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upstart writes:

Italy slaps facial recognition firm Clearview AI with €20 million fine:

Italy's data privacy watchdog said it will fine the controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI for breaching EU law. An investigation by Garante, Italy's data protection authority, found that the company's database of 10 billion images of faces includes those of Italians and residents in Italy. The New York City-based firm is being fined €20 million, and will also have to delete any facial biometrics it holds of Italian nationals.

This isn't the first time that the beleaguered facial recognition tech company is facing legal consequences. The UK data protection authority last November fined the company £17 million after finding its practices—which include collecting selfies of people without their consent from security camera footage or mugshots—violate the nation's data protection laws. The company has also been banned in Sweden, France and Australia.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Dell opts out of Microsoft's Pluton security for Windows

This doesn't align with our approach, PC giant tells us

Yet another top-tier PC maker seemingly isn't interested right now in Microsoft's vision of hardware-level security for Windows 11 systems.

Dell won't include Microsoft's Pluton technology in most of its commercial PCs, telling The Register: "Pluton does not align with Dell's approach to hardware security and our most secure commercial PC requirements."

Microsoft launched to much fanfare its Pluton security layer for PCs in 2020 after developing it with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. Pluton effectively bakes a co-processor in silicon that securely stores encryption keys, credentials, and other sensitive information. The idea being that this data is kept close to the CPU cores, within the same processor package, thwarting attempts extract the secret info by, say, snooping an external bus.

It also allows Microsoft to define a base level of security features in the chips that Windows runs on. For instance, Pluton provides a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a technology required by Windows 11."

Lenovo had previously told The Register its Intel-powered ThinkPads "will not support Microsoft Pluton at launch."

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Freeman writes:

Biden considers digital dollar—here’s how it could differ from regular money:

President Joe Biden today issued an executive order that could lead to the US creating a digital currency.

"My Administration places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency]," the executive order said. "These efforts should include assessments of possible benefits and risks for consumers, investors, and businesses; financial stability and systemic risk; payment systems; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and the actions required to launch a United States CBDC if doing so is deemed to be in the national interest."

Biden also ordered government agencies to develop policies for managing cryptocurrencies that already exist. "The rise in digital assets creates an opportunity to reinforce American leadership in the global financial system and at the technological frontier, but also has substantial implications for consumer protection, financial stability, national security, and climate risk," the White House said. Biden's order "encourages regulators to ensure sufficient oversight and safeguard against any systemic financial risks posed by digital assets."

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upstart writes:

Spotting accelerator-produced neutrinos in a cosmic haystack:

Physicists have developed new tools to help tone down the cosmic "noise" when searching for signs of particles called neutrinos in detectors located near Earth's surface. This method combines data-sifting techniques with image reconstruction methods similar to the computerized tomography (CT) scans used in medicine. It makes the signals of neutrinos produced by a particle accelerator stand out against the "web" of tracks produced by cosmic rays. These cosmic travelers are 20,000 times more numerous than neutrino interactions in the detector. Filtering out the many tracks from cosmic rays should improve experiments on the Earth's surface that are seeking to understand the behavior of the subatomic neutrinos.

Neutrino detectors at Earth's surface need to pick out the signals of elusive neutrino interactions from the background "noise" of cosmic rays. MicroBooNE detects tracks produced when charged particles from neutrino interactions ionize argon atoms in the detector. Three planes of wires in the MicroBooNE experiment are sensitive to electrons in the ionization trails. Each plane captures an image of the track in two dimensions. Computers assemble the 2D images into 3D tracks—similar to the way computed tomography (CT) scanners reconstruct 3D images of internal organs from 2D "slice-like" snapshots of the human body. At MicroBooNE, the shape of the track tells scientists which flavor of neutrino triggered the interaction. To weed out thousands of tracks produced by cosmic rays, scientists first match the track signals with flashes of light also produced in neutrino interactions. The team developed algorithms to help compare the timing and light patterns for each photomultiplier tube in the detector with the locations of all of the particles' tracks. No match means it's not a neutrino event. They also developed methods to eliminate tracks that completely traverse the detector and spot tracks that originate in the detector, rather than outside, completing the job of zeroing in on the neutrino events.

upstart writes:

Is Dark Energy Just an Illusion? Neutron Stars Will Tell Us:

For about 100 years now, general relativity has been very successful at describing gravity on a variety of regimes, passing all experimental tests on Earth and the solar system. However, to explain cosmological observations such as the observed accelerated expansion of the Universe, we need to introduce dark components, such as dark matter and dark energy, which still remain a mystery.

