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upstart writes:

Chipzilla reportedly wants more cash. Germany wants a bigger facility. And the EU is lurking with a bigger offer:

If Intel wants larger subsidies for its Magdeburg mega-fab, German officials think the x86 giant should increase its investments to match.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Financial Times reported on Thursday that the German government is willing to consider boosting subsidies, but only if Intel is willing to spend more on infrastructure too.

"It's logical that if the scale of the investment is increased, then the level of subsidy would also rise," Sven Schultze, the economy minister for Saxony-Anhalt, told the FT.

The debate over the size of Chipzilla's assets comes after multiple reports that Intel had pressured the German government for larger subsidies to offset rising energy and material costs, and hinted at delaying the project. Intel now expects the facility to cost somewhere in the neighborhood €20 billion ($22.1 billion) to complete.

Rising costs have also impacted the cost of Intel's two Arizona plants, which are now expected to cost 50 percent more than when first announced.

To date, the German government has committed €6.8 billion ($7.5 billion) to the Intel's planned builds — about 40 percent of the project's original €17 billion ($19 billion) price tag. However, last month, Bloomberg reported that Intel pushed for an additional €4-5 billion in subsidies.

[...] However, Intel's position could soon improve. The European Commission is expected to sign its own CHIPs funding bill into law any day now. The bill would unlock roughly €43 billion ($48 billion) to attract semiconductor investment in the region.

Original Submission

Looking ahead to exploring inside some of the other planets and satellites in the solar system, here is a proposal for a multi-jointed snake robot https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65245054 with a video animation available from the BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65245054

Here's a snip,

The EELS initiative comes in the backdrop of discoveries made by the Cassini probe, which explored Saturn, its rings, and moons for nearly 13 years. The iconic mission ended in September 2017 when the spacecraft crashed into Saturn's atmosphere.

The remarkable discovery of plumes of water vapor ejected into space by Saturn's tiny icy moon Enceladus prompted the development of this EELS snake robot. This raised the possibility of a habitable liquid ocean beneath the moon's frozen crust and piqued the space community's interest in exploring this moon.

Coming soon to theaters, the sequel, "AI Snakes on a Plane" ??

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Million-year-old viruses help fight cancer, say scientists:

Relics of ancient viruses - that have spent millions of years hiding inside human DNA - help the body fight cancer, say scientists. The study by the Francis Crick Institute showed the dormant remnants of these old viruses are woken up when cancerous cells spiral out of control. This unintentionally helps the immune system target and attack the tumour.

The team wants to harness the discovery to design vaccines that can boost cancer treatment, or even prevent it.

The researchers had noticed a connection between better survival from lung cancer and a part of the immune system, called B-cells, clustering around tumours. B-cells are the part of our body that manufactures antibodies and are better known for their role in fighting off infections, such as Covid.

Precisely what they were doing in lung cancer was a mystery but a series of intricate experiments using samples from patients and animal tests showed they were still attempting to fight viruses. "It turned out that the antibodies are recognising remnants of what's termed endogenous retroviruses," Prof Julian Downward, an associate research director at the Francis Crick Institute, told me.

upstart writes:

MEPs raise concerns over draft EU-US data transfer deal:

A shiny new data transfers deal between the European Union and the United States aimed at fixing costly legal uncertainty over exports of personal data isn't in place yet but the European Parliament's civil liberties committee is predicting the incoming EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (DPF) won't survive a legal challenge — just as its two predecessors, Safe Harbor (RIP: October 2015); and Privacy Shield (RIP: July 2020), failed to impress EU judges.

In a resolution passed by the LIBE committee yesterday, with 37 votes in favor, none against and 21 abstentions, the MEPs dubbed the DPF an improvement that nonetheless does not go far enough. They also predicted it's likely to be invalidated by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in the future.

The development follows a draft opinion by the LIBE, back in February, also giving the proposal a thumbs down and urging the Commission to press for meaningful reforms.

EU confirms draft decision on replacement US data transfer pact

In the resolution, the committee takes the view that the proposed arrangement does not provide sufficient safeguards for EU citizens since the framework still allows for bulk collection of personal data in certain cases; does not make bulk data collection subject to independent prior authorisation; and does not provide for clear rules on data retention.

