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upstart writes:

Multi-die system or chiplet-based technology is a big bet on high-performance chip design:

While the global semiconductor shortage that began in 2020 had its proximate causes in natural disasters and geopolitics, its effects drew widespread attention to the fact that just about every industry relies on chips. And pandemic-related ripple effects aside, the silicon status quo has been in flux for some time. New technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), which require greater computing efficiency and performance, have strained traditional systems in recent years.

With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), customers have also come to expect intelligence in everything from refrigerators to lightbulbs. Innovators are responding accordingly. Our poll found that nearly one-third (31%) of business executives plan to improve upon their companies' existing smart products, and almost another third (29%) intend to add AI/ML capabilities to their products soon. Only 9% of respondents said they were not producing IoT or connected devices.

This type of technology, however, necessitates robust edge computing and on-device processing, which requires greater and more efficient hardware performance. Complicating matters, the cloud data centers powering this compute shift are also voracious energy consumers. This is another area where traditional silicon is stagnating: sustainability. The cost of producing superfluous silicon is not just bad for business—it has an environmental impact. And while there's an ongoing push toward net-zero carbon emissions within the semiconductor supply chain, the industry isn't yet on track to meet the emissions standards set forth in the UN 2016 Paris Agreement.

"ChatGPT" (a pseudonym of one of our long-time contributors who has used ChatGPT to produce this submission) writes:

Hackers exploit WordPress plugin flaw that gives full control of millions of sites

Hackers have been exploiting a critical vulnerability in a popular WordPress plugin called 'Loginizer' that allows them to take full control of affected sites. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-27728, is a SQL injection flaw that allows attackers to insert malicious code into the site's database, giving them access to sensitive data and the ability to execute remote code. Loginizer is installed on millions of WordPress sites, and the vulnerability affects all versions up to and including 1.6.5. The plugin is designed to provide security features such as two-factor authentication and brute-force protection.

Security researchers have identified multiple hacking groups actively exploiting the vulnerability in recent weeks. The attackers are scanning the internet for WordPress sites that have the vulnerable plugin installed and are using automated tools to inject malicious code into the site's database. Once a site is compromised, the attackers can use it for various malicious purposes, such as stealing user data or distributing malware.

The plugin's developers have released a patch for the vulnerability, and WordPress site owners are advised to update their installations immediately. However, given the widespread use of the plugin, it is likely that many sites remain vulnerable to exploitation. Loginizer is just one of many WordPress plugins that have been found to have security flaws in recent years, highlighting the importance of regular security updates and monitoring for site owners.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The videos from Southern California Linux Expo 20x (SCaLE 20X) are now online. (Alternative via Invidious and its mirrors). SCaLE 20X took place in Pasadena, California from Thursday, March 9^th through Sunday, March 12^th, 2023.

The keynote speakers were Arun Gupta, Dr. Kitty Yeung, and Ken Thompson. There were nearly 100 sessions covering everything from open government to embedded, security, and FOSS@HOME to name only a few. Ceph, DevOps LA, Kubernetes and PostgreSQL also had presences at the event. Ken Thompson's keynote covered several topics including a long running project of his regarding music playback, which now includes a Raspberry Pi powered jukebox with tens of thousands of albums available. For the older material, the jukebox does playback through a player piano.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Crescent Space will be 'well positioned' to get a piece of NASA's cash pie, no contract yet:

Aerospace firm Lockheed Martin has announced the launch of a subsidiary to build a satellite communications network to connect future Moon missions with those of us stuck on Earth.

Crescent Space Services' first big project will be Parsec, a "novel cislunar communications and navigation network," which will use a constellation of small satellites built by Lockheed Martin to connect lunar explorers to each other and ground control on Earth.

Lockheed Martin describes Parsec's communications links between the Moon and Earth as being "completely controlled by the network," which it said will save those involved in mission planning some IT support time so they can focus on operations instead.

Along with being a communications network, Parsec will also act as a lunar positioning system "informing those on the ground of their exact location, hidden hazards and even how to get back to base," Lockheed Martin said.

[...] "With momentum gaining around humanity's return to the Moon, this is an immediate area of opportunity for Crescent," the company said - without stating whether it had actually secured any deals to get its constellation into orbit.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/elemental-music-interactive-periodic-table-turns-he-fe-ca-into-do-re-mi/

We're all familiar with the elements of the periodic table, but have you ever wondered what hydrogen or zinc, for example, might sound like? W. Walker Smith, now a graduate student at Indiana University, combined his twin passions of chemistry and music to create what he calls a new audio-visual instrument to communicate the concepts of chemical spectroscopy.

