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martyb writes:

T-Mobile Closes Sprint Merger after Two-Year Battle:

Two years after announcing a $26.5 billion merger with Sprint, T-Mobile is ready to get to work integrating the two companies. On Wednesday, the carrier announced that it has closed the deal, which will allow it to begin combining the third- and fourth-largest US wireless providers.

Both companies claim the merger will let them better compete with industry giants Verizon and AT&T. The move will see T-Mobile divest Sprint's Boost prepaid brand and spectrum to Dish, which will enter the market as a new fourth carrier. Dish, led by Charlie Ergen, has spent years and billions of dollars accumulating its own wireless spectrum and was previously under a deadline imposed by the Federal Communications Commission to put some of its spectrum trove to use by March of this year or risk losing it.

[...] These moves will potentially remake how Americans will get their wireless service over the coming years. T-Mobile and Sprint's combined assets should supercharge their ambitions to roll out 5G across the country, and the merged company's larger presence should enable it to better compete against larger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Dish, meanwhile, represents a new low-cost alternative once it gets its service rolled out.

Also at: Ars Technica.

Original Submission

wirelessduck writes:

https://www.barrons.com/articles/xerox-withdraws-hostile-bid-for-hp-citing-impact-of-coronavirus-51585688762

Xerox Holdings is withdrawing its hostile bid for HP Inc., the latest example of Covid-19's wide-ranging impact on markets.

Xerox (ticker: XRX) said Thursday afternoon that it will pull both its tender offer for HP (HPQ) shares and its proposed slate of directors for the HP board.

"The current global health crisis and resulting macroeconomic and market turmoil caused by Covid-19 have created an environment that is not conducive to Xerox continuing to pursue an acquisition of HP Inc.," Xerox said in a statement. "Accordingly, we are withdrawing our tender offer to acquire HP and will no longer seek to nominate our slate of highly qualified candidates to HP's Board of Directors."

Original Submission

NotSanguine writes:

Dan Goodin over at Ars Technica is reporting about an OpenWRT vulnerability in its package manager, opkg.

From the article:

For almost three years, OpenWRT—the open source operating system that powers home routers and other types of embedded systems—has been vulnerable to remote code-execution attacks because updates were delivered over an unencrypted channel and digital signature verifications are easy to bypass, a researcher said.

[...] Security researcher Guido Vranken, however, recently found that updates and installation files were delivered over unencrypted HTTPs[sic] connections, which are open to attacks that allow adversaries to completely replace legitimate updates with malicious ones. The researcher also found that it was trivial for attackers with moderate experience to bypass digital-signature checks that verify a downloaded update as the legitimate one offered by OpenWTR maintainers. The combination of those two lapses makes it possible to send a malicious update that vulnerable devices will automatically install.

[...] These code-execution exploits are limited in their scope because adversaries must either be in a position to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack or tamper with the DNS server that a device uses to find the update on the Internet.

[...] Exploiting these weaknesses, Vranken was able to create a server that impersonated downloads.openwrt.org and served a malicious update. As long as the malicious file is the same size at the legitimate file, it will be executed by a vulnerable device.

Vranken backs up his claims in a blog post where he provides a proof-of-concept exploit against OpenWRT devices.

The checksum bypass vulnerability in OpenWRT's opkg has been assigned CVE-2020-7982.

Affected versions:
18.06.0-18.06.6
19.07.0
LEDE 17.01.0-17.01.7.

Original blog post with discussion and exploit code
OpenWRT Advisory for this vulnerability

OpenWRT is a Linux distro focused on embedded devices, supports a a variety of SoCs, and is widely used on home routers.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8162:

As Volvo goes electric, here's how it's making its batteries top-notch:

Electric cars are becoming much more important to automakers, and that means those companies are having to learn how to get good with batteries. That was baked into Tesla from day one, but for existing automakers, batteries have to become a new core competency. Recently, Volvo opened its doors in Gothenburg, Sweden, to show us how that's happening, ahead of the launch later this year of its new battery EV, the XC40 Recharge.

Volvo was an early advocate for going electric, announcing a plan for its model range shortly after it told us that it was ending development on diesel engines. That plan calls for 50 percent of its sales to be BEVs by 2025, but actually implementing that plan is more involved than just holding a press conference, and it's a transformation that affects the entire company. Engineers are being retrained to work with electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. Supply lines and purchasing have to get to grips with responsibly sourcing a new range of materials. The carmaker even has to think about what its new EVs should sound like.

[...] Volvo has built its reputation on safety, and obviously the move to electric powertrains can't be allowed to compromise that.

