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upstart writes:

The Great Salt Lake is shrinking. What can we do to stop it?:

At Antelope Island State Park near Salt Lake City in the fall of 2022, three duck hunters dragged a sled across cracked desert sand in search of the water's edge. The birds they sought were bunched in meager puddles far in the distance. Just to the west, the docks of an abandoned marina caved into the dust and a lone sailboat sat beached amid sagebrush.

"Biologists are worried that we're on the brink of ecological collapse of the lake," says Chad Yamane, the regional director of Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit that conserves, restores and manages habitats for North America's waterfowl, and a waterfowl hunter himself.

Last fall, the Great Salt Lake hit its lowest level since record keeping began. The lake's elevation sank to nearly six meters below the long-term average, shriveling the Western Hemisphere's largest saline lake to half its historic surface area. The lake's shrinking threatens to upend the ecosystem, disrupting the migration and survival of 10 million birds, including ducks and geese.

[...] And the Great Salt Lake isn't unique. Many of the world's saline lakes are facing a double whammy: People are taking more water from the tributaries that feed the lakes, while a hotter, drier climate means it takes longer to refill them.

owl writes:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russian-t-90-tank-from-ukraine-mysteriously-appears-at-u-s-truck-stop

The folks at Peto's Travel Center and Casino in Roanoke, Louisiana see all kinds of vehicles pull up, but Tuesday night was different. What ended up in their parking lot is certainly something of a mystery, to say the least.

Someone left a Russian T-90A tank, which open source intelligence (OSINT) trackers say was captured by Ukraine last fall, on a trailer after the truck hauling it broke down and pulled into this truck stop off U.S. Interstate 10. An employee at Peto's, and the individual who first posted the images on Reddit, shared them with The War Zone.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The AI Doomers' Playbook:

AI Doomerism is becoming mainstream thanks to mass media, which drives our discussion about Generative AI from bad to worse, or from slightly insane to batshit crazy. Instead of out-of-control AI, we have out-of-control panic.

When a British tabloid headline screams, "Attack of the psycho chatbot," it's funny. When it's followed by another front-page headline, "Psycho killer chatbots are befuddled by Wordle," it's even funnier. If this type of coverage stayed in the tabloids, which are known to be sensationalized, that was fine.

But recently, prestige news outlets have decided to promote the same level of populist scaremongering: The New York Times published "If we don't master AI, it will master us" (by Harari, Harris & Raskin), and TIME magazine published "Be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike" (by Yudkowsky).

In just a few days, we went from "governments should force a 6-month pause" (the petition from the Future of Life Institute) to "wait, it's not enough, so data centers should be bombed." Sadly, this is the narrative that gets media attention and shapes our already hyperbolic AI discourse.

[...] Sam Altman has a habit of urging us to be scared. "Although current-generation AI tools aren't very scary, I think we are potentially not that far away from potentially scary ones," he tweeted. "If you're making AI, it is potentially very good, potentially very terrible," he told the WSJ. When he shared the bad-case scenario of AI with Connie Loizo, it was "lights out for all of us."

[...] Altman's recent post "Planning for AGI and beyond" is as bombastic as it gets: "Successfully transitioning to a world with superintelligence is perhaps the most important – and hopeful, and scary – project in human history."

It is at this point that you might ask yourself, "Why would someone frame his company like that?" Well, that's a good question. The answer is that making OpenAI's products "the most important and scary – in human history" is part of its marketing strategy. "The paranoia is the marketing."

hubie writes:

Stopping Storms from Creating Dangerous Urban Geysers:

During intense rainstorms, residents of urban areas rely on stormwater sewers to keep streets and homes from flooding. But in some cases, air pockets in sewers combine with fast-moving water to produce waterspouts that can reach dozens of feet high and last for several minutes. These so-called storm geysers can flood the surrounding area, cause damage to nearby structures, injure bystanders, and compromise drainage pipes.

In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Sichuan University, Ningbo University, University of Alberta, and Hohai University developed a computational model of stormwater piping to study storm geysers. They used this model to understand why storm geysers form, what conditions tend to make them worse, and what city planners can do to prevent them from occurring.

Perhaps the biggest cause of storm geysers is poor city planning. With extreme weather events becoming more common due to climate change, cities can often find themselves unprepared for massive amounts of rain. Growing cities are especially vulnerable. Small cities have small drainage pipes, but new streets and neighborhoods result in added runoff, and those small pipes may not be able to handle the increased volume.

[...] The authors say the best cure for a storm geyser is bigger pipes.

"The most effective preventive measure for newly planned drainage pipelines is to increase the pipeline diameter and improve system design, which reduces the likelihood of full-flow conditions and eliminates storm geysers," said Zhang.

upstart writes:

Shooting all-important bytes to a machine 254 million kms away from Earth:

Launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, the Curiosity rover was designed for scientific investigations during a two-year mission. Twelve years later, the car-sized machine is still roaming Mars' surface while NASA improves the software side of things from afar.

Between April 3 and 7, Curiosity's science and imaging operations were put "on hold" for planned software maintenance. NASA installed the latest "patch" to its Mars rover's flight software, a major update which was planned for years and designed to further extend the rover's capabilities and longevity in the Red Planet's harsh environment.

NASA started to work on the now-up and running software update back in 2016, when Curiosity got its last software overhaul. The new flight software (R13) brings about 180 changes to the rover's system, two of which will make the Mars robot drive faster and reduce wear and tear on its wheels.

