Day: November 20, 2018

Censored Planet, a project launched in August at the University of Michigan, has found that the number of websites being censored in Saudi Arabia doubled a couple of weeks after Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the country’s consulate in Istanbul. While the increased censorship is not surprising, the results show how skillful automated tracking has become at sniffing out repression.

Roya Ensafi, who leads the project at the university, says it detected the sharp increase in censorship activity when it ran an automated scan on October 16. That was the day after Saudi and Turkish officials had conducted a joint inspection of the consulate, which Khashoggi entered a couple of weeks earlier to get a marriage license.

Ensafi’s team runs these scans twice a week in more than 170 countries. She says the October scan showed that foreign news services such as Fox News, the Los Angeles Times, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were suddenly being blocked. Although the interference has since diminished for some sites, access to the Times’ website and arabnews.com, an English-language daily in Saudi Arabia, is still being restricted.

Censored Planet is one of a number of initiatives that track online censorship, including the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI). Some services, like OONI, rely on thousands of volunteers living under authoritarian regimes to run code that checks for crackdowns and then upload the results to their servers.

Ensafi, who grew up in Iran, has developed a way of monitoring censorship in repressive regimes without having to rely on volunteers, who could be subject to reprisals. Censored Planet’s software searches the internet for publicly available servers at places like universities or companies providing internet access in the countries it monitors. It then instructs these machines to conduct several different scans to check if any of the approximately 2,000 websites it tracks are being blocked.

One scan looks to see if censors are blocking access to internet protocol (IP) addresses that are associated with the websites Censored Planet monitors. Another checks for manipulation of servers running the domain name system, which helps route traffic to correct destinations over the internet. Regimes can tamper with this by, for example, redirecting requests for certain websites to incorrect IP addresses. The third scan looks for keyword blocking, which involves censors monitoring network traffic for certain sensitive words and then blocking traffic containing them.

In e-mailed comments to MIT Technology Review, Arturo Filastò, a cofounder of OONI, says that its approach shows how actual users are experiencing censorship on their devices, which Censored Planet can’t do. He also says he isn’t aware of any volunteer who has gotten into trouble for running software that looks for evidence of censorship. OONI takes care to warn people of potential risks and works closely with local lawyers to keep an eye on emerging threats.

Nevertheless, Filastò welcomes Censored Planet’s approach and says it’s complementary to OONI’s because it can use remote testing to track much greater numbers of websites. As his organization’s software runs on bandwidth paid for by its volunteers, it has to limit the number of sites being tracked. Both services publish their findings openly so that other researchers can use them.

 

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

November 20, 2018 at 04:36PM

In the US, “new car smell” is a beloved scent. People even try to make their cars smell new with after-market cleaning products. But in China, customers find the same odor repulsive. As the Chinese auto market grows, car makers are looking for a way to make the aroma of their new vehicles more amenable to Chinese tastes.

Early this month, Ford filed a patent to reduce the odor of some of the adhesive, leather, and other materials that produce Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) that contribute to new car smell. The patent appears to include software that senses the car’s location and the weather it’s experiencing, then it possibly detects whether the owner has “requested volatile organic compound removal from the vehicle.” Next, on a sunny day, the car will roll down a window and turn on the engine, the heater, and a fan in order to bake off the VOCs and their accompanying smell.

The Ford patent explains: “new vehicles typically have an odor often referred to as a ‘new car smell’… This odor typically persists for several months after the manufacture of a new vehicle. Some customers do not like this smell, and even become irritated or sick from the VOCs in the interior of a new vehicle” [emphasis Ford’s].

According to the Detroit Free Press, Ford’s software appears to work only with vehicles that possess some level of autonomy. If removal of new car smell is requested, “the car would drive itself to a place in the sun and bake away the offensive odor.”

“While ‘new car smell’ is ingrained in American culture, we know Chinese customers dislike that scent,” Debbie Mielewski, senior technical leader in materials sustainability at Ford, told the Detroit Free Press. ”This patent is the result of years of research and is just one idea we are considering for future use.”

Since the patent was just recently filed, there’s no guarantee it will be granted or that Ford will actually end up adopting the technology. Either way, it’s an interesting look at how car makers are considering tailoring their products to meet a wide range of tastes and preferences.

Radio waves from our Milky Way galaxy are reflected across the surface of the moon in a stunning new image. 

Using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope in the Western Australian desert, astronomers modeled this stunning view of the Milky Way’s radio waves cast across the moon. Researchers will use this measurement to very precisely measure the patch of sky covered by the moon, which will let them eventually detect extremely faint emissions from hydrogen atoms to help see how the first stars and galaxies of the early universe evolved, the research team said in a statement. 

