SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Potential hack for some Boeing planes fixed:

A digital vulnerability in the computer systems used on some Boeing Co aircraft that could have allowed malicious hackers to modify data and cause pilots to make dangerous miscalculations has been fixed, security researchers said on Friday, Trend reports with reference to Reuters.

Older versions of a digital tool used to calculate landing and take-off speeds on some aircraft could be tampered with by hackers with direct access to an "Electronic Flight Bag," or EFB, a tablet device used by pilots to plan flights, cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners said in a report.

"If data modification occurs, and the resulting miscalculations are not detected during the crew's required cross check or verification process, an aircraft could land on a runway too short, or take off at incorrect speeds potentially resulting in a tail strike or runway excursion," said the report, which was presented at the DEF CON hacker convention in Las Vegas on Friday.

In a statement, Boeing said it was not aware of any airplane that had been affected by the issue, but had released a software update to address it.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Average healthy adult doesn't really get much benefit, Med School professor says:

Are you among the one in three Americans who gulps down a multivitamin every morning, probably with a sip of water? The truth about this popular habit may be hard to swallow.

"Most people would be better off just drinking a full glass of water and skipping the vitamin," says Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internist at Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance. In addition to saving money, you'll have the satisfaction of not succumbing to misleading marketing schemes.

That's because for the average American adult, a daily multivitamin doesn't provide any meaningful health benefit, as noted recently by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). Their review, which analyzed 84 studies involving nearly 700,000 people, found little or no evidence that taking vitamin and mineral supplements helps prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease that can lead to heart attacks and stroke, nor do they help prevent an early death.

"We have good evidence that for the vast majority of people, taking multivitamins won't help you," says Cohen, an expert in dietary supplement research and regulation.

[...] Surveys suggest people take vitamins to stay healthy, feel more energetic, or gain peace of mind, according to an editorial that accompanied the USPSTF review. These beliefs stem from a powerful narrative about vitamins being healthy and natural that dates back nearly a century.

"This narrative appeals to many groups in our population, including people who are progressive vegetarians and also to conservatives who are suspicious about science and think that doctors are up to no good," says Cohen.

See also: Study Finds No Benefit to Taking Multivitamins and Some Other Supplements

Original Submission

takyon writes:

BITBLAZE Titan BM15 Arm Linux laptop features Baikal-M1 processor

Russian company Prombit has unveiled the BITBLAZE Titan BM15 Arm Linux Laptop equipped with Baikal-M1 octa-core Arm Cortex-A57 processor manufactured by TSMC, up to 128GB RAM [disputed: may only be 32 GB], SSD storage, and a 15.6-inch Full HD display.

[...] There's no mention of the operating system used on the product page, but the laptop most certainly runs the same Astra Linux distribution as the Baikal M hardware launched last year with the Russian office application package, and other programs all approved by the "Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media".

However, the laptop may end up being a collector item, as Tom's Hardware reports TSMC will not manufacture chips for Russian companies due to current sanctions. But we'll have to see, as Chinese companies such as SMIC should still be able to manufacture processors on a 28nm process despite (again) more sanctions. Tom's Hardware further mentions that the laptop is expected to cost between 100,000 and 120,000 rubles (or about $1,600 – $1,930 at current exchange rates), so the price/performance ratio is less than impressive, but that may be the cost of independence. Productions samples, scheduled "earlier than November" may cost less.

Also at Notebookcheck.

Previously:
Desktop and All-in-One Arm Linux Computers Launched with Baikal-M Processor
TSMC Ships First Batch of Baikal BE-M1000 ARM CPUs

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/new-unesco-flagship-report-calls-reinventing-education

During the 41st session of the General Conference, UNESCO launched its latest global report on education.

Sparking a timely global debate was precisely the goal of the International Commission, led by H.E. Ms Sahle-Work Zewde, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, that spent two years preparing the report, titled Reimagining our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education.

More than a million people – experts, young people and teachers but also civil society, government and economic actors – were tapped in the global consultation that informed it.