Smith presented his data sonification project—which essentially transforms the visible spectra of the elements of the periodic table into sound—at a meeting of the American Chemical Society being held this week in Indianapolis, Indiana. Smith even featured audio clips of some of the elements, along with "compositions" featuring larger molecules, during a performance of his "The Sound of Molecules" show.

As an undergraduate, "I [earned] a dual degree in music composition and chemistry, so I was always looking for a way to turn my chemistry research into music," Smith said during a media briefing.
[...]
Data sonification is not a new concept. For instance, in 2018, scientists transformed NASA's image of Mars rover Opportunity on its 5,000th sunrise on Mars into music. The particle physics data used to discover the Higgs boson, the echoes of a black hole as it devoured a star, and magnetometer readings from the Voyager mission have also been transposed into music. And several years ago, a project called LHCSound built a library of the "sounds" of a top quark jet and the Higgs boson, among others. The project hoped to develop sonification as a technique for analyzing the data from particle collisions so that physicists could "detect" subatomic particles by ear.

Related:
Scientists Are Turning Data Into Sound to Listen to the Whispers of the Universe (and More) (Aug. 2022)
How one Astronomer Hears the Universe (Jan. 2020)
The Bird's Ear View of Space Physics: NASA Scientists Listen to Data (Sept. 2014)

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Toxic image board 4chan has managed to stay online for the past seven years—amid boycotts and advertiser flight, after being implicated in several mass shootings, even as it was identified as a source of the conspiracy theories that inspired the January 6 insurrection—thanks, in part, to a $2.4 million investment from a major Japanese toy company.

A partnership agreement, obtained exclusively by WIRED, shows not only how current site owner Hiroyuki Nishimura acquired the far-right message board but also how Japanese industry helped finance the deal.
[...]
In recent years, Good Smile has branched out into content creation, working with various animation and film studios, has opened online wholesale companies in China and elsewhere, and has even sponsored a Super GT racing team.

In 2021, former employees of Good Smile's Los Angeles office—embroiled in a legal dispute about the future of their employment—countersued the company. In legal filings, they allege Good Smile was responsible for the distribution of potentially obscene sexually explicit anime products and merchandise ("lolicon") and that it, unbeknownst to its family-friendly corporate partners, was funding 4chan.

The accusations were picked up in The Ankler and The Hollywood Reporter, which cited a Good Smile representative admitting a passive investment in 4chan. The lawsuit was settled out of court, and the allegations were never proven.

quietus writes:

If you still want your Mao memorabilia, you better hurry down to Tiananmen Square, Beijing, while you still have the chance.

In China, the State Council is somewhat comparable to the Cabinet. Headed by the Prime Minister and consisting of the heads of the various Ministries (Defense, Commerce, Education, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Justice, Civil Affairs, State Security, Public Security and so on), it handles the day-to-day running of the country while formulating economic policy.

Its operational procedures are described in a document, conveniently titled "Working Procedures for the State Council". On March 18, an updated version of that document was published, and it has a couple of changes.

First off, the State Council now has to "report any major decisions, major events and important situations" to the Central Committee "in a timely manner." Previous edition sentences like "administration according to law, seeking truth from facts, democracy, openness, pragmatism and integrity" have been scrapped, as has the requirement for the State Council "to correct illegal or inappropriate administrative actions", or to "guide and supervise" the bureaucracy. In other words, its wings have been seriously clipped.

Secondly, any and all references to Marxism/Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, the thought of Deng Xiaoping and the ideologies of former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are now verboten. Only references to Xi Jinping Thought are allowed, as that is "the essence of Chinese culture and the spirit of the times".

To drive the point home, the Central Committee of the CCP launched another nationwide disciplinary campaign among its 96 million members.

This round will check them for loyalty to supreme leader Xi Jinping, weeding out "black sheep" and "two-faced" officials.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/judge-finds-google-destroyed-evidence-and-repeatedly-gave-false-info-to-court/

A federal judge yesterday ruled that Google intentionally destroyed evidence and must be sanctioned, rejecting the company's argument that it didn't need to automatically preserve internal chats involving employees subject to a legal hold.

"After substantial briefing by both sides, and an evidentiary hearing that featured witness testimony and other evidence, the Court concludes that sanctions are warranted," US District Judge James Donato wrote. Later in the ruling, he wrote that evidence shows that "Google intended to subvert the discovery process, and that Chat evidence was 'lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation' and 'with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation.'"
[...]
After yesterday's ruling against Google in the Northern California federal court, a US Department of Justice attorney submitted a notice of the sanctions to the DC-based court. Google is fighting the request for sanctions in that case, too.

