Privacy startup Proton already offers an email app, a VPN tool, cloud storage, a password manager, and a calendar app. In April 2022, Proton acquired SimpleLogin, an open-source product that generates email aliases to protect inboxes from spam and phishing. Today, Proton acquired Standard Notes, advancing its already strong commitment to the open-source community. From a report: Standard Notes is an open-source note-taking app, available on both mobile and desktop platforms, with a user base of over 300,000. [...] Proton founder and CEO Andy Yen makes a point of stating that Standard Notes will remain open-source, will continue to undergo independent audits, will continue to develop new features and updates, and that prices for the app/service will not change. Standard Notes has three tiers: Free, which includes 100MB of storage, offline access, and unlimited device sync; Productivity for $90 per year, which includes features like markdown, spreadsheets with advanced formulas, Daily Notebooks, and two-factor authentication; and Professional for $120 per year, which includes 100GB of cloud storage, sharing for up to five accounts, no file limit size, and more.
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cox Communications doesn't believe that ISPs should be held liable for the activities of their pirating subscribers. After a disappointing verdict from a Virginia jury and an unsatisfactory outcome at the Court of Appeals, the internet provider now intends to escalate the matter to the Supreme Court. If the present verdict stands, innocent people risk losing their Internet access, the ISP notes. [...] That's notable, as it would be the first time that a "repeat infringer" case ends up at the highest court United States. Cox asked the court of appeals to also stay its mandate pending its Supreme Court application, as this could steer the legal battle in yet another direction.
According to Cox, the Supreme Court has substantial reasons to take on the case. For one, there are currently conflicting court of appeals rulings on the "material contribution" aspect of copyright infringement. The Supreme Court could give more clarity on when a service, with a myriad of lawful uses, can be held liable for infringers. In addition, Cox also cites the recent 'Twitter vs. Taamneh' Supreme Court ruling, which held that social media platforms aren't liable for terrorists who use their network. While that's not a copyright case, it's relevant for the secondary liability question, the ISP argues. "Though Twitter was not a copyright case, it confronted a directly analogous theory of secondary liability: that social-media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, could be liable for continuing to provide services to those they knew were using them for illegal purposes," Cox writes.
Finally, Cox notes that the Supreme Court should hear the case because it deals with an issue that's 'exceptionally important' to ISPs as well as the public. If the present verdict stands, Internet providers may be much more likely to terminate Internet access, even if the subscriber is innocent. "This Court's material-contribution standard provides powerful incentives for ISPs of all stripes to swiftly terminate internet services that have been used to infringe -- no matter the universe of lawful uses to which those services are put, or the consequences to innocent, non-infringing people who also use those services. "That is why a chorus of amici urged this Court not to adopt this standard at the panel and en banc stages, and will likely urge the Supreme Court to grant review as well," Cox adds, referring to the support it received from third-parties previously. "Cox hasn't filed a writ of certiorari yet and still has time, as it's due June 17, 2024," notes TorrentFreak. "The intention to go to the Supreme Court would be another reason to halt the new damages trial, according to Cox, but the court of appeals rejected the request."
"This means that the new damages trial can start, even if the case is still pending at the Supreme Court. However, it's clear that this legal battle is far from over yet."
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Security updates have been issued by Debian (gtkwave), Fedora (dotnet7.0, dotnet8.0, and python-pillow), Mageia (apache, gstreamer1.0, libreoffice, perl-Data-UUID, and xen), Oracle (kernel, kernel-container, and varnish), Red Hat (edk2, kernel, rear, and unbound), SUSE (apache2-mod_jk, gnutls, less, and xfig), and Ubuntu (bind9, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4,
linux-bluefield, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.4,
linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4,
linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.5, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.5,
linux-hwe-6.5, linux-laptop, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.5,
linux-oem-6.5, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.5, linux-starfive,
linux-starfive-6.5, linux, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fde,
linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-gkeop,
linux-gkeop-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15,
linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency,
linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15,
linux-raspi, linux-azure, and xorg-server, xwayland).
A brain implant startup called Synchron is preparing to recruit patients for a large-scale clinical trial to seek commercial approval for its device. Reuters reports: Synchron on Monday plans to launch an online registry for patients interested in joining the trial meant to include dozens of participants, and has received interest from about 120 clinical trial centers to help run the study, CEO Thomas Oxley said in an interview. "Part of this registry is to start to enable local physicians to speak to patients with motor impairment," he said. "There's a lot of interest so we don't want it to come in a big bottleneck right before the study we'll be doing."
