Cambridge's far-right local government is trying to cull the social worker population. 

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A viral video shared on X claims the Italian Minister purportedly hung a Palestinian flag on the Milan Cathedral. Liberal Italian Minister hangs Palestinian flag on from the 800 year old Milan Cathedral. This is an insult and disrespectful. pic.twitter.com/nmmFPVhoqE — Klaus Arminius (@Klaus_Arminius) June 5, 2024 Verdict: Misleading According to a June 5 live […]

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. SimpleX – an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that its founder touts as the first and possibly the only one that operates without any identifiers – has rolled out a new version. The messaging and application platform, which those developing it say doesn’t even use random numbers or cryptographic keys to identify user profiles (in addition to not requiring phone numbers and usernames) has several new features in version 5.8 that was released earlier this month. Related: No Phone Numbers. No Usernames. A Possible Game-Changer For Private Messaging. The focus of the upgrade has been to enhance the product by tackling one segment of user privacy protection that had not been properly addressed, despite the effort to eschew various kinds of identifiers. That segment has to do with message routing and IP addresses. In different scenarios, recipients were able to see and track IP addresses of senders – a major drawback and criticism received by this privacy and security-focused app. Using a VPN or Tor was a transport overlay network workaround, but SimpleX developers opted out of now embedding Tor in the app, despite the many similarities they share through incorporating various methods of IP address protection. The reasons for this decision are primarily some of the habitually weak points of Tor, such as latency, the resources it uses, and error rates. On top of that, there are jurisdictions around the world that ban or restrict the use of this particular overlay network. Importantly, perhaps, as the post notes, Tor “doesn’t solve the problem of meta-data correlation by user’s transport session” – and working around this problem requires even more resources. For that reason, SimpleX, while announcing plans to continue to support Tor and other overlay networks, opted for a new private message routing protocol that “provides IP address and transport session protection out of the box.” According to SimpleX, while building on the Tor design, this new method means that the forwarding relay is always chosen by the sender and the second by the recipient. “In this way, neither side of the conversation can observe IP address or transport session of another,” the post explained. Another advantage of the new protocol is the forwarding relay preventing man-in-the-middle attacks, via cryptographic signing that allows the client to “verify that the messages are sent to the intended destination, and not intercepted.” Other new features include customizable Android and desktop themes and more group options that allow sending images, files, and media, “and also SimpleX links only to group administrators and owners.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post SimpleX Introduces Enhanced IP Privacy Measures appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Revealed: Patagonia and Its Tie to a Group Connected to Palestinian Terrorism

Just over a year ago, people across this planet received a challenge from the heavens: Solve an encoded message. The message was created by Daniela de Paulis, Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute. The goal was to simulate an alien signal – and despite its earthly creation, it really came from another planet.The project, A Sign In Space, was sent from the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on May 24 at 7 pm UTC, and received 16 minutes later by the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope at the Green Bank Observatory, and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station observatory. Over four thousand people worldwide joined the quest to decode the message.On June 7, the correct solution was finally presented to De Paulis by John and Sarah (made-up names), who are father and daughter. They looked at the encrypted message considering the possibility that it had a connection with a renowned computation model called the cellular automaton. Conway’s Game of Life is a popular version of this model.In this model, pixels can be considered "alive" or "dead" and evolve under specific rules. The model can create complex scenario that evolve from basic rules, and it was used to go from the whole seemingly meaningless message full of one and zeros (alive or dead pixels) to suddenly finding something with meaning.They used the Unity game engine and put the message through 6,625 transformations to turn the binary message into something that was intelligible. It turned out to be an image of five amino acids. These crucial life molecules are represented by blocks of different number of pixels. One for hydrogen, six for carbon, seven for nitrogen, and eight for oxygen.This is not the end of the experiment that mixes science and art – De Paulis envisioned the challenge as a way to mimic what humanity will face in the event of receiving an alien signal. There will be the understanding of what the communication is in the first place, the part solved by John and Sarah. Now comes the interpretation: What does the signal mean? Why these five amino acids in particular?           De Paulis is inviting more people to join the Discord server that has been used as a hub for the decoding and discussion surrounding the signal. Since last year, there have been over 54,000 messages related to the project, and the project team hopes that many more people joins the thousands already there to discuss, opine, and propose possible meanings of the signal from space.  

