btp

The number of retractions issued for research articles in 2023 has passed 10,000 — smashing annual records — as publishers struggle to clean up a slew of sham papers and peer-review fraud. Among large research-producing nations, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia and China have the highest retraction rates over the past two decades, a Nature analysis has found.

The bulk of 2023’s retractions were from journals owned by Hindawi, a London-based subsidiary of the publisher Wiley (see ‘A bumper year for retractions’). So far this year, Hindawi journals have pulled more than 8,000 articles, citing factors such as “concerns that the peer review process has been compromised” and “systematic manipulation of the publication and peer-review process”, after investigations prompted by internal editors and by research-integrity sleuths who raised questions about incoherent text and irrelevant references in thousands of papers.

We answer the questions readers asked in response to our guide to anonymizing your phone

About the LevelUp series: At The Markup, we’re committed to doing everything we can to protect our readers from digital harm, write about the processes we develop, and share our work. We’re constantly working on improving digital security, respecting reader privacy, creating ethical and responsible user experiences, and making sure our site and tools are accessible.

This is a follow-up article. Here's the first piece, if you'd like to read that one as well

In one of the coolest and more outrageous repair stories in quite some time, three white-hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train’s manufacturer after an independent maintenance company worked on it. The train’s manufacturer is now threatening to sue the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it.

After breaking trains simply because an independent repair shop had worked on them, NEWAG is now demanding that trains fixed by hackers be removed from service.

In one of the coolest and more outrageous repair stories in quite some time, three white-hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train’s manufacturer after an independent maintenance company worked on it. The train’s manufacturer is now threatening to sue the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it.

After breaking trains simply because an independent repair shop had worked on them, NEWAG is now demanding that trains fixed by hackers be removed from service.

These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer.

The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.

https://micronews.debian.org/2023/1702150551.html

Due to an issue in ext4 with data corruption in kernel 6.1.64-1, we are pausing the 12.3 image release for today while we attend to fixes. Please do not update any systems at this time, we urge caution for users with UnattendedUpgrades configured. Please see bug# 1057843: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1057843

The Foundation supports challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that jeopardize Wikipedia's community-led governance model and the right to freedom of expression.

An amicus brief, also known as a “friend-of-the-court” brief, is a document filed by individuals or organizations who are not part of a lawsuit, but who have an interest in the outcome of the case and want to raise awareness about their concerns. The Wikimedia Foundation’s amicus brief calls upon the Supreme Court to strike down laws passed in 2021 by Texas and Florida state legislatures. Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 prohibit website operators from banning users or removing speech and content based on the viewpoints and opinions of the users in question.

“These laws expose residents of Florida and Texas who edit Wikipedia to lawsuits by people who disagree with their work,” said Stephen LaPorte, General Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. “For over twenty years, a community of volunteers from around the world have designed, debated, and deployed a range of content moderation policies to ensure the information on Wikipedia is reliable and neutral. We urge the Supreme Court to rule in favor of NetChoice to protect Wikipedia’s unique model of community-led governance, as well as the free expression rights of the encyclopedia’s dedicated editors.”

“The quality of Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia depends entirely on the ability of volunteers to develop and enforce nuanced rules for well-sourced, encyclopedic content,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation. “Without the discretion to make editorial decisions in line with established policies around verifiability and neutrality, Wikipedia would be overwhelmed with opinions, conspiracies, and irrelevant information that would jeopardize the project’s reason for existing.”

Sorbonne University has been deeply committed to the promotion and the development of open science for many years. According to its commitment to open research information, it has decided to discontinue its subscription to the Web of Science publication database and Clarivate bibliometric tools in 2024. By resolutely abandoning the use of proprietary bibliometric products, it is opening the way for open, free and participative tools.

