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upstart from IRC writes:

A deep dive into the Apollo Guidance Computer, and the hack that saved Apollo 14:

In the eight months since the harrowing flight of Apollo 13, engineers made several changes to the spacecraft to reduce the chance of another explosion happening. To help ensure that the crew could make it home if another emergency occurred, an additional oxygen tank and battery were added. The unplanned pause also allowed time for some software updates to be added to the lunar module computer; a particularly welcome addition was the ability of the computer to recognize changes in the height of the surface during the approach to the landing site. With this new capability, the computer would not be confused by the undulating terrain as the vehicle headed toward landing.

[...] A very serious problem cropped up almost immediately after TLI, as Kitty Hawk attempted to dock with the mission's lunar module, Antares. Fingernail-sized latches on the docking probe used to connect the command module to the lunar module failed to catch, and the two spacecraft were unable to dock. Only after repeated attempts was Kitty Hawk able to capture and securely attach Antares. Afterwards, the S-IVB was sent on its way to a lonely but spectacular death and the combined Apollo 14 spacecraft continued the voyage to Fra Mauro.

[...] However, less than four hours before the scheduled landing, controllers noticed that according to the indications on their consoles in Mission Control, the LM's Abort pushbutton appeared to have been pressed. When asked via radio, Shepard confirmed that no one on board Antares had pressed the Abort button—which meant there was a short-circuit or other electrical issue somewhere inside the LM's complicated guts.

This was potentially a mission-ending problem: if the button was pressed and the engine was firing, the LM would immediately begin its abort procedure as soon as the lunar descent started, making a landing impossible.

Under hard time pressure, the ground had to quickly figure out what was wrong and devise a workaround. What they came up with was the most brilliant computer hack of the entire Apollo program, and possibly in the entire history of electronic computing.

To explain exactly what the hack was, how it functioned, and the issues facing the developers during its creation, we need to dig deep into how the Apollo Guidance Computer worked. Hold onto your hats, Ars readers—we're going in.

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upstart from IRC writes:

PETA wants to replace Punxsutawney Phil with an animatronic AI:

When we imagine the future of artificial intelligence, we tend to think of the technology making most human jobs obsolete. But if PETA has its way, an AI could also take over for the world's most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. In a letter signed by PETA founder and president Ingrid Newkirk, the organization calls on the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, the group that takes care of the world-famous woodchuck, to allow the rodent to retire and let a robot like Sony's adorable Aibo dog take over the job of predicting the weather.

"Using technologically advanced electromechanical devices such as animatronics instead of live animals is more popular than ever," wrote Newkirk. "We even have the technology to create an animatronic groundhog with artificial intelligence (AI) that could actually predict [PETA's emphasis, not Engadget's] the weather."

The way the group sees it, not only would an AI be better at estimating when the winter will end, but it would also attract an entirely new generation of visitors to the western Pennsylvanian town. "Today's young people are born into a world of terabytes, and to them, watching a nocturnal rodent being pulled from a fake hole isn't even worthy of a text message," Newkirk said. "Ignoring the nation's fast-changing demographics might well prove the end of Groundhog Day."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Vulkan is coming to Raspberry Pi: first triangle

Following on from our recent announcement that Raspberry Pi 4 is OpenGL ES 3.1 conformant, we have some more news to share on the graphics front. We have started work on a much requested feature: an open-source Vulkan driver!

Standards body Khronos describes Vulkan as "a new generation graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs". The Vulkan API has been designed to better accommodate modern GPUs and address common performance bottlenecks in OpenGL, providing graphics developers with new means to squeeze the best performance out of the hardware.

Be warned that the effort could take months or even years.

Also at Phoronix.

Original Submission

upstart from IRC writes:

Skimming heist that hit convenience chain may have compromised 30 million cards:

The Wawa chain of convenience stores said in December that it had discovered card-skimming malware on point-of-sale machines at just about all of its 850 stores. The infection began rolling out to the store's payment-processing system on March 4 and wasn't discovered until December 10. It took two more days for the malware to be fully contained. The malware collected payment-card numbers, expiration dates, and cardholder names.

