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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53518238

The US State Department described the recent use of "what would appear to be actual in-orbit anti-satellite weaponry" as concerning.

Russia's defence ministry earlier said it was using new technology to perform checks on Russian space equipment.

The US has previously raised concerns about new Russian satellite activity.

But it is the first time the UK has made accusations about Russian test-firing in space.

[...] The head of the UK's space directorate, Air Vice Marshal Harvey Smyth, said he was also concerned about the latest Russian satellite test, which he said had the "characteristics of a weapon".

"Actions like this threaten the peaceful use of space and risk causing debris that could pose a threat to satellites and the space systems on which the world depends," he said. He urged Russia to be "responsible" and to "avoid any further such testing".

[...] The US said the Russian satellite system was the same one it raised concerns about in 2018 and earlier this year when the US accused it of manoeuvring close to an American satellite.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Gedmatch confirms data breach after users' DNA profile data made available to police – TechCrunch:

Gedmatch, the DNA analysis site that police used to catch the so-called Golden State Killer, was pulled briefly offline on Sunday while its parent company investigated how its users' DNA profile data apparently became available to law enforcement searches.

[...] In a statement on Wednesday, the company told users by email that it was hit by two security breaches on July 19 and July 20.

"We became aware of the situation a short time later and immediately took the site down. As a result of the breach, all user permissions were reset, making all profiles visible to all users," the email read. "This was the case for approximately 3 hours. During this time, users who did not opt-in for law enforcement matching were also available for law enforcement matching, and conversely, all law enforcement profiles were made visible to Gedmatch users."

The statement said that the second breach caused user's settings to reset, allowing law enforcement to search profile data for users who had previously opted out.

At the time of writing, Gedmatch's website was offline.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Space Force unveils logo, 'Semper Supra' motto - SpaceNews:

The U.S. Space Force revealed its new logo and motto as the service seeks to build branding and cultural identity.

The black-and-silver service logo unveiled July 22 has the delta wing as its central element that is also found in the Space Force seal and flag. There is a "Space Force" horizontally shaped logo and a USSF vertical logo.

The Space Force motto "Semper Supra" means "always above." It represents the service's role in establishing, maintaining and preserving U.S. freedom of operations in the ultimate high ground, a Space Force spokesman said.

The logo was designed by the Department of the Air Force's advertising agency GSD&M.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Lab-made virus infects cells, interacts with antibodies just like SARS-CoV-2:

Airborne and potentially deadly, the virus that causes COVID-19 can only be studied safely under high-level biosafety conditions. Scientists handling the infectious virus must wear full-body biohazard suits with pressurized respirators, and work inside laboratories with multiple containment levels and specialized ventilation systems. While necessary to protect laboratory workers, these safety precautions slow down efforts to find drugs and vaccines for COVID-19 since many scientists lack access to the required biosafety facilities.

To help remedy that, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a hybrid virus that will enable more scientists to enter the fight against the pandemic. The researchers genetically modified a mild virus by swapping one of its genes for one from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The resulting hybrid virus infects cells and is recognized by antibodies just like SARS-CoV-2, but can be handled under ordinary laboratory safety conditions.

The study is available online in Cell Host & Microbe.

I've never had this many requests for a scientific material in such a short period of time. We've distributed the virus to researchers in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and, of course, all over the U.S. We have requests pending from the U.K. and Germany. Even before we published, people heard that we were working on this and started requesting the material."

Sean Whelan, PhD, co-senior author, the Marvin A. Brennecke Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Molecular Microbiology

[...] Since the hybrid virus looks like SARS-CoV-2 to the immune system but does not cause severe disease, it is a potential vaccine candidate, Diamond added. He, Whelan and colleagues are conducting animal studies to evaluate the possibility.

Journal Reference:
Case, J.B., et al. (2020) Neutralizing antibody and soluble ACE2 inhibition of a replication-competent VSV-SARS-CoV-2 and a clinical isolate of SARS-CoV-2. Cell Host & Microbe. doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2020.06.021.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Science Magazine:

Astronomers know of thousands of planets around other stars, yet only a handful have been imaged directly. The existence of the rest is inferred by how they affect their stars.

Now the world's largest optical telescope has directly spied a new planetary system—the first time more than one planet has been imaged around a star like our Sun. Astronomers used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to observe the Sun-like star TYC 8998-760-1, 300 light-years from Earth. Using the VLT's Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument, which is equipped with an optical mask called a coronagraph to block out a star's light, they were able to see two planets orbiting it [pictured here], as reported today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Some light from the star can be seen in the image above (center left) as well as the two giant planets (right) and a scattering of background stars.

