An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: A Chinese intelligence-gathering effort was behind the massive Marriott hotels data breach that exposed the personal information for up to 500 million people, the New York Times reported Tuesday. The hackers are believed to have been working for China's Ministry of State Security, the Times reported citing sources who had been briefed on the investigation's preliminary results. The revelation emerges as the U.S. Justice Department is preparing to announce new indictments against Chinese hackers working for the intelligence and military services, the Times reported. The hotel chain revealed last month that it had discovered that hackers had compromised the guest reservation database of its Starwood division, whose brands include Sheraton, W Hotels, Westin, Le Meridien, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and St. Regis. Marriott said some of the stolen information also included payment card numbers and expiration dates. Private investigators involved in a probe into the breach had previously discovered hacking tools, techniques and procedures that were used in earlier cyberattacks that have been linked to Chinese hackers.

Each year around Dec. 13 and 14, Earth passes through the orbit of the asteroid 3200 Phaeton. As its debris enters our atmosphere, we’re treated to a fabulous light show: the Geminids meteor shower. This year, the peak of the shower will fall on Thursday, Dec. 13 and Friday, Dec. 14. If you live in the Americas or Europe and can stay up late on Thursday night, head outside between midnight and dawn; that’s when the shower will be at its absolute peak. In Asia, Africa, and Australia, the shower will peak around midnight local time on Friday night. NASA scientists estimate that viewers will see about 120 meteors an hour. Experts expect this year to be an especially good one for sky-watching: The moon is new and sets early, which means skies will be darker, making it easier to catch sight of the shooting stars. (You can check the exact time the moon sets where you are here.) The Geminids are already known as a particularly impressive meteor shower; whereas most meteor showers are due to Earth passing into the orbit of a comet, 3200 Phaeton is an asteroid. Asteroids are made of denser chunks of rock, which means the debris burns up more slowly and brightly as it streaks across our sky. All you need to enjoy the Geminids is a comfortable spot with a clear view of the sky. (Be sure to check your local forecast before you head out.) It typically takes human eyes about 20 minutes to adjust to darkness, so it may be a few minutes before you start seeing shooting stars. And whatever you do, don’t ruin your night vision by looking at your backlit phone!

Sometimes a person, creature, or thing really resonates with you. That sense of “vibing” may be more than a figure of speech, it turns out. In a Dec. 5 post in Scientific American entitled “The Hippies Were Right: It’s All About Vibrations, Man!” lawyer and philosopher Tam Hunt explains a new theory of consciousness he developed with his colleague, psychologist Jonathan Schooler, at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Hunt is a philosopher of mind, biology, and physics, while Schooler is a professor of brain science, and together they’ve been working on answering one of the world’s most perplexing questions: “What physical processes underpin mental experience, linking mind and matter and creating the sense of self?” In other words, what natural laws govern our perception of existence? This search for the rules that relate mind and matter (pdf) is often referred to as the “hard problem of consciousness.” And no one has really solved it, but there are various theories. Hunt and Schooler suspect that every physical object, including you, is vibrating and oscillating. The more synchronized these vibes are, the more complex our connection with the world around us, and the more sophisticated our consciousness. The “resonance theory of consciousness” they present posits that synchronized vibrations are central not only to human consciousness but to all of physical reality. “All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating,” Hunt writes. “Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating, at various frequencies. Resonance is a type of motion, characterized by oscillation between two states. And ultimately all matter is just vibrations of various underlying fields.” When different oscillating things are close together for a time, they begin to vibrate in sync. That applies to neurons in brains, fireflies gathering, the Moon and Earth, and much more. This phenomenon is called “spontaneous self-organization.” The synchronization is a kind of physical communication between entities. Hunt argues that the more complex the synchronization is, the more complex the consciousness. So, for example, the billions of neurons that fire in the brain together to make a decision and form our experience of the world are extremely sophisticated, yielding a rich and dynamic sense of self. He refers to this sense of self as perception. The degree of perception possible for any thing or being varies widely. Still, even seemingly inanimate objects, like boulders or piles of sand, have a rudimentary level of consciousness according to Hunt’s definition of perception, which is simply an object “receiving information from the world.” Each grain of sand is an object in relation to the world and therefore it is also a subject that “experiences” existence, albeit to a much more limited extent than humans do, according to Hunt. He calls this a “micro-consciousness.” In a 2011 paper in the Journal of Consciousness Studies (pdf), Hunt explains: [L]iterally every life form and every speck of dust down to the smallest subatomic particle is influenced by the world through the various forces that act upon it. An electron is influenced by charged particles close enough to have an impact, and from objects that exert a gravitational pull—and the electron behaves accordingly. To exist, to be in the universe, means that every particle in the universe feels some pull and push from the various forces around it—otherwise it simply doesn’t exist. Thus, the electron perceives, as I have defined this term, and the electron is a subject. What humans have is a “macro-consciousness.” But that more complex awareness that gives us our rich sense of self, the experience of existence, Hunt argues, is based on “a shared resonance among many micro-conscious constituents.” Basically, all of the relatively simple vibrations and oscillations that occur individually in various physical aspects of the brain, working together, become extremely complex and provide our self-awareness. “The speed of the resonant waves that are present is the limiting factor that determines the size of each conscious entity,” Hunt writes. “As a shared resonance expands to more and more constituents, the particular conscious entity grows larger and more complex.” This resonance theory of consciousness tries to provide a unified framework for understanding mind and matter that includes neuroscience, the study of human consciousness or subjective experience, neurobiology, and biophysics. It offers an explanation for the differing degrees of consciousness in various physical systems. “It is all about vibrations, but it’s also about the type of vibrations and, most importantly, about shared vibrations,” Hunt argues. This view that he and Schooler have that all things are conscious to a greater or lesser extent is called panpsychism, and it’s relatively widely accepted among consciousness researchers. Their work builds on centuries of thinking about perception by philosophers and many decades of work by scientists on the physical underpinnings of this process. However, their theory that vibrations explain how perception is created at varying degrees of complexity, resonating to a more or less sophisticated extent, has yet to be proven definitively. It’s a possible framework that could solve the “hard problem of consciousness” and lends credence to the sense long expressed by spiritual types that it’s all about the “vibes.”

