SoylentNews

upstart writes:

A startup wants to democratize the tech behind DALL-E 2, consequences be damned – TechCrunch:

DALL-E 2, OpenAI's powerful text-to-image AI system, can create photos in the style of cartoonists, 19th century daguerreotypists, stop-motion animators and more. But it has an important, artificial limitation: a filter that prevents it from creating images depicting public figures and content deemed too toxic.

Now an open source alternative to DALL-E 2 is on the cusp of being released, and it'll have few — if any — such content filters.

London- and Los Altos-based startup Stability AI this week announced the release of a DALL-E 2-like system, Stable Diffusion, to just over a thousand researchers ahead of a public launch in the coming weeks. A collaboration between Stability AI, media creation company RunwayML, Heidelberg University researchers and the research groups EleutherAI and LAION, Stable Diffusion is designed to run on most high-end consumer hardware, generating 512×512-pixel images in just a few seconds given any text prompt.

"Stable Diffusion will allow both researchers and soon the public to run this under a range of conditions, democratizing image generation," Stability AI CEO and founder Emad Mostaque wrote in a blog post. "We look forward to the open ecosystem that will emerge around this and further models to truly explore the boundaries of latent space."

But Stable Diffusion's lack of safeguards compared to systems like DALL-E 2 poses tricky ethical questions for the AI community. Even if the results aren't perfectly convincing yet, making fake images of public figures opens a large can of worms. And making the raw components of the system freely available leaves the door open to bad actors who could train them on subjectively inappropriate content, like pornography and graphic violence.

hubie writes:

Employees are motivated by rewards that are perceived as distinct from salary:

Tangible rewards motivate employees when they're easy to use, pleasurable, unexpected, and distinct from salary, a new study found.

A recent survey of firms in the United States revealed that 84 per cent spent more than $90 billion annually on tangible employee rewards, such as gift cards, recreation trips and merchandise in hopes of increasing productivity.

[...] Presslee and his co-author, University of Wisconsin-Madison's Willie Choi, used four experiments to investigate the factors driving the preference between cash and tangible rewards. The attributes examined include ease of use of the reward (fungibility), hedonic nature of the reward (want vs. need), the novelty of the reward, and how the reward is presented.

"Rewards are constellations of attributes, and firms should focus more on the motivational effects of the attributes associated with a reward rather than the reward type itself," Presslee said. "Results confirmed that each of these attributes – individually and in combination – increases employee effort and performance."

The researchers recommend managers interested in motivating employees using tangible rewards would be best served to offer tangible rewards that incorporate these four attributes.

It would not surprise me if the effect was the same for cash, provided that the cash was handed directly to the employee instead of being added to their paycheck.

Journal Reference:
Jongwoon (Willie)Choia and AdamPresslee, When and why tangible rewards can motivate greater effort than cash rewards: An analysis of four attribute differences [open], Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2022.101389

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Uber to sunset free loyalty program in favor of subscription membership – TechCrunch:

Ride-hailing giant Uber is shutting down its free loyalty program, Uber Rewards, so it can focus on its subscription-based Uber One membership.

Uber first launched the rewards program in 2018 as a sort of frequent flyer scheme that allowed riders to earn points for every dollar spent on rides or Uber Eats deliveries. Those points could then be used to get discounts on future rides or deliveries. In November 2021, Uber began introducing Uber One, which, for $9.99 per month or $99.99 annually, allows members perks like 5% off certain rides or delivery orders and unlimited $0 delivery fees on food orders of over $15 and grocery orders of over $30.

In an email sent to customers that was picked up by The Verge, Uber said users can still earn points via the legacy rewards program until the end of August, and that they can redeem those points until October 31. Uber Rewards will officially shut down on November 1, 2022, according to an update posted by the company.

[...] Uber did not respond immediately for clarity as to why it is shutting down the Rewards program in favor of the Uber One membership. Perhaps the company did not see the returns and user loyalty that it would have expected from the program and thinks a subscription offering will provide better returns.

