SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Canonical announces real-time Ubuntu kernel:

Real-time Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is now generally available. The new kernel supports low-latency requirements for industrial, telecommunications, automotive, aerospace and defense industries.

The real-time Ubuntu 22.04 LTS from publisher Canonical was released on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. Enterprises running the open source operating system can now run more demanding workloads and develop a wide range of time-sensitive applications, Canonical said.

As a real-time solution, it was designed to minimize the response time guarantee within a specified deadline. With a new enterprise-grade real-time kernel, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS can keep up with stringent low-latency requirements such as smart factory applications.

The newest release is based on the 5.15 version of the Linux kernel. It includes Arm architecture and the out-of-tree PREEMPT_RT patches for x86, which reduces kernel latencies. Arm has a part in projects like software-defined vehicles, smart industrial 4.0 factories, 5G vRAN functionality and energy-efficient Arm-based hyperscale data centers.

upstart writes:

There Is No 'Going Dark:' Dutch Law Enforcement Spent Months Intercepting, Reading Encrypted Messages:

To hear consecutive FBI directors tell it, unless legislators are willing to mandate encryption backdoors, the criminals (including terrorists!) will win. That's the only option — at least according to Jim Comey and Chris Wray — given that the FBI, with its billions in funding and wealth of brainpower, is apparently unable to decrypt files and devices simply by waving a warrant at them.

All evidence points to the contrary. What FBI directors refer to as "going dark" is actually just the temporary blindness that results from staring directly at the Golden Age of Surveillance sun. While FBI directors waste their time making everyone stupider, law enforcement agencies around the world (including the one represented by these particular misguided loudmouths) are putting plans into action.

Twice in 2021 alone, investigators around the world announced the end results of long investigations that involved taking over message servers or otherwise compromising encrypted communication services that were allegedly marketed almost exclusively to criminals. The FBI, in conjunction with Australian law enforcement, subverted and ran an encrypted messaging server for three years, intercepting millions of messages — something that led to hundreds of arrests around the world. A second investigation targeted a Canadian encrypted service provider, resulting in a number of charges being brought against its CEO.

hubie writes:

A Multifaceted Sensation:

The delicate fragrance of jasmine is a delight to the senses. The sweet scent is popular in teas, perfumes and potpourri. But take a whiff of the concentrated essential oil, and the pleasant aroma becomes almost cloying. Indeed, part of the flower's smell comes from the compound skatole, a prominent component of fecal odor.

Our sense of smell is clearly a complex process; it involves hundreds of different odorant receptors working in concert. The more an odor stimulates a particular neuron, the more electrical signals that neuron sends to the brain. But researchers at UC Santa Barbara discovered that these neurons actually fall silent when an odor rises above a certain threshold. Remarkably, this was integral to how the brain recognized each smell. "It's a feature; it's not a bug," said Matthieu Louis, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology.

The paradoxical finding, published in Science Advances, shakes up our understanding of olfaction. "The same odor can be represented by very different patterns of active olfactory sensory neurons at different concentrations," Louis said. "This might explain why some odors can be perceived as very different to us at low, medium and very high concentrations. Consider for instance the smell of a ripe banana from a distance (sweet and fruity) versus up-close (overpowering and artificial)."

Snotnose writes:

In one of the odder stories from WWII, a submarine destroyed a train.

In August 1945, eight members of the crew of the USS Barb posed for a photo at Pearl Harbor holding up the submarine's battle flag. The different patches on the flag represented the boat's myriad accomplishments over 12 patrols in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. Seventeen ships sunk, a Presidential Unit Citation awarded following its 11th patrol, and the Medal of Honor was awarded to the ship's captain, Cmdr. Eugene Fluckey. But, most unusual, the flag also featured a kill marking for a train. Yes, a train.

[...] In the Sea of Okhotsk, Fluckey and the crew observed the rail line. After several days, Fluckey and the chief of the boat, a 26-year-old sailor named Paul Golden "Swish" Saunders, devised a plan. Saunders was the most experienced submariner aboard — he had joined the Navy when he was 17 and had served on the USS Barb since it was commissioned, sailing from the coast of North Africa to the North Pacific, for all of the submarine's 12 patrols.

[...] The USS Barb returned from its final patrol to Midway Island on Aug. 2, 1945, one of the most decorated U.S. Navy submarines of the war, and also the only submarine to have ever sunk a train.

You weren't expecting spoilers were you? JR.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

To date, astronomers have predicted 7 asteroid impacts in advance of their collision with Earth (and another 2 unconfirmed). 2023 CX₁ was an approximately meter-sized asteroid discovered on February 12 by Krisztián Sárneczky. Observatories announced its impending strike a few hours in advance, giving photographers a chance to aim their cameras at the expected landing site in Normandy, France:

Dramatic footage of the meteoroid was captured on multiple cameras, with the event even being picked up by a police car in England. It is just the seventh time space agencies have been able to forewarn an asteroid impact.

