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DannyB writes:

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin: Allegations of safety issues at company

The US Federal Aviation Authority[sic][*] (FAA) has said it will review safety concerns raised by whistleblowers at Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space company.

The announcement comes after 21 current and former employees claimed the company had ignored safety concerns to gain an advantage in the space race.

Staff also complained of a culture of sexism within the company.

Blue Origin rejected the charges and said it stands by its safety record.

[...] Raising concerns over the standard of the company's flagship New Shepard rocket, which Mr Bezos travelled into space on in July, the essay writers said: "In the opinion of an engineer who has signed on to this essay, 'Blue Origin has been lucky that nothing has happened so far'."

[...] The FAA, which regulates rocket launches in the US, said that it "takes every safety allegation seriously, and the agency is reviewing the information".

In addition to the safety concerns, staff also claimed that the company's management embraces a "particular brand of sexism" under which numerous managers and senior staff displayed consistently inappropriate behaviour towards women.

[*] Federal Aviation Administration.

I'm sure the New Shepard joyride for rich people meets the same high safety standards as other amusement park rides.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/10/fcc-proposal-targets-sim-swapping-port-out-fraud/

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is asking for feedback on new proposed rules to crack down on SIM swapping and number port-out fraud, increasingly prevalent scams in which identity thieves hijack a target's mobile phone number and use that to wrest control over the victim's online identity.

In a long-overdue notice issued Sept. 30, the FCC said it plans to move quickly on requiring the mobile companies to adopt more secure methods of authenticating customers before redirecting their phone number to a new device or carrier.

"We have received numerous complaints from consumers who have suffered significant distress, inconvenience, and financial harm as a result of SIM swapping and port-out fraud," the FCC wrote. "Because of the serious harms associated with SIM swap fraud, we believe that a speedy implementation is appropriate."

The FCC said the proposal was in response to a flood of complaints to the agency and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about fraudulent SIM swapping and number port-out fraud. SIM swapping happens when the fraudsters trick or bribe an employee at a mobile phone store into transferring control of a target's phone number to a device they control.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Spain: Roman Gold Coins Found by Amateur Divers Clearing Trash:

Freedivers off the coast of Spain have uncovered a treasure trove of 53 perfectly preserved gold coins from the Roman Empire, one of the largest collections ever found in Europe.

Brothers-in-law Luis Lens and César Gimeno were freediving in the Mediterranean Sea while on vacation in Xàbia, Spain. Cleaning up trash, according to The Times, as they explored the underwater scenery they came across a shiny object that resembled a "10-cent-coin," newspaper El Pais said.

After retrieving the object, they noticed an inscription with an ancient Greek or Roman face and assumed it was from jewelry.

Using the corkscrew of a Swiss Army knife, they discovered another seven coins embedded in a rock crevice.

After reporting their discovery to local authorities, a team of scuba divers and archaeologists uncovered a total of 53 gold coins, three nails, and some remains of what appeared to be a chest.

[...] "It's incredible. It's every child's dream to find a treasure," Luis Lens told El Pais.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/understanding-neuromorphic-computing-and-why-intels-excited-about-it/

Despite their name, neural networks are only distantly related to the sorts of things you'd find in a brain. While their organization and the way they transfer data through layers of processing may share some rough similarities to networks of actual neurons, the data and the computations performed on it would look very familiar to a standard CPU.

But neural networks aren't the only way that people have tried to take lessons from the nervous system. There's a separate discipline called neuromorphic computing that's based on approximating the behavior of individual neurons in hardware. In neuromorphic hardware, calculations are performed by lots of small units that communicate with each other through bursts of activity called spikes and adjust their behavior based on the spikes they receive from others.

On Thursday, Intel released the newest iteration of its neuromorphic hardware, called Loihi.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Louisiana's missing moon rock found in Florida thanks to broken gun:

A long-lost piece of the moon belonging to the state of Louisiana may have remained missing — if not also been discarded or destroyed — had the plaque on which it was mounted not attracted the eye of a Florida gun collector.

The man, who was looking for wood samples to use in the repair or replacement of his damaged gunstocks, purchased the Apollo 17 goodwill moon rock display without realizing what it was. The buyer, who requested to remain anonymous but resides in Merritt Island, near Cape Canaveral, said that he had likely purchased the plaque at a garage sale sometime over the past 15 years.

