount of goodness cancels out the badness, they coexist — the people you hurt will still be hurt, irrespective of the other things you do to make amends. We're flawed vessels, and we need a better moral discourse. That's one of the things this book is trying to establish... [F]iction gives you an emotional fly-through. It invites you to consider the lived experience of what is otherwise a very abstract and technical debate. And in the same way that Orwell bequeathed us this incredibly useful adjective Orwellian, as a way to talk about not the technical characteristics of the technology, but who does it and whom it does it to, these stories are a way of intervening in the world. In the real world, Doctorow believes our moment in time includes the possibility of a growing coalition of anti-monopoly sentiment. But he also believes that fears of technology-induced unemployment may ultimately be offset by climate change. "We've got 200 to 300 years of full employment for every working pair of hands, to do things like relocate every city on a coast 20km inland. The extended amounts of labour ahead of us are more than any technology could offset."

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QAnon's biggest news hub was run by a senior vice president at Citigroup, the American multinational investment bank and financial services company Citigroup. Jason Gelinas worked in the company's technology department, where he led an AI project and oversaw a team of software developers, according to Bloomberg. [Alternate URL] He was married with kids and had a comfortable house in a New Jersey suburb. According to those who know him, Gelinas was a pleasant guy who was into normal stuff: Game of Thrones, recreational soccer, and so on. Things did get weird, though, when politics came up... The movement had been contained mostly to the internet's trollish fringes until around the time Gelinas came along. In 2018, while doing his job at Citi, he created, as an anonymous side project, a website dedicated to bringing QAnon to a wider audience — soccer moms, white-collar workers, and other "normies," as he boasted. By mid-2020, the site was drawing 10 million visitors each month, according to the traffic-tracking firm SimilarWeb, and was credited by researchers with playing a key role in what might be the most unlikely political story in a year full of unlikely political stories: A Citigroup executive helped turn an obscure and incoherent cult into an incoherent cult with mainstream political implications... The need to spread the word beyond core users led to the creation of aggregator sites, which would scrape the Q drops and repost them in friendlier environs after determining authenticity. (The ability to post as Q has repeatedly been compromised, and some posts have had to be culled from the canon.) This task, Gelinas once told a friend, could be his calling from God.... His intention, as he later explained on Patreon, the crowdfunding website widely used by musicians, podcasters, and other artists, was to make memes, which are harder to police than tweets or Facebook text posts. "Memes are awesome," Gelinas wrote. "They also bypass big tech censorship." (Social media companies are, at least in theory, opposed to disinformation, and QAnon posts sometimes get removed. On Oct. 6, Facebook banned QAnon-affiliated groups and pages from the service....) The site wasn't just a repository of QAnon posts; Gelinas served as an active co-author in the movement's growing mythology... Gelinas claimed he was the No. 2 figure in the movement, behind only Q, according to a friend, and began to dream about turning his QAnon hobby into his main gig... By now, his site's growth had attracted an enemy. Frederick Brennan, a 26-year-old polymath with a rare bone disease, had decided to unmask him. Brennan was a reformed troll. He'd created 8chan, but he had a change of heart after the man responsible for the 2019 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, posted his manifesto on the forum in advance and inscribed 8chan memes on the weapons he used to kill 56 people... He referred to Gelinas's site in a tweet as "the main vector for Q radicalization." Days after Gelinas was outed as the man running the site, Citigroup "had put him on administrative leave and his name was removed from the company's internal directory. He was later terminated."

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America's not-for-profit College Board is a membership organization of 6,000 educational institutions that creates and administers tests used by college admissions offices. But it "operates as a near monopoly" with tests "which have a stranglehold on their student-customers...an organization under serious strain, run by an elitist, tone-deaf chief executive," according to a new article shared by long-term Slashdot reader theodp: The College Board's core product, the SAT, has set the standard for college admissions for more than five decades and fuels $1+ billion in annual revenue. In How The SAT Failed America, Forbes' Susan Adams takes a look at the College Board's billion-dollar testing monopoly and questions whether the great-granddaddy of standardized tests will survive... Adams notes that 2020 and fallout from the Board's inability to administer its tests safely and efficiently during the pandemic may be the undoing of the seemingly invincible cash machine. Since March, 500+ colleges — including every Ivy League school — have joined the growing 'test optional' movement. And on top of widely-reported technical problems with virtual AP exams in the spring, just-disclosed 2020 College Board AP data reveals that decreases in exam participation were seen in nearly every course. "They're going to learn how to do admissions without the tests," warns the head of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The article notes that "All told, more than 1,600 four-year schools will not require scores for admission in 2021, and a growing number are becoming 'test blind,' meaning they won't consider scores at all..." And there's also privacy concerns: College Board "leases" student data, including ethnicity, religion, gender and their parents' educational backgrounds, to colleges and other third parties. The practice initiates an onslaught of promotional mailings and brochures that students' families must endure in the years leading up to admission. (Late last year, a class action suit was filed in federal court in Illinois, claiming the College Board is violating the state's child privacy laws and using deceptive practices to enrich itself. College Board points out that a similar suit was dismissed several years ago.) The PSAT and SAT exams are loss leaders, in a sense, steering students to other opportunities on which College Board can cash in.