The MEPs are also worried that a proposed redress mechanism — a so-called "Data Protection Review Court" — would violate EU citizens' rights to access and rectify data about them, since decisions would be kept secret. They also question its independence since judges could be dismissed by the U.S. president, who could also overrule its decisions.

takyon writes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_orbital_test_flight

The Starship Orbital Flight Test is the planned first spaceflight of the SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. The planned launch site is Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX plans on using Starship prototypes Ship 24 (second stage) and Booster 7 (first stage). The Starship second stage will enter a transatmospheric Earth orbit with a negative Earth perigee, allowing Ship 24 to reenter the atmosphere after completing most of one orbit without having to restart its engines for a deorbit maneuver. The earliest launch opportunity is currently scheduled for April 17, 2023 at 08:00 CDT (13:00 UTC).

SpaceX stream. NASASpaceFlight stream.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

When admitting to an error isn't seen as a failure, improvement easy to achieve:

To improve security, the cybersecurity industry needs to follow the aviation industry's shift from a blame culture to a "just" culture, according to director of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association Serge Christiaans.

Speaking at Singapore's Smart Cybersecurity Summit this week, Christiaans explained that until around 1990, the number of fatal commercial jet accidents was growing alongside a steady increase of commercial flights. But around the turn of the decade, the number of flights continued to rise while the number of fatalities began to drop.

[...] While acknowledging that improved technology, more mature processes and improved leadership all helped to improve aviation safety, the former pilot and field CISO at tech consultancy Sopra Steria said the biggest improvements came from a change to a "just culture" that accepts people will make mistakes and by doing so makes it more likely errors will be reported.

In a just culture, errors are viewed as learning opportunities instead of moral failing, creating transparency and enabling constant improvement.

[...] Christiaans said he is yet to come across a company that had implemented open reporting without punishment in cybersecurity.

He attributed this to the industry working from the top down. The people at the top worked hard to get to leadership roles and become resistant to change. Shifting culture therefore needs to start with new recruits.

[...] Furthermore, not all of the aviation industry has been a beacon of transparent culture. For example, whistleblowers have alleged that culture at Boeing emphasized profit over safety, ultimately leading to engineering decisions that caused the crash of two 737 MAX airplanes.

[...] But Christiaan's analysis may be true at least when it comes to pilots and airlines, especially when culture is changed with small steps.

"So you plant the seeds, some airlines adapt, some don't," said Christiaans. "The ones who adapt, succeed."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

But first it'll have to prove its business model:

We've spent the last century and a half pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it's clear that we'll have to spend the coming decades removing a significant fraction of that.

But then what do we do with it all? Some people are proposing pumping it underground. Others think we can make things from it, including liquid fuels and concrete. Problem is, those are pretty low-margin opportunities today. One startup thinks the answer is to turn carbon dioxide into protein.

[...] NovoNutrients relies on bacteria to do the dirty work. The company has surveyed the scientific literature to find species that can use carbon dioxide in their metabolic pathways, allowing them to use the waste gas as energy. Its scientists have also discovered strains not otherwise known to science.

"Our technology is about how do you industrialize this naturally occurring metabolism?" CEO David Tze told TechCrunch+.

[...] The company's approach has several advantages over other methods of using carbon dioxide. For one thing, it does not require large amounts of land or water, which are both in short supply in many parts of the world. It also does not require the use of fossil fuels, which are a major contributor to climate change.

NovoNutrients is not the only company working on using carbon dioxide to create protein. Other companies, such as Calysta and Deep Branch Biotechnology, are also developing similar technologies. However, NovoNutrients believes that its approach is unique because it uses bacteria to create protein products that are high in quality and can be sold at a competitive price.

The company's pilot-scale plant will be located in California and is expected to be operational by the end of 2021 [sic]. If successful, NovoNutrients plans to build a larger commercial-scale plant that could produce up to 1,000 metric tons of protein per year.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

John Deere warns about the "unintended consequences" stemming from the new legislation:

The right to repair movement just got its first major win in Colorado as the state will likely become the first to establish a law designed to protect the farmers' right to repair their own equipment. Big manufacturing companies are not happy, but the law is expected to be signed soon.

Starting January 1, 2024, manufacturers of agricultural equipment will have to provide Colorado farmers everything they need to repair machinery by themselves. Denver legislators recently approved the first-ever proposal turning right-to-repair principles into law with a majority vote (44 to 16), after the same law was approved by the Senate last month.