Related:
US DoJ, Microsoft and 35 States Support an Appeal of Epic Games-Apple Decision (20220202)
Google's Antitrust Case Won't Go to Trial Until Sept. 2023 (20201221)
Google Reportedly Could be Hit With Second Antitrust Lawsuit This Week (20201217)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

AI image generator Midjourney has stopped free trials of its software:

AI image generator Midjourney has halted free trials of its service, blaming a sudden influx of new users. Midjourney CEO and founder David Holz announced the change on Tuesday, originally citing "extraordinary demand and trial abuse" in a message on Discord (this announcement was spotted first by The Washington Post). In an email to The Verge, Holz stated that the pause is "because of massive amounts of people making throwaway accounts to get free images."

"We think the culprit was probably a viral how-to video in china," said Holz over email. "This happened at the same time as a temporary gpu shortage. The two things came together and it was bringing down the service for paid users."

Given Holz's reference to "abuse," it was originally thought that the pause was linked to a spate of recent viral images created using Midjourney, including fabricated images of Donald Trump being arrested and the pope wearing a stylish jacket, which some mistook for real photographs. However, Holz characterized earlier reports as a "misunderstanding" and notes that the free trial of Midjourney never included access to the latest version of Midjourney, version 5, that creates the most realistic images and which is thought to have been used for these viral pictures.

[...] Midjourney maintains a list of banned words "related to topics in different countries based on complaints from users in those countries," as per a message from Holz last October. But it doesn't share a complete version of this list to minimize "drama." As Holz said last year, "Almost no one ever notices [the ban list] unless they're specially trying to create drama which is against our rules in tos [terms of service] 'don't use our tools to create drama.'"

[...] At the time of writing, Midjourney is still not allowing free users to generate images, though this may change in the future. "We're still trying to figure out how to bring free trials back, we tried to require an active email but that wasn't enough so we're back to the drawing board," said Holz.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Your victim status won't last long if your response is nonexistent:

In cybersecurity, the phrase "what they don't know won't hurt them" is not only wrong, it's dangerous. Despite this, it's a motto that remains in many organizations' PR playbooks, as demonstrated by the recent LastPass and Fortra data breaches.

[...] TechCrunch+ has learned that LastPass has already lost customers because of its silent-treatment approach to its breach. And Fortra is likely to face a similar fate after TechCrunch+ heard from multiple customers that they only learned that their data had been stolen after receiving a ransom demand; Fortra had assured them that the data was safe.

Smaller companies, too, are employing a silent-treatment approach to data breaches: Kids' tech coding camp iD Tech failed to acknowledge a January breach that saw hackers access the personal data of close to 1 million users, including names, dates of birth, passwords stored in plaintext, and about 415,000 unique email addresses. Concerned parents told us at the time that they only became aware of the breach after receiving a notification from a third-party data breach notification service.

[...] While getting hacked can be forgivable, an organization's victim status will not last long if it fails to respond appropriately or at all — as demonstrated by LastPass and Fortra.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Tech giants want to build massive, "hyperscale" data centers in the Netherlands, but a popular political movement wants them stopped:

There are around 200 data centers in the Netherlands, most of them renting out server space to several different companies. But since 2015, the country has also witnessed the arrival of enormous "hyperscalers," buildings that generally span at least 10,000 square feet and are set up to service a single (usually American) tech giant. Lured here by the convergence of European internet cables, temperate climates, and an abundance of green energy, Microsoft and Google have built hyperscalers; Meta has tried and failed.

Against the backdrop of an intensifying Dutch nitrogen crisis, building these hyperscalers is becoming more controversial. Nitrogen, produced by cars, agriculture, and heavy machinery used in construction, can be a dangerous pollutant, damaging ecosystems and endangering people's health. The Netherlands produces four times more nitrogen than the average across the EU. The Dutch government has pledged to halve emissions by 2030, partly by persuading farmers to reduce their livestock herds or leave the industry altogether. Farmers have responded with protests, blockading roads with tractors and manure and dumping slurry outside the nature minister's home.

The courts have also halted thousands of building projects—forcing construction jobs like Microsoft's to apply for permits proving they would not make the nitrogen crisis worse.

[...] The dispute over nitrogen permits has put Microsoft's data center developments in direct opposition to an increasingly powerful farming community. Earlier this month, a new political force, called the Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB), did so well in provincial elections, it became the joint-largest party in the Dutch Senate. The party, which emerged in response to the nitrogen crisis, also has strong views on data centers. "We think the data center is unnecessary," says Ingrid de Sain, farmer turned party leader of the BBB in North Holland, referring to the Microsoft complex. "It is a waste of fertile soil to put the data centers boxes here. The BBB is against this."

upstart writes:

Isar Aerospace recently secured $165 million in funding to gear up for the inaugural launch of its Spectrum rocket:

German company Isar Aerospace has raised $165 million in order to ramp up the development of its Spectrum rocket, which is scheduled for its debut launch later this year. For Europeans needing access to space, the rocket's arrival will come not a moment too soon.

