An intriguing exchange happened on the Linux Kernel Mailing List after a post by Nick Desaulniers, a Google software engineer working on compiling the Linux Kernel with Clang (and LLVM). Hackaday reports: Nick simply tested the waters for a possible future of Rust within the Linux kernel code base, which is something he's planning to bring up for discussion in this year's Linux Plumbers Conference — the annual kernel developer gathering. [Desaulniers thinks that discussion will include "a larger question of 'should we do this?' or 'how might we place limits on where this can be used?'"] The interesting part is Linus Torvalds's response on the LKML thread, which leaves everyone hoping for a hearty signature Rust rant akin to his C++ one disappointed. Instead, his main concern is that a soft and optional introduction of the support in the build system would leave possible bugs hidden, and therefore should be automatically enabled if a Rust compiler is present — essentially implying that he seems otherwise on board. Linus also touched on Rust earlier this month in his keynote interview with Dirk Hohndel, the chief open source officer at VMware, during the special virtual edition of the Linux Foundation's annual Open Source Summit and Embedded Linux Conference North America: Dirk Hohndel: Every new project is done in Go or Rust or another new language I've never heard of. Is there a risk that we are becoming the COBOL programmers of the 2030s? Linus Torvalds: Well, I don't actually think it's true that nobody writes in C any more. I think C is still one of the top 10 languages easily, if you look at any of the statistics. That said — I mean, people are actively looking at, especially doing drivers and things that are not very central to the kernel itself, and having interfaces to do those, for example, in Rust. People have been looking at that for years now. I'm convinced it's going to happen one day. I mean, it might not be Rust, but it is going to happen that we will have different models for writing these kinds of things. And C won't be the only one. I mean right now, it's C or assembly, and most people would rather not touch the assembly parts. [Dirk laughs] But it is something that people are looking at. I'm probably the wrong person. Greg has been more involved, since he's the driver maintainer in general. But things are afoot, and these things take a long, long time. I mean, the kind of infrastructure you need to start integrating other languages into a kernel, and making people trust these other languages — that's a big step.

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sciencehabit shares an article from Science magazine: Dogs are renowned for their world-class noses, but a new study suggests they may have an additional — albeit hidden — sensory talent: a magnetic compass. The sense appears to allow them to use Earth's magnetic field to calculate shortcuts in unfamiliar terrain. The finding is a first in dogs, says Catherine Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who studies "magnetoreception" and navigation in turtles... There were already hints that dogs — like many animals, and maybe even humans — can perceive Earth's magnetic field. In 2013, Hynek Burda, a sensory ecologist at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague who has worked on magnetic reception for 3 decades, and colleagues showed dogs tend to orient themselves north-south while urinating or defecating. Because this behavior is involved in marking and recognizing territory, Burda reasoned the alignment helps dogs figure out the location relative to other spots. Lohmann and a graduate student tracked the path of dogs on 233 separate trips spread out over three years: In 170 of these trips, the dogs stopped before they turned back and ran for about 20 meters along a north-south axis. When the animals did this, they tended to get back to the owner via a more direct route than when they didn't, the authors report in eLife... Burda thinks the dogs run along a north-south axis to figure out which way they are. "It's the most plausible explanation," he says. Lohmann says the implication is that dogs can remember their previous heading and use the reference to the magnetic compass to figure out the most direct route home.

