If you've been dreaming of moonlight in Vermont -- and getting a re-location subsidy -- "the time has come to make your maple-syrup-coated dreams a reality," reports Fast Company: [F]or those who relocate this year and can prove that they have full-time remote jobs, it's possible to get paid back for moving expenses, internet bills, or membership in a coworking space... The program offers up to $5,000 a year for two years. For the state, the program is one way to try to address its shrinking population. "We're the second-to-smallest state in the nation, and we're also getting older, so we really need to make sure there's more of a workforce here," says Joan Goldstein, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Economic Development, which is running the Remote Worker Grant Program. The entire state has a population of a little more than 600,000, roughly the size of Louisville, Kentucky. Vermont also recognized that a growing number of Americans work remotely -- nearly two-thirds of companies today have remote workers, and one recent survey found that hiring managers think it will continue to become even more common -- and that many city dwellers elsewhere are struggling with rent on increasingly overpriced apartments... The median home value in Brattleboro, roughly two hours from Boston, is less than $200,000; a one-bedroom apartment a short walk from the local co-op (and a small coworking space) goes for $850 a month. The budget for 2019 is $125,000, and will be given out "on a first come, first served basis."

Julia Reda is a member of Germany's Pirate Party, a member of the European Parliament, and the Vice-President of The Greens-European Free Alliance. Thursday her official web site announced: In 2014, security vulnerabilities were found in important Free Software projects. One of the issues was found in the Open Source encryption library OpenSSL.... The issue made lots of people realise how important Free and Open Source Software is for the integrity and reliability of the Internet and other infrastructure.... That is why my colleague Max Andersson and I started the Free and Open Source Software Audit project: FOSSA... In 2017, the project was extended for three more years. This time, we decided to go one step further and added the carrying out of Bug Bounties on important Free Software projects to the list of measures we wanted to put in place to increase the security of Free and Open Source Software... In January the European Commission is launching 14 out of a total of 15 bug bounties on Free Software projects that the EU institutions rely on. The bounties start at 25.000,00 € -- about $29,000 USD -- rising as high as 90.000,00 € ($103,000). "The amount of the bounty depends on the severity of the issue uncovered and the relative importance of the software," Reda writes. Click through for a list of the software projects for which bug bounties will be offered.

The CBC is marking the 20th anniversary of the notorious Hampsterdance web site with a 10,000-word oral history by arts reporter Leah Collins, promising "the twisted true story of one of the world's first memes." An anonymous reader writes: Deidre LaCarte, a Canadian martial arts instructor, created the site as part of a contest between her friend and her sister to see whose site could attract the most visitors by December 31st, 1998. Deidre won -- then remembers later waking up to news crews at her front door asking about that web site she'd created that had become a worldwide phenomenon. Slashdot's CmdrTaco linked to the site on February 9th, 1999, and hundreds of millions of pageviews later the CBC traces the site's evolution into Hampsterdance -- the Album, which included the less-remembered rock song "Hampster Party." (Recorded under a pseudonym by The Boomtang Boys, it was described by the Onion A.V. Club as "the definitive hamster party anthem of the new millennium," in their year-end retrospective "Least Essential Albums of 2000.") The CBC also interviewed members from a competing U.K. band that created knock-off versions of the site's hamster-y song for their own hit record, Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia. The Canadian hamster band enjoyed some popularity on Disney radio -- one song even became Hannah Montana's ringtone, and Britney Spears reportedly expressed an interest in recording their soulful hamster ballad, "Life is Good." Hallmark also says they ultimately used hampsterdance songs in over 100 different products. But whatever happened to the web site itself? Bill Porfido, president of a merchandising firm called Abatis International, eventually purchased the site, and described the resulting disaster as "How one man sunk a million trying to turn the world's most annoying website into the biggest thing in kiddie entertainment." Failed monetization attempts included a cartoon series about a world-travelling "Hampster" band -- the official Hampsterdance.com site is still selling a DVD titled How The Hampsters Saved Winter. "One million dollars. It's almost a million, what we lost," Porfido complains, saying the site is now maintained by his old business partner, Brian Hoffman -- and adding "I haven't spoken to Brian in about three years, but I know he's tired of it." But Porfido later admits that "even though it was a money sponge, I enjoyed every minute of it. "People are like, 'Hampsterdance? That's you? That's you?!' It kind of gave you a little taste of fame even though it was -- bogus. (Laughs)."