The first major change implemented by NASA in Curiosity software is related to how the machine processes images of its surroundings to plan a route around obstacles. Newer rovers like Perseverance are equipped with onboard computers capable of processing images on-the-fly, while the robots are still in motion. Curiosity, on the other hand, doesn't have that kind of feature and it needs to stop every time to reassess surface conditions and correct its course.

upstart writes:

German artist refuses award after his AI image wins prestigious photography prize:

There's some controversy in the photography world as an AI-generated image won a major prize at a prestigious competition, PetaPixel has reported. An piece called The Electrician by Boris Eldagsen took first prize in the Creative category at the World Photography Organization's Sony World Photography Awards — despite not being taken by a camera. Eldagsen subsequently refused the award, saying "AI is not photography. I applied [...] to find out if the competitions are prepared for AI images to enter. They are not."

Eldagsen's image is part of a series called PSEUDOMNESIA: Fake Memories, designed to evoke a photographic style of the 1940s. However, they are in reality "fake memories of a past, that never existed, that no one photographed. These images were imagined by language and re-edited more between 20 to 40 times through AI image generators, combining 'inpainting', 'outpainting', and 'prompt whispering' techniques."

In a blog, Eldagsen explained that he used his experience as a photographer to create the prize-winning image, acting as a director of the process with the AI generators as "co-creators." Although the work is inspired by photography, he said that the point of the submission is that it is not photography. "Participating in open calls, I want to speed up the process of the Award organizers to become aware of this difference and create separate competitions for AI-generated images," he said.

Eldagsen subsequently declined the prize. "Thank you for selecting my image and making this a historic moment, as it is the first AI-generated image to win in a prestigious international photography competition," he wrote. "How many of you knew or suspected that it was AI generated? Something about this doesn't feel right, does it? AI images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this. They are different entities. AI is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award.

When does the processing of a 'photograph' become unacceptable? Techniques such as burning and dodging, plus various types of film processing, can all change the image that is finally produced. Digital photographs can be even more easily modified. At what point does it become an entirely new genre. Does the method of production really matter? [JR]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Offensive cyber company QuaDream shutting down amidst spyware accusations:

According to sources, the company has been in a difficult situation for several months, and the research was the last nail in its coffin. The company hasn't been fully active for a while and it is believed that there are only two employees left in its offices whose job it is to look after the computers and other equipment. At the same time, the board of directors is trying to sell the company's intellectual property.

[...] Last week, it was reported that the Israeli firm's hacking tools have been used against journalists, opposition figures and advocacy organizations across at least 10 countries - including people in North America and Europe - according to new research published by Microsoft and the internet watchdog Citizen Lab.

According to sources, the company has been in a difficult situation for several months, and the research was the last nail in its coffin. The company hasn't been fully active for a while and it is believed that there are only two employees left in its offices whose job it is to look after the computers and other equipment. At the same time, the board of directors is trying to sell the company's intellectual property.

Citizen Lab said in its report that it had been able to identify a handful of civil society victims whose iPhones had been hacked using surveillance software developed by QuaDream - a lower-profile competitor to the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, which has been blacklisted by the U.S. government over allegations of abuse.

In its report published at the same time, Microsoft said it believed with "high confidence" that the spyware was "strongly linked to QuaDream."

In a statement, Microsoft Associate General Counsel Amy Hogan-Burney said that mercenary hacking groups like QuaDream "thrive in the shadows" and that publicly outing them was "essential to stopping this activity."

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a model that detects workplace stress just by how people type and move their computer mouse:

In Switzerland, one in three employees suffers from workplace stress. Those affected often don't realise that their physical and mental resources are dwindling until it's too late. This makes it all the more important to identify work-related stress as early as possible where it arises: in the workplace.

Researchers at ETH Zurich are now taking a crucial step in this direction. Using new data and machine learning, they have developed a model that can tell how stressed we are just from the way we type and use our mouse.

And there's more: "How we type on our keyboard and move our mouse seems to be a better predictor of how stressed we feel in an office environment than our heart rate," explains study author Mara Nägelin, a mathematician who conducts research at the Chair of Technology Marketing and the Mobiliar Lab for Analytics at ETH Zurich. Applied correctly, these findings could be used in future to prevent increased stress in the workplace early on.

[...] The researchers are currently testing their model with data from Swiss employees who have agreed to have their mouse and keyboard behaviour as well as their heart data recorded directly at their workplace using an app. The same app also regularly asks the employees about their subjective stress levels. Results should be available by the end of the year.

However, workplace stress detection also raises some thorny issues: "The only way people will accept and use our technology is if we can guarantee that we will anonymise and protect their data. We want to help workers to identify stress early, not create a monitoring tool for companies," Kerr says. In another study involving employees and ethicists, the researchers are investigating which features an app needs to have to meet these requirements and ensure responsible handling of sensitive data.

Journal Reference:
Naegelin M, Weibel RP, Kerr JI, Schinazi VP, et al.: An interpretable machine learning approach to multimodal stress detection in a simulated office environment. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 2023, 139: 104299, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2023.104299

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Yes. Your new car is probably spying on you.

As the world wakes up to exactly what a Tesla's onboard cameras can capture and beam back to their makers, a wider fear has arisen: is your car spying on you?

Systems such as telematics black boxes that record a vehicle's location and how it is driven are commonplace today. Complaints about how that data is fed back to Big Brother seem old-fashioned.

From Tesla's Model Y to the humble Mini, around two million of these data-gathering cars have been registered in the UK over the past five years.

The question is, when will it be impossible to buy a car that can't spy on you.

Original Submission

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