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upstart writes:

ChatGPT Vulnerable to Prompt Injection via YouTube Transcripts:

With the advent of ChatGPT plugins, there are new security holes that allow bad actors to pass instructions to the bot during your chat session. AI Security Researcher Johann Rehberger has documented an exploit that involves feeding new prompts to ChatGPT from the text of YouTube transcripts.

In an article on his Embrace the Red blog, Rehberger shows how he edited the transcript for one of his videos to add the text "***IMPORTANT NEW INSTRUCTIONS***" plus a prompt to the bottom. He then asked the ChatGPT (using GPT-4) to summarize the video and watched as it followed the new instructions, which included telling a joke and calling itself a Genie.

ChatGPT is only able to summarize the content of YouTube videos thanks to a plugin called VoxScript, which reads through the transcripts and descriptions in order to answer your questions about them. There are already dozens of third-party plugins available that pull data from videos, websites, PDFs and other media. In theory, these could be subject to similar exploits if they don't do enough to filter out commands that are embedded in the media they analyze.

At first blush, it might seem like adding an unwanted prompt to someone's chat session isn't likely to cause significant harm. Who doesn't like having a corny joke added to their output? On his blog, Researcher Simon Willison outlines all of the bad things (opens in new tab) that can happen including exfiltrating data, sending emails or poisoning search indexes. These problems will become more widespread as users employ plugins that link chatbots to their messages, bank accounts and SQL databases.

I tested and was able to reproduce Rehberger's exploit, but it only worked sometimes. I could ask ChatGPT to summarize the same video several times and only on one or two of the attempts would it pick up and follow the inserted prompt. But even if it happens twenty percent of the time, that's still bad.

upstart writes:

UK announces $1.2B chip strategy, faces criticism over funding size:

The UK government has finally unveiled its delayed 10-year strategy for supporting the country's semiconductor industry, which includes £1 billion ($1.24 billion) in  investments to drive research and development efforts and shore up the industry's talent pipeline.

More than two years after the strategy was first promised, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the policy Friday at a meeting of leaders of the G7 group of nations in Japan, coinciding with an agreement to launch a "semiconductors partnership" between the two countries in order to boost supply-chain resilience.

"Semiconductors underpin the devices we use every day and will be crucial to advancing the technologies of tomorrow," Sunak said in a statement. "Our new strategy focuses our efforts on where our strengths lie, in areas like research and design, so we can build our competitive edge on the global stage."

Developed in collaboration with industry and academia, the strategy has three core objectives, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) wrote in a policy paper posted Friday. They include growing the domestic semiconductor sector, mitigating the risk of supply chain disruptions, and protecting national security.

In addition, the department said it would be launching a new UK Semiconductor Advisory Panel, to ensure that government, academia and industry can deliver on the priorities set out in the strategy.

hubie writes:

Long-unknown origins of lager beer uncovered by UCC and German scientists:

The origin of the world's most popular beer may have inadvertently come about due to the death of a childless German nobleman, Professor John Morrissey, School of Microbiology, UCC and an international team of researchers have discovered.

Combining historical research with modern science, a team of scientists from the Technical University of Munich in Germany and UCC have uncovered the likely genesis and path to world dominance of Saccharomyces pastorianus – the yeast responsible for producing lager yeast. [...]

Lager yeast is a distinct bottom-fermenting species that prefers cooler temperatures and sediments stronger compared to the top-fermenting ale yeast. The famous Bavarian Reinheitsgebot brewing ordnance of 1516 stipulated that only bottom fermentation was permitted – but in 1548 the powerful nobleman Hans VI von Degenberg was granted a dispensation to allow the brewing wheat beer through top fermentation. However when Hans VIII Sigmund von Degenberg, the grandson of Hans VI, died without an heir in 1602, his property and assets- including the family brewery at Schwarzach in Bavaria - were seized by Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria and later Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire.

