SoylentNews

owl writes:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/icespikes/icespikes.htm:

Ice spikes are odd ice structures that occasionally grow out of ice cube trays. Unlike some of the strange things you might find growing in your refrigerator, ice spikes are made of nothing but ice. Ice spikes are the result of physics, not biology.

Here are some pictures[*] I took of ice spikes that grew in my kitchen freezer. They look a lot like the limestone stalagmites found in caves, although there was no water dripping inside my freezer when these formed.

To see your own ice spikes, make ice cubes in an ordinary ice cube tray, in an ordinary household freezer, but using distilled water, which you can buy in most supermarkets for about a dollar a gallon. We've tried several different freezers, and almost always got some ice spikes to grow.

[*] See linked article for the pictures. Have any soylentils also seen them?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

US government seizes $3.6 billion in bitcoin tied to 2016 hack of crypto exchange Bitfinex:

Two individuals, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, were arrested in New York and are expected to appear in court Tuesday afternoon. The two are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States. They face as many as 25 years in prison if convicted.

The DOJ detailed the seizure operation in a press release, explaining:

"According to court documents, Lichtenstein and Morgan allegedly conspired to launder the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoin that were stolen from Bitfinex's platform after a hacker breached Bitfinex's systems and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions. Those unauthorized transactions sent the stolen bitcoin to a digital wallet under Lichtenstein's control. Over the last five years, approximately 25,000 of those stolen bitcoin were transferred out of Lichtenstein's wallet via a complicated money laundering process that ended with some of the stolen funds being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan. The remainder of the stolen funds, comprising more than 94,000 bitcoin, remained in the wallet used to receive and store the illegal proceeds from the hack."

"After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein. Those files contained the private keys required to access the digital wallet that directly received the funds stolen from Bitfinex, and allowed special agents to lawfully seize and recover more than 94,000 bitcoin that had been stolen from Bitfinex. The recovered bitcoin was valued at over $3.6 billion at the time of seizure."

Notably, the amount seized corresponds to a series of transactions of Bitfinex hack-tied BTC on February 1. According to a statement of facts issued by the Department of Justice, investigators gained access to the wallets on January 31, meaning the February 1 transactions took place one day later.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Introducing a Personal Boundary for Horizon Worlds and Venues:

Today, we're announcing Personal Boundary for Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues. Personal Boundary prevents avatars from coming within a set distance of each other, creating more personal space for people and making it easier to avoid unwanted interactions. Personal Boundary will begin rolling out today everywhere inside of Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, and will by default make it feel like there is an almost 4-foot distance between your avatar and others. Over time, we'll continue to make improvements as we learn how this affects people's experiences.

[...] A Personal Boundary prevents anyone from invading your avatar's personal space. If someone tries to enter your Personal Boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary. You won't feel it—there is no haptic feedback. This builds upon our existing hand harassment measures that were already in place, where an avatar's hands would disappear if they encroached upon someone's personal space.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

DeepMind says its new AI coding engine is as good as an average human programmer:

DeepMind has created an AI system named AlphaCode that it says “writes computer programs at a competitive level.” The Alphabet subsidiary tested its system against coding challenges used in human competitions and found that its program achieved an “estimated rank” placing it within the top 54 percent of human coders.

[...] Ten of these challenges were fed into AlphaCode in exactly the same format they’re given to humans. AlphaCode then generated a larger number of possible answers and winnowed these down by running the code and checking the output just as a human competitor might. “The whole process is automatic, without human selection of the best samples,” Yujia Li and David Choi, co-leads of the AlphaCode paper, told The Verge over email.

