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Fnord666 writes:

The onboard atomic clocks that drive the satellite-navigation signals on Europe's Galileo network have been failing at an alarming rate.

Across the 18 satellites now in orbit, nine clocks have stopped operating. Three are traditional rubidium devices; six are the more precise hydrogen maser instruments that were designed to give Galileo superior performance to the American GPS network.

Galileo was declared up and running in December.

However, it is still short of the number of satellites considered to represent a fully functioning constellation, and a decision must now be made about whether to suspend the launch of further spacecraft while the issue is investigated. Prof Jan Woerner, the director general of the European Space Agency (Esa), told a meeting with reporters: "Everybody is raising this question: should we postpone the next launch until we find the root cause, or should we launch? "You can give both answers at the same time. You can say we wait until we find the solution but that means if more clocks fail we will reduce the capability of Galileo. But if we launch we will at least maintain if not increase the [capability], but we may then take the risk that a systematic problem is not considered. We are right now in this discussion about what to do."

Each Galileo satellite carries two rubidium and two hydrogen maser clocks. The multiple installation enables a satellite to keep working after an initial failure. All 18 spacecraft currently in space continue to operate, but one of them is now down to just two clocks. [...] It appears the rubidium failures "all seem to have a consistent signature, linked to probable short circuits, and possibly a particular test procedure performed on the ground".

[...] Actions are being taken to try to prevent further problems. These involve changing the way clocks are operated in orbit. Clocks about to fly are also likely to be refurbished, and future devices yet to be made will have design changes, the agency says.

Esa is hopeful it can still launch the next four satellites in the constellation before the end of the year.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38664225

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Messenger RNAs carry the information for the assembly of proteins from the DNA in the cell nucleus to the sites of protein synthesis in the cytoplasm, and are crucial for cell function. In nerve cells, which form cytoplasmic processes that can be very long, many neuronal mRNAs must be conveyed to the sites of action of their protein products to ensure that the correct intercellular connections can be established. This requires a dedicated transport system that links remote regions of the cytoplasm with the cell nucleus. Dierk Niessing, a professor at LMU's Biomedical Center and leader of a research group in the Institute of Structural Biology at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, has now characterized the structure of a macromolecular complex involved in the transport of mRNAs in yeast cells. The new findings appear in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

[...] The new data represent a major advance in our understanding of the transport of RNA -- a process that is common to all organisms whose cells are nucleated and is vital for their survival.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

The U.S. Labor Department has sued Oracle America Inc, alleging that the technology company systematically paid its white, male employees more than other workers and unlawfully favored Asian applicants in its recruiting and hiring efforts.

The department in a complaint filed with an administrative judge in Washington said the company was prohibited from engaging in racial discrimination given the hundreds of millions of dollars it receives as a contractor with the federal government.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-usa-labor-idUSKBN1522O6

Original Submission

multixrulz writes:

ABC reports about a worrying scam involving phone number porting. The attacker finds the phone number, name, and date of birth, and other easy-to-find information about a first victim and uses that information to port their number to a new service under control of the attacker. This enables them to access the victim's Facebook account, which is used in a social engineering attack against the victim's friends, who become new victims when they hand over their banking details, which are then used to transfer money and make purchases.

This attack obviously works better with the large amount of personal information people are putting on social networks. But how well would this kind of thing work against the average Soylentil?

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

A recent techdirt article says that

Law Enforcement Has Been Using OnStar, SiriusXM, To Eavesdrop, Track Car Locations For More Than 15 Year

Thomas Fox-Brewster of Forbes is taking a closer look at a decade-plus of in-car surveillance, courtesy of electronics and services manufacturers are installing in as many cars as possible.

Following the news that cops are trying to sweat down an Amazon Echo in hopes of hearing murder-related conversations, it's time to revisit the eavesdropping that's gone on for years prior to today's wealth of in-home recording devices.

One of the more recent examples can be found in a 2014 warrant that allowed New York police to trace a vehicle by demanding the satellite radio and telematics provider SiriusXM provide location information.

In this case, SiriusXM complied by turning on its "stolen vehicle recovery" mode, which allowed law enforcement to track the vehicle for ten days. SiriusXM told Forbes it only does this in response to search warrants and court orders. That may be the case for real-time tracking, but any location information captured and stored by SiriusXM can be had with nothing more than a subpoena, as this info is normally considered a third-party record.

It's not just satellite radio companies allowing cops to engage in surreptitious tracking. OnStar and other in-vehicle services have been used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on personal conversations between drivers and passengers.

In at least two cases, individuals unwittingly had their conversations listened in on by law enforcement. In 2001, OnStar competitor ATX Technologies (which later became part of Agero) was ordered to provide "roving interceptions" of a Mercedes Benz S430V. It initially complied with the order in November of that year to spy on audible communications for 30 days, but when the FBI asked for an extension in December, ATX declined, claiming it was overly burdensome.

