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upstart writes:

Aspiring Photographer's $3K Camera Accidentally Donated to Goodwill and Sold for $70:

An aspiring wedding photographer suffered a "huge setback" after her mom accidentally donated her brand new $3,000 camera to Goodwill — sparking a huge campaign to get the camera back.

Kelsie Lee had spent "several years" saving up for her Canon R6 Mark II with dreams of using it to be a wedding, engagement, and elopement photographer.

After purchasing the camera, Lee was been enthusiastically taking photos of her friends and family. But this all came to a crashing halt after her mom unintentionally donated the R6 to a Goodwill store where it was purchased for just $70.

"I was using it to take some photos of my family and me before we went out to dinner," Lee tells PetaPixel.

"I didn't want to bring the camera inside of the restaurant at the risk of damaging it and I also was hesitant to leave it in the car because of possible theft.

"My dad and I thought it would be a good idea to hide the camera in a cardboard box in the back of my mom's car — who was not at the dinner."

Later, when Lee went to retrieve her camera from her mom's car the "worst possible thing had happened" — the box and camera were gone.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/asus-fixes-error-that-caused-mass-router-outage-worldwide-for-2-days/

On Wednesday, Asus router users around the world took to the Internet to report that their devices suddenly froze up for no apparent reason and then, upon rebooting repeatedly, stopped working every few minutes as device memory became exhausted.

Two days later, the Taiwan-based hardware maker has finally answered the calls for help. The mass outage, the company said, was the result of "an error in the configuration of our server settings file." After fixing the glitch, most users needed to only reboot their devices. In the event that didn't fix the problem, the company's support team advised users to save their current configuration settings and perform a factory reset. The company also apologized.
[...]
"On the 16th, Asus pushed a corrupted definition file for ASD, a built-in security daemon present in a wide range of their routers," one person wrote. "As routers automatically updated and fetched the corrupted definition file, they started running out of filesystem space and memory and crashing."

The explanation answered the question of what was causing routers to crash, but it raised a new one: Why were routers affected even when they had been configured to not automatically update and no manual update had been performed? Asus has yet to address this, but the likely answer is that the definitions file for ASD, which resides in memory and scans devices for security threats, gets updated whether or not automatic updates are enabled.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Someone who looks a lot like you could also unlock it, says Which?

Samsung, Oppo and Nokia are among a range of Android phone makers with facial recognition scanning tech that can be "easily duped" by a printed 2D photo, according to tests undertaken by campaign group Which?

Resident techies that put a range of phones and brands through their paces (see box below) said the findings were of concern as biometric tech is often billed as one of the most secure ways to unlock a handset.

Of the 48 phones Which? sent to labs for testing, 19 could be spoofed with photos and "worryingly" these were "not even particularly high resolution and were printed on a standard office printer on normal, rather than photo, paper."

The vast majority of the phones that failed the simple biometric test were, unsurprisingly, low to mid-range in price, though Which? claimed there were exceptions, including the Xiaomi 13 and the Motorola Razr.

Of the phones that Which? reckons could be fooled, seven were made by Xiaomi, four came from Motorola, while two came from each of Nokia, Oppo and Samsung. One model made by Honor and another by Vivo was also found to be exploitable.

Under Android's requirements, phone makers must ensure devices and software are "Android compatible," which includes how often device security can be spoofed. Class 3 systems must not be duped more than 7 percent of the time, and Class 1 system are least secure, with a spot rate of 20 percent of the time to more.

Which? voiced worries that scammers could exploit the weakness to – for example – access Google Wallet to make payments to a limited value (£45 in the UK, about $56) without needing to unlock their phone. For larger transactions, Google asks users to use a Class 3 biometric lock, Which? said.

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Original Submission

upstart writes:

Miura 1, the First Spanish Suborbital Rocket, Is Ready for Launch:

Should it succeed, PLD Space will become the first private micro launcher to launch a rocket in Europe's emerging space race.

Spanish manufacturer PLD Space successfully carried out the final ignition test of its reusable Miura 1 rocket on Wednesday, setting the stage for its imminent launch from southern Europe.

