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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://kauainownews.com/2022/10/18/kauaʻi-mayor-signs-proactive-law-that-regulates-development-in-areas-prone-to-sea-level-rise/

Mayor Derek S. K. Kawakami signed into law a proactive bill that amends construction design standards to incorporate expected sea level rise impacts – making Kaua'i one of the first counties in the nation to enact development regulations based on scientific modeling projections.

[...] Kaua'i is no stranger to the impacts of climate change, as we've seen in the floods of 2018 and the recent historic south swell and king tides in July which resulted in significant infrastructure damage," Maor Kawakami said. "This new ordinance ensures that the inevitable effects of coastal erosion and flooding are determining factors in the future growth and development of our island."

[...] The ordinance requires the lowest floor of all new residential construction, and substantial residential construction improvements, to be elevated two feet above the highest sea level rise flood elevation. It also requires all new non-residential construction, and substantial non-residential improvements, to be elevated at least one foot above the highest sea level rise flood elevation.

[...] Fletcher said the United Nations' latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports say with high confidence that sea level rise will persist for "centuries to millennia" due to ongoing warming of the oceans and melting of the ice sheets.

"There is nothing we can do to stop sea level rise," Fletcher said "This measure will minimize the threat to public health and safety, promote resilient planning and design and minimize the expenditure of public money for costly flood control projects necessitated by accelerating sea level rise. Kaua'i is providing an example for coastal communities around the nation of the next right step in building community resiliency to climate change impacts."

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upstart writes:

GitHub Copilot may steer Microsoft into a copyright lawsuit:

GitHub Copilot – a programming auto-suggestion tool trained from public source code on the internet – has been caught generating what appears to be copyrighted code, prompting an attorney to look into a possible copyright infringement claim.

On Monday, Matthew Butterick, a lawyer, designer, and developer, announced he is working with Joseph Saveri Law Firm to investigate the possibility of filing a copyright claim against GitHub. There are two potential lines of attack here: is GitHub improperly training Copilot on open source code, and is the tool improperly emitting other people's copyrighted work – pulled from the training data – to suggest code snippets to users?

Butterick has been critical of Copilot since its launch. In June he published a blog post arguing that "any code generated by Copilot may contain lurking license or IP violations," and thus should be avoided.

That same month, Denver Gingerich and Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) said their organization would stop using GitHub, largely as a result of Microsoft and GitHub releasing Copilot without addressing concerns about how the machine-learning model dealt with different open source licensing requirements.

Copilot's capacity to copy code verbatim, or nearly so, surfaced last week when Tim Davis, a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University, found that Copilot, when prompted, would reproduce his copyrighted sparse matrix transposition code.

Asked to comment, Davis said he would prefer to wait until he has heard back from GitHub and its parent Microsoft about his concerns.

upstart writes:

Meta grudgingly agrees to sell Giphy after admitting defeat in UK battle:

Considering that Meta bought WhatsApp and Instagram without issue, it may come as a surprise that Meta's purchase of Giphy will be blocked. But that's the situation, as the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has now ordered Meta to sell Giphy.

The decision comes two years after the merger came under the increasingly intense scrutiny of UK regulators. Fighting every step of the way, Meta has since said in a statement to Reuters that although it's "disappointed" in the decision, it will "accept today's ruling as the final word on the matter."

Among the reasons why Meta must sell Giphy are the CMA's concerns that Meta and Giphy dominate the GIF marketplace and that Meta could cut off competitors from accessing Giphy content. Meta could also possibly change its terms and charge its competitors exorbitantly for access. This, the CMA feared, threatened to increase Facebook's already dominant presence in the social media marketplace by pushing users to prefer the platform where they can access the best GIFs. The regulator noted that 73 percent of the time UK residents spend on social media is on Facebook.

Also at issue was Giphy's prior place in the display advertising market at the time of Meta's (then Facebook's) $400 million acquisition. The CMA seemed to suggest that Meta's acquisition could have been driven by an urge to shut down a budding Giphy display advertising business that could have diversified display ad choices for UK businesses. (Meta told Ars that it believes there is no evidence to suggest this.) In a press release, the CMA said that Meta already controls half of UK display advertising.

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upstart writes:

Billions in funding could kick-start the US battery materials industry:

Both public and private funding for battery manufacturing in the US have exploded, sped by the passage earlier this year of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides incentives for electric vehicles. Under the requirements in the new electric-vehicle tax credits, battery components must be sourced and made in the US or its free-trade partners. But much of the investment in battery manufacturing so far has been focused on later stages in the supply chain, especially factories that make battery cells for electric vehicles.