The star system is very young at 17 million years old.

Also at AstronomyNow.

Journal Reference:
Alexander J. Bohn, Matthew A. Kenworthy, Christian Ginski, et al. Two Directly Imaged, Wide-orbit Giant Planets around the Young, Solar Analog TYC 8998-760-1 - IOPscience, The Astrophysical Journal Letters (DOI: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aba27e)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Scientists Accidentally Bred the Fish Version of a Liger:

American paddlefish and Russian sturgeon were not supposed to be able to create hybrid offspring. Surprise!

[...] At first glance, American paddlefish and Russian sturgeon seem about as different as two fish can be.

The Russian sturgeon, whose eggs are used to make top-shelf caviar, is a carnivore that hoovers crustaceans and smaller fish off the floor of rivers, lakes and coastal areas the world over. The American paddlefish, found in only 22 of the United States, is a filter feeder that strains zooplankton from the water. It has a comically long snout covered with tens of thousands of sensory receptors.

[...] Last year, researchers were trying to induce gynogenesis, a form of asexual production that requires the presence of sperm, but not the actual contribution of their DNA, in Russian sturgeon.

Something unexpected happened: The paddlefish sperm the researchers were using successfully fertilized the sturgeon eggs.

[...] Hundreds of hybrids emerged from those eggs and a month later, more than two-thirds of them were still alive. Around 100 of these hybrids are alive today.

Both creatures are known as “fossil fish” because of their ancient lineage. Their last common ancestor swam during the age of the dinosaurs, and the two have been evolving independently, on opposite sides of the planet, for over 184 million years — which makes them nearly twice as evolutionarily diverged as humans and mice. That led scientists to assume that they were too evolutionarily diverged to be hybridized.

Journal Reference:
Jenő Káldy, Attila Mozsár, Gyöngyvér Fazekas, et al. Hybridization of Russian Sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii, Brandt and Ratzeberg, 1833) and American Paddlefish (Polyodon spathula, Walbaum 1792) and Evaluation of Their Progeny, Genes (DOI: 10.3390/genes11070753)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for guy_:

With No Final Say, Trump Wants To Change Who Counts For Dividing Up Congress' Seats:

President Trump released a memorandum Tuesday that calls for an unprecedented change to the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the country — the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants from the numbers used to divide up seats in Congress among the states.

The memo instructs Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Commerce Department, to include in the legally required report of census results to the president "information permitting the President, to the extent practicable" to leave out the number of immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization from the apportionment count.

But the move by the president, who does not have final authority over the census, is more likely to spur legal challenges and political spectacle in the last months before this year's presidential election than a transformation of the once-a-decade head count, which has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

[...] Since the first U.S. census in 1790, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens — regardless of immigration status — have been included in the country's official population counts.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

This is how to do surgery in space:

Surgical emergencies are in fact one of the main challenges when it comes to human space travel. But over the last few years, space medicine researchers have come up with a number of ideas that could help, from surgical robots to 3D printers.

[...] As well as distance, the extreme environment faced during transit to and on Mars includes microgravity, high radiation levels and an enclosed pressurised cabin or suit. This is tough on astronauts’ bodies and takes time getting used to.

[...] For a crew of seven people, researchers estimate that there will be an average of one surgical emergency every 2.4 years during a Mars mission. The main causes include injury, appendicitis, gallbladder inflammation or cancer. Astronauts are screened extensively when they are selected, but surgical emergencies can occur in healthy people and may be exacerbated in the extreme environment of space.

[...] One problem was that, during open surgery, the intestines would float around, obscuring the view of the surgical field. To deal with this, space travellers should opt for minimally invasive surgical techniques, such as keyhole surgery, ideally occurring within patients’ internal cavities through small incisions using a camera and instruments.

[...] Bodily fluids will also behave differently in space and on Mars. The blood in our veins may stick to instruments because of surface tension. Floating droplets may also form streams that could restrict the surgeon’s view, which is not ideal. The circulating air of an enclosed cabin may also be an infection risk. Surgical bubbles and blood-repelling surgical tools could be the solution.

Researchers have already developed and tested various surgical enclosures in microgravity environments. For example, Nasa evaluated a closed system comprising a surgical clear plastic overhead canopy with arm ports, aiming to prevent contamination.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Earliest humans stayed at the Americas 'oldest hotel' in Mexican cave:

A cave in a remote part of Mexico was visited by humans around 30,000 years ago—15,000 years earlier than people were previously thought to have reached the Americas.

