A world-first study has called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, amid fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. The Guardian reports: The Australian-led study exposes a mass failure of English language medical journals to comply with international ethical standards in place to ensure organ donors provide consent for transplantation. The study was published on Wednesday in the medical journal BMJ Open. Its author, the professor of clinical ethics Wendy Rogers, said journals, researchers and clinicians who used the research were complicit in "barbaric" methods of organ procurement. "There's no real pressure from research leaders on China to be more transparent," Rogers, from Macquarie University in Sydney, said. "Everyone seems to say, 'It's not our job.' The world's silence on this barbaric issue must stop." A report published in 2016 found a large discrepancy between official transplant figures from the Chinese government and the number of transplants reported by hospitals. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, hospital data shows between 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year. The report provides evidence that this gap is being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.

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Tim O'Reilly, writing for Quartz: The pursuit of monopoly has led Silicon Valley astray. Look no further than the race between Lyft and Uber to dominate the online ride-hailing market. Both companies are gearing up for their IPOs in the next few months. Street talk has Lyft shooting for a valuation between $15 and $30 billion dollars, and Uber valued at an astonishing $120 billion dollars. Neither company is profitable; their enormous valuations are based on the premise that if a company grows big enough and fast enough, profits will eventually follow. Most monopolies or duopolies develop over time, and have been considered dangerous to competitive markets; now they are sought after from the start and are the holy grail for investors. If LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Chris Yeh's new book Blitzscaling is to be believed, the Uber-style race to the top (or the bottom, depending on your point of view) is the secret of success for today's technology businesses. Blitzscaling promises to teach techniques that are "the lightning fast path to building massively valuable companies." Hoffman and Yeh argue that in today's world, it's essential to "achieve massive scale at incredible speed" in order to seize the ground before competitors do. By their definition, blitzscaling (derived from the blitzkrieg or "lightning war" strategy of Nazi general Heinz Guderian) "prioritizes speed over efficiency," and risks "potentially disastrous defeat in order to maximize speed and surprise." Many of these businesses depend on network effects, which means that the company that gets to scale first is likely to stay on top. So, for startups, this strategy typically involves raising lots of capital and moving quickly to dominate a new market, even when the company's leaders may not know how they are going to make money in the long term. This premise has become doctrine in Silicon Valley. But is it correct? And is it good for society? I have my doubts. Imagine, for a moment, a world in which Uber and Lyft hadn't been able to raise billions of dollars in a winner-takes-all race to dominate the online ride-hailing market. How might that market have developed differently?

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Another idea. I'm staying in a rented house with Internet but no cable. I would like to watch a little news. It would be great if there were a web/app-only news channel, that competed with MSNBC, Fox, CNN, that was fully available over the web or Roku (or the like). It's ridiculous in 2019 that I am shut out from cable-style news just because I haven't paid Spectrum. Do we really still need them? (Note: I do pay them at my apartment in Manhattan, it's not like I'm trying to avoid paying them.)

An idea for the EU. Why not offer personal membership in the EU to citizens of countries that withdraw from the EU. Benefits might include, they get to keep their EU passport. They can freely move between EU countries as before. They can vote in EU elections. Might lead to something interesting, like a new political party in the withdrawing country?

Death of Jakelin Caal in US custody highlights how land conflicts and displacement fuel flight from indigenous villages.

Opposition leader Gantz says his country should learn from the 2005 Gaza withdrawal and apply it to other places.

Ahead of India's national elections later this year, WhatsApp is trying to wrangle bulk messaging and suspicious accounts. From a report: At a press briefing in New Delhi early today, company executives said they have built a machine learning system to detect and weed out users who engage in inappropriate behavior, such as sending bulk messages and creating multiple accounts with the sole purpose of spreading questionable content on the platform. Automated suspicious accounts and people who seek to create havoc are barred from the platform at various stages -- at the time of registration, while messaging, and when they are reported by others, the company's executives said. Overall, WhatsApp bans about 2 million accounts on its platform each month, a spokesperson said. To address this issue, a machine learning system uses learnings from the company's past dealings with problematic accounts and from specific scenarios engineers followed when taking down accounts, said Matt Jones, a software engineer at WhatsApp. This machine learning system has reached a level of sophistication that allows it to ban 20 percent of bad accounts at the time of registration, according to the company. Seventy-five percent of the 2 million accounts WhatsApp bans in a month are handled without human intervention or a report filed by a user, said Carl Woog, a spokesperson for WhatsApp.

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Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring wore blackface at a costume party in 1980, he admitted amid spate of scandals.

US secretary of state says the US will not cede leadership of the fight against ISIL despite troop withdrawal.

The string of hotter-than-average annual temperatures continued in 2018, as Earth experienced its fourth-hottest year on record, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [PDF]. From a report: Also in 2018, the United States suffered 14 weather and climate disasters with costs surpassing $1 billion during a warmer- and wetter-than-average year, NOAA reports. Global temperatures across land and sea were 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, making 2018 the fourth-warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880, NOAA said in a report Thursday. In a separate report, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said global temperatures were 1.5 degrees above the 1951 to 1980 mean, also the fourth highest going back to 1880. The 2-degrees Fahrenheit increase in global temperatures since the late 19th century has been driven largely by growing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, said the institute's director, Gavin Schmidt. The conclusion reaffirms NASA's long-established finding that man-made emissions are driving climate change, which President Donald Trump and some senior administration officials frequently challenge. By both agencies' measures, Earth has now recorded its five hottest annual average temperatures in the past five years. "2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend," Schmidt said in a press release.

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United Arab Emirates accused of clandestinely diverting weapons purchased from the US to rebel groups in Yemen.

As Brexit deadline nears with no deal in place, NIESR says contingency plans would limit fallout.

Comments come after US president this week called Iran the 'number one terrorist nation in the world'.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft today launched a marketing campaign pitting Office 2019 and Office 365 against each other. The goal? To prove Office 2019 isn't worth buying -- you and your company should go with Office 365 instead. In a series of three videos, twins Jeremy and Nathan calculate the differences in Excel, Cynni and Tanny present their findings in PowerPoint, while Scott and Sean type it out in Word. The ads are cringe-worthy, to say the least, but they do get the point across. When Microsoft announced Office 2019 in September 2017, the company said the productivity suite was "for customers who aren't yet ready for the cloud." And when Microsoft launched Office 2019 in September 2018, the company promised it wouldn't be the last: "We're committed to another on-premises release in the future." And yet, Microsoft would much rather you join the ranks of Office 365's 33.3 million subscribers. If you must, Office 2019 is available for purchase. But Office 365 is really what the company wants you to buy.

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National Weather Service Seattle lets us know what’s coming up. More snow!

Thursday is the Last Dry Day.