The new spending is an attempt to build out the earlier parts of the supply chain so the materials that go into a battery can also be made or sourced domestically. Making battery precursors in the US could help drive down costs for new technologies and ensure a steady supply of batteries, as well as establishing new companies and creating jobs.

The funding is a step toward "building the foundation of a domestic battery industry," Jonas Nahm, an assistant professor of energy, resources, and environment at Johns Hopkins, said in an email.

Multibillion-dollar manufacturing plants for battery cells and EVs are popping up all over the country. But earlier parts of the supply chain are still largely based in Asia, especially China, which makes up the vast majority of global capacity for mineral processing and electrode manufacturing.

This funding announcement reflects an attempt by the US to catch up, especially for processing the minerals used to make batteries. Four of the projects that received funding are companies working to extract and process lithium, a key metal for lithium-ion batteries. The supply of lithium may need to increase by 20 times between now and 2050 to meet demand. Lithium production represents "one of the vulnerable pieces of the supply chain," Nahm says.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

An international team of researchers has conducted a long-term experiment aboard the International Space Station to test the effect of space radiation on mouse embryonic stem cells. Their findings will contribute to helping scientists better assess the safety and risks related to space radiation for future human space flights.

In their study, the team performed a direct quantitative measurement of the biological effect of space radiation by launching frozen mouse embryonic stem cells from the ground to the International Space Station, exposing them to space radiation for over four years, and quantifying the biological effect by examining chromosome aberrations. Their experiment results show, for the first time, that the actual biological effect of space radiation is in close agreement with earlier predictions based on the physical measurement of space radiation.

Ordinary people are now able to travel in space, and the possibility of long-term manned flights to deep space, such as to the moon and Mars, is increasing. Yet space radiation remains a limiting factor for manned exploration. Scientists have been conducting intensive studies to measure physical doses of space radiation to better understand its effect on the human body.

However, since most of the studies until now were conducted on the ground, not in space, the results suffered from uncertainties, given that space radiation consists of many kinds of particles with different energies, and astronauts are continuously irradiated with low-dose rates. The actual space environment cannot be precisely reproduced on the ground.

The team prepared about 1,500 cryotubes containing highly radio-sensitized mouse embryonic stem cells and sent them to space. Their study was complex in its scope, with seven years of work before launch, four years of work after launch, and five years for analysis. "It was difficult to prepare the experiment and to interpret the results, but we successfully obtained quantitative results related to space radiation, meeting our original objective," said Professor Morita.

upstart writes:

Why do mosquitos attack some folks and ignore others? Science has an answer:

Scientific American:

The researchers analyzed the subjects' scent profiles to see what might account for this vast difference. They found a pattern: the most attractive subjects tended to produce greater levels of carboxylic acids from their skin while the least attractive subjects produced much less.

Carboxylic acids are commonplace organic compounds. Humans produce them in our sebum, which is the oily layer that coats our skin; there, the acids help to keep our skin moisturized and protected, Vosshall says. Humans release carboxylic acids at much higher levels than most animals, De Obaldia adds, though the amount varies from person to person. The new study had too few participants to say what personal characteristics make someone more likely to produce high levels of carboxylic acids—and there's no easy way to test your own skin's carboxylic acid levels outside of the laboratory, Vosshall says. (She muses, however, that sending people skin swabs in the mail could make for an interesting citizen science project in the future.)

But we do know that skin maintains a relatively constant level of carboxylic acids over time. This, in turn, leads to a consistent odor profile. (Mosquitoes could also be attracted to skin bacteria digesting the carboxylic acids we produce, Vosshall suggests.) When Vosshall and De Obaldia ran their tournament multiple times several months apart, they found that people's attractiveness rankings remained largely the same. Any personal factors that may have changed over those months—from what each subject ate to the kind of soap they used—didn't seem to make a difference.

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Original Submission

hubie writes:

Given a choice, captive bears mimic mixed diets of their wild peers:

Bears are not cats or dogs, and feeding them like they are likely shortens their lives.

A new study in Scientific Reports on the diets of giant pandas and sloth bears adds more evidence that bears are omnivores like humans and need a lot less protein than they are typically fed in zoos.

"Bears are not carnivores in the strictest sense like a cat where they consume a high-protein diet," said lead author Charles Robbins, a Washington State University wildlife biology professor. "In zoos forever, whether it's polar bears, brown bears or sloth bears, the recommendation has been to feed them as if they are high-protein carnivores. When you do that, you kill them slowly."