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The New York Times claims to have traced the origins of a Twitter security breach to "a teasing message between two hackers late Tuesday on the online messaging platform Discord." [The Times' article was also republished here by the Bangkok Post.] "yoo bro," wrote a user named "Kirk," according to a screenshot of the conversation shared with The New York Times. "i work at twitter / don't show this to anyone / seriously." He then demonstrated that he could take control of valuable Twitter accounts — the sort of thing that would require insider access to the company's computer network. The hacker who received the message, using the screen name "lol," decided over the next 24 hours that Kirk did not actually work for Twitter because he was too willing to damage the company. But Kirk did have access to Twitter's most sensitive tools, which allowed him to take control of almost any Twitter account... [F]our people who participated in the scheme spoke with The Times and shared numerous logs and screen shots of the conversations they had on Tuesday and Wednesday, demonstrating their involvement both before and after the hack became public. The interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or a sophisticated group of hackers. Instead, it was done by a group of young people — one of whom says he lives at home with his mother — who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6... "lol" did not confirm his real-world identity, but said he lived on the West Coast and was in his 20s. "ever so anxious" said he was 19 and lived in the south of England... The group began by selling access to highly-coveted Twitter handles for bitcoin, according to the Times, including the accounts @dark, @w, @l, @50 and @vague. Brian Krebs had suggested tweets of Twitter's internal tools came from "notorious SIM swapper" PlugWalkJoe — but the Times spoke to the 21-year-old (real name: Joseph O'Connor) who says his only involvement was taking possession of the breached Twitter account @6. "I don't care. They can come arrest me. I would laugh at them. I haven't done anything." Mr. O'Connor said other hackers had informed him that Kirk got access to the Twitter credentials when he found a way into Twitter's internal Slack messaging channel and saw them posted there, along with a service that gave him access to the company's servers. People investigating the case said that was consistent with what they had learned so far. Meanwhile, Twitter has said, "The attackers successfully manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter's internal systems, including getting through our two-factor protections. As of now, we know that they accessed tools only available to our internal support teams." But Mashable brings more bad news: In an update posted on Friday night, Twitter ran down what its internal investigation has discovered so far. One piece of previously unknown information: the hacker(s) downloaded the personal account data for up to eight of the accounts which they had access to. I should make this clear up front: that data includes direct messages... As rumors spread around the platform as to which eight accounts could have been targeted, Twitter released an additional clarification... "[T]o address some of the speculation: none of the eight were Verified accounts..." Twitter also says 130 Twitter accounts were targeted... The company said that hackers gained access to 45 of them via a password reset and, for a second time, reiterated that the passwords used on the accounts were not accessed. An article shared by Slashdot reader kimmmos notes that one account that went untouched was that of U.S. president Donald Trump. The Verge reports "it could be because Twitter has implemented extra protections for his account." But responding to the other account breaches, "A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the company has been in touch with the FBI," reports CNN. "We're acutely aware of our responsibilities to the people who use our service and to society more generally," Twitter added in a blog post. "We're embarrassed, we're disappointed, and more than anything, we're sorry."

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This week Medium's editor-at-large argued remote working could kill Silicon Valley in a new article on Medium's business site "Marker" — because working remotely could bring an end to those "serendipitous encounters" which lead to blockbuster products: Tech serendipity is the means to an end in Silicon Valley. "You bring together a density of entrepreneurs and capital with a belief in crazy ideas and a readiness to fund them, and you manufacture serendipity at higher rates than if it were evenly distributed," said Shaan Hathiramani, the CEO of Flockjay, a San Francisco education startup, who is among those wrestling with how to replicate the chance encounter. But in a future remote dispersion of workers that all but excludes the unexpected, face-to-face encounter, what will Silicon Valley lose...? Dozens of startups and legacy companies are trying to solve the serendipity crisis. Among them are Gather, a Silicon Valley startup, and Hopin, a U.K. company, both of which see the answer in conference apps: You watch online talks, then — just as you would at a physical conference — you go onto a "coffee break," a virtual room where you can "bump into" just about anyone else at the event. You can also sign up to be paired with people with whom you might have similar interests. "It's like a coffee break at TED," said Paul Saffo, a futurist at Stanford. Last week, Microsoft released a new feature for its Teams conferencing app called "Together Mode," which uses A.I. to cut out the images of everyone in a call and assemble them in a virtual setting, such as a theater. The sensation is to remove some of the fake-togetherness of Zoom calls, which is a real advance for the typical work meeting... If the past is instructive, the pandemic will pass and many daily routines will return. Hordes of people will return to the office, but large numbers won't. Some will pick up and move. At that point, today's effort to digitalize serendipity will pick up more urgency. Video conferencing and other software will get better, and some companies will claim their product fosters the unscripted moment in truly innovative ways, blind to demographics. The question is whether that solution will include a continued place for Silicon Valley.

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A lot of people seem to think I'm realllly stupid.

I think it's because I strive for simplicity in my work.

It happened right from the start, with ThinkTank. I factored it for years, until it was super easy.

