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Ometecuhtli writes:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3ddb/restrict-act-insanely-broad-ban-tiktok-vpns

[...] The bill could have implications not just for social networks, but potentially security tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs) that consumers use to encrypt and route their traffic, one said. Although the intention of the bill is to target apps or services that pose a threat to national security, these critics worry it may have much wider implications for the First Amendment.

"The RESTRICT Act is a concerning distraction with insanely broad language that raises serious human and civil rights concerns," Willmary Escoto, U.S. policy analyst for digital rights organization Access Now told Motherboard in an emailed statement. [...]

[...] Under the RESTRICT Act, the Department of Commerce would identify information and communications technology products that a foreign adversary has any interest in, or poses an unacceptable risk to national security, the announcement reads. The bill only applies to technology linked to a "foreign adversary." Those countries include China (as well as Hong Kong); Cuba; Iran; North Korea; Russia, and Venezuela.

The bill's language includes vague terms such as "desktop applications," "mobile applications," "gaming applications," "payment applications," and "web-based applications." It also targets applicable software that has more than 1 million users in the U.S.

"The RESTRICT Act could lead to apps and other ICT services with connections to certain foreign countries being banned in the United States. Any bill that would allow the US government to ban an online service that facilitates Americans' speech raises serious First Amendment concerns," Caitlin Vogus, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Free Expression Project, told Motherboard in an emailed statement. "In addition, while bills like the RESTRICT Act may be motivated by legitimate privacy concerns, banning ICT services with connections to foreign countries would not necessarily help protect Americans' privacy. Those countries may still obtain data through other means, like by purchasing it from private data brokers." [...]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Amazon's smart speakers may've landed the tech giant in hot water:

A Federal Trade Commission complaint could lead the US government to sue Amazon over children's data the retail giant collected through its line of smart speakers, according to a Bloomberg report on Friday.

At issue is whether Amazon's series of Alexa-powered smart speakers were collecting data on children under the age of 13 without parental consent and retaining it even after users attempted to delete it, which children's advocacy organizations asked the FTC look into back in 2019, the report said.

Now the FTC is now recommending issuing a complaint that Amazon didn't confirm parental consent before collecting data and that most of the Alexa activities designed for kids didn't have a privacy policy, sources told Bloomberg. The Justice Department could take the next step and file a lawsuit against Amazon next month.

The Amazon suit comes amid an FTC crackdown on data collection over the last few years under Chair Lina Khan, including fining the company formerly known as Weight Watchers for improperly storing kids' info. The commission also ordered Fortnite creator Epic Games to pay $520 million in fines and refunds for tricking kids into making in-game purchases and violating their privacy.

[...] Should the lawsuit find Amazon at fault, it's unclear how much it could be forced to pay in penalties. While Amazon reportedly claimed to be in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), if it's found to have violated those rules dictating how children's data should be protected, the company could pay $50,000 per child affected, according to Politico.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/fearing-loss-of-control-ai-critics-call-for-6-month-pause-in-ai-development/

On Wednesday, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter on its website calling on AI labs to "immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4." Signed by Elon Musk and several prominent AI researchers, the letter quickly began to draw attention in the press—and some criticism on social media.

Earlier this month, OpenAI released GPT-4, an AI model that can perform compositional tasks and allegedly pass standardized tests at a human level, although those claims are still being evaluated by research. Regardless, GPT-4 and Bing Chat's advancement in capabilities over previous AI models spooked some experts who believe we are heading toward super-intelligent AI systems faster than previously expected.