The Federal Trade Commission has sent out a flare to warn Netflix users that there are some grinches out there looking to take advantage of everyone's holiday bliss and vulnerability. From a report: In a post on the FTC's website, they warned us of scammers using household company names to dupe consumers. In a specific example, they cited a phishing email sent to a Netflix customer that claimed the user's account is on hold because Netflix is "having some trouble with your current billing information." The email invites the user to click on a link to update their payment method. The FTC sent the cautionary message out to all Netflix users so that they won't be victim to phishing.

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for ZDNet: Every major user interface (UI) redesign project is a hit and miss game, and Google's new Chrome UI appears to be a colossal miss. Designed with mobile devices in mind, the new Chrome user interface style was officially rolled out in September this year, with the release of Chrome version 69. Not all users liked the new UI, and this was clear from the beginning, with some users voicing their discontent online even back then. However, those users who didn't appreciate the new lighter-toned Chrome interface had the option to visit the chrome://flags page and modify a Chrome setting and continue using Chrome's older UI. But with Chrome version 71, released earlier this month, Google has removed the Chrome flag that allowed users to use the old UI. As you might imagine, this change did not go well, at all. Chrome's new UI might have been developed with a mobile-first approach in mind, but the UI is problematic on laptops and desktops, where its lighter tone and rounded tabs make it extremely hard to distinguish tabs from one another, especially when users open multiple tabs. Since being able to distinguish and switch between tabs at a fast pace is an important detail in most of today's internet-based jobs, many users have been having trouble adapting to the new UI both at work and at home, especially if they're the kind of people who deal with tens of tabs at the same time.

An anonymous reader writes: Three co-creators of the MIT-incubated Julia programming language are the recipients of the 2019 James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software. With origins in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Department of Mathematics, Julia is a programming language created in 2009 by Jeff Bezanson PhD '15, former MIT Julia Lab researchers Stefan Karpinski, and Viral B. Shah, and professor of mathematics Alan Edelman. The prize will be awarded to Bezanson, Karpinski, and Shah "for the creation of Julia, an innovative environment for the creation of high-performance tools that enable the analysis and solution of computational science problems." Released publicly in 2012, Julia has over 3 million downloads and is used in over 1,500 universities for scientific and numerical computing. "I am proud of the intellectual contributions of the Julia Lab, which applies the latest in computer science to science and engineering problems, while engaging interdisciplinary collaborations all over campus and beyond," said Edelman. "Julia is increasingly the language of instruction for scientific computing at MIT."

Samsung's 2019 smart TVs will allow consumers to browse the web, access their PCs and even edit work documents from the comfort of their living room couch. From a report: The company previewed a new feature dubbed Remote Access this week, which integrates both Samsung's own Knox security framework as well as remote access software from VMWare. Samsung stopped short on revealing key details about Remote Access. It did disclose that Remote Access will make it possible to remotely access a PC from a TV, which then seems to function as a gateway to the web, as well as a way to play PC-based games. To use Remote Access, consumers won't have to just rely on their TV remote controls. Instead, it will also work with a keyboard, mouse, and other input devices. These may come in handy when consumers access what Samsung vaguely described as a "web browser-based cloud office service" to "access files and work on documents."

Researchers at Google's AI labs created a couple of novel neural networks that can succeed in navigating web forms, such as an online flight-booking site. Although baby steps at the moment, the program succeeds as well or better than some models trained using human demonstrations of pointing and clicking. From a report: In a new paper from the team, they trained a neural network to understand the structure of web pages and the choices it can make when filling out forms in an airline ticket booker, or interacting with a social media site. The work broadly employs the same category of machine learning as Google's Go-winning AlphaZero software, what is known as "reinforcement learning." In RL, a neural network develops strategies of steps to take at each stage of trying to solve a problem as it receives rewards for good choices. The researchers figured out a way to train a neural network without being given human examples of how to navigate an online booking form. The approach makes the task of learning webpages and social media networks more "scalable," they write, where the possible combinations of states and actions can reach into the tens of millions. The point is not necessarily to actually book a flight; it's more an exercise in how a neural network can find solutions to a problem with numerous variables, where human guidance, or "supervision," in training is infeasible.