Increasingly determined and bold separatists seeking the international recognition of the self-proclaimed “Federal Republic of Ambazonia” (Southern Cameroons) have created a crypto-currency which they claim is the first to be fully nation-backed. Known as AmbaCoin, 20,082 of the Ambazonian crypto bond had already been bought, out of 100,000,000 on pre-sale as of Nov. 10. One AmbaCoin sells for 25 cents (circa 140 CFA franc) and the main initial coin offering of the crypto-currency is scheduled for Dec. 24. It is said to be backed by the “rich natural resources” of the breakaway region. The AmbaCoin was conceived and built by a group of anonymous Anglophone separatist scholars, technocrats and developers. But it has gained the support of frontline secessionists and separatist movements. When news of the crypto-currency was made public last month, Chris Anu, who has the title secretary of state for communications & IT for the “Federal Republic of Ambazonia”, posted a sample of the crypto-currency bond on his Facebook page and said: “We are getting there folks.” AMBACOIN/FACEBOOK Here it is. In the last five decades in Africa, especially in areas where people want to create a country of their own out of another, people have been opting to put their faith in a form of exchange other than a currency which is globally accepted. During the Nigerian civil war (1966-1970), the then self-declared Republic of Biafra adopted the Biafran pound as legal tender, abandoning the Nigerian pound it had been using before ‘independence’. There is also a plethora of unrecognized countries in the past which came up with currencies in their efforts to be independent. The Katangas in DR Congo came up with their own franc currency in the 1960s, while the Rhodesian pound was the currency of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from 1964 to 1970. REUTERS A statement on the website of AmbaCoin indicates that plans are already underway for the creation of a traditional fiat currency for “Ambazonia” that will be used to peg the future price of AmbaCoin. The English-speaking separatists will be keen to dissociate themselves from the Central African franc (CFA) which Cameroon uses. Both the Central and West African CFA are linked to France’s national treasury. There’s also the practical advantage that using a cryptocurrency for now will be out of reach of the Cameroon government. According to the developers, the biggest challenge faced by the breakaway region is that most of the resources and wealth in the area are controlled by the Francophone-led government of Cameroon, which stifles access to its assets. “Numerous Ambazonians in the diaspora and other stakeholders who want to see a prosperous Ambazonia, are unable to help provide foreign direct investment to the Governing Council,” Amba Coin developers said. As such, they thought the best way out will be to create a bond, which will be used to raise capital to kick-start the ‘Ambazonian’ economy. AmbaCoin, with tailored-made features, is an ERC20 crypto-currency which relies on Ethereum as the parent chain. The developers boost of the crypto’s transparency, confidentially and low transaction cost. The crypto-currency is the latest effort by Cameroon’s Anglophone secessionists to cement the Oct. 1, 2017 symbolic declaration of independence of the “Federal Republic of Ambazonia”. The separatists have in recent times carried arms against the state of Cameroon, enforced a school boycott since October 2016 and a civil disobedience action known as ‘ghost towns’ every Monday. In addition to the new crypto-currency, ‘Ambazonia’ has an anthem, flag and an interim government, but is yet to be recognized as a nation by any country in the world, unlike the Republic of Biafra which had a short-lived existence but was at one point was formally recognized by Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Haiti, Tanzania and Zambia

