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upstart writes:

Driverless car appears to flee the scene after being pulled over by cops:

A video showing a driverless car being stopped by the police and then attempting to drive away went viral over the weekend. San Francisco police stopped one of Cruise's autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs, likely because the car's headlights were not on despite it being night. In the video, first posted to Instagram on April 2, an officer can be heard saying, "There's nobody in it."

But a few seconds later, after the officer walks back to his police car, the autonomous vehicle—perhaps deciding that the traffic stop was over—tries to drive away before pulling over to a stop a few hundred feet away.

Cruise says that the car wasn't trying to make a run for it. The vehicle first yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to a safe spot for the actual traffic stop, the company says. One of the police officers contacted Cruise to inform it of the situation, and the driverless car did not receive a ticket. Cruise says it has fixed whatever caused the car to drive without its headlights at night.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

You're muted... or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen even when mic is off:

Kassem Fawaz's brother was on a videoconference with the microphone muted when he noticed that the microphone light was still on—indicating, inexplicably, that his microphone was being accessed.

[...] "It turns out, in the vast majority of cases, when you mute yourself, these apps do not give up access to the microphone," says Fawaz. "And that's a problem. When you're muted, people don't expect these apps to collect data."

[...] They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not.

The researchers then decided to see if they could use data collected on mute from that app to infer the types of activities taking place in the background. Using machine learning algorithms, they trained an activity classifier using audio from YouTube videos representing six common background activities, including cooking and eating, playing music, typing and cleaning. Applying the classifier to the type of telemetry packets the app was sending, the team could identify the background activity with an average of 82% accuracy.

[...] "With a camera, you can turn it off or even put your hand over it, and no matter what you do, no one can see you," says Fawaz. "I don't think that exists for microphones."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

ACE Shuts Down Massive Pirate Site After Locating Owner in Remote Peru:

In October 2021, TorrentFreak learned that the Motion Picture Association and its anti-piracy partner Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment had taken an interest in one of the world's most popular pirate streaming sites.

In a DMCA subpoena application filed at a California court, MPA/ACE asked Cloudflare to hand over all information held on several pirate platforms including movie, TV show and anime streaming site Pelisplushd.net.

The site was not particularly well-known in English-speaking regions but in Latin America, its status as a giant was undisputed – 58 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb data. In the following months the site grew by millions more visitors but in the third week of March, locals reported problems accessing the site. We now know why.

In a statement published Wednesday, ACE officially announced that it was behind the closure of Pelisplushd.net. The anti-piracy group labeled the platform the second-largest Spanish-language 'rogue website' in the entire Latin American region with 383.5 million visits in the past six months and nearly 75 million visits in February 2022.

upstart writes:

We've Heard Of Bricking A Hard Drive, But...:

Mass storage has come a long way since the introduction of the personal computer. [Tech Time Traveller] has an interesting video about the dawn of PC hard drives focusing on a company called MiniScribe. After a promising start, they lost an IBM contract and fell on hard times.

We'd heard of MiniScribe, but a lot of companies from those days came and went. What we didn't remember is that once it was taken over by a turnaround firm, pressure to perform caused the company's executives to do some creative bookkeeping which finally came back to haunt them.

Apparently, the company was faking inventory to the tune of $15 million because executives feared for their jobs if profits weren't forthcoming. Once they discovered the incorrect inventory, they not only set out to alter the company's records to match it, but they also broke into an outside auditing firm's records to change things there, too.

upstart writes:

NASA Hardware Techniques: Soldering Space Electronics Like It’s 1958:

PeriscopeFilm on YouTube has many old TV adverts and US government reels archived on their channel, with some really interesting subjects to dive in to. This first one we’re highlighting here is a 1958 film about NASA Soldering Techniques (Video, embedded below), which has some fascinating details about how things were done during the Space Race, and presumably, continue to be done. The overall message about cleanliness couldn’t really be any clearer if they tried — it’s so critical it looks like those chaps in the film spend far more time brushing and cleaning than actually wielding those super clean soldering irons.

