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upstart writes:

Largest known cave art images in US by Indigenous Americans discovered in Alabama:

Archaeologists in Alabama have discovered the longest known painting created by early Indigenous Americans, a new study finds. Indigenous Americans crafted this 1,000-year-old record-breaking image — of a 10-foot-long (3 meters) rattlesnake — as well as other paintings, out of mud on the walls and ceiling of a cave, likely to depict spirits of the underworld, the researchers said.

The cave has hundreds of cave paintings and is considered the richest place for Native American cave art in the American Southeast, the researchers said. To investigate its historic art, the team turned to photogrammetry, a technique that involves taking hundreds of digital images in order to build a virtual 3D model. Using this method, the researchers spotted five previously unknown giant cave paintings, known as glyphs.

"This methodology allows us to create a virtual model of the space that we can manipulate," study first author Jan Simek, a distinguished professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, told Live Science. "In this particular case, the ceiling of the cave is very close to the floor. So your field of vision is limited by your proximity to the ceiling. We never saw these very large images because we couldn't get back far enough to see them."

After creating the virtual model, "we could look at it from a greater perspective," he said. "It allows us to see things in a way that we can't in person."

[...] This cave was first discovered in 1998 and remains unnamed, going by the moniker "19th unnamed cave" in order to protect the discoveries. The cave contains over 3 miles (5 kilometers) of underground passages with the majority of paintings discovered in one large chamber, according to a 1999 study published in the journal Southeastern Archaeology. In continuing to use photogrammetry techniques on the 19th unnamed cave and others, the team hopes to further improve understanding of Indigenous American art.

The study will be published online Wednesday (May 4) in the journal Antiquity.

Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/discovering-ancient-cave-art-using-3d-photogrammetry-precontact-native-american-mud-glyphs-from-19th-unnamed-cave-alabama/

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.24

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The Italian research center SISSA has announced a paper proposing a new property, called "non-minimal coupling" [PDF - 232Kb] to address the mystery of the nature of dark matter:

In the Universe, dark matter and standard matter "talk" to each other using a secret language. This "discussion" happens thanks to gravity, scientists say, but not in a way they can fully comprehend. A new SISSA study published in "The Astrophysical Journal" sheds light on this long-standing issue.

The authors of the research, Ph.D Student Giovanni Gandolfi and supervisors Andrea Lapi and Stefano Liberati, propose a special property for dark matter called a "non-minimal coupling with gravity". This new type of interaction can modify dark matter gravitational influence on standard 'baryonic' matter.

[...] To prove the hypothesis, the assumption has been tested and then confirmed with experimental data from thousands of spiral galaxies.

[...] The new study suggests the existence of a new feature of dark matter, named 'non-minimal coupling', which "can be described as a new type of interaction between dark matter and gravity" the authors affirm. "It tells us a lot about the way the two components "communicate". If the non-minimal coupling is present, standard matter "perceives" spacetime in a way which is different from the one "experienced" by the dark matter.

[...] The new study proposes a solution to one of the most discussed problems in astrophysics, researchers say: "Among other things, the positions of those who argue that dark matter does not exist, and therefore gravity must be modified, are based on the difficulty of finding an explanation to this problem, which is one of the last missing pieces for a global comprehension of dark matter".

But there is more. "This feature of dark matter is not a piece of new exotic fundamental physics" the author say. "One can explain the existence of this non- minimal coupling with known physics alone".

Journal Reference:
Giovanni Gandolfi et al Empirical Evidence of Nonminimally Coupled Dark Matter in the Dynamics of Local Spiral Galaxies? [open] 2022 ApJ 929 48
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac5970

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AnonTechie writes:

Yahoo

The Fermi paradox questions why aliens have never visited Earth despite the Universe being so old and so vast that races should have evolved interstellar travel and come calling by now. Now two scientists believe they may have the answer.

Astrobiologists Dr Michael Wong, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, and Dr Stuart Bartlett, of California Institute of Technology, have hypothesised that civilisations burn out when they grow too large and technical.

Faced with an ever-growing population and eye-watering energy consumption, worlds hit a crisis point known as a "singularity" where innovation can no longer keep up with demand. The only alternative to collapse is to abandon "unyielding growth" and adopt a balance that allows survival but prevents the society moving any further forward, or venturing far from its own spot in the universe.

Writing in the Royal Society Open Science, Dr Wong and Dr Bartlett said: "We propose a new resolution to the Fermi paradox: civilisations either collapse from burnout or redirect themselves to prioritising homeostasis, a state where cosmic expansion is no longer a goal, making them difficult to detect remotely. "Either outcome — homeostatic awakening or civilisation collapse — would be consistent with the observed absence of (galactic-wide) civilisations."

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canopic jug writes:

Science fiction novelist, journalist, and technology activist, Cory Doctorow, has written an article at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) covering the self-censorship that social control media participants exercise when playing to the algorithms, a behavior sometimes called algospeak. In pursuing algospeak, participants avoid certain words, phrases, and topics while boosting others to play to the automated moderation algorithms. If played correctly the algorithm will actually raise the visibility of the content in question. If played incorrectly the content disappears off the radar. However, since the algorithm itself is unknown to the participants, the result usually falls somewhere in between even after a lot of trial and error.

"Algospeak" is a new English dialect that emerged from the desperate attempts of social media users to "please the algorithm": that is, to avoid words and phrases that cause social media platforms' algorithms to suppress or block their communication.

Algospeak is practiced by all types of social media users, from individuals addressing their friends to science communicators and activists hoping to reach a broader public. But the most ardent practitioners of algospeak are social media creators, who rely—directly or indirectly—on social media to earn a living.

For these creators, accidentally blundering into an invisible linguistic fence erected by social media companies can mean the difference between paying their rent or not. When you work on a video for days or weeks—or even years—and then "the algorithm" decides not to show it to anyone (not even the people who explicitly follow you or subscribe to your feed), that has real consequences.

Cory Doctorow goes into a bit more depth about how these circumstances are abnormal and closes by recommending the Santa Clara Principles on transparency and accountability in content moderation.

While there are a lot of articles here on SN about censorship as it is imposed from the outside, self-censorship gets relatively little coverage at least by name. Social control media has been using the computer as a Skinner box. Skinner himself would have been impressed, though whether positively or negatively is another matter.

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hubie writes:

New experiments have shown the source of the aurora borealis

Researchers have demonstrated Alfvén waves accelerating electrons under conditions that correspond to Earth's magnetosphere. The magnetosphere around the Earth contains ionized charged particles or plasma, one of the four types of matter along with solid, liquid, and gas. Plasmas are similar to both fluids and gases but also contain magnetic and electric fields. In 1942, Hannes Alfvén predicted that plasmas could support waves. These waves are today called Alfvén waves. The new experiments show that electrons "surf" on the electric field of the Alfvén wave in a phenomenon known as Landau damping. This means the energy of the wave is transferred to the accelerated electrons, like a surfer catching a wave and being continually accelerated as the surfer moves along with the wave. These electrons are the ultimate source of the light we call the aurora borealis.

The electrons stream along the magnetic field lines and run into atoms of oxygen and molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, knocking them into excited states resulting in their emissions of a wide range of colors.

Journal Reference:
Schroeder, J. W. R., et al., Laboratory measurements of the physics of auroral electron acceleration by Alfvén waves, Nature Communications 12, 3103 (2021).
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23377-5

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Open-source security: It's too easy to upload 'devastating' malicious packages, warns Google:

Google has detailed some of the work done to find malicious code packages that have been sneaked into bigger open-source software projects.

The Package Analysis Project is one of the software supply chain initiatives from the the Linux Foundation's Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) that should help automate the process of identifying malicious packages distributed on popular package repositories, such as npm for JavaScript and PyPl for Python. It runs a dynamic analysis of all packages uploaded to popular open-source repositories. It aims to provide data about common types of malicious packages and inform those working on open-source software supply chain security about how best to improve it.

[...] "Despite open-source software's essential role in all software built today, it's far too easy for bad actors to circulate malicious packages that attack the systems and users running that software."

[...] Attackers distribute malicious packages on npm and PyPl often enough that it's something OpenSSF, which Google is a member of, decided it needed to be addressed.

upstart writes:

Judge dismisses "insufficient" copyright claims in Destiny 2 cheating case:

When game makers go to court to stop cheat makers, they often rely on claims that the cheat tools represent a form of copyright infringement on the original game. Last week, though, a federal judge dismissed such copyright claims in a case against a Destiny 2 cheat maker, saying developer Bungie has "not pleaded sufficient facts to plausibly allege that [the cheat maker] copied constituent elements of Bungie's work."

[...] In its initial complaint, Bungie alleged that the Aimjunkies cheat software is "identical or substantially similar to the copyrighted works [i.e., Destiny 2]." It also alleges that Aimjunkies' tools "infringe Bungie's Destiny Copyrights by copying, producing, preparing unauthorized derivative works from, distributing and/or displaying Destiny 2 publicly, all without Bungie's permission."

In a ruling obtained by Torrentfreak, though, Western District of Washington Judge Thomas Zilly notes that Bungie has "not pleaded any facts explaining how the cheat software constitutes an unauthorized copy of any of the copyrighted works identified in the complaint." Simply alleging that copyright infringement happened is not enough, Judge Zilly writes, citing precedent to assert that "Bungie's complaint must contain more than a 'formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action.'"

Furthermore, Judge Zilly says that Bungie's own Destiny 2 license agreement prevents the company from making a federal case out of many of Aimjunkies' alleged bad acts. Under that license agreement, arguments regarding technical circumvention of technological protection measures, trafficking in circumvention technology, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment must be referred back to arbitration rather than argued before the courts, Judge Zilly writes (Bungie seems to have acknowledged this fact via a voluntary filing in February).

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A study of nearly 9,000 children found those who eat a vegetarian diet had similar measures of growth and nutrition compared to children who eat meat:

[...] Researchers found children who had a vegetarian diet had similar mean body mass index (BMI), height, iron, vitamin D, and cholesterol levels compared to those who consumed meat. The findings showed evidence that children with a vegetarian diet had almost two-fold higher odds of having underweight, which is defined as below the third percentile for BMI. There was no evidence of an association with overweight or obesity.

Underweight is an indicator of undernutrition, and may be a sign that the quality of the child's diet is not meeting the child's nutritional needs to support normal growth. For children who eat a vegetarian diet, the researchers emphasized access to healthcare providers who can provide growth monitoring, education and guidance to support their growth and nutrition.

[...] A limitation of the study is that researchers did not assess the quality of the vegetarian diets. The researchers note that vegetarian diets come in many forms and the quality of the individual diet may be quite important to growth and nutritional outcomes. The authors say further research is needed to examine the quality of vegetarian diets in childhood, as well as growth and nutrition outcomes among children following a vegan diet, which excludes meat and animal derived products such as dairy, egg, and honey.

Journal Reference:
Laura J. Elliott et al. Vegetarian Diet, Growth, and Nutrition in Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Cohort Study [open] Pediatrics 2022
DOI: 10.1542/peds.2021-052598

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Rocket Lab launches smallsats, catches but drops booster - SpaceNews:

Rocket Lab declared success in its effort to catch an Electron booster in midair after launch May 2, even though the helicopter had to release the booster moments later.

The Electron rocket lifted off from the company's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 6:49 p.m. Eastern after a brief hold in the countdown. The rocket's ascent went as planned, with the kick stage, carrying a payload of 34 smallsats, reaching orbit about 10 minutes later.

[...] The company billed the midair capture as the final step in its efforts to reuse the stage. A successful midair recovery could allow the company to fly the stage again later this year, enabling the company to increase its flight rate without manufacturing more boosters.

About 15 minutes after launch, the descending booster came into view of Rocket Lab's Sikorsky S-92 helicopter. Video from the helicopter appeared to show the hook grappling the parachute to cheers from mission control. Moments later, though, there were groans and the webcast cut away, suggesting that perhaps the helicopter lost the booster.

More than a half-hour later, Rocket Lab confirmed that the helicopter had grappled, but then released, the booster. "After the catch, the helicopter pilot noticed different load characteristics than what we've experienced in testing," company spokesperson Murielle Baker said on the webcast. "At his discretion, the pilot offloaded the stage for a successful splashdown" for recovery by a boat, like on the three previous recovery attempts.

Despite the release, she called the catch "a monumental step forward in our program to make Electron a reusable launch vehicle." It was not clear when Rocket Lab would next attempt a midair booster recovery.

Rocket Lab launch webcast (booster capture about 50 minutes in)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Linux gaming surges in popularity – is this the Steam Deck effect?:

Linux gaming has witnessed an impressive uptick in popularity among Steam gamers, going by the latest hardware survey from Valve's gaming platform.

The hardware survey for April 2022 shows that the amount of gamers using Linux has increased to 1.14%, which is still a modest percentage, but it's up quite strongly on the previous month when Linux sat at exactly 1.0%.

While an increase of 0.14% means very little for Windows, it's actually a big leap for Linux, and in fact represents the second-highest level of adoption the alternative platform has witnessed in recent times, going by Valve's figures.

What was the best month ever for Linux, you may well wonder? That'd be November 2021 when Steam's hardware survey reported an adoption level of 1.16%, as Gaming on Linux, which reported on this, pointed out. Interestingly, that adoption percentage had climbed to that peak quite speedily since July 2021, when the Steam Deck was first announced, but since hitting that high, the percentage has drifted slowly downward to 1% in March 2022.

So what's quite remarkable here is that we've seen a large spike, relatively speaking, with a jump from 1% to 1.14% – the biggest leap in recent times in the space of just a month.

I am not a gamer, so why are Linux users not using it as a gaming platform? Is it lack of graphics card support, poor range of available games or are Linux users simply more orientated towards business, programming and other non-gaming aspects of computing? JR.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) has cleared a big hurdle to becoming a law:

The European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a proposal for bringing competition and fairness back to online platform markets. It just cleared a major hurdle on the way to becoming law in the EU as the European Parliament and the Council, representing the member states, reached a political agreement.

The DMA is complex and has many facets, but its overall approach is to place new requirements and restrictions on online "gatekeepers": the largest tech platforms, which control access to digital markets for other businesses. These requirements are designed to break down the barriers businesses face in competing with the tech giants.

[...] The DMA only places obligations on "gatekeepers," which are companies that create bottlenecks between businesses and consumers and have an entrenched position in digital markets. The DMA's threshold is very high: companies will only be hit by the rules if they have an annual turnover of €7.5 billion within the EU or a worldwide market valuation of €75 billion. Gatekeepers must also have at least 45 million monthly individual end-users and 100,000 business users. Finally, gatekeepers must control one or more "core platform services" such as "marketplaces and app stores, search engines, social networking, cloud services, advertising services, voice assistants and web browsers." In practice, this will almost certainly include Meta (Facebook), Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and possibly a few others.

The DMA restricts gatekeepers in several ways, including:

• limiting how data from different services can be combined,
• banning forced single sign-ons, and
• forbidding app stores from conditioning access on the use of the platform's own payment systems.

Other parts of the DMA make it easier for users to freely choose their browser or search engine, and force companies to make unsubscribing from their "core platform services" as easy as subscribing was in the first place.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Parallel ice ridges, a common feature on Jupiter's moon Europa, are found on Greenland's ice sheet

Parallel ice ridges in Greenland bear a striking resemblance to ridges on Jupiter's ice-encased moon Europa, suggesting the moon's icy shell could be riddled with pockets of water.

This similarity could greatly improve the odds of NASA's Europa Clipper mission detecting potentially habitable environments on the Jovian moon. The spacecraft's ice-penetrating radar instrument REASON (short for Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface) will be ideal for conducting such a search.

"If there are pockets of water under the ridges, we have the right instruments to see them," said Dustin Schroeder, a Stanford University associate professor and coauthor of a new study comparing Greenland's "double ridges" with those of Europa.

[...] "It's exciting, what it would mean if you have plenty of water within the ice shell," said coauthor Gregor Steinbrügge, a former Stanford researcher who is now a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.[...]

Potential life-sustaining nutrients on Europa's surface – perhaps deposited there by another Jupiter moon, volcanic Io – might find their way to the subsurface ocean, he said.

Journal Reference:
Culberg, R., Schroeder, D.M. & Steinbrügge, G. Double ridge formation over shallow water sills on Jupiter's moon Europa. [open] Nat Commun 13, 2007 (2022).
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29458-3

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Clearview AI's co-founder Hoan Ton-That recently defended his startup's use of controversial facial recognition software:

If you're skeptical about whether your company will ever use facial recognition technology as a business tool, you're not alone. Perhaps the most prominent facial recognition technology provider in the world, Clearview AI, has attracted significant criticism and raised ethical concerns even as it has been used by law enforcement.

In a live interview with the Washington Post last week, New York-based Clearview AI's co-founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That addressed questions about the ethical and legal implications of his software, which became first known to many Americans when a billionaire used it to identify his daughter's dinner date, and for the involvement of far-right individuals in the creation of the company. Pressed on questions about the legal and ethical choices his firm has made while creating a searchable database of 20 billion facial images, Ton-That repeatedly brought up examples where the use cases of Clearview AI's technology would look better in the public eye, mentioning its use in helping catch criminals in child pornography and child abuse cases. Ton-That also pointed to the use of Clearview AI's technology by the Ukrainian government to identify dead Russian soldiers, for notifying their families of their passing.

While Clearview AI has some 20 billion facial images to feed its current product, the dataset is being used only by governments so far. "There's no non-governmental use of this dataset at this time," Ton-That said, adding that "we've developed as prototypes different versions of our technology for retail and banking."

Ton-That went on to say he welcomes regulation and his company will not do business with governments he described as "authoritarian."

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Previously:
Ukraine Reportedly Adopts Clearview AI to Track Russian Invaders
Italy Slaps Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI With €20 Million Fine
Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI Tells Investors: It's Seeking Massive Expansion
France Has Ordered Clearview AI to Delete its Facial Recognition Data
US Government Agencies Plan to Increase Their Use of Facial Recognition Technology
And many more

Original Submission

hubie writes:

From a story out of Princeton University:

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the world's oceans, marine biodiversity could be on track to plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to a recent study in the journal Science by Princeton University researchers.

The paper's authors modeled future marine biodiversity under different projected climate scenarios. They found that if emissions are not curbed, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone could come to mirror the substantial impact humans already have on marine biodiversity by around 2100. Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest risk of extinction, the authors reported.

[...] "The silver lining is that the future isn't written in stone," said first author Justin Penn, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Geosciences. "The extinction magnitude that we found depends strongly on how much carbon dioxide [CO2] we emit moving forward. There's still enough time to change the trajectory of CO2 emissions and prevent the magnitude of warming that would cause this mass extinction."

[...] The researchers report that the pattern of extinction their model projected — with a greater global extinction of species at the poles compared to the tropics — mirrors the pattern of past mass extinctions.

[...] The model also helps resolve an ongoing puzzle in the geographic pattern of marine biodiversity. Marine biodiversity increases steadily from the poles towards the tropics, but drops off at the equator. This equatorial dip has long been a mystery; researchers have been unsure about what causes it and some have even wondered whether it is real. Deutsch and Penn's model provides a plausible explanation for the drop in equatorial marine biodiversity: the oxygen supply is too low in these warm waters for some species to tolerate.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Uber admits to misleading Australian users about ride cancellation fees:

Uber has admitted to misleading users about ride cancellation fees and Uber Taxi fare estimates in Australia, with the ride-sharing company set to face AU$26 million in penalties for those practices.

Through an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the consumer watchdog uncovered that Uber's rideshare app displayed a cancellation warning to consumers who sought to cancel a ride saying words to the effect of "[y]ou may be charged a small fee since your driver is already on their way", even when consumers were seeking to cancel a ride within Uber's free cancellation period.

Most of Uber's services provide users with a five-minute free cancellation that commences once a driver has accepted the trip wherein users can cancel their ride without incurring a fee.

Uber engaged in this misleading practice for almost four years, from December 2017 and September 2021, with over two million Australian consumers being shown the misleading cancellation warning.

"Uber admits it misled Australian users for a number of years, and may have caused some of them to decide not to cancel their ride after receiving the cancellation warning, even though they were entitled to cancel free of charge under Uber's own policy," said Gina Cass-Gottlieb, who stepped into the role last month as the agency's first woman chair.

In September 2021, Uber amended its cancellation messaging for Uber services across Australia to "[y]ou won't be charged a cancellation fee".

Uber also admitted that its app deceptively displayed an inflated estimated fare range for its Uber Taxi ride option, which allowed users to book a ride with a taxi rather than a rideshare driver.

Original Submission