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Fnord666 writes:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sha-1-collision-attacks-are-now-actually-practical-and-a-looming-danger/

Attacks on the SHA-1 hashing algorithm just got a lot more dangerous last week with the discovery of the first-ever "chosen-prefix collision attack," a more practical version of the SHA-1 collision attack first carried out by Google two years ago.

What this means is that SHA-1 collision attacks can now be carried out with custom inputs, and they're not just accidental mishaps anymore, allowing attackers to target certain files to duplicate and forge.

The SHA-1 hashing function was theoretically broken in 2005; however, the first successful collision attack in the real world was carried out in 2017.

Two years ago, academics from Google and CWI produced two files that had the same SHA-1 hash, in the world's first ever SHA-1 collision attack -- known as "SHAttered."

Cryptographers predicted SHA-1 would be broken in a real-world scenario, but the SHAttered research came three years earlier than they expected, and also cost only $110,000 to execute using cloud-rented computing power, far less than what people thought it might cost.

But last week, a team of academics from France and Singapore has taken the SHAttered research one step further by demonstrating the first-ever SHA-1 "chosen-prefix" collision attack, in a new research paper titled "From Collisions to Chosen-Prefix Collisions - Application to Full SHA-1."

"Finding a practical collision attack breaks the hash function badly of course, but the actual damage that can be done with such a collision is somewhat limited as the attacker will have little to no control on the actual data that collides," Thomas Peyrin, one of the researchers told ZDNet via email over the weekend.

"A much more interesting attack is to find a so-called 'chosen-prefix collision,' where the attacker can freely choose the prefix for the two colliding messages. Such collisions change everything in terms of threat because you can now consider having collisions with meaningful data inside (like names or identities in a digital certificate, etc)."

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takyon writes:

This shrimplike creature makes aluminum armor to survive the deep sea's crushing pressure

Amphipods—small, shrimplike crustaceans in most aquatic ecosystems—start to fall apart once they hit depths of 4500 meters. There, a combination of crushing pressures, low temperature, and higher acidity causes the calcium carbonate in their exoskeletons to dissolve, making them vulnerable to pressure and predators. Now, scientists have discovered how one species, Hirondellea gigas, can survive in the deepest part of the ocean: with aluminum suits of armor.

Researchers first analyzed H. gigas specimens found at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, more than 10,000 meters below the surface of the ocean. They found that this extreme amphipod constructs a personal suit of armor—a layer of aluminum hydroxide gel covering the surface of its exoskeleton. But aluminum isn't abundant in ocean water, making it hard to source as a building material. It is, however, abundant in ocean sediment.

An aluminum shield enables the amphipod Hirondellea gigas to inhabit deep-sea environments (open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0206710) (DX)

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takyon, realDonaldTrump and James Orme bring us news of all things SpaceX:

SpaceX to Launch 60 Starlink Satellites at Once, and More

takyon writes:

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reveals radical Starlink redesign for 60-satellite launch

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has published the first official photo of the company's near-final Starlink design and confirmed that Falcon 9 will launch a staggering 60 satellites on May 15th.

Known internally as Starlink v0.9, this mission will not be the first launch of operational satellites, but it will be the first internal SpaceX mission with a dedicated Falcon 9 launch. Additionally, the payload will be the heaviest yet launched by SpaceX, signifying an extraordinarily ambitious first step towards realizing the company's ~12,000-satellite Starlink megaconstellation.

Put simply, SpaceX's Starlink v0.9 launch is extremely unique for several reasons. Aside from the unprecedented step of launching 60 spacecraft weighing ~13,000 kg (~30,000 lb) on a developmental mission, both the form factor of each satellite and the style of dispenser/payload adapter has never been seen before. SpaceX appears to have settled on a square dispenser with four separate quadrants for satellites. The satellites themselves look truly bizarre – it's actually difficult to discern where one spacecraft stops and the next begins. Nevertheless, it appears that each Starlink satellite is a relatively thin rectangle, possibly with a squared top and bottom. It's also possible that they are all around rectangular and that the dispenser instead has two main sections.

martyb writes:

A Cup of Joe and You're Good to Go (Under 6 a Day and You're A-OK):

While the pros and cons of drinking coffee have been debated for decades, new research from the University of South Australia reveals that drinking six or more coffees a day can be detrimental to your health, increasing your risk of heart disease by up to 22 per cent.

In Australia, one in six people are affected by cardiovascular disease. It is a major cause of death with one person dying from the disease every 12 minutes. According to the World Health Organization, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death, yet one of the most preventable.

Investigating the association of long-term coffee consumption and cardiovascular disease, UniSA researchers Dr Ang Zhou and Professor Elina Hyppönen of the Australian Centre for Precision Health say their research confirms the point at which excess caffeine can cause high blood pressure, a precursor to heart disease.

