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canopic jug writes:

The Atlantic Council has published a policy report entitled "Avoiding the success trap: Toward policy for open-source software as infrastructure". It addresses the idea of Open Source Software (OSS) as essential infrastructure. OSS differs from physical infrastructure yet supports critical functions, provides dependable services, offers subtle and often unseen service delivery, and functions through decentralized control.

This report aims to develop tangible example policies for the United States and European Union to support OSS as infrastructure and point policymakers toward existing policy vehicles that government can readily modify and adopt to better support and engage with the OSS ecosystem. The report does not seek to make definitive statements about what open source is or is not through these analogies. Rather the goal is to capture a snapshot of its most essential features and most consequential participants. Any of the analogies can be extended far past usefulness, and policymakers should approach each keeping in mind the essential truth that, while all models are wrong, some (including, we believe, these) are useful, nonetheless. Before diving into the analogies though, this report looks to discuss the open-source ecosystem as it is, highlighting key principles and addressing common misconceptions.

[...] None of this report reflects a belief that OSS is inherently insecure, but rather that it is uniquely central to modern digital systems and that relationships with the OSS community are necessarily, and substantively, different than those government has grown accustomed to with industry and industry within itself. Sustainable use emphasizes the user responsibility for much of the risk associated with software use, including OSS, and addresses OSS-specific features of development and contribution possibly only with open-source code. Addressing systemic risk is an important step for policy efforts to support the security and sustainability of OSS projects with an accurate picture of the considerable interdependency between code bases. Finally, governments must step up to support OSS as the infrastructure that it is. These resources should come alongside expanded private sector support and can manifest in targeted formats as well as a more general support model, the OSS Trust. OSS is infrastructure, and the provision of support for it as such will permit more rapid adoption and considerable innovation in even critical domains of economic and government activity.

So it seems that the establishment continues to turn its jaundiced eye towards software development.

Previously:
(2023) Opinion: FOSS Could be an Unintended Victim of EU Security Crusade
(2022) Honoring Peter Eckersley, Who Made the Internet a Safer Place for Everyone
(2022) Open Source Community Sets Out Path to Secure Software

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Used or new, does not matter:

As the U.S. government is gearing up to put even stricter constraints on the Chinese semiconductor sector, China-based chipmakers are accelerating their purchases of wafer fab equipment (WFE) to ensure the continuous operation of their fabs. However, Chinese companies prefer to keep these transactions under the radar as some violate U.S. sanctions, reports DigiTimes.

Companies like SMIC, HuaHong, Nexchip, and Silan Microelectronics are buying everything they can, including second-hand tools, according to the story that cites anonymous industrial sources. Some of the WFE they procure cannot be shipped to China as this would violate the U.S.-imposed sanctions, which is precisely the reason why parties prefer to keep such purchases low profile.

Interestingly, even Huawei — which is under severe sanctions by the U.S. government and legally cannot procure anything containing advanced U.S. technology without permission — is stepping up purchasing wafer fab tools. Perhaps, as it is prepping to build a fab with SMIC, it wants to get as many tools as possible.

Previously: U.S. Sanctions Against China Could Hurt Own Domestic Industry: Semiconductor Industry Association

Related:

• Netherlands Refuses to Summarily Agree to US Export Restrictions on China Over Silicon Chips
• Huawei Patents EUV Lithography Tools Used to Make <10nm Chips

Original Submission

upstart writes:

GitHub built a new code-focused search engine in Rust because popular text search engines couldn't scale enough:

The Rust programming language continues to grow in popularity and now developer platform GitHub has used it to build its new code-focused search engine, Blackbird.

Instead of perusing forums for answers, GitHub wants users to use its search engine, which is currently in beta.

[...] "At first glance, building a search engine from scratch seems like a questionable decision. Why would you do that? Aren't there plenty of existing, open source solutions out there already? Why build something new?" writes GitHub's Timothy Clem.

His short answer is that GitHub hasn't found success using general text search products to power code search.

"The user experience is poor, indexing is slow, and it's expensive to host. There are some newer, code-specific open source projects out there, but they definitely don't work at GitHub's scale," he writes.

[...] The Rust-written custom search engine, Blackbird, is more efficient and gives GitHub "substantial storage savings via deduplication and guarantees a uniform load distribution across shards", according to Pavel Avgustinov, VP of software engineering at GitHub.