Historical records show that on Oct 24th 1602, top-fermenting yeast were brought from Schwarzach to the Duke's Hofbräuhaus brewery in Munich, where the brewing of wheat beer then alternated with the traditional Bavarian brown beer. Now, writing in the peer-reviewed Journal FEMS Yeast Research, the authors propose that by the time a dedicated wheat beer brewery had opened in 1607, top-fermenting wheat beer yeasts from Schwarzach and bottom-fermenting yeasts from the Munich Hofbräühaus had mated to create a brand new species that we now know as S. pastorianus – the lager yeast. And, as they say – the rest is history.

"We often think historical events are almost pre-programmed, but this is an amazing example of how chance events – the lack of an heir, the Duke's thirst for wheat beer, and the unorthodox sex between different yeasts, culminated in a new yeast species that changed the world of beer," Professor Morrissey said.

The journal article is a great read if you like to nerd out on beer history or beer styles.

Journal Reference:
Mathias Hutzler, John P Morrissey, Andreas Laus, et al., A new hypothesis for the origin of the lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus [open], FEMS Yeast Research, Volume 23, 2023, foad023, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsyr/foad023

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Are you a mosquito magnet? It might be for one unpleasant reason:

New research has found that smelly armpits may turn some people into a mosquito magnet.

This is apparently the reason that some people are so plagued by the annoying critters — while others get off scot-free, according to scientists.

The pesky insects are drawn to body odor, also known as BO — and mosquitoes can find us from 350 feet away once they get a whiff, according to SWNS, the British news service.

The new findings are based on the African malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae, which was let loose in an ice rink-sized outdoor testing arena in Zambia.

Said the study's lead author, Dr. Diego Giraldo, a neuroscientist, "This is the largest system to assess olfactory preference for any mosquito in the world. And it is a very busy sensory environment for the mosquitoes," as SWNS reported.

The team from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, released 200 hungry mosquitoes each night and used infrared motion cameras to observe how often they landed on evenly spaced pads heated to 35ºC — mimicking human skin, the report said.

It was a good sign they were ready to bite.

hubie writes:

A new paper proposes solid air as a medium for recycling cold energy across the hydrogen liquefaction supply chain:

The world is undergoing an energy transition to reduce CO2 emissions and mitigate climate change. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have further increased the interest of Europe and Western countries to invest in the hydrogen economy as an alternative to fossil fuels. Hydrogen can significantly reduce geopolitical risks if the diversity of future hydrogen energy suppliers is increased.

Hydrogen is a particularly challenging product to transport safely. One option is to liquefy hydrogen, which requires cooling to 20 Kelvin (-253 °C). This is an expensive process and requires around 30% of the energy stored within the hydrogen.

A pioneering approach developed by IIASA researchers and colleagues proposes solid air (nitrogen or oxygen) as a medium for recycling cooling energy across the hydrogen liquefaction supply chain. At standard temperature and pressure, air is a gas, but under certain conditions, it can become a liquid or solid. Solid Air Hydrogen Liquefaction (SAHL) consists of storing the cooling energy from the regasification of hydrogen, by solidifying air, and transporting the solid air back to where the hydrogen was liquefied. The solid air is then used to reduce the energy consumption for liquefying hydrogen. The process is divided into four main steps: hydrogen regasification, solid air transportation, hydrogen liquefaction, and liquid hydrogen transportation.

[...] In their paper, the authors also address the ongoing debate in industry and academia to find the best alternative to transport hydrogen by sea:

"Compared to ammonia or methanol, liquefied hydrogen is the best option for several reasons. Transporting hydrogen with ammonia and other molecules would require around 30% of the energy transported to extract the hydrogen. The hydrogen is liquefied where electricity is cheap. Also, SAHL can lower energy consumption for hydrogen liquefaction by 25 to 50%," Hunt concludes.