"You may think that it's an advantage to have something smaller like an electrical motor compared to a combustion engine in the front [of the vehicle]. But the way that we design for frontal crashes, taking into consideration the real world accidents where you have angles, different speeds, different offsets, the engine itself is actually part of the system to help distribute the loads," explained Thomas Broberg, one of Volvo's senior technical advisers for safety.

Consequently, don't expect a voluminous Tesla-style cargo frunk between the front wheels of an electric XC40. While there is a storage space under the hood, underneath that (and below the inverter and control electronics for the front motor) is a large steel crash structure that distributes frontal impact loads away from the car's occupants in the same way Volvo's internal combustion engines are designed to do.

The battery pack, like just about every EV since General Motors' AUTOnomy concept of 2002, lives between the front and rear axles, and it contributes significantly to the car's structural rigidity and crashworthiness. One doesn't envy the engineers, for the pack has to satisfy two potentially competing demands. Obviously a collision can't compromise the integrity of the pack itself, because lithium-ion cells don't react well to being short-circuited. But equally, you can't design an indestructible pack unless you want the vehicle occupants to absorb all the kinetic energy of a crash instead.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

In Earth’s largest extinction, land die-offs began long before ocean turnover:

New ages for fossilized vertebrates that lived just after the demise of the fauna that dominated the late Permian show that the ecosystem changes began hundreds of thousands of years earlier on land than in the sea, eventually resulting in the demise of up to 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. The later marine extinction, in which nearly 95% of ocean species disappeared, may have occurred over the time span of tens of thousands of years.

Though most scientists believe that a series of volcanic eruptions, occurring in large pulses over a period of a million years in what is now Siberia, were the primary cause of the end-Permian extinction, the lag between the land extinction in the Southern Hemisphere and the marine extinction in the Northern Hemisphere suggests different immediate causes.

"Most people thought that the terrestrial collapse started at the same time as the marine collapse, and that it happened at the same time in the Southern Hemisphere and in the Northern Hemisphere," said paleobotanist Cindy Looy, University of California, Berkeley, associate professor of integrative biology. "The fact that the big changes were not synchronous in the Northern and Southern hemispheres has a big effect on hypotheses for what caused the extinction. An extinction in the ocean does not, per se, have to have the same cause or mechanism as an extinction that happened on land."

[...] "For some years now, we have known that -- in contrast to the marine mass extinction -- the pulses of disturbance of life on land continued deep into the Triassic Period. But that the start of the terrestrial turnover happened so long before the marine extinction was a surprise."

In their paper, Looy and an international team of colleagues concluded "that greater consideration should be given to a more gradual, complex, and nuanced transition of terrestrial ecosystems during the Changhsingian (the last part of the Permian) and, possibly, the early Triassic."

Journal Reference:

Robert A. Gastaldo, Sandra L. Kamo, Johann Neveling, John W. Geissman, Cindy V. Looy, Anna M. Martini. The base of the Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone, Karoo Basin, predates the end-Permian marine extinction. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15243-7

Original Submission

In the beginning there was Project MAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Computer_Science_and_Artificial_Intelligence_Laboratory#Project_MAC

On July 1, 1963, Project MAC (the Project on Mathematics and Computation, later backronymed to Multiple Access Computer, Machine Aided Cognitions, or Man and Computer) was launched with a $2 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Project MAC's original director was Robert Fano of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). ... The program manager responsible for the DARPA grant was J. C. R. Licklider, who had previously been at MIT conducting research in RLE, and would later succeed Fano as director of Project MAC.

Project MAC would become famous for groundbreaking research in operating systems, artificial intelligence, and the theory of computation.

There have been quite a few MACs since then (esp. from Apple) and now Toyota is starting up a new one, https://www.autonomousvehicleinternational.com/news/computing/toyota-researches-human-decision-making.html

The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has launched Machine Assisted Cognition (MAC) to predict human decision making.

MAC aims to be scalable, using available data to develop and demonstrate artificial intelligence tools that can understand and predict human behavior. TRI has hired Franziska Bell to manage the program, who is hiring a new team of researchers including behavioral scientists. They will have oversight of the Accelerated Materials Design and Discovery program led by Brian Storey.

Eric Krotkov, TRI's chief science officer, said, "Our vision is to create a human amplification system for Toyota where people and machines work together synergistically to make better predictions, forecasts and business decisions, and do so more quickly."

The MAC will pursue use-cases that could have applicable solutions for different business functions. Once a proof of concept has been developed, the group will explore specific capabilities that can support the needs of Toyota users in different parts of the organization.

Personally, I'm quite happy to work synergistically with my older Toyota--using the standard controls--steering wheel, pedals, shifter, etc.--on a nice twisty road. I'd rather that my Toyota not get any ideas about working synergistically with me!

