Daily Archives: February 13, 2019

Finland basic income trial left people ‘happier but jobless’

Posted on by

Giving jobless people in Finland a basic income for two years did not lead them to find work, researchers said.

From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of €560 (£490; $634).

The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs, and support them if they had to take insecure gig economy work.

While employment levels did not improve, participants said they felt happier and less stressed.

When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits.

It immediately attracted international interest – but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.

[…]

Although it’s enjoying a resurgence in popularity, the idea isn’t new. In fact, it was first described in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516 – a full 503 years ago.

Such schemes are being trialled all over the world. Adults in a village in western Kenya are being given $22 a month for 12 years, until 2028, while the Italian government is working on introducing a “citizens’ income”. The city of Utrecht, in the Netherlands, is also carrying out a basic income study called Weten Wat Werkt – “Know What Works” – until October.

[…]

Did it help unemployed people in Finland find jobs, as the centre-right Finnish government had hoped? No, not really.

Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren’t given the money. They are still trying to work out exactly why this is, for the final report that will be published in 2020.

But for many people, the original goal of getting people into work was flawed to begin with. If instead the aim were to make people generally happier, the scheme would have been considered a triumph.

[…]

Researchers from Kela are now busy analysing all of their results, to figure out what else – if anything – they can tell us about basic income’s uses and shortcomings.

Mr Simanainen says that he doesn’t like to think of the trial as having “failed”.

From his point of view, “this is not a failure or success – it is a fact, and [gives us] new information that we did not have before this experiment”.

Source: Finland basic income trial left people ‘happier but jobless’ – BBC News

Researchers Developed a Technique to Turn Nearly a Quarter of Our Plastic Waste into Fuel

Posted on by

A team of chemists at Purdue may have found a partial solution to our plastic woes. As detailed in a paper published this week in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, the chemists discovered a way to convert polypropylene—a type of plastic commonly used in toys, medical devices, and product packaging like potato chip bags—into gasoline and diesel-like fuel. The researchers said that this fuel is pure enough to be used as blendstock, a main component of fuel used in motorized vehicles.

Polypropylene waste accounts for just under a quarter of the estimated 5 billion tons of plastic that have amassed in the world’s landfills in the last 50 years.

To turn polypropylene into fuel, the researchers used supercritical water, a phase of water that demonstrates characteristics of both a liquid and a gas depending on the pressure and temperature conditions. Purdue chemist Linda Wang and her colleagues heated water to between 716 and 932 degrees Fahrenheit at pressures approximately 2300 times greater than the atmospheric pressure at sea level.

When purified polypropylene waste was added to the supercritical water, it was converted into oil within in a few hours, depending on the temperature. At around 850 degrees Fahrenheit, the conversion time was lowered to under an hour.

The byproducts of this process include gasoline and diesel-like oils. According to the researchers, their conversion process could be used to convert roughly 90 percent of the world’s polypropylene waste each year into fuel.

Source: Researchers Developed a Technique to Turn Nearly a Quarter of Our Plastic Waste into Fuel – Motherboard

QNAP NAS user? You’d better check your hosts file for mystery anti-antivirus entries

Posted on by

Network attached storage maker QNAP’s customers have reported being hit by a mystery issue that disables software updates by hijacking entries in host machines’ hosts file.

The full effects are, as yet, unknown – but users have reported that the most visible symptom is that some 700 entries are added to the /etc/hosts file that redirect a bunch of requests to IP address 0.0.0.0.

This, said forlorn QNAP forum user ianch99, stopped his antivirus from updating by sinkholing all of the software’s requests to the vendor’s website. Others reported that the Taiwanese NAS appliance maker’s own MalwareRemover was borked, though it is not known whether these two things are linked.

“If you remove these entries, the update runs fine but they return on after rebooting,” posted ianch99. So far the only cure appeared to be a script provided by QNAP itself, which one helpful Reddit user posted the link to after apparently being given it by one of the storage firm’s techie in live chat.

Other users publicly wondered about the QNAP’s seeming reluctance to say anything about the issue, with a Reg reader telling us: “The wider QNAP-using population could perhaps do with a heads-up from your esteemed organ.”

QNAP failed to respond when The Register asked the company to comment on these goings-on, and has made no public statement at the time of writing.

A couple of years ago firmware from the Taiwanese headquartered biz was discovered to have a catastrophic bug that corrupted data on RAID drives during a rebuild “through faulty calculations”. It was eventually patched.

Source: QNAP NAS user? You’d better check your hosts file for mystery anti-antivirus entries • The Register

Android phones can be hacked remotely by viewing malicious PNG image

Posted on by

Your Android could be pwned by simply viewing an innocent-looking image – be it from browsing the internet or an image received via text – according to the Android Security Bulletin issued this month. While this certainly doesn’t apply to all images, Google discovered that a maliciously crafted PNG image could be used to hijack a wide variety of Androids – those running Android Nougat (7.0), Oreo (8.0), and even the latest Android OS Pie (9.0).

The latest bulletin lists 42 vulnerabilities in total – 11 of which are rated as critical. The most severe critical flaw is in Framework; it “could enable a remote attacker using a specially crafted PNG file to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process.”