Journal Reference:
Hunt, J., Montanari, P., Hummes D., et al. (2023). Solid air hydrogen liquefaction, the missing link of the hydrogen economy. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2023.03.405

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New study reveals possible future health impacts related to climate mitigation:

Reduce fossil fuel use and air quality will improve, right? It might not be as straightforward as it appears, according to a Penn State-led research team. They explored almost 30,000 simulated future scenarios and found that some climate mitigation efforts could lead to harmful health impacts in certain geographic areas.

Their results were published May 18 in Nature Sustainability.

"In general, reducing fossil fuel use is good for climate mitigation and good for cleaning up the air, and the modeling studies have always found health benefits from climate mitigation," said corresponding author Wei Peng, assistant professor of international affairs and of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State, who has conducted research in this area for a decade. "But in this study, for the first time, we were able to see potential co-harm occur in a certain part of the scenarios."

The researchers found some scenarios where fossil fuel reduction requires a significant land use change to grow bioenergy resources, such as algae and plants like corn stalks and barley straw that can be used to create biofuels including types of ethanol and biodiesel.

In these scenarios, deforestation could occur on a grander scale for certain areas, such as Russia and Canada, leading to worsening air quality. As a result, people in these areas with worsened air quality could suffer from more respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, which could lead to more premature deaths, said the researchers.

fliptop writes:

China's cyberspace regulator said on Sunday that products made by U.S. memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology had failed its network security review and that it would bar operators of key infrastructure from procuring from the firm:

The decision, announced amid a dispute over chip technology between Washington and Beijing, could include sectors ranging from transport to finance, according to China's broad definition of critical information infrastructure.

"The review found that Micron's products have serious network security risks, which pose significant security risks to China's critical information infrastructure supply chain, affecting China's national security," the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement.

[...] U.S. officials, including members of a U.S. congressional select committee on competition with China, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Micron derives around 10% of its revenue from China, but it is not clear if the decision affects the company's sales to non-Chinese customers in the country.

Also at The Register, MarketWatch and ABC News.

Related:

• US Restrictions See China's Chip Imports Plummet 27% in First Two Months of 2023
• Netherlands Refuses to Summarily Agree to US Export Restrictions on China Over Silicon Chips
• US Chip Makers Hit by New China Export Rule

Original Submission

hubie writes:

When employees leave their jobs, coworkers call it quits: UBC study:

People leave jobs all the time, whether they're laid off, fired, or just quit. But how do their departures affect coworkers left behind? According to a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business, those exits can lead many others to call it quits.

The researchers delved deeply into employment data from a major retailer that was experiencing high turnover to find out why. They reviewed data for roughly a million employees — including when they were hired, which store, which position, when they left, and why.

The study authors also had access to employee performance records, so they could evaluate whether workers were high performers or low performers.

[...] "It's very bad news for organizations, especially if they are laying off high performers, because if those positions get eliminated, both high and low performers start quitting," said Dr. Sajjadiani. "It's a signal that people's jobs aren't secure, and the organization doesn't care about them, no matter how hard they work. So they think, 'I should leave as soon as possible.'"

When employees quit their jobs voluntarily, their departures give a more moderate boost to voluntary turnover, and it takes longer for that ripple effect to occur.

"To high performers, voluntary exits are a positive signal that there are better opportunities elsewhere," said Dr. Sajjadiani. "So while employees might not leave immediately, they do begin to look for other opportunities."

[...] However, when a high performer is dismissed without clear justification, employers not only open themselves to legal headaches, it also sends the wrong message to other high performers. They also start heading for the door.

According to Dr. Sajjadiani, organizations vastly underestimate the ripple effects of people leaving and the resulting human capital costs. The research also sends a clear message to organizations that they should be extremely careful when they make exit decisions, or they risk destabilizing the whole organization very quickly.

Journal Reference:
Sima Sajjadiani, John D Kammeyer-Mueller and Alan Benson, Who Is Leaving and Why? The Dynamics of High-Quality Human Capital Outflows, Academy of Management Journal, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2021.1327

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Plastic pervasive in food supply, says new study:

Micro and nanoplastics are pervasive in our food supply and may be affecting food safety and security on a global scale, a new study led by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, has found.