The gauntlet, in the form of 48 letters, has been thrown down, and a vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s leadership of the Conservative Party is on. The prime minister declared her determination to fight on. And yet even in that moment of seeming defiance, some of the flaws in her character and her approach to leadership were on display. It is worth taking a moment to reflect on how Britain got here. Breakfast in The Hague, lunch in Berlin, afternoon tea in Brussels: May’s Tuesday may have sounded like a rushed luxury European tour. But it was a last-minute dash to try and salvage her Brexit deal, and sooth rebellious MPs back home. Unfortunately, it was a bit late for the prime minister to try and form warmer, more productive relationships with her EU counterparts. This charm offensive was moribund on arrival. It is reflective of her time in office, which is looking like it will one day become a classic case study of bad leadership in practice. Chance handed her the top job in the summer of 2016, in the aftermath of the EU referendum. Her rivals for the leadership destroyed each other. May stepped over their political corpses and entered Number 10. She then had a choice. With only a small parliamentary majority, and with a country split almost in two (52:48) on the issue of Europe, she could have acted as a conciliatory figure, daring more extreme voices on either side to coalesce around a moderate, agreed path to a calm compromise over Brexit. May did not take that path. Like a football fan who thinks that a lucky, dubious late winner has made her team champions of the world, she adopted a triumphalist tone, hugging the 52% Leave voters close, while disdaining the 48% who, like her, had voted Remain. Instead of bringing the country together she exacerbated division and added to the confusion in her own government. Mistake after mistake Her party conference speech in October 2016 denounced the internationalist, outward looking “citizens of nowhere” who, she suggested, had no feel for the country they lived in. She was cheered on by other extreme voices such as the Daily Mail, which under its then editor urged her to “crush the saboteurs”, and denounced independent judges as “enemies of the people.” The prime minister could have disowned or distanced herself from this sort of language. She chose not to. She did not include cabinet colleagues or the wider country in her plans for the Brexit negotiations. We would get, we were told, a “red, white and blue Brexit.” When asked what Brexit would mean in practice for everyone, she said, simply, that “Brexit means Brexit.” May established hard, irrational, and impractical red lines. Critical voices were ignored or dismissed. The public—some of them at least—began to fight back. While the Conservative vote share rose at the 2017 general election—the snap election May said she was never going to call—so too did Labour’s. A 20-point poll lead all but vanished over the course of the campaign, and with it her majority in Westminster. Here too was a moment for possible reconciliation. Brexit could have been reconceived as a shared national project. But still May pressed on, maintaining that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” Reality has gradually reasserted itself, with the final production of a compromise withdrawal agreement that has few friends in Westminster—hence the delayed parliamentary vote. Failure to adapt For two-and-a-half years misstep has followed misstep. Why then does the prime minister persist in using the language of duty and of honour? Does she really believe she has been acting, as she keeps saying, “in the national interest”? May has clearly convinced herself that this is the case. Someone had to step up and be prime minister and deal with the aftermath of the referendum result. She has shown resilience in the face of constant criticism. But her leadership has been flawed from the outset. She chose the wrong strategy and then, when it was clearly failing, failed to adapt. British politics has a management style that is is burdened with the curse of Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 party conference speech (“U turn if you want to”), which created the myth of the unflinching leader who must never take a step back or change her mind. But good leaders change course when new information demands it. As a Remain voter May has overcompensated, trying (and ultimately failing) to convince Leave voters that she has become one of them. Hence all the solemn talk of the national interest. And yet she has never been able to declare that the UK will be better off because of Brexit—because it won’t be. She merely talks vaguely about a “bright future”. As James Kirkup, director of the Social Market Foundation think-tank, wrote: “May thinks she honours the referendum result and Leave voters by adopting the falsehoods that underpin the Leave cause, especially the notion that Brexit is some sort of opportunity to be seized.” I would go further. It was Brexit that delivered Number 10 to May and therefore, she has calculated, she cannot risk undermining it. But a leader truly acting in the national interest would have told the country what she knows to be true: that there is no good Brexit, only varying degrees of harmful ones. It is bad leadership to live a lie. It is bad leadership to force a country to live through an extended period of destabilizing cognitive dissonance. Some of this was avoidable. But the wreckage of Brexit and how it has been handled will continue to harm the country for many years to come.

