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upstart writes:

Recent X-rays of her lungs were so bad, doctors thought she had cancer:

A woman in Washington state is facing electronic home monitoring and possible jail time after spending the past year willfully violating multiple court orders to have her active, contagious case of tuberculosis treated and to stay in isolation while doing so.

Last week, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department announced that it was "monitoring" a case of active tuberculosis in a county woman who had refused treatment.

"Most people we contact are happy to get the treatment they need," Nigel Turner, division director of Communicable Disease Control, said in a press announcement last week. "Occasionally people refuse treatment and isolation. When that happens, we take steps to help keep the community safe."

But reporting by The News Tribune discovered that the woman's refusal to heed public health guidance is a long-standing challenge for local officials. Documents filed in the Pierce County Superior Court and reviewed by the Tribune found that the woman's first court order for involuntary isolation dates back more than a year ago, to January 19, 2022.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which mostly causes disease in the lungs, though it can invade other areas of the body. It can easily turn deadly without proper treatment. M. tuberculosis is transmitted through the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes, spits, or launches bacterial cells around them. Although transmission mostly occurs from close, prolonged contact, inhaling only a few of these microscopic germs is enough to spark an infection. According to the World Health Organization, tuberculosis is one of the top infectious disease killers in the world, causing 1.6 million deaths in 2021.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/netflix-taps-ai-image-synthesis-for-background-art-in-the-dog-and-the-boy/

Over the past year, generative AI has kicked off a wave of existential dread over potential machine-fueled job loss not seen since the advent of the industrial revolution. On Tuesday, Netflix reinvigorated that fear when it debuted a short film called Dog and Boy that utilizes AI image synthesis to help generate its background artwork.

Directed by Ryotaro Makihara, the three-minute animated short follows the story of a boy and his robotic dog through cheerful times, although the story soon takes a dramatic turn toward the post-apocalyptic. Along the way, it includes lush backgrounds apparently created as a collaboration between man and machine, credited to "AI (+Human)" in the end credit sequence.

[...] Netflix and the production company WIT Studio tapped Japanese AI firm Rinna for assistance with generating the images. They did not announce exactly what type of technology Rinna used to generate the artwork, but the process looks similar to a Stable Diffusion-powered "img2img" process than can take an image and transform it based on a written prompt.

Related:
ChatGPT Can't be Credited as an Author, Says World's Largest Academic Publisher
90% of Online Content Could be 'Generated by AI by 2025,' Expert Says
Getty Images Targets AI Firm For 'Copying' Photos
Controversy Erupts Over Non-consensual AI Mental Health Experiment
Microsoft's New AI Can Simulate Anyone's Voice With Three Seconds of Audio
AI Everything, Everywhere
Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI Sued for $9B in Damages Over Piracy
Adobe Stock Begins Selling AI-Generated Artwork
AI Systems Can't Patent Inventions, US Federal Circuit Court Confirms

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Dell is cutting 6,650 jobs amid falling demand for PCs:

Computer manufacturer Dell is set to cut about 6,650 jobs representing 5 percent of its global workforce, according to a report from Bloomberg. Announced in a memo on Monday, Dell Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said that the company's previous cost-cutting measures, such as a pause on hiring and limitations on travel, have proved insufficient, and that the company is experiencing market conditions that "continue to erode with an uncertain future."

The layoffs were announced in the face of falling demand for PCs and laptops. Following a surge in PC sales during the global covid pandemic, most major computing manufacturers are now seeing a sharp drop in demand. Industry analyst IDC reported a 37 percent decline in Dell's computer shipments during its recent holiday quarter compared to the same three-month period the previous year. Bloomberg reports that 55 percent of Dell's revenue is generated from PC sales.

After the layoffs, Dell will have 39,000 fewer global employees compared to its peak in January 2020.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT, has ramped up its hiring around the world, bringing on roughly 1,000 remote contractors over the past six months in regions like Latin America and Eastern Europe, according to people familiar with the matter:

About 60% of the contractors were hired to do what's called "data labeling" — creating massive sets of images, audio clips, and other information that can then be used to train artificial intelligence tools or autonomous vehicles.

The other 40% are computer programmers who are creating data for OpenAI's models to learn software engineering tasks. OpenAI's existing Codex product, launched in Aug. 2021, is designed to translate natural language into code.

[...] Previously, OpenAI trained its models on code scraped from GitHub, a repository site owned by its largest investor, Microsoft, which last week confirmed multi billion dollars in new funding first reported by Semafor. But in this case, OpenAI appears to be building a dataset that includes not just lines of code, but also the human explanations behind them written in natural language.

[...] Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, recently put the company's headcount at 375 people, a tiny number compared to the thousands of staff at tech giants like Google and Facebook working on artificial intelligence. "I know I'm not supposed to brag about OpenAI," he tweeted, touting the company's "talent density."