AlphaCode was tested on 10 of challenges that had been tackled by 5,000 users on the Codeforces site. On average, it ranked within the top 54.3 percent of responses, and DeepMind estimates that this gives the system a Codeforces Elo of 1238, which places it within the top 28 percent of users who have competed on the site in the last six months.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

A New Proposed Law Could Actually Hold Big Tech Accountable for Its Algorithms:

We’ve seen again and again the harmful, unintended consequences of irresponsibly deployed algorithms: risk assessment tools in the criminal justice system amplifying racial discrimination, false arrests powered by facial recognition, massive environmental costs of server farms, unacknowledged psychological harm from social media interactions, and new, sometimes-insurmountable hurdles in accessing public services. These actual harms are egregious, but what makes the current regime hopeless is that companies are incentivized to remain ignorant (or at least claim they to be) about the harms they expose us to, lest they be found liable.

Many of the current ideas for regulating large tech companies won’t address this ignorance or the harms it causes. While proposed antitrust laws would reckon with harms emerging from diminished competition in the digital markets, relatively small companies can also have disturbing, far-reaching power to affect our lives. Even if these proposed regulatory tools were to push tech companies away from some harmful practices, researchers, advocates and—critically —communities affected by these practices would still not have sufficient say in all the ways these companies’ algorithms shape our lives. This is especially troubling given how little information and influence we have over algorithms that control critical parts of our lives. The newly updated Algorithmic Accountability Act from Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen. Cory Booker, and Rep. Yvette Clarke could change this dynamic—and give us all an opportunity to reclaim some power over the algorithms that control critical parts of our lives.

upstart writes:

The quantum 'boomerang' effect has been seen for the first time:

[...] An experiment reveals that, after being given a nudge, particles in certain materials return to their starting points, on average, researchers report in a paper accepted in Physical Review X.

Particles can boomerang if they're in a material that has lots of disorder. Instead of a pristine material made up of orderly arranged atoms, the material must have many defects, such as atoms that are missing or misaligned, or other types of atoms sprinkled throughout.

In 1958, physicist Philip Anderson realized that with enough disorder, electrons in a material become localized: They get stuck in place, unable to travel very far from where they started. The pinned-down electrons prevent the material from conducting electricity, thereby turning what might otherwise be a metal into an insulator. That localization is also necessary for the boomerang effect.

upstart writes:

Making installed train windows permeable to mobile-phone signals:

Train riders expect to have a good internet connection while on board, yet the insulated window panes currently used on trains interfere with wireless signals. For now, railway companies get around this problem by equipping each railcar with a signal booster, or repeater. But repeaters are expensive boxes that consume a lot of power, are environmentally un-friendly and must be replaced every time there's a new advance in wireless technology.

[...] One-third of the power used by railcars goes to their heating and cooling systems, which means that effective insulation is essential. Around ten years ago, railway companies began adding an ultra-thin metal coating to windows that can double railcars' energy efficiency—but it also prevents wireless signals from getting through. Railway companies and mobile operators therefore decided to install repeaters in each railcar so that passengers can use their connected devices while on board.

[...] But most railcars today are not ready to be replaced yet—each one has a useful life of around 30 years. The researchers therefore came up with a portable version of their system than can be used directly on existing railcars.

[...] The nu glass system consists of a laser housed within a portable casing that operators attach to a train window. The laser can engrave a single window in around 15 minutes and an entire railcar in just a few hours.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Move over JavaScript: Back-end languages are coming to the front-end:

In the early days of networked computing, mainframes did all the heavy lifting: users connected to massive machines with video terminals that could do little more than send and receive text. Then in the 1970s, personal computers came along and made it possible to do serious computing on the client-side as servers handled tasks like authentication and storage in many networks. The rise of the internet in the 1990s swung the pendulum back to the server, with web browsers taking on a role not unlike terminals in the mainframe era.

The client-side made a come back over the past decade as developers built "single-page applications" (SPAs) with JavaScript. But a new crop of tools is sending the pendulum swinging back towards the server.

