This map shows you how far you can travel from each station in Europe in less than 5 hours.
It is inspired by the great Direkt Bahn Guru. The data is based off of this site, which sources it from the Deutsch Bahn.
Hover your mouse over a station to see the isochrones from that city.
This assumes interchanges are 20 minutes, and transit between stations is a little over walking speed. Therefore, these should be interpreted as optimal travel times. The journeys might not exist when taking into account real interchange times.
In a paper appearing today in Science, the engineers present the design for a new ultrasound sticker — a stamp-sized device that sticks to skin and can provide continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs for 48 hours.
The researchers applied the stickers to volunteers and showed the devices produced live, high-resolution images of major blood vessels and deeper organs such as the heart, lungs, and stomach. The stickers maintained a strong adhesion and captured changes in underlying organs as volunteers performed various activities, including sitting, standing, jogging, and biking.
The current design requires connecting the stickers to instruments that translate the reflected sound waves into images. The researchers point out that even in their current form, the stickers could have immediate applications: For instance, the devices could be applied to patients in the hospital, similar to heart-monitoring EKG stickers, and could continuously image internal organs without requiring a technician to hold a probe in place for long periods of time.
If the devices can be made to operate wirelessly — a goal the team is currently working toward — the ultrasound stickers could be made into wearable imaging products that patients could take home from a doctor’s office or even buy at a pharmacy.
“We envision a few patches adhered to different locations on the body, and the patches would communicate with your cellphone, where AI algorithms would analyze the images on demand,” says the study’s senior author, Xuanhe Zhao, professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering at MIT. “We believe we’ve opened a new era of wearable imaging: With a few patches on your body, you could see your internal organs.”
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The MIT team’s new ultrasound sticker produces higher resolution images over a longer duration by pairing a stretchy adhesive layer with a rigid array of transducers. “This combination enables the device to conform to the skin while maintaining the relative location of transducers to generate clearer and more precise images.” Wang says.
The device’s adhesive layer is made from two thin layers of elastomer that encapsulate a middle layer of solid hydrogel, a mostly water-based material that easily transmits sound waves. Unlike traditional ultrasound gels, the MIT team’s hydrogel is elastic and stretchy.
“The elastomer prevents dehydration of hydrogel,” says Chen, an MIT postdoc. “Only when hydrogel is highly hydrated can acoustic waves penetrate effectively and give high-resolution imaging of internal organs.”
The bottom elastomer layer is designed to stick to skin, while the top layer adheres to a rigid array of transducers that the team also designed and fabricated. The entire ultrasound sticker measures about 2 square centimeters across, and 3 millimeters thick — about the area of a postage stamp.
The researchers ran the ultrasound sticker through a battery of tests with healthy volunteers, who wore the stickers on various parts of their bodies, including the neck, chest, abdomen, and arms. The stickers stayed attached to their skin, and produced clear images of underlying structures for up to 48 hours. During this time, volunteers performed a variety of activities in the lab, from sitting and standing, to jogging, biking, and lifting weights.
When activated, repair mode prevents a range of behaviors – from casual snooping to outright lifting of personal data – by blocking access to photos, messages, and account information.
The mode provides technicians with the access they require to make a fix, including the apps a user employs. But repairers won’t see user data in apps, so content like photos, texts and emails remains secure.
When users enable repair mode their device reboots. To exit, the user reboots again after logging in their normal way and turning the setting off.
Samsung said it is rolling out repair mode via software update, initially on the Galaxy S21 series within South Korea, with more models, and perhaps locations, getting the functionality over time.
Samsung has not explained how the feature works. Android devices already offer the chance to establish accounts for different users, so perhaps Samsung has created a role for repair technicians and made that easier to access.
Most repair technicians won’t want to view or steal a customer’s personal data – but it does happen.
Apple was forced to pay millions last year after two iPhone repair contractors allegedly stole and posted a woman’s nudes to the internet. That fiasco was in no way an isolated incident. In 2019 a Genius Bar employee allegedly texted himself explicit images taken from an iPhone he repaired and was subsequently fired.
Over the weekend, the Indonesian government began the task of blocking any website or service that had failed to register as part of new “internet control” laws. That ended up being a lot, including everything from Steam to the Epic Games Store to Nintendo Online to EA and Ubisoft’s platforms.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kominfo) took the steps after the introduction of strict new laws, which the government says is part of a crackdown on anything appearing online that is “deemed unlawful,” and which would require any online service platform or provider hosting any such “unlawful” content to remove it within 24 hours (or four if it is deemed to be “urgent”).
In order to abide by those laws, international companies operating in Indonesia needed to have signed up by the weekend, and unsurprisingly given the sweeping powers at play, many have chosen not to, at least for now. As a response, non-participating services have been blocked to Indonesian IPs, which means alongside wider, more mainstream companies like PayPal and Yahoo, a host of gaming platforms have also been cut off.
While PayPal was temporarily reinstated (in order to allow customers to get their money off the platform), the gaming stores and platforms have remained dark since the weekend (the new law’s registration deadline passed on July 27).