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The world's biggest provider of wind and solar energy is now more valuable than the giant oil company Exxon Mobil, "once the largest public company on Earth," reports Bloomberg: NextEra ended Wednesday with market value of $145 billion, topping Exxon's $142 billion... NextEra has emerged as the world's most valuable utility, largely by betting big on renewables, especially wind. Exxon has seen its fortunes shift in the other direction as electric vehicles become more widespread and the fight against climate change takes on more urgency. "People believe that renewable energy is a growth story and that oil and gas is a declining story," said Jigar Shah, co-founder of the green financier Generate. NextEra had about 18 gigawatts of wind and solar farms at the end of last year, enough to power 13.5 million homes. And it's expanding significantly, with contracts to add another 12 gigawatts of renewables. Its shares have surged more than 20% this year. At the same time, Exxon's shares have tumbled more than 50% as the pandemic quashed global demand for fuels. The company's second-quarter loss was its worst of the modern era and, in August, Exxon was ejected from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company was worth $525 billion in 2007, more than three times its current value. Peter McNally, an energy expert at research firm Third Bridge, tells ExtremeTech that it all comes down to the cheaper price of renewable energy. "Alternative power is now getting competitive with traditional forms of electricity, coal and natural gas fired generation."

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"To fight a disease that thrives on human contact, robots have increasingly taken the place of vulnerable humans," writes Slashdot reader the_newsbeagle: Sentry robots have performed screenings and patrolled streets, looking for lockdown violators. Avatars have allowed family members to visit loved ones in senior homes and enabled graduating students to walk across the stage. In hospitals, germ zappers have blasted UV-C light through hospital rooms, while doctor assistant bots have checked on patients. This photo essay takes a tour of essential robot workers during the time of COVID. "Robots don't need masks, can be easily disinfected, and, of course, they don't get sick," the article notes, noting they're being deployed "all over the world." Not all robots operate autonomously — many, in fact, require direct human supervision, and most are limited to simple, repetitive tasks. But robot makers say the experience they've gained during this trial-by-fire deployment will make their future machines smarter and more capable.

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"It's the end of a rocky journey..." writes the Verge. After six years of developing the free first-person shooter game Crucible, Amazon launched the game in May, yanked it into closed beta in July, and then 14 weeks later cancelled the game altogether. Ars Technica reports: This followed the game's formal delisting from Steam in July, which followed painfully low concurrent player counts (as low as 200) that made it difficult for players to successfully matchmake with each other. Though the game launched with considerable attention, including a promotional blitz on the Amazon-owned game-streaming platform Twitch, it only briefly maintained a player population exceeding 10,000 users. "...ultimately we didn't see a healthy, sustainable future ahead [for] Crucible," explains a blog post from Amazon's Crucible team. The Verge reports: The developers will be hosting a "a final playtest and community celebration" in the next few weeks, according to the blog. Once that's done, matchmaking will be disabled, but you'll be able to play custom games (which are expected to be available in the coming days) until 3PM ET on November 9th. The company also says that it will be offering a full refund for any purchases you might have made... Crucible developers will be moved to other Amazon Games titles, including New World, Amazon's upcoming massively multiplayer online game. That game, which is currently set to launch in spring 2021, has had its own set of challenges, including two delays. And we're also still waiting on the release of Pac-Man Live Studio, a version of Pac-Man that you can play directly on Twitch. Amazon said in May that the game would launch in June, but it's still not out, and the game's website only says that it's "coming soon."

