Author: Truth & Hammer

Be ready for the parent view of what is going on in the internet.  Just maybe this is a good idea.

The UK government is taking a hard line when it comes to online safety, moving to establish what it says is the world’s first independent regulator to keep social media companies in check.

Companies that fail to live up to requirements will face huge fines, and senior directors who are proven to have been negligent will be held personally liable. They may also find access to their sites blocked.

The new measures, designed to make the internet a safer place, were announced jointly by the Home Office and Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The introduction of the regulator is the central recommendation of a highly anticipated government white paper, titled Online Harms, published Monday in the UK.

The regulator will be tasked with ensuring social media companies tackle a range of online problems, including:

• Incitement of violence and the spread of violent (including terrorist) content
• Encouragement of self-harm or suicide
• The spread of disinformation and fake news
• Cyberbullying
• Children’s access to inappropriate material
• Child exploitation and abuse content

As well as applying to the major social networks, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, the requirements will also have to be met by file-hosting sites, online forums, messaging services and search engines.

“For too long these companies have not done enough to protect users, especially children and young people, from harmful content,” UK Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement. “We have listened to campaigners and parents, and are putting a legal duty of care on internet companies to keep people safe.”

Google and Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has and always will be a world power, even if the news or other countries do not talk about it.  They stand alone in their decisions to govern themselves.

A dissident writer dubbed the “Chinese Solzhenitsyn” said Friday that his homeland is a “threat for the whole world”.  Liao Yiwu, who was jailed for writing a poem called “Massacre” about the Tiananmen Square protests, told AFP that it would be better for mankind if the economic superpower “splits up”.  “My dream is that China splits up into 10 or so countries. Because China as it is today is a threat for the whole world,” he said as his latest book, “Bullets and Opium”, was published in France.  The book, which has been banned in China, recounts the stories of dozens of victims of the Tiananmen massacre, when troops killed thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing in 1989.

The massacre, which is also known as the “June Fourth Incident”, is a major taboo in China.  Liao, who has been living in exile in Berlin since 2011, said, “Returning to China is not a big concern for me. I would like to go back to my native Sichuan — when it’s independent. Then I would be delighted to return.”  Liao, a poet and musician who also reported on the lives of the Chinese poor, was tortured in prison, according to human rights groups, and harassed by the police on his release.  He told AFP that he was “very pessimistic” about his country under the increasing authoritarian rule of President Xi Jinping.

– ‘Executioners’ in power –

“Thirty years ago we thought we might develop towards democracy. Today it is all about making money.  “Every one of the Western countries which criticised China after the (Tiananmen) massacre fight with each other now to do business with the executioners even as they continue to arrest and kill people,” Liao added.  He poured scorn on the fact that Xi Jinping’s daughter studied at Harvard along with the children of other Communist Party leaders. “Even the leaders’ mistresses are getting grants to study” at the US university, he claimed.  “Those who have scruples are marginalised while those who make money without criticising the party can do what they want,” said the 60-year-old.  But Liao insisted that Tiananmen is the major turning point in recent Chinese history.  “For me, as for all Chinese people, it was a cataclysmic moment,” he said.

– ‘Struggle for the truth’ –

“You cannot mention the massacre in China, it’s taboo. My struggle is to make the truth of what happened known to as many people as I can.”  The writer said that three decades on “we still don’t know the exact number of victims”.  Human rights groups believe that between 2,600 and 3,000 people died after 200,000 soldiers were brought in to encircle the Chinese capital.  British diplomatic cables declassified in 2017 put initial estimates of the death toll at around 10,000.  “The Mothers of Tiananmen group have published 202 names but we know there was a lot more than that,” Liao added.  As for the young man standing in front of a tank, who became a symbol of the peaceful protest, “we still don’t know his name or his fate,” he added.

“The name Wang Weilin given to him by Western journalists was invented. We know nothing about him even though he is the symbol of the millions of people who opposed the tyranny of June 4,” the writer said.  Liao’s book “Testimonials” about his time in prison has been compared to the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago”, and was praised by Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017 after spending years in prison.  Territorial issues are deeply sensitive in China and any suggestions that the country could be broken up are likely to stoke outrage.  Last year hotel chain Marriott was strongly criticised by Chinese authorities for listing Taiwan — along with Tibet and Hong Kong — as separate countries, all regions which Beijing claims under its authority.

In May, US clothing retailer Gap apologised to China over a T-shirt with a map showing the mainland but omitting Taiwan — self-ruled since 1949 — which Beijing considers a rebel province awaiting reunification.

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Hayabusa2 hovering above asteroid Ryugu in October. Credit: JAXA For the past year, space probe Hayabusa2 has pelted asteroid Ryugu with bouncing probes, shot a bullet at it, and taken a bite of it — all for science. But now, the mission has performed its most daring manoeuvre yet: it dropped an explosive on the surface of the asteroid to create a small crater. If the explosion went as planned — the mission team are yet to confirm the detonation — it will expose some of the asteroid’s subsurface layers that the probe will gather during a later touchdown. The operation took place on 5 April. First, the probe lowered itself from a parking altitude of 20 kilometres down to 500 metres above the asteroid’s surface. From there it dropped an explosive device. After partially ascending, it then released a second device carrying a camera. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed that the probe had released the device and was safe at 11:56 am Japan time (3:36 am UT). “We conducted a lot of experiments, but when we did this for real, I was still very nervous,” said Osamu Mori, an engineer from JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in Sagamihara who was involved in the operation of the impactor, during a live broadcast. In Ryugu’s extremely weak gravity, the bomb took about 40 minutes to reach the surface. Meanwhile, the spacecraft manoeuvred itself to a safe zone behind the asteroid. That way, when the 9.5 kilograms of explosive charge went off, the debris it kicked up could not harm the probe. The one-use camera device, however, was still hovering above the target, ready to take pictures of the explosion and upload them back to the mother ship via a radio link.Images will confirm whether the charge detonated and created a crater. Hayabusa2’s mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa , also from ISAS, told Nature in June that the manoeuvre would be “a very risky operation”, but one with big potential payback. The experiment will give astronomers the opportunity to study material under the asteroid’s surface, which can shed light on the early Solar System. In the following weeks, the probe will image the crater from high up. Then at a later date, mission scientists plan to execute the final major step of the mission. They will lower the probe right into the crater and collect a sample. This will be the second sample collected from Ryugu: Hayabusa2 already touched down on 22 February , and collected some of its space dirt after kicking it up with a bullet. Space agencies have blown craters on Solar System bodies before. In 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact mission released a washing-machine-sized impactor at high speed onto a comet called Tempel 1. And on multiple occasions over the decades, researchers have sent impactors and deliberately crashed probes on the Moon’s surface — including most recently the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer — and studied the effects. Hayabusa2 left Earth in late 2014 and arrived at Ryugu in June 2018 . In two separate phases in September and October, it then released three small probes onto the surface. The spacecraft is scheduled to head back to Earth before the end of 2019. A year later, a re-entry capsule will take samples down with it so that scientists can study them in their labs.