“Before there were stars and galaxies, the universe was pretty much just hydrogen, floating around in space,” Benjamin McKinley, lead astronomer of the study from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), said in the statement. “Since there are no sources of the optical light visible to our eyes, this early stage of the universe is known as the ‘cosmic dark ages.'” [Stunning Photos of Our Milky Way Galaxy (Gallery)]

The new image is actually comprised of measurements from the MWA’s lunar observations, as well as the Global Sky Model — a map of diffuse galactic radio emission published in 2008. Using computer modeling, the Global Sky Model was mapped onto the face of the moon, allowing astronomers to calculate the average brightness from the Milky Way that would reflect off its surface.

The Milky Way radiates light onto different areas of the moon’s surface. This light is then reflected back toward Earth and captured in the telescope’s view. Therefore, the researchers were able to calculate how much light from the Milky Way reflects off the moon to factor into their computation, McKinley told Space.com in an email.

Similar to how a car stereo converts radio waves into sound, the MWA radio telescope converts radio signals from space into images, McKinley said. 

However, radio signals from the early universe are very weak compared to the other bright objects in the foreground, and standard techniques are not sensitive enough to detect such emissions, according to the statement.

Therefore, the astronomers used the moon as a reference point of known brightness and shape from which the team could measure the patch of sky covered by the moon. 

“So to use this technique, we need to assume that we know both the shape of the moon and its intrinsic brightness — and how that varies with frequency,” McKinley said. “We can calculate how bright the moon’s radio emission should be [based on] its temperature. Then, from our measurements we can deduce the occulted background temperature, which is dominated by radio emission from the Milky Way.”

However, the brightness of the moon is influenced by reflections from the rest of the Milky Way — which they factored in by simulation — as well as “earthshine,” radio waves from Earth that bounce off the moon and interfere with the signal received by the telescope. 

Factoring in this bright interference, the team was able to measure the radio signals of the sky surrounding the moon, McKinley said. 

Using this method, the team hopes to detect the extremely faint signal emanating from the hydrogen atoms in the very earliest days of the universe. However, more data and refined techniques are needed, the researchers said. 

“If we can detect this radio signal it will tell us whether our theories about the evolution of the universe are correct,” McKinley said in the statement. 

Their findings were published Sept. 6 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

If you’re willing to suffer through a few commercials, YouTube is now offering a number of movies on its site that can be streamed for free.

The collection of free films officially launched in October but started getting attention over the past few days. While you won’t find any new releases, there are a few films you might actually want to watch. The collection currently includes Legally Blonde, The Terminator, and several Rocky movies, among others.

Films are being made available through partnerships with movie studios, so the collection is subject to change. When you watch one, ads will be shown throughout your viewing, similar to the experience if you were watching the movie on broadcast television.

You can check out the full collection of free stuff here. Worth noting, this page is the only place you can see all the free films grouped together. If you try to sort things by genre, you’ll end up with movies you need to pay to rent or buy in the mix as well.

And this might only be the beginning of ad-supported feature films on YouTube. Speaking with AdAge, Rohit Dhawan, director of product management at YouTube says that in the future we might see advertisers using the platform to sponsor the viewing of a specific film. For instance, you might have the opportunity to watch a recent release for free if you’re willing to watch a few toilet paper commercials.

On the morning of Friday, November 16, scientists and diplomats crammed into an auditorium in Versailles, a stone’s throw from the Sun King’s gilded chateau. Patrick Abbott, an American physicist, had flown into France for the long weekend. Forehead gleaming and blue suit jacket draped across his lap, Abbott watched from a packed balcony as a group of diplomats from 60 different countries voted unanimously on a treaty that intended to change global trade and technology forever.

The vote re-defined the metric system for the first time since 1983. The new system completely upends the historical methods for setting standards using physical objects. Previous systems have used things like the notches on a metal rod to set a distance standard. Up until the vote, the kilogram had been based on a platinum-iridium cylinder stored under lock and key in France.

Scientists have now scrapped all physical objects from the system. The units are instead based on fundamental constants of nature. For example, the meter has been defined in terms of the speed of light. This means that as long as you can measure the speed of light, you can create a meter stick; you don’t need access to a special object. Using this principle, astronauts on Mars could theoretically make a precise tape measure from scratch.

These standards offer more stability because fundamental constants don’t change over time. In the 1960s, for example, a more precise standard for time made possible GPS technology, which needed to keep time to one-billionth of a second per day. With more precise standards for the kilogram, mole, Kelvin, and Ampere, scientists anticipate more technology breakthroughs. “This [is] the biggest revolution in measurement since the French revolution,” said Bill Phillips, a physics Nobel Laureate, from the stage below.

Perhaps the biggest change was in the definition of the kilogram, which was the last remaining unit to be based on a physical artifact: the International Prototype Kilogram, also known as Le Grand K, locked in a vault in a Paris suburb. While scientists will still monitor and study Le Grand K, it no longer has its former scientific significance. Now, it’s just a cylinder with a lot of history. Starting in May, the kilogram will be defined in terms of Planck’s constant, a number that relates a radio wave’s energy to its frequency.