Enrico Barausse, astrophysicist at SISSA (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati) and principal investigator of the ERC grant GRAMS (GRavity from Astrophysical to Microscopic Scales) questions whether dark energy is real or, instead, it may be interpreted as a breakdown of our understanding of gravity. “The existence of dark energy could be just an illusion,” he says, “the accelerated expansion of the Universe might be caused by some yet unknown modifications of general relativity, a sort of ‘dark gravity’.”

The merger of neutron stars offers a unique situation to test this hypothesis because gravity around them is pushed to the extreme. “Neutron stars are the densest stars that exist, typically only 10 kilometers in radius, but with a mass between one or two times the mass of our Sun,” explains the scientist. “This makes gravity and the spacetime around them extreme, allowing for abundant production of gravitational waves when two of them collide. We can use the data acquired during such events to study the workings of gravity and test Einstein’s theory in a new window.”

owl submitted this interesting story:

Ken Shirriff writes Reverse-engineering the waveform generator in a 1969 breadboard

How hard could it be to fix a vintage solderless breadboard that doesn't quite work? The "elite 2 circuit design test system" below combined a solderless breadboard with some supporting circuitry: power supplies, a waveform generator, a pulse generator, switches, and lights. CuriousMarc found one of these breadboards on eBay, but the function generator didn't work, so we set out to repair it.

I figured that the waveform and pulse generators would be simple circuits, but they turn out to be implemented with a board crammed full of components, including over 40 transistors. I reverse-engineered the circuitry and found some interesting circuits inside, including op-amps implemented from discrete transistors. This complexity probably explains the shockingly high price of this breadboard: $1300 in 1969 (equivalent to $10,000 in current dollars).

The article continues is Ken's usual meticulously-detailed fashion with images and schematics of what he found.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Shackleton's lost shipwreck discovered off Antarctica:

One of the world's most storied shipwrecks, Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, has been discovered off the coast of Antarctica more than a century after its sinking, explorers announced Wednesday.

Endurance was discovered at a depth of 3,008 meters (9,869 feet) in the Weddell Sea, about six kilometers (four miles) from where it was slowly crushed by pack ice in 1915.

"We are overwhelmed by our good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance," said Mensun Bound, the expedition's director of exploration.

[...] As part of Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition between 1914 and 1917, Endurance was meant to make the first land crossing of Antarctica, but it fell victim to the tumultuous Weddell Sea.

Just east of the Larsen ice shelves on the Antarctic peninsula, it became ensnared in sea-ice for over 10 months before being crushed and sinking.

[...] The voyage became legendary due to the miraculous escape Shackleton and his crew made on foot and in boats.

The crew managed to escape by camping on the sea ice until it ruptured.

Freeman writes:

Valve does what FromSoftware don’t, thanks to Steam Deck’s precaching update:

While Elden Ring's recent launch has been a massive critical and commercial success, it continues developer FromSoftware's streak of leaving players in a technical lurch. Even on the newest Xbox and PlayStation consoles or the highest-end PCs, Elden Ring still manages to turn in a somewhat unsteady performance for various reasons.

In the case of one unoptimized aspect of the game's PC version, someone outside FromSoftware has swooped in to save the day. Usually, this kind of PC gaming story comes thanks to enterprising modders from the gaming community at large. In Elden Ring's case, however, the fix comes courtesy of an unlikely source: Valve, the massive company that runs the Steam storefront.