[...] "In order to maintain a healthy heart and a healthy blood pressure, people must limit their coffees to fewer than six cups a day – based on our data six was the tipping point where caffeine started to negatively affect cardiovascular risk."

Using UK Biobank data of 347,077 participants aged 37-73 years, the study explored the ability of the caffeine-metabolizing gene (CYP1A2) to better process caffeine, identifying increased risks of cardiovascular disease in line with coffee consumption and genetic variations.

Prof Hyppönen says that despite carriers of the fast-processing gene variation being four times quicker at metabolising caffeine, the research does not support the belief that these people could safely consume more caffeine, more frequently, without detrimental health effects.

Journal Reference:
Ang Zhou, Elina Hyppönen. Long-term coffee consumption, caffeine metabolism genetics, and risk of cardiovascular disease: a prospective analysis of up to 347,077 individuals and 8368 cases. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2019; 109 (3): 509 DOI: 10.1093/ajcn/nqy297

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James Orme writes:

As technology becomes the foundation of everything society does, governments around the world are in the throes of ambitious development projects seeking to extract as much value as possible from new technologies. In 2016, Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan, established a smart city project management office (PMO) to help it realise its smart city vision. A year after it launched, the initiative has been the recipient of an array of awards.

[...] While technology is at the centre of smart city projects, Dr Chen-Yu Lee, director of the PMO that smart city projects should not be distracted by technology, but instead primarily focus on how services can be improved.

Taipei has been recognised for improving many of its public services, including education and sustainability. As part of a project to modernise services in the New Taipei City Library, a 24-hour self-checkout system and e-book display was installed, which displays various publications and provides advisory services.

Despite international recognition, Dr Lee said Taipei is not comparing itself to other cities, although he recognised the city has its own way of doing things. Dr Lee credits its 'Change Culture' concept for enabling the project to churn out such a high volume of initiatives.

Source: https://techerati.com/features-hub/interviews/what-other-smart-city-projects-can-learn-from-taipei/

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JOTech writes:

Mobile 2G/3G networks are going away. Some carriers' shutoff dates are already public and others are yet to be announced, but the end for this technology is inevitable. While many companies and public sector agencies stopped using 2G/3G a long time ago, the shutoff will cause significant turmoil for the hundreds of enterprises that are still using this technology for early IoT use cases or are in the midst of digital transformation journeys.

The turmoil will result in a positive outcome as much of the 2G and 3G spectrum will be repurposed for 5G, but it is nevertheless something organisations need to anticipate. For those that are using it for IoT, this is the ideal opportunity to deploy future-proof IoT solutions that both mitigate the potential network security risks posed by IoT devices and enable the connectivity necessary to future-proof rapidly expanding enterprise networks for innovations. The natural step forward is an upgrade to 4G LTE, but many enterprises are already looking ahead to 5G, which raises questions around timing, deployment strategies, and the best way to future-proof investments.

Source: https://techerati.com/features-hub/opinions/are-you-prepared-for-the-enterprise-2g-3g-shutdown/

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takyon writes:

In Arizona, It's No Longer A Felony To Own Nunchucks

It's officially legal to own nunchucks in Arizona. On Friday, the state's Republican governor, Doug Ducey signed a bill removing nunchucks from a list of prohibited weapons that includes bombs, gun silencers and automatic firearms.

Until Friday, people who practiced martial arts faced the risk of a felony charge for possessing nunchucks in public. Arizona only allowed the weapons to be used in preparation for martial arts competitions.

"The average person can do far more damage using a baseball bat than nunchucks," Arizona Rep. John Kavanaugh, a Republican, told the Associated Press before the legislation passed. "They're not dangerous to anybody. And we really should let kids and adults who want to do martial arts activities legally possess them."

Several states, including Arizona, adopted the ban in the 1970s as martial arts movies, like ones starring Bruce Lee, became popular, according to the Arizona Daily Star. Last year, a federal judge struck down a similar ban in New York ruling that nunchucks were protected under the Second Amendment, the Washington Post reported.

Nunchaku, not dangerous? That's an insult to the Okinawan people!

The exact origin of nunchaku is unclear. Allegedly adapted by Okinawan farmers from a non-weapon implement for threshing rice, it was not a historically popular weapon because it was ineffective against the most widely used weapons of that time such as samurai swords, and few historical techniques for its use still survive.

Previously: New York State's Ban on Nunchaku ("Nunchucks") Found Unconstitutional

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The_Spine writes:

In January 1951 a geiger counter at Kodak's headquarters in New York registered readings 25 times higher than normal during a snowstorm. It turned out that on the 27th of January the first nuclear test occurred at the Nevada Proving Grounds location.