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The source for this story is a post on Reddit, which Jalopnik argues "was corroborated with this remarkable video of Tesla's new Instant, Unplanned Convertible feature." I know we've covered Tesla's chronic quality control issues here before, and I realize that among hardcore Tesla-stans this may feel like we're picking on Tesla unfairly but in our defense, Tesla really does have some terrible quality issues. Sometimes we get a really dramatic and baffling issue, like this one where the fucking roof flew off a brand-new Model Y while the car was being driven home. "The Tesla service center in Dublin did not return a message seeking comment," reports the Verge, adding "A spokesperson for Tesla also did not respond." Leaving them with nothing but the Redditor's own story: Nathaniel Galicia Chien was driving down Interstate 580 with his parents in their brand-new Tesla Model Y when he started to hear a lot of wind. "I thought a window was open," Chien recalled in an email to The Verge, "but half a minute later the entire glass top of the roof just flew off in the wind." Chien said the incident occurred hours after he and his parents picked up the new Model Y from the Tesla dealership in Dublin, California. Right off the bat, they noticed some minor "fit and finish" problems, such as "spacing issues and unevenness in the gaps that are pretty well-known issues with new Teslas." But they didn't expect any problems with the crossover's mammoth panoramic glass roof, and certainly not on the same day they drove it off the dealer's lot. For years, Tesla has been plagued by quality issues, but it seems to have grown worse with the release of the Model Y in 2019. Just this past summer, Tesla scored last in a survey of customers by researcher JD Power. Owners have flocked to online forums to complain about paint and trim problems, indentations in the seats, and loose seatbelts. But an entire roof flying off on the highway is a new kind of problem for Tesla... Chien said Tesla's service representatives said that "either the seal on the roof was faulty, or they somehow just forgot to seal the roof on entirely." "They gave us a free rental to use in the meantime and offered to get it serviced," the Redditor posted this week, "but we just opted to wait for a brand new one."

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This week's release of Python 3.9 "brings forward significant changes to both the features of the language and to how the language is developed," writes InfoWorld — starting with a new yearly release schedule and performance-boosting parser improvements: - Python makes it easy to manipulate common data types, and Python 3.9 extends this ease with new features for strings and dictionaries. For strings, there are new methods to remove prefixes and suffixes, operations that have long required a lot of manual work to pull off. [The methods are named .removeprefix() and .removesuffix() and their return value is the modified string] - For dictionaries, there are now union operators, one to merge two dictionaries into a new dictionary and one to update the contents of one dictionary with another dictionary. - Decorators let you wrap Python functions to alter their behaviors programmatically. Previously, decorators could only consist of the @ symbol, a name (e.g. func) or a dotted name (func.method) and optionally a single call (func.method(arg1, arg2)). With Python 3.9, decorators can now consist of any valid expression...provided it yields something that can function as a decorator... - Two new features for type hinting and type annotations made their way into Python 3.9. In one, type hints for the contents of collections — e.g., lists and dictionaries — are now available in Python natively. This means you can for instance describe a list as list[int] — a list of integers — without needing the typing library to do it. The second addition to Python's typing mechanisms is flexible function and variable annotations. This allows the use of the Annotated type to describe a type using metadata that can be examined ahead of time (with linting tools) or at runtime... - Python extension modules, written in C, may now use a new loading mechanism that makes them behave more like regular Python modules when imported.

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Slashdot reader omfglearntoplay shared this article from Science Alert: A cross-sectional analysis of 11,489 children, 655 of whom were exposed to THC in the womb, has found cannabis use during pregnancy is tied to a small elevation in psychotic-like behaviours later in life. These include aggression towards others, as well as attention and social problems... the relationship stood even when other confounding factors, such as genetic predispositions, were considered. Whether or not this link is causal is another matter — after all, there are many other factors the researchers may not have considered — but in the context of other research, it's an interesting link worthy of further exploration... [S]everal other lines of evidence have shown prenatal cannabis exposure is associated with decreased attention span and some behavioural problems in children... While research on the health effects of cannabis is slowly catching up with legalisation, data on cannabis use during pregnancy is still lagging far behind. And that could be inadvertently harming the next generation. A 2019 study of over 450,000 pregnant women found cannabis use more than doubled between 2002 and 2017, reaching 7 percent... Cannabis is reportedly used to deal with nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy, but there's little evidence to say whether this actually works or if it's safe... There is currently no known safe level of cannabis use during pregnancy or lactation. The potential risks have led the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics to both advise against using cannabis in early pregnancy or while breastfeeding. Even the U.S. Surgeon General advises against cannabis use during pregnancy... While alcohol and tobacco during pregnancy are also linked to adverse health outcomes, these are already well documented. But many women don't know these are risks that might also come with prenatal exposure to weed.

