Some leaked speedtests from beta users of SpaceX's Starlink satellite-broadband service "aren't showing the gigabit speeds SpaceX teased," writes Ars Technica, "but it's early." Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared their report: Beta users of SpaceX's Starlink satellite-broadband service are getting download speeds ranging from 11Mbps to 60Mbps, according to tests conducted using Ookla's speedtest.net tool. Speed tests showed upload speeds ranging from 5Mbps to 18Mbps. The same tests, conducted over the past two weeks, showed latencies or ping rates ranging from 31ms to 94ms. This isn't a comprehensive study of Starlink speeds and latency, so it's not clear whether this is what Internet users should expect once Starlink satellites are fully deployed and the service reaches commercial availability.... Links to 11 anonymized speed tests by Starlink users were posted by a Reddit user yesterday... A new Reddit post listing more speed tests shows some Starlink users getting even lower latency of 21ms and 20ms. Beta testers must sign non-disclosure agreements, so these speed tests might be one of the only glimpses we get of real-world performance during the trials. SpaceX has told the Federal Communications Commission that Starlink would eventually hit gigabit speeds, saying in its 2016 application to the FCC that "once fully optimized through the Final Deployment, the system will be able to provide high bandwidth (up to 1Gbps per user), low latency broadband services for consumers and businesses in the US and globally." SpaceX has launched about 600 satellites so far and has FCC permission to launch nearly 12,000. While 60Mbps isn't a gigabit, it's on par with some of the lower cable speed tiers and is much higher than speeds offered by many DSL services in the rural areas where SpaceX is likely to see plenty of interest.

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InfoQ reports on a new security group that launched last week: Supported by The Linux Foundation, the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) aims to create a cross-industry forum for a collaborative effort to improve open source software security. The list of initial members includes Google, Microsoft, GitHub, IBM, Red Hat, and more. "As open source has become more pervasive, its security has become a key consideration for building and maintaining critical infrastructure that supports mission-critical systems throughout our society. It is more important than ever that we bring the industry together in a collaborative and focused effort to advance the state of open source security. The world's technology infrastructure depends on it." Microsoft CTO for Azure Mark Russinovich explained clearly why open source security must be a community effort: "Open-source software is inherently community-driven and as such, there is no central authority responsible for quality and maintenance. [...] Open-source software is also vulnerable to attacks against the very nature of the community, such as attackers becoming maintainers of projects and introducing malware. Given the complexity and communal nature of open source software, building better security must also be a community-driven process." Also joining the group are Intel, IBM, Uber, and VMWare, according to Foundation's inaugural announcement, which promises its governance and decisions "will be transparent, and any specifications and projects developed will be vendor agnostic."

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At the Black Hat security conference, researchers from the Taiwanese cybersecurity firm CyCraft revealed at least seven Taiwanese chip firms have been breached over the past two years, reports Wired: The series of deep intrusions — called Operation Skeleton Key due to the attackers' use of a "skeleton key injector" technique — appeared aimed at stealing as much intellectual property as possible, including source code, software development kits, and chip designs. And while CyCraft has previously given this group of hackers the name Chimera, the company's new findings include evidence that ties them to mainland China and loosely links them to the notorious Chinese state-sponsored hacker group Winnti, also sometimes known as Barium, or Axiom. "This is very much a state-based attack trying to manipulate Taiwan's standing and power," says Chad Duffy, one of the CyCraft researchers who worked on the company's long-running investigation... The researchers found that, in at least some cases, the hackers appeared to gain initial access to victim networks by compromising virtual private networks, though it wasn't clear if they obtained credentials for that VPN access or if they directly exploited vulnerabilities in the VPN servers. The hackers then typically used a customized version of the penetration testing tool Cobalt Strike, disguising the malware they planted by giving it the same name as a Google Chrome update file. They also used a command-and-control server hosted on Google's or Microsoft's cloud services, making its communications harder to detect as anomalous.... Perhaps the most remarkable of those new clues came from essentially hacking the hackers. CyCraft researchers observed the Chimera group exfiltrating data from a victim's network and were able to intercept an authentication token from their communications to a command-and-control server. Using that same token, CyCraft's analysts were able browse the contents of the cloud server, which included what they describe as a "cheat sheet" for the hackers, outlining their standard operating procedure for typical intrusions. That document was notably written in simplified Chinese characters, used in mainland China but not Taiwan... "It's possible that what they're seeing is just a small fragment of a larger picture," says the director of Kaspersky's Global Research & Analysis Team, who tells Wired the group has also attacked telecoms, tech firms, and a broad range of other Taiwanese companies. But in the same article one of CyCraft's researchers argues the group could be looking for even more exploits. "If you have a really deep understanding of these chips at a schematic level, you can run all sorts of simulated attacks on them and find vulnerabilities before they even get released."

