Musings

By Bonnie Allen · CBC News · Dramatic increase in synthetic fertilizers has increased crop yields, but also nitrous oxide emissions Matthew Howard/CBC Jocelyn Velestuk says her family farm near Broadview, Sask., makes a six-figure investment in manufactured fertilizer every year. And she doesn't want it to be wasted in the atmosphere as nitrous oxide. Increasingly, farmers are adopting more sophisticated fertilizer products and application methods in order to grow the most food, while spending the least amount of money. At the same time, these new approaches can reduce emissions of N2O, a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. More at CBC News

By Sean Rehaag AP Photo/Marco Ugarte In this June 2019 photo, Central American migrants wait for the departure of a northbound freight train in Palenque, Mexico. The Mexican crackdown on migrants prompted by pressure from the Trump administration has pushed Central American migrants to seek new ways to try to reach the U.S. border. U.S. President Donald Trump regularly asserts that the United States is under attack by foreign invaders and that he is the only one willing to stop them. Who are these invaders? Central American asylum seekers, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. More at The Conversation

By Matthew Pearson · CBC News · Application calls for restitution of all fines paid, cancellation of outstanding debts Jean Delisle/CBC Ottawa-based defence lawyer Michael Spratt says victim surcharges often are imposed on people "who are already struggling." Spratt said that aspect of the application is the most meaningful, because it deals directly with the problems laid out by the Supreme Court last year when it quashed the mandatory victim surcharges for convicted criminals — a fine one Ontario judge referred to as a "tax on broken souls." More at CBC News

By CBC News The Canada Votes newsletter is your weekly tip-sheet as we count down to Oct. 21. Left to right, top row: Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer, Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. Bottom row: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet. More at CBC News

By Kate Cox He's tired of "dogmatic announcements that lawful access simply cannot be done." Elijah Nouvelage | Getty Images Graffiti urging people to use Signal, a highly encrypted messaging app, is spray-painted on a wall during a protest on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California. US Attorney General William Barr accused tech firms of "dogmatic" posturing, saying lawful backdoor access "can be and must be" done, adding, "We are confident that there are technical solutions that will allow lawful access to encrypted data and communications by law enforcement, without materially weakening the security provided by encryption." More at Ars Technica Opinion: His guy is a total nut case. Another fine example of the American education system. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Kyla Tienhaara AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad A Pakistani man walks past a shop that was closed due to a recent strike in Peshawar, Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani businesses went on strike in a nationwide protest against an increased sales tax, which opposition political parties said was imposed as part of the International Monetary Fund’s recent $6 billion bailout package for Islamabad. It’s been a rough month for Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. It started off with the International Monetary Fund approving a US$6 billion dollar loan to the country. The strict conditions on the loan meant that instead of expanding the welfare state, Khan’s government had to impose “shock therapy” austerity measures. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in nationwide strikes. More at The Conversation Opinion: Austerity always crashes the economy. Don't stop where the ink does.

By John Paul Tasker · CBC News · A decision on the winning bid is not expected until 2022 Jason Franson/Canadian Press A pilot positions a CF-18 Hornet at CFB Cold Lake in Alberta on October 21, 2014. The federal government formally submitted requests for proposals (RFP) today to procure fighter jets to replace the decades-old CF-18s. Four companies are in the running to supply Canada with roughly 80 new jets: Saab of Sweden, Airbus Defence and Space out of Britain, and the American firms Boeing and Lockheed Martin. More at CBC News

@Instagram A screen shot of @Instagram’s social media feed. Instagram’s recent decision to remove its “like” counter from its platform in select geographic regions is an interesting, perhaps long overdue, measure. Although recently users in Canada reported seeing the “like” counter back on for a day, the counter is currently off. The roll-out is a techno-social experiment, and there are advantages — and a few unintended consequences — of such an action. More at The Conversation

By Sam Machkovech Data and Seven of Nine return to help Picard shepherd a new cast into space. CBS "Engage!" Yes, that's what Sir Patrick Stewart says in this moment, and yes, it's as delightful in action as that sounds. All eyes were on San Diego Comic Con's Star Trek panel this year, as anticipation continues to build for Star Trek: Picard, the first Trek entry to feature Sir Patrick Stewart since the 2002 film Star Trek: Nemesis. And on Saturday, the series' handlers at CBS didn't disappoint. More at Ars Technica

By Jorge Barrera · CBC News · Renovation and construction dot Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario, much of it fuelled by marijuana Jorge Barrera/CBC The Pot Shoppe advertising its THC-laced slushies, gummies and hash in Tyendinaga. Driving down Highway 401 in southern Ontario, with the FM dial tuned to 87.9, the 1990s-era rap music fades into an ad, offering a free joint with every purchase over $20 between midnight and 4:20 a.m. at the Pot Shoppe. More at CBC News