The others said they could do it in a weekend.

Heh. They couldn't

In the next version, we added a blindingly complex feature, cloning. It was actually also pretty simple, but when you demo'd it, you could see their minds exploding.

Hooo, what was that?

Technology.

Ohhhh.

You have to impress them if you want them to believe you.

CNN shares some bad news. "After people are infected with the novel coronavirus, their natural immunity to the virus could decline within months, a new pre-print paper suggests." The paper was co-authored by 37 researchers from seven different institutions: The paper, released on the medical server medrxiv.org on Saturday and not yet published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, suggests that antibody responses may start to decline 20 to 30 days after Covid-19 symptoms emerge. Antibodies are the proteins the body makes to fight infection... Since early on in the pandemic, the World Health Organization has warned that people who have had Covid-19 are not necessarily immune from getting the virus again. Yet the new study had some limitations, including that more research is needed to determine whether similar results would emerge among a larger group of patients and what data could show over longer periods of time when it comes to infection with the coronavirus... "The report is the latest in a growing chain of evidence that immunity to COVID-19 is short-lived," reports the San Francisco Chronicle: A Chinese study published June 18 in the journal Nature Medicine also showed coronavirus antibodies taking a nosedive. The study of 74 patients, conducted by Chongqing Medical University, a branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, showed that more than 90% exhibited sharp declines in the number of antibodies within two to three months after infection... Studies of four seasonal coronaviruses that cause colds show that although people develop antibodies, the immune response declines over time and people become susceptible again. Scientists suspect that the severity of cold symptoms is reduced by previous infections. The Chronicle reports this new information suggests two implications: "Waning antibodies affect vaccine development," said Shannon Bennett, the chief of science at San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences. "Where natural immunity doesn't really develop or last, then vaccine programs are not likely to be easily successful or achievable..." The Chronicle adds, "Whatever happens, epidemiologists hope the recent reports about antibody viability put to rest the concept embraced by many young people of herd immunity, where the disease can't find any more victims because so many people have survived infections and must be immune. 'This attitude that if I go out there and just get exposed — get it over with — then I'll be immune is a dangerous presumption,' Bennett said. Now more than ever."

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Talking Heads: "When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed. Say something once, why say it again?"

Remember Flippy, the burger-flipping robot who was fired for being too slow? Since then he's been busy — and his robotic arm just landed a test gig flipping burgers in a White Castle restaurant in Chicago, reports Mashable: Since its unveiling in 2018, Flippy has cooked more than 40,000 pounds of fried food — including 9,000 sandwiches at LA's Dodger Stadium, the Arizona Diamondbacks' Chase Field, and two CaliBurger locations, where it works alongside humans to increase productivity and consistency. "I think automation is here to stay and this is the first example of a really large credible player starting down that journey," Miso Robotics CEO Buck Jordan told TechCrunch of the White Castle collab. Engineers are working to install the latest version of Flippy at an undisclosed location in Chicago, where the mechanical fry cook will be integrated into the restaurant's point-of-sale system, allowing it to get to work as soon as an order is placed. Customers in the Windy City can keep an eye out for Flippy starting in September. That "latest version" is named Flippy ROAR (Robot-on-a-Rail), according to USA Today. Citing a statement from White Castle, they report that "The idea is to reduce human contact with food during the cooking process..."

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Face masks "offer much more protection against coronavirus than many think," reports the Los Angeles Times. [Alternate version here ....] There's a common refrain that masks don't protect you; they protect other people from your own germs, which is especially important to keep unknowingly infected people from spreading the coronavirus. But now, there's mounting evidence that masks also protect you. If you're unlucky enough to encounter an infectious person, wearing any kind of face covering will reduce the amount of virus that your body will take in. As it turns out, that's pretty important. Breathing in a small amount of virus may lead to no disease or far more mild infection. But inhaling a huge volume of virus particles can result in serious disease or death. That's the argument Dr. Monica Gandhi, UC San Francisco professor of medicine and medical director of the HIV Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, is making about why — if you do become infected with the virus — masking can still protect you from more severe disease... She cited an outbreak at a seafood plant in Oregon where employees were given masks, and 95% of those who were infected were asymptomatic.... The protective effects are also seen in countries where masks are universally accepted for years, such as Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore. "They have all seen cases as they opened ... but not deaths," Gandhi said. "The emerging scientific data is clear: wearing a mask doesn't only protect others, it also significantly reduces your own risk of getting Coronavirus," one U.S. governor recently pointed out. "So if you're a selfish bastard and wearing a mask to protect others isn't enough of a reason to do so, then maybe protecting yourself is?"