He argues GitHub's scale means it can't use a Unix 'grep' (global regular expression print) for search. In effect, it would be too slow when considering the possibility of processing hundred of terabytes of code in memory. Queries would take too long.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

There has never been a better time to get a job in climate tech:

Nations and corporations are setting ambitious carbon goals. The U.S. government is enacting plans unleashing billions of dollars to address climate change. Many investors remain bullish on climate tech startups. Job prospects in the space are relatively rosy while traditional tech giants layoff thousands.

Climate career opportunities include everything from installing solar panels and electric vehicle charging devices to innovating cutting-edge climate tech hardware and software.

At first it seemed like a niche sector for new jobs, said Yin Lu, partner with MCJ Collective. But now "it's literally everywhere," she said.

New evidence keeps emerging on job growth in the sector, and there are even warnings about shortages of both blue- and white-collar climate workers. On the installation and manufacturing side, U.S. clean energy companies have announced more than 100,000 new jobs since the August passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Globally, the current 6 million jobs in clean energy manufacturing could more than double to 14 million by 2030, according to a new report from IEA, an intergovernmental nonprofit.

fliptop writes:

The new AIs draw from human-generated content, while pushing it away:

With the massive growth of ChatGPT making headlines every day, Google and Microsoft have responded by showing off AI chatbots built into their search engines. It's self-evident that AI is the future. But the future of what?

[...] Built on information from human authors, both companies' [(Microsoft's "New Bing" and Google's Bard)] AI engines are being positioned as alternatives to the articles they learned from. The end result could be a more closed web with less free information and fewer experts to offer you good advice.

[...] A lot of critics will justifiably be concerned about possible factual inaccuracies in chatbot results, but we can likely assume that, as the technology improves, it will get better at weeding out mistakes. The larger issue is that the bots are giving you advice that seems to come from nowhere – though it was obviously compiled by grabbing content from human writers whom Bard is not even crediting.

[...] I'll admit another bias. I'm a professional writer, and chatbots like those shown by Google and Bing are an existential threat to anyone who gets paid for their words. Most websites rely heavily on search as a source of traffic and, without those eyeballs, the business model of many publishers is broken. No traffic means no ads, no ecommerce clicks, no revenue and no jobs.

Eventually, some publishers could be forced out of business. Others could retreat behind paywalls and still others could block Google and Bing from indexing their content. AI bots would run out of quality sources to scrape, making their advice less reliable. And readers would either have to pay more for quality content or settle for fewer voices.

Related: 90% of Online Content Could be 'Generated by AI by 2025,' Expert Says

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Alphabet stock price drops after Google Bard launch blunder:

About 10 percent of Alphabet's market value – some $120 billion – was wiped out this week after Google proudly presented Bard, its answer to Microsoft's next-gen AI offerings, and the system bungled a simple question.

In a promotional video to show off Bard, a web search assistant to compete against Microsoft's ChatGPT-enhanced Bing, the software answered a science question incorrectly, sending Alphabet's share price down amid an overall lackluster launch by the Chocolate Factory.

Microsoft's integration of OpenAI's super-hyped language models into the Bing search engine and Edge web browser has ignited an arms race. Microsoft wants to eat into Google's web search monopoly by offering a better search engine that uses OpenAI's ChatGPT to answer queries in a conversational way with natural language rather than simple lists of links to relevant webpages.

The idea being that the bot is trained on fresh snapshots of the web, and netizens' web search requests are answered automatically by the bot with summaries of info scraped from the internet.

The Chocolate Factory is not about to give up any of its territory without a fight, though it stumbled at the first hurdle with its launch of ChatGPT rival Bard on Wednesday.

upstart writes:

Starlink can be used for military comms, but controlling drones is prohibited:

The close relationship between SpaceX and Ukraine could be strained after the company limited the country's ability to use the Starlink satellite service for offensive military purposes. The move follows reports that Ukraine has been using Starlink to control drones.

SpaceX has supplied over 25,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine and maintained them since the war began, helping keep the nation's critical infrastructure and its citizens online as Russia continues its assault.

But Ukraine is said to have been utilizing Starlink in its offensive push against the Russian military, including using it to target enemies with drones, a violation of SpaceX policies.

Speaking at a conference in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday (via Reuters), SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said Starlink was never meant to be weaponized.

"However, Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement," she said, referring to reports that Starlink had been used to control Ukraine's drones. "There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that [controlling the drones]," she said, "There are things that we can do, and have done."