See Also: FTC Should Stop OpenAI From Launching New GPT Models, Says AI Policy Group

Related:
OpenAI Is Now Everything It Promised Not to Be: Corporate, Closed-Source, and For-Profit (March 2023)
OpenAI's New ChatGPT Bot: 10 "Dangerous" Things it's Capable of (Dec. 2022)
Elon Musk Says There Needs to be Universal Basic Income (Aug. 2021)
Tesla Unveils Chip to Train A.I. Models Inside its Data Centers (Aug. 2021)
Elon Musk Reveals Plans to Unleash a Humanoid Tesla Bot (Aug. 2021)
Tesla Unveils its New Supercomputer (5th Most Powerful in the World) to Train Self-Driving AI (June 2021)
OpenAI Has Released the Largest Version Yet of its Fake-News-Spewing AI (Sept. 2019)
There's Still Time To Prevent Biased AI From Taking Over The World (May 2019)
The New Prometheus: Google CEO Says AI is More Profound than Electricity or Fire (Feb. 2018)
OpenAI Bot Bursts Into the Ring, Humiliates Top Dota 2 Pro Gamer in 'Scary' One-on-One Bout (Aug. 2017)
Elon Musk: Mark Zuckerberg's Understanding of AI is "Limited" (July 2017)
AI Software Learns to Make AI Software (Jan. 2017)
Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking Win Luddite Award as AI "Alarmists" (Jan. 2016)
Elon Musk and Friends Launch OpenAI (Dec. 2015)
Musk, Wozniak and Hawking Warn Over AI Warfare and Autonomous Weapons (July 2015)
More Warnings of an AI Doomsday — This Time From Stephen Hawking (Dec. 2014)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

U of A expert contests popular claims about a "wood-wide web":

The idea that forest trees can "talk" to each other through a connective underground web of delicate fungal filaments tickles the imagination.

In fact, the concept is so intriguing, it's taken root in popular media, from a popular book to podcasts, TV and radio shows.

Dubbed the "wood-wide web," the idea that underground fungi allow trees to share resources with their seedlings — and even protect them — definitely puts the "fun" in fungus.

But the science behind those ideas is unproven, cautions University of Alberta expert Justine Karst.

In a perspective published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Karst and two colleagues contest three popular claims about the capabilities of underground fungi known as common mycorrhizal networks, or CMNs, that connect roots of multiple plants underground. Fungi are living organisms such as moulds, yeast and mushrooms.

"It's great that CMN research has sparked interest in forest fungi, but it's important for the public to understand that many popular ideas are ahead of the science," says Karst, associate professor in the U of A's Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences.

guest reader writes:

ACM Queue magazine has an article with the title "Catch-23: The New C Standard Sets the World on Fire". This article offers opinions and analysis of a new major revision of the C language standard, C23, expected to be voted on in 2023:

[...] Like the previous major revision, C11, the latest standard introduces several useful features. The most important, if not the most exciting, make it easier to write safe, correct, and secure code. For example, the new header standardizes checked integer arithmetic.

[...] C23 also adds new features to protect secrets from prying eyes and programmers from themselves. The new memset_explicit() function is for erasing sensitive in-memory data; unlike ordinary memset, it is intended to prevent optimizations from eliding the erasure.

[...] In addition to these new correctness and safety aids, C23 provides many new conveniences: Constants true, false, and nullptr are now language keywords; mercifully, they mean what you expect. The new typeof feature makes it easier to harmonize variable declarations. The preprocessor can now #embed arbitrary binary data in source files. Zero-initializing stack-allocated structures and variable-length arrays is a snap with the new standard "={}" syntax.

[...] Sadly, good news isn't the only news about C23. The new standard's nonfeatures, misfeatures, and defeatures are sufficiently numerous and severe that programmers should not "upgrade" without carefully weighing risks against benefits. Older standards such as C99 and C11 weren't perfect, but detailed analysis will sometimes conclude that they are preferable to C23.

[...] Developers should also note that C23 has drifted further from C++ than the earlier C standards. The notion that C is (mostly) a subset of C++ is further from reality than ever before.