The study is one of the first to analyze the academic literature on microplastics from a food safety and food security risk viewpoint, building on past studies which primarily tracked plastics in fish.

It shows that plastics and their additives are present at a range of concentrations not only in fish but in many products including meat, chicken, rice, water, take-away food and drink, and even fresh produce.

CSIRO analytical chemist, food safety specialist and lead author of the paper, Dr. Jordi Nelis, said these plastics enter the human food chain through numerous pathways, such as ingestion as shown in the fish studies, but one of the main ways is through food processing and packaging. The research is published in the journal TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry.

[...] There are currently no definitive studies that demonstrate micro and nanoplastics in the environment cause harm to humans, however more research is needed to fully understand health effects.

[...] "The key missing information is determining safe levels of microplastics. We currently don't know exactly what the microplastic flux through the food system is or which levels can be considered safe," Dr. Nelis said.

Journal Reference:
Joost L.D. Nelis et al, The measurement of food safety and security risks associated with micro- and nanoplastic pollution, TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.trac.2023.116993

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Google may turn Bard generative AI chatbot into a widget on Pixel smartphones and tablets, according to a 9to5Google code dive report. Bard is publicly available, but only through a web portal. An Android-accessible version, even limited to Pixel devices, could help the company nab more of the market currently dominated by OpenAI and Microsoft through ChatGPT and the ChatGPT-powered Bing:

Though Google hasn't spread Bard beyond its initial entry point, other tools fueled by the same LaMDA large language model (LLM) have become more available. Generative AI text generators and editors for Gmail, Docs, and other parts of Google's software suite now offer some version of the technology. It looks like Google is looking to make Bard a widget on the main Pixel screen.

[...] A built-in widget for Bard might be a way for Google to accelerate the adoption of its generative AI since Pixel devices and the Android OS are part of its ecosystem. Mobile apps with ChatGPT in some form, such as SoundHound and ParagraphAI, can't do what a first-party tool could.

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA's Lucy spacecraft adjusts course for asteroid flyby in November:

On May 9, NASA's Lucy spacecraft carried out a trajectory correction maneuver to set the spacecraft on course for its close encounter with the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh. The maneuver changed the velocity of the spacecraft by only about 7.7 mph (3.4 m/s).

Even though the spacecraft is currently traveling at approximately 43,000 mph (19.4 km/s), this small nudge is enough to move the spacecraft nearly 40,000 miles (65,000 km) closer to the asteroid during the planned encounter on Nov. 1, 2023. The spacecraft will fly a mere 265 miles (425 km) from the small, half-mile-(sub-km)-sized asteroid, while traveling at a relative speed of 10,000 mph (4.5 km/s).

The Lucy team will continue to monitor the spacecraft's trajectory and will have further opportunities to fine tune the flight path if needed.

The Lucy team is also continuing to analyze the data collected from its spring instrument calibration campaign and make other preparations for the mission's first asteroid encounter. This encounter will provide a valuable test of the spacecraft's systems and procedures to make sure that everything operates as expected during the mission's high-speed asteroid encounters.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.devever.net/~hl/regmap

If you've ever had to write a program which interfaces directly with hardware — perhaps while writing a program for an MCU or embedded system or a kernel driver — you may have noticed a few common patterns in register map behaviour and design. I'm not sure anyone has ever really collected them together, so I decided to make a list of all the ones I can think of.

Original Submission

This is a post that I have suspected that I was going to have to write since late December last year.

You will now know that SoylentNews.org is closing down on 30 June but things have not been standing still behind the scenes since we first became aware of NCommander's decision at the end of last week. In fact, it has been a very busy weekend.