Earlier this year, 40 University of Chicago students, faculty, and administrative staff gathered at the business school for an unusual leadership workshop. Instead of a lecture or small-group exercises, management professor Harry Davis got everyone on their feet and formed a choir. “One of my motivations is to get people to try new things,” says Davis, who helms a leadership center at the university’s Booth School of Business. A onetime member of the Dartmouth glee club, Davis often incorporates the humanities in his curricula to get business-minded students to expand their perspectives. “As we look at the performing arts, there’s an enormous amount of value that can be taken in terms of experimentation and being open to other worlds that may contain useful raw material that could apply to our own world,” he says. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Active listening. Most participants had very little singing experience, aside from the occasional karaoke night. But the goal, says Davis, wasn’t to groom professional singers. Rather, he wanted the group to use singing as a learning experience. ”For better or worse, the world has become more specialized,” reflects Davis. “We need specialization, but we need breadth as well.” There are similar arguments for using drawing as a tool for learning. As design historian D.B. Dowd at Washington University in St. Louis outlines in his book Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice, putting pen to paper isn’t so much about performance as it is process. What kind of pep talk did Davis give to those who were horrified at the idea of singing in public? “Things happen earlier in life when we’re told we can’t carry a tune, but in fact, many of us can sing,” he says. “Sometimes we are actually prisoners of many stories that we carry around with us.” Leadership lessons from choir practice Singing in a choir, it turns out, yields endless lessons (and metaphors) for managers. It’s about vulnerability, agility, trust, coaching, teamwork, failure, and generosity. But perhaps the most vital aspect is in regard to listening. “We teach music to be better people and how to listen to each other,” explains Mollie Stone, a choirmaster and lecturer at the University of Chicago’s music department, who helped Davis shape the workshop. In a chorus, it’s not about overpowering another voice, but adjusting one’s tune to create a harmony, says Patty Cuyler, co-director of Village Harmony, an organization that convenes community choirs around Chicago and also helped facilitate the U of C class. “It’s the sum of the parts and the individuals don’t count as much as what you do to make everyone sound good,” she explained. “If that’s not a great model for working in a business, I don’t know what is.” Stone purposely chose an eclectic repertoire, starting with a melodious Zulu ode. Learning a song in another language teaches one to pay closer attention to cultural nuance—how words are enunciated or how the tongue rolls to make a particular sound, explains Stone. “What’s so magical about learning how to learn the music of another culture is that it takes the attention away from yourself,” she says. “You’re busy listening to such intricate details.” After three hours of rehearsing, the group performed together in front of an audience and earned their applause. Singing in the office The idea of singing in a business setting isn’t unique to the Booth School. In fact, many Danish companies, like the media startup Zetland, start their day by singing a traditional folk song. The Danes believe that group singing fosters a sense of camaraderie and common identity among employees. Denmark’s tourism website even extolls the benefits of corporate sing-alongs: To sing is not a relic of primary schools, community buildings or churches. Singing is actually relevant and good, because it is healthy: When people sing, they breath deeper and slower. The deep, slow and calm breathing provides more oxygen to the brain and affects cardiac activity positively. Additionally, participants will begin to breathe in a similar pace and their hearts will begin to beat concurrently. Singing connects people socially and creates an invisible link – making participants move from an “I-perspective” to an “us-perspective.” I recently experienced this fine Danish tradition at TechFest in Copenhagen. At the beginning of a challenging workshop, the facilitator invited everyone to pull out their phones and look up the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s folk song Blowing in the Wind. It seemed like a strange way to kick off an international gathering, but my finely developed New York cynicism was no match for the beautiful chorus of human voices. UC Booth doesn’t plan on holding another choral workshop anytime soon, but it’s dedicated to mining connections between the performing arts and leadership. In 2015, the school invited professional ballet dancers to teach students about dealing with failure, and next year, a theater scholar will be embedded in the program. Davis champions the idea of forming office choral groups to more business settings. “We spend a lot time teaching people become better leaders, but we do nothing to make them better followers,” says Davis in a short video about the workshop. “Becoming a follower is absolutely necessary…So much that’s written about leadership is about the soloist, but we were all equal in this experience.”

The internet is getting faster. Ookla, an internet analytics company, released its state of the internet report this week showing mobile and broadband internet are accelerating around the world, although not every country is keeping pace. In 2018, mobile internet speeds rose 15% on average to 23 megabits per second (Mbps) down (15.2%), while upload speeds rose 9 Mbps (11.2%). Broadband internet (over fiber optic or metal) surged 26% to 46 Mbps down, and 22 Mbps up. That’s a slightly slower rate of increase than 2017, but telecoms are steadily building out new infrastructure, especially fixed Gigabit connections (many cities got the high-speed service for the first time in 2018) and 4G (with “5G” on the way). Where can you go for the fastest internet? Small, rich nations are your best bet. Norway and Iceland top the list. Their blazing fast mobile internet speeds are roughly twice as fast as their fastest big-nation counterparts, China and US (31 Mbps and 29 Mbps, respectively). Fixed internet speeds show a similar pattern. US internet service providers are steadily catching up. This year, the US saw a 36% increase in mean download speed, ranking it 7th in the world between Hungary and Switzerland. As for the slowest countries among the 124 ranked, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, and Venezuela finished at the bottom with recorded speeds of 7.5 Mbps or slower. But those near the bottom have made progress. Among the most-improved countries, Iraq made the cut, according to Ookla.

