CNBC reports: A Texas A&M professor was charged with conspiracy, making false statements and wire fraud on allegations that he was secretly collaborating with the Chinese government while conducting research for NASA, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said Monday... "Once again, we have witnessed the criminal consequences that can arise from undisclosed participation in the Chinese government's talent program," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a statement. "The Department of Justice will continue seeking to bring participation in these talent programs to light and to expose the exploitation of our nation and our prized research institutions," he added. The DOJ has previously described China's Thousand Talents Plan as a tool of the Chinese Communist Party to "attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China's scientific development, economic prosperity and national security." Through this program, the Chinese government would "often reward individuals for stealing proprietary information," the DOJ said. "While 1.4 million foreign researchers and academics are here in the U.S. for the right reasons, the Chinese Talents Program exploits our open and free universities," said Ryan Patrick, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, adding that ties to the Chinese government must be disclosed. The criminal complaint accuses the professor of trying to "leverage NASA grant resources to further the research of Chinese institutions" and "gain access to the unique resources of the International Space Station."

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Tesla, Ford, Honda, Daimler, and Intel have asked America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to fight a recent court ruling in favour of Qualcomm, reports the BBC: Qualcomm has a practice of requiring customers to sign patent licence agreements before selling them chips. Such practices have drawn accusations the firm is stifling competition... According to Glyn Moody, a journalist specialising in tech policy, the car industry is bothered by Qualcomm's patent practices because "cars are essentially becoming computers on wheels", as the industry continues to develop more advanced connected cars. In the future, it is hoped that connected cars will use 5G processors to connect them to the internet. Carmakers have seen this battle over 4G and are worried it will cement the firm's position as the battle for dominance over 5G technology advances. "This is a completely different world than the one [carmakers] are used to, so they're suddenly faced with dealing with computer standards and computer patents, which is a big problem for them as they don't have any. So if they have to start licensing this stuff, it's going to get expensive for them," Mr. Moody told the BBC... Prof Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School is director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology. He has been following Qualcomm's various court cases for several years. "Qualcomm made a commitment that it would licence its chips on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, because they wanted their chips to be included in the industry standards, and then they created a structure to avoid doing this," he said. "I think they are in fact violating the antitrust laws."

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CNET reports: Twice a year most of the U.S. stumbles around in confusion while missing appointments, resetting their clocks and grumbling about daylight saving time. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine thinks we should knock that nonsense off and just stick with standard time year-round. The AASM released a position statement this week as an accepted paper in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine calling for an end to daylight saving time... The professional organization represents sleep medicine professionals and accredits sleep medicine facilities. "Permanent, year-round standard time is the best choice to most closely match our circadian sleep-wake cycle," said lead author M. Adeel Rishi, a sleep specialist with the Mayo Clinic and vice chair of the AASM Public Safety Committee. "Daylight saving time results in more darkness in the morning and more light in the evening, disrupting the body's natural rhythm." Studies have pointed to health risks connected to daylight saving time and the sleep disruptions it causes. The AASM called out stroke risks, stress reactions and an increase in motor vehicles crashes, particularly in relation to the springtime clock change. "Because the adoption of permanent standard time would be beneficial for public health and safety, the AASM will be advocating at the federal level for this legislative change," said AASM president Kannan Ramar in a release on Thursday.

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An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Mozilla report in a study that web browsing histories (the lists of user visited websites) are uniquely identifying users (PDF). In their study that was the case for 99% of users. Treating web browsing histories like fingerprints, the researchers analysed how the users can be reidentified just based on the coarsened list of user-visited websites. In doing so they upheld and confirmed a previous study from 2012, prompting the author of the original study to say that web browsing histories are now personal data subject to privacy regulations like the GDPR. Sensitivity of web browsing history data questions the laws allowing ISPs to sell web browsing histories. The now-vindicated author of the 2012 study added this emphatic note in their blog post. "Web browsing histories are personal data. Deal with it."

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gollum123 shared this article from MarketWatch: Do masks really work? Ask the dozens of Starbucks customers who tested positive for COVID-19 in Seoul this month after a woman with coronavirus sat under one of the cafe's air-conditioners. According to a local news report, at least 56 coronavirus cases have been linked to that one customer. The kicker: The four masked workers avoided infection... "This speaks volumes about the role masks can play," Ma Sang Hyuk, a pediatric infectious diseases physician in South Korea, explained to Bloomberg News. "Masks may not provide 100% protection, but there's nothing out there that's as effective." Local authorities made it mandatory this week for everybody to wear masks both indoors and outdoors, as the greater Seoul area has seen a surge in coronavirus cases.