Although Google had no report of the security flaws being actively exploited, it remains to be seen if and how long it will take before attackers use the flaw for real-world attacks. Android owners were urged to patch as soon as security updates becomes available. But let’s get real: Even if your Android still receives security updates, there’s no telling how long it will be (weeks or months) before manufacturers and carriers get it together to push out the patches.

Source: Android phones can be hacked remotely by viewing malicious PNG image | CSO Online

The most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in Framework that could allow a remote attacker using a specially crafted PNG file to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process.

Source: https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2019-02-01.html

Tencent-backed AI firm aims to free up parents and teachers from checking children’s maths homework – and analyses most common mistakes countrywide

Posted on by

a Beijing-based online education start-up has developed an artificial intelligence-powered maths app that can check children’s arithmetic problems through the simple snap of a photo. Based on the image and its internal database, the app automatically checks whether the answers are right or wrong.

Known as Xiaoyuan Kousuan, the free app launched by the Tencent Holdings-backed online education firm Yuanfudao, has gained increasing popularity in China since its launch a year ago and claims to have checked an average of 70 million arithmetic problems per day, saving users around 40,000 hours of time in total.

Yuanfudao is also trying to build the country’s biggest education-related database generated from the everyday experiences of real students. Using this, the six-year-old company – which has a long line of big-name investors including Warburg Pincus, IDG Capital and Matrix Partners China – aims to reinvent how children are taught in China.

“By checking nearly 100 million problems every day, we have developed a deep understanding of the kind of mistakes students make when facing certain problems,” said Li Xin, co-founder of Yuanfudao – which means “ape tutor” in Chinese – in a recent interview. “The data gathered through the app can serve as a pillar for us to provide better online education courses.”

Source: Tencent-backed AI firm aims to free up parents and teachers from checking children’s maths homework | South China Morning Post

Ubisoft And Mozilla Announce A.I. Coding Assistant Clever-Commit

Posted on by

Video game publisher Ubisoft is working with Mozilla to develop an artificial intelligence coding assistant called Clever-Commit, head of Ubisoft La Forge Yves Jacquier announced during DICE Summit 2019 on Tuesday.

Clever-Commit reportedly helps programmers evaluate whether or not a code change will introduce a new bug by learning from past bugs and fixes. The prototype, called Commit-Assistant, was tested using data collected during game development, Ubisoft said, and it’s already contributing to some major AAA titles. The publisher is also working on integrating it into other brands.

“Working with Mozilla on Clever-Commit allows us to support other programming languages and increase the overall performances of the technology. Using this tech in our games and Firefox will allow developers to be more productive as they can spend more time creating the next feature rather than fixing bugs. Ultimately, this will allow us to create even better experiences for our gamers and increase the frequency of our game updates,” said Mathieu Nayrolles, technical architect, data scientist, and member of the Technological Group at Ubisoft Montreal.

Mozilla is assisting Ubisoft by providing programming language expertise in Rust, C++, and Javascript. The technology will also help the company ship more stable versions of its Firefox internet browser.

Source: Ubisoft And Mozilla Announce A.I. Coding Assistant Clever-Commit – Variety

One click and you’re out: UK makes it an offence to view terrorist propaganda even once

Posted on by

It will be an offence to view terrorist material online just once – and could incur a prison sentence of up to 15 years – under new UK laws.

The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill was granted Royal Assent yesterday, updating a previous Act and bringing new powers to law enforcement to tackle terrorism.

But a controversial inclusion was to update the offence of obtaining information “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism” so that it now covers viewing or streaming content online.

The rules as passed into law are also a tightening of proposals that had already been criticised by human rights groups and the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Max Hill.

Originally, the proposal had been to make it an offence for someone to view material three or more times – but the three strikes idea has been dropped from the final Act.

The law has also increased the maximum penalty for some types of preparatory terrorism offences, including the collection of terrorist information, to 15 years’ imprisonment.

[…]

In the summer, when the proposals were for multiple clicks, terrorism law reviewer Max Hill (no relation to your correspondent) told the Joint Committee on Human Rights that the “the mesh of the net the government is creating… is far too fine and will catch far too many people”.

He also pointed out that the offence could come with a long sentence as the draft bill also extends the maximum penalties to 15 years’ imprisonment.

Corey Stoughton of rights campaigner Liberty echoed these concerns, and said the law should not cover academics and journalists, but should also exempt people who were viewing to gain a better understanding of the issues, or did so “out of foolishness or poor judgement”.

The UN’s special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, has also slammed the plans, saying the rule risked “pushing a bit too much towards thought crime”.

At an event during his visit to the UK, Cannataci said “the difference between forming the intention to do something and then actually carrying out the act is still fundamental to criminal law… here you’re saying: ‘You’ve read it three times so you must be doing something wrong’.”

The government said the law still provides for the existing “reasonable excuse defence”, which includes circumstances where a person “did not know, and had no reason to believe” the material acccessed contained terrorist propaganda.

“Once a defendant has raised this defence, the burden of proof (to the criminal standard) to disprove this defence will rest with the prosecution,” the Home Office’s impact assessment said.

Source: One click and you’re out: UK makes it an offence to view terrorist propaganda even once