Reimagining Our Futures Together upholds the tradition of past landmark UNESCO reports that have structured education policies around the world. The Faure report, Learning to Be, in 1972, and the Delors report, Learning: The Treasure Within, in 1996, are key references in the debate on learning. The report recommends an urgent, sweeping reform of education globally to repair past injustices and enhance our capacity to act together for a more sustainable future. The report finds that today's teaching and learning methods are outdated and even counterproductive. Education could contribute so much more to creating just and peaceful societies, a healthy planet and shared progress that benefits us all. Instead, how we educate is in effect causing some of our difficulties to address today's challenges.

takyon writes:

Loongson Adds LoongArch Support To LibreOffice

Following GCC 12 introducing LoongArch support earlier this year, Linux 5.19 adding the initial LoongArch port, and Glibc 2.36 adding LoongArch, LibreOffice is now the latest high-profile open-source project adding support for this Chinese processor ISA that started out derived from MIPS64.

Loongson as the company behind LoongArch contributed the native support for running the LibreOffice open-source office suite on LoongArch 64-bit hardware.

Related: Initial Experiments with the Loongson Pi 2K

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Crypto and the US Government Are Headed for a Decisive Showdown:

If you have paid casual attention to crypto news over the past few years, you probably have a sense that the crypto market is unregulated—a tech-driven Wild West in which the rules of traditional finance do not apply.

If you were Ishan Wahi, however, you would probably not have that sense.

Wahi worked at Coinbase, a leading crypto exchange, where he had a view into which tokens the platform planned to list for trading—an event that causes those assets to spike in value. According to the US Department of Justice, Wahi used that knowledge to buy those assets before the listings, then sell them for big profits. In July, the DOJ announced that it had indicted Wahi, along with two associates, in what it billed as the "first ever cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme." If convicted, the defendants could face decades in federal prison.

On the same day as the DOJ announcement, the Securities and Exchange Commission made its own. It, too, was filing a lawsuit against the three men. Unlike the DOJ, however, the SEC can't bring criminal cases, only civil ones. And yet it's the SEC's civil lawsuit—not the DOJ's criminal case—that struck panic into the heart of the crypto industry. That's because the SEC accused Wahi not only of insider trading, but also of securities fraud, arguing that nine of the assets he traded count as securities.

This may sound like a dry, technical distinction. In fact, whether a crypto asset should be classified as a security is a massive, possibly existential issue for the crypto industry. The Securities and Exchange Act of 1933 requires anyone who issues a security to register with the SEC, complying with extensive disclosure rules. If they don't, they can face devastating legal liability.

The article continues with a detailed discussion about whether some crypto coins are a security as classified by the SEC and the implications of that determination.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Rutgers study disentangles two ways of thinking about self-control to examine role willpower plays in restraint

In Greek mythology, the story of Odysseus and the Sirens illustrates a paradigmatic example of self-control.

When the hero of Homer's epic prepared to travel past the Sirens, mythical creatures who lure sailors with their enchanted singing, Odysseus instructs his crew to plug their ears with wax and tie him to the ship's mast. That way, Odysseus can listen to the Sirens as he sails by, and the crew can keep their wits. No matter how much he begs to be released, no one will hear his pleas.

Was Odysseus exercising willpower with his plan, or was he merely removing his ability to cave to temptation?

Researchers have long wondered what tools people successfully use to resist temptations [...]

Bridges said one method is called diachronic regulation, which involves selecting and modifying one's situation and cultivating habits over time to avoid temptation – essentially removing willpower from the equation. A second approach, synchronic regulation, relies on deliberate, effortful willpower in the moment to resist temptation.

Psychologists and economists have increasingly argued that because willpower is difficult to exercise, diachronic regulation is more effective than synchronic regulation. This conclusion is based in part on the failure of willpower-driven campaigns (such as Nancy Regan's "Just Say No" campaign, which had no measurable effects on youth tobacco, alcohol or drug use).

But Bridges and her colleagues hypothesized that such assessments of synchronic regulation rested on a faulty interpretation of the data, that supposed examples of effective purely diachronic strategies involved the use of willpower to implement, and that the popular, or "folk," view of willpower is just as important.

"We theorized that it takes willpower to implement temptation-avoidance strategies," said Bridges.

[...] She added: "People often infer that it's the diachronic strategy doing the self-control work, when really, moments of synchronic regulation are being amplified with diachronic strategy. Understanding the role of willpower in self-control has implications for the way we talk about helping people break habits."