A new technology is helping collect trash and floating debris in the water. Toronto is one of the first cities in Canada to install floating garbage bins to clean the city's outer harbour. More

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols GitLab finds 68% of security professionals feel that less than half of developers can spot security vulnerabilities, but most people feel it's a programmer's job to write secure code. That makes sense. But when GitLab, a DevOps company, surveyed over 4,000 developers and operators, they found 68% of the security professionals surveyed believe it's a programmer's job to write secure code, but they also think less than half of developers can spot security holes. More at ZDNet

By Jim Salter Data brokers like Facebook, Google, and Oracle might know more than you think. Thought using Incognito mode might keep such searching private? Facebook, Google, and even Oracle have more of your Web usage in their sights than you might think. The paper, set to be published in the journal New Media & Society, does an excellent job of backing up the claim that porn usage ends up being tracked by Google and Facebook. Authors Elena Maris, Timothy Libert, and Jennifer Henrichsen used open source tool webxray to analyze more than 22,000 porn sites, discovering tracking code for Google on 74% and for Facebook on 10% of the sites analyzed. Software giant Oracle's Web tracking code also showed up, appearing on 24% of those sites. More at Ars Technica

By John Timmer A Green New Deal with an emphasis on the green part. University of Rhode Island Sights like this may become common on Long Island. Yesterday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that's been described as the state's Green New Deal. Unlike the one that's been floated in Congress, this one isn't a grab-bag collection of social and energy programs. Instead, there's a strong focus on energy, with assurances that changes will be made in a way that benefits underprivileged communities. More at Ars Technica

By Eli Glasner · CBC News · Software engineer Ben Feist restored 11,000 hours of audio as historic mission control room becomes museum Eli Glasner Ben Feist, seen smiling in the centre, gazes at the large monitors displaying the lunar surface in the newly restored mission control More at CBC News

By British Medical Journal CC0 Public Domain Nations with strong women's rights are more likely to have better health and faster growth than those who don't promote and protect these values, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open. More at Phys.org

By Peter Zimonjic · CBC News · Recently revamped guide is 'based on evidence, based on science, based on research,' PM says Chris Young/Canadian Press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, is dismissing Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer's attack on the Canada Food Guide insisting his government's update to the guid is based on evidence. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending his government's update to the Canada Food Guide in the wake of attacks by Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer who suggested the changes were riddled with "bias" and driven by "ideology." More at CBC News

By George Dvorsky Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden Biswamoyopterus gaoligongensis, a flying squirrel. A newly described species of flying squirrel is teaching researchers more about these enigmatic, tree-hopping rodents, but its threatened status means scientists will have to act fast. More at Gizmodo

By Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco Martha Blackburn's bill is everything wrong with 2019 in 13 pages A bi-partisan law bill that promises to give internet users far greater control over their privacy made another appearance in US Congress on Thursday. More at The Register

By Vasileios Giotsas, The Conversation Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock How could a small internet service provider (ISP) in Pennsylvania cause millions of websites worldwide to go offline? That's what happened on June 24, 2019 when users across the world were left unable to access a large fraction of the web. The root cause was an outage suffered by Cloudflare, one of the internet's leading content hosts on which the affected websites relied. More at Phys.org

By Joel Hruska Here at ExtremeTech, we’ve often discussed the difference between different types of NAND structures — vertical NAND versus planar, or multi-level cell (MLC) versus triple-level cells (TLC) and quad-level cells (QLC). Now, let’s talk about the more basic relevant question: How do SSDs work in the first place, and how do they compare with newer technologies, like Intel’s non-volatile storage technology, Optane? More at ExtremeTech

By Katharine Trendacosta The Senate Judiciary Committee voted on the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act, aka the CASE Act. This was without any hearings for experts to explain the huge flaws in the bill as it’s currently written. And flaws there are. More at Electronic Frontier Foundation

By Matthew Hoffmann Georgios Kefalas/Keystone via AP Climate activists block the entrance to the Swiss bank UBS with a pile of coal in Basel, Switzerland earlier this summer. Climate protests are helping raise awareness about the ugliness of fossil fuels, and so too should the language we use. Despite dire warnings of climate catastrophe and research showing that fossil fuels need to stay in the ground, the fossil fuel system remains dominant, normal and even invisible. More at The Conversation

By Mark Gollom · CBC News · Former Ontario teaching assistant accuses Twitter of double standard after she's banned for 'hateful conduct' Richard Drew/Associated Press Twitter's decision to ban former Ontario teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd sparked accusations that the social media firm unfairly targets certain groups or individuals. Twitter's decision to ban former Ontario teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd from its platform earlier this week has once again sparked accusations that the company unfairly targets people with certain viewpoints. More at CBC News