Freeman writes:

The secret US mission to bolster Ukraine’s cyber defenses ahead of Russia’s invasion:

Months before the Russian invasion, a team of Americans fanned out across Ukraine looking for a very specific kind of threat.

Some were soldiers, with the US Army’s Cyber Command. Others were civilian contractors and some employees of American companies that help defend critical infrastructure from the kind of cyber attacks that Russian agencies had inflicted upon Ukraine for years.

The US had been helping Ukraine bolster its cyber defenses for years, ever since an infamous 2015 attack on its power grid left part of Kyiv without electricity for hours.

But this surge of US personnel in October and November was different: it was in preparation of impending war. People familiar with the operation described an urgency in the hunt for hidden malware, the kind which Russia could have planted, then left dormant in preparation to launch a devastating cyber attack alongside a more conventional ground invasion.

Experts warn that Russia may yet unleash a devastating online attack on Ukrainian infrastructure of the sort that has long been expected by western officials. But years of work, paired with the past two months of targeted bolstering, may explain why Ukrainian networks have held up so far.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A man who got the 1st pig heart transplant has died after 2 months

The first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig has died, two months after the groundbreaking experiment, the Maryland hospital that performed the surgery announced Wednesday.

David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Doctors didn't give an exact cause of death, saying only that his condition had begun deteriorating several days earlier.

[...] Prior attempts at such transplants — or xenotransplantation — have failed largely because patients' bodies rapidly rejected the animal organ. This time, the Maryland surgeons used a heart from a gene-edited pig: Scientists had modified the animal to remove pig genes that trigger the hyper-fast rejection and add human genes to help the body accept the organ.

At first the pig heart was functioning, and the Maryland hospital issued periodic updates that Bennett seemed to be slowly recovering. Last month, the hospital released video of him watching the Super Bowl from his hospital bed while working with his physical therapist.

Bennett survived significantly longer with the gene-edited pig heart than one of the last milestones in xenotransplantation — when Baby Fae, a dying California infant, lived 21 days with a baboon's heart in 1984.

[...] One next question is whether scientists have learned enough from Bennett's experience and some other recent experiments with gene-edited pig organs to persuade the FDA to allow a clinical trial — possibly with an organ such as a kidney that isn't immediately fatal if it fails.

Previously: Surgeons Smash Records With Pig-to-Primate Organ Transplants
Surgeons Successfully Transplant Genetically Modified Pig Heart Into Human Patient

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Meet Apple's Enormous 20-Core M1 Ultra Processor, the Brains in the New Mac Studio Machine:

Apple on Tuesday announced its highest-end M1 Mac processor to date, a model that links two M1 Max chips together into a single package with 20 processing cores, 64 graphics cores, and support for up to 128GB of memory. The chip, with a remarkable 114 billion transistors, debuted at Apple's March product launch event and powers the high-end $3,999 configuration of the new Mac Studio desktop computer.

The chip uses dedicated circuitry on last year's M1 Max with a high-speed silicon link called UltraFusion to marry the two processors together without a complicated design that would mean problems for programmers, Apple said. It's emblematic of the increasing push across the semiconductor industry to use packaging technology to link smaller chip elements into one larger processor.

UltraFusion employs a technique called a silicon interposer, essentially a layer in the chip package with 10,000 high-speed links between the two slices of silicon. "This is a super clever approach to maximize a mature design," said Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin. Compared to the first-generation M1, the M1 Ultra has seven times as many transistors, the basic electronic building block in a processor.

upstart writes:

Needy, overconfident voice assistants are wearing on their owners' last nerves:

[...] "Hey Alexa, play 'Despacito,'" [Kate] Compton said into the ether from her home in Evanston, Ill., where she teaches computer science at Northwestern University. A nearby smart speaker launched into an explanation: The Luis Fonsi song was not available, but it could be if Compton paid for a subscription. Alexa proceeded to walk us through the pricing plans.

Compton tried again: "Hey Alexa, play classical music."

"Here's a station you might like," Alexa said tentatively, adding that the songs were hosted on Amazon Music.