[...] As you would expect (and it’s not exactly a big secret) NASA has some very exacting standards for assembly of all hardware, like this great workmanship standard, which is well worth studying. Soldering is an important subject for many of us, we’ve covered the subject of solder metallurgy, as well as looking at how ancient hardware hackers soldered without the benefit of much modern knowledge.

I'm not sure my first Heathkit project would have passed NASA standards.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Meta announces plans to monetize the Metaverse, and creators are not happy:

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, announced some initial plans on Wednesday to allow content creators to monetize in its would-be Metaverse platform, Horizon Worlds. Meta's planned revenue share for contributors' creations could add up to nearly 50 percent.

[...] First off, Horizon Worlds will support in-world purchases. A handful of creators will be able to sell virtual items from within user-generated areas. Meta also plans to introduce a creator bonus program that awards money to creators based on how much other users engage with their content.

[...] When users purchase an item in Horizon Worlds, Meta confirmed to CNBC that it would take a 25 percent cut—but that's after any amount a hardware platform might take. Right now that just means Meta's Oculus store, which takes a 30 percent cut. So content creators will have to hand over 30 percent to the Oculus store (or the applicable percentage for whatever platform stores Horizon Worlds ends up on later, like Google Play), then they'll have to cede 25 percent of what's left to Horizon Worlds.

That leaves creators with just over half of their content's revenue before any applicable taxes.

The announcement has drawn ire from creators in the loosely related NFT community, who are accustomed to single-digit percentage platform takes. There are also accusations of hypocrisy from game developers and others who have seen Meta publicly criticize companies like Apple for charging 30 percent on similar transactions around in-game content.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Review: 3D V-Cache Powers a New Gaming Champion

On average at 1080p, the 5800X3D is ~9% faster than the 12900K, which costs 30% more, and ~7% faster than the Core i9-12900KS, which costs a whopping 64% more. That means the Ryzen 7 58000X3D is now both the fastest gaming chip in our test suite and a better value for gaming specifically than the Core i9 models.

Overclocking either of Intel's Core i9 models requires a beefy cooler and robust motherboard. However, despite its much tamer overall power requirements, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is still ~3% faster than the overclocked 12900K in our cumulative measurement.

[...] AMD's marketing claim is that the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is, on average, 15% faster than the Ryzen 9 5900X. The 3D V-Cache doesn't improve performance in all games, so this will vary, but we recorded a 21% increase over the 5900X at 1080p in our test suite, which is incredibly impressive.

The 5800X3D and the 5800X are built from the same basic design, but the X3D model has a 200 MHz lower boost and 400 MHz lower base clock than the 5800X. Despite that limitation, we recorded a massive 28% gain over the 5800X at 1080p, which is impressive. However, overclocking the 5800X3D's [DDR4] memory yielded an average performance increase of only about 1%, which isn't too meaningful.

[...] These results clearly show that the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a chip designed specifically for gaming, not for leading-edge performance in application workloads. We've highlighted the 5800X3D beating the 12900K in gaming, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that the 12900K is 29% faster in single-threaded work and 62% faster in threaded applications. That chasm grows even larger with the Core i9-12900KS.

AnonTechie writes:

Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock. But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously. How can that be, and what would it mean? It'll take a little while to explain, but don't worry: even if time doesn't exist, our lives will go on as usual.

upstart writes:

US warns of govt hackers targeting industrial control systems:

A joint cybersecurity advisory issued by CISA, NSA, FBI, and the Department of Energy (DOE) warns of government-backed hacking groups being able to hijack multiple industrial devices using a new ICS-focused malware toolkit.

The federal agencies said the threat actors could use custom-built modular malware to scan for, compromise, and take control of industrial control system (ICS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices.

"The APT actors' tools have a modular architecture and enable cyber actors to conduct highly automated exploits against targeted devices. Modules interact with targeted devices, enabling operations by lower-skilled cyber actors to emulate higher-skilled actor capabilities," the joint advisory reads.

"The APT actors can leverage the modules to scan for targeted devices, conduct reconnaissance on device details, upload malicious configuration/code to the targeted device, back up or restore device contents, and modify device parameters."

