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takyon writes:

An arXiv preprint suggests that evidence of intelligent (or trashy) life could be found by looking for space junk:

Its author, Héctor Socas-Navarro, spends most of his time at the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics in Spain studying the sun. But he was struck by a weird side effect of the ring of active and retired satellites circling Earth: it's a little bit opaque. And the more satellites we throw up there, the more opaque it gets. He realized that if we—or any technologically advanced aliens out there—build enough satellites, they'll eventually become dense enough to leave a faint shadow around the planet when it passes in front of a star.

And that's awfully convenient given that one of the best ways we have of spotting alien planets is by staring at their stars and waiting for tiny dips in brightness as planets pass in front of them. Essentially, Socas-Navarro's new paper proposes, if aliens have put enough satellites into orbit around their planet, we'll be able to spot the faintly opaque bubble before and after we spot the brightness dip of the planet itself.

The scale of the endeavor would be a real challenge for the aliens, however, since this idea relies on between 10 billion and one trillion satellites. "It's like building the pyramids," Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard University, told New Scientist. "Each building block is easy, but putting it together is the hard engineering task."

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takyon writes:

China will begin recruiting civilians for crewed space missions, rather than limiting the space program to military personnel:

China will begin recruiting civilian astronauts for its military-backed space program and plans to increase the number of crewed missions to around two a year, a top official with the country's space program said.

China's third batch of astronaut trainees will include recruits from industry, research institutions and universities who will help build and crew China's independent space station, Yang Liwei, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, told reporters on the sidelines of the annual session of China's ceremonial parliament.

Russia and China have agreed to collaborate on future missions:

Russia and China have agreed to create a joint data center for lunar and deep space projects, Russian space agency Roscosmos has announced. The projects will involve Russian and Chinese scientific and industrial bodies and companies, Roscosmos said in a statement on Saturday.

Roscosmos and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) also signed an agreement of intent on cooperation over moon and deep space research, at the International Space Exploration Forum (ISEF) in Tokyo. The countries will also look into the possibilities of providing assistance for each other's lunar programs. That would include the launch of the Russian Luna-26 orbiter in 2022, and the Chinese planned landing on the south pole of the moon scheduled for 2023.

Both countries attended the International Space Exploration Forum in Tokyo (ISEF2), where international agreements were signed. The next forum will be held in Italy in 2021.

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takyon writes:

Stanford researchers develop technique to see objects hidden around corners

A driverless car is making its way through a winding neighborhood street, about to make a sharp turn onto a road where a child's ball has just rolled. Although no person in the car can see that ball, the car stops to avoid it. This is because the car is outfitted with extremely sensitive laser technology that reflects off nearby objects to see around corners.

This scenario is one of many that researchers at Stanford University are imagining for a system that can produce images of objects hidden from view. They are focused on applications for autonomous vehicles, some of which already have similar laser-based systems for detecting objects around the car, but other uses could include seeing through foliage from aerial vehicles or giving rescue teams the ability to find people blocked from view by walls and rubble.

Confocal non-line-of-sight imaging based on the light-cone transform (DOI: 10.1038/nature25489) (DX)

Whereas light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems use such measurements to recover the shape of visible objects from direct reflections, NLOS [(Non Line Of Sight)] imaging reconstructs the shape and albedo of hidden objects from multiply scattered light. Despite recent advances, NLOS imaging has remained impractical owing to the prohibitive memory and processing requirements of existing reconstruction algorithms, and the extremely weak signal of multiply scattered light. Here we show that a confocal scanning procedure can address these challenges by facilitating the derivation of the light-cone transform to solve the NLOS reconstruction problem. This method requires much smaller computational and memory resources than previous reconstruction methods do and images hidden objects at unprecedented resolution. Confocal scanning also provides a sizeable increase in signal and range when imaging retroreflective objects. We quantify the resolution bounds of NLOS imaging, demonstrate its potential for real-time tracking and derive efficient algorithms that incorporate image priors and a physically accurate noise model. Additionally, we describe successful outdoor experiments of NLOS imaging under indirect sunlight.