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Yesterday, a Microsoft rep confirmed that the option to purchase 12 months of Xbox Live Gold has been removed from the Microsoft Store. That's exactly a week ahead of the July 23 games presentation, where Microsoft could be announcing a plan to phase out the subscription service altogether with the launch of Xbox Series X. Inverse reports: "At this time Xbox has decided to remove the 12 month Xbox Live Gold SKU from the Microsoft online Store," a Microsoft spokesperson tells Inverse. "Customers can still sign up for a 1 month or 3 month Xbox Live Gold subscription online through the Microsoft Store." No attention was brought to this change officially in any public statements, but shortening the length that people can subscribe to Xbox Live Gold is very telling. "It also seems like the right time for Microsoft to talk about the future of Xbox," Venture Beat's Jeff Grubb argues in a post about the July showcase. "That service is starting to feel a bit outdated. Maybe it's time to phase it out." While Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg has since gone onto say that the July 23 presentation will be solely focused on games, this Grubb's article suggests that Xbox Live Gold is being phased out. That can't be taken lightly now that the option for a 12-month subscription is gone. It is worth noting that the 12-month Xbox Live Gold subscription remains available at retailers like GameStop, so if you do want to buy a year of the service that option is still open. But third-party retailers probably have residual inventory. It now seems likely that Xbox Live Gold will be phased out, possibly to get an edge up on the PS5, which will presumably still make players pay for online via PlayStation Plus subscriptions. If Xbox Series X's final price is cheaper than that of the PS5, and the console offers free online play that saves gamers about $60 a year, then Microsoft's console becomes the better financial investment hands down. But this remains hypothetical. What could Microsoft replace Xbox Live Gold with? The report goes on to say that the most obvious move for Microsoft "would be to integrate Xbox Live Gold into Game Pass Ultimate," which gives players access to Game Pass on Xbox One and PC in addition to an Xbox Live Gold subscription, so players can play any online games and they get unlimited access to any games that are available in the Game Pass library. The service was also recently confirmed to be compatible with the upcoming game streaming service Project xCloud.

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I was talking with a friend yesterday about Woody Allen. We both felt that he had been unfairly canceled. And yes the word applies to his experience. He's one of the great film makers of our time. The movie Manhattan came up in our discussion, I saw it was playing on Amazon, so I watched it. What an incredible movie. People forget that Allen wrote the movie, so any flaws you see in the main character, and they sure are there, were put there by him. In the end you feel his heartbreak at having been so dismissive of Mariel Hemmingway's character, she was so much more wise than him, even though she was so much younger. I had forgotten that Diane Keaton was in the movie. It's a masterpiece.

Biden is now getting the intelligence briefings. And finally, someone is actually reading them. I bet his staff is planning on how to address each of the issues. Anyway, for now he says both Russia and China are interfering with our election and he says what you'd hope a president would say. BTW, "meddling" is the wrong word, meddling is what a Jewish mother does. What Russia did in 2016 was an act of war. Americans are dying because of what they did.

People are writing about the risks associated with Twitter, hacking and misinformation, after the hack of last week. There's an even bigger risk. Twitter itself could be bought for 1/2 of $28 billion, the company's valuation according to the stock price. That's a fraction of the net worth of a number of billionaires. And you could probably finance the acquisition, so you would need much less than $14 billion to pull it off. Basically Twitter itself, legally, is very insecure. We're depending on something a bad actor could take over, legally. I've been writing about this for years. I hope other people tune into it before it actually happens. (Do you think Peter Thiel hasn't thought of it? Don't be naïve.)

I prefer Metacritic to Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. I like it because it's clean and simple. They gather reviews of lots of pubs, rate them on a scale of 1-100, and they give the movie or show a rating based on the average. A show with an 80 or higher is must-watch.