Synchron received U.S. authorization for preliminary testing in July 2021 and has implanted its device in six patients. Prior testing in four patients in Australia showed no serious adverse side effects, the company has reported. Synchron will be analyzing the U.S. data to prepare for the larger study, while awaiting authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to proceed, Oxley said. Synchron and the FDA declined to comment on the expected timing of that decision. The company aims to include patients who are paralyzed due to the neurodegenerative disease ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), stroke and multiple sclerosis, Oxley said. [...]
Synchron's device is delivered to the brain via the large vein that sits next to the motor cortex in the brain instead of being surgically implanted into the brain cortex like Neuralink's. The FDA has asked Synchron to screen stroke patients using a non-invasive test to determine whether they would respond to an implant, Oxley said.
"They want to expand the market to people who have had a stroke severe enough to cause paralysis because if limited to quadriplegia, the market is way too small to be sustainable," Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said of Synchron. In 2020, Synchron reported that patients, opens new tab in its Australian study could use its first-generation device to type an average of 16 characters per minute. That's better than non-invasive devices that sit atop the head and record the electrical activity of the brain, which have helped people type up to eight characters per minute, but not the leap forward that is hoped for with an implant, Ludwig said. Oxley would not say whether typing has gotten faster or offer any other details from the ongoing U.S. trial. Reuters notes that Synchron's investors include billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. It's competing with Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant startup and claims it's farther along in the process of testing its device.
Earlier this year, Neuralink said it implanted a chip in its first human patient. It later said the patient fully recovered and was able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts.
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After 64 years of service, ULA on Tuesday launched its last-ever Delta rocket carrying a classified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). "The powerful booster departed Space Launch Complex-37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 12:53 p.m. EDT (1653 GMT), literally setting itself on fire for the 16th and final time," reports Space.com. From the report: That spectacle, which was unique to the Delta IV in its heaviest configuration, was the result of hydrogen building up in the flame trench and then rising up alongside the rocket after it was used to cool down the three RS-68A engines to cryogenic temperatures. When the engines fired, the hydrogen ignited and flames lapped at the orange insulation covering the core stage and its two side-mounted boosters. The two boosters were jettisoned about four minutes into the flight, followed by the core, or first stage, separating one minute and 45 seconds later. A single RL10C-2-1 engine on the Delta cryogenic second stage then took over, propelling the NROL-70 payload into space. Due to national security concerns, coverage of the launch ceased following fairing jettison at about 6 minutes and 40 seconds into the flight.
ULA is retiring the Delta IV, and eventually its other legacy rocket, the Atlas V, in favor of its newly introduced Vulcan, which flew a near-perfect first mission in January. The Vulcan was developed to replace both long-flying rockets in all of their configurations. "This is a great mission to think about that transition, because national security space missions is our core and the unique set of missions there require a high-energy launch vehicle. We designed Vulcan specifically for that," said [Tory Bruno, chief executive officer of United Launch Alliance]. In addition to being the 16th Delta IV Heavy, Tuesday's launch was also the 45th liftoff of a Delta IV, the 35th Delta IV to fly from Florida and the 389th Delta launch of any kind since 1960 (of which 294 were sent skyward from Cape Canaveral). Half of the Delta IV Heavy launches were devoted to sending NRO payloads into orbit. The rocket and its less powerful configurations were also used in support of NASA, NOAA (the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), U.S. Air Force and commercial payloads.
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According to the European Union, Earth has reached its warmest March on record, capping a 10-month streak in which every month set a new temperature record. Reuters reports: Each of the last 10 months ranked as the world's hottest on record, compared with the corresponding month in previous years, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin. The 12 months ending with March also ranked as the planet's hottest ever recorded 12-month period, C3S said. From April 2023 to March 2024, the global average temperature was 1.58 degrees Celsius above the average in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period.
C3S' dataset goes back to 1940, which the scientists cross-checked with other data to confirm that last month was the hottest March since the pre-industrial period. Already, 2023 was the planet's hottest year in global records going back to 1850. El Nino peaked in December-January and is now weakening, which may help to break the hot streak toward the end of the year. But despite El Nino easing in March, the world's average sea surface temperature hit a record high, for any month on record, and marine air temperatures remained unusually high, C3S said. "The main driver of the warming is fossil fuel emissions," said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London's Grantham Institute. Failure to reduce these emissions will continue to drive the warming of the planet, resulting in more intense droughts, fires, heatwaves and heavy rainfall, Otto said.