"I can't even tell you how long I owned it for," the man told collectSPACE.com after reaching out for information through a common contact. "I'm not even sure how much I paid for it. I buy plaques because I take the wood from the plaques and I send it over to my gunstock guy and he makes grips for my Colts and so forth."

"The wood [in the plaques] is such nice wood — that is what I buy them for," he said.

It was not until the past two years, when he was seeking a particular color wood for a repair, that he pulled the moon-rock-adorned plaque from one of the 15 to 16 boxes of plaques that he had amassed for his hobby.

"What the hell is this?" he recalled thinking after taking a good look at what was on the plaque for the first time. "Before I start stripping things off, I generally take a moment to read them."

upstart writes:

Norwegian reservoirs power homes in Great Britain via 724km (450 mile) cable:

Norwegian reservoirs will begin powering homes in Great Britain today as the world's longest subsea power cable was switched on, in a boost to renewables and tight energy supplies this winter.

The 724-kilometre North Sea Link is the sixth of a growing network of electricity interconnectors between Great Britain and its European neighbours, to trade energy and adapt to grids increasingly reliant on the variable output of wind, solar and hydro.

First tested in June, the copper cable along the seabed of the North Sea will operate at half its potential for three months before reaching its 1400 megawatt capacity, enough to power 1.4 million homes.

Power is expected to initially mostly flow from Norway, which generates almost [all] electricity from hydro, to Great Britain, where electricity prices are higher. The link may eventually be used to export electricity from offshore windfarms for storage at pumped hydro facilities in Norway, pumping water uphill and releasing it to generate electricity when neeeded[sic].

The start of commercial operations will help Great Britain's tight margins of electricity supply this winter, which are squeezed by a fire taking out half of the capacity of a separate link to France. "It couldn't have come at a better time," says Tom Edwards at energy analysts Cornwall Insight.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

CNN shut down its Facebook page in Australia after court liability ruling:

CNN shut down its Facebook page in Australia on Wednesday, after an Australian court ruled that media outlets are liable for defamatory user-generated comments.

[...] The deteriorating effects of the court's ruling on online speech in Australia serve as a warning of what's to come if U.S. lawmakers succeed in their efforts to weakening protections against such legal decisions in the United States.

[...] The court's ruling previews the grim future in store if U.S. politicians get their way and dismantle Section 230, the keystone U.S. law that shields websites from liability over user-generated content. Without it, social media platforms and any other website with user-generated content—especially those without Facebook's deep pockets—would likely die. Both Republicans and Democrats, President Joe Biden included, would like it dismantled.

Should the person doing the defaming be liable, or the owner of the page the defamation is posted on be liable?

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Liquid metal encased in hydrogel makes a promising energy-harvesting device:

Scientists at North Carolina State University have developed a flexible, stretchy energy-harvesting device solely out of biocompatible soft materials: liquid metal and soft polymers known as hydrogels. It produces small amounts of electricity comparable to other energy-harvesting technologies, and it can also operate in water as well as air, according to the team's recent paper published in the journal Advanced Materials. The team thinks the new NCSU device holds promise for powering wearable devices, charging them spontaneously with no need for an external power source.

"Mechanical energy—such as the kinetic energy of wind, waves, body movement and vibrations from motors—is abundant," said co-author Michael Dickey, a chemical and bimolecular engineer at NCSU. "We have created a device that can turn this type of mechanical motion into electricity. And one of its remarkable attributes is that it works perfectly well underwater."

The NCSU scientists were particularly inspired by a 2013 paper by Korean researchers. The 2013 researchers found they could harvest energy from an electrical double-layer capacitor (ELCD) by depressing arrays of water droplets sandwiched between two rigid electrodes, thereby spontaneously charging the capacitor.

[...] The key proved to be a liquid-metal alloy of gallium and indium, per Dickey, which is then encased in a water-absorbent hydrogel. The dissolved salts in the water (ions) congregate on the metallic surface, forming an electrical double layer akin to a capacitor. Deforming the liquid metal increases the area, and the greater the surface area, the greater the induced charge.