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"Ice melting in Greenland contributes more than a millimeter rise to sea level every year," reports CNN, adding that now "that's likely to get worse." And Forbes shares some context: Last week, the world was given two more harsh reminders of what the future holds as residents of Italy's Aosta valley were told to evacuate fearing that a huge portion of the Mont Blanc glacier, the equivalent size of Milan's cathedral, might collapse. Then the last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic, the Milne Ice Shelf, collapsed losing a chunk of ice bigger than Manhattan to the Arctic ocean. In April, a study published in The Cryosphere suggested that atmospheric circulation patterns contributed in a significant way to Greenland's rapid loss of ice and as such the future melting predictions could be underestimated by half. Now, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, Greenland's glaciers have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop right now, the ice sheet would continue shrinking. Satellite data from the last 40 years shows that Greenland's glaciers have passed a tipping point of sorts, where the snowfall that replenishes the ice sheet each year cannot keep up with the ice that is flowing into the ocean from glaciers.... Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss. The article notes that the paper was released "on the same day that the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that July 2020 was the second-warmest July on record and that Arctic ice is currently at a record low for summer — the lowest in 42 years of record-keeping."

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Applehu Akbar shared CNN's article about why some people experience Covid-19 differently: "When we looked in the setting of Covid disease, we found that people who had prior vaccinations with a variety of vaccines — for pneumococcus, influenza, hepatitis and others — appeared to have a lower risk of getting Covid disease," Dr. Andrew Badley, an infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday night... There's been no definitive evidence of any other vaccines boosting immunity against Covid-19. But some researchers have suggested it's possible.... Last month, researchers found that countries where many people have been given the tuberculosis vaccine Bacillus Calmette-Guerin had less mortality from coronavirus, a finding that fits with other research suggesting the vaccine can boost people's immunity in general. But once you're infected, how much of the virus made it into your body could also have an impact on what your experience is, another expert told CNN on Monday. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at University of California, San Francisco, has been working with a team of researchers to understand how more people could go through their infections with minimal or no symptoms. About 40% of people infected with the virus don't have symptoms, according to an estimate last month by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gandhi's team found masks make a difference. "What the mask does is really reduce the amount of virus that you get in, if you do get infected," she said. "And by reducing that... you have a lower dose, you're able to manage it, you're able to have a calm response and you have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all."

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Slashdot reader Tekla Perry is also senior editor at IEEE Spectrum, and brings a story about San Diego's 3,300 "smart streetlights," each one equipped with "an Intel Atom processor, half a terabyte of storage, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios, two 1080p video cameras, two acoustical sensors, and environmental sensors that monitor temperature, pressure, humidity, vibration, and magnetic fields." San Diego's smart streetlights were supposed to save money and inspire entrepreneurs to use streetlight sensor data to develop apps that would make the city a better place. The money savings didn't add up and the apps never emerged. Instead, the San Diego police realized the video data, intended to be processed at the edge by AI algorithms [and deleted after 5 days], could be tapped directly for law enforcement. Now consumer groups are looking to the city to pass legislation governing the use of data, and other cities are opting to avoid such issues by leaving cameras out of future intelligent lighting systems. The first video accessed by police exonerated a person they'd arrested for murder in August of 2018. But over the next 10 months they'd accessed 99 more videos to investigate what they called "serious" crimes, a number climbing to up to 175 videos by early 2020. "The list included murders, sexual assaults, and kidnappings — but it also included vandalism and illegal dumping, which caused activists to question the city's definition of 'serious'..." according to IEEE Spectrum. "To date, San Diego police have tapped streetlight video data nearly 400 times, including this past June, during investigations of incidents of felony vandalism and looting during Black Lives Matter protests." Morgan Currie, a lecturer in data and society at the University of Edinburgh, tells the site it's "a classic example of how data collection systems are easily retooled as surveillance systems, of how the capacities of the smart city to do good things can also increase state and police control."