The Trump administration announced on Friday a plan designed to make it easier for coal-fired power plants, after nearly a decade of restrictions, to release into the atmosphere more mercury and other pollutants linked to developmental disorders and respiratory illnesses [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: The limits on mercury, set in 2011, were the first federal standards to restrict some of the most hazardous pollutants emitted by coal plants and were considered one of former President Barack Obama's signature environmental achievements. Since then, scientists have said, mercury pollution from power plants has declined more than 80 percent nationwide. President Trump's new proposal does not repeal the regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, but it would lay the groundwork for doing so by weakening a key legal justification for the measure. The long-term impact would be significant: It would weaken the ability of the E.P.A. to impose new regulations in the future by adjusting the way the agency measures the benefits of curbing pollutants, giving less weight to the potential health gains. In announcing the proposed rule, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that the cost of cutting mercury from power plants "dwarfs" the monetary benefits. The proposal, which the acting E.P.A. administrator, Andrew Wheeler, signed on Thursday, is expected to appear in the federal register in the coming weeks. The public will have 60 days to comment on it before a final rule is issued. [...] Reworking the mercury rule, which the E.P.A. considers the priciest clean air regulation ever put forth in terms of annual cost to industry, would represent a victory for the coal industry, and in particular for Robert E. Murray, an important former client of Mr. Wheeler's from his days as a lobbyist.

Over the last two years, we have heard numerous reports about Fuchsia, a new operating system for phones, computers, and just about everything else by Google. We've seen it in a variety of demos, all of which featured a UI, codenamed "Armadillo." Now it seems that Armadillo, and thus everything about Fuchsia we've "seen," has been removed. Reader Suren Enfiajyan shares a report: Everything we've known Fuchsia to look like falls under Armadillo. Last May, when we got our first look at Fuchsia UI, it was possible because Armadillo was simply a Flutter app that could be built to run on Android. After some months, we were also able to show off the first five minutes of Fuchsia UI on the Pixelbook using Fuchsia's screenshot tool, and we saw improvements to Armadillo, like Google Sign-In support. All in all, it was clear Fuchsia was shaping up to become a clean operating system that implements and extends Material Design. Unfortunately, none of the demos and examples are accurate anymore. With a recent code change, humorously titled "Armadillo fainted!", spotted by Redditor alawami, we've reached the end of an era. Every single piece of Armadillo code has now been permanently removed from Fuchsia's Topaz repo.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Netflix is further distancing itself from Apple's 15% iTunes tax bracket. Earlier this year, the streaming giant enabled iOS users in more than two dozen markets to bypass the iTunes payment method as part of an experiment. The company now tells VentureBeat that it has concluded the experiment and has incorporated the change globally. "We no longer support iTunes as a method of payment for new members," a Netflix spokesperson told VentureBeat. Existing members, however, can continue to use iTunes as a method of payment, the spokesperson added. Additionally, the support rep added that customers who are rejoining Netflix using an iOS device, after having canceled payment for at least one month, also won't be able to use iTunes billing. The move, which will allow Netflix to keep all proceeds from its new paying iPhone and iPad customers, underscores the tension between developers and the marquee distributors of mobile apps -- Apple and Google.

