Daily Archives: September 27, 2020

Formula 1 drivers told they cannot wear slogans or messages in post-race duties

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Formula 1 drivers have been told they cannot wear clothing bearing any slogans or messages while doing official duties after grands prix.

The move is a reaction to Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton wearing a T-shirt at the last race in Tuscany referencing the case of a woman killed by US police.

The FIA said podium finishers “must remain attired only in their driving suits done up to the neck”.

This must be the case throughout the podium ceremony and interviews.

The requirements include a “medical face mask or team-branded face mask”.

The move had been expected after talks between the FIA, Mercedes and Hamilton’s representatives before this weekend’s Russian Grand Prix.

At Mugello, Hamilton wore a T-shirt saying: “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor” at the official pre-race anti-racism demonstration and on the podium and during the post-race interviews.

He had previously worn a Black Lives Matter T-shirt for the demonstration, but not after the race, while other drivers wore the FIA official “End Racism” T-shirts.

The FIA looked into whether they should investigate Hamilton on the grounds of breaking any rules, but decided against it.

Political messages have long been banned on the podium in F1.

Hamilton said at the Russian Grand Prix: “I did something that has never really happened in F1 and obviously they will stop it from happening moving forwards.”

[…]

Source: Formula 1 drivers told they cannot wear slogans or messages in post-race duties – BBC Sport

New measurements show moon has hazardous radiation levels

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Future moon explorers will be bombarded with two to three times more radiation than astronauts aboard the International Space Station, a health hazard that will require thick-walled shelters for protection, scientists reported Friday.

China’s lander on the far side of the moon is providing the first full measurements of radiation exposure from the lunar surface, vital information for NASA and others aiming to send astronauts to the moon, the study noted.

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Astronauts would get 200 to 1,000 times more radiation on the moon than what we experience on Earth—or five to 10 times more than passengers on a trans-Atlantic airline flight, noted Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.

“The difference is, however, that we’re not on such a flight for as long as astronauts would be when they’re exploring the moon,” Wimmer-Schweingruber said in an email.

Cancer is the primary risk.

“Humans are not really made for these radiation levels and should protect themselves when on the moon,” he added.

[…]

Wimmer-Schweingruber said the radiation levels are close to what models had predicted. The levels measured by Chang’e 4, in fact, “agree nearly exactly” with measurements by a detector on a NASA orbiter that has been circling the moon for more than a decade, said Kerry Lee, a space radiation expert at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“It is nice to see confirmation of what we think and our understanding of how radiation interacts with the moon is as expected,” said Lee, who was not involved in the Chinese-led study.

[…]

The German researchers suggest shelters built of moon dirt—readily available material—for stays of more than a few days. The walls should be 80 centimeters (about 2 1/2 feet) thick, they said. Any thicker and the dirt will emit its own secondary radiation, created when galactic cosmic rays interact with the lunar soil.

Source: New measurements show moon has hazardous radiation levels

China says it won’t approve TikTok sale, calls it ‘extortion’. Finally someone calling it what it is.

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The September 20 deadline for a purported TikTok sale has already passed, but the parties involved have yet to settle terms on the deal. ByteDance and TikTok’s bidders Oracle and Walmart presented conflicting messages on the future ownership of the app, confusing investors and users. Meanwhile, Beijing’s discontent with the TikTok sale is increasingly obvious.

China has no reason to approve the “dirty” and “unfair” deal that allows Oracle and Walmart to effectively take over TikTok based on “bullying and extortion,” slammed an editorial published Wednesday in China Daily, an official English-language newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.

The editorial argued that TikTok’s success — a projected revenue of about a billion dollars by the end of 2020 — “has apparently made Washington feel uneasy” and prompted the U.S. to use “national security as the pretext to ban the short video sharing app.”

The official message might stir mixed feelings within ByteDance, which has along the way tried to prove its disassociation from the Chinese authority, a precondition for the companies’ products to operate freely in Western countries.