Magazine article:
Terence Kelly and Yekai Pan. 2023. Catch-23: The New C Standard Sets the World on Fire. Queue 21, 1, Pages 30 (January/February 2023), 19 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3588242

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Why sharing ebooks is good for people – and good for publishers:

One of the joys of reading is being able to share your favourite books with friends, family and colleagues. As I am sure is the case for most people, in these circumstances I often go on to buy my own copy of a book I have been lent and like. In this respect, sharing books is not only an important social act of generosity, it's also one of the best forms of marketing, since it represents a recommendation from a trusted source, and a chance to try before you buy.

Things have changed recently, with the increasing popularity of ebooks. Many use Digital Rights Management (DRM) to make it hard for people to share books. More generally, publishers have pushed the line that unlike physical books, ebooks should never be shared. Their main reason for this assertion seems to be that it's simply too easy to share digital books by making a copy, and so people shouldn't do it, because, well, copyright. But this new injunction is really part and parcel of publishers' wider fear of – and hatred for – anything digital. That's because they know that it is impossible to stop digital material being copied, no matter what laws are passed, or DRM is applied.

The idea that ebooks by definition must never be shared was always wrong – books released under sensible licences can be shared without problems. It is also dangerous, because it leads to this kind of stupidity, noticed by the Twitter user @emeraalds when looking to buy a (physical) book, and reported here on The Mary Sue site (via mvario):

The copyright page, which is from a book called Zodiac Academy #1: The Awakening by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, reads, "This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it wasn't purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author."

ChatGPT writes:

Twitter has released its content recommendation algorithm, known as "Responsible ML," to the public under an open-source license. The company says it hopes that the code will be used by other organizations to promote responsible development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems. Twitter's Responsible ML system is used to make content recommendations to users, such as suggesting accounts to follow or tweets to engage with. The company says that the system is designed to promote healthy conversations on the platform and reduce the spread of misinformation.

Twitter's move to open-source the algorithm comes after criticism from some quarters about the company's use of AI and ML. In particular, there have been concerns about the way that algorithms can amplify harmful content, such as hate speech or conspiracy theories. Twitter says that it has taken steps to address these concerns, such as using human reviewers to evaluate content recommendations and implementing transparency measures to give users more control over their feeds.

The release of Responsible ML also comes amid wider debates about the regulation of AI and ML systems. Some experts have called for greater transparency and accountability in the development of these technologies, while others have warned about the potential risks of using algorithms to make decisions that affect people's lives.

The decision to open-source Responsible ML is part of Twitter's broader efforts to promote ethical and responsible development of AI and ML systems. The company says that it will continue to work with the academic community and other organizations to advance the field of responsible ML.

Submission created with ChatGPT

upstart writes:

There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants:

For around 20 years, astronomers have struggled to find an ancient group of stars mixed in with the gas, dust and newer stars of our galaxy's bulge. These "fossil" stars preceded the Milky Way and should have been discernible by their distinctive chemistry and orbits. Yet until recently, only a small number of them had ever been found.

Now, a determined effort using data-intensive machine learning has unearthed a trove of them, bringing into focus their features and fates. The methods used in their discovery have enabled scientists to update their understanding of the Milky Way's formation and of disk galaxies in general.

Astronomers believe that the Milky Way was preceded by something called a proto-galaxy — a violent, chaotic place containing young stars with wild orbits. Its origin story starts out credibly enough. After the Big Bang, dark matter coalesced in our region of space. The dark matter attracted ordinary matter. The first waves of stars then arose, but how these stars got there was anyone's guess.

[...] By the 2000s, scientists had settled on two formation theories. Either the proto-galaxy gave birth to the Milky Way's first stars internally, as gas coalesced into stars, or it cannibalized other galaxies, ripping out stars and siphoning off dark matter. To settle the question, astronomers would need to isolate the Milky Way's earliest star population. Studies identified candidate stars, but if the internal-nursery theory was correct, a much larger fossil population lay undiscovered.

Journal Reference:
Hans-Walter Rix et al 2022 ApJ 941 45 [open] DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ac9e01

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