In 1952, Kodak notified the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about its findings. The commission dismissed Kodak's concerns, even allowing Kodak to give a press release about radioactive snow. Kodak was told that the radiation in the snow wasn't harmful to humans or animals, which it relayed in the press release.

Kodak would eventually go on to threaten to sue the United States government for the nuclear tests due to the damage it was causing to their X-ray film. The U.S. government and Kodak eventually worked out a deal where the AEC would notify Kodak of future tests so precautions could be made to protect the film. In return, Kodak was to keep silent about the nuclear testing.

Source:
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/kodak-had-weapons-grade-uranium-in-their-basement-6a6c15d5677f

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RandomFactor writes:

Researchers at King's College in London, the Fondazione Monasterio hospital in Pisa and the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies university in Pisa have determined that expression of microRNA-199a regenerates cells in pig hearts damaged during heart attacks, according to an article published Wednesday. Most research into regenerating damaged heart tissue has been based on stem cells and unsuccessful up to now.

In this breakthrough, the researchers identified a gene in humans that causes the body to produce cardiac muscle cells.

At the moment, the gene typically switches off a month into our lives, meaning we have to make do with those cells for the rest of our lives. This is why heart attack damage cannot be mended.

In this study, scientists managed to isolate functioning versions of the gene and inject them into pig hearts in a harmless virus, which spread them across the organ.

The process was highly successful, repairing "a large part of the damage" after a month by increasing muscle and decreasing scarring in the heart. This left it almost fully functioning, according to [Professor Mauro Giacca of King's College].

It should be noted that while this repair of scar tissue is encouraging, there are potential downsides also

subsequent persistent and uncontrolled expression of the microRNA resulted in sudden arrhythmic death of most of the treated pigs

Accordingly the article notes that "dosage of this therapy needs to be tightly controlled."

There are currently 23 million individuals in the world affected by mycardial infarctions which cause this type of (currently) permanent damage.

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RandomFactor writes:

An unwavering stare with another person makes you uncomfortable. But if held for as little as one minute it might just give you nightmares.

The perceptual phenomena known as strange face illusion was first described by the psychologist Giovanni Caputo of the University of Urbino, Italy in 2010. In a recent study participants included portrait artists who were able to create graphical depictions of what they saw.

The two volunteers settled in their seats and locked eyes—feeling a little awkward at first, but suppressing uncomfortable smiles to comply with the scientist's directions. Ten minutes had seemed like a long stretch to look deeply into the eyes of a stranger, but time started to lose its meaning after a while. Sometimes, the young couple felt as if they were looking at things from outside their own bodies. Other times, it seemed as if each moment contained a lifetime. Throughout their close encounter, each member of the duo experienced their partner's face as everchanging. Human features became animal traits, transmogrifying into grotesqueries. There were eyeless faces, and faces with too many eyes. The semblances of dead relatives materialized. Monstrosities abounded.

When staring at an unchanging scene for a prolonged period humans experience the perceptual vanishing of objects and scenes, this is known as Troxler's fading.

When we stare at an unchanging face for a long time (our own face in the mirror, or the face of the person sitting in front of us), our visual neurons decrease their activity, making facial features fade and disappear (and then reappear when we blink or move our eyes). In the absence of such visual information, our brain is bound to "fill in" the gaps according to our neural wiring, expectations, and experiences—sometimes with fantastical results.

As it turns out, a bathroom mirror works just fine for this as well.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956_

Leading drug companies including Teva, Pfizer, Novartis and Mylan conspired to inflate the prices of generic drugs by as much as 1,000 percent, according to a far-reaching lawsuit filed on Friday by 44 states.

The industrywide scheme affected the prices of more than 100 generic drugs, according to the complaint, including lamivudine-zidovudine, which treats H.I.V.; budesonide, an asthma medication; fenofibrate, which treats high cholesterol; amphetamine-dextroamphetamine for A.D.H.D.; oral antibiotics; blood thinners; cancer drugs; contraceptives; and antidepressants.

"We all know that prescription drugs can be expensive," Gurbir S. Grewal, the New Jersey attorney general, said in a statement. "Now we know that high drug prices have been driven in part by an illegal conspiracy among generic drug companies to inflate their prices."

In court documents, the state prosecutors lay out a brazen price-fixing scheme involving more than a dozen generic drug companies and just as many executives responsible for sales, marketing and pricing. The complaint alleges that the conspirators knew their efforts to thwart competition were illegal and that they therefore avoided written records by coordinating instead at industry meals, parties, golf outings and other networking events.

Source: https://theinformationsuperhighway.org/generic-drugmakers-conspired-to-inflate-prices-up-to-1000-state-prosecutors-say/

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666_

Oops! Scientists accidentally create new material that makes batteries charge much faster

Some of the most famous scientific discoveries happened by accident. From Teflon and the microwave oven to penicillin, scientists trying to solve a problem sometimes find unexpected things. This is exactly how we created phosphorene nanoribbons – a material made from one of the universe's basic building blocks, but that has the potential to revolutionize a wide range of technologies.

