An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Three U.S. Senate Democrats today asked the four major wireless carriers about allegations they've been throttling video services and -- in the case of Sprint -- the senators asked about alleged throttling of Skype video calls. Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent the letters to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, noting that recent research using the Wehe testing platform found indications of throttling by all four carriers. "All online traffic should be treated equally, and Internet service providers should not discriminate against particular content or applications for competitive advantage purposes or otherwise," the senators wrote. Specifically, the Wehe tests "indicated throttling on AT&T for YouTube, Netflix, and NBC Sports... throttling on Verizon for Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Netflix... throttling on Sprint for YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Skype Video calls... [and] delayed throttling, or boosting, on T-Mobile for Netflix, NBC Sports, and Amazon Prime by providing un-throttled streaming at the beginning of the connection, and then subsequently throttling the connection," the senators' letters said.

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Given that Facebook is now known to be a shitshow, hopefully they can do a better job of peering with the open web so we have a way out, and aren’t betting the whole future of online discourse on it.

At the end of the summit, a weak statement was issued, calling for accountability, but still offering support to Myanmar.

Google Photos, introduced in 2015, has become one of the most emotionally resonant pieces of technology today. It is also shaping our narratives along the way, writes The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo. From a story: Google's computers can recognize faces, even as they age over time. Photos also seems to understand the tone and emotional valence of human interaction, things like smiles, giggles, frowns, tantrums, dances of joy and even snippets of dialogue like "happy birthday!" or "good job!" The resulting montage, synced to a swelling Hollywood score, mixed obvious highlights -- birthdays, school plays -- with dozens of ordinary moments of childhood bliss. [...] This is what I mean about a sucker punch: Who expects software to make them cry? Images on Instagram and Snapchat may move you regularly, but Google Photos is not social media; it is personal media, a service begun three years ago primarily as a database to house our growing collections of private snaps -- and a service run mostly by machines, not by other humans posting and Liking stuff. And yet Google Photos has become one of the most emotionally resonant pieces of technology I regularly use. It is remarkable not just for how useful it is -- for how it has erased any headache in storing and searching through the tsunami of images we all produce. More than that, Photos is remarkable for what it portends about how we may one day understand ourselves through photography.

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Several DRC soldiers also killed or wounded in joint operation targeting Allied Democratic Forces fighters in northeast.

Bangladesh halts transportation of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar after protests.

Argentine politicians pass austerity budget for 2019 that cuts social spending and raises debt payments.

The European Union's ambassador to Tanzania was forced to leave the country after facing government pressure, bloc says.

A young Iraqi woman's obsession with all things Korean inspires her dream of moving to South Korea.

schwit1 shares a report: Researchers have used a neural network to generate artificial fingerprints that work as a "master key" for biometric identification systems and prove fake fingerprints can be created. According to a paper [PDF] presented at a security conference in Los Angeles, the artificially generated fingerprints, dubbed "DeepMasterPrints" by the researchers from New York University, were able to imitate more than one in five fingerprints in a biometric system that should only have an error rate of one in a thousand. The researchers, led by NYU's Philip Bontrager, say that "the underlying method is likely to have broad applications in fingerprint security as well as fingerprint synthesis." As with much security research, demonstrating flaws in existing authentication systems is considered to be an important part of developing more secure replacements in the future. In order to work, the DeepMasterPrints take advantage of two properties of fingerprint-based authentication systems. The first is that, for ergonomic reasons, most fingerprint readers do not read the entire finger at once, instead imaging whichever part of the finger touches the scanner.

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I'm almost ready to ship the first release of my Likes server with an API for JavaScript running in the browser. I took time to get it right, I hope. Could be the beginning of something interesting! I'll do another review tomorrow before posting pointers. Knock wood, praise Murphy, I am not a lawyer, etc.

The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it will seek a ban on the sale of menthol-flavored cigarettes. From a report: The announcement came as the agency officially released a detailed plan to also restrict the sale of flavored electronic cigarettes. It also wants to ban flavored cigars. In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb says the moves are aimed at fighting smoking among young people. Flavored e-cigarettes, menthol-flavored tobacco cigarettes and flavored cigars are all popular among teenagers. "Today, I'm pursuing actions aimed at addressing the disturbing trend of youth nicotine use and continuing to advance the historic declines we've achieved in recent years in the rates of combustible cigarette use among kids," Gottlieb says. While cigarette smoking has hit a record low in the United States, vaping has been skyrocketing. That trend has raised concerns that a new generation of young people will become addicted to nicotine. Gottlieb says the moves were prompted by new data showing a 78 percent increase in e-cigarette use among high school students and a 48 percent increase among middle school students, from 2017 to 2018. "These data shock my conscience," Gottlieb says.

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Statewide death toll hits 59, with hundreds more unaccounted for as search continues for remains.

schwit1 shares a report: Every F-35 squadron, no matter the country, has a 13-server ALIS package that is connected to the worldwide ALIS network. Individual jets send logistical data back to their nation's Central Point of Entry, which then passes it on to Lockheed's central server hub in Fort Worth, Texas. In fact, ALIS sends back so much data that some countries are worried it could give away too much information about their F-35 operations. Another networking system is the Joint Reprogramming Enterprise, or JRE. The JRE maintains a shared library of potential adversary sensors and weapon systems that is distributed to the worldwide F-35 fleet. For example, the JRE will seek out and share information on enemy radar and electronic warfare signals so that individual air forces will not have to track down the information themselves. This allows countries with the F-35 to tailor the mission around anticipated threats -- and fly one step ahead of them. Although the networks have serious cybersecurity protections, they will undoubtedly be targets for hackers in times of peace, and war. Hackers might try to bring down the networks entirely, snarling the worldwide logistics system and even endangering the ability of individual aircraft to get much-needed spare parts. Alternately, it might be possible to compromise the integrity of the ALIS data -- by, say, reporting a worldwide shortage of F-35 engines. Hackers could conceivably introduce bad data in the JRE that could compromise the safety of a mission, shortening the range of a weapon system so that a pilot thinks she is safely outside the engagement zone when she is most certainly not. Even the F-35 simulators that train pilots could conceivably leak data to an adversary. Flight simulators are programmed to mirror flying a real aircraft as much as possible, so data retrieved from a simulator will closely follow the data from a real F-35.

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Officials open Bogota camp to host 500 Venezuelans who were inhabiting a growing shanty town near city's bus station.