It's nearly the new year, which means time for some reflection on what's happened and what's to come. For Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, that means looking back on one really tough year. From a report: In his year-end post on Friday, Zuckerberg is optimistic, if a little defensive. He ticked off changes the company's made -- or, as he put it, "We've fundamentally altered our DNA" -- to focus more on handling the bad stuff that happens on Facebook. That includes tackling Russian interference in our elections, stopping harmful and bullying posts, and promising to give people more control over their data. He also noted that Facebook now has 30,000 people working on safety and harassment issues, and it's investing billions of dollars in security each year. He also acknowledged these issues will take more than a year to fix. But he said the company's started multiyear plans to address them. That doesn't mean he thinks Facebook is fully on the ball. "In the past we didn't focus as much on these issues as we needed to, but we're now much more proactive," he wrote. "I've learned a lot from focusing on these issues and we still have a lot of work ahead," Zuckerberg added. "I'm proud of the progress we've made in 2018 and grateful to everyone who has helped us get here -- the teams inside Facebook, our partners and the independent researchers and everyone who has given us so much feedback. I'm committed to continuing to make progress on these important issues as we enter the new year."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Sears, the employer of more than 68,000 filed for bankruptcy in October. Its last shot at survival is a $4.6 billion proposal put forward by its chairman, Eddie Lampert, to buy the company out of bankruptcy through his hedge fund, ESL Investments. ESL is the only party offering to buy Sears as a whole, people familiar with the situation tell CNBC. Without that bid or another like it, liquidators will break the company up into pieces. But as Lampert stares down a deadline of Dec. 28 to submit his offer, he is quickly running out of time. As of Thursday afternoon, Lampert had neither submitted his bid, nor rounded up financing, the people familiar said. Should Lampert submit a bid, Sears' advisors would have until Jan. 4 to decide whether he is a "qualified bidder." Only then, could ESL take part in an auction against liquidation bids on Jan. 14. It is possible Lampert, Sears' largest investor, secures financing in time to meet the deadline, these people said.

Retron shares a report: Music retailer HMV has confirmed it is calling in KPMG as administrators. The move, the second in six years, involves 2,200 staff at 125 stores. Owners Hilco, which took the company out of its first administration in 2013, blamed a "tsunami" of retail challenges, including business rate levels and the move to digital. It said the stores would continue to trade while negotiations were held with major suppliers and it looked for buyers. Paul McGowan, executive chairman of HMV and its owner Hilco Capital, said: "Even an exceptionally well-run and much-loved business such as HMV cannot withstand the tsunami of challenges facing UK retailers over the last 12 months on top of such a dramatic change in consumer behaviour in the entertainment market." He pointed out HMV sold 31% of all physical music in the UK in 2018 and 23% of all DVDs and Blu-rays, with its market share growing month by month throughout the year. But he added that the industry consensus was that the market would fall by another 17% during 2019 and therefore it would not be possible to continue to trade the business. Holders of gift vouchers are being advised to consider spending them sooner rather than later.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said on Friday the agency had launched an investigation into a nationwide CenturyLink outage that has affected 911 service for consumers across the country. In a statement, he said [PDF]: "When an emergency strikes, it's critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help. The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling. I've directed the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to immediately launch an investigation into the cause and impact of this outage. This inquiry will include an examination of the effect that CenturyLink's outage appears to have had on other providers' 911 services. I have also spoken with CenturyLink to underscore the urgency of restoring service immediately. We will continue to monitor this situation closely to ensure that consumers' access to 911 is restored as quickly as possible." The outage, which lasted all day Thursday and is still ongoing in certain states, knocked out 911 emergency call services in parts of western Washington state. News outlet KOMO reported that some CenturyLink customers reported receiving busy signals when dialing 911. Other areas of the country also experiencing 911 outages included parts of Missouri, Idaho and Arizona. Some ATM machines weren't working in Idaho and Montana. And additionally, Verizon said it had service interruptions in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and parts of Montana as a result of issues with CenturyLink.

schwit1 shares a report: Google has removed a map outlining the geographical extent of the Greater Kurdistan after the Turkish state asked it to do so, a simple inquiry on the Internet giant's search engine from Wednesday on can show. "Unavailable. This map is no longer available due to a violation of our Terms of Service and/or policies," a note on the page that the map was previously on read. Google did not provide further details on how the Kurdistan map violated its rules. The map in question, available for years, used to be on Google's My Maps service, a feature of Google Maps that enables users to create custom maps for personal use or sharing through search. Maps drawn by ancient Greeks, Islamic historians, Ottomans, and Westerners showing Kurdistan with alternative names such as "Corduene" or "Karduchi" have existed since antiquity. The use of the name "Kurdistan" was banned by the administration of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the immediate aftermath of the crushed Sheikh Said uprising for Kurdish statehood in 1925. Further reading: Local media report. "Turkish officials outraged by Google map showing the unofficial border of Kurdistan. Turkey demands the removal of the map. There are around 40 million Kurds divided between 4 main countries," Jiyar Gol, a BBC correspondent tweeted.