"[It is] a sign of the rapid advances in global detection capabilities," writes the European Space Agency (ESA) on Twitter.

Videos filmed in both England and France capture people's amazement as the asteroid burns up and detonates in Earth's atmosphere.

"I saw a post on Facebook saying that it was expected at 03:00 so I just stood at my window and turned on my phone," says Becky who witnessed the asteroid. "I wasn't expecting much but it really was amazing."

Dutch photographer Gijs de Reijke drove to the French city of Le Havre to capture an astonishing shot of the asteroid. He took a 30-second exposure on a Nikon D850 with a 70-300mm set at 135mm, the amazing photos highlight the bright colors of the asteroid.

Another photographer, David L, captured the asteroid from Le Mans, France.

Gijs de Reijke and David Legangneux photos.

Previously: 2018 LA: The Third Asteroid Discovered on an Impact Trajectory With Earth
An Asteroid Hit Earth Right After Being Spotted by Telescope This Week

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The telecoms providers said the upcoming platform is designed to give customers control over their data which is currently collected by 'major, non-European players':

The European Commission has approved a joint venture to create a new digital advertising platform and challenge current Big Tech dominance.

The new venture is being organised by Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone, which claim to be working on a "privacy-by-design" platform that requires opt-in consent by the consumer to activate brand advertising.

[...] Orange said the four telecoms providers will have an equal stake in the new joint venture company, which will be based in Belgium and run by independent management. The platform is based on a project first launched by Vodafone to create a digital advertising service for Europe.

The platform creates a digital token for the user, which lets brands and publishers recognise users on websites in a near-anonymous state. The companies believe this will allow advertisers to group users and tailor content to them, while retaining privacy control for the user.

The move appears to be aimed at the current control Big Tech companies have over the digital advertising market, based on a statement released by Orange.

"The platform is specifically designed to offer consumers a step change in the control, transparency and protection of their data, which is currently collected, distributed and stored at scale by major, non-European players," the statement said.

The commission conducted an investigation and said the joint venture will raise "no competition concerns" in the EEA.

The European Commission noted that there would still be alternative options available and that the joint venture will not restrict rival providers of digital identification services.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The automaker closed a hole that allowed a security researcher to gain system administrator access to more than 14,000 corporate and partner accounts and troves of sensitive data:

An ethical hacker found a backdoor in a Web app used by Toyota employees and suppliers for coordinating tasks related to the automaker's global supply chain, gaining control of the global system merely by knowing the email address of one of its users.

Security researcher Eaton Zveare revealed this week that in October, he found the backdoor login mechanism in the Toyota Global Supplier Preparation Information Management System (GSPIMS) Web portal, a site used by Toyota employees and their suppliers to coordinate various business activities. The backdoor allowed him to log in as any corporate user or supplier.

From there he found a system administrator email and logged in to their account, thus gaining "full control over the entire global system," he explained in a blog post about the hack.

[...] The hack demonstrates once again how a simple, overlooked flaw in an enterprise system can inadvertently give an attacker access to sensitive data and corporate accounts of a company's supply chain. This, in turn, paves the way for malicious activity that affects not only that organization but its entire ecosystem of partners, security experts noted.

[...] The researcher reported the issue to Toyota on Nov. 3 and the company reported back 20 days later that it had been fixed — a speedy response with which Zveare was "impressed," he said.

upstart writes:

Mars Curiosity rover finds unexpected evidence of water:

The key to understanding whether Mars was ever habitable is water. For life as we know it to thrive, liquid water needs to be present — and we know that even though it is now dry, there was once liquid water on the surface of Mars. However, the history of water on Mars is complex, and scientists are still debating exactly how long water was present there and when the planet dried up.

And it's about to get more complex. Recently, the Curiosity rover has made an intriguing discovery suggesting that water was once present in an area that scientists had thought would be dry.

[...] The unusual thing about this discovery is its location — the rover is currently climbing up a mountain called Mount Sharp, where the oldest layers of rock are at the bottom and younger layers are at the top. At the point the rover is currently located, around half a mile from the mountain's base, the researchers expect to find drier conditions — but instead, they found this evidence that there was once a shallow lake here.

[...] "The wave ripples, debris flows, and rhythmic layers all tell us that the story of wet-to-dry on Mars wasn't simple," Vasavada said. "Mars' ancient climate had a wonderful complexity to it, much like Earth's."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Genetic analyses also suggest mammals' social lives and life spans are evolutionarily linked:

For mammals, one secret to a long life may be spending it living with friends and family.

An analysis of the life spans and social lives of nearly 1,000 mammal species shows that species that live in groups, such as horses and chimpanzees, tend to live longer than solitary beasts, like weasels and hedgehogs. The finding suggests that life span and social traits are evolutionarily entwined in mammals, researchers report January 31 in Nature Communications.