At the vanguard of these tools is Phoenix, a framework for the programming language Elixir, and a feature called LiveView. Using LiveView and a bit of JavaScript, developers can create browser-based interfaces for real-time applications like chat rooms or Twitter-style status updates. All UI elements are rendered on the server first and sent to the browser, ready-to-display. The only JavaScript required is a small amount of code that opens a WebSockets connection that handles sending input from the browser and receiving refreshed HTML/CSS from the server.

Phoenix isn't the first platform to offer a way for back-end developers to create front-end interfaces—Microsoft's ASP.NET Web Forms for Microsoft .NET existed back in 2002—but it did inspire many new tools. Caldara for Node.js, Livewire for the PHP framework Laravel, and StimulusReflex for Ruby on Rails, to name a few. Microsoft, meanwhile, released a new .NET feature called Blazor Server that modernizes the old Web Forms idea.

"My goal is not to get rid of single-page applications, but to obviate them for a large class of applications," Phoenix creator Chris McCord says.

There is a lot more in the full article.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

EU joins chips race with 42 bn euro bid to rival Asia:

The production of semiconductors, also known as chips, has become a strategic priority in Europe as well as the United States, after the shock of the pandemic choked off supply, bringing factories to a standstill and emptying stores of products.

The manufacturing of chips overwhelmingly takes place in Taiwan, China and South Korea and the European Union's 27 member states want factories and companies inside the bloc to take on a bigger role.

Thierry Breton, the EU's industry commissioner, on Tuesday will press Europeans to be as ambitious as possible and match similar plans in the United States, where the Biden administration is asking Congress to approve $52 billion.

upstart writes:

SpaceX Starlink satellites doomed after geomagnetic storm hits Earth:

As many as 40 Starlink satellites from Thursday's SpaceX launch are set to smash back into Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate in the atmosphere, according to a SpaceX update on Tuesday.

[...] But after launch on Thursday, a geomagnetic storm slammed into Earth's atmosphere. Geomagnetic storms are caused by the sun spewing out solar wind particles that eventually crash into Earth. The particles mess with the planet's magnetic field and disrupt satellites, increasing drag and messing with their orbits.

That's exactly what happened to potentially 40 Starlink satellites just after they were deployed into their intended orbit, SpaceX has said.

[...] SpaceX said the satellites will "reenter or already have reentered the Earth's atmosphere" on Tuesday, effectively ending their short lives. When the satellites collide with the atmosphere, they're designed to burn up entirely, so no debris reaches the ground. SpaceX also says they pose no risk to other satellites.

So why is it just Starlink satellites that are reporting a problem?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Speeding Through Semiconductor Nanowires: New Basis for Ultrafast Transistors:

Smaller chips, faster computers, less energy consumption. Novel concepts based on semiconductor nanowires are expected to make transistors in microelectronic circuits better and more efficient. Electron mobility plays a key role in this: The faster electrons can accelerate in these tiny wires, the faster a transistor can switch and the less energy it requires. A team of researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the TU Dresden, and NaMLab has now succeeded in experimentally demonstrating that electron mobility in nanowires is remarkably enhanced when the shell places the wire core under tensile strain. This phenomenon offers novel opportunities for the development of ultrafast transistors.

Nanowires have a unique property: These ultra-thin wires can sustain very high elastic strains without damaging the crystal structure of the material. And yet the materials themselves are not unusual. Gallium arsenide, for example, is widely used in industrial manufacturing, and is known to have a high intrinsic electron mobility.

To further enhance this mobility, the Dresden researchers produced nanowires consisting of a gallium arsenide core and an indium aluminum arsenide shell. The different chemical ingredients result in the crystal structures in the shell and the core having slightly different lattice spacings. This causes the shell to exert a high mechanical strain on the much thinner core. The gallium arsenide in the core changes its electronic properties. "We influence the effective mass of electrons in the core. The electrons become lighter, so to speak, which makes them more mobile," explained Dr. Emmanouil Dimakis, scientist at the HZDR's Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research and initiator of the recently published study.

upstart writes:

North Korea: Missile programme funded through stolen crypto, UN report says:

Between 2020 and mid-2021 cyber-attackers stole more than $50m (£37m) of digital assets, investigators found.