The 2001 case didn't end well for law enforcement. It wasn't that the court had an issue with the eavesdropping, but rather that the act of listening in limited the functionality of the in-car tech, which the court found to be overly-burdensome.

[...] Law enforcement may find encryption to be slowing things down in terms of accessing cell phone contents, but everything else -- from in-car electronics to the Internet of Things -- is playing right into their hands.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Earlier today, we ran an article detailing that Oracle released 270 critical security updates for many of its products, including MySQL cluster which we use here to provide high uptime and reliability for SoylentNews. Needless to say, it was time to upgrade both NDB backends, and the four MySQLd frontends. While the upgrade did not go completely smoothly due to the fact that MySQL strict mode got enabled, and broke the site briefly, our total downtime was less than five minutes or so. Right now, we had to do a full flush and purge of all caches, which means the site is running a bit larky until they can repopulate but I'm pleased to announce we're up to date and secure!

ndb_mgm> show
Cluster Configuration
---------------------
[ndbd(NDB)]	2 node(s)
id=2	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5, Nodegroup: 0)
id=3	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5, Nodegroup: 0, *)

[ndb_mgmd(MGM)]	2 node(s)
id=101	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)
id=102	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)

[mysqld(API)]	4 node(s)
id=11	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)
id=12	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)
id=13	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)
id=14	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)

If you notice any unusual breakages or slowdowns, please let me know in the comments. Otherwise, keep calm and carry on!

~ NCommander

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Google and others think software that learns to learn could take over some work done by AI experts.

Progress in artificial intelligence causes some people to worry that software will take jobs such as driving trucks away from humans. Now leading researchers are finding that they can make software that can learn to do one of the trickiest parts of their own jobs—the task of designing machine-learning software.

In one experiment, researchers at the Google Brain artificial intelligence research group had software design a machine-learning system to take a test used to benchmark software that processes language. What it came up with surpassed previously published results from software designed by humans.

In recent months several other groups have also reported progress on getting learning software to make learning software. They include researchers at the nonprofit research institute OpenAI (which was cofounded by Elon Musk), MIT, the University of California, Berkeley, and Google's other artificial intelligence research group, DeepMind.

If self-starting AI techniques become practical, they could increase the pace at which machine-learning software is implemented across the economy. Companies must currently pay a premium for machine-learning experts, who are in short supply.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Ambulances in Stockholm are testing a system that interrupts in-car audio systems to warn drivers that they need to get through.

The solution was developed by students at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in the city. It broadcasts a voice warning, while a text message also appears in the radio display. It uses an FM radio signal to jam drivers' speakers and stop music playing. It will only be able to alert cars that have their radios turned on. It can also interrupt CDs and music connected via Bluetooth.

[...] "Often drivers have only a few seconds to react and give way to emergency vehicles," said Mikael Erneberg, a KTH student who worked on the system. "The optimal warning time is at least 10 to 15 seconds."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

BleepingComputer has an interesting article on a 2015 design decision by Intel that opened up the JTAG interface to attacks.

Attackers with access to a device can take control over a target's computer and bypass all local security systems by abusing a hardware debugging interface included with Intel CPUs, which in recent years has become accessible via an external USB 3.0 port.

The debugging interface is JTAG (Joint Test Action Group), a debugging framework that has been included for many years with Intel chipsets.

JTAG works under the software level, allowing engineers, developers, and system administrators access to a hardware debugging utility that can provide insight into how the OS kernel, hypervisors, and local drivers are performing.

[...] In older Intel CPUs, the JTAG interface was only accessible by connecting a special device to the ITP-XDP port found on the motherboard, inside a computer's chassis.

Starting with the Skylake CPU line released in 2015, Intel dropped the ITP-XDP interface and allowed developers and engineers to access this powerful debugging utility via common USB 3.0 ports, accessible from the device's exterior, via a new a new technology called Direct Connect Interface (DCI).

Two Positive Technologies security researchers, Maxim Goryachy and Mark Ermolov, argue that this has significantly simplified the attack procedure needed to take control of Intel-based machines.

The two explain that while most hardware vendors disable the DCI interface before they ship products out of the factory's gateway, the DCI interface can be re-enabled via a computer's BIOS settings.

If a target doesn't password-protect its BIOS, attackers can enable this setting, and then connect via USB and alter core processes, undetectable to any type of security software installed on a targetted[sic] machine.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The CIA has released around 13 million pages of declassified documents online in a much more easily accessible form, following a lawsuit and other pressure:

Among the more unusual records are documents from the Stargate Project, which dealt with psychic powers and extrasensory perception. Those include records of testing on celebrity psychic Uri Geller in 1973, when he was already a well-established performer. Memos detail how Mr Geller was able to partly replicate pictures drawn in another room with varying - but sometimes precise - accuracy, leading the researchers to write that he "demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner".

