Wall Street has begun trading water as a commodity, like gold or oil. The country's first water market launched on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange this week with $1.1 billion in contracts tied to water prices in California, Bloomberg News reported. From a report: The market allows farmers, hedge funds, and municipalities to hedge bets on the future price of water and water availability in the American West. The new trading scheme was announced in September, prompted by the region's worsening heat, drought, and wildfires fueled by climate change. There were two trades when the market went live Monday. "Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come," RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray told Bloomberg. "We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops." Proponents argue the new market will clear up some of the uncertainty around water prices for farmers and municipalities, helping them budget for the resource. But some experts say treating water as a tradable commodity puts a basic human right into the hands of financial institutions and investors, a dangerous arrangement as climate change alters precipitation patterns and increases water scarcity.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Researchers have found a way to protect highly fragile quantum systems from noise, which could aid in the design and development of new quantum devices, such as ultra-powerful quantum computers. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, have shown that microscopic particles can remain intrinsically linked, or entangled, over long distances even if there are random disruptions between them. Using the mathematics of quantum theory, they discovered a simple setup where entangled particles can be prepared and stabilized even in the presence of noise by taking advantage of a previously unknown symmetry in quantum systems. Their results, reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, open a new window into the mysterious quantum world that could revolutionize future technology by preserving quantum effects in noisy environments, which is the single biggest hurdle for developing such technology. Harnessing this capability will be at the heart of ultrafast quantum computers. [...] Now, Dutta and his co-author Professor Nigel Cooper have discovered a robust quantum system where multiple pairs of qubits remain entangled even with a lot of noise. They modeled an atomic system in a lattice formation, where atoms strongly interact with each other, hopping from one site of the lattice to another. The authors found if noise were added in the middle of the lattice, it didn't affect entangled particles between left and right sides. This surprising feature results from a special type of symmetry that conserves the number of such entangled pairs. They showed this hidden symmetry protects the entangled pairs and allows their number to be controlled from zero to a large maximum value. Similar conclusions can be applied to a broad class of physical systems and can be realized with already existing ingredients in experimental platforms, paving the way to controllable entanglement in a noisy environment. The researchers are hoping to confirm their theoretical findings with experiments within the next year.

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Cruise Automation, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, has started testing what it describes as fully driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco, the first milestone required to secure a permit to launch a shared, commercial service that can charge for rides. TechCrunch reports: The company released Wednesday a video of its first ride -- with no human safety driver behind the wheel -- in the Sunset neighborhood in San Francisco. There was a human safety operator in the vehicle, sitting in the passenger seat, the video shows. Cruise's testing of fully autonomous vehicles is in limited geographic area and in arguably one of San Francisco's simpler environments; the video below shows the testing was conducted at night in a less congested part of San Francisco. However, it still marks progress by the company that had once aimed to launch a commercial service by the end of 2019. For some in the industry, the caveats of having a safety operator in the passenger seat and launching in an "easier" and small geofenced area matter. Cruise says this is just the beginning and that it will eventually expand its driverless testing area, adding in more complicated environments over time, as well as removing the safety operator from the vehicle. "We recognize this is both a trust race as well as a tech race," Cruise spokesperson Milin Mehta said in an email. "Given that, during the beginning of our use of this permit, we will maintain a safety operator in the passenger seat. The safety operator has the ability to bring the vehicle to a stop in the event of an emergency, but does not have access to standard driver controls. Eventually, this safety operator will be fully removed."