[...] When evolutionary biologist Xuming Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing was studying the longest-lived mammals to understand the evolution of longevity, he took particular note of naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber). The rodents are exceptionally long-lived, sometimes reaching over 30 years of age. They also live in huge, complex, subterranean societies. In contrast, other rodents like golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus), which are solitary, live to only about four years.

[...] Zhou and his colleagues decided to see if there were any links between longevity and social habits shared across a wide range of mammal species.

The researchers compiled information from the scientific literature on the social organization of 974 mammal species. They then split these species into three categories: solitary, pair-living and group-living. When the researchers compared these three groups with data on the mammals' known longevity, they found that group-living mammals tended to live longer than the solitary species — roughly 22 years compared with nearly 12 years in solitary mammals.

fliptop writes:

The tool could let teachers spot plagiarism or help social media platforms fight disinformation bots:

Hidden patterns purposely buried in AI-generated texts could help identify them as such, allowing us to tell whether the words we're reading are written by a human or not.

These "watermarks" are invisible to the human eye but let computers detect that the text probably comes from an AI system. If embedded in large language models, they could help prevent some of the problems that these models have already caused.

For example, since OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT was launched in November, students have already started cheating by using it to write essays for them. News website CNET has used ChatGPT to write articles, only to have to issue corrections amid accusations of plagiarism. Building the watermarking approach into such systems before they're released could help address such problems.

In studies, these watermarks have already been used to identify AI-generated text with near certainty. Researchers at the University of Maryland, for example, were able to spot text created by Meta's open-source language model, OPT-6.7B, using a detection algorithm they built. The work is described in a paper that's yet to be peer-reviewed, and the code will be available for free around February 15.

[...] There are limitations to this new method, however. Watermarking only works if it is embedded in the large language model by its creators right from the beginning. Although OpenAI is reputedly working on methods to detect AI-generated text, including watermarks, the research remains highly secretive. The company doesn't tend to give external parties much information about how ChatGPT works or was trained, much less access to tinker with it. OpenAI didn't immediately respond to our request for comment.

Related:

• BuzzFeed Preps AI-Written Content While CNET Fumbles
• Seattle Public Schools Bans ChatGPT; District 'Requires Original Thought and Work From Students'
• ChatGPT Arrives in the Academic World
• OpenAI's New ChatGPT Bot: 10 "Dangerous" Things it's Capable of

Original Submission

upstart writes:

And while Intel is fighting for its life, the rest of the industry is moving on:

In reality, Intel is not the giant of the industry. Intel's total share of industry capacity is around 10%, they are not a giant who has stumbled, they are a niche player and have been for years. Admittedly, they occupy a high-value, high-price niche, but it is a niche nonetheless.

The best analogy we can think of here is automobiles. Mercedes sells around 10% of cars in the US, just as Intel has about 10% of industry capacity. Now imagine if Mercedes somehow lost its brand – maybe a massive recall or a series of high profile vehicle-caused accidents. They would not only lose market share but also all their brand value, causing a long term downward sales trend that would be very expensive to dig their way out. Intel is the luxury brand of semis and suddenly their cars do not move fast. We have tortured that analogy enough, the point is that Intel really does not occupy the strategic high ground we all thought it did.

After their last set of results, especially their guidance for 2023, we are increasingly of the opinion that Intel is out of options. They forecast they are going to burn $15 billion in cash next year, a huge amount even for a company with $34 billion of net cash on their balance sheet.

After their disastrous roadmap event last month, we have to call in to question the company's ability to accurately forecast their business. We actually have many more examples of systematic flaws in their forecasting abilities, but none as public as that event. So we have little confidence in the company's $15 billion forecast, it could easily be much higher. Add to that the need to continue to fund their manufacturing needs and their cash needs are immense.

Nor is it clear if 2024 will be any better. At heart, we have always argued that the company has one task before it and that is an existential task – it has to catch up in manufacturing. The earliest they forecast achieving that is late 2024, which means it will likely not factor into results until 2025. By that time the company's bank balances will be dangerously low.

upstart writes:

The Supreme Court may overhaul how you live online:

On my Google Discover page, for example, I was seeing loads of stories about cancer and grief, which is not in line with the company's targeting policies that are supposed to prevent the system from serving content on sensitive health issues.

Imagine how dangerous it is for uncontrollable, personalized streams of upsetting content to bombard teenagers struggling with an eating disorder or tendencies toward self-harm. Or a woman who recently had a miscarriage, like the friend of one reader who wrote in after my story was published. Or, as in the Gonzalez case, young men who get recruited to join ISIS.