The system was due for an upgrade, says Abbott. The French cylinder tends to gain weight over time. But still, he’s got a soft spot for it. “There are a lot of people who refer to the International Prototype Kilogram irreverently as a hunk of metal. They’ll say how outrageous it is for us to still use it in the 21st century,” says Abbott. “But the fact remains that it’s done a wonderful job for over a century. Yes, it has changed from its original value. But has it been a problem? No. I get kind of defensive about it.”

And so he should. He’s allowed a little sentimentality: Abbott, who works at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is one of three designated keepers of the US kilogram standard. The lab maintains the standard using a collection of platinum-iridium cylinders stored in an underground lab in Maryland, all replicas of the IPK. All scales manufactured in the US have to be calibrated using some method that traces back to these weights. Your bathroom scale was calibrated by a weight whose mass was confirmed via another weight, and so on, where the last weight in the calibration chain is perching in a bell jar in Abbott’s lab.

A month ago at his lab in Maryland, Abbott showed me the weights. He handled the weights sweetly, almost like an owner tending to his pets. The first time he ever picked up one of the kilogram replicas, to place it inside a machine, was 12 years ago. The proper protocol involves grabbing them with a pair of tongs covered in soft chamois leather and coated in lint paper. “I was so scared,” he says. “It was like if someone had said, ‘Why don’t you take my Ferrari for a ride?’” The IPK’s home lab in France sells kilogram cylinders at around $85,000 apiece, depending on the price of platinum. Platinum iridium is an extremely hard material and difficult to scratch, but “it makes you paranoid,” he says.

Abbott also has to monitor the weights, to check that their masses stay the same over time. In the lab, he has developed a nearly obsessive attention to cleanliness and frequently reminds his colleagues to change their gloves. “If your gloves are dirty, and you pick up a tool, whatever’s on the gloves are going to go on the tool. And that means it could get on the mass and change its weight,” he says. “You have to remember where your hands have been, and what they’ve touched.” His vigilance has kept the cylinders largely safe from mishaps. “One time I dropped one of the masses rather hard [inside a machine], and it fell over,” says Abbott. “I was worried about that, but it didn’t hurt anything.”

He knows the weights well enough to have favorites: K4 and K79, whose numbers signify the order in which they were manufactured. “They’re just so stable over the years, so I really like them,” he says. “When you measure their mass, they really don’t change.”

K4, along with another cylinder named K20, are the most historic items in the collection: both are 130-year-old platinum iridium cylinders that are replicas of Le Grand K. “They’re brothers, cut from the same bar of platinum iridium,” says Abbott. Periodically, he or one of his colleagues have to hand-carry them to France, to check if their masses have fluctuated against the one true kilogram. There, they reunite the cylinders, one per trip, with its brother at its home French lab, which compares their weights.

Abbott has made the trip once, in 2011. “It’s a real cloak-and-dagger affair,” he says. He treated the kilogram like a precious carry-on. Using the tongs, he placed it in a custom-built container, a tiny covered platform with ungreased screws that squeak when you fiddle with them. Then he wrapped it in bubble paper and stuck it inside a camera bag. To keep customs and TSA officials’ grubby hands from opening the container, the director of NIST wrote him an official letter describing the mission to accompany the kilogram.

On the plane, Abbott kept the kilogram next to him on the seat for the whole ride. He even took it to the bathroom with him. “I didn’t want to be the one known for losing the kilogram,” says Abbott.

In the end, it was a meeting in Versailles that concluded the cylinders’ travels.

Abbott’s day-to-day work won’t change too much once the kilogram gets its new definition in May. He’ll continue to monitor his weights—they’re still a practical way of calibrating other weights. The key difference is that they no longer have to trek back to France. The cylinder won’t need to go on any bathroom trips. Instead, Abbott and his colleagues will check the mass of the cylinders using a new machine called the Kibble balance.

When you place a weight on the Kibble balance, the machine produces an electric current proportional to Planck’s constant. With Planck’s constant set, the kilogram will correspond to a specific amount of current in the Kibble balance. The promise in this design is that even if the balance breaks, they can just fix it—something that you can’t do if you dent a platinum-iridium cylinder.

The keepers of the Kibble balance are now the new caretakers of the mass standard. And they are just as obsessive as Abbott. They’ve hooked up various parts of the machine to the Internet. When the machine is collecting data, Darine El Haddad, a physicist at NIST, regularly logs in from home to see how it’s doing.

Many of Haddad’s Kibble balance colleagues have even gotten tattoos of Planck’s constant on their forearms. Haddad, on the other hand, showed up to Versailles with merely a week-old henna graphic on her forearm, soon to fade. “I’m very committed to Planck’s constant,” assures Haddad. “I just haven’t committed to a tattoo yet.”

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