By Zach Dubinsky, Lisa Mayor · CBC News · CAFE's backers have included a notorious counterfeiter and a Lamborghini-driving ex-wrestling champ CBC One of the storefronts of the Toronto-based CAFE, a chain of unlicensed cannabis dispensaries, was raided and shut down last week — a regular occurrence for the business. It reopened within hours. These are no ordinary renegade weed stores. They are branches of Cannabis and Fine Edibles, or CAFE, a chain of sleek coffee shops that double as marijuana dispensaries. Collectively, they have been raided and shut down at least a dozen times since Canada legalized cannabis last October — only to bounce back each time, usually reopening within hours. More at CBC News

By Guy Quenneville · CBC News · Conservative leader also vows to abolish Liberals' planned front-of-package nutrition labelling Don Somers/CBC Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer defended dairy and denounced the process that led to Canada's new Food Guide at a Saskatoon business luncheon Wednesday. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is promising another review of Canada's recently updated Food Guide should the Tories come to power this fall, saying the latest guide is the result of a flawed and biased process. More at CBC News Opinion: More hatred. Politicians are not smarter than the scientist who have study this all their lives. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Anthony King, From Horizon Magazine, Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine A raft of strategies is being trialled in Europe to turn nutrient-rich farm waste such as chicken feathers, cow dung and plant stalks into green fertiliser. Full of phosphorus and nitrogen, recycled products could help reduce intensive agriculture's emissions and reliance on fertiliser imports. More at Phys.org

By Beth Mole Just three drug makers and six distributors were behind the flood. Getty | Bloomberg Enlarge / Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters hold signs while protesting during the McKesson Corp. annual meeting at the Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce in Irving, Texas, US, on Wednesday, July 26, 2017. Between 2006 and 2012, opioid drug makers and distributors flooded the country with 76 billion pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone—highly addictive opioid pain medications that sparked the epidemic of abuse and overdoses that killed nearly 100,000 people in that time period. More at Ars Technica Opinion: Capitalism at work. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Bennett Cyphers The latest release of Privacy Badger gives it the power to detect and block a new class of evasive, pervasive third-party trackers, including Google Analytics. More at Electronic Frontier Foundation

By Thomson Reuters · British lawmakers due to vote on measure aimed at avoiding a no-deal Vincent Kessler/Reuters British Union Jack flags are seen on the desks of members of the Brexit Party at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. A no-deal Brexit could plunge the U.K. into a deep recession, the Office for Budget Responsibility said Thursday. A no-deal Brexit would hurt confidence and deter investment and lead to higher trade barriers with the European Union, pushing down the value of the pound and causing the economy to contract by 2 per cent by the end of 2020, the OBR said, referring to forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. More at CBC News

By Emma Davie · CBC News · Fewer than 30 inmates held in the region's four long-term youth jails during first week of July Emma Davie/CBC The Waterville youth centre in Nova Scotia, along with the rest of the corrections facilities for young offenders in Atlantic Canada, has seen a dramatic decline in the number of inmates. More at CBC News

By Rhiannon Johnson · CBC News · Videos on turtles and wolverines in Indigenous languages available since 2017 CBC Hinterland Who's Who produced its original vignette on loons in 1963. Now videos are being translated into six Indigenous languages. More at CBC News

By John Paul Tasker · CBC News · Biodiversity is declining faster than at any other time in human history, study finds Chad Hipolito/Canadian Press Forest ecologist Andy MacKinnon stands next to a Grand Fir tree nearly 50 metres tall in the Coastal Douglas Fir zone at Francis/King Regional Park in Saanich, B.C. The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society says Canada needs to protect 30 per cent of its land and inland water to prevent a 'nature emergency.' More at CBC News

By Kamyar Razavi U.S. Department of Energy/flickr Zero-emissions energy is part of the solution to climate change. One approach that can better engage news audiences is a style of reporting known as solutions journalism. Solutions journalism is reporting on ways that people and governments meaningfully respond to difficult problems. It is an alternative to just reporting on the problem itself. More at The Conversation

By Colin Willis In open organizations with cultures of adaptability, learning should be continuous—and won't always happen in a formal setting. Do we really understand how it works? Pexels, via Pixabay. CC0. Continuous learning refers to the ongoing, career-driven, intentional learning process people undertake to develop themselves. For people who consider themselves continuous learners, learning never stops—and these people see learning opportunities in everyday experiences. Engaging with one's colleagues in debate, reflecting on feedback, scouring the internet for a solution to a frustrating problem, trying something new, or taking a risk are all examples of the informal learning activities one can perform on the job. More at Opensource.com

Shutterstock Understanding the human microbiome will lead to breakthroughs in health care, including treatments for ailments such as irritable bowel syndrome. Microbes are part of humans from the initial stage of development and play an important role in the functioning of the human body. The human microbiome is composed of viruses, bacteria and fungi residing in communities within and on the body. More at The Conversation