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Launching today is America's classified NROL-44 spy satellite, which German public broadcaster DW calls "a massive, open secret": NROL-44 is a huge signals intelligence, or SIGINT, satellite, says David Baker, a former NASA scientist who worked on Apollo and Shuttle missions, has written numerous books, including U.S. Spy Satellites and is editor of SpaceFlight magazine. "SIGINT satellites are the core of national government, military security satellites. They are massive things for which no private company has any purpose," says Baker... "It weighs more than five tons. It has a huge parabolic antenna which unfolds to a diameter of more than 100 meters in space, and it will go into an equatorial plane of Earth at a distance of about 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles)," says Baker... Spy satellites "hoover up" of hundreds of thousands of cell phone calls or scour the dark web for terrorist activity. "The move from wired communication to digital and wireless is a godsend to governments because you can't cut into wires from a satellite, but you can literally pick up cell phone towers which are radiating this stuff into the atmosphere. It takes a massive antenna, but you're able to sit over one spot and listen to all the communications traffic," says Baker... Some people worry about congestion in space, or satellites bumping into each other, and the threat of a collision causing space debris that could damage other satellites or knock out communications networks. But that may have benefits, too — little bits of spy satellite can hide in all that mess and connect wirelessly to create a "virtual satellite," says Baker. "There are sleeper satellites which look like debris. You launch all the parts separately and disperse them into various orbits. So, you would have sensors on one bit, an amplifier on another bit, a processor on another, and they'll be orbiting relatively immersed in space debris." "Space debris is very good for the space defense industry," says Baker, "because the more there is, the more you can hide in it."

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An anonymous reader quotes The New Stack: While there are some who may never get over the fact that the Istio service mesh, originally created by Google and IBM, will not be handed over to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, the project took a big step this past week to assuage those who critiqued the project for being under a Google-majority control: Istio has introduced a new Istio steering committee. According to the blog post, the new steering committee will consist of 13 seats, with four "elected Community Seats" and nine "proportionally allocated Contribution Seats," a change they say "solidifies our commitment to open governance, ensuring that the community around the project will always be able to steer its direction, and that no one company has majority voting control over the project." This final point is really the key to the announcement here, with them further and more explicitly clarifying later that "no single vendor, no matter how large their contribution, has majority voting control over the Istio project." To this end, they write, they have "implemented a cap on the number of seats a company can hold, such that they can neither unanimously win a vote, or veto a decision of the rest of the committee." As for how those seats are allocated, the four Community Seats will consist of four representatives from four different organizations and will be chosen in an annual election. The nine Contribution Seats will be assigned to a minimum of three different companies "in proportion to contributions made to Istio in the previous 12 months," with this year's metric being merged pull requests. But not everyone was satisfied. On Twitter AWS engineer Matthew S. Wilson called it "a crappy way to build a community," objecting to the way it's recognizing and rewarding open source contributions by company rather than by the individuals. And Knative co-founder Matt Moore called it "what you get when a company wants to 'play community', but treat its employees as interchangeable cogs."

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Today's song: Shiny Happy People.

Massive amounts of oil spilled into a wildlife sanctuary, and 39 dead dolphins have been discovered.

One more thing. Perhaps the Democrats should campaign on fear, just a bit. Think about what a second term for Trump might bring, specifically. I wrote a tweet about that, a short one. "Trump wins second term, masks are now illegal. The virus is declared dead. We are forced to go to indoor centers, until we all get the virus, so the economy can reopen fully." I'm sure Trump unchained would try to bring his version of Hitler to the US, with serious advantages. Hitler didn't have nukes, America's wealth or an ally like Covid-19. He can and I'm sure will do a lot of damage. I think people should be confronted with that very specific vision, in all states, red and blue.

I’ve praised Andrew Sullivan in the past, so I have to say his latest is just propaganda, garbage, filled with lies. I guess this is what he’s like unchained from NY Mag. I didn’t read his stuff before he moved to NYM. He’s like a Fox commenter. Vile. And because he's smart, he must know what he's doing. My friends said I was wrong about him when I praised him, writing from his NYM pulpit. They were right.

Update on the mouse infestation in my car. I had the car fumigated, but sadly, the stench is as bad as ever. I'm going to find out what I can get for the car in trade, and move on. A very expensive lesson. On the other hand, I asked my fellow Woodstockers how they deal with mice and cars, and I have learned so much. I'm going to make a list of all the ways people keep the mouse damage to a minimum, and I'm going to practice it. I was very lax, liberal, laissez-faire even with the local mouse community. No more. I am on the warpath. It's them or me!

BTW, the Pixel 4a has a headphone jack. At one time that was a big deal for me, but not no mo. It feels weird. I wonder if I'll find a use for it. Basically Bluetooth works reliably now. At one time, not too long ago, it did not.

NakedJen asked how's the camera on the iPhone SE. She's thinking about getting one so she can use Clubhouse. I haven't even tried the SE's camera, I've been so focused on the Pixel 4a's. I will do some picture taking with it.

BTW, I got $0 in trade for my iPhone XS/Max with the cracked display. Oh well. It was a reallllly expensive phone, around $1500 if I recall correctly. The new iPhone SE is even nicer and was only $350. And I also love the Pixel 4a. I can't decide which is nicer. But what is great is both Apple and Google are now making inexpensive phones with formerly high-end features. If you're using an old phone, even one that's only two years old as I was, it's worth looking at the new Google and Apple offerings.