ICS/SCADA devices at risk of being compromised and hijacked include:

• Schneider Electric MODICON and MODICON Nano programmable logic controllers (PLCs)
• Omron Sysmac NJ and NX PLCs, and
• Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) servers

DOE, CISA, NSA, and the FBI also found that state-sponsored hackers also have malware that leverages CVE-2020-15368 exploits to target Windows systems with ASRock motherboards to execute malicious code and move laterally to and disrupt IT or OT environments.

upstart writes:

Google to invest $9.5B in US offices and data centers this year:

Google plans to invest $9.5 billion in US offices and data centers this year, the company said Wednesday. That's an increase from $7 billion spent on real estate in 2021.

The planned spending comes as the company begins to roll out its hybrid work strategy, which will allow many employees to work remotely part of the week.

"It might seem counterintuitive to step up our investment in physical offices even as we embrace more flexibility in how we work," said Sundar Pichai, Google and Alphabet CEO, in a blog post. "Yet we believe it's more important than ever to invest in our campuses and that doing so will make for better products, a greater quality of life for our employees, and stronger communities."

Google highlighted investments in offices across the country, including the opening of new premises in Atlanta and ongoing construction of an office in Austin, with work also under way on existing offices in New York, as well as campuses in Boulder, CO., Cambridge, MA., Pittsburgh, and Seattle. The company also expects to create 12,000 additional jobs this year.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Titanosaur nesting spot found in Brazil:

They were the largest land creatures the Earth has ever known. But what survived millions of years of fossilization in one specific area of the Ponte Alta region of Brazil was not their massive bones, rather, it was their rare and relatively tiny eggs. And many of them! The first titanosaur nesting site in the country was recently announced in a paper published in Scientific Reports.

Sauropods, a group of long-necked herbivores, were a diverse type of dinosaur that lived from the Jurassic era through the Cretaceous, a period spanning from 201 million years to 66 million years ago. Titanosaurs were a clade of sauropod—a group with a common ancestor—that was the last of this lineage to exist on this planet in the Late Cretaceous. While their name justifiably implies an enormous size, not all of them were huge.

South America is well-known for its titanosaur fossils, particularly in Argentina, home to some of the world's most spectacular titanosaur nesting sites and embryonic remains. Titanosaur eggshells and egg fragments are known in Uruguay, Peru, and Brazil, but a fossilized egg here and there doesn't provide evidence of a nesting site. Several egg clutches, numerous eggs and egg fragments in more than one layer of sediment, does.

The discovery marks the northernmost titanosaur nesting site in South America. While we knew the dinosaurs ranged farther north, the lack of known nesting sites there suggested they might have migrated south for egg-laying. The discovery indicates that this wasn't necessarily the case.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operating temperature:

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will see the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang, but to do that, its instruments first need to get cold—really cold. On April 7, Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)—a joint development by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency)—reached its final operating temperature below 7 kelvin (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 266 degrees Celsius).

Along with Webb's three other instruments, MIRI initially cooled off in the shade of Webb's tennis-court-size sunshield, dropping to about 90 kelvin (minus 298 F, or minus 183 C). But dropping to less than 7 kelvin required an electrically powered cryocooler. Last week, the team passed a particularly challenging milestone called the "pinch point," when the instrument goes from 15 kelvin (minus 433 F, or minus 258 C) to 6.4 kelvin (minus 448 F, or minus 267 C).

"The MIRI cooler team has poured a lot of hard work into developing the procedure for the pinch point," said Analyn Schneider, project manager for MIRI at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "The team was both excited and nervous going into the critical activity. In the end it was a textbook execution of the procedure, and the cooler performance is even better than expected."

The low temperature is necessary because all four of Webb's instruments detect infrared light—wavelengths slightly longer than those that human eyes can see. Distant galaxies, stars hidden in cocoons of dust, and planets outside our solar system all emit infrared light. But so do other warm objects, including Webb's own electronics and optics hardware. Cooling down the four instruments' detectors and the surrounding hardware suppresses those infrared emissions. MIRI detects longer infrared wavelengths than the other three instruments, which means it needs to be even colder.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Physicists in the United States have just announced a major breakthrough after they literally put a new spin on one of the greatest inventions in history: the transistor. The scientists made an entirely novel switching device called a magneto-electric transistor that uses 5% less energy than conventional semiconductor transistors, while potentially reducing the number of transistors needed to store data by as much as 75%.