Journal Reference:
Robbins, C.T., Christian, A.L., Vineyard, T.G. et al. Ursids evolved early and continuously to be low-protein macronutrient omnivores [open]. Sci Rep 12, 15251 (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-19742-z

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hubie writes:

A new study from Uppsala University shows that using a weighted blanket at bedtime increases melatonin in young adults:

Previous research has shown that weighted blankets may ease insomnia in humans. However, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Hence, researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden experimented with 26 young men and women to examine if the bedtime use of a weighted blanket increases the production of sleep-promoting and anti-stress hormones like melatonin and oxytocin. In addition, they investigated whether the bedtime use of a weighted blanket (12 percent of participants' body weight) reduced the activity of stress systems in the body. [...]

"Using a weighted blanket increased melatonin concentrations in saliva by about 30 percent. However, no differences in oxytocin, cortisol, and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system were observed between the weighted and light blanket conditions," says Elisa Meth, first author and Ph.D. student at the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences at Uppsala University.

Journal Reference:
Elisa M. S. Meth, Luiz Eduardo Mateus Brandão, Lieve T. van Egmond, et al., A weighted blanket increases pre-sleep salivary concentrations of melatonin in young, healthy adults [open], J Sleep Res, 2022. DOI: 10.1111/jsr.13743

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Russia finds 40% of its Chinese chip imports are defective:

As reported by The Register, pro-Putin newspaper Kommersant writes that the percentage of defective imported chips into Russia before the war was just 2%, which isn't very good considering how many components are found in today's electronic items. Now, almost eight months after the country invaded Ukraine, it stands at 40%.

Russia blames these failure rates on the pandemic impacting the supply chain and sanctions forcing it to import chips from the Chinese gray market, an area that not only comes with the threat of faulty products but is also unreliable and slow.

Many businesses have quit Russia as a result of the import restrictions, and those that are left must deal with sanction-skirting Chinese companies for semiconductors. Given that some of these duds were likely intended for military hardware supporting the war in Ukraine, one wonders if Russia and China's "friendship without limits" extends to imports of non-borked chips.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

How the World Will Know If Russia Is Preparing to Launch a Nuke:

This week, NATO is conducting its regular, long-planned nuclear strike exercise known as "Steadfast Noon" to practice deploying fighter jets used to carry nuclear weapons. And Russia is expected to conduct its own nuclear drills sometime this month—as it typically does—in reaction to NATO's exercises.  While these rehearsals don't involve actual bombs, they come at a fraught moment, given Russian president Vladimir Putin's recent suggestion that the Kremlin could deploy nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine.

Officials from the United States and the United Kingdom have emphasized that they do not see indications that Russia is actively preparing to launch a nuclear strike. And the signals the global community has to draw on in monitoring the Russian nuclear weapons program, while not infallible, are robust. That means the world would likely know if a nuclear attack were imminent.

"We take any nuclear weapons or nuclear saber-rattling very seriously here," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier this month. But, she added, "we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture, nor do we have any indication that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons."

Similarly, Jeremy Fleming, director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence agency, said last week, "I would hope that we will see indicators if they started to go down that path." He added that there would be a "good chance" of detecting Russian preparations.

upstart writes:

USB-C can hit 120Gbps with newly published USB4 Version 2.0 spec:

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: USB-C is confusing. A USB-C port or cable can support a range of speeds, power capabilities, and other features, depending on the specification used. Today, USB-C can support various data transfer rates, from 0.48Gbps (USB 2.0) all the way to 40Gbps (USB4, Thunderbolt 3, and Thunderbolt 4). Things are only about to intensify, as today the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) published the USB4 Version 2.0 spec. It adds optional support for 80Gbps bidirectional bandwidth as well as the optional ability to send or receive data at up to 120Gbps.

The USB-IF first gave us word of USB4 Version 2.0 in September, saying it would support a data transfer rate of up to 80Gbps in either direction (40Gbps per lane, four lanes total), thanks to a new physical layer architecture (PHY) based on PAM-3 signal encoding. For what it's worth, Intel also demoed Thunderbolt at 80Gbps but hasn't released an official spec yet.

USB4 Version 2.0 offers a nice potential bump over the original USB4 spec, which introduced optional support for 40Gbps operation. You just have to be sure to check the spec sheets to know what sort of performance you're getting.