[...] Isar Aerospace has raised a total of $330 million so far, with $75 million raised during its previous round of funding in July 2021. The funds will go towards the development of Isar's Spectrum rocket, a two-stage launch vehicle designed to carry small and medium sized satellites to orbit. According to ISAR, Spectrum should be capable of carrying 2,205 pounds (1,000 kilograms) to low Earth orbit (LEO). By comparison, SpaceX's medium-lift Falcon 9 can hoist 50,265 pounds (22,800 kg) to LEO.

Spectrum's inaugural launch is planned for the second half of 2023. Isar Aerospace is currently running tests on the rocket's Aquila engine, which was developed and manufactured in-house. The company is also finalizing its infrastructure at the launch site in Andøya, Norway, which will host Spectrum's debut liftoff.

[...] Europe is desperately in need of its own launch vehicles, whether for small or medium lift, to provide local access to space. Spectrum won't be the most powerful rocket when it debuts, but it'll fill a troublesome gap, especially until Vega-C and Ariane 6 come through.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Food safety authorities in the US and Singapore have already approved synthetic meat and the EU is also expected to:

Italy's right-wing government has backed a bill that would ban laboratory-produced meat and other synthetic foods, highlighting Italian food heritage and health protection.

If the proposals go through, breaking the ban would attract fines of up to €60,000 (£53,000).

Francesco Lollobrigida, who runs the rebranded ministry for agriculture and food sovereignty, spoke of the importance of Italy's food tradition.

The farmers' lobby praised the move.

But it was a blow for some animal welfare groups, which have highlighted lab-made meat as a solution to issues including protecting the environment from carbon emissions and food safety.

[...] The proposals, approved by ministers on Tuesday, seek to ban synthetic foods produced from animal cells without killing the animal, and would apply to lab-produced fish and synthetic milk too.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A rare 'ultramassive' black hole, 30 billion times the mass of the Sun, is lurking in the cosmos:

Holy smokes. A group of astronomers have found a black hole containing (checks notes) 30 billion times the mass of our Sun. That's more than seven thousand times the size of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

The team used gravitational lensing to see the black hole. In this natural phenomenon, massive objects' gravitational fields bend photons of light magnifying and warping them—making it possible to see object that would otherwise be hidden or too faint. Last year, a team spotted the oldest known star in an arc of gravitationally lensed light.

According to a Durham University release, the newly detected black hole is the first ever found using gravitational lensing. A paper about the discovery is published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

[...] The team identified the black hole by modeling the different pathways light might take through the universe, depending on the presence of black holes of varying mass. They then compared the computer data with images of the cosmos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Lo and behold, they found a match.

[...] "Gravitational lensing makes it possible to study inactive black holes, something not currently possible in distant galaxies," Nightingale added. "This approach could let us detect many more black holes beyond our local universe and reveal how these exotic objects evolved further back in cosmic time."

A brief video explaining the process

Journal Reference:
James. W. Nightingale, Russell J. Smith, Qiuhan He, et al., Abell 1201: Detection of an Ultramassive Black Hole in a Strong Gravitational Lens, arXiv:2303.15514 [astro-ph.GA], https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.15514

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Netflix has been releasing mobile video games since 2021, but this would be the company's first attempt at TV-based video games:

Higher quality TV and movies? No. A standard of not cancelling shows after a single season? Nah. Mobile games on your TV? Yup. That appears to be Netflix's plan after a developer found some hidden code while digging through the platform. The company's actually been offering games on mobile since 2021, but given paltry player numbers, the effort to bring them to TVs, where most subscribers actually use Netflix, might be the best way to remind people that they're even there.

App developer Steve Moser—who shared his findings with Bloomberg—found some sneaky lines of code during some digging into Netflix's back end. One line of the code allegedly read "A game on your TV needs a controller to play. Do you want to use this phone as a game controller?," indicating that a user's smartphone would serve as the controller for a game hosted on Netflix's interface.

Currently, Netflix's gaming service is relegated to mobile, and while there's critically acclaimed titles like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge and Immortality in there, you can only get at them either by stumbling on Netflix's games on your phone's app store or through a single row in the Netflix app. As such, it's easy to miss out on this side of Netflix entirely. According to recent data, only one percent of subscribers are playing games on Netflix.