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In 2000 Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak answered questions from Slashdot readers. More than 20 years later, CNET writes: Party on, Woz. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak turned 70 on Tuesday, and invited the world to his virtual birthday party. The event raised funds for singer Jewel's Inspiring Children Foundation, which provides mentorship and mental health resources for at-risk youth. And while the star-studded event is over, you can watch the replay online. Wozniak and his wife, Janet, can be seen in party footage watching the event from their Northern California home. The celebration featured recorded performances and birthday greetings from such celebrities as William Shatner, Kristi Yamaguchi, Shaquille O'Neal, Chris Rick, Nancy Pelosi, Emmylou Harris and more. There's now a three-hour-plus video of the party, complete with comments from those who already watched, available to view online. If you want it in shorter slices, Wozniak has been sharing brief videos from the party on his Twitter account... The party may be over, but it was the kickoff event for "11 Days of Wozdom," a series of social media challenges, with prizes for some participants. There's also a terrific biographical video on the site — plus a link to 24 special auctions supporting Woz's favority charity. Bid on a dinner with both Woz and comedian Drew Carey, a tour with Woz of comedian Jay Leno's classic car garage, or a private concert with Jewel that's hosted by Woz. (And there's also a meeting with Woz on Zoom, and a chance to have him record a personalized video message.) It looks like everyone's celebrating. In 2010 Jonathan Mann, who writes a song a day, recorded "That's Just the Woz" to celebrate Steve Wozniak's 60th birthday. This week -- now up to song #4,235 -- Mann recorded a follow-up song, also pointing his viewers to the URL for Woz's favorite charity. "Instead of presents, help save and transform children's lives," Woz tweeted on Monday.

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Anything that gets us to hate each other based on race, age, gender is a wedge, and it's designed to keep us from unifying, which allows the assholes to keep control.

Underlying all the bitterness, the liberals are angry that Nader elected Bush. That's the crazy part of their argument. The people who elected Bush are 1. The people who voted for him and 2. The Supreme Court. Illustrated in this beautiful scene from The West Wing. Josh, to Amy who is working for a Nader-like candidate. "He's taking the president's votes," says Josh. Amy responds: "Listen, I'm not indifferent to this situation, but that right there, that's the crazy part of your argument. They're not his votes." She's right. Nader ran for president. Gore lost (technically he gave up). Get over it.

BTW, I also write publicly to petition people in power to help the causes I believe in. You should do it too. Stick your neck out. It's easy to be a critic, much harder to stand for something. You'll find the assholes try to shame you. Keep going.

I can't believe liberals are such cowards, idiots, so ignorant, such petty snobs -- they are eviscerating Ralph Nader for having the temerity to publicly ask AOC to read an open letter he wrote to her, about causes she fights for. He has advice about organizing, something he knows about, has had enormous success with. I actually read his letter, which is something I expect most of his critics didn't, because if they did, they would stop and think and maybe just maybe get a grip. For liberals, Nader should be considered a pioneer of the stature of John Lewis. He successfully fought to reform the auto industry, and so much more. I bet when AOC reads Nader’s letter, she will respond because she’s the real deal, as is Nader.

Microsoft just launched a new website "to showcase how it's embracing open source to 'bring choice, technology and community to our customers,'" reports ZDNet: Microsoft, under CEO Satya Nadella, has said and done a lot to shed its image as a pariah of Linux and open-source software communities. With a Linux kernel for Windows 10, GitHub, a new Android Surface Duo, and the commercial cloud as its main source of revenue, Microsoft is a very different company than it was 30 years ago when it was afraid open-source software would gobble up its intellectual property and revenues. Nowadays, it's got a growing number of open-source projects, including its hugely popular cross-platform code editor Visual Studio Code (VS Code), .NET Core, the hit JavaScript-based programming language TypeScript, and new open-source Windows developer tools like PowerToys and Windows Terminal... According to the company, over 35,000 engineers at the company are using GitHub Enterprise Cloud to host and release official Microsoft open-source projects, samples, and documentation.... Jeff Wilcox, a software engineer with the Microsoft Open Source Programs Office, announced the new site Thursday. He notes that it is "built by the Ruby open-source project Jekyll (that also powers GitHub Pages)".

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An anonymous reader shares a report: In an award-winning paper presented at the USENIX security conference this week, a team of academics from North Carolina State University presented a list of findings from operating a massive telephony honeypot for 11 months for the sole purpose of tracking, identifying, and analyzing the robocalling phenomenon in the US. NCSU researchers said they ran 66,606 telephone lines between March 2019 and January 2020, during which time they said to have received 1,481,201 unsolicited calls -- even if they never made their phone numbers public via any source. The research team said they usually received an unsolicited call every 8.42 days, but most of the robocall traffic came in sudden surges they called "storms" that happened at regular intervals, suggesting that robocallers operated using a tactic of short-burst and well-organized campaigns. In total, the NCSU team said it tracked 650 storms over 11 months, with most storms being of the same size.

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