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Previously: Why OpenAI's Codex Won't Replace Coders

Related: OpenAI and Microsoft Announce Extended, Multi-Billion-Dollar Partnership

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A recent study shows that top-of-the-line Android phones sold in China are a total privacy nightmare:

New research suggests that users of top-of-the-line Android devices sold in China are getting their personal data pilfered left, right and center, according to new research. The collection, which is happening without notification or consent, could easily lead to the persistent tracking of users and the easy unmasking of their identities.

A study published by computer scientists at several different universities reveals that phone makers like Xiamoi, OnePlus, and Oppo Realme, some of the most popular in China, are all collecting massive amounts of sensitive user data via their respective operating systems, as are a variety of apps that come pre-installed on the phones. The data is also getting hoovered up by an assortment of other private actors, and researchers worry that the devices in question "send a worrying amount of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) not only to the device vendor but also to service providers like Baidu and to Chinese mobile network operators." Given private industry's close relationship with the Chinese government, it's more than enough to raise the specter of broader surveillance concerns for mobile users in China.

The PII being collected includes pretty sensitive stuff, including basic user information like phone numbers and persistent device identifiers (IMEI and MAC addresses, advertising IDs, and more), geolocation data (which, obviously, would allow an observer to unmask your physical location), and data related to "social connections"—such as contacts, their phone numbers, and phone and text metadata, the study found. In other words, the recipients of this data would have a pretty clear picture of who is using a particular device, where they are doing it, and who they're talking to. Phone numbers in China are also tied to an individual "citizen ID," meaning that it's inextricably tied to the user's real, legal identity.

upstart writes:

Scientists Simulate the Human GI Tract in Mice:

A team of biologists and pathologists in Ohio has successfully modeled the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract in rodents. By planting tiny balls of human intestinal tissue into the abdomens of mice and allowing those tissues to take root, the scientists have created a working environment in which they can study GI physiology and immunology without human test subjects.

[...] Thanks to pluripotent stem cells' ability to become any bodily cell, the team could "feed" them a specific growth protein until they became intestinal cells. In less than a month, these cells had formed tiny balls of tissue known as organoids.

Next, the team used Busulfan (a common chemotherapy drug) and genetic engineering to suppress the immune systems of their test mice. This would ensure the lab-grown organoids wouldn't be rejected. The scientists transplanted one organoid next to each test mouse's kidneys, then monitored the organoids' growth over the span of 20 weeks. By the end of this period, the organoids had grown to the size of a pea. Better yet, they contained roughly 20 types of human immune cells, mimicking the immune population in the human GI tract.

Journal Reference:
Bouffi, Carine, Wikenheiser-Brokamp, Kathryn A., Chaturvedi, Praneet, et al. In vivo development of immune tissue in human intestinal organoids transplanted into humanized mice [open], Nature Biotechnology (DOI: 10.1038/s41587-022-01558-x)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Samsung's Android build is 4x bigger than Google's—twice the size of Windows 11:

As a smartphone operating system, Android strives to be a lightweight OS so it can run on a variety of hardware. The first version of the OS had to squeeze into the T-Mobile G1, with only a measly 256MB of internal storage for Android and all your apps, and ever since then, the idea has been to use as few resources as possible. Unless you have the latest Samsung phone, where Android somehow takes up an incredible 60GB of storage.

Yes, the Galaxy S23 is slowly trickling out to the masses, and, as Esper's senior technical editor Mishaal Rahman highlights in a storage space survey, Samsung's new phone is way out of line with most of the ecosystem. Several users report the phone uses around 60GB for the system partition right out of the box. If you have a 128GB phone, that's nearly half your storage for the Android OS and packed-in apps. That's four times the size of the normal Pixel 7 Pro system partition, which is 15GB. It's the size of two Windows 11 installs, side by side. What could Samsung possibly be putting in there?!

[...] Unlike the clean OSes you'd get from Google or Apple, Samsung sells space in its devices to the highest bidder via pre-installed crapware. A company like Facebook will buy a spot on Samsung's system partition, where it can get more intrusive system permissions that aren't granted to app store apps, letting it more effectively spy on users. You'll also usually find Netflix, Microsoft Office, Spotify, Linkedin, and who knows what else. Another round of crapware will also be included if you buy a phone from a carrier, i.e., all the Verizon apps and whatever space they want to sell to third parties. The average amount users are reporting is 60GB, but crapware deals change across carriers and countries, so it will be different for everyone.

upstart writes:

Netflix's password sharing crackdown hasn't even launched yet in the States, but is already a public relations mess:

The plan is to try to force Netflix customers to pay an extra $2-$3 every month for service for any users using your credentials outside of the home. An accidentally leaked Netflix help guide last week indicated that users who don't log into their Netflix account in a 31 day period would face the new surcharges, something that didn't go over well with either users or celebrities that travel a lot.