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takyon writes:

According to TorrentFreak (TF) entertainment coalitions such as the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) are continuing to threaten developers of Kodi addons:

The MPA, Netflix, Amazon, and dozens of other content companies are ramping up the pressure on a third-party Kodi addon developer. Last year, JSergio123 was warned by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment to cease his activities and sign a confidential settlement agreement. He did not and now he's coming under pressure to comply. But what are ACE's demands?

[...] JSergio123's reluctance to sign an agreement with ACE hasn't gone unnoticed by the anti-piracy group. In a letter dated March 5, 2018 and signed by Kelly Klaus of US-based lawfirm Munger, Tolles & Olson, the developer is reminded of what transpired last year and what is expected of him moving forward.

"I understand that ACE counsel have discussed with you various of your "Addon" software applications and related software and services, including URLResolver (collectively, the "[redacted] Addons") and other actions you have undertaken to induce and contribute to the mass infringement of the ACE members' copyrighted works," Klaus writes. "I also understand that ACE counsel have provided you with a proposed settlement agreement, pursuant to which you would end your infringing activities and provide cooperation and other consideration in exchange for ACE agreeing not to pursue legal action against you arising out of your infringing activities. To date, you have not signed the settlement agreement."

JSergio123's precise reasons for not signing the settlement agreement aren't being made public. However, TorrentFreak understands that some of the terms presented to addon developers last year have caused considerable concern. In some cases they are difficult to meet, not to mention unpalatable to the people involved. They include promises to ensure that specified addons and indeed any developed in the future can no longer infringe copyright. For those that scrape third-party sources, this could prove impossible to absolutely guarantee. This could effectively put developers out of the addon game – legitimate or otherwise – for good. TF is also informed that ACE demanded a high-level of cooperation, including that the developers should supply what amounts to a full confession, detailing all the projects they've been involved in, past and present.

Meanwhile, Dish Network is continuing to pursue a lawsuit against TVAddons and ZemTV.

Related: MPAA Chief Focuses Attention on the Kodi Platform
Kodi Panic in the UK and Popularity in North America
Kodi Add-on Library "TVAddons" Disappears After Lawsuit
Hollywood Strikes Back Against Illegal Streaming Kodi Add-Ons
Kodi Returns to its Roots With an Xbox One Release
Two New Lawsuits Against Makers of "Pirate Streaming Devices"

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takyon writes:

Study questions whether adults can really make new neurons

Over the past 20 years, evidence that adult humans can produce hundreds of new neurons per day has fueled hope that ramping up cell birth could be therapeutic. Boosting neurogenesis, researchers speculate, might prevent or treat depression, Alzheimer's disease, and other brain disorders. But a controversial study in Nature this week threatens to dash such hopes by suggesting that the production of neurons declines sharply after early development and grinds to a halt by adulthood.

The results of the "exhaustive search" for new neurons in adult human and monkey brains "will disappoint many," says neuroscientist Paul Frankland of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. "It raises concern that levels of neurogenesis are too low to be functionally important" in humans, adds another observer, René Hen, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. But he and others suggest that the study left much room for error. The way the tissue was handled, the deceased patients' psychiatric history, or whether they had brain inflammation could all explain why the researchers failed to confirm earlier, encouraging studies, Hen says.

Also at STAT News.

Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults (DOI: 10.1038/nature25975) (DX)

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takyon writes:

Wave Computing Adopts Low Power MIPS 64-bit Multi-Threaded Core

Wave Computing [...] announced today that it has selected a 64-bit Multi-Threaded processor core from MIPS Technologies for future AI solutions. Wave will use the MIPS core in its next generation of Dataflow Processing Unit (DPU) chips that will ship in Wave's future deep learning systems to handle device control functions including management of the real-time operating system (RTOS) and system-on-chip (SoC) subsystem.