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Scientists are trying to understand the impact this huge prominence will have on Earth:

The Sun has always fascinated astronomers. And now, a new development has baffled scientists. A huge part of the Sun broke off of its surface and created a tornado-like swirl around its North Pole. Though scientists are trying to analyse how this occurred, the video of the development has stunned the space community. The remarkable phenomenon was caught by NASA's James Webb telescope and shared on Twitter by Dr Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster, last week. The Sun keeps emitting solar flares (called prominence) that sometimes affect communications on Earth, hence scientists are more concerned about the latest development.

"Talk about Polar Vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our Star. Implications for understanding the Sun's atmospheric dynamics above 55 degrees here cannot be overstated!" Dr Skov said in a tweet last week.

According to NASA, the prominence is a large bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. There have been several such instances in the past but this one has stumped the scientific community.

[...] Space scientists are now analyzing the strange event to gather more details about it and present a clearer picture.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

An AI 'Engineer' Has Now Designed 100 Chips:

[...] AI firm Synopsys has announced that its DSO.ai tool has successfully aided in the design of 100 chips, and it expects that upward trend to continue.

Companies like STMicroelectronics and SK Hynix have turned to Synopsys to accelerate semiconductor designs in an increasingly competitive environment. The past few years have seen demand for new chips increase while materials and costs have rocketed upward. Therefore, companies are looking for ways to get more done with less, and that's what tools like DSO.ai are all about.

The tool can search design spaces, telling its human masters how best to arrange components to optimize power, performance, and area, or PPA as it's often called. Among those 100 AI-assisted chip designs, companies have seen up to a 25% drop in power requirements and a 3x productivity increase for engineers. SK Hynix says a recent DSO.ai project resulted in a 15% cell area reduction and a 5% die shrink.

[...] With all the AI innovations of late, it is starting to feel like a sea change in how we create things. OpenAI's ChatGPT, now embedded in Microsoft's products, can write stories, create computer code, and answer search queries in natural language. Meanwhile, OpenAI's Dall-e can win art competitions with AI-generated art. AI also plays a larger role in gaming, with many titles supporting AI upsampling technologies like DLSS.

Original Submission

US NIST Unveils Winning Encryption Algorithm for IoT Data Protection

fliptop writes:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that ASCON is the winning bid for the "lightweight cryptography" program to find the best algorithm to protect small IoT (Internet of Things) devices with limited hardware resources:

Small IoT devices are becoming increasingly popular and omnipresent, used in wearable tech, "smart home" applications, etc. However, they are still used to store and handle sensitive personal information, such as health data, financial details, and more.

That said, implementing a standard for encrypting data is crucial in securing people's data. However, the weak chips inside these devices call for an algorithm that can deliver robust encryption at very little computational power.

"The world is moving toward using small devices for lots of tasks ranging from sensing to identification to machine control, and because these small devices have limited resources, they need security that has a compact implementation," stated Kerry McKay, a computer scientist at NIST.

[...] ASCON was eventually picked as the winner for being flexible, encompassing seven families, energy efficient, speedy on weak hardware, and having low overhead for short messages.

NIST also considered that the algorithm had withstood the test of time, having been developed in 2014 by a team of cryptographers from Graz University of Technology, Infineon Technologies, Lamarr Security Research, and Radboud University, and winning the CAESAR cryptographic competition's "lightweight encryption" category in 2019.

More info at the algorithm's Website and the technical paper submitted to NIST in May 2021.

Related:

• NIST Drafts Revised Guidelines for Digital Identification in Federal Systems
• NIST Calls Time on SHA-1, Sets 2030 Deadline

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes:

2024 Mercedes-Benz eSprinter electric van coming to the U.S.:

Mercedes-Benz might be known for luxury cars, but it also makes vans, and it's finally bringing an electric van to the United States.

Scheduled to start production this summer, the 2024 Mercedes-Benz eSprinter is an all-electric version of the Sprinter full-size cargo van that's already a favorite of delivery services like FedEx and Amazon, as well as camper van converters. While the automaker has been selling electric vans in Europe since 2010, the new eSprinter is the first one aimed at the U.S. market.

[...] Mercedes will offer multiple configurations of body style and pack size in other markets, but for now, the U.S.-spec eSprinter is offered exclusively as a high-roof, long-wheelbase cargo van with a 113-kilowatt-hour battery pack. The rear-wheel drive van is powered by a single electric motor with 134 horsepower or 201 hp outputs, both with 295 pound-feet of torque. Full range figures aren't available yet, but Mercedes estimates 248.5 miles on the more lenient European  Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP) testing cycle.