We'd been trying to separate layers of phosphorus crystals into two-dimensional sheets. Instead, our technique created tiny, tagliatelle-like ribbons one single atom thick and only 100 or so atoms across, but up to 100,000 atoms long. We spent three years honing the production process, before announcing our findings.

[...] The two-dimensional ribbons have a number of remarkable properties. Their width to length ratio is similar to the cables that span the Golden Gate Bridge. Their incredibly uniform but manipulable width allows their properties, such as whether and how they conduct electricity, to be fine-tuned. They are also incredibly flexible, which means that they can follow the contours of any surfaces they're put on perfectly, and even be twisted.

Perhaps the most important of these is in the area of battery technology. The corrugated structure of phosphorene nanoribbons means that the charged ions that power batteries could soon move up to 1000 times faster than currently possible. This would mean a significant decrease in charging time, alongside an increase in capacity of approximately 50 percent. Such performance gains would provide massive boosts to the electric car and aircraft industries, and allow us to much better harness renewable energy to eliminate reliance on fossil fuels even on grey, calm days.

It also means that in future, batteries could use sodium ions instead of lithium ions. Known lithium reserves may not be able to meet huge projected increases in battery demand, and extraction of the metal can be environmentally harmful. Sodium, by contrast, is abundant and cheap.

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realDonaldTrump writes:

foxnews.com/science/reindeer-eating-seaweed-climate-change

Named after the group of Norwegian islands they've lived on for 5,000 years, these 20,000–plus reindeer are now eating seaweed to survive the increasingly warm winters. According to researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Centre for Biodiversity Dynamic, the reindeer are turning to seaweed because the plants they normally eat are becoming harder to get to.

More rain is now falling instead of snow, which causes the snow on the ground to freeze over [...] burying the tundra vegetation under thick ice.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/nuos-rat042419.php

[...] So they devised a way to figure out if indeed reindeer were eating seaweed, and why.

This involved -- and there is no polite way to say it -- collecting and testing their poop. It turns out that researchers can distinguish between different kinds of food animals eat by testing their hair or their scat for isotopes.

In this case, the researchers collected reindeer poop from animals that were in habitats near the shore as well as from animals that lived in areas far from the shore. They then looked at stable isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur, all of which will have values that are detectably different in scat from reindeer that eat seaweed compared to scat from reindeer with a more traditional diet of terrestrial plants.

The researchers also had nine years of data for ground ice thickness, which they called basal ice. They combined this with GPS collar data, and location data from a total of 2199 reindeer observations during those years. They were then able to calculate where the reindeer were with respect to the coastline, and to see if more reindeer went to the coast to feed in years when the ground ice was thicker.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has unveiled its predictions for the future of drones, and the findings came as a surprise, even to the FAA itself. Non-commercial drone growth has greatly exceeded expectations, increasing by 170 percent last year, despite officials thinking that it would only grow by 44 percent. This also forced experts to race back to the drawing board and re-write its predictions for the entire industry as a result.

The percentages are impressive, but it's worth bearing in mind that the actual numbers aren't huge: the total number of commercial drones registered with the FAA now sits at 277,000. By contrast, there are about 1.25 million personal drones in the US, expected to rise to 1.4 million by 2023.

In that same year, the FAA now predicts there will be 835,000 commercial drones, which represents a tripling of the total over the next five years. Their original prediction was that there'd be about 452,000 commercial drones flying by 2022, but based on their unexpectedly fast takeup, that figure now looks likely to be achieved in early 2020 instead.

The full report notes that "the significant growth in this sector over the past year demonstrates the uncertainty and potential of the market." It goes on to say that while the FAA does not expect the current growth rate to continue, "nevertheless, the sector will be much larger than what we understood as recently as last year."

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/06/commercial-drones-are-way-more-popular-than-the-faa-expected/

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quietus writes:

Three ports straddling the North Sea are going to work together to store carbon dioxide in disbandoned gas fields.

At a first stage, the ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Ghent-Terneuzen-Vlissingen aim at storing 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

The project, code-named CO2TransPorts, is an extension of an existing initiative started by the port of Rotterdam, Porthos.

It involves the building of a network of pipelines to catch the emissions of the neighboring refineries and chemical industry, transporting it to the harbour of Rotterdam, and from there through a 20 km underseas pipeline towards an abandoned gas field, 3 kilometers underneath the North Sea.

The ports involved already possess an extensive network of pipelines: Antwerp, for example, has 720 km of pipelines in the port alone, along with extensive connections to other pipelines criscrossing the Low Countries. The North Sea will see more than 300 gas/oil fields being decommissioned by 2025, according to industry figures.