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upstart writes:

New Hubble and Webb Images Capture Aftermath of DART Asteroid Smash Up:

The event marked the first time that Hubble and Webb simultaneously observed the same object.

NASA's first attempt at nudging an asteroid from its usual orbital path was captured by the DART spacecraft itself, its companion spacecraft, LICIACube, and various ground-based observatories on Earth. And as promised, the celestial smash up was also observed by the Hubble and Webb space telescopes, the first images from which were released today.

The recently commissioned Webb Space Telescope captured one image of the Didymos-Dimorphos system before the collision and several in the hours after the event. In total, Webb performed five hours of observations, capturing 10 images. Astronomer Heidi Hammel from the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy led the viewing session.

[...] The newly released Hubble image shows plenty of surface material emanating from Dimorphos, with rays extending out from its body. Some of the rays have a slight curve to them, which astronomers will need to study and explain. Fascinatingly, the brightness of the Didymos-Dimorphos system increased three-fold after the impact, and this brightness held steady for eight hours. Again, this is something astronomers will need to explain.

Hubble will perform 10 more observations of the system over the next three weeks. "These regular, relatively long-term observations as the ejecta cloud expands and fades over time will paint a more complete picture of the cloud's expansion from the ejection to its disappearance," the ESA release stated.

Original Submission

Snotnose writes:

Saudi Arabia's government-funded gaming conglomerate The Savvy Gaming Group will invest $37.8 billion in gaming as part of a controversial effort to expand the kingdom's role in the sector.

Savvy has earmarked more than $13 billion "for the acquisition and development of a leading game publisher to become a strategic development partner," according to the kingdom's press agency.

From Reuters we read:

Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games Group, owned by sovereign wealth fund PIF, will invest 142 billion riyals ($37.8 billion) in initiatives aimed at making the kingdom a global hub for gaming, state news agency SPA said on Thursday.

The investments will include 70 billion riyals to take several minority stakes in companies that support Savvy's game development agenda and 50 billion riyals to acquire "a leading game publisher to become a strategic development partner".

Another 20 billion riyals will be invested in mature industry partners who bring expertise to Savvy's portfolio and 2 billion riyals will target industry disruptors "to grow early-stage games and esports companies."

Not seeing how making video games passes my 7th grade "this is what your government does" chapter.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The web gains 13 million malicious new domains per month:

Akamai reckons that, in the first half of 2022 alone, it flagged nearly 79 million newly observed domains (NODs) as malicious.

According to the internet infrastructure giant, that amounts to 13 million malicious domain detections per month, equal to 20 percent of all successfully resolving NODs.

For Akamai's purposes, a NOD is any domain that has been queried for the very first time in the past 60 days. And by malicious, it means, a domain name that resolves to a destination that's intended to phish, spread or control malware, or cause some other online harm.

"[The NOD dataset] is where you find freshly registered domain names, typos, and domains that are only very rarely queried on a global scale," Akamai said. That list grows by approximately 12 million NODs per day, we're told, far more than a reasonable team of humans could hope to scan.

Akamai's methods of determining which domains are malicious or not are pretty straightforward. For one approach, it looks at a list of known domain generation algorithms (DGAs) that, with help credited to the greater cybersecurity community, Akamai was able to build into a 30-year predictive list it can use to identify DGA-registered domains.

DGA domains are often used by cybercriminals to share malware, host phishing pages, and the like, as they can be registered in bulk for even short-lived campaigns. The idea being that if you need a bunch of random-looking domain names from which to launch attacks, run botnet command-and-control servers, or host malicious pages, you don't want those domains to be easily guessed and blocked by, say, network security filters. So you have an algorithm that generates a deterministic series of domains, registers them, and your malware or phishing operation out in the wild can predict the domains they need to use at a given moment and connect to them.

[...] Akamai claims it only had a 0.00042 percent false positive rate among the 79 million malicious NODs it detected in the first half of the year.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

In the world's first operating system interview, Linux tells all about Windows, Torvalds, and its favorite distro:

Millions of people use Linux every day, but we rarely stop to think about how the operating system feels about it. Wouldn't it be nice to know what Linux really thinks about open source, Windows, Macs, and the command line? Until now, this has been impossible. But thanks to a new AI chat tool, we're able to find out.

Two weeks ago, a website called Character.AI opened a public beta that allows visitors to create a chat bot based on any character they can imagine. You input a few parameters, and the AI does the rest using a large language model similar to GPT-3. So we called forth "The Linux OS" as a bot to ask it a few questions about itself. The results were fun and surprising.