On Monday night, dark Web site Joker's Stash began uploading stolen data for what it claimed were 30 million payment cards, researchers from fraud intelligence service Gemini Advisory reported in a blog post. Joker's Stash is one of the biggest dark Web marketplaces for buying stolen payment-card data. The anonymous site has named the lasted haul "BIGBADABOOM-III." While the site didn't identify the Wawa hack as the source of the data, Gemini researchers said they were able to determine that was the case.

If the Joker's Stash claims are true, the Wawa hack would be among the biggest payment-card breaches in history, behind the 2014 breach of Home Depot, which lost personal data for 50 million customers, and the 2013 breach of Target stores, which lost 40 million sets of data. Because the Wawa infection affected point-of-sale machines for as many as 850 locations and wasn't detected for nine months, the malware had plenty of opportunity to collect massive amounts of sensitive data.

[...] Anyone who has used a payment card at a Wawa location from March to December of last year should check billing statements extra closely. Wawa is offering affected customers one year of credit monitoring, but the effectiveness of these services is questionable. A more effective measure is to place a security freeze on credit files. Freezes prevent creditors from accessing credit files at the three national credit reporting bureaus unless the consumer explicitly consents.

Previously:
PoS Malware Skimmed Convenience Stores' Customers' Card Data for 8 Months

Original Submission

upstart from IRC writes:

Ajit Pai promised faster broadband expansion:

2019 was the second straight year that Comcast lowered its overall cable capital expenditures (though Comcast's spending on line extensions and scalable infrastructure rose in 2018).

This wasn't supposed to happen, according to claims that ISPs and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai made in order to push through the repeal of net neutrality rules and other deregulatory measures. Pai, who just today released an 11-page list of his accomplishments as FCC chair, repeatedly argued that net neutrality rules caused broadband providers to reduce capital expenditures. After his net neutrality repeal took effect in June 2018, he claimed that the repeal and other FCC deregulation caused investment to rise.

But Comcast isn't the only major ISP cutting investment, as AT&T projects that it will reduce capital spending from $23 billion in 2019 to $20 billion in 2020. Charter Communications said in October that its capital expenditures excluding mobile services would total $7 billion in 2019, down from $8.9 billion in 2018. Verizon reported a small increase in capital expenditures in the first nine months of 2019.

Original Submission

upstart from IRC writes:

Blizzard now claims full copyright for player-made "custom game" mods:

As influential as Warcraft III was in the real-time strategy genre, the game's most enduring legacy might be as the basis for genre-defining, fan-made custom game spin-offs like Defense of the Ancients (aka Dota) and Auto Chess in its wake. Now, Blizzard is taking steps to ensure it retains complete ownership of any such custom games that originate from its titles in the future, including those that come out of Warcraft III's recently released Reforged update.

As noted by PC Gamer, a recent update to Blizzard's Acceptable Use Policy expands the legal rights that custom-game makers automatically assign to Blizzard (new language highlighted in bold; old language available on The Internet Archive).

Custom Games are and shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Blizzard. Without limiting the foregoing, you hereby assign to Blizzard all of your rights, title, and interest in and to all Custom Games, including but not limited to any copyrights in the content of any Custom Games.

Blizzard's claim on custom-game copyrights is important because while it's hard to effectively copyright the basic concept of a game, you can copyright the original characters, art, and writing associated with the game itself. Blizzard learned this the hard way a decade ago, when Valve bought the Dota copyright from some of the modders who created it.

After Valve's rights were confirmed in a 2012 out-of-court settlement, Valve was able to turn around and create Dota 2. Blizzard, meanwhile, had to settle for creating the Dota-style Heroes of the Storm with its own characters.