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The French armed forces now have permission to develop "augmented soldiers" following a report from a military ethics committee. CNN reports: The report, released to the public on Tuesday, considers medical treatments, prosthetics and implants that improve "physical, cognitive, perceptive and psychological capacities," and could allow for location tracking or connectivity with weapons systems and other soldiers. Other possible interventions considered by the armed forces ethics committee include medical treatments to prevent pain, stress and fatigue, and substances that would improve mental resilience if a soldier were taken prisoner. The committee said that France needs to maintain "operational superiority of its armed forces in a challenging strategic context" while respecting the rules governing the military, humanitarian law and the "fundamental values of our society." As a result, it has forbidden any modification that would affect a soldier's ability to manage the use of force or affect their sense of "humanity." Further examples of banned modifications include cognitive implants that would affect the exercise of a soldier's free will, or changes that would affect their reintegration into civilian life.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's a long time coming for Tesla's Full Self-Driving feature, and it hasn't been a cheap journey. The price for the self-driving feature has increased multiple times and is currently available for supported Teslas for $10,000.While Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta continues to expand to more Tesla owners ahead of a planned end-of-year launch, the actual settings for the system have been uncovered and published on Twitter by a well-known Tesla hacker named Green. Not only are there dozens of settings and available adjustments, but there's also a way to show a detailed vehicle view of the world while a Tesla is driving down the road. In a Twitter thread, Green shares the status of internal states within the system while taking us on a tour of dozens of settings ranging from controls for FSD and Enhanced Summon to information about the Camera and Ultrasonics. The system also shows sliders for GPS, speed threshold, and other items that no one outside of Tesla should ever mess with. There's also an Augmented Vision area where developers can toggle what's seen on a Tesla display while driving. It includes toggles for Pretty, Developer, and Camera Image. Once Developer is enabled, it shows options for a whole host of data that can be shown on the infotainment system. This all may be information overload for the average Tesla owner, but it's a fun way to get more details on how a Tesla sees the world. Tesla being Tesla, the developer settings also have fun settings including California Stop (which generally means you don't bring the car to a halt but just slow down at a stop sign) and something called Chiropractor Adjust Skeleton, which is filed under the City Streets settings. What that means is a mystery, but both items are part of the FSD defaults in the developer controls.

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A new study, published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, is the first to explore the effects of MDMA therapy in couples where one member is suffering from PTSD. New Atlas reports: This preliminary study investigated the feasibility of incorporating two MDMA sessions into a previously established PTSD therapeutic regime known as CBCT, or cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy. As opposed to traditional PTSD therapies focusing on the individual, CBCT is designed to help improve relationship functioning for couples, while still improving PTSD symptoms in the individual patient. The new trial recruited six couples, in which one member of the couple had a pre-existing PTSD diagnosis, and explored the feasibility of incorporating two MDMA sessions into the CBCT protocol, which traditionally involves around 15 therapy sessions conducted over several months. The new study reports the addition of MDMA to the couples therapy protocol resulted in effects that were, "on par with, or greater than, those achieved with CBCT alone." Improvements were detected in both relationship outcomes and individual PTSD symptoms. The effects were most significant at the six-month follow up implying the MDMA therapy confers compelling long-term benefits. It is important to note the study was uncontrolled, so any efficacy comparisons to CBCT alone can only be garnered by examining prior CBCT studies. However, this feasibility study does establish the addition of MDMA to the pre-existing therapeutic protocol is safe and it does not negatively interfere with other PTSD treatments.

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Thelasko shares a report from Engadget: After a successful launch, the Starship rose and successfully maneuvered its way to the landing area. However, it appeared that the spacecraft didn't slow down enough for a proper landing, and it exploded in thrilling fashion. On the live feed, SpaceX said the test was successful and noted it would be moving on to testing the SN9 prototype next. Elon Musk tweeted "Successful ascent, switchover to header tanks & precise flap control to landing point!" In a follow-up, he explained the landing, saying that low fuel header tank pressure during the landing burn contributed to the high touchdown velocity and the massive explosion. The good news, is that the team got âoeall the data we neededâ and it appears everything is in order for future tests. You can view the full test flight here.

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Adobe has released the final scheduled update to its Flash Player plugin, weeks before Flash's official retirement. The Verge reports: As noted on Adobe's site, yesterday marked the last update for Flash outside mainland China, which has a separate version of the software. Adobe will stop supporting Flash on December 31st, 2020, and it will block Flash content from running on January 12th, 2021. Adobe offered a brief farewell in its release notes. "We want to take a moment to thank all of our customers and developers who have used and created amazing Flash Player content over the last two decades," the note says. "We are proud that Flash had a crucial role in evolving web content across animation, interactivity, audio, and video. We are excited to help lead the next era of digital experiences."