Americans welcomed voice assistants into their homes on claims that Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant would be like quasi-human helpers, seamlessly managing our appointments, grocery lists and music libraries. From 2019 to 2021, the use of voice assistants among online adults in the United States rose to 30 percent from 21 percent, according to data from market research firm Forrester. Of the options, Siri is the most popular — 34 percent of us have interacted with Apple's voice assistant in the last year. Amazon's Alexa is next with 32 percent; 25 percent have used Google Assistant; and Microsoft's Cortana and Samsung's Bixby trail behind with five percent each.

upstart writes:

NVIDIA's Stolen Code-Signing Certs Used to Sign Malware:

NVIDIA certificates are being used to sign malware, enabling malicious programs to pose as legitimate and slide past security safeguards on Windows machines.

Two of NVIDIA's code-signing certificates were part of the Feb. 23 Lapsus$ Group ransomware attack the company suffered – certificates that are now being used to sign malware so malicious programs can slide past security safeguards on Windows machines.

The Feb. 23 attack saw 1TB of data bleed from the graphics processing units (GPUs) maker: a haul that included data on hardware schematics, firmware, drivers, email accounts and password hashes for more than 71,000 employees, and more.

Security researchers noted last week that malicious binaries were being signed with the stolen certificates to come off like legitimate NVIDIA programs, and that they had appeared in the malware sample database VirusTotal.

[...] Both of the stolen NVIDIA code-signing certificates are expired, but they're still recognized by Windows, which allow a driver signed with the certificates to be loaded in the operating system, according to reports.

upstart writes:

Critical Bugs Expose Hundreds of Thousands of Medical Devices and ATMs:

Specialized health care devices, from imaging tools like CT scanners to diagnostic lab equipment, are often inadequately protected on hospital networks. Now, new findings about seven vulnerabilities in an Internet of Things remote management tool underscore the interconnected exposures in medical devices and the broader IoT ecosystem.

Researchers from the health care security firm CyberMDX, which was acquired last month by the IoT security firm Forescout, found seven easily exploited vulnerabilities, collectively dubbed Access:7, in the IoT remote access tool PTC Axeda. The platform can be used with any embedded device, but has proven particularly popular in medical equipment. The researchers also found that some companies have used it to remotely manage ATMs, vending machines, barcode scanning systems, and some industrial manufacturing equipment. The researchers estimate that the Access:7 vulnerabilities are in hundreds of thousands of devices in all. In a review of its own customers, Forescout found more than 2,000 vulnerable systems.

"You can imagine the type of impact an attacker could have when they can either exfiltrate data from medical equipment or other sensitive devices, potentially tamper with lab results, make critical devices unavailable, or take them over entirely," says Daniel dos Santos, head of security research at Forescout.

Freeman writes:

How to save the International Space Station and prevent the dreaded "gap":

In the 10 days since Russia invaded Ukraine, relations between the first nation to reach space and the Western world have been stripped to the bone.

To wit: Europe's space agency has canceled several launches on Russian rockets, a contract between privately held OneWeb and Roscosmos for six Soyuz launches has been nullified, Europe suspended work on its ExoMars exploration mission that was set to use a Russian rocket and lander, and Russia has vowed to stop selling rocket engines to US launch companies.

Virtually every diplomatic and economic tie between Russia's space industry and Europe and the United States has been severed but one—the International Space Station.

In addition to these actions, Russia's chief spaceflight official, Dmitry Rogozin, has been bombastic since the war's outbreak, vacillating between jingoistic and nationalistic statements on Twitter and threats about how the ISS partnership could end. Moreover, the Kremlin-aligned publication RIA Novosti even created a creepy video showing Russians leaving their American colleagues behind in space.

But Rogozin has not crossed any red lines with his deeds. Although the intemperate space chief has taken every punitive and symbolic step that Roscosmos can in response to Western sanctions, he has stopped short of huge, partnership-breaking actions.

[...] The US space agency's chief of human spaceflight operations, Kathy Lueders, said last week that it would be a "sad day" if NASA and Russia stopped working together on the space station.

Original Submission