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"Most users don't seem to realize the severity of the risks they're subjecting themselves to while using hotel Wi-Fi networks," writes Windows Report, noting that America's FBI "issued a Public Service Announcement concerning the risks of using hotel Wi-Fi networks while teleworking." Apparently, more and more U.S. hotels started advertising room reservations during the daytime for those who seek a distraction-free environment. This comes as a blessing for teleworkers who can't seem to focus on their work environment while at home. On the other hand...there are a few quite serious risks you may expose yourself to while using Wi-Fi networks in hotels: - Traffic monitoring: Your network activity could be exposed to a malicious third-party - Evil Twin attacks: Cloning the hotel network, misleading clients to connect to the fake one instead - Man-In-The-Middle attacks: Intercepting and stealing sensitive information from one's device - Compromising work" Facilitating cybercriminals to steal work credentials or other similar resources - Digital identity theft - Ransomware Among other things, the FBI points out: Guests generally have minimal visibility into both the physical location of wireless access points within the hotel and the age of networking equipment. Old, outdated equipment is significantly more likely to possess vulnerabilities that criminal actors can exploit. Even if a hotel is using modern equipment, the guest has no way of knowing how frequently the hotel is updating the firmware of that equipment or whether the hotel has changed the equipment's default passwords. The hotel guest must take each of these factors into consideration when choosing whether to telework on a hotel network. Or, as Slashdot reader SmartAboutThings puts it, "Using hotel Wi-Fi, in general, is not safe at all, and if you have no other choice, then you might as well give VPN services a try." Or, just don't use the hotel's wifi (using your cellphone as a mobile hotspot instead).

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California's elections include grass roots propositions that change the law directly while bypassing legislators. Uber, Lyft, and Uber-owned Postmates (as well as DoorDash and Instacart) have spent $185 million — the most ever spent — pushing a proposition that would keep ride-hail and delivery drivers as independent contractors, reports SFGate. "If it passes...gig corporations won't have to contribute to Social Security, Medicare or unemployment insurance. They won't have to offer paid sick leave, workers compensation or unemployment benefits to drivers." But the site also investigated what happened shortly after the Uber/Lyft PAC reported an $128,000 expenditure on mailers: Political mailers masquerading as progressive voter guides and endorsing Proposition 22, the initiative backed by Uber and Lyft, are showing up in Southern California voters' mailboxes. The fine print on one mailer says it was prepared by the "Feel the Bern, Progressive Voter Guide," which is not an actual organization. Neither are the "Council of Concerned Women Voters Guide" nor the "Our Voice, Latino Voter Guide," whose mailers make the same endorsements as Feel the Bern. Mailed political fliers typically identify the organization that paid for the literature. But that information was conspicuously absent from Feel the Bern and the other two mailers... The measure would allow ride-hail and delivery drivers to continue to be treated as independent contractors, although with some new benefit concessions. If it fails, these employees would likely be considered workers entitled to a minimum wage, overtime pay, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance and paid sick leave. The California Democratic Party has endorsed a "no" vote for Prop. 22.

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"Google LLC is reportedly planning to relinquish direct control over its open-source Knative project to a five-seat steering committee that will have rules to prevent any single organization from having more than two seats," reports SiliconANGLE. "The plan is designed to stymie criticism that Google is secretly planning to retain control over key open-source projects it has developed, according to a report today on the tech news website The Protocol." Knative is an open-source project first developed by Google that provides components for deploying, running and managing serverless, cloud-native applications on top of Kubernetes, a container management platform that was also built by Google and open-sourced in 2015... Google is planning to make some major changes to Knative's governance structure, according to the report. Seats on the committee will now be held by individuals rather than specific companies, and elections will be held later this year to select two new members. In addition, the report said, Google is considering eventually expanding the committee to seven members as a way to include representatives from Knative's user community. The plan comes just a few months after Google angered some members of the open-source software community when it reneged on a promise to hand over control of another project, Istio, to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, a Linux Foundation project that was founded in 2015 to help advance container technology. In July Google said that it instead of transferring Istio to the CNCF, it would create a neutral organization called Open Usage Commons to manage its trademark policies, while control would be maintained by the project's steering committee. That decision upset many of Google's partners, most notably IBM Corp., which has also contributed greatly to the development of Istio.