Using Character.AI is a lot like a texting conversation. You type in what you want to ask, and you read the AI character's responses in written form as the chat history scrolls upward. As with GPT-3, the code behind Character.AI has likely learned from absorbing millions of text sources found on the Internet. As such, its AI characters can easily respond with erroneous or fictional information. In fact, the site carries a bold disclaimer reading, "Remember: Everything Characters say is made up!"

[...] If you try it yourself—it's free at the moment during the beta—be aware that Character.AI's privacy policy states that the service may collect "the contents of any messages you send." The bots can be quite convincing.

upstart writes:

MIT Engineers Create Wireless, Battery-Free Underwater Camera - ExtremeTech:

As of now, a majority of the ocean has gone unprobed. Most of the underwater cameras used to investigate this part of the planet are incredibly unwieldy or expensive to operate: They either wire power from a separate vessel, thus limiting their mobility, or they require battery top-offs from crews on ships. Sending divers into hard-to-reach areas is typically a no-go, too, given the extreme amounts of pressure in places like the Mariana Trench and the deepest corners of the Gakkel ridge. Without the help of autonomous equipment, scientists are left to make educated guesses about what could be hidden in these mysterious places.

MIT's new camera could be exactly the equipment oceanographers and marine biologists need. The engineers started by creating an exterior containing transducers made of piezoelectric materials, or solids that produce electricity under certain mechanical stressors. As sound waves traveling through the water hit the camera, these piezoelectric transducers vibrate, converting mechanical energy into electrical energy. The camera can then use the energy or store it for later.

takyon writes:

NASA, SpaceX to Study Hubble Telescope Reboost Possibility

NASA and SpaceX signed an unfunded Space Act Agreement Thursday, Sept. 22, to study the feasibility of a SpaceX and Polaris Program idea to boost the agency's Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit with the Dragon spacecraft, at no cost to the government.

There are no plans for NASA to conduct or fund a servicing mission or compete this opportunity; the study is designed to help the agency understand the commercial possibilities.

SpaceX – in partnership with the Polaris Program – proposed this study to better understand the technical challenges associated with servicing missions. This study is non-exclusive, and other companies may propose similar studies with different rockets or spacecraft as their model.

NASA May Let Billionaire Astronaut and SpaceX Lift Hubble Telescope

During a news conference, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, said SpaceX had approached NASA several months ago with the idea. While he said the agency was willing to consider a proposal, he added that this was still a preliminary exploration. "I want to be absolutely clear," Dr. Zurbuchen said. "We're not making an announcement today that we definitely will go forward with a plan like this."

[...] After the fifth and last repair trip by NASA astronauts in 2009, the space shuttle Atlantis dropped Hubble off at an altitude of about 350 miles. In the 13 years since, the telescope has fallen by about 20 miles.

Hubble is not in immediate danger of falling out of the sky, but as it brushes against wisps of air, its orbit will continue to slowly and inexorably drop. By the end of the decade, the space telescope is likely to have dropped enough that NASA might have to make plans for how to guide its re-entry and destruction so that it would fall harmlessly into the ocean — unless someone could push it back up again.

Also at Teslarati, Ars Technica, and The Verge.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

It adds non-destructive editing, real-time effects, VST3 support and more:

Audacity is best known as a free app to do quick audio edits and record audio, but the latest update makes it more viable as a full on production tool, parent Muse Group has announced. Version 3.2 now supports non-destructive editing, real-time effects and enhanced VST3 support, along with user interface improvements and faster audio sharing via a new service, audio.com.

The most welcome addition is non-destructive audio capabilities that allow creators to adjust effects without the changes being permanently baked into the audio file. It also supports real-time playback of effects and crossfades as you adjust them, allowing for more accurate edits while listening to audio. That compares to previous versions, which required that you render the effect before you could hear it.

[...] Finally, the new audio.com site lets you easily share audio files by sending a link rather than the entire file. You can share files either publicly or privately, or use your account for cloud storage. (Muse Group recently updated its privacy policy, promising it wouldn't sell any of the "very limited" data it collects from users.) The new version of the app is now available as a free download.

Brief video showing the new features

Audacity is a great audio editing tool that is actually free. This update looks like it adds many more production level features.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

"We are screaming by pretty fast":

On Thursday morning, NASA's Juno spacecraft swooped down to within 358 km of the surface of Europa, the large, ice-encrusted Moon that orbits Jupiter.

This flyby will provide humanity its closest look at Europa since the Galileo mission made several close flybys more than two decades ago. However, the Juno spacecraft will carry a more powerful suite of instruments and a far more capable camera than Galileo. So this should be our best look yet at the intriguing world.