From a MIPS press release:

As design complexity and software footprints continue to increase, the 64-bit MIPS architecture is being used in an even broader set of datacenter, connected consumer devices, networking products, and emerging AI applications. In addition to Wave, companies including Mobileye, Fungible, ThinCI, and DENSO, among others, are using the MIPS 64-bit processor core as they develop ground-breaking AI applications. [...] Last August, Denso group company NSITEXE, Inc. announced that it licensed the newest MIPS CPU to drive enhanced in-vehicle electronic processing.

Related: MIPS Strikes Back: 64-bit Warrior I6400 Arrives
PEZY's Next Many-Core Chip Will Include a MIPS 64-Bit CPU
ARM Cortex-A35, Snapdragon 820, and New Imagination MIPS Processors
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched
Imagination Technologies Acquired for $675 Million, MIPS to be Sold Off

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takyon writes:

Amazon launches a low-cost version of Prime for Medicaid recipients

Amazon announced this morning it will offer a low-cost version of its Prime membership program to qualifying recipients of Medicaid. The program will bring the cost of Prime down from the usual $10.99 per month to about half that, at $5.99 per month, while still offering the full range of Prime perks, including free, two-day shipping on millions of products, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Photos, Prime Reading, Prime Now, Audible Channels, and more.

The new program is an expansion on Amazon's discounted Prime service for customers on government assistance, launched in June 2017. For the same price of $5.99 per month, Amazon offers Prime memberships to any U.S. customer with a valid EBT card – the card that's used to disburse funds for assistance programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC).

It could be a way to get users with certain health care requirements on board before Amazon launches its own health insurance company.

Also at USA Today.

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takyon writes:

Slowing Biological Time to Extend the Golden Hour for Lifesaving Treatment

When a Service member suffers a traumatic injury or acute infection, the time from event to first medical treatment is usually the single most significant factor in determining the outcome between saving a life or not. First responders must act as quickly as possible, first to ensure a patient's sheer survival and then to prevent permanent disability. The Department of Defense refers to this critical, initial window of time as the "golden hour," but in many cases the opportunity to successfully intervene may extend much less than sixty minutes, which is why the military invests so heavily in moving casualties as rapidly as possible from the battlefield to suitable medical facilities. However, due to the realities of combat, there are often hard limits to the availability of rapid medical transport and care.

DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] created the Biostasis program to develop new possibilities for extending the golden hour, not by improving logistics or battlefield care, but by going after time itself, at least how the body manages it. Biostasis will attempt to directly address the need for additional time in continuously operating biological systems faced with catastrophic, life-threatening events. The program will leverage molecular biology to develop new ways of controlling the speed at which living systems operate, and thus extend the window of time following a damaging event before a system collapses. Essentially, the concept aims to slow life to save life.

[...] DARPA will hold a Proposers Day webinar on March 20, 2018, at 12:30 PM EDT to provide more information about Biostasis and answer questions from potential proposers. For details of the event, including registration requirements, visit: https://go.usa.gov/xnzqE.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A bug in an obscure but widely used email program may be putting as many as 400,000 servers around the world at risk of serious attack until they install an update.

The flaw—which is in all releases of the Exim message transfer agent except for version 4.90.1—opens servers to attacks that can execute malicious code, researchers who discovered the vulnerability warned in an advisory published Tuesday. The buffer overflow vulnerability, which is indexed as CVE-2018-6789, resides in base64 decode function. By sending specially manipulated input to a server running Exim, attackers may be able to remotely execute code.

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takyon writes:

Vulkan 1.1 Specification Released: Open-source Tools, SDKs, and Launch Driver Support

Since the release of Vulkan 1.0 in February 2016, the successor to OpenGL slowly but surely made its way into applications and game engines. Today, roughly two years later, the Khronos Group is releasing Vulkan 1.1 and SPIR-V 1.3 specifications, and much like Vulkan 1.0's 'hard' API launch these are accompanied by updated developer tools, open source conformance tests, and launch driver support from GPU vendors. [...] In sum, the evolution of Vulkan from 1.0 to 1.1 is three-pronged: integration of developer-requested functionalities, driver support and seamless porting of Vulkan to more platforms, and then practical implementation by way of a developed ecosystem.

