● [Tech] Protests greet Brussels copyright reform plan. ︴ ︴

▼ Opponents of proposed European copyright reforms are stepping up efforts to convince politicians to vote against the measures. The vote on the Copyright Directive comes before the European Parliament on 20 June. It aims to rebalance copyright controls for the net age but critics say it will stifle freedom of expression. Net veterans have signed an open letter against the directive and others have made tools to aid lobbying efforts. Lobbying call The wide-ranging directive has emerged from a process started in 2014 to "modernise" copyright rules so they support what people do online and make it easier for some organisations, such as schools, to use protected material. Article 13 of the Copyright Directive has given rise to the most protests. Critics say this requires web services to filter everything people put online to ensure what they post does not impinge on any copyrighted material. Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, net pioneer Vint Cerf, Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia, and many others sent an open letter to the European Union this week urging it to scrap the article. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Tech] At E3, video gaming's bigots have lost. ︴ ︴

▼ Four years ago a row hit the games industry like an atomic bomb. The treatment of women, within both the industry and the games themselves, was being scrutinised like never before. And, as journalists predicted that “gamers are over”, an angry, and at times vicious, movement emerged: Gamergate. Supporters of Gamergate would say it was about “ethics in games journalism”. But it was quite openly more often than not about something else: women, minorities and hatred of so-called “social justice warriors” - the “SJWs” - as if social justice was something to be avoided. It was a row that would go on to consume lives and careers, creating celebrities of likes of Milo Yiannopoulos as it went. In many respects, Gamergate was a dress rehearsal for what we refer to today as the alt-right. I'd been at E3 in June 2014, just before Gamergate really took hold. And in summing up that year's show, I concluded that the industry still had a problem with women, despite a new momentum and demands for progress. The show's lowest moment was in learning that that year's new Assassin's Creed game would have four playable characters - all of them male. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Tech] Google diversity figures show little change. ︴ ︴

▼ A new report from Google has revealed that little has changed despite a commitment to increasing diversity among staff employed by the tech giant. Overall nearly 70% of Google staff were men, as has been the case since 2014. In the US almost 90% were white or Asian, 2.5% were black and 3.6% Latin American. The figures also showed that black and Latin American employees had the highest attrition rate in 2017 - those choosing to leave. "....despite significant effort, and some pockets of success, we need to do more to achieve our desired diversity and inclusion outcomes," wrote Danielle Brown, diversity vice-president, in the report. Ms Brown said the firm would increase transparency and include senior leaders in diversity-related work in order to try to drive progress. Other figures from the report included: *.Just over 25% of leaders were women in 2018, up nearly 5% since 2014. *.Of the overall US staff hired in 2017, 31.2% were women, although this dropped to 24.5% for tech new recruits (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Tech Tent - the bumpy road to self-driving cars. ︴ ︴

▼ On Tech Tent this week, we take a closer look at driverless cars and explore the tricky transition period where drivers may not be sure exactly who is controlling a vehicle. This video which shows the dangers of relying too much on Tesla's Autopilotsystem to cope with every situation, has proved very popular with readers. *. Streamor downloadthe latest Tech Tentpodcast *.Listen live every Friday at 15:00 GMT on the BBC World Service The video illustrates a wider point about the messy middle part of the journey to fully autonomous cars, where the motorist can be assisted by new features but needs to stay alert. Matthew Avery, of Thatcham Research, tells us that drivers are being misled into thinking these semi-autonomous cars can cope with any situation: "We're hearing about autonomous cars being available today and that's simply not true. What we've actually got is driver assistance systems." Frank Chen is an optimist about self-driving cars - he's a partner at the ritzy Silicon venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz which is investing heavily in this area: "Self-driving cars are going to rewire our planet," he tells us. "They're going to remake our cities, they're going to eliminate traffic accidents." (▪ ▪ ▪)

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[i=s] Editado por Pedro_P en 15-6-2018 08:04 PM *

● [Science] Black Holes Could Actually Be Colliding Wormholes. ︴ ︴

▼ A conceptual vision of a wormhole. Could black holes actually be colliding wormholes? A new theory says maybe. Credit: Shutterstock When two wormholes collide, they could produce ripples in space-time that ricochet off themselves. Future instruments could detect these gravitational "echoes," providing evidence that these hypothetical tunnels through space-time actually exist, a new paper suggests. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has already detected space-time ripples, called gravitational waves, emanating from merging black holes — discoveries that led to the Nobel Prize in 2017. But while LIGO's detection was just one of many observations supporting the existence of black holes, these exotic objects still pose theoretical problems. For instance, they seem to be inconsistent with the laws of quantum mechanics. One way to resolve these problems is if black holes were actually wormholes. Point of no return One of the main features of black holes is the event horizon, a region of space-time beyond which nothing can escape, not even light. If you throw anything into a black hole, it's lost forever — to an extent. Stephen Hawkingdiscovered that, thanks to a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, black holes could actually produce a tiny bit of radiation, which would come to be known as Hawking radiation. Over a long time, black holes could even evaporate away due to this radiation. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Work starts to upgrade Large Hadron Collider. ︴ ︴