The company was then forced to backtrack, stating the guides were posted in error, and intended for customers in countries like Chile and Peru where the crackdown had already launched. Those efforts, as we'd mentioned previously, were also reportedly a confusing mess for subscribers in those countries, who say it was never really clear how the inconsistently-enforced system actually worked.

Netflix is embracing the move because the company's growth has hit a wall internationally, forcing it to begin nickel-and-diming existing subscribers if Wall Street is to get its improved quarterly returns.

[...] The question then is: is that modest bump in revenue worth alienating and annoying your existing customers in a competitive streaming market? We're apparently going to find out.

To be clear, I still think Netflix has value at its current monthly rate, and many people who complain about the new rate hikes are lazy and likely won't cancel. On the flip side, this move remains the latest signal from the company that it's done with being innovative and disruptive and has, as publicly traded companies usually do, shifted toward nickel-and-diming and turf protection as it attempts to fend off competitors.

Previously:
    Netflix Fights Password-Sharing With Test of $3 "Extra Member" Fee
    Netflix to Start Testing Warnings for People Borrowing Login Info

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://ryancor.medium.com/hardware-trojans-under-a-microscope-bf542acbcc29

While the security industry generally focuses on software cyber attacks, we can't forget the security impact of lower level hardware flaws, such as those that affect semiconductors. The surface for silicon level attacks has widened over the past several years; as integrated circuit (IC) fabrication evolves for increasingly advanced microelectronics, the risk of flaws creeping into these complex systems also increases.

This article gives an overview and background of Hardware Trojans including netlists, die preparations, electron microscope images, and circuit testing. We will additionally be making our own physical layout design of a Hardware Trojan that will be analyzed using Klayout.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Servers running unpatched versions of ESXi are sitting ducks for ESXiArgs attacks:

An explosion of cyberattacks is infecting servers around the world with crippling ransomware by exploiting a vulnerability that was patched two years ago, it was widely reported on Monday.

The hacks exploit a flaw in ESXi, a hypervisor VMware sells to cloud hosts and other large-scale enterprises to consolidate their hardware resources. ESXi is what's known as a bare-metal, or Type 1, hypervisor, meaning it's essentially its own operating system that runs directly on server hardware. By contrast, servers running the more familiar Type 2 class of hypervisors, such as VMware's VirtualBox, run as apps on top of a host operating system. The Type 2 hypervisors then run virtual machines that host their own guest OSes, such as Windows, Linux, or, less commonly, macOS.

[...] The vulnerability being exploited to infect the servers is CVE-2021-21974, which stems from a heap-based buffer overflow in OpenSLP, an open network-discovery standard that's incorporated into ESXi. When VMware patched the vulnerability in February 2021, the company warned it could be exploited by a malicious actor with access to the same network segment over port 427. The vulnerability had a severity rating of 8.8 out of a possible 10. Proof-of-concept exploit code and instructions for using it became available a few months later.

[...] Researchers from the YoreGroup Tech Team, Enes Sonmez and Ahmet Aykac, reported that the encryption process for ESXiArgs can make mistakes that allow victims to restore encrypted data. OVH's Levrard said his team tested the restoration process the researchers described and found it successful in about two-thirds of the attempts.

Anyone who relies on ESXi should stop whatever they're doing and check to ensure patches for CVE-2021-21974 have been installed. The above-linked advisories also provide more guidance for locking down servers that use this hypervisor.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Vitamin D deficiency increases risk of losing muscle strength by 78%:

Vitamin D plays an important role in the regulation of calcium and phosphorus absorption by the organism. It also helps keep the brain and immune system working. Researchers at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil and University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom have now shown that vitamin D supplementation reduces the risk of dynapenia in older people by 78%.

Dynapenia is an age-associated loss of muscle strength. It can be partially explained by muscle atrophy and is a major risk factor for physical incapacity later in life. People with dynapenia are more likely to fall, need to go to hospital, be prematurely institutionalized, and die.

[...] "Vitamin D is known to participate in various functions of the organism. Actually, it's a hormone and its many roles include helping to repair muscles and releasing calcium for muscle contraction kinetics. It was therefore expected to cause muscle alterations of some kind. That's exactly what our study proved," said Tiago da Silva Alexandre, last author of the article. Alexandre is a professor of gerontology at UFSCar.

Bone and muscle tissue are interconnected not just mechanically and physically but also biochemically. "Endocrine disorders such as vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency can lead to loss of bone mineral density as well as a reduction in muscle mass, strength and function," he said.

