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upstart writes:

Machine Learning Can Be Fair and Accurate:

Carnegie Mellon University researchers are challenging a long-held assumption that there is a trade-off between accuracy and fairness when using machine learning to make public policy decisions.

As the use of machine learning has increased in areas such as criminal justice, hiring, health care delivery and social service interventions, concerns have grown over whether such applications introduce new or amplify existing inequities, especially among racial minorities and people with economic disadvantages. To guard against this bias, adjustments are made to the data, labels, model training, scoring systems and other aspects of the machine learning system. The underlying theoretical assumption is that these adjustments make the system less accurate.

A CMU team aims to dispel that assumption in a new study, recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

[...] the researchers found that models optimized for accuracy — standard practice for machine learning — could effectively predict the outcomes of interest but exhibited considerable disparities in recommendations for interventions. However, when the researchers applied adjustments to the outputs of the models that targeted improving their fairness, they discovered that disparities based on race, age or income — depending on the situation — could be removed without a loss of accuracy.

Journal Reference:
Kit T. Rodolfa, Hemank Lamba, Rayid Ghani. Empirical observation of negligible fairness–accuracy trade-offs in machine learning for public policy, Nature Machine Intelligence (DOI: 10.1038/s42256-021-00396-x)

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upstart brings us this story:

International Team of Astronomers Reports on Largest-ever Observed Set of Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts:

An international team of astronomers recently observed more than 1,650 fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected from one source in deep space, which amounts to the largest set – by far – of the mysterious phenomena ever recorded.

More than a decade after the discovery of FRBs, astronomers are still baffled by the origins of the millisecond-long, cosmic explosions that each produce the energy equivalent to the sun’s annual output.

In a study published in the Oct. 13 issue of the journal Nature, scientists – including UNLV astrophysicist Bing Zhang – report on the discovery of a total of 1,652 independent FRBs from one source over the course of 47 days in 2019. The source, dubbed FRB 121102, was observed using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China, and represents more FRBs in one event than all previous reported occurrences combined.

[...] According to Zhang, there are two active models for where FRBs come from. One could be that they come from magnetospheres, or within a magnetar’s strong magnetic field. Another theory is that FRBs form from relativistic shocks outside the magnetosphere traveling at the speed of light.

“These results pose great challenges to the latter model,” says Zhang. “The bursts are too frequent and - given that this episode alone amounts to 3.8% of the energy available from a magnetar - it adds up to too much energy for the second model to work.”

Journal Reference:
D. Li, P. Wang, W. W. Zhu, et al. A bimodal burst energy distribution of a repeating fast radio burst source, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03878-5)

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upstart writes:

Facebook sues programmer who allegedly scraped data for 178 million users:

Facebook has filed a lawsuit on Friday against a Ukrainian national for allegedly scraping its website and selling the personal data of more than 178 million users on an underground cybercrime forum.

According to court documents filed today, the man was identified as Alexander Alexandrovich Solonchenko, a resident of Kirovograd, Ukraine.

Facebook alleges that Solonchenko abused a feature part of the Facebook Messenger service called Contact Importer.

The feature allowed users to synchronize their phone address books and see which contacts had a Facebook account in order to allow users to reach out to their friends via Facebook Messenger.

Between January 2018 and September 2019, Facebook said that Solonchenko used an automated tool to pose as Android devices in order to feed Facebook servers with millions of random phone numbers.

As Facebook servers returned information for which phone numbers had an account on the site, Solonchenko collected the data, which he later collected and offered for sale on December 1, 2020, in a post on RaidForums, a notorious cybercrime forum and marketplace for stolen data.

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hubie writes:

From a very recent Scientific Reports paper, described very well by its abstract:

Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that represent objects like art, collectible, and in-game items. They are traded online, often with cryptocurrency, and are generally encoded within smart contracts on a blockchain. Public attention towards NFTs has exploded in 2021, when their market has experienced record sales, but little is known about the overall structure and evolution of its market. Here, we analyse data concerning 6.1 million trades of 4.7 million NFTs between June 23, 2017 and April 27, 2021, obtained primarily from Ethereum and WAX blockchains. First, we characterize statistical properties of the market. Second, we build the network of interactions, show that traders typically specialize on NFTs associated with similar objects and form tight clusters with other traders that exchange the same kind of objects. Third, we cluster objects associated to NFTs according to their visual features and show that collections contain visually homogeneous objects. Finally, we investigate the predictability of NFT sales using simple machine learning algorithms and find that sale history and, secondarily, visual features are good predictors for price. We anticipate that these findings will stimulate further research on NFT production, adoption, and trading in different contexts.