Being born a twin was bad news if you happened to live in ancient Mayan times, as the iconic civilization apparently had a thing for sacrificing relatives, including identical siblings – and especially if they were boys. At the world-famous site of Chichén Itzá in southern Mexico, researchers have just identified the remains of 64 children who were ceremonially dispatched over a period of 500 years, revealing that all were male and several were likely selected due to their close biological kinship with one another.A major seat of power in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, Chichén Itzá is notorious for its bloody traditions, with hundreds of ritually executed children and adolescents having previously been found in a natural sinkhole known as the Sacred Cenote. The majority of these were identified as girls, leading to the theory that the ancient city’s inhabitants were fixated on female sacrifice, although the new research indicates that they had no problem with killing young boys too.The unfortunate lads were laid to rest in an underground water cistern known as a chultun, which was first discovered by archaeologists in 1967. In total, 106 children were found in the chamber, and the authors of the new study were able to retrieve and analyze DNA from 64 of these.In doing so, they discovered that all were male and that around a quarter were closely related to at least one other person within the chultun – including two sets of identical twins. “As such twins occur spontaneously in only 0.4 percent of the general population, the presence of two sets of identical twins in the chultún is much higher than would be expected by chance,” write the authors.Radiocarbon dating indicated that the bones were interred between the 7th and 12th centuries, although the majority were deposited during Chichén Itzá's 200-year heyday, from roughly 800 to 1000 CE. Isotopic analysis, meanwhile, revealed that related pairs of sacrificial boys shared the same diet, suggesting they probably lived together in the same household.It’s unclear exactly why twins and other close relatives were chosen, although the researchers note that identical brothers feature prominently in ancient Maya mythology. In particular, the sacred K’iche’ Mayan Book of Council – or Popol Vuh – recounts the story of the “Hero Twins” Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who do battle with the gods through repeated cycles of sacrifice and resurrection, and the slaughter of twin boys at Chichen Itzá may well have represented a ritual enactment of these mythic adventures.“The similar ages and diets of the male children, their close genetic relatedness, and the fact that they were interred in the same place for more than 200 years point to the chultún as a post-sacrificial burial site, with the sacrificed individuals having been selected for a specific reason,” said study author Oana Del Castillo-Chávez in a statement.Genetic continuity between the ancient children and present-day Maya communities, meanwhile, indicates that the victims were locals rather than foreigners. At the same time, the researchers gained insight into the lasting impact of disease epidemics caused by early contact with European conquistadores.It’s thought that these outbreaks during the 16th century ravaged Indigenous populations, with declines of up to 90 percent in some places. The most severe of these was the 1545 cocoliztli pandemic, which was caused by the pathogen Salmonella enterica Paratyphi C.Comparing modern Maya genomes with the DNA of the sacrificed boys, the researchers found evidence of positive selection in immunity-related genes that provide protection against Salmonella. This indicates that the survivors of these colonial-era pandemics may have been genetically adapted to withstand certain illnesses, later passing on genes that became ubiquitous among future generations.In other words, as lead author Rodrigo Barquera puts it: “The present-day Maya carry the genetic scars of these colonial-era epidemics.”The study is published in the journal Nature.

If you were hoping the next invasion of New York would be somewhat less eight-legged, we’ve got bad news: invasive crabs that harass fishers, alter food webs, and even shut down power plants have made it to the state’s waters. On the upside, they do have very cute little mittens.Describing it as “anything but crabulous”, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS-DEC) announced on social media last week that Chinese mitten crabs (Eriocheir sinensis) had been found in the Nissequogue River this past winter. Since then, the crabs have made their way into the Hudson and Long Island Sound.     IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Mitten crabs are appropriately named, given their distinguishing feature is a pair of “furry” claws that look like, well, mittens. However, it’s not actually fur; it’s a dense patch of setae, which are stiff, hair-like structures that can also be found in some insects and geckos.Their resemblance to cold weather gear might make it seem as though the crabs are simply well-prepared for all weathers, but the actual purpose of the mittens – if there even is one, sometimes nature just likes to fuck around and find out – remains unclear.But while their furry forelimbs might earn them some fans, their appearance in New York is not welcome. Mitten crabs are actually native to East Asia, making them an invasive species in the US. It’s thought they managed to reach the States either accidentally, such as in the ballast water of a ship, or were introduced on purpose as a delicacy.Though we’re yet to see the impact of their arrival in New York, we know from their invasion of both European and Californian waters that they can wreak havoc in all sorts of ways. It seems they’ve got it in for the fishing and energy industries in particular, as according to the NYS-DEC, they’ve been found to steal bait, damage gear and catch, and block the cooling systems of power plants.If that gives the illusion of mitten crabs being passionate about the environment, then you should also know that these furry fiends can cause instability in riverbanks, alter food webs because they can snack on multiple different things, and compete with native species for food and a place to live.Given their potential impact, officials are keen to keep an eye on them, with the help of the public. So how do you recognize a mitten crab?The most obvious feature is their furry claws, but juvenile crabs don’t always have these. In that case, the NYS-DEC recommends looking for “a notch on the carapace between the eyes and four small lateral spines on each side of the carapace.”If you manage to spot one, “Do not throw it back alive!” says the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. That sounds ominous, but the advice goes on to say that mitten crabs should be frozen and then reported to the authorities.Low on freezer space? Thinking that a spot of crab might make a nice lunch? Mitten crabs are edible, but take caution: they are carriers of parasitic worms that can also infect humans.