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Keaton Peters reports via the Texas Tribune: Students sitting for their STAAR exams this week will be part of a new method of evaluating Texas schools: Their written answers on the state's standardized tests will be graded automatically by computers. The Texas Education Agency is rolling out an "automated scoring engine" for open-ended questions on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness for reading, writing, science and social studies. The technology, which uses natural language processing technology like artificial intelligence chatbots such as GPT-4, will save the state agency about $15-20 million per year that it would otherwise have spent on hiring human scorers through a third-party contractor.
The change comes after the STAAR test, which measures students' understanding of state-mandated core curriculum, was redesigned in 2023. The test now includes fewer multiple choice questions and more open-ended questions -- known as constructed response items. After the redesign, there are six to seven times more constructed response items. "We wanted to keep as many constructed open ended responses as we can, but they take an incredible amount of time to score," said Jose Rios, director of student assessment at the Texas Education Agency. In 2023, Rios said TEA hired about 6,000 temporary scorers, but this year, it will need under 2,000.
To develop the scoring system, the TEA gathered 3,000 responses that went through two rounds of human scoring. From this field sample, the automated scoring engine learns the characteristics of responses, and it is programmed to assign the same scores a human would have given. This spring, as students complete their tests, the computer will first grade all the constructed responses. Then, a quarter of the responses will be rescored by humans. When the computer has "low confidence" in the score it assigned, those responses will be automatically reassigned to a human. The same thing will happen when the computer encounters a type of response that its programming does not recognize, such as one using lots of slang or words in a language other than English. "In addition to 'low confidence' scores and responses that do not fit in the computer's programming, a random sample of responses will also be automatically handed off to humans to check the computer's work," notes Peters. While similar to ChatGPT, TEA officials have resisted the suggestion that the scoring engine is artificial intelligence. They note that the process doesn't "learn" from the responses and always defers to its original programming set up by the state.
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Congress may be closer than ever to passing a comprehensive data privacy framework after key House and Senate committee leaders released a new proposal on Sunday. The bipartisan proposal, titled the American Privacy Rights Act, or APRA, would limit the types of consumer data that companies can collect, retain, and use, allowing solely what they'd need to operate their services. Users would also be allowed to opt out of targeted advertising, and have the ability to view, correct, delete, and download their data from online services. The proposal would also create a national registry of data brokers, and force those companies to allow users to opt out of having their data sold. [...] In an interview with The Spokesman Review on Sunday, [Cathy McMorris Rodgers, House Energy and Commerce Committee chair] claimed that the draft's language is stronger than any active laws, seemingly as an attempt to assuage the concerns of Democrats who have long fought attempts to preempt preexisting state-level protections. APRA does allow states to pass their own privacy laws related to civil rights and consumer protections, among other exceptions.
In the previous session of Congress, the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committees brokered a deal with Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, on a bill that would preempt state laws with the exception of the California Consumer Privacy Act and the Biometric Information Privacy Act of Illinois. That measure, titled the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, also created a weaker private right of action than most Democrats were willing to support. Maria Cantwell, Senate Commerce Committee chair, refused to support the measure, instead circulating her own draft legislation. The ADPPA hasn't been reintroduced, but APRA was designed as a compromise. "I think we have threaded a very important needle here," Cantwell told The Spokesman Review. "We are preserving those standards that California and Illinois and Washington have."
APRA includes language from California's landmark privacy law allowing people to sue companies when they are harmed by a data breach. It also provides the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and private citizens the authority to sue companies when they violate the law. The categories of data that would be impacted by APRA include certain categories of "information that identifies or is linked or reasonably linkable to an individual or device," according to a Senate Commerce Committee summary of the legislation. Small businesses -- those with $40 million or less in annual revenue and limited data collection -- would be exempt under APRA, with enforcement focused on businesses with $250 million or more in yearly revenue. Governments and "entities working on behalf of governments" are excluded under the bill, as are the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and, apart from certain cybersecurity provisions, "fraud-fighting" nonprofits.
Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called the draft "very strong" in a Sunday statement, but said he wanted to "strengthen" it with tighter child safety provisions.
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