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CNN reports on "The New Leaf Project," an initiative in which the University of British Columbia partnered with a Vancouver-based charity called Foundations for Social Change: Researchers gave 50 recently homeless people a lump sum of 7,500 Canadian dollars (nearly $5,700). They followed the cash recipients' life over 12-18 months and compared their outcomes to that of a control group who didn't receive the payment. The preliminary findings, which will be peer-reviewed next year, show that: - Those who received cash were able to find stable housing faster, on average. By comparison, those who didn't receive cash lagged about 12 months behind in securing more permanent housing. - People who received cash were able to access the food they needed to live, faster. Nearly 70% did after one month, and maintained greater food security throughout the year. - The recipients spent more on food, clothing and rent, while there was a 39% decrease in spending on goods like alcohol, cigarettes or drugs... The 115 participants in the randomized controlled trial were between the ages of 19 and 64, and they had been homeless for an average of 6 months. Participants were screened for a low risk of mental health challenges and substance abuse. Funding for the initiative came from a grant from the Canadian federal government, and from donors and foundations in the country... Direct cash transfers are not "a silver bullet for homelessness in general," and the program focused on "a higher functioning subset of the homeless population," said Claire Williams, the CEO and co-founder of Foundations for Social Change, but she believes the research shows that providing meaningful support to folks who have recently become homeless decreases the likelihood they will become entrenched in the experience... According to the research, reducing the number of nights spent in shelters by the 50 study participants who received cash saved approximately 8,100 Canadian dollars per person per year, or about 405,000 Canadian dollars over one year for all 50 participants. "There's a common misconception that the cost of doing nothing is free or cheap and it absolutely is not," Williams said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: When technologists talk about the "Internet of Things" (IoT), they often gloss over the fact that all these interconnected things need batteries and electronics to carry out the job of collecting and processing data while they're communicating to one another. This job is made even more challenging when you consider that many of the objects we would like to connect are made from plastic and do not have electronics embedded into them. Now researchers at the University of Washington have devised a way of using 3D printed plastic to create objects that communicate with smartphone or other Wi-Fi devices without the need for batteries or electronics. This research builds on previous work at the University of Washington dating back to 2014 in which another research team employed battery-less chips that transmit their bits by either reflecting or not reflecting a Wi-Fi router's signals. With this kind of backscattering, a device communicates by modulating its reflection of the Wi-Fi signal in the space. [...] In this latest research, the University of Washington team has been able to leverage this Wi-Fi backscatter technology to 3D geometry and create easy to print wireless devices using commodity 3D printers. To achieve this, the researchers have built non-electronic and printable analogues for each of these electronic components using plastic filaments and integrated them into a single computational design. The researchers are making their CAD models available to 3D printing enthusiasts so that they can create their own IoT objects. The designs include a battery-free slider that controls music volume, a button that automatically orders more cornflakes from an e-commerce website and a water sensor that sends an alarm to your phone when it detects a leak. The researchers "have leveraged mechanical motion to provide the power for their objects," reports Spectrum. "To ensure that the plastic objects can reflect Wi-Fi signals, the researchers employ composite plastic filament materials with conductive properties. These take the form of plastic with copper and graphene filings." "Once the reflective material was created, the next challenge for the researchers was to communicate the collected data. The researchers ingeniously translated the 0 and 1 bits of traditional electronics by encoding these bits as 3D printed plastic gears. A 0 and 1 bit are encoded with the presence and absence of tooth on the gear, respectively. These gears reflect the WiFi signal differently depending on whether they are transmitting a 1 bit or a 0 bit."

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An error in Facebook's automated system rejected a user's picture of onions for being "overtly sexual." The BBC reports: The Seed Company by EW Gaze, in St John's, Newfoundland, had wanted to post a seemingly innocent advert for Walla Walla onion seeds on Facebook. But to their surprise, it was rejected for being "overtly sexual." In a statement on Wednesday, the social media company apologized for the error made by its automated technology. It took store manager Jackson McLean a moment to realize what the issue was with the posting, he said. Then he figured out that "something about the round shapes" could be suggestive of breasts or buttocks. He knew his customers would find the ad rejection funny, and posted the photo, along with the automated Facebook message warning "listings may not position products or services in a sexually suggestive manner," to the company page. Mr McLean said some clients have been posting images of potentially suggestive carrots and pumpkins in reply. He also appealed the decision to Facebook. The Walla Walla onions, "an older onion variety," had recently brought back in stock by customer request, and are now selling fast due to their newfound notoriety, he said. "We've sold more in the last three days than in the last five years," said Mr McLean, adding they are also now listed under "sexy onions" on the company website.

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