[...] It was by looking at these demand problems and the physical constraints of the conventional transistor that Dowben and colleagues reckoned that they had to come up with something that works fundamentally differently. Eventually, they figured out how to make an electric-magnetic transistor.

Here’s how it works. Instead of leveraging the switching of the flow of electrons through a circuit, the electric-magnetic transistor uses a fundamental property of electrons called spin, which can point either up or down. The orientation of a particle’s spin can be manipulated using, you’ve guessed it, magnetism.

ZME Science

[Journal Reference]: Advanced Materials
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202105023

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Wikipedia community votes to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations:

More than 200 long-time Wikipedia editors have requested that the Wikimedia Foundation stop accepting cryptocurrency donations. The foundation received crypto donations worth about $130,000 in the most recent fiscal year—less than 0.1 percent of the foundation's revenue, which topped $150 million last year.

Debate on the proposal has raged over the last three months.

"Cryptocurrencies are extremely risky investments that have only been gaining popularity among retail investors," wrote Wikipedia user GorillaWarfare, the original author of the proposal, back in January. "I do not think we should be endorsing their use in this way."

GorillaWarfare is Molly White, a Wikipedian who has become something of an anti-cryptocurrency activist. She also runs the Twitter account "web3 is going just great," which highlights "some of the many disasters happening in crypto, defi, NFTs, and other web3 projects," the account profile says.

In her proposal for the Wikimedia Foundation, GorillaWarfare added that "Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two most highly used cryptocurrencies, and are both proof-of-work, using an enormous amount of energy."

[...] Bitcoin defenders countered that bitcoin's energy usage is driven by its mining process, which consumes about the same amount of energy regardless of the number of transactions. So accepting any given bitcoin donation won't necessarily lead to more carbon emissions.

But cryptocurrency critics argued that Wikimedia's de facto endorsement of cryptocurrencies may help to push up their price. And the more expensive bitcoin is, the more energy miners will devote to creating new ones.

[...] Ultimately, 232 long-time editors of Wikipedia voiced support for ending cryptocurrency donations, while 94 opposed the move.

ElizabethGreene writes:

From Becky Ferreira at Vice:

Scientists believe they have identified the oldest fossils on Earth, dating back at least 3.75 billion years and possibly even 4.2 billion years, in rocks found at a remote location in northern Québec, Canada, according to a new study.

If the structures in these rocks are biological in origin, it would push the timeline of life on our planet back by 300 million years at a minimum, and could potentially show that the earliest known organisms are barely younger than Earth itself.

These presumed microbial fossils were originally collected by Dominic Papineau, an associate professor in geochemistry and astrobiology at University College London, during a 2008 expedition to Québec's Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt, a formation that contains some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Papineau and his colleagues reported their discovery in a 2017 paper published in Nature, which sparked a debate over whether the tubes and filaments preserved in the rocks were a result of biological or geological processes.

[...] In the wake of skepticism about the claims of their 2017 study, Papineau and his colleagues employed a host of new techniques to clarify the nature of the mysterious structures in the Canadian rock.

[...] "We don't have any DNA, of course, that survived these geological timescales, with the heat and pressure that the rock has suffered," Papineau said. "But what we can say, on the basis of morphology, is that these microfossils resemble those that are made by the modern microbacterium called Mariprofundus ferrooxydans."

Journal Reference:
Dominic Papineau, Zhenbing She, Matthew S. Dodd, et al., Metabolically diverse primordial microbial communities in Earth's oldest seafloor-hydrothermal jasper [open], Sci. Adv., 8, 15, 2022.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm2296

Previously: Oldest Evidence of Life on Earth Found in 3.77-4.28 Billion Year Old Fossils

Original Submission