The Apache Software Foundation has released NetBeans 10.0, the second major release of the Apache NetBeans IDE. The release, said the Apache Software Foundation, is focused in adding support for JDK 11, JUnit 5, PHP, JavaScript and Groovy, as well in solving many issues. From a blog post: JDK 11 support has been enhanced in the following ways: Integration with the nb-javac project, adding support for JDK 11, removed the CORBA modules, support for JEP 309, Dynamic Class-File Constants, support for JEP 323, Local-Variable Syntax for Lambda Parameters, and support for LVTI Support for Lamdba Parameters. PHP 7.3: You can now add trailing commas in function calls under PHP 7.3 (mailing list thread), and also use the list reference assignment, the flexible Heredoc and Nowdoc Syntaxes are also supported. [...] And more: context sensitive lexer, PHPStan support, debugger, twig, hints, suggestions, code completionâ¦â visit PHP Features Page and NetBeans 10 New and Noteworthy for more details on PHP support. JUnit 5.3.1 has been added as a new Library to NetBeans, so you can quickly add it to your Java projects. For Maven projects without no existing tests, JUnit 5 is now the default JUnit version.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When General Motors laid off more than 6,000 workers days after Thanksgiving, John Patrick Leary, the author of the new book Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism, tweeted out part of GM CEO Mary Barra's statement. "The actions we are taking today continue our transformation to be highly agile, resilient, and profitable, while giving us the flexibility to invest in the future," she said. Leary added a line of commentary to of Barra's statement: "Language was pronounced dead at the scene." Why should we pay attention to the particular words used to describe, and justify, the regularly scheduled "disruptions" of late capitalism? Published this month by Haymarket Books, Leary's Keywords explores the regime of late-capitalist language: a set of ubiquitous modern terms, drawn from the corporate world and the business press, that he argues promulgate values friendly to corporations (hierarchy, competitiveness, the unquestioning embrace of new technologies) over those friendly to human beings (democracy, solidarity, and scrutiny of new technologies' impact on people and the planet). These words narrow our conceptual horizons -- they "manacle our imagination," Leary writes -- making it more difficult to conceive alternative ways of organizing our economy and society. We are encouraged by powerful "thought leaders" and corporate executives to accept it as the language of common sense or "normal reality." When we understand and deploy such language to describe our own lives, we're seen as good workers; when we fail to do so, we're implicitly threatened with economic obsolescence. After all, if you're not conversant in "innovation" or "collaboration," how can you expect to thrive in this brave new economy? [...] Calling our current economic system "late capitalism" suggests that, despite our gleaming buzzwords and technologies, what we're living through is just the next iteration of an old system of global capitalism. In other words, he writes, "cheer up: things have always been terrible!" What is new, Leary says, quoting Marxist economic historian Ernest Mandel, is our "belief in the omnipotence of technology" and in experts. He also claims that capitalism is expanding at an unprecedented rate into previously uncommodified geographical, cultural, and spiritual realms.