By Katherine Breward Crew/Unsplash Providing workers who have autism with a quiet workspace and detailed instructions on tasks are among several accommodation strategies for employers. Companies seek a competitive edge by hiring talented people, yet many capable workers are overlooked because they have autism. More at The Conversation

By Crime and Justice Research Alliance CC0 Public Domain About 3.5 million students are suspended each year, and school punishment has been tied to a variety of negative outcomes. A new study took a longitudinal look at how school suspensions are related to offending behaviors that include assault, stealing, and selling drugs. It found that rather than decreasing subsequent offending, school suspensions increase this behavior. More at Phys.org

By Zack Zwiezen Today, developers have a huge variety of ways to create and manage enemy AI. However, back in the 90s it was much more difficult to create sophisticated enemy AI. It was even harder to do so on the N64 due to its limited power and resources. But Rare, the developers behind GoldenEye, pulled it off and did such a great job that after playing GoldenEye, developers at Valve actually changed the then-unreleased Half-Life and its AI. More

By Verna Yu in Hong Kong The successful protests against the extradition law are unleasing popular anger on a range of issues Kin Cheung/AP Several thousand people marched in Hong Kong on Saturday to protest about a variety of grievances. Millions in this former British colony have flocked to the streets in several mass protests over the past month to fight against a proposed law that would allow individuals to be extradited to stand trial in China’s opaque courts. Now, feeling emboldened by the solidarity and big turnout at recent protests, which have made headlines across the world, Hong Kong people are now riding on the wave of their success to speak up on a range of issues, which are generally related to their discontent with the encroachment of China into Hong Kong. More at The Guardian

By Laurie Fagan · CBC News · Province is urging people to report sightings of the animals Experts say wild pigs, like these seen in a farmers' field in Chatham, Ont., can devastate crops like corn and soybeans. Animal experts with the Ontario government are asking the public to help track the number and location of wild pigs amid concerns they will decimate farm crops and damage sensitive wetlands. More at CBC News

By Thomson Reuters · Consumption of sugary drinks is linked to obesity, which itself increases cancer risks Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press Sugary drinks are seen at a store in Montreal in 2017. A large study in France suggests that limiting intake of sugar-sweetened drinks may help to cut the number of cancer cases in a population. People who drink a lot of sugary drinks have a higher risk of developing cancer, although the evidence cannot establish a direct causal link, researchers said. More at CBC News

By Kelsey Scarfone The federal and provincial governments have just released their draft agreement for Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health. This agreement is meant to act as an action plan and funding tool to protect and restore the Great Lakes. Unfortunately, it is inadequate and disappointing. More at Environmental Defence

By Ryan F. Mandelbaum Kathrin Swoboda (Audobon Photography Awards) Like humans, birds breathe. And on a cold day, the moisture from their breath condenses into steam that emanates from their beaks. Photographer Kathrin Swoboda knew this, and was hoping to capture it on film at the park near her house. More at Gizmodo

By Richard Speed Software-snatcher backs down on licence plans Faced with continued rumbles of discontent from its reseller network on the eve of its Inspire conference, Microsoft has climbed down from plans to pull free software licences from its channel chums. More at The Register

By Shaun Nichols in San Francisco Scrambling addresses can't always hide you from stalkers, say eggheads David Strobinski, David Li, and Johannes Becker at Boston University told The Register how they found that the MAC randomization system of Bluetooth LE, designed to thwart the tracking of devices, transmits packages of data that can still be used to uniquely identify, and thus track the location of a mobile phone or PC. More at The Register

By Adam Dachis Google—the internet’s largest search destination—can legally profit from fraud on its platform and has little incentive to fix it. But this isn’t a problem easily solved by ethics or legal amendments because current circumstances make changing the status quo extremely difficult. Nevertheless, there’s still more that we all can do to mitigate fraud on the internet. More at ExtremeTech

Canada’s unions welcome a new three-year agri-food pilot program which will provide an additional 2,750 permanent residency opportunities for temporary foreign workers engaged in the sector, particularly in the meat industry. The proposed program, announced today by Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, is open to full-time non-seasonal agricultural migrant workers and will help give them a pathway to permanent residency. More at Canadian Labour Congress

By Nathan Robinson From Ross Perot to Tom Steyer, rich megalomaniacs run for president by preying on voters’ disillusionment Stephen Lam/Reuters ‘Steyer has been the embodiment of the anti-democratic tendencies in the Democratic party.’ The past week saw both the passing of Ross Perot and the entry of Tom Steyer into the presidential race. It’s fitting that the two events should coincide – as one billionaire presidential candidate leaves us, another steps up to take his place. But while “rich guy who tells it like it is” candidates are not necessarily doomed to electoral oblivion – one of them sits in the White House today – they represent everything dysfunctional about US democracy. More at The Guardian