Once USB4 Version 2.0 products come out, you'll be able to hit 80Gbps with USB-C passive cables that currently operate at 40Gbps, but you'll have to buy a new cable if you want a longer, active 80Gbps.

Today, the USB-IF confirmed that USB4 Version 2.0 will take things even further by optionally supporting a data transfer rate of up to 120Gbps across three lanes.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Germany dismisses cybersecurity chief over alleged Russian ties:

Germany's government has sacked its cybersecurity chief after reports of possible ties with Russian intelligence.

An interior ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday that Arne Schoenbohm had been relieved of his duties as president of the Federal Office for Information Security with immediate effect.

Media outlets reported last week that Schoenbohm could have had contacts with people involved with Russian security services through the Cyber Security Council of Germany.

The group brings together experts from public institutions and the private sector, and Schoenbohm co-founded it in 2012. Media reports said one of its members is a German company that is a subsidiary of a Russian cybersecurity firm founded by a former KGB employee.

The group, which describes itself as politically neutral, has rejected such connections as absurd.

Schoenbohm, who had been head of the German cybersecurity agency since 2016, has not commented on the reports so far. There was no immediate word on who would succeed the 53-year-old.

[...] Having said that, the ministry said it would "thoroughly investigate all known accusations".

Germany has in recent years repeatedly accused Russia of cyber espionage attempts.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns after failed budget and market turmoil

U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned Thursday following a failed tax-cutting budget that rocked financial markets and which led to a revolt within her own Conservative Party.

Truss said in a statement outside Downing Street: "We set out a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit."

"I recognize though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to announce that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party."

The party is now due to complete a leadership election within the next week, faster than the usual two-month period. Graham Brady, the Conservative politician that is in charge of leadership votes and reshuffles, told reporters he was now looking at how the vote could include Conservative MPs and the wider party members.

Truss was in office for just 44 days, on 10 of which government business was paused following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Live updates: BBC, The Guardian, CNN, NYT.

Liz Truss resigns as prime minister after Tory revolt
Liz Truss: UK prime minister resignation speech in full
Pound rallies as Liz Truss announces resignation

Liz Truss (Wikipedia).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

SpaceX's Rideshare program will now allow customers to launch a 50 kilogram payload for $275,000, down from a previous minimum of 200 kilograms for $1.1 million.

SpaceX slashes base price of smallsat rideshare program, adds "Plates"

SpaceX has rolled out an upgraded version of its Rideshare program that will allow even more small satellite operators to send their spacecraft to orbit for extremely low prices.

[...] While it technically hasn't reduced its prices, SpaceX will now allow satellites as small as 50 kilograms to book directly through the company at its virtually unbeatable rate of $5500 per kilogram. Before this change, customers with small satellites would either have to pay for all the extra capacity they weren't using, boosting their relative cost per kilogram, or arrange their launch services with a third-party aggregator like Spaceflight or Exolaunch.

Aggregators purchase slots on SpaceX's rideshare missions and then seek out numerous small satellites (usually well under 50 kilograms each) to try to reach their 200-kilogram minimum, thus ensuring that even the smallest satellites can launch for close to the advertised rate of $5500 per kilogram. As is always the case, a subcontractor has its own bills to pay and profit margins to seek, so aggregators likely charge customers quite a bit more than SpaceX's base price.

fliptop writes:

A Greek financial journalist is one of several who believe they have been targeted for surveillance by the nation's government with the help of Intellexa:

In late March 2021, Thanasis Koukakis was notified by a team of digital researchers that his phone had been infected with malware. A reporter who typically covers finance, Koukakis had been in the midst of investigating corruption issues when his device was infected. Research later showed that his phone had been under surveillance for approximately two months.

It turned out that he had been targeted with "Predator," a commercial spyware capable of infiltrating mobile phones and stealing pretty much everything inside of them—videos, pictures, text messages, search history, passwords, call logs, and more. Like a lot of other commercial spyware tools, Predator is typically sold to high-paying government clients—in this case, by a company called Cytrox. A secretive surveillance firm based in North Macedonia, Cytrox is owned by an Israeli parent company called Intellexa.

[...] The Greek government has, however, admitted to spying on Koukakis. In a parliamentary committee hearing in August, the head of the Greek equivalent of the CIA confessed that his agency had surveilled the journalist. However, the government has denied that it uses Predator or maintains any association with Intellexa.

Some interesting comments on Bruce Schneier's blog. Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Original Submission