A gene editing technique has been used to produce asexual rice, which could carry traits such as high yields and drought resistance. From a report: After more than 20 years of theorizing about it, scientists have tweaked a hybrid variety of rice so that some of the plants produce cloned seeds. No plant sex necessary. The feat, described earlier this month in Nature, is encouraging for efforts to feed an increasingly crowded world. Crossing two good varieties of grain can make one fabulous one, combining the best versions of genes to give crops desirable traits such as higher yields. But such hybrid grain marvels often don't pass along those coveted genetic qualities to all seeds during reproduction. So farmers who want consistently higher yields have to pay for new hybrid seeds every year. This new lab version of hybrid rice would preserve those qualities through self-cloning, says study coauthor Venkatesan Sundaresan, a plant geneticist at the University of California, Davis. Though 400 kinds of plants, including some blackberries and citruses, have developed self-cloning seeds naturally, re-creating those pathways in crop plants has "been harder than anyone expected," Sundaresan says. He and his colleagues got the idea for the new research while studying "how a fertilized egg becomes a zygote, this magical cell that regenerates an entire organism," as Sundaresan puts it. The researchers discovered that modifying two sets of genes caused the japonica rice hybrid called Kitaake to clone its own seeds. First the team found that in a fertilized plant egg, only the male version of a gene called BABY BOOM1 found in sperm triggered the development of a seed embryo. So the scientists inserted a genetic starter switch, called a promoter, that let the female version of the same gene do the same job. No male would be necessary to trigger an embryo's development.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Speaking to a source familiar with the company's plans, we've learned that Google intends to launch two new Pixel smartphones on Verizon in early spring 2019 -- the Pixel 3 and 3 XL "Lite." An exact announcement date and pricing are not yet known. A Pixel 3 Lite prototype was leaked on a Russian tech blog last month, fueling rampant speculation about where the phone would be sold and how it would be positioned in Google's larger smartphone lineup. Later, renders of the 3 Lite and a larger XL variant were released by OnLeaks. These "Lite" Pixels will be the first phones in the mid-range Google has released since the Nexus 5X, which launched at $379 in the US in 2015.

A volcano on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali erupted Sunday, belching ash high into the air and over nearby villages as officials warned tourists to keep clear of the area. Mount Agung has been erupting periodically since it rumbled back to life in 2017, when it grounded hundreds of flights and left 120,000 visitors stranded. On Sunday morning, the volcano—which is about 70 kilometres (44 miles) from the tourist hub of Kuta—sent ash skywards as it erupted for about three minutes, according to the country's volcanology centre. "Residents near Mount Agung as well as climbers and tourists should not carry out any activity in the danger zone or within four-kilometre radius from the crater," the centre said in a statement. On December 22, an eruption from Anak Krakatoa triggered a tsunami which hit the western tip of the neighbouring island of Java and southern Sumatra, killing at least 426 and leaving more than 7,000 injured. In the latest eruption, several villages on Bali were covered in a thin layer of ash but no smoke or lava was detected coming from the crater and no evacuation has been ordered. The volcanology centre also warned residents near rivers in the area to be on alert forcold lava flows—a type of mudflow that can form from rock and ash in the rainy season and which is often a prelude to the blazing orange lava of popular imagination. In June, dozens of flights were cancelled after Agung erupted and shot a fresh plume of smoke and ash more than 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) into the sky. Agung's last major eruption in 1963 killed around 1,600 people. Indonesia is the world's most active volcanic region and lies on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where tectonic plates collide, causing frequent volcanic and seismic activities.

A computer virus hit newspaper printing plants in Los Angeles and at Tribune Publishing newspapers across the country. Tribune Publishing said a computer virus disrupted production of the Chicago Tribune and its other newspapers, the Chicago Tribune reported. The print edition of the Chicago Tribune was published Saturday without paid death notices and classified ads, while in other markets a similarly slimmed-down version of the Saturday newspaper will be delivered on Sunday, the company said. "This issue has affected the timeliness and in some cases the completeness of our printed newspapers. Our websites and mobile applications however, have not been impacted," Tribune Publishing spokeswoman Marisa Kollias said in a statement. Tribune Publishing also reported the attack to the FBI on Friday, the Chicago Tribune said. The virus that hit Los Angeles prevented it from printing and delivering Saturday editions of the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune and other papers to some subscribers. The Los Angeles Times, which runs the facility, said the computer virus infected systems that are associated with the printing process. Spokeswoman Hillary Manning said the paper has been working to fix the issues but added that Sunday deliveries may be affected as well. Biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought both the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune earlier this year for $500 million.