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Britain's medicine regulator warned people with significant allergies not to get Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine after two people suffered adverse reactions, but was set to give more detailed guidance on Wednesday based on reviews of those cases. Reuters reports: Starting with the elderly and frontline workers, Britain began mass vaccinating its population on Tuesday, part of a global drive that poses one of the biggest logistical challenges in peacetime history. National Health Service medical director Stephen Powis said the advice had been changed as a precaution after two NHS workers reported anaphylactoid reactions from the vaccine. "Two people with a history of significant allergic reactions responded adversely yesterday," Powis said. "Both are recovering well." The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) initially advised anyone with "a history of a significant allergic reaction to a vaccine, medicine or food" to avoid taking the vaccine. However, by the end of Wednesday that guidance was set to be refined after discussions with experts on the nature of the reactions. "We're tweaking advice to make it very clear that if you've got a food allergy, you're not more at risk," Imperial College London's Paul Turner, an expert in allergy and immunology who has been advising the MHRA on their revised guidance, told Reuters. Pfizer and BioNTech said they were supporting the MHRA's investigation. In other vaccine-related news, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU regulatory body in charge of approving COVID-19 vaccines, said today it was the victim of a cyberattack.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized Wednesday for the company's handling of the departure of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru and said he would investigate the events and work to restore trust, according to an internal memo sent companywide and obtained by Axios. From the report: Gebru's exit has provoked anger and consternation within Google as well as in academic circles, with thousands of people signing an open letter urging Google to reexamine its practices. In the note, Pichai acknowledged the depth of the damage done by the company's actions and said the company would look at all aspects of the situation, but stopped short of saying the company made a mistake in removing Gebru. "I've heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru's departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google," Pichai said in the memo. " I want to say how sorry I am for that, and I accept the responsibility of working to restore your trust." While Pichai's memo strikes a contrite tone, it's unclear how far it will go to addressing the significant upset within Google's ranks, especially among those concerned with its commitments to diversity and academic freedom.

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According to The Robot Report, citing The Korea Economic Daily, Hyndai will finalize its acquisition of Boston Dynamics on December 10th. A source familiar with the deal said the acquisition is for about $1 billion. From the report: Robotics has become a bigger focus for Hyundai since Chung Euisun was named chairman in October. The company has since said robotics will account for 20% of its future business. Hyundai Robotics was founded in 2017, but it officially launched earlier in 2020. The company's automotive group invested in autonomous vehicle startup 42dot and Realtime Robotics in 2019. Hyundai has also created a $4 billion autonomous vehicle joint venture with Aptiv. It is not yet clear how Boston Dynamics will fit into Hyundai, which becomes the third owner of Boston Dynamics in seven years. It was acquired by Google in 2013 and sold to Softbank Group in 2017. The RBR50 company has mainly operated as an R&D organization since it was founded. But a new emphasis on commercialization was evident after it was acquired by Softbank.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Ron Amadeo: Google and Samsung want to work together on smart home compatibility. The two companies put out dueling press releases today, saying that Google Nest devices would work better with Samsung SmartThings, ending a war between the SmartThings community and Nest/Google/Alphabet that has been going on for years. Samsung says that "Google Nest devices, including thermostats, cameras and doorbells, will be "Works With SmartThings" (WWST) certified, allowing users to seamlessly control their smart homes through SmartThings." Nest has long been the most insular smart home company, and now it sounds like Nest devices are finally going to start playing nice with your other smart home devices. As a user of the Google and SmartThings ecosystem, there are a few things missing from the announcement that I would like to see. SmartThings is supporting Nest and Google, but I don't see anything about Google reciprocating and supporting SmartThings better. Like I complained about in the Android 11 review (which included a Google Assistant-powered smart home control panel), Google's smart home support is exclusionary toward devices that compete with Nest products. Google supports controlling SmartThings-compatible lights (and, really, every light imaginable), because Nest doesn't make a light bulb or switch, but it doesn't work with door locks, because Nest makes a door lock (Google and Samsung both seem to have forgotten about the Yale x Nest Lock in today's announcement). Google's "Nest Hub" smart display can show camera feeds, but only Nest camera feeds. The Nest exclusivity here isn't doing Google any favors, and more open hardware support would really improve the appeal of the Nest Hub smart display.