Painstaking excavations of Chiquihuite Cave, located in a mountainous area in northern Mexico controlled by drugs cartels, uncovered nearly 2000 stone tools from a small section of the high-altitude cave.

Archaeological analysis of the tools and DNA analysis of the sediment in the cave uncovered a new story of the colonisation of the Americas which now traces evidence of the first Americans back to 25,000-30,000 years ago.

[...] "For decades people have passionately debated when the first humans entered the Americas. Chiquihuite Cave will create a lot more debate as it is the first site that dates the arrival of people to the continent to around 30,000 years ago—15,000 years earlier than previously thought. These early visitors didn't occupy the cave continuously, we think people spent part of the year there using it as a winter or summer shelter, or as a base to hunt during migration. This could be the Americas oldest ever hotel."

The find provides more evidence to challenge the accepted theory that the Clovis people were the earliest in the Americas 15,000 years ago.

Journal Reference:
Ciprian F. Ardelean, Lorena Becerra-Valdivia, Mikkel Winther Pedersen, et al. Evidence of human occupation in Mexico around the Last Glacial Maximum [$], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2509-0)

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chromas writes:

Sick of AI engines scraping your pics for facial recognition? Here's a way to Fawkes them right up:

Researchers at the University of Chicago's Sand Lab have developed a technique for tweaking photos of people so that they sabotage facial-recognition systems.

The project, named Fawkes in reference to the mask in the V for Vendetta graphic novel and film depicting 16th century failed assassin Guy Fawkes, is described in a paper scheduled for presentation in August at the USENIX Security Symposium 2020.

[...] "Our distortion or 'cloaking' algorithm takes the user's photos and computes minimal perturbations that shift them significantly in the feature space of a facial recognition model (using real or synthetic images of a third party as a landmark)," the researchers explain in their paper. "Any facial recognition model trained using these images of the user learns an altered set of 'features' of what makes them look like them."

The boffins claim their pixel scrambling scheme provides greater than 95 per cent protection, regardless of whether facial recognition systems get trained via transfer learning or from scratch. They also say it provides about 80 per cent protection when clean, "uncloaked" images leak and get added to the training mix alongside altered snapshots.

They claim 100 per cent success at avoiding facial recognition matches using Microsoft's Azure Face API, Amazon Rekognition, and Face++. Their tests involve cloaking a set of face photos and providing them as training data, then running uncloaked test images of the same person against the mistrained model.

• Research paper (pdf)
• GitHub page (Python)
• Project page (unencrypted, heh)

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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/07/waymo-is-working-on-autonomous-ram-promaster-vans-for-goods-deliveries/

Late on Tuesday night, Waymo and Fiat Chryler Automobiles announced that they are strengthening the partnership between the two companies that began back in 2016. Waymo will be FCA's sole autonomous driving technology partner for developing so-called L4 (geofenced or otherwise operational design domain-limited autonomous driving) technology. Additionally, Waymo and FCA are going to develop autonomous Ram ProMaster commercial vans for driverless deliveries.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Tesla picks Austin for its next US factory to build Cybertruck, Semi truck, Model Y:

Tesla has picked a site near Austin for its next U.S. factory, a 4- to 5-million square foot $1.1 billion plant that will assemble the automaker's futuristic Cybertruck, the Tesla Semi and the Model Y and Model 3 for sales to customers on the East Coast.

[...] Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the future factory as an "ecological paradise," with a boardwalk and bike lanes and where the public will be welcome. While tours have been offered at Tesla's Fremont, Calif., the campus is not open for the public to wander its grounds.

[...] Tesla has promised Texas officials it will employ at least 5,000 people. About 25 of those workers are categorized as "qualifying" jobs and would be paid a minimum of $74,050, while the remaining would be middle income jobs with an annual salary of $47,147.

[...] Under terms of the agreement with Travis County, Tesla must invest $1.1 billion in the new factory within the first five years. In exchange, Travis County will rebate 70% of the property taxes Tesla will pay. Once Tesla's investment in the factory eclipses that $1.1 billion mark, the property taxes rebates will increase to 75%. Any investments in the factory beyond $2 billion, will give Tesla 80% in property tax rebates.

[...] If Tesla fails to hit the investment goal or if its falls 75% short of its jobs requirement in any year, the company won't receive any property tax relief. The county will also have the ability to recoup tax rebates if Tesla breaches its contract.