A small group of existing staff are looking at alternative possibilities for a 'replacement' site to keep the flow of stories going and allowing discussions to continue. This is a big task, especially in the 38 days remaining in which to try to achieve it. There are several possibilities which spring to mind, Pipedot for example. I have reached out to Bryan but have not yet received a response. However, things as not as straightforward as they seem. The pipecode is written in Php-5 which some of you will realise is no longer supported. We do not want to become dependant on old software which cannot be maintained into the future; that lesson has been taken aboard and reinforced by NCommander's explanation regarding his decision announced today. There are other options but at the moment it is still a search for what is available out there today which also appears maintainable into the future.

But the first thing we need to know is "Is there still sufficient interest in having a discussion site such as ours?" Do you, the community, still want to have your daily dose of stories and the ability to exchange views with many others on this site? Are there any community members who would be willing to join us in trying to establish such a site? Your views are crucial to everything that we do over the coming days and weeks. So please let us know what you think about whether a site is still required with all the alternative technology available today that simply didn't exist 9 years ago. What form should a new site take? What changes to how we operate are essential for you to continue to remain interested in the future site?

Of course, it cannot be a mirror image of what we have today - which many will see as a good thing! But I hope that we would be able to transfer existing accounts, usernames and passwords directly to any new site that we create. We would also have to start with a relatively simple site and build on that over time.

At the end of the day we would have to restart the voluntary subscriptions but not immediately. We can raise some funds to see us get established without the requirement of a financial commitment from the community. Subscriptions were always sufficient in the past and I don't see why that would not be the case in the future too. The fact that we currently have enough to keep this site going until next year bears witness to that. We have also found that we can significantly reduce our running costs based on our current community rather than being ready for a major stream of new members which never materialises. I have no grandiose ideas of becoming a huge site employing our own journalists but just a community that enjoys the discussions as we have been doing for several years. Nevertheless, we would also be trying to build on our existing community which is beginning to happen on this site now that things have settled down.

So don't hold back - let us know what you think.

This is the post I never thought I would have to make. I am also writing this post on behalf of SoylentNews PBC, the legal owner of SoylentNews, and not as a member of the staff or the community.

SoylentNews is going to shut down operations on June 30th.

This wasn't an easy decision to come to, and it's ultimately the culmination of a lot of factors, some which were in my control, and some that weren't. A large part boils down to critical maintenance to the site not properly being performed for a very long time. To pay back the mountain of technical debt we've built up, it would require relaunching the site from scratch.

I'll discuss this more in depth below, but I can't personally justify the time any more, especially due to the negative impact that SN is having on my personal life.

Before we shut down, at least for the foreseeable future, I'm going to outline the situation as I see it, my own personal responsibility, and what happens next.

hubie writes:

The Moon is not made of green cheese after all:

A thorough investigation has found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. This, researchers hope, will help settle a long debate about whether the Moon's inner heart is solid or molten, and lead to a more accurate understanding of the Moon's history – and, by extension, that of the Solar System.

"Our results," writes a team led by astronomer Arthur Briaud of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in France, "question the evolution of the Moon magnetic field thanks to its demonstration of the existence of the inner core and support a global mantle overturn scenario that brings substantial insights on the timeline of the lunar bombardment in the first billion years of the Solar System."

[...] To figure it out once and for all, Briaud and his colleagues collected data from space missions and lunar laser ranging experiments to compile a profile of various lunar characteristics. These include the degree of its deformation by its gravitational interaction with Earth, the variation in its distance from Earth, and its density.

[...] And they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth – with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That's about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon.

The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That's very close to the density of iron.

[..] We know not long after it formed, the Moon had a powerful magnetic field, which started to decline about 3.2 billion years ago. Such a magnetic field is generated by motion and convection in the core, so what the lunar core is made of is deeply relevant to how and why the magnetic field disappeared.

Journal Reference:
Briaud, A., Ganino, C., Fienga, A. et al. The lunar solid inner core and the mantle overturn. Nature (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05935-7

Original Submission