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The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU regulatory body in charge of approving COVID-19 vaccines, said today it was the victim of a cyber-attack. From a report: In a short two-paragraph statement posted on its website today, the agency discloses the security breach but said it couldn't disclose any details about the intrusion due to an ongoing investigation. EMA is currently in the process of reviewing applications for two COVID-19 vaccines, one from US pharma giant Moderna, and a second developed in a collaboration between BioNTech and Pfizer. An EMA spokesperson did not return a request for comment seeking information if the attack targeted its vaccine approval process or if it was a financially-motivated attack like ransomware. Nonetheless, in a follow-up statement released on its own website, BioNTech said that "some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, which has been stored on an EMA server, had been unlawfully accessed" during the attack, confirming that COVID-19 research was most likely the target of the attack.

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How people spend their time is similar in many ways across countries: we all sleep, work, eat, and enjoy leisure. But there are also important differences in the freedom people have to spend time on the things they value most. Studying how people across the world spend their time provides an important perspective for understanding living conditions, economic opportunities, and general well-being. A study by Our World in Data: Consider sleeping, for example. From this sample of countries, South Koreans sleep the least -- averaging 7 hours and 51 minutes of sleep every day. In India and the US, at the other end of the spectrum, people sleep an hour more on average. Work is another important activity where we see large differences. Countries are sorted by paid work hours in the chart (check the source link) -- from highest to lowest. In China and Mexico people spend, on an average day, almost twice as much time on paid work as people in Italy and France do. This is a general pattern: People in richer countries can afford to work less. Keep in mind that this chart shows the average for all people in the working age bracket, from 15 to 64 years, whether they are actually employed or not. Differences in demographics, education and economic prosperity all contribute to these inequalities in work and time use. But what's clear in the chart here (check the source link) is that there are also some differences in time use that are not well explained by economic or demographic differences. In the UK, for example, people spend more time working than in France; but in both countries people report spending a similar amount of time on leisure activities. Cultural differences are likely to play a role here. The French seem to spend much more time eating than the British -- and in this respect the data actually goes in line with stereotypes about food culture. People in France, Greece, Italy and Spain report spending more time eating than people in most other European countries. The country where people spend the least time eating and drinking is the USA (63 minutes).

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The Federal Trade Commission today sued Facebook, alleging that the company is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct. FTC: Following a lengthy investigation in cooperation with a coalition of attorneys general of 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, the complaint alleges that Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy -- including its 2012 acquisition of up-and-coming rival Instagram, its 2014 acquisition of the mobile messaging app WhatsApp, and the imposition of anticompetitive conditions on software developers -- to eliminate threats to its monopoly. This course of conduct harms competition, leaves consumers with few choices for personal social networking, and deprives advertisers of the benefits of competition. The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could, among other things: require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp; prohibit Facebook from imposing anticompetitive conditions on software developers; and require Facebook to seek prior notice and approval for future mergers and acquisitions. "Personal social networking is central to the lives of millions of Americans," said Ian Conner, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. "Facebook's actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition. Our aim is to roll back Facebook's anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive."

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At Chrome Dev Summit 2020 today, Google announced it will change how extensions access data and how extension permissions work in 2021. On January 18, a day before the release of Chrome 88, Google will require that every extension publicly display its privacy practices and will limit what developers can do with the data they collect. From a report: The first change means that Chrome users next year will determine which websites an extension can access when they browse the web. Once you grant an extension permission to access a website's data, that preference can be saved for that domain. Today, the extension makes that call. In 2021, you will still be able to grant an extension access to all the websites you visit, but that won't be the default. Google outlined the second change last month: "each extension's detail page in the Chrome Web Store will show developer-provided information about the data collected by the extension, in clear and easy to understand language." The company also updated its user data privacy policy with an addition to how extension developers use data they collect.