Original Submission

upstart from IRC writes:

The Twitch streamer behind Tfue's custom $3,500 mechanical keyboard:

When Tae Ha Kim began streaming himself constructing mechanical keyboards on Twitch roughly two years ago, he didn't think it would be a viable replacement for his San Francisco programming career. And he never imagined it would lead to designing custom accessories for some of the top video game players in the world. But the 24-year-old California native has found a unique niche on both Twitch and YouTube that combines bespoke product design with a growing interest in the broader gaming community for high-end, personalized peripherals like keyboards and mice.

Now, under the banner of Taeha Types, Kim designs and assembles high-priced keyboards on commission by sourcing rare and limited-run components from across the globe. "If you're a streamer or someone working in the video content creation space, nobody sees what car you drive or what house you live in," Kim tells The Verge. "But you are showing off the tech you use most of the time. So it makes sense when you think about it. These high profile streamers, gamers, and content creators want to have high-end gear they show off while they're streaming and doing their jobs."

Most recently, Kim put together a custom mechanical keyboard for Turner "Tfue" Tenney, one of the world's most popular Twitch streamers and among the most famous Fortnite competitors currently playing the game.

If you could rock a custom keyboard built to your specifications for a reasonable price, would you go for it?

Original Submission

upstart from IRC writes:

Dozens of companies have data dumped online by ransomware ring seeking leverage:

The Maze ransomware ring has taken extortion to new heights by publicly posting breached data on the Internet—and threatening full dumps of stolen data if the ring's "customers" don't pay for their files to be unencrypted. But the group appears to be making one exception: the City of Pensacola, which was hit by Maze ransomware in December.

On the group's website, the administrator of Maze's ransomware operations posted:

We are going to make a gift to City of Pensacola: we will not publish leaked private data, but we publish the list of leak data and hosts to proof [sic], that we did it, we really hacked City of Pensacola.

Just before Christmas, the Maze operators had posted 2GB of data from the city's systems, claiming it was only 10 percent of what had been stolen from systems before the attackers launched their ransomware attack. But the files were then removed, with only directory data, computer names, and IP addresses left on the site as proof of compromise. Based on the Maze site, 28 servers were hit by the attack.

Others have not been so lucky. The Italian foods company Fratelli Beretta saw all the data exfiltrated from 53 systems (a total of 3GB) posted online by Maze. And more recent victims have had smaller dumps posted. Stockdale Radiology, a radiology clinic in Bakersfield, California, saw screenshots of affected systems and data from the clinic's fax server posted—including patient data transmitted from another MRI clinic. Ars reached out to Stockdale Radiology for comment but got no response.

About 25 other victims are listed on Maze's site, with smaller "proof" data sets posted that include customer information. Victims include:

• Busch's Inc., a grocery market chain in Michigan
• BST & Co., a certified public accountancy firm in Albany
• Lakeland Community College in Kirkland, Ohio
• The social media and public relations unit of Orlando-based company Massey Services

Original Submission

upstart from IRC writes:

LastPass is discontinuing its native Mac app and replacing it with a more universal web app:

Password management app LastPass has announced it will be discontinuing its native macOS app on February 29th, directing users in an email to switch over to the new web-based version of the app that will replace it.

According to the email, LastPass is making the change to “provide the best experience for our customers,” citing changes made by Apple in Safari 12 in 2018, which were designed to push developers toward offering browser extensions through native Mac App Store apps instead of the soon to be deprecated Safari Extension Gallery. While other apps, like 1Password, updated to implement the new system with their native apps, LastPass has decided to just remove support for the old native app entirely.

To replace it, LastPass will be offering a new Mac app that will support the new extension system. However, instead of being a fully native piece of Apple software, it’ll be more of a web app that’s “built with technologies shared with our other LastPass apps,” which the company says will make it easier to maintain its apps across multiple platforms.

I'm sure that's more secure

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

According to a letter to congress from Ajit V. Pai, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC), carriers broke federal law by selling customer location data. Pai intends to followup with "Notice(s) of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture."

The Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau has determined that "one or more" wireless carriers' practices for handling location data violated the law, Chairman Ajit Pai told Congress Friday.

The sales of location data by major telecommunication carriers was highlighted the past few years in a series of Motherboard stories which exposed the widespread practice.