[...] While much of the information has been technically publicly available since the mid-1990s, it has been very difficult to access. The records were only available on four physical computers located in the back of a library at the National Archives in Maryland, between 09:00 and 16:30 each day. A non-profit freedom of information group, MuckRock, sued the CIA to force it to upload the collection, in a process which took more than two years.

At the same time, journalist Mike Best crowd-funded more than $15,000 to visit the archives to print out and then publicly upload the records, one by one, to apply pressure to the CIA. "By printing out and scanning the documents at CIA expense, I was able to begin making them freely available to the public and to give the agency a financial incentive to simply put the database online," Best wrote in a blog post. In November, the CIA announced it would publish the material, and the entire declassified CREST archive is now available on the CIA Library website.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard informs us of a story:

Oracle has released the first Critical Patch Update scheduled for 2017, and it's massive. It fixes 270 vulnerabilities across multiple products, and over 100 of them are remotely exploitable by unauthenticated attackers.

The entire list of affected products and components is long, and Oracle advises users of all of them to implement the updates as soon as possible.

"The focus has shifted from Database and Java SE to critical business applications, as we predicted within the last 2 years," the ERPScan research team noted.

[...] The number of fixed issues is not the largest an Oracle CPU has ever delivered, but of the last five (since January 2016), four have passed the 240-mark.

Also: Oracle Patches 270 Vulnerabilities in January Update

Original Submission

randomerr writes:

The real threat to global critical infrastructure is not enemy states or organisations but squirrels.

Cris Thomas has been tracking power cuts caused by animals since 2013.

Squirrels, birds, rats and snakes have been responsible for more than 1,700 power cuts affecting nearly 5 million people, he told a security conference.

He explained that by tracking these issues, he was seeking to dispel the hype around cyber-attacks.

His Cyber Squirrel 1 project was set up to counteract what he called the "ludicrousness of cyber-war claims by people at high levels in government and industry", he told the audience at the Shmoocon security conference in Washington.

Squirrels topped the list with 879 "attacks", followed by:

• birds - 434
• snakes - 83
• raccoons - 72
• rats - 36
• martens - 22
• frogs - three

He concludes that the damage done by real cyber-attacks - Stuxnet's destruction of Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges and disruption to Ukrainian power plants being the most high profile - was tiny compared to the "cyber-threat" posed by animals.

Also at Arstechnica

Original Submission

A couple months ago we ran a story asking the SoylentNews community for volunteers to help with editing and the community did not let us down; we received a full dozen inquiries! You've probably noticed a few new names art the top of the stories and quite frankly, their contributions made it possible for the staff to survive the holiday season — many, many thanks!

If, for whatever reason, you did not want to be an Editor, but still wish to contribute, there are many other areas:

Submit stories

Click the Submit Story link in the "Navigation" slashbox on the left-hand side of the main page. It is not necessary to write perfect prose (though we sure appreciate it when we see it!) If you find a story that you find interesting and think that others might also enjoy it, too, send it in! We publish, on average, about 450 stories a month. If 1% of the community submitted a story or two each month, it would make a huge difference!

Post comments

You don't need to be a subject-matter expert to comment on a story! (Though we sure do appreciate when such people chime in!) Sometimes the best discussions come about simply because someone asked a question.

Perform Moderation

Moderation is like Olympic Scoring. Everything from a "-1" (not worth the electrons used to store it) to a "5" (one of the best on the site). Each registered user gets 5 mod points per day. Concentrate on promoting the good rather than hiding the bad... we want to make sure the most insightful, interesting, and informative comments are visible.

Help site development and operation

Something bugging you about site behavior? Have experience in running a web site? Know how to run an IRC server? Know your way around a Wiki? Can code Perl in your sleep? Have experience doing QA and/or test? Don't have this knowledge but would like to learn? Join our development and/or operations team.

Support the site

Your financial contributions are critical to our continued operation. Subscribe to SoylentNews or buy SoylentNews swag.

Other?

See something else where you'd like to help out? Let us know — the more the merrier! There's a lot of fun and camaraderie in our team... in large part it's why I continue to contribute to the site. Join in on the fun!

There are many rewards for contributing. Just to be a part of such a diverse and knowledgeable team is indescribable. I have learned so much from some amazingly helpful people. So join up as an editor, submit stories and comments, moderate, or help the site to keep running.

Lastly, spread the word. Share a link to the main page, to a particular story, or even to a single comment.