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Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]: In 2014, Apple executives became alarmed when China enacted a new labor law meant to protect workers' rights. The law required that no more than 10% of a factory's workforce be temporary workers. Typically these employees have fewer benefits and legal protections than permanent ones, but Apple's suppliers increasingly relied on them in China's tightening labor market. Apple surveyed 362 of its supplier factories in China that year and discovered that nearly half were over the quota for temporary workers. Eighty factories used temporary workers for more than half their labor force, according to an internal Apple presentation reviewed by The Information. Apple asked its suppliers to come up with plans to reduce their use of temporary workers by a March 2016 deadline, when a two-year grace period for the law expired. However, by the time the law went into effect, little progress had been made. According to four former Apple employees familiar with its labor issues, Apple for years took no major action against its suppliers for violating the temp-worker labor law out of concerns it would create costs, drain resources and delay product launches. Three of the ex-Apple employees were members of its supplier responsibility team, which is in charge of monitoring violations and enforcing penalties, while the fourth was a senior manager familiar with its operations in China. The former employees, as well as a review of internal Apple presentations and the company's own data on factory hiring between 2013 and 2018, suggests that Apple's strategy for managing its supply chain made it difficult for its three biggest contract manufacturers -- Foxconn Technology, Quanta Computer and Pegatron -- to remain compliant with the labor restrictions. The issue surfaced again publicly last year when Apple admitted that Foxconn had broken the law at its massive iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, which can employ as many as 300,000 workers. Apple says it requires suppliers to abide by local laws and pledges to remove those that won't comply.

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YouTube is taking belated action on election misinformation: The company said it would now remove misleading videos that claim widespread fraud or other errors changed the outcome of the US presidential election. From a report: Google-owned YouTube announced that it would begin enforcing against this content on Wednesday, citing Tuesday's safe harbor deadline for the US election, which is the date after which state election results cannot effectively be challenged. YouTube said that enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. National news outlets have universally projected that Joe Biden will be the next President. As an example of content that would be banned, YouTube said it would take down videos claiming that a presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or errors in counting votes. It will begin enforcing the policy starting Wednesday, and said it would "ramp up" efforts in the weeks to come. It will still allow videos including news coverage and commentary to remain on the platform if they have enough context. Any videos in violation of the policy that were posted prior to Wednesday, will remain up even though they now break YouTube's rules. They will feature an information panel that says election results have been certified.

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sciencehabit writes: It's not just your storage unit that's packed to the gills. According to a new study, the mass of all our stuff -- buildings, roads, cars, and everything else we manufacture -- now exceeds the weight of all living things on the planet. And the amount of new material added every week equals the total weight of Earth's nearly 8 billion people. "If you weren't convinced before that humans are dominating the planet, then you should be convinced now," says Timon McPhearson, an urban ecologist at the New School who was not involved with the research. "This is an eye-catching comparison," adds Fridolin Krausmann, a social ecologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, who also was not involved in the work. There are many measures of humanity's impact on the planet. Fossil fuels have sent greenhouse gases soaring to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years. Agriculture and dwellings have altered 70% of land. And humans have wiped out untold numbers of species in an emerging great extinction. The transformations are so great that researchers have declared we're living in a new human-dominated age: the Anthropocene.

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theodp writes: As the 8th annual Hour of Code kicked off this week, the College Board released 2020 AP national and state score breakouts for AP CS program participants. As in past years, this year's results still showed striking gaps in performance and participation across gender and ethnicity segments. Passing rates across major ethnic group segments ranged from 39.8%-78.6% for the Java-based AP CS A course, and 52%-83% for the newer "language agnostic" AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) course. Across gender segments, females accounted for 25% of AP CS A scores (16.2K of 64.9K total students) and 33.9% of AP CSP scores (38.6K of 113.9K students). Asian students accounted for 47% of all passing female AP CS A students. Due to pandemic-related school closures, the overall number of students completing AP STEM-related courses in 2020 declined for all subjects except CS. AP CS A, which had an abbreviated taken-at-home final exam, saw a modest 1.5% YOY increase in completions, while AP CSP saw a whopping 21.5% YOY increase in completions, no doubt helped by the cancellation of its end-of-course exam, which was to have counted for 60% of scores (students were instead assessed only by their portfolio submissions).

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