Together, Tesla will receive at least $61 million in property tax abatement. It's possible that Tesla could receive more from the state.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Ongoing Meow attack has nuked >1,000 databases without telling anyone why:

More than 1,000 unsecured databases so far have been permanently deleted in an ongoing attack that leaves the word "meow" as its only calling card, according to Internet searches over the past day.

The attack first came to the attention of researcher Bob Diachenko on Tuesday, when he discovered a database that stored user details of the UFO VPN had been destroyed. UFO VPN had already been in the news that day because the world-readable database exposed a wealth of sensitive user information[...]

[...] Besides amounting to a serious privacy breach, the database was at odds with the Hong Kong-based UFO's promise to keep no logs. The VPN provider responded by moving the database to a different location but once again failed to secure it properly. Shortly after, the Meow attack wiped it out.

Since then, Meow and a similar attack have destroyed more than 1,000 other databases. At the time this post went live, the Shodan computer search site showed that 987 ElasticSearch and 70 MongoDB instances had been nuked by Meow. A separate, less-malicious attack tagged an additional 616 ElasticSearch, MongoDB, and Cassandra files with the string "university_cybersec_experiment." That attackers in this case seem to be demonstrating to the database maintainers that the files are vulnerable to being viewed or deleted.

[...] In other cases—including the current Meow attacks—the data is simply wiped out with no ransomware note or any other explanation. The only thing left behind in the current attacks in the word "meow."

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Rumors Point Towards Remarkable Gains for AMD's Upcoming 'Big Navi' GPUs - ExtremeTech:

There’s been a lot of debate in the past 12 months over whether RDNA2 would deliver a huge improvement over RDNA. The Radeon 5700 and 5700 XT were significant leaps forward for AMD’s products, but they failed to cleanly beat Turing on absolute power efficiency, and while they challenged Nvidia’s RTX GPUs, they weren’t enough to deliver knockout blows. RDNA was important because it demonstrated that after years of iterating on GCN, AMD was still capable of delivering significant advances in GPU technology.

AMD raised eyebrows when it claimed RDNA2 would offer a 1.5x performance per watt improvement over RDNA, in the same way RDNA had improved dramatically over GCN. Generally speaking, such dramatic improvements only come from node shrinks, not additional GPUs built on the same node. Nvidia’s Maxwell is probably the best example of a GPU family that improved over its predecessor without a node change, and the gap between Maxwell and Kepler was smaller than the gap between Pascal and Maxwell, as far as power efficiency improvements and performance gains.

There are rumors going around that Big Navi might [be] dramatically faster than expected, with performance estimated at 1.95x – 2.25x higher than the 5700 XT. This would be an astonishing feat, to put it mildly. The slideshow below shows our test results from the 5700 XT and 5700. The 5700 XT matched the RTX 2070 (and sometimes the 2080) well, while the 5700 was modestly faster than the RTX 2060 for a slightly higher price. A 1.95 – 2.25x speed improvement would catapult Big Navi into playable frame rates even on the most demanding settings we test; 18fps in Metro Exodus at Extreme Detail and 4K becomes 35-41 fps depending on which multiplier you choose. I have no idea how Big Navi would compare against Ampere at that point, but it would handily blow past the RTX 2080 Ti.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

A team of researchers with Oregon State University has confirmed the first active leak of sea-bed methane in Antarctica. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes their trip to Cinder Cones located at McMurdo Sound situated in the Ross Sea, and why they believe it signals very serious repercussions for global warming.

[...] The researchers note that the methane leak at the Cinder Cones is not in a part of the ocean that has been warming; thus, the reason for the leak is a mystery. Much more concerning is the reaction of undersea microbes. Prior research has shown that when other parts of the seafloor begin releasing methane, microbes move in and eat it, preventing it from making its way to the surface and into the atmosphere. Cinder Cones has been leaking for at least five years, they note, but as yet, methane-eating microbes have not moved in. Thus, the methane is almost certainly making its way into the atmosphere. The reason this is so concerning, they point out, is because it suggests that if other parts of the seafloor in Antarctica begin to seep methane due to warming, microbes may not move into the area quickly enough to prevent massive amounts of the gas from making its way into the atmosphere. They plan to continue monitoring seepage at Cinder Cones, noting that it could take as long as five more years for microbes to move in. But that research will have to wait, as the pandemic has put their plans on hold.

Are krill or penguins to blame?

Journal Reference:
Andrew R. Thurber, Sarah Seabrook, Rory M. Welsh. Riddles in the cold: Antarctic endemism and microbial succession impact methane cycling in the Southern Ocean, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.1134)

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