--martyb

takyon writes:

New Hampshire-based Nanocomp Technologies Inc. claims that its new manufacturing process produces carbon nanotubes that are hundreds of times longer than what is typically available:

A new commercial manufacturing process for carbon nanotubes (CNTs) produces tubes in the range of 1–10 mm in length (5–12-nm dia.), two orders of magnitude longer than currently available CNTs, which typically have lengths from 5–20µm. "Despite attractive mechanical and electrical properties, CNTs have largely been a disappointment for 'real-world' applications, because it has not been possible to make them in formats that are useful for engineers," explains Peter Antoinette, co-founder and president of Nanocomp Technologies Inc. (Merrimack, N.H.; www.nanocomptech.com), the developer of the process. Short CNTs do not readily form networks within other materials, unless used at very high concentrations.

The Nanocomp process revolves around a proprietary 1-m long heated reactor that contains a widely available iron catalyst and allows control of 23 separate process variables. Organic alcohols serve as the carbon source for CNTs. "By exerting tight control over the process conditions, we can manipulate the length and dimensions of the CNTs," Antoinette says. The longer, polymer-like CNTs resulting from the process are commercially available as Miralon products, and they can be spun into "yarn" using equipment for textile fiber processing. Because of their length, the Nanocomp CNTs form bundles and networks that allow them to be more useful in macroscale materials, such as for lightweight structural materials.

Found at NextBigFuture, which has some older information about the company.

The carbon nanotube market is projected to grow by between 16.8% to 22.1% per year in the near future.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) will attempt to develop vaccines for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Lassa fever, and Nipah virus within the next five years. CEPI is seeking another half billion dollars of funding at the World Economic Forum:

Scientists have named three relatively little-known diseases they think could cause the next global health emergency. A coalition of governments and charities has committed $460m to speed up vaccine development for Mers, Lassa fever and Nipah virus. They are asking funders at the World Economic Forum Davos for another $500m. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations aims to have two new experimental vaccines ready for each disease within five years.

CEPI was formed in the wake of the Ebola crisis to speed up vaccine development:

The devastating Ebola epidemic that erupted in West Africa in 2014 sparked the formation of CEPI. Experimental Ebola vaccines, which have no commercial market, were sitting in laboratory freezers when the epidemic broke out, but they had never been tested in humans. Clinical trials began in haste in September 2014, but vaccine development is a multiphase process that requires first conducting small-scale studies for safety and immune responses in hundreds of people who are not at risk for the disease. Vaccines that pass those tests move on to real-world efficacy trials in thousands of volunteers. By the time an Ebola vaccine proved its worth in July 2015, standard containment efforts had already nearly brought the epidemic to a standstill.

Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust in London, co-authored an influential perspective in the 23 July 2015 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine that spelled out the need for a coordinated global effort to help advance vaccines against menacing infectious diseases that industry ignored because of dodgy markets. The article proposed taking novel vaccines through preliminary human testing before the inevitable outbreaks—an idea that has now evolved into CEPI. "We now have enough money to show the world that this can deliver," says Farrar, who is on the interim CEPI board. CEPI will now solicit proposals from academic researchers and industry to develop candidate vaccines for its three target viruses.

Original Submission

randomerr writes:

NASA wants to uncover the mystery behind the asteroid “16 Psyche.” that may contain a priceless treasure trove of minerals. “We’ve been to all the different planets, we’ve been to other asteroids. But we’ve never visited a body that has been made of entirely metal,” said Carol Polanskey, project scientist for the Psyche mission. Now NASA, led by researchers at Arizona State University, plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to orbit 16 Psyche – an asteroid roughly the size of Massachusetts, made of iron and other precious metals. The mission’s leader estimates that the iron alone on today’s market would be worth $10,000 quadrillion.

Previously: NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Alexey Yablokov and Chris Busby are biologists whose efforts have been to make people aware of the negative health effects of very low-dose ionizing radiation.

Chris Busby reports via CounterPunch

There will be many obituaries published about Alexey V. Yablokov, the extraordinary Russian scientist, activist, and human being, but I would like to briefly record a few words about the man I knew. And to weep a few tears.

He was a strong [...] friend and fellow fighter for truth, and his recent death on the evening of January 10th means a lot for me--and (though we may [not] know it) for us all on this increasingly contaminated planet.

[...] He, like me, saw the issue of radiation and health as one which was fundamentally a political one, and only secondarily as scientific.

[...] In 1998, [...] Alexey and I [...] with Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, Alice Stewart, and (later) Molly Scott Cato [...] decided to form an alternative [to ICRP, the International Commission on Radiological Protection]: the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR).

This needed an alternative radiation risk model, and we worked on this over the next five years to create the first ECRR report which was published in 2003 and rose upon the nuclear industry horizon with the brightness of a thousand suns.

[Continues...]