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside”—a song written by a Jewish composer that has become a secular Christmas anthem—played a small but crucial role in the rise of modern Islamic fundamentalism. Back in 1950, the Egyptian author and religious theorist Sayyid Qutb spent two years as an exchange student at a teacher’s college in Greeley, Colorado. He was infuriated by many things about American life—people spent too much time taking care of their lawns, and it was impossible to get a decent haircut—but especially by a church dance where a pastor played Frank Loesser’s Grammy-winning song on a gramophone: “The dance hall convulsed to the tunes on the gramophone and was full of bounding feet and seductive legs,” Qutb wrote later. “Arms circled waists, lips met lips, chests met chests, and the atmosphere was full of passion.” “宝贝，外面很冷，”长期以来一直是美国的假日经典，最近在#MeToo时代受到审查，因为它轻松地描绘了性强制 - 虽然仔细阅读表明这首歌可以很容易狡猾地向女性赋权致敬。 不要Qutb。他的描述： 从晚上约会回来的男孩和女孩之间的对话。男孩带着女孩回家，让她不能离开。她恳求他让她回家，因为它已经来晚了，她的母亲在等，但每次她都会找借口，他会用她的线回答她：但是宝贝外面很冷。 这首歌证实了Qutb对美国文化的最大怀疑。 纪录片导演亚当柯蒂斯在电影“噩梦的力量”中观察到，“对大多数观看这种舞蹈的人来说，这将是一种无辜的幸福之舞”。“但库特布还看到了别的东西。在他面前的舞者是悲惨的失落的灵魂。他们相信他们是自由的，但实际上他们被自己的自私和贪婪的欲望困住了。“ 当库特布回到埃及时，他是一个改变了的人，决心拒绝西方并拥抱纯净的伊斯兰教版本。正如记者劳伦斯赖特在“纽约客”中所写： Qutb回到了埃及一个彻底改变的人。在他所看到的美国的精神荒地中，他重新创造了自己作为一个好战的穆斯林，他带着伊斯兰教的愿景回到了埃及，这种伊斯兰教会摒弃西方的庸俗影响。伊斯兰社会必须得到净化，唯一足以清理它的机制就是圣战的古老而血腥的工具。 Qutb最终成为穆斯林兄弟会的高级成员，策划暗杀埃及总统Gamal Abdel Nasser，并于1966年被处决。但他的教诲和着作成为一代激进伊斯兰主义者的主要灵感，包括奥萨马·本·拉登和艾曼扎瓦希里。

Americans are again splurging on subprime debt. The spigots are forecast to open even wider next year for personal loans, thanks to financing provided by fintech startups as well as the Trump administration’s lighter regulatory touch on payday lending. Subprime personal loan balances have been climbing since 2014 and are forecast to increase 20% next year, to a record $156.3 billion, according to credit-scoring firm TransUnion. The last three months of this year will be the biggest quarter ever for origination, accounting for some 5 million loans. “A lot of it is being driven by non-prime and subprime originations,” said Jason Laky, TransUnion’s consumer-lending business lead. In the past, personal loans were mainly used by borrowers with weak credit who weren’t able to get other kinds of financing, like credit cards or home equity loans. But now, a decade after the subprime credit bubble popped, personal loans are experiencing a revival thanks to digital startups that make it quick and easy to borrow money this way. Instead of going to a bank, which may have been wary of the unsecured (no collateral) form of lending, borrowers can now get money in seconds via their smartphone. Personal loans aren’t new, and neither are point-of-sale loans, another option that is becoming increasingly popular. San Francisco-based Affirm, founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, is one of the leaders in point-of-sale loans and is available at more than 1,200 US retailers. The company says its lending process allows it to approve far more applicants across the credit spectrum than traditional lenders. Levchin says the company’s loans are fairer and more transparent than other products, because there are no hidden fees and they have a set pay-off date. Payday lending has also increased. These days, this type of high-interest, short-term debt often takes place online through installment loans. San Francisco-based LendUp is an example of the new breed of payday lenders, charging annual percentage rates that can range from 30% to more than 1,300% depending on the type of loan, according to a report by NerdWallet. Payday loans are back thanks to the Trump administration. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) had aggressively pursued this type of high-interest lending, but all of that changed after Donald Trump was elected and Mick Mulvaney became the bureau’s acting director. Strict rules aimed at high-interest lenders have since been shelved and enforcement has declined. “The CFPB leadership changed and made very clear statements to the market that they’re going to have a lighter touch on regulations, especially subprime regulation,” Laky said. ”We have seen a very quick return of capital in market.”

Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou, arrested in Canada on Dec. 1 at the request of the US on suspicion of violating sanctions on Iran, was granted bail of C$10 million ($7.5 million) in a Vancouver court today (Dec. 11). During a bail application hearing that began Friday (Dec. 7), Meng had offered to wear an ankle bracelet and pay for her own 24-hour monitoring through private surveillance firms. The judge initially appeared skeptical of the offer, but later ruled that he was satisfied Meng was not a flight risk after assurances from friends and local contacts. He outlined 15 conditions she has to meet. Apart from 24-hour monitoring that she has to pay for, she must also adhere to an 11pm-to-6am curfew in her Vancouver home, and surrender her multiple passports. She also has to pay roughly US$5 million in cash. Meng’s next hearing is Feb. 6. Huawei confirmed bail had been set, and said it complies with all laws, including export controls and sanctions. Meng is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, who developed the company into the world’s biggest provider of telecom equipment and second-biggest seller of smartphones. Meng was elevated to vice chair earlier this year as Huawei’s troubles with the US deepened, even though her father had said in the past that no child of his had the “vision, character, or ambition” to lead the company. Huawei has a long, troubled history with US companies and authorities, including accusations of intellectual-property theft (pdf) and warnings that its equipment poses potential national security risks. Huawei has disputed these allegations and said its equipment is safe to use—it has even called for a “thorough government investigation” (pdf) into its business. This year, the Trump administration launched an investigation into how the Chinese government supports its tech firms, and has imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions in Chinese goods. And as the world prepares for the widespread adoption of 5G telecom networks—which would make internet-connected devices like self-driving cars a widespread reality—concern about keeping telecom infrastructure safe from intrusion has increased. To that end, the US has stepped up efforts to restrict the use of Huawei equipment in the US, and has urged its allies (paywall) to do the same. Countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Japan have taken such steps. Meng’s arrest came on the same day as Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in an effort to resolve the two countries’ trade tensions, though Trump said he had no knowledge the arrest was coming. Some commentators have criticized the US for politicizing the use of law enforcement, describing the timing of the arrest as a China-style tactic. The arrest of Meng relates to the dealings between a Huawei-linked firm called Skycom and Iran, and whether Meng misrepresented relations between the two firms. “It is entirely appropriate to hold Huawei accountable for its illegal activities, including the apparent sanctions violations,” Elsa Kania, a fellow researching Chinese military innovation at the Center for New American Security in Washington DC, told Quartz. She added, “If this case were to become unduly politicized pursuant to the trade war, there would be a risk that reactions to real security concerns could be dismissed as disingenuous—or as attempts by the U.S. government to undermine Huawei as a company.” The Dec. 1 meeting between Xi and Trump resulted in a commitment to negotiate a deal to resolve trade tensions by March 1. As Meng’s bail proceedings were underway, Trump told Reuters in an interview that he would intervene in the Justice Department’s case if he thought it could help secure the “largest trade deal ever made” with China.

schwit1 shares a report from Popular Mechanics: A Russian online mapping company was trying to obscure foreign military bases. But in doing so, it accidentally confirmed their locations -- many of which were secret. Yandex Maps, Russia's leading online map service, blurred the precise locations of Turkish and Israeli military bases, pinpointing their location. The bases host sensitive surface-to-air missile sites and facilities housing nuclear weapons. The Federation of American Scientists reports that Yandex Maps blurred out "over 300 distinct buildings, airfields, ports, bunkers, storage sites, bases, barracks, nuclear facilities, and random buildings" in the two countries. Some of these facilities were well known, but some of them were not. Not only has Yandex confirmed their locations, the scope of blurring reveals their exact size and shape.

"South Australia, which has a history with space events long ago, is set to become the base for the Australian space industry," writes Slashdot reader Badooleoo. ABC News reports: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced Adelaide will be the home of Australia's new space agency. South Australia beat strong competition from other states to secure the headquarters, after enlisting homegrown NASA astronaut Andy Thomas to help with its campaign. The agency will be based at Lot Fourteen, the former Royal Adelaide Hospital site, which is being transformed into an innovation precinct. The Prime Minister said South Australia was an ideal home for the new agency and was already a key hub for the space and technology industry. "This agency is going to open doors for local businesses and Australian access to the $US345 billion global space industry," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. "Our Government's $41 million investment into the agency will act as a launching pad to triple Australia's space economy to $12 billion and create up to 20,000 jobs by 2030."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Legislation to restore net neutrality rules now has 180 supporters in the U.S. House of Representatives, but that's 38 votes short of the amount needed before the end of the month. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution, already approved by the Senate, would reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules. But 218 signatures from U.S. representatives (a majority) are needed to force a full vote in the House before Congress adjourns at the end of the year. Net neutrality advocates previously said they needed 218 signatures by December 10 to force a vote. But an extension of Congress' session provided a little more time. "[Now that the Congressional session has officially been extended, members of Congress could be in town as late as December 21st," net neutrality advocacy group Fight for the Future wrote yesterday. "This means we have until the end of the year to get as many lawmakers as possible signed on to restore net neutrality." A discharge petition that would force a vote on the CRA resolution gained three new supports in the past two weeks, but even if all Democrats were on board it still wouldn't be enough to force a vote. Republicans have a 236-197 House majority, and only one House Republican has signed the petition.