[...] Our body only synthesizes vitamin D when large areas of skin are exposed to sunlight, Alexandre recalled. "It's necessary to explain to people that they risk losing muscle strength if they don't get enough vitamin D. They need to expose themselves to the sun, eat food rich in vitamin D or take a supplement, and do resistance training exercises to maintain muscle strength," he said.

Journal Reference:
Delinocente, M.L.B., Luiz, M.M., de Oliveira, D.C. et al. Are Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Deficiency and Insufficiency Risk Factors for the Incidence of Dynapenia?. Calcif Tissue Int 111, 571–579 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00223-022-01021-8

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Curiosity Rover Finds Foot-Long Meteorite on Martian Surface:

The rock, dubbed Cacao, is made of iron and nickel, NASA says.

Cacao was first spotted on January 27, in the shadow of the Curiosity rover. The next day, Curiosity repositioned itself to better image the large rock.

It's not the first meteorite Curiosity has spotted. In 2014, the rover found an iron meteorite (nicknamed Lebanon) that measured about 6.5 feet across, and in 2016, it came across a golf ball-sized meteorite nicknamed Egg Rock on the planet's Mount Sharp.

Iron meteorites like these regularly crop up on Earth and have caused stirs throughout human history. Japanese emperors and the pharaoh Tutankhamun had weapons forged from iron meteorites.

There's no way to date the meteorites, the rover team said on Twitter, but the newly discovered rock "could have been here millions of years!"

Cacao was found on Curiosity's 3,724th sol. The rover arrived on Mars in August 2012, and since then has explored the planet's Gale Crater and Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high mountain in the crater's center.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/until-further-notice-think-twice-before-using-google-to-download-software/

Searching Google for downloads of popular software has always come with risks, but over the past few months, it has been downright dangerous, according to researchers and a pseudorandom collection of queries.

"Threat researchers are used to seeing a moderate flow of malvertising via Google Ads," volunteers at Spamhaus wrote on Thursday. "However, over the past few days, researchers have witnessed a massive spike affecting numerous famous brands, with multiple malware being utilized. This is not 'the norm.'"

The surge is coming from numerous malware families, including AuroraStealer, IcedID, Meta Stealer, RedLine Stealer, Vidar, Formbook, and XLoader. In the past, these families typically relied on phishing and malicious spam that attached Microsoft Word documents with booby-trapped macros. Over the past month, Google Ads has become the go-to place for criminals to spread their malicious wares that are disguised as legitimate downloads by impersonating brands such as Adobe Reader, Gimp, Microsoft Teams, OBS, Slack, Tor, and Thunderbird.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Companies are increasingly dropping four-year college degree requirements for their jobs and putting more emphasis on experience. And that is not just entry-level jobs:

A third of those who dropped degree requirements did so for senior-level roles, a recent survey found.

The survey of HR managers by Intelligent.com found 53% of hiring managers said their company eliminated the requirement for a bachelor's degree for some roles in the past year.

"For so many jobs, it is an arbitrary requirement. And it does eliminate people needlessly who could be great employees," said Stacie Haller, a career coach who worked with Intelligent.com for its report.

[...] What companies are increasingly focused on is experience, with 76% of hiring managers surveyed saying they favor real world skills over education.

Evaluating those skills in real-time is proving successful. The vast majority of companies now test candidates in the interview process, and 66% say they have candidates take an assessment to test hard skills. Sixty-four percent say they have applicants complete a test assignment.

Full survey results and methodology available at Intelligent.com.

Previously: America Needs to Get Over its Reverence for the Bachelor's Degree

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/04/australian-approval-of-mdma-and-psilocybin-a-baby-step-in-the-right-direction-medical-experts-say

The Therapeutic Goods Administration announced on Friday that, from July, approved psychiatrists would be able to prescribe MDMA (ecstasy) for post-traumatic stress disorder and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) for treatment-resistant depression. The move makes Australia the first country in the world to officially recognise psychedelics as medicines.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists president, associate professor Vinay Lakra, said the college "cautiously welcomed" the decision, and had been monitoring ongoing research in the area.

"We need to take some baby steps rather than one giant leap," he said. "So this is a baby step in the right direction and what it does is allow us to do things in an appropriately safe way for everyone ... and if necessary take a step back as well."

[...] Psychiatrists will need to get approval by a human research ethics committee, then approval under the TGA's authorised prescriber scheme. To get those approvals they must demonstrate their training, robust patient selection and evidence-based treatment protocols, as well as patient monitoring. They must also satisfy governance and reporting criteria.

"These measures are necessary because there is only limited evidence that the substances are of benefit in treating mental illnesses, and only in controlled medical settings," the TGA said in a statement.