Journal Reference:
Veenasri Vallem, Erin Roosa, Tyler Ledinh, et al. A Soft Variable‐Area Electrical‐Double‐Layer Energy Harvester, Advanced Materials (DOI: 10.1002/adma.202103142)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Phone companies must now block carriers that didn’t meet FCC robocall deadline:

In a new milestone for the US government's anti-robocall efforts, phone companies are now prohibited from accepting calls from providers that did not comply with a Federal Communications Commission deadline that passed this week. "Beginning today, if a voice service provider's certification and other required information does not appear in the FCC's Robocall Mitigation Database, intermediate providers and voice service providers will be prohibited from directly accepting that provider's traffic," the FCC said yesterday.

Specifically, phone companies must block traffic from other "voice service providers that have neither certified to implementation of STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication standards nor filed a detailed robocall mitigation plan with the FCC." As we've written, the STIR (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs) protocols verify the accuracy of Caller ID by using digital certificates based on public-key cryptography.

STIR/SHAKEN is now widely deployed on IP networks because large phone companies were required to implement it by June 30 this year, but it isn't a cure-all. Because of technology limitations, there was no requirement to implement STIR/SHAKEN on older TDM-based networks used with copper landlines, for instance. The FCC has said that "providers using older forms of network technology [must] either upgrade their networks to IP or actively work to develop a caller ID authentication solution that is operational on non-IP networks."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

KDE's Telemetry: The Tip Of The Iceberg?:

Recently, there was a debate on the PCLinuxOS forum about KDE Plasma's implementation of telemetry through KUserFeedback. While in PCLinuxOS, we can remove it without any collateral effects to the system, while other users reported that doing the same in other distros (like Debian 11) results in the complete removal of KDE Plasma! Why force such an implementation, if, as KDE's developers say, it is just an innocuous, privacy-respecting measure?

Coincidence or not, in the past years many popular Linux distributions started rolling out optional telemetry. Then it was the time of computer programs: news broke out in May regarding Audacity, a popular audio editing app, which announced it was starting the use of telemetry. The move was finally pushed back after users revolted against it.

While many point out that the data collection is by opt-in and entirely anonymous, others have found that, even if you don't activate telemetry, data is still collected, using computer resources, registering "apps and boot, number of times used and duration in /home/user/telemetry folder." As such, they argue that, because of the way Linux permissions work, other programs could have access to these log files. KUserFeedback's FAQs page confirms this:

"KUserFeedback is designed to be compliant with KDE Telemetry Policy, which forbids the usage of unique identification. If you are using KUserFeedback outside of the scope of that policy, it's of course possible to add a custom data source generating and transmitting a unique id."

Do any Soylentils have opinions about this, or experiences with it?

Original Submission

NPC-131072 writes:

Smartphone Sensor Data Has Potential to Detect Cannabis Intoxication:

A smartphone sensor, much like what is used in GPS systems, might be a way to determine whether or not someone is intoxicated after consuming marijuana, according to a new study by the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research.

According to the study, published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, which evaluated the feasibility of using smartphone sensor data to identify episodes of cannabis intoxication in the natural environment, a combination of time features (tracking the time of day and day of week) and smartphone sensor data had a 90 percent rate of accuracy.

[...] Cannabis intoxication has been associated with slowed response time, affecting performance at work or school or impairing driving behavior leading to injuries or fatalities. Existing detection measures, such as blood, urine or saliva tests, have limitations as indicators of cannabis intoxication and cannabis-related impairment in daily life.

Journal Reference:
Sang Won Bae, Tammy Chung, Rahul Islama, et al. Mobile phone sensor-based detection of subjective cannabis intoxication in young adults: A feasibility study in real-world settings, Drug and Alcohol Dependence (DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2021.108972)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Mozilla Says Chrome’s Latest Feature Enables Surveillance:

Chrome 94 has officially dropped. As is always the case with a new browser version, there’s plenty to be excited about. However, there are also some items to be skeptical about, including a feature Mozilla claims enables surveillance on you.

[...] Chrome 94 introduces a controversial idle detection API. Basically, websites can ask Chrome to report when a user with a web page open is idle on their device. It’s not just about your usage of Chrome or a particular website: If you’ve stepped away from your computer and aren’t using any applications, Chrome can tell the website you’re not actively using your computer.