For years criminal websites shrouded in secrecy have thrived beyond the reach of traditional search engines, but a group of French engineers has found a way to navigate this dark web—a tool they don't want to fall into the wrong hands. "We insist on this ability to say 'no'," Nicolas Hernandez, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Networks, says at the company's offices near Lyon, in the heart of France's Beaujolais wine country. He said Aleph refused 30 to 40 percent of licensing requests for its "Google of the dark web," based on reviews by its ethics committee and input from its government clients. Most web users never venture beyond the bounds of sites easily found and accessed with casual web surfing. But people and sites seeking anonymity can hide behind layers of secrecy using easily available software like Tor or I2P. These sites can't be found by searching: instead, users have to type in the exact URL string of often random characters. In an authoritarian regime, a protest movement could use the secrecy to organise itself or connect with the outside world without fear of discovery. But the dark web is also ideal for drug and weapon sales, people-smuggling and encrypted chat-room communications by terrorists. When Aleph's co-founder Celine Haeri uses her software to search for "Glock", the Austrian pistol maker, several sites offering covert gun sales instantly pop up. A search for Caesium 137, a radioactive element that could be used to create a "dirty" nuclear bomb, reveals 87 dark web sites, while another page explains how to make explosives or a homemade bazooka. Arms smugglers find the dark web particularly useful Arms smugglers find the dark web particularly useful "Some even advertise the stars they've gotten for customer satisfaction," Hernandez said. Uncharted territory Over the past five years Aleph has indexed 1.4 billion links and 450 million documents across some 140,000 dark web sites. As of December its software had also found 3.9 million stolen credit card numbers. "Without a search engine, you can't have a comprehensive view" of all the hidden sites, Hernandez said. He and a childhood friend began their adventure by putting their hacking skills to work for free-speech advocates or anti-child abuse campaigners, while holding down day jobs as IT engineers. Haeri, at the time a teacher, asked for their help in merging blogs by her colleagues opposed to a government reform of the education system. The result became the basis of their mass data collection and indexing software, and the three created Aleph in 2012. They initially raised 200,000 euros ($228,000) but had several close calls with bankruptcy before finding a keen client in the French military's weapon and technology procurement agency. "They asked us for a demonstration two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack," Hernandez said, referring to the 2015 massacre of 12 people at the satirical magazine's Paris offices, later claimed by a branch of Al-Qaeda. Terror atttacks in 2015 focused French authorities' minds on the dark net Terror atttacks in 2015 focused French authorities' minds on the dark net "They were particularly receptive to our pitch which basically said, if you don't know the territory—which is the case with the dark web—you can't gain mastery of it," Haeri added. Ethical risks The ability to covertly navigate the dark web is a holy grail for security services trying to crack down on illicit trafficking and prevent terror attacks. The US government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been working on a similar project, called Memex, for years. Aleph plans to soon add artificial intelligence capabilities to its software, which would recognise images such as Kalashnikov rifles or child abuse victims, or alert businesses to potential copyright infringement. Its revenues are expected to reach around 660,000 euros this year, a figure it hopes to double in 2019. That has attracted the attention of investors as Aleph steps up efforts to add more private-sector buyers to its roster of government clients. But as more people and businesses start using Aleph's search engine, the risk increases that criminal organisations or hostile governments will eventually gain access. The challenge will be to grow while setting out clear guidelines for handling the thorny ethical questions. But Hernandez insisted he would remain vigilant, comparing his role to that of the "Protectors of the City" in ancient Greek democracies.

