Night Mode Could Actually Be Worse For Your Sleep Pattern, Study Finds Slashdotby BeauHD on cellphones at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 17, 2019, 11:35 pm)

According to a new study published in Current Biology, the "night mode" on your phone could actually be worse for your sleep pattern. Scientists say the blue light, which is significantly reduced when night mode is enabled, could be telling our brain that it's night time because it resembles the colors of twilight. From the report: According to the study, brightness levels are more important than color when it comes to stimulating the body clock. However, when the light is equally dim, blue is more relaxing than yellow. This makes basic sense: daylight is yellow, twilight is blue, and sunrise and sunset are pretty reliable ways to tell your body clock what time it is. Of course, at this point, we only know it works on mice -- and mice don't have phones. "We think there is good reason to believe it's also true in humans," says Dr Brown, lead author of the study. There is perhaps a more obvious truth to be drawn -- if your phone is telling you to switch to night mode, it is time to put down your phone. It is not the color of the screen that is keeping you awake; it is all the stuff your phone offers as an alternative to sleep at 2am. There is only one real night-mode switch: the off button.

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[no title] Scripting News(cached at December 17, 2019, 11:33 pm)

Did some unpacking from the cross-country storage unit move from Berkeley. Today's pictures are product T-shirts from the 80s and 90s: Frontier, Frontier, Frontier, MORE, Ready, ThinkTank.
LogMeIn Acquired By Private-Equity Firms Slashdotby BeauHD on business at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 17, 2019, 11:05 pm)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: LogMeIn announced this morning that it has agreed to be sold for $4.3 billion to affiliates of Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corporation, the private equity affiliate of Elliott Management Corporation. The purchase price comes out to $86.05 per share in an all-cash deal. The company had a 52-week high of $96.87 per share and a low of $62.02. The purchase price represents a 25% premium on the closing share price on September 18th, which the company reports was the day media reports began to leak that the company was up for sale. Bill Wagner, president and CEO at LogMeIn said in a statement that the price reflects the high value of the company and will give stockholders a meaningful return. As you would expect, he was also was optimistic that the partnership with Francisco and Evergreen will help the company going forward. As for the private equity firms, they are getting a broad portfolio of products including unified communications and collaboration (UCC). LogMeIn bought Jive Communications for $357 million in 2018 to give it deeper penetration in the unified communications market. It's most well known product is probably GoToMeeting, which has had to compete with the likes of Zoom, WebEx, BlueJean, Google Hangouts and others in a crowded video conferencing space. The company bought GoToMeeting from Citrix in 2016 for $1.8 billion Unless it can find a buyer who will offer a higher price, the deal is expected to close in mid 2020 after standard regulatory scrutiny.

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Pope abolishes 'pontifical secrecy' for sex abuse investigations AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 11:00 pm)

Victims hail the move as much overdue and say it needs to be implemented broadly.
Children among dozens of migrants trying to reach UK by boat AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 11:00 pm)

Five boats carrying women, children and men intercepted by UK border agents.
Google Execs Debated Getting Out of Cloud Computing Last Year, But Instead Set a Goa Slashdotby msmash on cloud at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 17, 2019, 10:05 pm)

In early 2018, top executives at Alphabet debated whether the company should leave the public cloud business, but eventually set a goal of becoming a top-two player by 2023, according to a report from The Information on Tuesday. From a report: If the company fails to achieve this goal, some staffers reportedly believe that Alphabet could withdraw from the market completely. While Alphabet subsidiary Google is dominant in web search and advertising, the company is still a small player in cloud computing, which involves renting out computing and storage resources to other companies, schools and governments. In 2018 the company lagged Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba in that market, according to industry research firm Gartner.

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US Congress takes aim at Syrian war crimes, Russian aggression AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 10:00 pm)

Defence bill measure gives the US another way to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies with sanctions.
Bolivia's Morales names two possible successors AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 10:00 pm)

Morales names his former economy minister and a key coca farmer union boss as potential MAS presidential candidates.
What's behind the upsurge in violence in the Sahel? AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 10:00 pm)

The United Nations Security Council has met after a spike in attacks in the Sahel region.
Italy's Di Maio holds talks with Libya's rival leaders AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 9:30 pm)

GNA says Italian foreign minister renewed support for Tripoli-based gov't, while no details emerge from Haftar meeting.
More than 20 killed in air raids on towns in Syria's Idlib AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 9:30 pm)

Russian-backed government forces step up attacks on rebel-held towns in northwest Syria, volunteer medic group says.
Mozilla To Add Second DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) Provider in Firefox Slashdotby msmash on mozilla at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 17, 2019, 9:05 pm)

Mozilla has announced that NextDNS would be joining Cloudflare as the second DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) provider inside Firefox. From a report: The browser maker says NextDNS passed the conditions imposed by its Trusted Recursive Resolver (TRR) program, and can now be added as a second option for DoH inside Firefox. These conditions include (1) limiting the data NextDNS collects from the DoH server used by Firefox users; (2) being transparent about the data they collect; and (3) promising not to censor, filter, or block DNS traffic unless specifically requested by law enforcement. DNS-over-HTTPS, or DoH, is a new feature that was added to Firefox last year. When enabled, it encrypts DNS traffic coming in and out of the browser. DNS traffic is not only encrypted but also moved from port 53 (for DNS traffic) to port 443 (for HTTPS traffic), effectively hiding DNS queries and replies inside the browser's normal stream of HTTPS content. This encrypted DNS traffic reaches a so-called DoH resolver. Here, the DoH traffic is decrypted and the DoH resolver makes the DNS query on the user's behalf, receives the result, encrypts it, and sends it back to the user's browser -- also disguised inside encrypted HTTPS content.

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UK launches inquest into girl's pollution-linked death AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 9:00 pm)

A court in London will look at what role the city's air played in her fatal asthma, especially since it exceeds the WHO's levels of acceptable pollution.
Senate passes massive defence bill that creates US Space Force AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 9:00 pm)

The $738bn defence policy bill now goes to the White House, where Trump has promised to quickly sign it.
Greek FM tours Arab states to bolster support amid Turkey tension AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 17, 2019, 9:00 pm)

Greece fears Turkey will start drilling for lucrative hydrocarbons in waters it claims as its maritime territory.