▼ Work has begun on a major upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle smasher. The High-Luminosity LHC will make it possible to study the fundamental building blocks of matter in more detail than ever before. Cern, the organisation that operates the LHC, held a ground-breaking ceremony on Friday to mark the beginning of civil engineering works. The vast LHC is housed beneath the French-Swiss border, near Geneva. The upgrade will boost the accelerator's potential for new discoveries in physics, starting in 2026. "The HiLumi project will allow us to get a lot more out of the LHC than we have been able to get so far," said theoretical physicist Prof John Ellis. "It's going to enable us to probe much deeper into the history of the Universe, look at very rare processes and study particle physics in much more detail than the regular LHC." (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Russia floats new nuclear power station—and new risks As world-first platform makes its way east, international watchdogs raise concerns. ︴ ︴

▼ The beginning of towing of FPU ‘Academik Lomonosov’ to Pevek. rosatom.ru The world’s first commercial floating nuclear power station—a 21,500-metric-ton Russian vessel called theAkademik Lomonosov—is slowly making its way across the Arctic Ocean, on a multi-stage trip to its final destination in eastern Russia. People are not happy about it. Environmental and nuclear watchdogs worry the station could hit an iceberg and sink while crossing the Arctic, spilling nuclear fuel into the fragile northern ecosystem. Or it could run aground, fouling the landscape, or be tossed by waves in a storm, or even—once installed in the remote coastal town of Pevek, 53 miles across the Bering Strait from Alaska—be attacked by terrorists or fail for any number of other reasons. One need only look at Japan’s Fukushima plantto see that water and nukes don’t always mix. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Stars turn out for Stephen Hawking memorial at Westminster Abbey. ︴ ︴

▼ Tributes have been paid to renowned physicist Prof Stephen Hawking in a Westminster Abbey memorial service. British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Hawking in a BBC drama, and astronaut Tim Peake were among those giving readings at the ceremony. Prof Hawking died in March, aged 76, after a long battle with motor neurone disease. His ashes are being buried alongside other great scientists like Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] A Major Mediterranean Diet Study Was Retracted. But Do Docs Still Recommend It? ︴ ︴

▼ A landmark study on the benefits of the Mediterranean diet for heart health had serious problems with its methods, the study's authors announced this week. The problems were so critical that the researchers retracted their original paper — a rigorously designed study first published in 2013 in The New England Journal of Medicine that found that following a Mediterranean diet reduced the risk of heart attacksand strokes. In its place, the authors have published a reanalysisof their data in the same journal on June 13, which they say accounts for the methodology problems and comes to the same conclusion as the original. But in light of the problems with the original study, do doctors still recommend that people follow a Mediterranean dietto protect their hearts? Some experts say that despite the study's problems, there's already a lot of other research showing the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, and so they'd continue to recommend the diet. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [International News] US child migrants: 2,000 separated from families in six weeks. ︴ ︴ 

▼ Almost 2,000 migrant children were separated from their families at the US border over six weeks, officials say. Following a Trump administration crackdown on illegal border crossings from Mexico, adults are being detained, meaning the children with them are removed from their care. The issue is causing a growing political storm in the US. It means that those entering the US irregularly are criminally prosecuted, a change to a long-standing policy of charging most of those crossing for the first time with a misdemeanour offence. As the adults are being charged with a crime and detained, the children that travel with them are being separated and classed as unaccompanied minors. What do we know about the children? Figures from the US Department of Homeland Security show that 1,995 children were separated from 1,940 adults who are being held between 19 April and 31 May.(▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [International News] Kashmir editor shot dead in Srinagar alongside bodyguards Shujaat Bukhari, 50, first journalist to be killed in 12 years in disputed region. ︴ ︴

▼ Shujaat Bukhari and his bodyguards were shot dead by three men on a motorcycle. Photograph: STRINGER/EPA A leading journalist and editor who worked for peace in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmirhas been shot dead along with his bodyguards. Shujaat Bukhari had just left the Srinagar city office of his newspaper, Rising Kashmir, on Thursday when three men on a motorcycle fired at him and his two guards, police said. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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