The bill is now on the governor's desk, where Jared Polis is expected to approve the bi-partisan proposal within 10 days. The Consumer Right To Repair Agricultural Equipment requires manufacturers to provide parts, embedded software, firmware, tools, documentation, repair manuals and other resources to independent repair providers and owners of farming machinery, giving them the ability to fix broken stuff without needing to go through official resellers and repair services.

The bill folds agricultural equipment into the existing consumer right-to-repair statutes of Colorado, which states that a manufacturer's failure to comply is a "deceptive trade practice." Manufacturers are not obliged to "divulge any trade secrets" to independent repair services and owners, the statutes say. The bill was later amended to clarify that repair providers and owners are not authorized to make modifications to equipment that permanently deactivate safety measures or modify carbon emissions.

upstart writes:

Let's go through all the proposed problematic powers, starting with surveillance and censorship:

Special report United Nations negotiators convened this week in Vienna, Austria, to formulate a draft cybercrime treaty, and civil society groups are worried.

"We are here for the fifth session on the negotiations of this new treaty on cybercrime, which will have the potential to drastically redraft criminal law all around the world," said Thomas Lohnninger, executive director of Austria-based tech policy group Epicenter.works, in a media briefing on Thursday about the treaty negotiations.

"It represents a tectonic shift because of its global nature when it comes to the cross border access to our personal information."

The UN Cybercrime Treaty, to the extent it gets adopted, is expected to define global norms for lawful surveillance and legal processes available to investigate and prosecute cybercriminals. And what has emerged so far contemplates [PDF] more than 30 new cybercrime offenses, with few concessions to free speech or human rights.

[...] Katitza Rodriguez, policy director for global privacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explained that current cross-border cybercrime cooperation comes from the Budapest Convention, negotiated in 2001, by member states at the Council of Europe.

Russia, however, Rodriguez said, has objected to the convention for infringing state sovereignty by allowing other nations to investigate cybercrimes in its jurisdiction. So in 2017, Russia proposed negotiating a new treaty, and in 2019 the UN adopted a resolution to do so, backed by Russia, Cambodia, Belarus, China, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela.

The US and members of the European Union opposed the proposal citing concerns about lack of human rights protections. Nonetheless, Rodriguez said, Russia pushed its proposal forward and the UN opened negotiations just days after Russia invaded Ukraine.

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2023/01/the-8086-processors-microcode-pipeline.html

Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978, and its influence still remains through the popular x86 architecture. The 8086 was a fairly complex microprocessor for its time, implementing instructions in microcode with pipelining to improve performance. This blog post explains the microcode operations for a particular instruction, "ADD immediate". As the 8086 documentation will tell you, this instruction takes four clock cycles to execute. But looking internally shows seven clock cycles of activity. How does the 8086 fit seven cycles of computation into four cycles? As I will show, the trick is pipelining.

[...] The alternative is microcode: instead of building the control circuitry from complex logic gates, the control logic is largely replaced with code. To execute a machine instruction, the computer internally executes several simpler micro-instructions, specified by the microcode. In other words, microcode forms another layer between the machine instructions and the hardware. The main advantage of microcode is that it turns the processor's control logic into a programming task instead of a difficult logic design task.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Torswats uses synthesized voices to pressure law enforcement to specific locations:

"Hello, I just committed a crime and I want to confess," a panicked sounding man said in a call to a police department in February. "I've placed explosives inside a local school,' the man continued.

"You did what?!" the operator responded.

"I've placed explosives inside a local school," the man said again, before specifying Hempstead High School in Dubuque, Iowa, and providing its address. In response to the threat, the school went on lockdown, and police searched the school but found nothing, according to a local media report.

The bombs weren't real. But, crucially, neither was the man's voice. The panicked man's lines sound artificially generated, according to recordings of the swatting calls reviewed by Motherboard. It is unclear how exactly the caller generated the voice, be that some form of artificial intelligence tool or another speech synthesis program. The result, though, is a voice that sounds very consistent across multiple calls.

[...] Known as "Torswats" on the messaging app Telegram, the swatter has been calling in bomb and mass shooting threats against highschools and other locations across the country. Torswat's connection to these wide ranging swatting incidents has not been previously reported. The further automation of swatting techniques threatens to make an already dangerous harassment technique more prevalent.