It takes willpower to develop willpower.

Journal Reference:
Zachary C. Irving, Jordan Bridges, Aaron Glasser, et al., Will-powered: Synchronic regulation is the difference maker for self-control, Cognition, 225, 2022. 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105154

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.wired.com/story/smiling-dogs-horses-made-of-clouds-captcha-has-gone-too-far/

When Jared Bauman was asked to look at nine dog pictures and identify which ones were smiling as part of a captcha test to log in to a website a few weeks ago, he was stumped. "To be honest, I had a bit of a moment," the founder of a creative marketing agency in San Diego, California, says. "Do dogs really smile?" Most of the dogs looked neither happy nor sad—some were grimacing, or simply had their mouths open. No one is sure whether dogs can actually smile, meaning that correctly identifying smiling dogs in a captcha is a near-impossible task.

This kind of conundrum is becoming a bigger issue as captchas—tests designed to weed out robot web surfers from humans on websites—have grown increasingly cryptic. The smiling dogs were the final straw for an increasing number of people posting their disbelief on social media in recent months.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google Is About To Stop Answering Your Stupid Questions:

In a long blog post, Google has announced that it is about to stop answering your stupid questions. Surprisingly, the more you look into it, the more it sounds like a pretty good idea.

In the beginnings of Google and for most of its history, Google has attempted to point you in the way of the information you need, bringing the most relevant results to the top of the page for you to explore yourself. However, in recent years it has tried to make things even easier for its users, by attempting to answer the question quickly without the need for you to explore further websites.

Whether it's a "knowledge panel" (the little block on the right-hand side which tells you information about a public figure) the "featured snippets" at the top, or the "people also ask" section, Google now attempts to answer your question quickly, without the need to leave the page.

While this is incredibly useful for well-established facts, or issues where there is a lot of consensus, there are other times when having what (to layperson users) looks like a definitive answer pop up can be less ideal, especially when the algorithm gets it wrong.

hubie writes:

It's all in the ankles when it comes to riding hoverboards:

Engineering researchers have some simple advice for people learning to ride hoverboards: it's all in the ankles.

An experiment using sophisticated cameras and sensors attached to first-time riders revealed that ankle movements, not knee or hip movements, are the key to catching on to the increasingly popular devices.

[...] Hoverboards have a motor and two wheels connected by a platform. Riders steer and balance with their feet, although some models are self-balancing.

While new riders would be wise to concentrate on ankle movement, the study by researchers in Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan also showed the central nervous system somehow seems to just know the best strategy to use.

[...] "The process of learning how to ride a hoverboard is largely subconscious," Arami said. "Interestingly enough, our central nervous system can usually figure it out without much instruction, so take it easy and enjoy the ride."

Researchers theorize ankle movement is primarily used to learn to ride because they're the joints closest to the board, primates generally learn better with their hands and feet, and the central nervous system often tries to minimize muscular effort.

[...] Researchers are ultimately interested in using technology to develop assistive and rehabilitative robotics systems to allow people with impairments to regain movement.

"Hoverboards, as simple as they appear, help us dig into how we control our lower limbs and deepen our understanding of human motor control," Arami said.

Associated video

Journal Reference:
Mohammad Shushtari, Atsushi Takagi, Judy Lee, et al., Balance strategy in hoverboard control, Sci Rep, 12:4509 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-08291-0

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Once, a river ran through it. Now, white dust and thousands of dead fish cover the wide trench that winds amid rows of trees in France's Burgundy region in what was the Tille River in the village of Lux.

From dry and cracked reservoirs in Spain to falling water levels on major arteries like the Danube, the Rhine and the Po, an unprecedented drought is afflicting nearly half of the European continent. It is damaging farm economies, forcing water restrictions, causing wildfires and threatening aquatic species.

There has been no significant rainfall for almost two months in Western, Central and Southern Europe. In typically rainy Britain, the government officially declared a drought across southern and central England on Friday amid one of the hottest and driest summers on record.

And Europe's dry period is expected to continue in what experts say could be the worst drought in 500 years.