Moving straight into the core changes, Vulkan 1.1 brings two new wide-ranging functionalities: protected content and subgroup operations. The former utilizes low-level restrictions such that applications can render and display using resources they cannot access or copy, in turn securing playback and display of protected content. While ostensibly for DRM purposes, Khronos noted that Vulkan was exposing GPU capability rather than pushing for hardware-level DRM, leaving usage or implementation up to the developers.

So on the one hand, developers may choose to create a highly-restrictive multi-layered DRM scheme with a high degree of granularity. On the other hand, perhaps the feature could be used for an advanced low-level adblocker, not only for browsers but one that could hook onto ad-serving mobile and desktop games and applications. All might be possible with Vulkan 1.1 and beyond. To that end, Vulkan is in many ways simply looking to enable what is possible – in the purest sense of the idea – on GPUs.

That idea carries over with the new 'subgroup operations', where a set of threads can communicate and coordinate amongst themselves where normally this would be done by accessing off-chip memory. Ultimately, this offers developers a method of parallelizing certain workloads to a very high degree, and while compute and deep learning are the more obvious use cases, subgroup operations are not limited to only compute shaders and could presumably be used for graphical purposes. Naturally, the new SPIR-V 1.3 likewise supports subgroup operations.

Khronos Group press release and Vulkan Resource Page.

SPIR: "Standard Portable Intermediate Representation"

Previously: Khronos Group Releases Vulkan 1.0 Graphics Specification

Related: Open Source Doom 3 BFG Gets a Vulkan Renderer
AMD Finally Pushing Out Open-Source Vulkan Driver

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

It's hard to believe that a single material can be described by as many superlatives as graphene can. Since its discovery in 2004, scientists have found that the lacy, honeycomb-like sheet of carbon atoms -- essentially the most microscopic shaving of pencil lead you can imagine -- is not just the thinnest material known in the world, but also incredibly light and flexible, hundreds of times stronger than steel, and more electrically conductive than copper.

Now physicists at MIT and Harvard University have found the wonder material can exhibit even more curious electronic properties. In two papers published today in Nature, the team reports it can tune graphene to behave at two electrical extremes: as an insulator, in which electrons are completely blocked from flowing; and as a superconductor, in which electrical current can stream through without resistance.

Researchers in the past, including this team, have been able to synthesize graphene superconductors by placing the material in contact with other superconducting metals -- an arrangement that allows graphene to inherit some superconducting behaviors. This time around, the team found a way to make graphene superconduct on its own, demonstrating that superconductivity can be an intrinsic quality in the purely carbon-based material.

The physicists accomplished this by creating a "superlattice" of two graphene sheets stacked together -- not precisely on top of each other, but rotated ever so slightly, at a "magic angle" of 1.1 degrees. As a result, the overlaying, hexagonal honeycomb pattern is offset slightly, creating a precise moiré configuration that is predicted to induce strange, "strongly correlated interactions" between the electrons in the graphene sheets. In any other stacked configuration, graphene prefers to remain distinct, interacting very little, electronically or otherwise, with its neighboring layers.

The team, led by Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, an associate professor of physics at MIT, found that when rotated at the magic angle, the two sheets of graphene exhibit nonconducting behavior, similar to an exotic class of materials known as Mott insulators. When the researchers then applied voltage, adding small amounts of electrons to the graphene superlattice, they found that, at a certain level, the electrons broke out of the initial insulating state and flowed without resistance, as if through a superconductor.

"We can now use graphene as a new platform for investigating unconventional superconductivity," Jarillo-Herrero says. "One can also imagine making a superconducting transistor out of graphene, which you can switch on and off, from superconducting to insulating. That opens many possibilities for quantum devices."

takyon writes:

Facebook asks users: should we allow men to ask children for sexual images?

Facebook has admitted it was a "mistake" to ask users whether paedophiles requesting sexual pictures from children should be allowed on its website.