As you might expect, developers love this new feature—anything that can provide them with more information regarding how users are interacting with their apps is a positive. It’s enabled by default in Chrome 94, but it might not be as bad as it sounds. Like using your webcam or microphone, a prompt will ask your permission before using your idle data on a particular website.

The API comes with its fair share of opponents, including rival browser-maker Mozilla. The folks behind Firefox say that it creates an “opportunity for surveillance capitalism.” Mozilla’s Web Standards Lead Tantek Çelik commented on GitHub, saying:

AnonTechie writes:

Why OpenAI’s Codex Won’t Replace Coders:

This summer, the artificial intelligence company OpenAI released Codex, a new system that automatically writes software code using only simple prompts written in plain language. Codex is based on GPT-3, a revolutionary deep learning platform that OpenAI trained on nearly all publicly available written text on the Internet through 2019.

As an early Beta tester, I've had extensive opportunities to put both GPT-3 and Codex through their paces. The most frequent question I'm asked about Codex is "Will this replace human programmers?" With world powers like the United States investing billions into training new software developers, it's natural to worry that all the effort and money could be for naught.

If you're a software developer yourself—or your company has spent tons of money hiring them—you can breathe easy. Codex won't replace human developers any time soon, though it may make them far more powerful, efficient, and focused.

Why isn't Codex an existential threat to human developers? Years ago, I worked with a high-level (and highly compensated) data scientist and software developer from a major American consulting firm on a government database project. Our task was to understand how a state agency was using its database to assign grants to organizations, and then to advise the agency on how to improve the database.

upstart writes:

Apple Pay with VISA lets hackers force payments on locked iPhones:

Express Transit works for specific services, like ticket gates, with card readers that send a non-standard sequence of bytes that bypass the Apple Pay lock screen.

In combination with a Visa card, “this feature can be leveraged to bypass the Apple Pay lock screen, and illicitly pay from a locked iPhone, using a Visa card, to any EMV reader, for any amount, without user authorisation.”

The researchers were able to emulate a ticket-barrier transaction by using a Proxmark device acting as a card reader communicating with the target iPhone and an Android phone with an NFC chip that communicated with a payment terminal.

[...] “The attack works by first replaying the Magic Bytes to the iPhone, such that it believes the transaction is happening with a transport EMV reader. Secondly, while relaying the EMV messages, the Terminal Transaction Qualifiers (TTQ), sent by the EMV terminal, need to be modified such that the bits (flags) for Offline Data Authentication (ODA) for Online Authorizations supported and EMV mode supported are set.”

[...] Digging deeper into the issue, the researcher discovered that they could modify the Card Transaction Qualifiers (CTQ) responsible for setting contactless transactions limits.

This modification is to trick the card reader that the authentication step on the mobile device has been completed successfully. During the experiment, the researchers were able to make a GBP 1,000 transaction from a locked iPhone. They tested the attack successfully on iPhone 7 and iPhone 12.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Clover growth in Mars-like soils boosted by bacterial symbiosis:

As Earth's population grows, researchers are studying the possibility of farming Martian soils, or "regolith." However, regolith is lacking in some essential plant nutrients, including certain nitrogen-containing molecules that plants require to live. Therefore, agriculture on Mars will require strategies to increase the amount of these nitrogen compounds in regolith.

[...] To explore a possible role for symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in astroagriculture, the researchers grew clover in man-made regolith that closely matches that of Mars. They inoculated some of the plants with the microbe Sinorhizobium meliloti, which is commonly found in clover root nodules on Earth.

[...] The researchers found that the inoculated clover experienced 75% more root and shoot growth compared to the uninoculated clover.

[...] These findings suggest the possibility that symbiosis between plants and nitrogen-fixing bacteria could aid agriculture on Mars. Future research could continue to explore such relationships with other crops and address issues with plant toxicity in regolith.

Journal Reference:
Franklin Harris, John Dobbs, David Atkins, et al. Soil fertility interactions with Sinorhizobium-legume symbiosis in a simulated Martian regolith; effects on nitrogen content and plant health, PLOS ONE (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257053)

Original Submission