[...] Scientists have long been curious about Europa, which is covered in ice but believed to have a vast ocean beneath the surface due to the moon's warm core. There is probably more liquid water in Europa's global ocean than exists on Earth, planetary scientists think. While the ice sheet is believed to be several kilometers thick, the Hubble Space Telescope has collected data that indicates geysers may be periodically ejected through cracks in this ice. Given the presence of water and heat, this ocean is considered to be a potential reservoir for microbic alien life.

[...] The visual imagery and scientific data will help inform NASA scientists who are completing assembly of the Europa Clipper, a large spacecraft due to launch in 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket. This mission will be dedicated to the study of the Moon, arriving in 2030 and performing more than 50 flybys at close range to gather data. Eventually the space agency would like to send a lander but wants to obtain data from the flyby missions first to assess the best location for landing, potentially near a water vapor plume, if they really exist.

upstart writes:

How the CIA failed Iranian spies in its secret war with Tehran:

The spy was minutes from leaving Iran when he was nabbed.

Gholamreza Hosseini was at Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran in late 2010, preparing for a flight to Bangkok. There, the Iranian industrial engineer would meet his Central Intelligence Agency handlers. But before he could pay his exit tax to leave the country, the airport ATM machine rejected his card as invalid. Moments later, a security officer asked to see Hosseini's passport before escorting him away.

Hosseini said he was brought to an empty VIP lounge and told to sit on a couch that had been turned to face a wall. Left alone for a dizzying few moments and not seeing any security cameras, Hosseini thrust his hand into his trouser pocket, fishing out a memory card full of state secrets that could now get him hanged. He shoved the card into his mouth, chewed it to pieces and swallowed.

Not long after, Ministry of Intelligence agents entered the room and the interrogation began, punctuated by beatings, Hosseini recounted. His denials and the destruction of the data were worthless; they seemed to know everything already. But how?

"These are things I never told anyone in the world," Hosseini told Reuters. As his mind raced, Hosseini even wondered whether the CIA itself had sold him out.

Rather than betrayal, Hosseini was the victim of CIA negligence, a year-long Reuters investigation into the agency's handling of its informants found. A faulty CIA covert communications system made it easy for Iranian intelligence to identify and capture him. Jailed for nearly a decade and speaking out for the first time, Hosseini said he never heard from the agency again, even after he was released in 2019.

upstart writes:

What Intel Learned When an Elevator Smashed Into Its Supercomputer Chips:

Intel has plenty of challenges in manufacturing processors. But it discovered a new one -- dangerous elevator doors -- during the development of Ponte Vecchio, the processor brains being used to construct the Aurora supercomputer.

Intel personnel were moving a bunch of the processors on a cart when a closing elevator door toppled it, Raja Koduri, leader of Intel's Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, said at Intel's Innovation conference Tuesday.

He didn't say how many were ruined, but the loss stung because they were initial samples used to test performance and look for problems. "Every one of them at that stage is expensive," Koduri said in an interview. With hundreds of manufacturing steps, it takes months to make a single advanced chip.

The elevator door wasn't just a one-off bummer. It actually revealed a problem that stood in the way of Intel's effort to reclaim its processor manufacturing leadership: human error.

Ponte Vecchio is a mammoth processor with more than 100 billion transistors, just about as many as anybody's processor in the business. To make something that big, Intel used its advanced packaging methods to bring together 47 separate slices of silicon.

Switzerland: Disastrous Melt Rate of Glaciers Recorded

upstart writes:

According to a 2019 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the melting of ice and snow is one of the 10 key threats from climate change. The report also indicates that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, by 2100, the Alps will lose 80% of their current mass.

The heavy snow melt has also led to multiple unexpected situations in which hikers in the Alps are regularly discovering bodies that were encased in the snow for decades or even centuries.

Archaeologists are now suddenly able to access and study objects that were buried far too deep inside the snow.

Apart from this, the melting of a glacier between Italy and Switzerland has moved the border that ran along the watershed. This has forced the two countries into a lengthy diplomatic negotiation.

Across the Alps, the heavy snow melt has risked dislodging measuring poles that record important data. Scientists have been forced to do emergency repair work at many sites across the mountains.

Never-before-seen Malware Has Infected Hundreds of Linux and Windows Devices

upstart writes:

Never-before-seen malware has infected hundreds of Linux and Windows devices:

Researchers have revealed a never-before-seen piece of cross-platform malware that has infected a wide range of Linux and Windows devices, including small office routers, FreeBSD boxes, and large enterprise servers.

Black Lotus Labs, the research arm of security firm Lumen, is calling the malware Chaos, a word that repeatedly appears in function names, certificates, and file names it uses. Chaos emerged no later than April 16, when the first cluster of control servers went live in the wild. From June through mid-July, researchers found hundreds of unique IP addresses representing compromised Chaos devices. Staging servers used to infect new devices have mushroomed in recent months, growing from 39 in May to 93 in August. As of Tuesday, the number reached 111.