On Sunday, the social network ran a survey for some users asking how they thought the company should handle grooming behaviour. "There are a wide range of topics and behaviours that appear on Facebook," one question began. "In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook's policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures."

The options available to respondents ranged from "this content should not be allowed on Facebook, and no one should be able to see it" to "this content should be allowed on Facebook, and I would not mind seeing it".

A second question asked who should decide the rules around whether or not the adult man should be allowed to ask for such pictures on Facebook. Options available included "Facebook users decide the rules by voting and tell Facebook" and "Facebook decides the rules on its own".

Also at The Verge, TechCrunch, The Mercury News, CNBC, and Engadget.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Ross Anderson in the Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory asks some questions about whether durable goods such as cars can be Internet-connected and yet provide sufficient privacy and safety. It's not a deep discussion but it does raise a few other pertainent questions.

Perhaps the biggest challenge will be durability. At present we have a hard time patching a phone that's three years old. Yet the average age of a UK car at scrappage is about 14 years, and rising all the time; cars used to last 100,000 miles in the 1980s but now keep going for nearer 200,000. As the embedded carbon cost of a car is about equal to that of the fuel it will burn over its lifetime, we just can't afford to scrap cars after five years, as do we laptops.

Meters and medical devices are two more examples of hardware that can cause great harm when control of the integrated software is taken over by malfeasants.

Source : Making security sustainable.
and Making Security Sustainable: Can there be an Internet of durable goods? (warning for PDF)

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takyon writes:

France to set legal age of sexual consent as 15

France plans to fix the legal age of sexual consent as 15, meaning sex with someone younger than that would be considered rape.

Equality Minister Marlène Schiappa welcomed the move, which follows advice from doctors and legal experts. Currently, prosecutors must prove sex with someone under 15 was forced in order to bring rape charges. The change comes amid uproar over two recent cases of men accused of having sex with 11-year-old girls.

Under the existing legislation, if there is no violence or coercion proved, offenders may only be charged with sexual abuse of a minor and not rape. This has a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£66,000; $87,000).

[...] The government is to approve the new age limit as part of a package of other laws against sexual violence and harassment in the coming weeks. It had been discussing whether to set the age as 13 or 15, which is what groups fighting violence against children had campaigned for.

Les commentaires déplorables.

Also at The Local, NPR, and SBS.

Related: French Porn Star Hits Back at President Emmanuel Macron's Plans to Censor Online Porn

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

FBI agents paid employees in Best Buy's Geek Squad unit to act as informants, documents published Tuesday reveal.

Agents paid managers in the retailer's device repair unit to pass along information about illegal content discovered on customers' devices, according to documents posted online by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The digital rights group sued the FBI for the documents last year after the bureau denied a Freedom of Information Act request.

The EFF filed the lawsuit to learn the extent to which the agency trains and directs Best Buy Geek Squad employees to conduct warrantless searches of customers' devices during maintenance. The EFF said it was concerned that use of repair technicians to root out evidence of criminal behavior circumvents people's constitutional rights.

[...] Another document shows the FBI approved a $500 payment to a "confidential human source" whose name was redacted. The EFF said the payment appears to be one of many connected to the prosecution of Mark Rettenmaier, a Southern California doctor accused of possessing child pornography after he sent in his computer to Best Buy for repairs.

The EFF said the documents detail investigation procedures in which Geek Squad employees would contact the FBI after finding what they believed to be child pornography on a customer's device.

The EFF said an FBI agent would examine the device to determine whether there was illegal content present, and if so, seize the device and send it to the FBI field office closest to where the customer lived. Agents would then investigate further, and in some cases try to obtain a warrant to search the device. 

Best Buy said last year that three of the four employees who may have received payment from the FBI are no longer employed by the company. The fourth was reprimanded and reassigned.

Previously: Cooperation Alleged Between Best Buy and the FBI
FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance
EFF Sues FBI to Obtain Records About Geek Squad/Best Buy Surveillance

Related: How Best Buy's Computer-Wiping Error Turned Me into an Amateur Blackhat

Original Submission