It is one of the worst ecological disasters of recent decades, but the shrinking of Iran's great Lake Urmia finally appears to be stabilising and officials see the start of a revival. A rusty cargo ship and a row of colourful pedal boats lying untouched on the bone-dry basin are a sign of the devastating loss of water in what was once the largest lake in the Middle East. Situated in the mountains of northwest Iran, Lake Urmia is fed by 13 rivers and designated as a site of international importance under the UN Convention on Wetlands that was signed in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971. The lake has been shrinking since 1995, according to the UN Environment Programme, due to a combination of prolonged drought, over-farming and dams. By August 2011 the lake's surface was 2,366 square kilometres (914 square miles) and shrank drastically to just 700 km2 in 2013, according to the United Nations. The catastrophe has threatened the habitat of shrimp, flamingos, deers and wild sheep and caused salt storms that pollute nearby cities and farms. That finally triggered a coordinated effort to save the lake in 2013—with a joint programme between Iran and the UN Development Programme funded by the Japanese government. President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to revive Lake Urmia, which was once the largest lake in the Middle East President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to revive Lake Urmia, which was once the largest lake in the Middle East The project became a priority for the incoming administration of President Hassan Rouhani. "One of my promises was to revive Urmia lake, and I am still committed to that promise," Rouhani said during a recent visit to the region. Some positive results are finally emerging and the lake's surface area reached 2,300 km2 last year, according to UN Development Programme figures. "This is the beginning of the lake's revival," said Abolfazl Abesht, who heads the wetlands unit of Iran's environment department. He warned it would take "decades" to return to the 5,000 km2 it once covered, but at least "now the trend has stopped". Sustainable farming Rising temperatures and reduced rainfall have been a major factor in the lake's decline, experts say. Rising temperatures and reduced rainfall have been a major factor in Lake Urmia's decline, experts say Rising temperatures and reduced rainfall have been a major factor in Lake Urmia's decline, experts say So, too, was the construction of a causeway in 2008 to shorten driving times between Urmia and the nearby city of Tabriz that cut the lake in two. But people were also a major part of the problem due to a rapid rise in the population and farming around the lake, which provides a livelihood to some six million people. The rejuvenation effort therefore focused on redirecting rivers to irrigate farmland, thus avoiding use of water from the lake, and the promotion of more sustainable farming methods. "Almost 85 percent of the water is used for agriculture, and we are trying to help farmers reduce usage through cheap and effective techniques," said Abesht. Measures such as using natural instead of chemical fertilisers, or levelling the land to avoid run-off, have shown major improvements for local farmer Afshin Medadi. The 47-year-old had to invest in new equipment, but says "things are more cost-effective now", with his farm using a tenth of the water. There has also been a noticeable reduction in the salt and dust pollution whipped up from the desiccated lake floor during storms, he added. Green initiatives have been launched as parts of efforts to save Lake Urmia Green initiatives have been launched as parts of efforts to save Lake Urmia Others have launched their own green initiatives. One group of 20 women set up a collective to raise awareness among lakeside communities about water waste, and encourage the production of handicrafts to boost sustainable employment. One of the organisers, 39-year-old Kobra Asghari from the village of Gharehgozlou, hopes industries such as carpet and doll-making can gradually overtake traditional farming. They are also encouraging women to plant less thirsty crops such as saffron and olives. "We gradually managed to encourage the men to do the same," she said. "People are paying more attention to their environment and the dying ecosystem."

China's top court will rule on intellectual property cases for the first time from January 1, the government said, elevating the handling of an issue that has become a key complaint in the trade war with the US. Washington and Beijing are currently in talks to resolve a bruising trade spat that has spooked markets worldwide. The two sides imposed tit-for-tat tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of goods this year, before agreeing to a 90-day truce on December 1. The United States, along with the European Union, has long complained about lax enforcement of intellectual property rights in China. Forced technology transfers have been another major bone of contention for foreign companies operating in China. Deputy Chief Justice Luo Dongchuan said Saturday that from the start of 2019 the Supreme Court would begin handling appeals on intellectual property rights cases, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Such cases were previously handled by provincial-level high courts. The move will "help prevent inconsistency of legal application and improve the quality and efficiency of trials," Luo said. China is mulling a series of steps to strengthen protections against IP theft. IP includes intangible creations like patents, trademarks and copyrights. The country's patent law is being amended to increase the compensation amount by up to five times. Another draft law presented at a recent meeting of China's legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, allows victims of intellectual property theft to sue for damages. China's legislature also announced it is looking at a new law governing foreign investment that would prevent the forced transfer of technology and give foreign firms the same privileges as Chinese companies. Chinese courts heard a total of 213,480 IP cases in 2017—40 percent more than in 2016 and double the number heard in 2013, Xinhua reported.