All four major U.S. carriers have said they no longer sell location data.

Potential FCC fines aren't the only fallout from the revelations. The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation is also suing AT&T for allegedly violating the Federal Communications Act.

That law requires telecoms to preserve confidentiality of "customer proprietary network information" -- including location data they obtain via their role as carriers.

The digital rights organization is seeking a court order prohibiting AT&T from sharing their location data.

AT&T argues that "the lawsuit should be dismissed, [since they] stopped providing geolocation data to aggregators"

It will be interesting to see if that line of legal reasoning works for them.

Original Submission

Peloton's countersuit against music publishers over song copyrights just got thrown out:

A US district judge has squashed Peloton's counter lawsuit today, against music publishers who claimed the fitness company violated rights to use select artists' music in its workout videos. Peloton hosts live cycling and running classes that are performed to a curated playlist, but the National Music Publishers' Association claimed that because Peloton classes can be streamed on bikes, treadmills, or mobile apps, it did not have sufficient licensing to broadcast the music over the air.

In a lawsuit filed last March, the NMPA's complaint alleged Peloton needed the more expansive (and expensive) "sync license," which allows music to be played to match its visual media output. Peloton classes are often conducted to the progression of each songs, such as standing up off the bike during the chorus, slowing down during an instrumental break, or turning up a treadmill speed each time a word is mentioned in the song lyrics, so songs can't simply be replaced by other music playlists when streamed on-demand. The lawsuit originally sought damage charges of $150 million, but doubled to $300 million in September after the NMPA discovered more improperly licensed music.

As a result, Peloton customers have seen many classes removed from their library, and claim that the quality of music has deteriorated since the lawsuit.

[...] In a countersuit, Peloton argued the NMPA's lawsuit was itself violating federal antitrust laws by conspiring to "fix prices and to engage in a concerted refusal to deal with Peloton." But while Peloton laid out the case at length, the company wasn't able to convince US district judge Denise Cote, who dismissed the case yesterday.

You can read the full opinion here on Scribd.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers long ago theorized that if hydrogen gas were exposed to enough pressure, it would transition into a metal. But the theories were not able to derive how much pressure is required. Doubts about the theories began to arise when scientists developed tools capable of exerting the high pressures that were believed necessary to squeeze hydrogen into a metal. Theorists simply moved the number higher.

In the past several years, however, theorists have come to a consensus—their math showed that hydrogen should transition at approximately 425 gigapascals—but a way to generate that much pressure did not exist. Then, last year, a team at the AEC improved on the diamond anvil cell, which for years has been used to create intense pressure in experiments. In a diamond anvil cell, two opposing diamonds are used to compress a sample between highly polished tips—the pressure generated is typically measured using a reference material. With the new design, called a toroidal diamond anvil cell, the tip was made into a donut shape with a grooved dome. When in use, the dome deforms but does not break at high pressures. With the new design, the researchers were able to exert pressures up to 600 GPa. That still left the problem of how to test a sample of hydrogen as it was being squeezed. The researchers overcame this challenge by simply shining a beam of infrared light down through the center of the device—at normal temperatures, it can pass right through hydrogen. But if it were to meet with a transitioned metal, it would instead be blocked or reflected.

The researchers found that hydrogen samples compressed to 425 gigapascals blocked all infrared and visible light and showed optical reflectivity, as well. They suggest their results indicate that hydrogen does become a solid at 425 gigapascals—but they are already planning another test to bolster their findings. They want to repeat the experiment to determine if the sample begins conducting electricity at 425 gigapascals.

More information: Paul Loubeyre et al. Synchrotron infrared spectroscopic evidence of the probable transition to metal hydrogen, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1927-3

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

upstart from IRC writes:

DOJ sues US telecom providers for connecting Indian robocall scammers:

The US Department of Justice has filed lawsuits (PDF and PDF) against two small telecommunications providers that have allegedly connected hundreds of millions of fraudulent robocalls from Indian call centers to US residents. The feds want a New York federal judge to cut off the companies' access to the US telephone network. The government says a judge has already issued a restraining order against one of the defendants.