Original Submission

All Systems Go In Houston As Nasa Prepares Return To Moon

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Rick LaBrode has worked at NASA for 37 years, but he says the American quest to return to the Moon is by far the crowning moment of his career.

LaBrode is the lead flight director for Artemis 1, set to take off later this month—the first time a capsule that can carry humans will be sent to the Moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

"This is more exciting than really anything I've ever been a part of," LaBrode told journalists at the US space agency's Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.

The 60-year-old confided to AFP that the eve of the launch is likely to be a long night of anticipation—and little rest.

"I'm going to be so excited. I won't be able to sleep too much, I'm sure of that," he said, in front of Mission Control's iconic giant bank of screens.

Artemis 1, an uncrewed test flight, will feature the first blastoff of the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which will be the most powerful in the world when it goes into operation.

It will propel the Orion crew capsule into orbit around the Moon. The spacecraft will remain in space for 42 days before returning to Earth.

[...] Korth, who has worked on Orion for more than a decade, said everyone in Houston is excited for the return to the Moon and for NASA's future.

"Definitely, I feel like it is like a new golden age," she said.

upstart writes:

Irish researchers develop new model to help treat heart failure:

Developed at RCSI, the new 'mock circulatory loop' model can mimic both a healthy heart and a heart in failure to help device testing.

Researchers in Ireland have reached a milestone in heart health research with a new lab-based model to test devices that treat patients with an increasingly common form of heart failure.

There are two common types of heart failure in humans: one with preserved ejection fraction and the other with reduced ejection fraction. Ejection fraction is the measurement used to determine the heart's ability to pump oxygen-rich blood through the body.

In recent years, heart failure with preserved or normal ejection fraction has become more common among patients, likely due to an increase in the prevalence of common risk factors such as old age, high blood pressure and obesity. Women are at great risk of it than men.

Developed at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in collaboration with the National College of Art and Design, the new model called 'mock circulatory loop' mimic both a healthy heart and a heart in failure with preserved ejection fraction.

The model enables potential heart failure treatment devices to be examined in terms of their effect on both chambers in the left side of the heart.

It can test devices to examine the left atrium, the top chamber responsible for receiving oxygen-rich blood from the lungs, as well as the left ventricle, the lower chamber responsible for pumping the oxygen-rich blood around the body.

The research was published in the Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine journal last month.

Journal Reference:
Malone, Andrew, Gallagher, Sean, Saidi, Jemil, et al. In vitro benchtop mock circulatory loop for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction emulation, Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine (DOI: 10.3389/fcvm.2022.910120)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory made its 1 millionth car:

Plant closures and other challenges didn't keep Tesla's Chinese factory from crossing a key milestone. As Electrek notes, company chief Elon Musk has revealed that Gigafactory Shanghai recently produced its 1 millionth car. As mentioned earlier in August, Musk noted that Tesla has made a total of 3 million electric vehicles to date.

The facility has quickly become a cornerstone of Tesla's manufacturing strategy. It started production in late 2019, but ramped up to the point where it became the largest EV factory on the planet. Its annual production rate topped 800,000 by the end of 2021, making it crucial to Tesla's record-setting year. Gigafactory Shanghai is now the company's main export hub, delivering cars to Europe and other key markets in addition to China.

The Shanghai factory is gradually becoming just one piece in a larger puzzle. The newly opened Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas will drive at least some near-term growth, and Tesla is exploring the potential for factories in places like Canada.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The tech aiming to prevent lost airline luggage:

Jenny Loucas scrolls through photos of her 40th birthday celebrations in Greece, knowing that much of the clothes and jewellery she had worn in the pictures are lost for good.

For while she had enjoyed a wonderful holiday, her luggage then disappeared after she had checked it in for the flight home to London Gatwick.