After investigating claims that its employees are taking bribes to sell internal data to merchants to help them increase their sales on the site, Amazon has reportedly fired several employees involved in the scams. The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon let go of several workers in the U.S. and India who allegedly inappropriately accessed company data that disreputable merchants had misused. The Hill reports: Amazon is focusing its internal bribery investigation on India, a person familiar with the effort told the paper. Some employees in India and China working as customer support have said that their access to an internal database that allows them to find data about specific product performance or trending keywords has been dramatically limited. Amazon has also deleted thousand of suspect reviews, restricted sellers' access to customer data on its platform, and quashed some methods to force the site to bring up certain products higher in search results, the people told the Journal. "We have strict policies and a Code of Business Conduct & Ethics in place for our employees. We implement sophisticated systems to restrict and audit access to information," the company wrote. "We hold our employees to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our Code faces discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties." "In addition, we have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them, including terminating their selling accounts, deleting reviews, withholding funds, and taking legal action," Amazon added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google CEO Sundar Pichai thinks Android users have a good understanding of the volume of data Google collects on them, when they agree to use the Android mobile operating system. The exec, who is testifying today in front of the House Judiciary committee for a hearing entitled "Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use and Filtering Practices," claimed that users are in control of the information Google has on them. "For Google services, you have a choice of what information is collected, and we make it transparent," Pichai said in response to questioning from Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). Google's defense on the data collection front is similar to Facebook's -- that is, Pichai responded that Google provides tools that put users in control. But do they actually use them? "It's really important for us that average users are able to understand it," said Pichai, stating that users do understand the user agreement for Android OS. "We actually ... remind users to do a privacy checkup, and we make it very obvious every month. In fact, in the last 28 days, 160 million users went to their My Account settings, where they can clearly see what information we have -- we actually show it back to them. We give clear toggles, by category, where they can decide whether that information is collected, stored, or -- more importantly -- if they decide to stop using it, we work hard to make it possible for users to take their data with them," he said. When asked if Google could improve its user dashboard and tools to better teach people how to protect their privacy, including turning off data collection and location tracking, Pichai said "there's complexity," but it is "something I do think we can do better." He continued: "We want to simplify it, and make it easier for average users to navigate these settings. It's something we are working on."

dryriver writes: As anyone who buys professional computer monitors knows, the dynamic range of the display device you are looking at can be expressed quite usefully in terms of percentage sRGB coverage and percentage AdobeRGB coverage. The higher the percentage for each, the better and wider the dynamic range of the screen panel you are getting. People who work with professional video and photographs typically aim for a display that has 100 percent sRGB coverage and at least 70 to 80 percent AdobeRGB coverage. Laptop review site Notebookcheck for example uses professional optical testing equipment to check whether the advertised sRGB and AdobeRGB percentages and brightness in nits for any laptop display panel hold up in real life. This being the case, why do quote-unquote "High Dynamic Range" capable TVs -- which seem to be mostly 10 bits per channel to begin with -- not have an sRGB or AdobeRGB rating quoted anywhere in their technical specs? Why don't professional TV reviewers use optical testing equipment that's readily available to measure the real world dynamic range of HDR or non-HDR TVs objectively, in hard numbers? Why do they simply say "the blacks on this TV were deep and pleasing, and the lighter tones were..." when this can be expressed better and more objectively in measured numbers or percentages? Do they think consumers are too unsophisticated to understand a simple number like "this OLED TV achieves a fairly average 66 percent AdobeRGB coverage?"

A judge in Vancouver, British Columbia, has set a $7.5 million U.S. bail for Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested last week on suspicion of violating U.S. trade sanctions against Iran. "The United States had asked the Vancouver court to deny bail for Meng, whose father is a billionaire and a founder of Huawei, calling her a flight risk," reports CNBC. From the report: Canada has been expected to extradite Meng to the United States over charges that the company improperly took payments from Iran in violation of sanctions against the country. Meng's next moves will be closely watched, but it is likely with her corporate and family connections that she will be able to make bail. The $10 million CAD ($7.5 million USD) includes $7 million CAD ($5.2 million USD) cash and $3 million CAD ($2.2 million USD) more from five or more guarantors, presented by Meng and her attorney's as sureties that she would remain in the country. As conditions of the bail agreement, Meng must surrender her passports, wear a GPS tracking device and be accompanied by security detail whenever she leaves her residence.

The Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog, known as the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the majority of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents fail to delete the personal data they collect from travelers' devices. Last year alone, border agents searched through the electronic devices of more than 29,000 travelers coming into the country. "CBP officers sometimes upload personal data from those devices to Homeland Security servers by first transferring that data onto USB drives -- drives that are supposed to be deleted after every use," Gizmodo reports. From the report: Customs officials can conduct two kinds of electronic device searches at the border for anyone entering the country. The first is called a "basic" or "manual" search and involves the officer visually going through your phone, your computer or your tablet without transferring any data. The second is called an "advanced search" and allows the officer to transfer data from your device to DHS servers for inspection by running that data through its own software. Both searches are legal and don't require a warrant or even probable cause -- at least they don't according to DHS. It's that second kind of search, the "advanced" kind, where CBP has really been messing up and regularly leaving the personal data of travelers on USB drives. According to the new report [PDF]: "[The Office of the Inspector General] physically inspected thumb drives at five ports of entry. At three of the five ports, we found thumb drives that contained information copied from past advanced searches, meaning the information had not been deleted after the searches were completed. Based on our physical inspection, as well as the lack of a written policy, it appears [Office of Field Operations] has not universally implemented the requirement to delete copied information, increasing the risk of unauthorized disclosure of travelers' data should thumb drives be lost or stolen." The report also found that Customs officers "regularly failed to disconnect devices from the internet, potentially tainting any findings stored locally on the device." It also found that the officers had "inadequate supervision" to make sure they were following the rules. There's also a number of concerning redactions. For example, everything from what happens during an advanced search after someone crosses the border to the reason officials are allowed to conduct an advanced search at all has been redacted.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Verizon is conceding defeat on its crusade to turn a patchwork of dot-com-era businesses into a thriving online operation. The wireless carrier slashed the value of its AOL and Yahoo acquisitions by $4.6 billion, an acknowledgment that tough competition for digital advertising is leading to shortfalls in revenue and profit. The move will erase almost half the value of the division it had been calling Oath, which houses AOL, Yahoo and other businesses like the Huffington Post. The revision of the Oath division's accounting leaves its goodwill balance -- a measure of the intangible value of an acquisition -- at about $200 million, Verizon said in a filing Tuesday. The unit still has about $5 billion of assets remaining. Verizon also announced yesterday that 10,400 employees are taking buyouts to leave the company. The cuts are "part of an effort to trim the telecom giant's workforce ahead of its push toward 5G," TechCrunch reported.