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/MAC lists 271 MAC acronyms.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8162:

Neural implants plus AI turns sentence-length thoughts to text:

For people with limited use of their limbs, speech recognition can be critical for their ability to operate a computer. But for many, the same problems that limit limb motion affect the muscles that allow speech. That had made any form of communication a challenge, as physicist Stephen Hawking famously demonstrated. Ideally, we'd like to find a way to get upstream of any physical activity and identify ways of translating nerve impulses to speech.

Brain-computer interfaces were making impressive advances even before Elon Musk decided to get involved, but the problem of brain-to-text wasn't one of its successes. We've been able to recognize speech in the brain for a decade, but the accuracy and speed of this process are quite low. Now, some researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are suggesting that the problem might be that we weren't thinking about the challenge in terms of the big-picture process of speaking. And they have a brain-to-speech system to back them up.

Joseph G. Makin, David A. Moses & Edward F. Chang. Machine translation of cortical activity to text with an encoder–decoder framework. Nature Neuroscience, 2020. DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0608-8

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8162:

Saudi Arabia may be spying on its citizens via US mobile networks:

Data shared by a whistleblower suggests Saudi Arabia may be using a weakness in mobile telecom networks to track its citizens in the US, The Guardian reports. The data shows that over a four-month period, Saudi Arabia's three biggest mobile phone companies sent 2.3 million requests for Provider Subscriber Information (PSI). Normally, that data is used to help foreign operators register roaming charges, but the high volume of requests could also give the Saudi telecoms enough info to track users within hundreds of meters of accuracy.

This takes advantage of long-standing vulnerabilities in a global messaging system called SS7, which routes mobile calls when a user from one country is traveling in another. According to the data shared with The Guardian, the Saudi telecoms sent millions of these PSI SS7 requests to US carriers, including AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon (Engadget&aposs parent company) between November 2019 and March 1st -- sometimes requesting data as often as two to 13 times per hour.

It isn't clear if the Saudi telecoms were spying on behalf of the government, but the kingdom doesn't have the best track record. Earlier this year, The Guardian reported that Amazon's Jeff Bezos's phone was hacked via a WhatsApp message from the personal account of Prince Mohammed. Twitter has banned thousands of accounts linked with a state-backed effort to promote the Saudi government's message, and the Department of Justice has charged former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia.

DannyB writes:

Court: Violating a site's terms of service isn't criminal hacking

A federal court in Washington, DC, has ruled that violating a website's terms of service isn't a crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act[*], America's primary anti-hacking law. The lawsuit was initiated by a group of academics and journalists with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union.

[...] rather than addressing that constitutional issue, Judge John Bates ruled on Friday that the plaintiffs' proposed research wouldn't violate the CFAA's criminal provisions at all. Someone violates the CFAA when they bypass an access restriction like a password. But someone who logs into a website with a valid password doesn't become a hacker simply by doing something prohibited by a website's terms of service, the judge concluded.

"Criminalizing terms-of-service violations risks turning each website into its own criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into his own legislature," Bates wrote.

[...] This isn't the first time a court has held that violating a website's terms of use is not a criminal hacking offense. In 2009, a California federal judge rejected a CFAA prosecution against Lori Drew, a woman who contributed to a MySpace hoax that led to the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier. Prosecutors had argued that Drew violated MySpace's terms of service.

In 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—which includes California—rejected another CFAA prosecution based on a terms-of-service violation. In that case, an employee had used a valid password to access confidential information, which the employee then used in ways that violated the employer's policies.

A 2015 ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted the CFAA in a similar way. It overturned the conviction of a cop who had used a police database to look up information about women he knew personally. While his creepy behavior violated police department policies, the court held, that didn't make it a violation of the anti-hacking law.

"The government's construction of the statute would expand its scope far beyond computer hacking to criminalize any unauthorized use of information obtained from a computer," the appeals court concluded.

DannyB writes:

The Eclipse Foundation Releases Eclipse Theia 1.0, a True Open Source Alternative to Visual Studio Code

Leading open source adopters for Eclipse Theia include ARM, Arduino, EclipseSource, Ericsson, Gitpod, Google Cloud, IBM, Red Hat, SAP, and TypeFox

The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world's largest open source foundations, today announced the release of Theia 1.0, a true open source alternative to Microsoft's popular Visual Studio Code (VS Code) software. Eclipse Theia is an extensible platform to develop multi-language Cloud and Desktop Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) with state-of-the-art web technologies that enable developers, organizations, and vendors to create new, extensible solutions that avoid the fees associated with VS Code. Early contributors and adopters span a broad variety of industries and applications, and include companies like ARM, Arduino, EclipseSource, Ericsson, Gitpod, Google Cloud, IBM, Red Hat, SAP, and TypeFox.