Such attacks are an "important revenue source" for Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programme, they said.

The findings were reportedly handed to the UN's sanctions committee on Friday.

The cyber-attacks targeted at least three cryptocurrency exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia.

The report also referenced a study published last month by the security firm Chainalysis that suggested North Korean cyberattacks could have netted as much as $400m worth of digital assets last year.

And in 2019, the UN reported that North Korea had accumulated an estimated $2bn for its weapons of mass destruction programmes by using sophisticated cyber-attacks.

Previously:
North Korea Hackers Stole $400m of Cryptocurrency in 2021, Report Says

Original Submission

upstart writes:

IRS abandons facial recognition plan after firestorm of criticism:

The Internal Revenue Service has abandoned its plan to require millions of Americans to submit to a facial recognition check through a private company to access their online tax accounts following a firestorm of criticism from privacy advocates and members of Congress.

The IRS said Monday it would "transition away" from using a face-scanning service offered by the company ID.me in the coming weeks and would develop an additional authentication process that does not involve facial recognition. The IRS said it would also continue to work with "cross-government partners" on additional methods of authentication, but it did not provide a precise time frame for the change or say what the additional authentication process might entail.

The agency originally had said that starting this summer all taxpayers would need to submit a "video selfie" to ID.me to access their tax records and other services on the IRS website. But lawmakers and advocates slammed the idea of mandating the technology's use nationwide, saying it would unfairly burden Americans without smartphones or computer cameras, would make sensitive data vulnerable to hackers and would subject people of color to a system known to work less accurately on darker skin.

"The IRS takes taxpayer privacy and security seriously, and we understand the concerns that have been raised," IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said in a statement announcing the decision. "Everyone should feel comfortable with how their personal information is secured, and we are quickly pursuing short-term options that do not involve facial recognition."

Previously:
IRS Plan to Scan Your Face

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

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Chie Ferrelli loved her Subaru SUV, which she bought in 2020 because it made her feel safe. So when it was time for her husband, Marc, to purchase his own new car last summer, they returned to the Subaru dealer near their home in southeast Massachusetts. But there was a catch, one that made the couple mad: Marc's sedan wouldn't have access to the company's telematics system and the app that went along with it. No remote engine start in the freezing New England winter; no emergency assistance; no automated messages when the tire pressure was low or the oil needed changing. The worst part was that if the Ferrellis lived just a mile away, in Rhode Island, they would have the features. They bought the car. But thinking back, Marc says, if he had known about the issue before stepping into the dealership he "probably would have gone with Toyota."

Subaru disabled the telematics system and associated features on new cars registered in Massachusetts last year as part of a spat over a right-to-repair ballot measure approved, overwhelmingly, by the state's voters in 2020. The measure, which has been held up in the courts, required automakers to give car owners and independent mechanics more access to data about the car's internal systems.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

$66 billion deal for Nvidia to purchase Arm collapses:

SoftBank's $66 billion sale of UK-based chip business Arm to Nvidia collapsed on Monday after regulators in the US, UK, and EU raised serious concerns about its effects on competition in the global semiconductor industry, according to three people with direct knowledge of the transaction.

The deal, the largest ever in the chip sector, would have given California-based Nvidia control of a company that makes technology at the heart of most of the world's mobile devices. A handful of Big Tech companies that rely on Arm's chip designs, including Qualcomm and Microsoft, had objected to the purchase.

SoftBank will receive a break-up fee of up to $1.25 billion and is seeking to unload Arm through an initial public offering before the end of the year, said one of the people.

The failure is set to result in a management upheaval at Arm, with chief executive Simon Segars being replaced by Rene Haas, head of the company's intellectual property unit, the person added.

The collapse of the deal robs SoftBank of a big windfall it would have earned thanks to a boom in Nvidia's stock price.

Original Submission