The battery cells use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry similar to what is used in some entry-level Tesla models. It's a somewhat cheaper alternative to other lithium-ion chemistries and, Mercedes notes, eliminates the use of cobalt and nickel, costly minerals that have generated concerns over pollution and human rights abuses related to their mining. A 115-kilowatt DC fast charger can take the pack from 10% to 80% in 42 minutes, according to Mercedes. A slower 9.6-kW AC charger is included as well.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Just three minutes of exposure to deep red light once a week, when delivered in the morning, can significantly improve declining eyesight:

Published in Scientific Reports, the study builds on the team's previous work*, which showed daily three-minute exposure to longwave deep red light 'switched on' energy producing mitochondria cells in the human retina, helping boost naturally declining vision.

For this latest study, scientists wanted to establish what effect a single three-minute exposure would have, while also using much lower energy levels than their previous studies. Furthermore, building on separate UCL research in flies** that found mitochondria display 'shifting workloads' depending on the time of day, the team compared morning exposure to afternoon exposure.

In summary, researchers found there was, on average, a 17% improvement in participants' colour contrast vision when exposed to three minutes of 670 nanometre (long wavelength) deep red light in the morning and the effects of this single exposure lasted for at least a week. However, when the same test was conducted in the afternoon, no improvement was seen.

[...] "This simple intervention applied at the population level would significantly impact on quality of life as people age and would likely result in reduced social costs that arise from problems associated with reduced vision."

[...] Professor Jeffery said: "Using a simple LED device once a week, recharges the energy system that has declined in the retina cells, rather like re-charging a battery.

"And morning exposure is absolutely key to achieving improvements in declining vision: as we have previously seen in flies, mitochondria have shifting work patterns and do not respond in the same way to light in the afternoon – this study confirms this."

Journal Reference:
Shinhmar, H., Hogg, C., Neveu, M. et al. Weeklong improved colour contrasts sensitivity after single 670 nm exposures associated with enhanced mitochondrial function [open]. Sci Rep 11, 22872 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02311-1

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A new experiment creates data-storing holograms from spiraling particles of light.:

Particles of twisted light that have been entangled using quantum mechanics offer a new approach to dense and secure data storage.

Holograms that produce 3-D images and serve as security features on credit cards are usually made with patterns laid down with beams of laser light. In recent years, physicists have found ways to create holograms with entangled photons instead. Now there is, literally, a new twist to the technology.

Entangled photons that travel in corkscrew paths have resulted in holograms that offer the possibility of dense and ultrasecure data encryption, researchers report in a study to appear in Physical Review Letters.

[...] Like any other photons, the twisted versions can be entangled so that they essentially act as one entity. Something that affects one of an entangled photon pair instantly affects the other, even if they are very far apart.

[...] Now the same approach has been applied to record data in holograms. Instead of transmitting information on multiple, twisted light channels, photon pairs with different amounts of twist create distinct sets of data in a single hologram. The more orbital angular momentum states involved, each with different amounts of twist, the more data researchers can pack into a hologram.

upstart writes:

The company's prototype is a smaller version of the nuclear reactor it's hoping to send to the Moon by 2029:

Rolls-Royce Holdings is getting into the spaceflight industry. The British aerospace engineering company says it's developing a micro-nuclear reactor that the company hopes could be a source of fuel for long trips to the Moon and Mars.

As humanity begins to venture back into space, with crewed missions scheduled to visit the Moon and Mars within the next two decades, the technology that moves us throughout the solar system will be a pivotal part of that journey. Last week, Rolls-Royce teased the design of its Rolls-Royce micro-reactor for spaceflight with a digital mockup posted to Twitter last week.

[...] Rolls-Royce Holdings announced in 2021 its intent to develop nuclear reactor technology, having obtained $600 million in public and private funding to develop its business. Since the nuclear reactor won't have to carry as much fuel as a chemical propulsion rocket, the entire system will be lighter allowing for faster travel or increased payloads. The company says that the reactor could serve as both a new form of propulsion and a power source for bases on the Moon or Mars, and Rolls-Royce claims that they will have a nuclear reactor ready to send to the Moon by 2029.

Rolls-Royce is not the only party working on rocket propulsion outside of traditional chemical fuel. NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a collaboration to develop a thermal rocket engine that could improve the time it takes to get to deep space. Likewise, NASA had a successful test of a rotating detonation rocket engine, which uses less fuel and provides more thrust than current propulsion systems.

[...] A previous version of this article stated that Rolls-Royce is entering the nuclear reactor business. While this is the company's first public effort at space-based nuclear reactors, it has been supplying submarines with small reactors since the 1960s.

Original Submission

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.