"We are thrilled to see Eclipse Theia deliver on its promise of providing a production-ready, vendor-neutral, and open source framework for creating custom and white-labeled developer products," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. "Visual Studio Code is one of the world's most popular development environments. Not only does Theia allow developers to install and reuse VS Code extensions, it provides an extensible and adaptable platform that can be tailored to specific use cases, which is a huge benefit for any organization that wants to deliver a modern and professional development experience. Congratulations to all the Theia committers and contributors on achieving this milestone."

DannyB writes:

Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls:

Honda has done what no other car maker is doing, and returned to analogue controls for some functions on the new Honda Jazz.

While most manufacturers are moving to touchscreen controls, identifying smartphone use as their inspiration - most recently seen in Audi's latest A3 - Honda has decided to reintroduce heating and air conditioning controls via a dial rather than touchscreen, as in the previous-generation Jazz.

Jazz project leader Takeki Tanaka explained: "The reason is quite simple - we wanted to minimise driver disruption for operation, in particular, for the heater and air conditioning.

^<no-sarcasm>
It seems to me that neither physical controls nor voice controlled operation are fundamentally incompatible with cars being both smart and connected.
_{</no-sarcasm>}

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Coronavirus bound? A perfect at-home project: Backup your data

Tuesday is World Backup Day, a made-up holiday that encourages the the sale of more products like hard drives and USB thumb drives.

That said, when's the last time you actually backed up your phone? Or computer? All of those precious photos sitting on the phone and not backed up could end up as distant memories if you lost the device or had it stolen.

And having your pictures posted on Facebook doesn't count as a backup. The social network greatly lowers the resolution after you've uploaded it, making it unsuitable as a second copy.

We're all at home now. Why not take a few minutes this weekend to back up our media.

I'd rather have a backup than wish I did.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

The 4/1 joke this year is on me. Working from home apparently doesn't get you out of working on your home, or in this case a church destined to shortly be my home. Which is what kept me from having time to annoy you lot with a terrible/goofy/whatever theme or some other silliness this year. Enjoy your lazy Wednesday and feel free to have a chuckle at my expense.

Side note: there are only sixty-one four-digit uids left at the time of this writing (the morning of 3/31) . Any of you long time ACs who think you might want to register before we hit five digits need to do it soon.

Runaway1956 writes:

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/03/28/bored-kids-are-going-on-a-bear-hunt-and-its-adorable/:

Neighborhoods across the globe are putting stuffed bears in their windows and front lawns to give kids a safe game. As the book says, "We're not scared."

We're going on a bear hunt.

We're going to catch a big one.

What a beautiful day! We're not scared.

So begins the beloved award-winning children's picture book We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen[¹] and illustrator Helen Oxenbury[²] that has inspired people across the world to put stuffed bears in their windows to create a "bear hunt" for families out on a walk or a drive through the neighborhood.

It's a great activity for little ones during scary times of social distancing because of the coronavirus.

Matthew Berry, 41, first saw the idea posted by Meghan Harrigan in the neighborhood Facebook page for Woodgate, a suburb not far from Countryside Mall in Clearwater. She had posted a Bear Hunt as an event on Friday afternoon and pretty soon the neighborhood exploded with bears in the windows, the trees, in the backs of cars and under fences, he said.

[...] And there's a new Facebook group that was started this week called Pinellas County's Wild Animal Safari that was formed to allow families to organize and publicize where to find "wild animal safaris" of all kinds of stuffed animals throughout the area. Inspired by the bear hunts, organizer Krystal French chose a wild animal safari, "because it will add a little variety to the search."

[¹] Michael Rosen on Wikipedia
[²] Helen Oxenbury on Wikipedia.

Are any Soylentils going to give this a try in their area?

https://www.newsobserver.com/living/article241538566.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/briarwood-neighborhood-keeps-high-spirits-with-teddy-bear-hunt/ar-BB11QXjC

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

NASA reveals what the final X-57 all-electric X-plane will look like

NASA has released three concept art images showing its X-57 Maxwell all-electric X-plane in its final configuration. The first manned X-plane from NASA in two decades, the X-57 is shown in its Modification iV (Mod IV) form, which includes a high-aspect-ratio wing and 5-ft (1.5-m) diameter wingtip propellers to recover energy from wingtip vortices.

Designed to help develop certification standards that can be applied to electric aircraft as they come onto the market, the X-57 [has] 12 electric motor nacelles with individual propellers, plus two larger propellers on the wingtips.

[...] When it is fully developed, the X-57 could improve flight efficiency by 500 percent when cruising at high speed while generating no in-flight emissions and much less noise than conventional aircraft.

A 2m26s video is included at end of article. (Life At The Lab: All-Electric in the Air)

Original Submission