[...] Two months later and Easyjet has confirmed that her luggage has been permanently lost. "We are very sorry for the loss of Ms Loucas's bag, and we understand the frustration this will have caused," an Easyjet spokeswoman told the BBC.

As newspaper headlines and social media posts around the world have shown in recent months, Ms Loucas's case is far from unique, with some commentators calling it "the summer of lost luggage".

[...] And one insurance firm, Spain's Mapfre, said that the number of passengers reporting missing luggage this summer was 30% higher than in 2019, the last year of normal travel before the pandemic.

[...] To try to keep tabs on their items of luggage, a growing number of passengers are turning to technology.

Apple has reportedly seen a rise in sales of its AirTag tracking device. The AirTag works by sending out a secure Bluetooth signal that can be detected by nearby devices in the Find My network. These devices send the AirTag's location to the iCloud, allowing the user to go to the Find My app and see it on a map.

[...] Other travellers are attaching trackers that use GPS to their luggage.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

What killed tons of fish in European river? Mystery deepens:

Laboratory tests following a mass die-off of fish in the Oder River detected high levels of salinity but no mercury poisoning its waters, Poland's environment minister said Saturday as the mystery continued as to what killed tons of fish in Central Europe.

Anna Moskwa, the minister of climate and environment, said analyses of river samples taken in both Poland and Germany revealed elevated salt levels. Comprehensive toxicology studies are still underway in Poland, she said.

[...] The Oder River runs from Czechia to the border between Poland and Germany before flowing into the Baltic Sea. Some German media had suggested that the river have been be poisoned with mercury.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Friday that "huge amounts of chemical waste" were probably dumped intentionally into his country's second-longest river, causing environmental damage so severe it would take years for the waterway to recover.

[...] "The extent of the fish die-off is shocking. This is a blow to the Oder as a waterway of great ecological value, from which it will presumably not recover for a long time," said Alex Vogel, the environment minister for Germany's Brandenburg state, along which the river runs.

The head of Polish waters, Poland's national water management authority, said Thursday that 10 tons of dead fish had been removed from the river. Hundreds of volunteers were working to help collect dead fish along the German side.

German laboratories said they detected "atypical" levels of "salts" that could be linked to the die-off but wouldn't fully explain them on their own.

Original Submission

Ignition confirmed in a nuclear fusion experiment for the first time

Atominator and upstart write:

A 2021 experiment achieved the landmark milestone of nuclear fusion ignition, which data analysis has now confirmed – but attempts to recreate it over the last year haven't been able to reach ignition again.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2333346-ignition-confirmed-in-a-nuclear-fusion-experiment-for-the-first-time/

Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion Energy: Ignition Confirmed in Record 1.3 Megajoule Shot

upstart writes:

The research has been published one year after the breakthrough was achieved. Will scientists be able to recreate it?:

Exactly one year later, the scientific results of this record experiment have been published in three peer-reviewed papers: one in Physical Review Letters and two in Physical Review E, according to a press release by LLNL.

"The record shot was a major scientific advance in fusion research, which establishes that fusion ignition in the lab is possible at NIF," said Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for LLNL's inertial confinement fusion program.

"Achieving the conditions needed for ignition has been a long-standing goal for all inertial confinement fusion research and opens access to a new experimental regime where alpha-particle self-heating outstrips all the cooling mechanisms in the fusion plasma."

[...] Since their success last August, the researchers have been trying to recreate the record-breaking performance in order to understand its experimental sensitivities.

[...] While the researchers have not been able to recreate the same level of fusion yield as the August 2021 experiment, all of them have showcased capsule gain greater than unity with yields in the 430-700 kJ range, significantly higher than the previous highest yield of 170 kJ from February 2021.

"It is extremely exciting to have an 'existence proof' of ignition in the lab," Hurricane concluded. "We're operating in a regime that no researchers have accessed since the end of nuclear testing, and it's an incredible opportunity to expand our knowledge as we continue to make progress."