The Breakthrough Listen search for intelligent life is, to date, the most extensive technosignature search of nearby celestial objects. We present a radio technosignature search of the centers of 97 nearby galaxies, observed by Breakthrough Listen at the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. We performed a narrowband Doppler drift search using the turboSETI pipeline with a minimum signal-to-noise parameter threshold of 10, across a drift rate range of $\pm$ 4 Hz\ $s^{-1}$, with a spectral resolution of 3 Hz and a time resolution of $\sim$ 18.25 s. We removed radio frequency interference by using an on-source/off-source cadence pattern of six observations and discarding signals with Doppler drift rates of 0. We assess factors affecting the sensitivity of the Breakthrough Listen data reduction and search pipeline using signal injection and recovery techniques and apply new methods for the investigation of the RFI environment. We present results in four frequency bands covering 1 -- 11 GHz, and place constraints on the presence of transmitters with equivalent isotropic radiated power on the order of $10^{26}$ W, corresponding to the theoretical power consumption of Kardashev Type II civilizations.

$8.2 Billion from the President’s Investing in America Agenda to Deliver Transformative Passenger Rail in America

President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda – a key pillar of Bidenomics – is delivering world class-infrastructure across the country, expanding access to economic opportunity, and creating good-paying jobs. By delivering $66 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak 50 years ago – President Biden is delivering on his vision to rebuild America and win the global competition for the 21st century.

ArsTechnica article on the letter. Just a short summary, with some more context on other works and investigations into the auto industry's privacy issues.

Does your company collect user data from its vehicles, including but not limited to the actions, behaviors, or personal information of any owner or user?
If so, please describe how your company uses data about owners and users collected from its vehicles. Please distinguish between data collected from users of your vehicles and data collected from those who sign up for additional services.
Please identify every source of data collection in your new model vehicles, including each type of sensor, interface, or point of collection from the individual and the purpose of that data collection.
Does your company collect more information than is needed to operate the vehicle and the services to which the individual consents?
Does your company collect information from passengers or people outside the vehicle? If so, what information and for what purposes?
Does your company sell, transfer, share, or otherwise derive commercial benefit from data collected from its vehicles to third parties? If so, how much did third parties pay your company in 2022 for that data?
Once your company collects this user data, does it perform any categorization or standardization procedures to group the data and make it readily accessible for third-party use?
Does your company use this user data, or data on the user acquired from other sources, to create user profiles of any sort?
How does your company store and transmit different types of data collected on the vehicle? Do your company’s vehicles include a cellular connection or Wi-Fi capabilities for transmitting data from the vehicle?
Does your company provide notice to vehicle owners or users of its data practices?
Does your company provide owners or users an opportunity to exercise consent with respect to data collection in its vehicles?
If so, please describe the process by which a user is able to exercise consent with respect to such data collection. If not, why not?
If users are provided with an opportunity to exercise consent to your company’s services, what percentage of users do so?
Do users lose any vehicle functionality by opting out of or refusing to opt in to data collection? If so, does the user lose access only to features that strictly require such data collection, or does your company disable features that could otherwise operate without that data collection?
Can all users, regardless of where they reside, request the deletion of their data? If so, please describe the process through which a user may delete their data. If not, why not?
Does your company take steps to anonymize user data when it is used for its own purposes, shared with service providers, or shared with non-service provider third parties? If so, please describe your company’s process for anonymizing user data, including any contractual restrictions on re-identification that your company imposes.
Does your company have any privacy standards or contractual restrictions for the third-party software it integrates into its vehicles, such as infotainment apps or operating systems? If so, please provide them. If not, why not?
Please describe your company’s security practices, data minimization procedures, and standards in the storage of user data.
Has your company suffered a leak, breach, or hack within the last ten years in which user data was compromised?
If so, please detail the event(s), including the nature of your company’s system that was exploited, the type and volume of data affected, and whether and how your company notified its impacted users.
Is all the personal data stored on your company’s vehicles encrypted? If not, what personal data is left open and unprotected? What steps can consumers take to limit this open storage of their personal information on their cars?
Has your company ever provided to law enforcement personal information collected by a vehicle?
If so, please identify the number and types of requests that law enforcement agencies have submitted and the number of times your company has complied with those requests.
Does your company provide that information only in response to a subpoena, warrant, or court order? If not, why not?
Does your company notify the vehicle owner when it complies with a request?