Climate change is exacerbating conditions as hotter temperatures speed up evaporation, thirsty plants take in more moisture and reduced snowfall in the winter limits supplies of fresh water available for irrigation in the summer. Europe isn't alone in the crisis, with drought conditions also reported in East Africa, the western United States and northern Mexico.

upstart writes:

Ethereum's big proof-of-stake blockchain switch could happen on September 15th:

The second-biggest cryptocurrency could switch to a much more energy-efficient proof-of-stake blockchain, as Ethereum developers proposed a terminal date for the current network to occur on September 15th or 16th.

The Ethereum network has been on a years-long path to switch its energy-hungry proof-of-work blockchain to a more efficient proof-of-stake system, and now its developers are suggesting a date to make the switch. It's not final yet, but on a call streamed via the Ethereum Foundation's YouTube page, they decided to submit this pull request proposing to make the change when the network reaches a specific difficulty mark, which should occur on September 15th or 16th.

Dubbed Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD), it specifies the mining of a particular block where the old network ends and the new one begins at 58750000000000000000000.

[...] Proof of stake, which is already used by other blockchains, can drastically reduce the amount of energy used by having miners lock up crypto they already own as collateral for the chance to validate transactions and face the penalty of losing those tokens if their calculations don't add up.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.mattkeeter.com/blog/2022-08-11-udp/

UDP is a transport-level protocol for sending messages through an IP network.

It sits at level 4 in the OSI model:

7 Application
6 Presentation
5 Session
4 Transport
3 Network
2 Data link
1 Physical

Like many of you, I've got hardware on my desk that's sending UDP packets, and the time has come to take a closer look at them.

Most "low-level" networking tutorials will bottom out somewhere at "use tcpdump to see raw packets". We'll be starting a bit lower in the stack; specifically, here:

[Picture of Probes soldered to a circuit board]

This is a high-speed active differential probe soldered to an Oxide Computer Company rack switch. We're going all the way down to the metal.

Original Submission

Chatbot Says the Company 'Exploits People'

upstart writes:

Meta's new prototype chatbot has told the BBC that Mark Zuckerberg exploits its users for money:

Meta says the chatbot uses artificial intelligence and can chat on "nearly any topic".

[...] Meta said the chatbot was a prototype and might produce rude or offensive answers.

[...] The chatbot, called BlenderBot 3, was released to the public on Friday.

The programme "learns" from large amounts of publicly available language data.

[...] "His company exploits people for money and he doesn't care. It needs to stop!" it said.

[...] BlenderBot 3's algorithm searches the internet to inform its answers. It is likely its views on Mr Zuckerberg have been "learnt' from other people's opinions that the algorithm has analysed.

[...] Meta has made the BlenderBot 3 public, and risked bad publicity, for a reason. It needs data.

"Allowing an AI system to interact with people in the real world leads to longer, more diverse conversations, as well as more varied feedback," Meta said in a blog post.

upstart writes:

FCC Denies SpaceX $885 Million in Subsidies for Rural Starlink Expansion - ExtremeTech:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that Elon Musk's SpaceX will not get the $885.5 million subsidy it was previously granted for Starlink internet services. The money was part of the broader $9.2 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and was intended to beef up connectivity in underserved rural areas of the US. However, FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel doesn't think the agency should "publicly subsidize its still developing technology," which requires a $600 satellite dish.

SpaceX was one of 180 companies vying for the funds during the 2020 bidding process, but only two have been dropped from the program. In addition to SpaceX, LTD Broadband has lost its $1.3 billion grant. This was just the first phase of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund rollout, which will run through the early 2030s. It's possible SpaceX will participate in future phases of the program, but it's going to have to address some of its business practices first.

The FCC cited SpaceX's fees as a primary reason for pulling the subsidy. At launch, SpaceX required all subscribers to pay $500 for the satellite dish that connects them to the Starlink megaconstellation. However, SpaceX raised that fee to $600 recently. The monthly fee for service also jumped from $99 to $110. The FCC thinks the limited universal service funds should go to less expensive connectivity options.

This announcement doesn't come completely out of left field. Last year, the FCC warned SpaceX and other bidders that the subsidies could not be used to cover "parking lots and well-served urban environments." SpaceX was allegedly set to use $111 million of the subsidy to expand in cities that already had plenty of internet access.

Original Submission