Previously: Finally, a Fusion Reaction Has Generated More Energy Than Absorbed by the Fuel

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2  Original Submission #3 

upstart writes in with two stories on a Zoom exploit affecting macOS users:

The Zoom installer let a researcher hack his way to root access on macOS:

A security researcher has found a way that an attacker could leverage the macOS version of Zoom to gain access over the entire operating system.

[...] The exploit works by targeting the installer for the Zoom application, which needs to run with special user permissions in order to install or remove the main Zoom application from a computer. Though the installer requires a user to enter their password on first adding the application to the system, Wardle found that an auto-update function then continually ran in the background with superuser privileges.

When Zoom issued an update, the updater function would install the new package after checking that it had been cryptographically signed by Zoom. But a bug in how the checking method was implemented meant that giving the updater any file with the same name as Zoom's signing certificate would be enough to pass the test — so an attacker could substitute any kind of malware program and have it be run by the updater with elevated privilege.

[...] "To me that was kind of problematic [Zoom not responding to his disclosure for 8 months] because not only did I report the bugs to Zoom, I also reported mistakes and how to fix the code," Wardle told The Verge in a call before the talk. "So it was really frustrating to wait, what, six, seven, eight months, knowing that all Mac versions of Zoom were sitting on users' computers vulnerable."

upstart writes:

Inaccurate maps are delaying the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law's broadband funding:

Nearly nine months after Congress passed President Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the federal government has yet to allocate any of the $42.5 billion in funding the legislation set aside for expanding broadband service in underserved communities, according to The Wall Street Journal. Under the law, the Commerce Department can't release that money until the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) publishes new coverage maps that more accurately show homes and businesses that don't have access to high-speed internet.

Inaccurate coverage data has long derailed efforts by the federal government to address the rural broadband divide. The previous system the FCC used to map internet availability relied on Form 477 filings from service providers. Those documents have been known for their errors and exaggerations. In 2020, Congress began requiring the FCC to collect more robust coverage data as part of the Broadband DATA Act. However, it wasn't until early 2021 that lawmakers funded the mandate and in August of that same year that the Commission published its first updated map.

Following a contractor dispute, the FCC will publish its latest maps sometime in mid-November. Once they're available, both consumers and companies will a chance to challenge the agency's data. As a result of that extra step, funding from the broadband plan likely won't begin making its way to ISPs until the end of 2023, according to one analyst The Journal interviewed.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

To Fix Tech, Democracy Needs to Grow Up:

There is growing recognition that rapid technology development is producing society-scale risks: state and private surveillance, widespread labor automation, ascending monopoly and oligopoly power, stagnant productivity growth, algorithmic discrimination, and the catastrophic risks posed by advances in fields like AI and biotechnology. Less often discussed, but in my view no less important, is the loss of potential advances that lack short-term or market-legible benefits. These include vaccine development for emerging diseases and open source platforms for basic digital affordances like identity and communication.

At the same time, as democracies falter in the face of complex global challenges, citizens (and increasingly, elected leaders) around the world are losing trust in democratic processes and are being swayed by autocratic alternatives. Nation-state democracies are, to varying degrees, beset by gridlock and hyper-partisanship, little accountability to the popular will, inefficiency, flagging state capacity, inability to keep up with emerging technologies, and corporate capture. While smaller-scale democratic experiments are growing, locally and globally, they remain far too fractured to handle consequential governance decisions at scale.

This puts us in a bind. Clearly, we could be doing a better job directing the development of technology towards collective human flourishing—in fact, this may be one of the greatest challenges of our time. If actually existing democracy is so riddled with flaws, it doesn't seem up to the task. This is what rings hollow in many calls to "democratize technology": Given the litany of complaints, why subject one seemingly broken system to governance by another?