Journal Reference:
Nadini, Matthieu, Alessandretti, Laura, Di Giacinto, Flavio, et al. Mapping the NFT revolution: market trends, trade networks, and visual features [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-00053-8)

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upstart writes:

Tesla switches all standard-range vehicles to LiFePo chemistry:

The thing about modern lithium nickel-cobalt-aluminum-oxide battery chemistries as fitted to modern, long-range electric vehicles is that they're expensive. They're expensive because their increased energy density necessitates the use of more rare-earth minerals in their construction. There are other chemistries, though, and one of the more popular ones is called lithium-iron-phosphate or LFP.

In a move to offer reduced-cost Model 3s to the Chinese market, Tesla started offering its base Model 3 with an LFP battery pack. Since LFP chemistry makes for a less energy-dense cell, it provides a lower range but at significantly lower production costs. That move worked so well for Tesla that now, according to its 2021 Q3 shareholder deck (PDF), released Wednesday, it's moving to LFP chemistry for all of its standard-range vehicles around the world.

upstart writes:

Stretchy, bendy, flexible LEDs: They're also cheaper, faster and fabricated with an inkjet printer:

Organic LEDs, made with organic small molecules or polymer materials, are cheap and flexible. "You can bend or stretch them -- but they have relatively low performance and short lifetime," [Chuan] Wang said. "Inorganic LEDs such as microLEDs are high performing, super bright and very reliable, but not flexible and very expensive."

"What we have made is an organic-inorganic compound," he said. "It has the best of both worlds."

They used a particular type of crystalline material called an organometal halide perovskite -- though with a novel twist. The traditional way to create a thin layer of perovskite, which is in liquid form, is to drip it onto a flat, spinning substrate, like a spin art toy, in a process known as spin coating. As the substrate spins, the liquid spreads out, eventually covering it in a thin layer.

From there, it can be recovered and made into perovskite LEDs, or PeLEDs.

Like spin art, however, a lot of material is wasted in that process -- as the substrate spins at several thousand RPM, some of the dripping perovskite splatters and flies away, not sticking to the substrate.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

In the early 1980s cassette tapes were the standard storage medium for home computer users; readers of a certain age will remember fiddling with audio jacks, tape counters and signal levels, then waiting for several minutes while a program (hopefully) loaded correctly. While most people happily upgraded to much more reliable floppy disks, [Zack Nelson] decided to go back in time and add a suitably classic storage medium to a retrocomputing project, in the form of a cassette interface. The cassette player he had available was a Pearlcorder L400, which uses the smaller microcassette instead of the familiar audio tapes used in your Walkman or boombox.

https://zeninstruments.blogspot.com/2021/10/manchester-decoder-and-cassette.html

Original Submission

upstart writes:

American ISPs slammed for spying on their own subscribers:

The US Federal Trade Commission on Thursday said many internet service providers are sharing data about their customers, in defiance of expectations, and are failing to give subscribers adequate choices about whether or how their data is shared.

The trade watchdog's findings arrived in the form of a report [PDF] undertaken in 2019 to examine the data and privacy practices of major US broadband providers, including AT&T Mobility, Charter Communications, Google Fiber, T-Mobile US, Verizon Wireless, and Comcast's Xfinity.

"[T]hese findings underscore deficiencies of the 'notice-and-consent' framework for privacy, especially in markets where users face highly limited choices among service providers," said FTC boss Lina Khan in a statement [PDF].

"The report found that even in instances where internet service providers purported to offer customers some choice with respect to how their data was collected or used, in practice users were thwarted by design decisions that made it complicated, difficult, or near-impossible to actually escape persistent surveillance."

[...] More specifically, the report notes that:

Motor Trend reports on flat towing battery EV cars to recharge them, with several comments from several manufacturers.

Can You Flat Tow EVs to Recharge Them? Yes, but There Are Asterisks:

Rivian may have given this the most thought, as its vehicles are inherently more likely to run out of juice farther from help. For that reason, the company makes an additional, higher regenerative braking level available: engage reverse while towing the truck forward.