Beijing has already modified a set of export rules to complicate the potential TikTok deal, restricting the sale of certain AI-technologies to foreign companies. Both ByteDance and China’s state media have said the agreement won’t involve technological transfers.

The Trump administration said it would ban downloads of TikTok, which boasts 100 million users in the country, if an acceptable deal was not reached. It also planned to shut down Tencent’s WeChat, a decision that just got blocked by a district court in San Francisco.

TikTok has collected nearly 198 million App Store and Google Play installs in the U.S., while WeChat has been installed by nearly 22 million users in the U.S. since 2014, according to market research firm Sensor Tower. Unlike TikTok, which has a far-reaching user base in the U.S., WeChat is mainly used by Chinese-speaking communities or those with connections in China, where the messenger is the dominant chat app and most Western alternatives are blocked.

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Source: China says it won’t approve TikTok sale, calls it ‘extortion’ | TechCrunch

Ex-eBay global intel staffers to admit they cyberstalked online tat bazaar’s critics – who got pig heads, funeral wreath, and more in the mail

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Four of the seven former eBay employees charged with cyberstalking a couple critical of the web auction house are scheduled to plead guilty next month.

In June, the US Justice Department charged six former staffers – director of safety and security James Baugh, 45, of San Jose, California; director of global resiliency David Harville, 48, of New York City; manager of global intelligence Stephanie Stockwell, 26, of Redwood City, California; and eBay Global Intelligence Center staffers Stephanie Popp, 32, Veronica Zea, 26, and Brian Gilbert, 51, all of San Jose – with conspiring to commit cyberstalking and tamper with witnesses.

The US Attorney’s Office of Massachusetts on Wednesday said four former eBay employees charged in that case plan to admit guilt at a video conference hearing scheduled for October 8, 2020.

A spokesperson for the USAO of Massachusetts confirmed to The Register the four individuals are Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Popp, Stephanie Stockwell, and Veronica Zea. The cases against the two most senior executives in the group, Harville and Baugh, remain ongoing; both deny the accusations.

In July, a seventh former eBay employee, former Santa Clara police captain Philip Cooke, 55, who oversaw security operations at eBay’s offices in Europe and Asia, was charged separately for alleged involvement in the harassment campaign.

The defendants are said [PDF] to have participated in a concerted effort to intimidate and silence a husband and wife team who run an ecommerce-focused newsletter and blog in a campaign last year.

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it describes a harassment effort that consisted, among other things, of sending the newsletter publishers live cockroaches, the head of a fetal pig, a funeral wreath, a mask of a bloody pig’s head, and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse.

Unasked

Bloomberg suggests the recipient of that text message, “Executive 1,” is former CEO David Wenig, based on the similarity between a newsletter article quoted in the complaint, “eBay RICO Lawsuit Meant to Curb Seller Exodus to Amazon?” and an article with the same headline on the EcommerceBytes Blog that refers to Wenig.

The affidavit outlining the case cites text identical to the online article except that it replaces “eBay CEO” with “[Executive 1]”. Wenig has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Source: Ex-eBay global intel staffers to admit they cyberstalked online tat bazaar’s critics – who got pig heads, funeral wreath, and more in the mail • The Register

A New Version of Microsoft Office Without a Subscription Launches in 2021

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Subscriptions may be ideal for certain services such as Netflix, with its constant flow of new content, but for a suite of tools like Microsoft Office? Paying every month doesn’t suit everyone, especially if all they want is access to the word processor and spreadsheet. Thankfully, a new perpetual license edition of the suite arrives next year.

Microsoft clearly pushes an Office subscription as the best way to access its always up-to-date suite of tools and services, while those who just want to buy a copy outright and use it for years to come are still using Office 2019, which released back in 2018. It was unclear whether 2019 would ever be replaced, but as spotted by Windows Central, Microsoft quietly confirmed in a news post by the Exchange team that “Microsoft Office will also see a new perpetual release for both Windows and Mac, in the second half of 2021.”

There’s no details regarding the name, price, or availability of this new version

Source: A New Version of Microsoft Office Without a Subscription Launches in 2021 | PCMag