At the same time, as we deal with everything from surveillance to space travel, we desperately need ways to collectively negotiate complex value trade-offs with global consequences, and ways to share in their benefits. This definitely seems like a job for democracy, albeit a much better iteration. So how can we radically update democracy so that we can successfully navigate toward long-term, shared positive outcomes?

canopic jug writes:

A while back, retired journalist and octogenarian, Chris Biddle, had an excellent interview with author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow about digital restrictions. They speak in particular about digital restrictions technologies which have been spread within agricultural equipment through the equipment's firmware. Their conversation starts out with mention of the use of network-connected firmware to brick the tractors which were looted from dealership sales lots in Ukraine by the invading Russian army. Cory gives a detailed overview of the issues hidden away by the mainstream press under the feel-good stories about the incident.

But was the bigger picture more worrying? I speak with Cory Doctorow, author, Guardian journalist with a special interest in protecting human rights in this digital age.

He says that whilst 'kill-switches' used to disable the machinery provide a security benefit, it is possible that widely available 'hacking' technology could also be used to disrupt the world's agricultural infrastructure by those with more sinister motives.

All of which feeds into the Right to Repair cases currently going through the US courts. It is also all about who owns the tractor, who owns data, and who owns the rights to the embedded software?

Deere contends that a customer can never fully own connected machinery because it holds exclusive rights to the software coding.

Some US farmers have attempted to unlock the embedded by purchasing illegal firmware –mostly developed by sophisticated hackers based in Ukraine!

The interview is just under 45 minutes.

Previously:
(2022) New York State Passes First Electronics Right-to-Repair Bill
(2022) John Deere Remotely Disables Farm Equipment Stolen by Russians from Ukraine Dealership
(2022) A Fight Over the Right to Repair Cars Turns Ugly
(2021) Apple and John Deere Shareholder Resolutions Demand They Explain Their Bad Repair Policies
(2021) The FTC is Investigating Why McDonald's McFlurry Machines are "Always Broken"
(2020) Europe Wants a 'Right to Repair' Smartphones and Gadgets
(2019) New Elizabeth Warren Policy Supports "Right to Repair"
(2016) Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Rampant Data Broker Sale Of Pregnancy Data Gets Fresh Scrutiny Post Roe:

For decades now, privacy advocates warned we were creating a dystopia through our rampant over-collection and monetization of consumer data. And just as often, those concerns were greeted with calls of "consumers don't actually care about privacy" from overly confident white guys in tech.

Nothing has exposed those flippant responses as ignorant quite like the post-Roe privacy landscape, in which basic female health data can now be weaponized to ruin the lives of those seeking abortions, or those trying to help women obtain foundational health care. Either by states looking to prosecute them, or individual right wing hardliners who often have easy, cheap access to the exact same information.

The latest case in point: Gizmodo did a deep dive into the largely unaccountable data broker space and discovered there are currently 32 different data brokers selling pregnancy status data on 2.9 billion consumer profiles.

Via browsing, app, promotion, and location data, those consumers are quickly deemed "actively pregnant" or "shopping for maternity products." Another 478 million customer profiles are actively labeled "interested in pregnancy" or "intending to become pregnant." As is usually the case, companies (the ones that could be identified) claimed it was no big deal because the data is "anonymized":

Related: Okay, Google: To Protect Women, Collect Less Data About Everyone

Original Submission

upstart writes:

What Are the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and Fourteen Eyes?:

The Five, Nine, and Fourteen Eyes are agreements between the surveillance agencies (the "eyes") of several countries. The original group is the Five Eyes (abbreviated as FVEY)—consisting of the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—which shortly after the second world war signed a deal (the UKUSA pact) to share intelligence among each other.

Over the years, four other countries informally joined the original five (the Netherlands, France, Denmark, and Norway), making nine.

A few years after, five more joined (Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Sweden) to come to the grand total of 14.

However, these three groups are different from each other in what they share with each other.

Naturally, deals struck between spies aren't accessible to regular people, but we do know a fair bit about these three groups, especially the original five. This is because their founding document, the UKUSA agreement, was made public in 2010. The British National Archives has the full text.