So while the case before the justices may seem largely theoretical, it is really fundamental to our daily lives and the role that the internet plays in society. As Farid told me, "You can say, 'Look, this isn't our problem. The internet is the internet. It reflects the world'... I reject that idea." But recommendation systems organize the internet. Could we really live without them?

Speaking of the State of the Union, Biden called out Big Tech several times, offering the clearest signal yet that there will be increased activity around tech policy—one of the few areas with potential for bipartisan agreement in the newly divided Congress.

upstart writes:

A new crop of unowned seeds is bringing biodiversity back to farming:

Alexander Klepnev CC BY 4.0

When Jack Kloppenburg looks out over his sprawling vegetable garden in rural Wisconsin, he sees half a dozen arm-thick green-striped squash called Candystick Dessert Delicata, and a gaggle of bright yellow Goldini squash among the lush green. "These are so delicious!" he exclaims with all the enthusiasm only a lifelong gardener can muster. But what's special about the vegetables is not just their taste: They have all been grown from open source seeds developed by Oregon farmer Carol Deppe, a Harvard-trained geneticist and board chair of the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI).

Most people have heard of open source software, maybe also of open source beer (Free beer for all!) or open source pharmaceutical research. The principle is the same: Someone developed the seeds — for cowpeas, corn, rye and more — and now offers the resource for everybody to share. 

Just like software development has been co-opted by a few global companies like Microsoft and Apple, the international seed development and trade, too, is controlled by a few big giants like Bayer (Monsanto), Corteva (DuPont) and ChemChina (Syngenta). A 2012 Oxfam study found that four companies dominate more than 60 percent of the global trade with grains.

When we buy cereal or bread, few pay attention to the fact that most grains are protected or even patented. Most farmers don't own the seeds they sow on their fields. "They are renting them," Kloppenburg, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-founder of OSSI says with disgust. The problem with that? "A few global companies have the monopolies on global seed trade, and they breed cash crops like corn and soy, purely for money. They don't care about biodiversity, world hunger or about the small farmer." What sounds like a business problem impacts everybody, Kloppenburg insists. "These few gene giants on top of the food chain decide what ends up on our plates."

upstart writes:

Failed Webb calibration leads to discovery of tiny asteroid:

With any new technology, there are bound to be failures — and that's true of cutting-edge astronomy instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope as well. But failures can have a silver lining, as was demonstrated recently when an unsuccessful attempt to calibrate a Webb instrument to a well-known asteroid turned up a delightful surprise: the discovery of a new, different asteroid that is just a few hundred feet across.

Researchers were looking through the data collected during the calibration of Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) when it was pointed toward known asteroid 1998 BC1 — a procedure that had failed due to technical issues. They hoped that they could use this data to test out some new techniques, but when they went digging, they spotted something unexpected. There was a tiny asteroid around 100 to 200 meters (300 to 650 feet) long that happened to be passing through the instrument's field of view at the same time.

"Our results show that even 'failed' Webb observations can be scientifically useful, if you have the right mindset and a little bit of luck," said lead author of the research, Thomas Müller, in a statement. "Our detection lies in the main asteroid belt, but Webb's incredible sensitivity made it possible to see this roughly 100-meter object at a distance of more than 100 million kilometers."

The smaller targets like asteroids are, the harder they are to detect as they reflect so little light. So it's exciting that Webb was able to detect this new object, thought to be the smallest asteroid Webb has observed so far.

Journal Reference:
T. G. Müller, M. Micheli, T. Santana-Ros, et al. Asteroids seen by JWST-MIRI: Radiometric size, distance, and orbit constraints [open], Astronomy & Astrophysics (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202245304)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Emperor Penguin promised a relaxed seasonal development cycle and has delivered:

Work on version 6.2 of the Linux kernel will stretch into an eighth release candidate, despite emperor penguin Linus Torvalds now saying it isn't really necessary.

In late January, Torvalds rated release candidate five as "fairly sizable" due to "pent up testing and fixes from people being off."

He therefore flagged his intention to extend this kernel development cycle beyond his preferred seven release candidates.

Release candidate six then landed in what Torvalds described as "suspiciously small" stature, followed by release candidate seven that he labelled "fairly small and controlled, to the point where normally I'd just say that this is the last rc.

"But since I've stated multiple times that I'll do an rc8 due to the holiday start of the release, that's what I'll do."

And indeed he did. On February 12 he announced rc8 and declared: "the only real reason for an rc8 is – as now mentioned several times – just to make up for some time during the holiday season. Not that we seem to really have needed it, but there was also no real reason to deviate from the plan."

Torvalds expects "a few late regression fixes" that will come in handy, but doesn't feel the slightly longer-than-usual development process will prove harmful.

All of which means penguinistas need to wait until next week for additions such as improved performance on many-core IBM POWER servers, persistent memory support for RISC-V, and more enabling code for Intel's "On Demand" software-defined silicon plan.

Original Submission