Ford reckoned its Mustang Mach-E or F-150 Lightning will generate at least 9.2 kW at reasonably low speed. Lucid had plenty of experience flat towing its Air sedan prototypes during extensive durability and development drives that sometimes saw the vehicles exceeding their impressive range nowhere near a charger (often at durability-test tracks with no chargers). Lucid claimed that when towed in the high-regen setting at 20 to 30 mph, the car should generate power at a rate of 100 kW; while being towed by a strong support truck at 60 to 70 mph in max regen, Lucid saw charging rates of up to 200 kW. Charging a Rivian with the gear selector in reverse purportedly delivers rates akin to a DC fast charger. Note that on the "Warped Perception" YouTube channel, a Tesla Model S (which comes with robust tow hooks) was flat towed behind a Mercedes-AMG E55 at 70 mph and reported a 65-kW rate, while the AMG earned 5 mpg.

owl writes:

Home Alone is now a $250 Lego set, and it might be the most impressive fan-inspired model yet:

Some of the most amazing Lego sets of the past decade have been dreamt up by fans — and this week, the Danish toy brick company revealed its largest Lego Ideas set yet. It's Kevin McCallister's iconic house from Home Alone, and it's a 3,955-piece marvel filled with movie moments, hidden references, and a number of Kevin's booby traps.

Kevin can slide down the stairs on his sled, land a clothes iron on Marv's face, zipline down to his treehouse, break the shelves that release Buzz's tarantula, drop a paint can, and more. Lego even recreated the scary basement furnace with its opening jaws, with a light-up brick so it can glow, and there's a gear you can turn to spin the train set and turntable that Kevin disguised as people (to make it look like someone was "home").

The whole build opens up like a dollhouse, including a full attic playspace you access by flipping up the roof, and each floor can lift off if you'd rather interact from the top down. As The Brothers Brick point out in their review, it's got a few never-before-seen bricks, too: the door with the pet flap is new here.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists made a wooden knife that's three times sharper than steel blades:

The gold standard for knives is usually steel or ceramics, but in a new study, appearing in the journal Matter on Oct. 20, material scientists describe their latest creation: A "hardened wood knife" around three times sharper than a stainless steel dinner knife. It can "easily" cut through a medium-well done steak, according to Teng Li, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland and first author on the paper, and can be used and reused many times.

[...] Li's team developed a two-step method for hardening the wood in their knives that increased the blade's hardness 23-fold. This was achieved by ensuring the wood retained a higher level of cellulose.

Typically, wood contains only about 50% cellulose, which provides some structural integrity, and weaker molecules make up the rest. Li's two-step process was able to remove these weaker components but retain the cellulose. Coating the wood in mineral oil helps protect its sharpness during use and washing.

[...] They discovered the two-step process the used(sic) prevented defects from creeping in. "The strength of a piece of material is very sensitive to the size and density of defects, like voids, channels, or pits," he said in a statement.

The team didn't stop at hardened wooden knives, either. They also developed wooden nails, showing they were as sharp as conventional steel nails.

Also at ScienceDaily

Journal Reference:
Bo Chen. Hardened wood as a renewable alternative to steel and plastic, Matter [open] (DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2021.09.020)

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset:

Oculus may have officially discontinued its low-end Oculus Go headset last year, but the company has one more "official" update to help future-proof the hardware. On Thursday, Oculus released an unlocked build of the Oculus Go operating system, allowing for "full root access" on more than 2 million existing units.

Oculus CTO (and former id Software co-founder) John Carmack announced his plans for this update last month, saying it was something he had "been pushing on for years." In part, the unlocking is an attempt to guarantee that Go hardware will continue to be fully functional well into the future, allowing for "a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset twenty years from now [to] be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down," Carmack wrote.

Before that, though, the update will allow tinkerers to "repurpose the hardware for more things today," as Carmack puts it.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/bluetooth_tracking_device/

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Vice

Japanese police on Monday arrested a 43-year-old man for using artificial intelligence to effectively unblur pixelated porn videos, in the first criminal case in the country involving the exploitative use of the powerful technology.

Masayuki Nakamoto, who runs his own website in the southern prefecture of Hyogo, lifted images of porn stars from Japanese adult videos and doctored them with the same method used to create realistic face swaps in deepfake videos.

But instead of changing faces, Nakamoto used machine learning software to reconstruct the blurred parts of the video based on a large set of uncensored nudes and sold the content online. Penises and vaginas are pixelated in Japanese porn because an obscenity law forbids the explicit depictions of genitalia.

Nakamoto reportedly made about 11 million yen ($96,000) by selling over 10,000 manipulated videos, though he was arrested specifically for selling 10 fake photos at about 2,300 yen ($20) each.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

White House further postpones disclosure of JFK assassination documents, citing Covid

The White House announced late Friday that it would further postpone the release of more documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, pointing to the "significant impact" of the Covid-19 pandemic.

President Joe Biden issued a memo that said the national archivist recommended he "'direct two public releases of the information that has ultimately 'been determined to be appropriate for release to the public.'" The first will be an "interim release" later this year, with a second, "more comprehensive release in late 2022," the memo said.

The memo said that the Covid-19 pandemic has slowed down the process of reviewing whether redactions continue to meet the "statutory standard."

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy