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takyon writes:

Bipartisan crypto overhaul seeks to treat most digital assets as commodities and empower CFTC

As excited as Wall Street and Main Street were to have crypto as a new investment idea and store of value, the speed at which cryptocurrencies entered mainstream U.S. markets caused proportionate angst for U.S. regulators, who were equipped only with decades-old securities laws to police an industry many still refer to as the financial "Wild West."

But after months of research, industry consultation and bipartisan teamwork, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Cynthia Lummis said Tuesday that they are ready to debut the first major attempt to place guardrails around the nascent industry.

Their bill, titled the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, amounts to a regulatory overhaul that would classify the vast majority of digital assets as commodities like wheat, oil or steel. As such, the bipartisan legislation would also leave the bulk of the oversight responsibility to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and not the Securities and Exchange Commission, as some had expected.

The Leaked Draft of the Lummis-Gillibrand Crypto Bill Offers Legal Cover to Bitcoin and Other Digital Currencies, Recognizes NFTs as a New Asset Class, and Mandates 100% Backing for Stablecoins

Crucially, the bill treats all cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, as "ancillary assets" unless they behave like a security that a company might issue to pool capital – provide dividends, liquidation rights, or a financial interest in the issuer. On a similar note, the bill defines a digital asset as a natively electronic asset that offers economic or proprietary access rights. Similarly, a virtual currency is defined as a digital asset that is used primarily as a medium of exchange, unit of account, or a store of value, and is not backed by any underlying financial asset.

Thirdly, it appears that the legislation will not ban non-custodial or self-hosted crypto wallets. Finally, the bill mandates 100 percent backing for stablecoins. This is an important aspect of the legislation, given the bulwark status that stablecoins enjoy in the crypto world, and necessitated by the recent high-profile failure of Terra's algorithmic UST stablecoin. Of course, a strong stablecoin segment will allow investors to transact much more safely and conveniently with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies.

Also at The Washington Post.

See also: Crypto lobbying hits fever pitch as Bitcoin's favorite senator finishes bill

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Student debt can impair your cardiovascular health into middle age, study finds:

"As the cost of college has increased, students and their families have taken on more debt to get to and stay in college. Consequently, student debt is a massive financial burden to so many in the United States, and yet we know little about the potential long-term health consequences of this debt. [...]

[...] Researchers assessed biological measures of cardiovascular health of 4,193 qualifying respondents using the 30-year Framingham cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk score, which considers sex, age, blood pressure, antihypertensive treatment, smoking status, diabetes diagnosis, and body mass index to measure the likelihood of a cardiovascular illness over the next 30 years of life. They also looked at levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biomarker of chronic or systemic inflammation.

The researchers found that more than one third of respondents (37%) did not report student debt in either wave, while 12% had paid off their loans; 28% took on student debt; and 24% consistently had debt. Respondents who consistently had debt or took on debt had higher CVD risk scores than individuals who had never been in debt and those who paid off their debt. Interestingly, respondents who paid off debt had significantly lower CVD risk scores than those never in debt. They found clinically significant CRP value estimates for those who took on new debt or were consistently in debt between young adulthood and early mid-life, estimates that exceeded their counterparts who never had debt or paid it off. Race/ethnicity had no impact on the results.

upstart writes:

New research finds that the ecological effect of invasive species alone is comparable to the combined effects of invasives plus warming temperatures, drought or nitrogen deposition:

It is no secret that the ecological health of the planet is under serious threat. Scientists have previously identified invasive species, drought and an altered nitrogen cycle, driven in part by the widespread use of synthetic fertilizers, as among the most serious planetary challenges, with global climate change topping the list. Many have assumed that climate change would consistently amplify the negative effects of invasives -- but, until now, there was no research to test that assumption.

[...] "What we found surprised us," says Lopez. "There were a number of cases where the interactions made everything worse at the local scale, which is what we expected to see, but only about 25% of the time. The majority of the time, invasions and environmental change together didn't make each other worse. Instead, the combined effects weren't all that much more than the impact of invasive species alone."

"What is so important about our findings," says Allen, "is that they highlight the critical importance of managing invasive species at the local scale." And the local scale is precisely the scale at which effective and swift action is most likely to happen.

[...] "Our work shows that dealing with invasive species now will make our ecosystems more climate resilient," says Bradley.

Original source material

Isn't mankind an invasive species?

Journal Reference:
Bianca E. Lopez et al. Global environmental changes more frequently offset than intensify detrimental effects of biological invasions. PNAS, 2022; 119 (22) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2117389119

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Bored Ape Yacht Club, Otherside NFTs stolen in Discord server hack:

Hackers reportedly stole over $257,000 in Ethereum and thirty-two NFTs after the Yuga Lab's Bored Ape Yacht Club and Otherside Metaverse Discord servers were compromised to post a phishing scam.

Earlier this morning [4 Jun], the Discord account for a Yuga Labs community manager was allegedly hacked to post a phishing scam on the company's Discord servers.

This phishing scam pretended to be an exclusive, limited giveaway for existing BAYC, Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), and Otherside NFT holders, which included a link to a webpage that allowed a visitor to mint the free NFT.

[...] the phishing scam added a sense of urgency, stating that only a limited amount of NFTs was available to be minted, which likely pushed visitors to abandon caution and rush to mint the free giveaway.

[...] Once a user visited the page and attempted to mint the giveaway, the page likely stole all Ethereum and NFTs held in the linked wallet.

According to blockchain cybersecurity firm PeckShield, approximately 32 NFTs were stolen, including those from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Otherdeed, Bored App Kennel Club, and Mutant Ape Yacht Club projects.

Users also report that the hackers stole over 145 Ethereum during the phishing attack, worth approximately $250,000.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Tim Hortons coffee app broke law by constantly recording users' movements:

Canadian investigators determined that users of the Tim Hortons coffee chain's mobile app "had their movements tracked and recorded every few minutes of every day," even when the app wasn't open, in violation of the country's privacy laws.

"The Tim Hortons app asked for permission to access the mobile device's geolocation functions but misled many users to believe information would only be accessed when the app was in use. In reality, the app tracked users as long as the device was on, continually collecting their location data," according to an announcement Wednesday by Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The federal office collaborated with provincial authorities in Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta in the investigation of Tim Hortons.

"The app also used location data to infer where users lived, where they worked, and whether they were traveling," the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said. "It generated an 'event' every time users entered or left a Tim Hortons competitor, a major sports venue, or their home or workplace."

Tim Hortons scrapped plans to use the app for targeted advertising but "continued to collect vast amounts of location data" for another year "even though it had no legitimate need to do so," the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said. Tim Hortons said it used aggregated location data "to analyze user trends—for example, whether users switched to other coffee chains, and how users' movements changed as the pandemic took hold," the federal office said.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

link: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/sony-build-space-lasers-with-new-satellite-services-unit-2022-06-02/

"Sony on Thursday said it formed a new company that will build and supply devices that allow small satellites in orbit to communicate with one another via laser beams, dipping into the fast-growing space sector."

Sony Space Communications Corp, registered on Wednesday, is meant to take advantage of laser technology to avoid a bottleneck of radio frequencies. The devices will work between satellites in space and satellites communicating with ground stations.

The company did not say when it expects to have its first commercial device operating in space, whether it has existing customers lined up or how much money it has invested into the technology to date.

There are roughly 12,000 satellites in orbit, a number that is projected to increase rapidly in the coming years as rocket companies slash the cost of launching things to space, [...]

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Height may be an unrecognized but biologically important and unchangeable risk factor for several common health conditions:

A large genetic study by the VA Million Veteran Program (MVP) has found a person's height may affect their risk for several common health conditions in adulthood. Significant findings include a link between height and lower risk of coronary heart disease, and a link between height and higher risk for peripheral neuropathy and circulatory disorders.

Dr. Sridharan Raghavan from the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System, who led the study, described the results as "a significant contribution to understanding how height is related to clinical conditions from an epidemiologic perspective." [...] "The broad scope of our study yielded a catalog of clinical conditions associated with genetically predicted height. In other words, these are conditions for which height might be a risk factor, or protective factor, irrespective of other environmental conditions that also could impact height and health."

[...] Overall, genetically predicted height was linked to both lower and higher disease risk, depending on the condition. Being tall appears to protect people from cardiovascular problems. The study linked being taller to lower risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and coronary heart disease. But risk of atrial fibrillation was higher in taller participants. These connections have been shown before in previous research.

Conversely, being tall may increase the risk of the majority of non-cardiovascular conditions considered in the study. This was especially true of peripheral neuropathy and circulatory disorders involving the veins.

[...] Taken together, the results suggest that height may be an unrecognized but biologically important and unchangeable risk factor for several common conditions, particularly those that affect the extremities, according to the researchers. It may be useful to consider a person's height when assessing risk and disease surveillance, they say.

Click through to the fine article to see a few other things associated with height.

Journal Reference:
Sridharan Raghavan et al., A multi-population phenome-wide association study of genetically-predicted height in the Million Veteran Program [open], PLOS Genetics, 2022. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1010193

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Tracking sleep with a self-powering smart pillow:

The human body needs sleep as much as it needs food and water. Yet many people fail to get enough, causing both mind and body to suffer. People who struggle for shut-eye could benefit from monitoring their sleep, but they have limited options for doing so. [...]

Studies have linked chronic lack of sleep to physical ailments, such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as mental health issues. Those interested in getting a better handle on what's happening to them at night have two primary options. They can take a sleep test conducted in a medical facility, or they can use an app through a smartphone or smart watch — a much more convenient, but less accurate choice. Recognizing the need, many groups have begun developing new sleep monitoring systems using triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). [...]

[...] To construct this new smart pillow, the researchers formulated a flexible, porous polymer triboelectric layer. Movement between the head and this layer changes the electric field around nearby electrodes, generating a current. They strung together several of these self-powering sensors to create a flexible and breathable TENG (FB-TENG) array that can be placed atop an ordinary pillow. This system could generate voltage that corresponded to the amount of applied pressure, and it could track the movement of a finger tracing out letters. [...]

The article doesn't answer the most important question: can this be easily turned into an IoT device? Otherwise there's probably no future in it.

Journal Reference:
Haiying Kou et al, Smart Pillow Based on Flexible and Breathable Triboelectric Nanogenerator Arrays for Head Movement Monitoring during Sleep, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2022. DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c03056

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Webb Telescope will release its first full-color images and spectroscopic data on July 12, 2022:

As the largest and most complex observatory ever launched into space, Webb has been going through a six-month period of preparation before it can begin science work, calibrating its instruments to its space environment and aligning its mirrors. This careful process, not to mention years of new technology development and mission planning, has built up to the first images and data: a demonstration of Webb at its full power, ready to begin its science mission and unfold the infrared universe.

[...] Deciding what Webb should look at first has been a project more than five years in the making, undertaken by an international partnership between NASA, ESA, CSA, and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, home to Webb's science and mission operations.

"Our goals for Webb's first images and data are both to showcase the telescope's powerful instruments and to preview the science mission to come," said astronomer Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at STScI. "They are sure to deliver a long-awaited 'wow' for astronomers and the public."

[...] While careful planning for Webb's first full-color images has been underway for a long time, the new telescope is so powerful that it is difficult to predict exactly how the first images will look. "Of course, there are things we are expecting and hoping to see, but with a new telescope and this new high-resolution infrared data, we just won't know until we see it," said STScI's lead science visuals developer Joseph DePasquale.

[...] After capturing its first images, Webb's scientific observations will begin, continuing to explore the mission's key science themes. Teams have already applied through a competitive process for time to use the telescope, in what astronomers call its first "cycle," or first year of observations. Observations are carefully scheduled to make the most efficient use of the telescope's time.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

An interesting piece of computing history which may be familiar to many here ... Here is the inside story of personal computing at the legendary research lab

This article was first published as "Inside the PARC: the 'information architects'." It appeared in the October 1985 issue of IEEE Spectrum. A PDF version is available on IEEE Xplore. The diagrams and photographs appeared in the original print version.

In late 1969, C. Peter McColough, chairman of Xerox Corp., told the New York Society of Security Analysts that Xerox was determined to develop "the architecture of information" to solve the problems that had been created by the "knowledge explosion." Legend has it that McColough then turned to Jack E. Goldman, senior vice president of research and development, and said, "All right, go start a lab that will find out what I just meant."

Goldman tells it differently. In 1969 Xerox had just bought Scientific Data Systems (SDS), a mainframe computer manufacturer. "When Xerox bought SDS," he recalled, "I walked promptly into the office of Peter McColough and said, 'Look, now that we're in this digital computer business, we better damned well have a research laboratory!' "

In any case, the result was the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California, one of the most unusual corporate research organizations of our time. [...] PARC, now in its fifteenth year, originated or nurtured technologies that led to these developments, among others:

• The Macintosh computer, with its mouse and overlapping windows.
• Colorful weather maps on TV news programs.
• Laser printers.
• Structured VLSI design, now taught in more than 100 universities.
• Networks that link personal computers in offices.
• Semiconductor lasers that read and write optical disks.
• Structured programming languages like Modula-2 and Ada.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The US needs to figure out what to do about its radioactive garbage:

Lindsay Krall decided to study nuclear waste out of a love for the arcane. Figuring how to bury radioactive atoms isn't exactly simple—it takes a blend of particle physics, careful geology and engineering, and a high tolerance for reams of regulations. But the trickiest ingredient of all is time. Nuclear waste from today's reactors will take thousands of years to become something safer to handle. [...]

[...] Congress has shown little interest in working out a solution for future generations. Long-term thinking isn't their strong suit. "It's been a complete institutional failure in the US," Krall says.

But there's a new type of nuclear on the block: the small modular reactor (SMR). [...] A Department of Energy-sponsored report estimated in 2014 that the US nuclear industry would produce 94 percent less fuel waste if big, old reactors were replaced with new smaller ones.

Krall was skeptical about that last part. "SMRs are generally being marketed as a solution—that maybe you don't need a geological repository for them," she says. So as a postdoc at Stanford, she [...] got an answer: By many measures, the SMR designs produce not less, but potentially much more waste: more than five times the spent fuel per unit of power, and as much as 35 times for other forms of waste. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this week.

upstart writes in with two related stories:

Elon Musk's back-to-office edict reignites debate on remote work:

Elon Musk, CEO of the electric vehicle maker, created a stir this week with emails to employees in which he said he wants them working at least 40 hours a week in the company's offices. Those who seek an exception to that policy will need approval from Musk himself — or they'll just be fired, he suggested.

[...] "Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week," Musk wrote. "Moreover, the office must be where your actual colleagues are located, not some remote pseudo office. If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned."

"Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth," he added. "This will not happen by phoning it in."

Musk's stance goes against much of the thinking throughout the tech industry, where companies have been slow to put any demands on workers around when or if they return or how much time they need to spend in physical offices. Workers who were sent home at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic have gained critical leverage over the past two years as companies are doing what it takes to appease sought-after tech talent and win recruiting battles.

After remote-work ultimatum, Musk reveals plan to cut 10% of Tesla jobs:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to cut 10 percent of jobs at the electric carmaker because he has a "super bad feeling" about the economy, he wrote in an email to executives, according to Reuters.

Musk sent the message on Thursday with the subject line "pause all hiring worldwide," according to the report. Musk "did not elaborate on the reasons for his 'super bad feeling' about the economic outlook in the brief email seen by Reuters," the news organization wrote.

[...] Tesla reported $18.8 billion in revenue in Q1 2022, a year-over-year increase of 81 percent. Net income was $3.3 billion, a 658 percent year-over-year increase. Tesla said that it "was another record quarter for Tesla by several measures such as revenues, vehicle deliveries, operating profit, and an operating margin of over 19 percent."

[...] In addition to expressing concern about the economy, Musk has been waffling on his commitment to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Given that, the "elephant in the room now remains the radio silence on Twitter deal," Ives wrote.

Was issuing the ultimatum simply a quick and dirty way to get people to leave without having to pay unemployment or buy them out, and is any of this related to buying Twitter?