A small Massachusetts town has rejected an offer from Comcast and instead plans to build a municipal fiber broadband network. From a report: Comcast offered to bring cable Internet to up to 96 percent of households in Charlemont in exchange for the town paying $462,123 plus interest toward infrastructure costs over 15 years. But Charlemont residents rejected the Comcast offer in a vote at a special town meeting Thursday. "The Comcast proposal would have saved the town about $1 million, but it would not be a town-owned broadband network," the Greenfield Recorder reported Friday. "The defeated measure means that Charlemont will likely go forward with a $1.4 million municipal town network, as was approved by annual town meeting voters in 2015." About 160 residents voted, with 56 percent rejecting the Comcast offer, according to news reports.

It's an ad duopoly battle. From a report: Facebook is starting to test search ads in its search results and Marketplace, directly competing with Google's AdWords. Facebook first tried Sponsored Results back in 2012 but eventually shut down the product in 2013. Now it's going to let a small set of automotive, retail, and ecommerce industry advertisers show users ads on the search results page on mobile in the US and Canada. They'll be repurposed News Feed ads featuring a headline, image, copy text, and a link in the static image or carousel format that can point users to external websites. Facebook declined to share screenshots as it says the exact design is still evolving. Facebook may expand search ads to more countries based on the test's performance.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted today that YouTube needs to do better in dealing with conspiracy content on its site that can lead to real-world violence. From a report: During his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee, the exec was questioned on how YouTube handles extremist content that promotes conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and, more recently, a Hillary Clinton-focused conspiracy theory dubbed Frazzledrip. According to an article in Monday's Washington Post, Frazzledrip is a variation on Pizzagate that began spreading on YouTube this spring. In a bizarre series of questions, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asked Pichai if he knew what Frazzledrip was. Pichai replied that he was "not aware of the specifics about it." Raskin went on to explain that the recommendation engine on YouTube has been suggesting videos that claim politicians, celebrities and other leading figures were "sexually abusing and consuming the remains of children, often in satanic rituals." He said these new conspiracist claims were echoing the discredited Pizzagate conspiracy, which two years ago led to a man firing shots into a Washington, D.C. pizzeria, in search of the children he believed were held as sex slaves by Democratic Party leaders.

Organizations desperate for software engineering talent tend to follow similar plays when it comes to attracting student developers about the enter the workforce, including offering perks like free food, beer, and ping pong. However, student developers have a much stronger appetite for other workplace elements when making employment decisions, according to a Tuesday report from HackerRank. From a news writeup: The three most important criteria students look for in job opportunities are professional growth and learning (58%), work/life balance (52%), and having interesting problems to solve (46%), according to a survey of 10,350 student developers worldwide. These far outpaced compensation (18%) and perks (11%), which they view as "nice to haves" rather than deal breakers, the survey found. For many student developers, a computer science degree is not enough to teach them the skills they will need in the workforce, the report found. Nearly two-thirds (65%) said they rely partially on self-teaching to learn to code, and 27% say they are totally self-taught. Only 32% said they were entirely taught at school, the survey found.

Starting Tuesday, Firefox will nudge you to try out options designed to make the web more interesting, more useful or more productive. From a report: Mozilla's new Firefox 64 keeps an eye on what you're up to and prompts you to try extensions and features that could help you with that activity, the browser maker said. For example, if you open the same tab lots of times, it could suggest you pin it to your tab strip for easier future access. Other suggestions include installing the Facebook Container extension to curtail the social network's snooping, a Google Translate extension to tap into Google's service, and the Enhancer for YouTube extension to do things like block ads and control playback on Google's video site. The feature could help you customize Firefox more to your liking -- something that could help you stick with the browser in the face of Google Chrome's dominance. And that, in turn, could help Mozilla pursue its push toward a privacy-respecting web that's not just effectively controlled by Chrome.

ESET researchers have discovered a new Android Trojan using a novel Accessibility-abusing technique that targets the official PayPal app, and is capable of bypassing PayPal's two-factor authentication. A report elaborates: At the time of writing, the malware is masquerading as a battery optimization tool, and is distributed via third-party app stores. After being launched, the malicious app terminates without offering any functionality and hides its icon. This video, courtesy of ESET, demonstrates the process in practice.