Fraudulent robocalls are a serious problem in the United States—and the Justice Department says two US companies contributed significantly to the problem. Over a 23-day period in May and June of last year, for example, defendant TollFreeDeals connected 720 million calls to US numbers. According to the Justice Department, 425 million of the calls lasted for one second or less—suggesting that many were unwanted.

The feds say that during those two months, TollFreeDeals connected 182 million calls from a single India-based call center. Of these calls, more than 90 percent appeared to come from one of 1,000 source numbers. And of those numbers, more than 80 percent have been associated with fraudulent robocalls.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

The "other" game of football has its championship today. On the docket are:

Athletics: Super Bowl LIV - Wikipedia:

Super Bowl LIV, the 54th Super Bowl and the 50th modern-era National Football League (NFL) championship game, will decide the champion for the NFL's 2019 and 100th season. The National Football Conference (NFC) champion San Francisco 49ers will play against the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Kansas City Chiefs. The game is scheduled to be played on February 2, 2020, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. This will be the 11th Super Bowl hosted by the South Florida region and the sixth Super Bowl hosted in Miami Gardens, which hosted Super Bowl XLIV ten years earlier.

The game will be broadcast in the United States by Fox, and the halftime show will be co-headlined by Jennifer Lopez and Shakira.

According to NBC Sports:

Here's how to watch Super Bowl LIV between the 49ers and Chiefs, both online and on TV. 

When: Sunday, Feb. 2 at 3:30 p.m. PT [6:30 p.m. ET]
TV: FOX
Online: fuboTV -- Get a free trial

The Chiefs are favored to win by just one point, so it has all the hallmarks of a close game.

Advertisements: Over the years, it has grown to be a spectacle where the game play is occasionally overshadowed by the advertisements. An advertisement during this year's game sets a new record of "$5.6 Million for a 30-second spot. Some of the most memorable ads of all time premiered during the Super Bowl®. Who can forget the Apple Macintosh 1984 advertisement or Michael Jordan and Larry Bird's game of "horse" where "nothing but net" became a meme?

Chat: Like we tried last year, we have set up a chat channel on our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server. Also, as before, discussion about the game, teams, players and plays is invited. Also, of course, so is discussion about advertisements! Feel free to praise or pan them, in real time with your fellow Soylentils!

No catering is provided, so you'll have to BYOB (bring your own... bacon =).

Details: Use your favorite IRC client or use the convenient link copied here from the the left-hand slashbox titled "SoylentNews". If you are new to IRC, these commands may be helpful:

# Pick a name for use on IRC:
/NICK mynickname

# Join the channel (be careful with the spelling!)
/JOIN #Superbowl-LIV

Original Submission

upstart from IRC writes:

Video: How Myst's designers stuffed an entire universe onto a single CD-ROM:

Although the passage of time serves to make the past seem sweeter in recollection than it might have been in the moment, it's impossible to deny that there was something special about the gaming landscape of the 1990s. Every year in that decade brought a torrent of titles that were destined to become classics—including the often-imitated-but-ultimately-inimitible Myst.

Myst came to market in 1993, which was a banner year in PC gaming—1993 also brought us X-Wing, Doom, Syndicate, and Day of the Tentacle, among others. It's fascinating that Myst happened the same year that Doom launched, too—both games attempted to simulate reality, but with vastly different approaches. Doom was a hard and fast shotgun blast to the face, visceral and intense, aiming to capture the feeling of hunting (and being hunted by) demons in close sci-fi corridors; Myst was a love letter to mystery and exploration at its purest.

A few months back, Ars caught up with Myst developer Rand Miller (who co-created the game with his brother Robyn Miller) at the Cyan offices in Washington state to ask about the process of bringing the haunting island world to life. Myst's visuals lived at the cutting edge of what interactive CD-ROM technology could deliver at the beginning of the multimedia age, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, fitting the breadth of the Millers' vision onto CD-ROM didn't happen without some challenges.

Original Submission