[...] Torswats carries out these threatening calls as part of a paid service they offer. For $75, Torswats says they will close down a school. For $50, Torswats says customers can buy "extreme swattings," in which authorities will handcuff the victim and search the house. Torswats says they offer discounts to returning customers, and can negotiate prices for "famous people and targets such as Twitch streamers." Torswats says on their Telegram channel that they take payment in cryptocurrency.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Machine learning has boosted the resolution of an image produced by Event Horizon Telescope data captured six years ago:

Using machine learning, a team of researchers has enhanced the first image ever taken of a distant black hole. Importantly, the newly updated image shows the full resolution of the telescope array for the very first time.

[...] The machine learning model has sharpened the otherwise blurry image of black hole M87, showcasing the utility of machine learning models in improving radio telescope images. The team's research was published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"Approximately four years after the first horizon-scale image of a black hole was unveiled by EHT in 2019, we have marked another milestone, producing an image that utilizes the full resolution of the array for the first time," said Dimitrios Psaltis, a researcher at Georgia Tech and a member of the EHT collaboration, in an Institute for Advanced Study release. "The new machine learning techniques that we have developed provide a golden opportunity for our collective work to understand black hole physics."

[...] But even using radio telescopes around the world doesn't give astronomers a complete view of the black hole; by incorporating a machine learning technique called PRIMO, the collaboration was able to improve the array's resolution. What appeared a bulbous, orange doughnut in a 2019 image has now taken on the delicate, thin circle of The One Ring.

upstart writes:

Writers and publishers face an existential threat from AI: time to embrace the true fans model:

Walled Culture has written several times about the major impact that generative AI will have on the copyright landscape. More specifically, these systems, which can create quickly and cheaply written material on any topic and in any style, are likely to threaten the publishing industry in profound ways. Exactly how is spelled out in this great post by Suw Charman-Anderson on her Word Count blog. The key point is that large language models (LLMs) are able to generate huge quantities of material. The fact that much of it is poorly written makes things worse, because it becomes harder to find the good stuff[.]

[...] One obvious approach is to try to use AI against AI. That is, to employ automated vetting systems to weed out the obvious rubbish. That will lead to an expensive arms race between competing AI software, with unsatisfactory results for publishers and creators. If anything, it will only cause LLMs to become better and to produce material even faster in an attempt to fool or simply overwhelm the vetting AIs.

The real solution is to move to an entirely different business model, which is based on the unique connection between human creators and their fans. The true fans approach has been discussed here many times in other contexts, and once more reveals itself as resilient in the face of change brought about by rapidly-advancing digital technologies.

upstart writes:

You don't need alien asteroids, you just need a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and liquid hot magma:

A new research model shows that Earth's oceans could have formed from interactions between a hydrogen-rich early atmosphere and oxygen within the planet's magma.

The study from the multi-institution AETHER project also demonstrates why Earth's core is lighter than it should be, owing to the presence of gaseous hydrogen.

Edward Young, professor at the University of California Los Angeles, and colleagues propose that one of the protoplanets involved in the formation of Earth was heavier than thought. By maximizing its size to more than a fifth or third of Earth, the researchers show there would have been enough gravity to make the hydrogen-rich atmosphere hang around long enough to interact with the magma ocean, according to a paper published in Nature this week.

Prevailing theories explaining the abundance of water on Earth – oceans make up around 70 percent of the planet's surface – depend on the impacts of water-carrying asteroids.

[...] In a statement coinciding with the publication, co-author Anat Shahar, staff scientist and deputy for Research Advancement Earth and Planets Laboratory at Carnegie Science, said the inspiration for the new model came from studies of planets forming outside the solar system.

upstart writes:

Kernel 6.2 ditched a useful defense against ghostly chip design flaw:

The Spectre vulnerability that has haunted hardware and software makers since 2018 continues to defy efforts to bury it.

On Thursday, Eduardo (sirdarckcat) Vela Nava, from Google's product security response team, disclosed a Spectre-related flaw in version 6.2 of the Linux kernel.

The bug, designated medium severity, was initially reported to cloud service providers – those most likely to be affected – on December 31, 2022, and was patched in Linux on February 27, 2023.

"The kernel failed to protect applications that attempted to protect against Spectre v2, leaving them open to attack from other processes running on the same physical core in another hyperthread," the vulnerability disclosure explains. The consequence of that attack is potential information exposure (e.g., leaked private keys) through this pernicous problem.

The moniker Spectre [PDF] describes a set of vulnerabilities that abuse speculative execution, a processor performance optimization in which potential instructions are executed in advance to save time.