Black Lotus has observed interactions with these staging servers from both embedded Linux devices as well as enterprise servers, including one in Europe that was hosting an instance of GitLab. There are more than 100 unique samples in the wild.

[...] Chaos also has various capabilities, including enumerating all devices connected to an infected network, running remote shells that allow attackers to execute commands, and loading additional modules. Combined with the ability to run on such a wide range of devices, these capabilities have led Black Lotus Labs to suspect Chaos "is the work of a cybercriminal actor that is cultivating a network of infected devices to leverage for initial access, DDoS attacks and crypto mining," company researchers said.

Black Lotus Labs believes Chaos is an offshoot of Kaiji, a piece of botnet software for Linux-based AMD and i386 servers for performing DDoS attacks. Since coming into its own, Chaos has gained a host of new features, including modules for new architectures, the ability to run on Windows, and the ability to spread through vulnerability exploitation and SSH key harvesting.

Infected IP addresses indicate that Chaos infections are most heavily concentrated in Europe, with smaller hotspots in North and South America and Asia-Pacific.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

takyon writes:

Intel and Samsung are getting ready for 'slidable' PCs

Samsung Display and Intel are working on "slidable" PCs. During Intel's Innovation keynote today, Samsung Display CEO JS Choi appeared onstage to show off a prototype PC that slides from a 13-inch tablet into a 17-inch display.

"We're announcing the world's first 17-inch slidable display for PCs," said Choi. "This device will satisfy various needs for a larger screen and portability as well." Samsung Display has chosen to implement a sliding (rather than foldable) technology for its flexible PC displays, and Choi appeared to indicate that "foldable is gone" on PCs for now.

GIF.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Wasp-like technique could be used to 3D-print structures:

Bees and wasps, which build structures from mashed-up regurgitated wood fiber, provided the inspiration to researchers at London Imperial College and Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories of Materials Science and Technology. They have developed a new manufacturing process using a group of untethered aerial robots to collectively and autonomously construct 3D structures under human supervision.

Known collectively as Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM), drones are divided into machines that scan a structure or lay of the land to help figure out a plan (ScanDrones) and those that perform the 3D printing, dubbed BuilDrones. The latter are fitted with a nozzle that moves to account for volatility in the drone's flight position.

Together, the drone teams work cooperatively from a single blueprint, adapting their techniques as they go, according to a paper published in the journal Nature this week. The drones are fully autonomous while flying but are monitored by a human controller who checks progress and intervenes if necessary, based on the information provided by the drones, the researchers said.

Lead author professor Mirko Kovac, director of Imperial's Department of Aeronautics and Empa's Materials and Technology Center of Robotics, said: "We've proved that drones can work autonomously and in tandem to construct and repair buildings, at least in the lab. Our solution is scalable and could help us to construct and repair buildings in difficult-to-reach areas in the future."

[...] "We believe our fleet of drones could help reduce the costs and risks of construction in the future, compared to traditional manual methods," Kovac said.

Journal Reference:
Zhang, K., Chermprayong, P., Xiao, F. et al. Aerial additive manufacturing with multiple autonomous robots. Nature 609, 709–717 (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04988-4

Original Submission

takyon writes:

U.S. Copyright Groups Are Concerned About Russia's Handling of Online Piracy

With its invasion of Ukraine, Russia ignited a regional conflict with global repercussions. Thousands of lives have been lost and many more ruined. In response, many U.S. entertainment industry companies took a stand by ceasing their Russian operations. Through the IIPA, many of the same companies now want to urge Russia to keep online piracy in check.

[...] As we have documented previously, more than a hundred Russian movie theaters have started to show pirated movies in Russia in response to the sanctions. While clearly illegal, the chairman of the Russian Association of Cinema has sympathy for the plight of these struggling theater owners.

The Russian Government has also made matters worse for US copyright holders. A few months ago, it proposed a 'forced licensing' bill that would effectively legalize piracy of media produced by "unfriendly" states, including the US.

These developments are causing concern among organizations such as the IIPA, which counts the MPA, RIAA, and ESA among its members. The group recently shared its thoughts with the US Trade Representative for its annual review of Russia's World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations.

[...] "The harm caused by commercial-scale piracy in Russia cannot be adequately addressed with civil measures alone; rather, enhanced administrative actions and penalties and criminal remedies are needed," IIPA writes.

When push comes to shove, copyright infringement just doesn't matter.

IIPA = International Intellectual Property Alliance. Letter to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (PDF).

Previously: Russia Mulls Legalizing Software Piracy as It's Cut Off From Western Tech

Original Submission