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes:

Volcano Watch: Over 9000 earthquakes and ground uplift were detected at Mt Thorbjorn, Iceland in the past month, with more Volcanoes now on alert:

Another volcano in Iceland is on an increased alert after an earthquake swarm and ground movement. In addition, the available data shows that magma is accumulating under the volcano, steadily increasing the risk of an eruption in the near future.

But as you will see, there is more than one volcano ready to erupt in Iceland. Moreover, there is a known history of widespread effects on Europe and across the Northern Hemisphere from Icelandic eruptions. For this reason, each event is being monitored closely and taken seriously.

Iceland is a volcanic island in the North Atlantic and one of the most active volcanic regions in the world. In its history, it produced significant eruptions with powerful impacts on Europe, North America, and the entire Northern Hemisphere.

The island experiences constant earthquake activity because it sits on the boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. This boundary is also known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR).

upstart writes:

When AI is the inventor who gets the patent?:

It's not surprising these days to see new inventions that either incorporate or have benefitted from artificial intelligence (AI) in some way, but what about inventions dreamt up by AI -- do we award a patent to a machine?

[...] In commentary published in the journal Nature, two leading academics from UNSW Sydney examine the implications of patents being awarded to an AI entity.

Intellectual Property (IP) law specialist Associate Professor Alexandra George and AI expert, Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor Toby Walsh argue that patent law as it stands is inadequate to deal with such cases and requires legislators to amend laws around IP and patents -- laws that have been operating under the same assumptions for hundreds of years.

The case in question revolves around a machine called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) created by Dr Stephen Thaler, who is president and chief executive of US-based AI firm Imagination Engines. Dr Thaler has named DABUS as the inventor of two products -- a food container with a fractal surface that helps with insulation and stacking, and a flashing light for attracting attention in emergencies.

For a short time in Australia, DABUS looked like it might be recognised as the inventor because, in late July 2021, a trial judge accepted Dr Thaler's appeal against IP Australia's rejection of the patent application five months earlier. But after the Commissioner of Patents appealed the decision to the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia, the five-judge panel upheld the appeal, agreeing with the Commissioner that an AI system couldn't be named the inventor.

upstart writes:

Meeting Owl videoconference device used by govs is a security disaster:

The Meeting Owl Pro is a videoconference device with an array of cameras and microphones that captures 360-degree video and audio and automatically focuses on whoever is speaking to make meetings more dynamic and inclusive. The consoles, which are slightly taller than an Amazon Alexa and bear the likeness of a tree owl, are widely used by state and local governments, colleges, and law firms.

A recently published security analysis has concluded the devices pose an unacceptable risk to the networks they connect to and the personal information of those who register and administer them. The litany of weaknesses includes:

• The exposure of names, email addresses, IP addresses, and geographic locations of all Meeting Owl Pro users in an online database that can be accessed by anyone with knowledge of how the system works. This data can be exploited to map network topologies or socially engineer or dox employees.
• The device provides anyone with access to it with the interprocess communication channel, or IPC, it uses to interact with other devices on the network. This information can be exploited by malicious insiders or hackers who exploit some of the vulnerabilities found during the analysis
• Bluetooth functionality designed to extend the range of devices and provide remote control by default uses no passcode, making it possible for a hacker in proximity to control the devices. Even when a passcode is optionally set, the hacker can disable it without first having to supply it.
• An access point mode that creates a new Wi-Fi SSID while using a separate SSID to stay connected to the organization network. By exploiting Wi-Fi or Bluetooth functionalities, an attacker can compromise the Meeting Owl Pro device and then use it as a rogue access point that infiltrates or exfiltrates data or malware into or out of the network.
• Images of captured whiteboard sessions—which are supposed to be available only to meeting participants—could be downloaded by anyone with an understanding of how the system works.

[...] Researchers from modzero, a Switzerland- and Germany-based security consultancy that performs penetration testing, reverse engineering, source-code analysis, and risk assessment for its clients, discovered the threats while conducting an analysis of videoconferencing solutions on behalf of an unnamed customer. The firm first contacted Meeting Owl-maker Owl Labs of Somerville, Massachusetts, in mid-January to privately report their findings. As of the time this post went live on Ars, none of the most glaring vulnerabilities had been fixed, leaving thousands of customer networks at risk.

Original Submission