Social Media Platforms Leave 95 Percent of Reported Fake Accounts Up, Study Finds

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The report comes this week from researchers with the NATO Strategic Communication Centre of Excellence (StratCom). Through the four-month period between May and August of this year, the research team conducted an experiment to see just how easy it is to buy your way into a network of fake accounts and how…

China Covers Up Killing Of Prisoners To Continue Harvesting Organs For Transplant: New Report

“Despite repeated denials, China stands accused of a systematic cover-up to hide the continuing practice of forced organ harvesting and murder,” reports Forbes’ cybersecurity writer Zak Doffman: The practice, described as “state-run mass murder” and valued at $1 billion each year, has supposedly been outlawed in the country. But a new report, published on November 14 in the BMC Medical Ethics…

Hologram-Like Device Animates Objects Using Ultrasound Waves

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Researchers in Southampton have built a device that displays 3D animated objects that can talk and interact with onlookers. A demonstration of the display showed a butterfly flapping its wings, a countdown spelled out by numbers hanging in the air, and a rotating, multicolored planet Earth. Beyond interactive digital signs and animations,…

Mozilla Hits Google, Facebook For ‘Microtargeting’ Political Ads

Mozilla is calling on Google and Facebook to stop “microtargeting” political ads. “Political speech is critical to democratic discourse, but against the very real circumstances of organized disinformation and organic misinformation today, microtargeting keeps ideas from being debated in the open, and fiction parades as fact,” Ashley Boyd, Mozilla’s advocacy vice president, said in a statement. “Online platforms can take the…

In the age of fake news and manipulation, you are the new battlefield

With states, political parties and individuals jockeying for ever-greater influence online, you and your clicks are now the front line in the information war Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432520-800-in-the-age-of-fake-news-and-manipulation-you-are-the-new-battlefield/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Fake News Posters In Singapore Will Face Fines, Prison Sentences Under New Law

dryriver quotes CNN: Singapore’s sweeping anti-fake news law, which critics warn could be used to suppress free speech in the already tightly controlled Asian city state, came into force Wednesday. Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill, it is now illegal to spread “false statements of fact” under circumstances in which that information is deemed “prejudicial” to Singapore’s security,…

How a Self-Taught Engineer Landed a New Job in Tech

Alina is a self-taught engineer from Berlin, Germany who turned to Coursera to gain the skills and knowledge she needed to break into the tech field.  Real-life projects for hands-on practice When I started on this self-teaching road, there were many online resources to choose from but I stopped at Coursera because unlike other platforms, […]
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The World’s Most-Used Cryptocurrency Isn’t Bitcoin

What’s the world’s most widely used cryptocurrency? If you think it’s Bitcoin, which accounts for about 70% of all the digital-asset world’s market value, you’re probably wrong. From a report: While concrete figures on trading volumes are hard to come by in this often murky corner of finance, data from CoinMarketCap.com show that the token with the highest daily and monthly…

Creating different kinds of light with manipulable quantum properties

In a paper published today in Nature’s NPJ Quantum Information, Omar Magaña-Loaiza, assistant professor in the Louisiana State University (LSU) Department of Physics & Astronomy, and his team of researchers describe a noteworthy step forward in the quantum manipulation and control of light, which has far-reaching quantum technology applications in imaging, simulation, metrology, computation, communication, and cryptography, among other areas. The…

German Prosecutors Indict Top VW Bosses Over Diesel Emissions Scandal

dryriver shares a report from Reuters: German prosecutors have accused Volkswagen’s CEO of holding back market-moving information on rigged emissions tests four years ago, raising the prospect of fresh upheaval at the carmaker just as it tries to reinvent itself as a champion of clean driving. Prosecutors in the city of Braunschweig said on Tuesday they would press criminal charges of…