As Global Voices sums up, these laws have been opposed both within and outside of Indonesia since they were first announced:
The mandatory registration of private electronic systems operators (ESOs) is stipulated in the Ministerial Regulation 5 (MR5) issued in December 2020. Its amended version, Ministerial Regulation 10 (MR10), was released in May 2021.
Both MR5 and MR10 have been consistently opposed by the media, civil society groups, and human rights advocates for containing provisions that pose a threat to freedom of expression.
MR5 is deeply problematic, granting government authorities overly broad powers to regulate online content, access user data, and penalize companies that fail to comply…Ministerial Regulation 5 is a human rights disaster that will devastate freedom of expression in Indonesia, and should not be used in its current form.
While this isn’t a market that’s normally in the headlines, this is important news, because with its large population (at 270 million it’s the fourth most-populous nation on Earth) Indonesia is a huge market for online services. As The Diplomatpoints out, “Indonesia remains one of the largest internet markets in the world, with the third-largest population of Facebook users and also comes in the top 10 for users of YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp.”
None of the services currently affected are banned; they’re technically just restricted until either they sign up to Kominfo or the law is modified (or repealed). Some of the companies that have signed up include Google, Roblox and Riot Games (League of Legends, Valorant). And while direct access to services like Steam are currently not available, Indonesian gamers are already reportedly getting around this by using a VPN.
Hackers had access to dashboards used to remotely manage and control thousands of credit card payment terminals manufactured by digital payments giant Wiseasy, a cybersecurity startup told TechCrunch.
Wiseasy is a brand you might not have heard of, but it’s a popular Android-based payment terminal maker used in restaurants, hotels, retail outlets and schools across the Asia-Pacific region. Through its Wisecloud cloud service, Wiseeasy can remotely manage, configure and update customer terminals over the internet.
But Wiseasy employee passwords used for accessing Wiseasy’s cloud dashboards — including an “admin” account — were found on a dark web marketplace actively used by cybercriminals, according to the startup.
Youssef Mohamed, chief technology officer at pen-testing and dark web monitoring startup Buguard, told TechCrunch that the passwords were stolen by malware on the employee’s computers. Mohamed said two cloud dashboards were exposed, but neither were protected with basic security features, like two-factor authentication, and allowed hackers to access nearly 140,000 Wiseasy payment terminals around the world.
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Buguard said it first contacted Wiseasy about the compromised dashboards in early July, but efforts to disclose the compromise were met with meetings with executives that were later canceled without warning, and according to Mohamed, the company declined to say if or when the cloud dashboards would be secured.
Screenshots of the dashboards seen by TechCrunch show an “admin” user with remote access to Wiseasy payment terminals, including the ability to lock the device and remotely install and remove apps. The dashboard also allowed anyone to view names, phone numbers, email addresses and access permissions for Wiseasy dashboard users, including the ability to add new users.
Another dashboard view also shows the Wi-Fi name and plaintext password of the network that payment terminals are connected to.
Mohamed said anyone with access to the dashboards could control Wiseasy payment terminals and make configuration changes.
In a setback for Visa in a case alleging the payment processor is liable for the distribution of child pornography on Pornhub and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek, a federal judge ruled that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa knowingly facilitated the criminal activity.
On Friday, July 29, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California issued a decision in the Fleites v. MindGeek case, denying Visa’s motion to dismiss the claim it violated California’s Unfair Competition Law — which prohibits unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business acts and practices — by processing payments for child porn. (A copy of the decision is available at this link.)
In the ruling, Carney held that the plaintiff “adequately alleged” that Visa engaged in a criminal conspiracy with MindGeek to monetize child pornography. Specifically, he wrote, “Visa knew that MindGeek’s websites were teeming with monetized child porn”; that there was a “criminal agreement to financially benefit from child porn that can be inferred from [Visa’s] decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite allegedly knowing that MindGeek monetized a substantial amount of child porn”; and that “the court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn” by “knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime.”
“When MindGeek decides to monetize child porn, and Visa decides to continue to allow its payment network to be used for that goal despite knowledge of MindGeek’s monetization of child porn, it is entirely foreseeable that victims of child porn like plaintiff will suffer the harms that plaintiff alleges,” Carney wrote.
In a statement, a Visa spokesperson said: “Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company. This pre-trial ruling is disappointing and mischaracterizes Visa’s role and its policies and practices. Visa will not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity. We continue to believe that Visa is an improper defendant in this case.”
A rep for MindGeek provided this statement: “At this point in the case, the court has not yet ruled on the veracity of the allegations, and is required to assume all of the plaintiff’s allegations are true and accurate. When the court can actually consider the facts, we are confident the plaintiff’s claims will be dismissed for lack of merit. MindGeek has zero tolerance for the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history.”
The company’s statement continued, “We have banned uploads from anyone who has not submitted government-issued ID that passes third-party verification, eliminated the ability to download free content, integrated several leading technological platform and content moderation tools, instituted digital fingerprinting of all videos found to be in violation of our Non-Consensual Content and CSAM [child sexual abuse material] Policies to help protect against removed videos being reposted, expanded our moderation workforce and processes, and partnered with dozens of non-profit organizations around the world. Any insinuation that MindGeek does not take the elimination of illegal material seriously is categorically false.”