In the next few days, PLD Space aims to become the first private micro launcher company to actually launch a rocket in the European space race. The Miura 1 is a one-stage suborbital rocket that stands 41 feet (12.5 meters) long, or about the height of four-story building. The rocket serves as a proof-of-concept for PLD's larger Miura 5 rocket, which aims to launch satellites into orbit beginning in 2025.

PLD Space developed the Miura 1's TEPREL-B motor in-house, which can achieve a thrust of 30 kN with a simple pressure-fed cycle using jet fuel. The rocket can reach an altitude of 93 miles (150 kilometers) with a cargo of 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and is meant to be reusable for at least three trips.

[...] The Miura 1 will be launched towards the Atlantic Ocean from a cliff on the coast of Huelva in southwestern Spain, specifically a military test zone known as "Médano del Loro." The launch is scheduled to take place on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, when the area will be free of fishermen, at 7:30 a.m. local time. On the day of the launch, the air space will be closed, and officials will establish an exclusion area in the ocean. The Spanish Institute of Aerospace Technology has already approved several launch windows through May 31.

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owl writes:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/05/ev-advocates-join-tech-groups-and-automakers-to-oppose-am-radio-mandate/

Congress wants to force AM into every new car for emergency alerts.

The fight over the future of AM radio got a little more heated this week as organizations representing the auto and technology industries told Congress that its plan to mandate this mode of radio wave reception is poorly conceived and will hinder progress.

AM radio has seen almost every other in-car entertainment option come and go—vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs—and it might predate just about everything other than playing "I Spy," but time is catching up with this old broadcast technology. It is starting to get left behind as new models—many of which are electric vehicles—drive off into the sunset, streaming their audio instead of modulating its amplitude.

[...] "As more and more Americans adopt electric vehicles, we must ensure that they are equipped with AM radio. AM radio is—and will remain—an essential communications channel for emergency alerts and for disseminating news and other important information to residents of our district and communities across our country. I am proud to co-lead this bipartisan legislation which would ensure that EVs continue to be equipped with this basic but critical capability," said Rep. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), another co-sponsor.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Shutterstock picks up Giphy for $53 million after UK blocks Meta's acquisition:

Shutterstock is buying Giphy for $53 million after Meta's acquisition of the popular GIF platform was blocked by the UK's competition regulator, the stock image giant has announced.

That price represents a steep discount compared to what Meta (then Facebook) reportedly agreed to pay for Giphy in 2020. At the time, Axios reported the deal was worth around $400 million, while The Guardian suggests closer to $315 million. Either way, a $53 million price tag is a bargain versus Giphy's peak valuation of around $600 million in 2016. As part of the deal, Meta will retain access to Giphy's library across its products.

Meta's acquisition of Giphy ran into trouble when the UK's competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), ordered Facebook's parent company to unwind the deal in 2021. The CMA argued that the deal could harm competition by increasing Meta's market power, potentially allowing it to block its rival's access to GIFs or force them to hand over valuable user data in exchange for them. Although it appealed the ruling, Meta eventually agreed to sell Giphy last year.

For Shutterstock, the deal will augment its content library, expanding it to include GIFs and Stickers. The company also said it would help its "generative AI and metadata strategy." That's a bit more vague, but Shutterstock is currently using generative AI to provide imagery to its customers. Acquiring Giphy's substantial library could theoretically give Shutterstock reams of training data for future AI-based products.

"Through the Giphy acquisition, we are extending our audience touch points beyond primarily professional marketing and advertising use cases and expanding into casual conversations," Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy said in a statement. "We plan to leverage Shutterstock's unique capabilities in content and metadata monetization, generative AI, studio production and creative automation to enable the commercialization of our GIF library as we roll this offering out to customers."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/brand-new-laptop-recreates-1981s-ibm-pc-complete-with-8088-cpu-and-640kb-of-ram/

All modern Intel and AMD PCs can trace their roots to a single system: the IBM Personal Computer. Originally released in August 1981, this computer became so popular and long-lived that competitors reverse-engineered its BIOS so that their computers could use the same software and peripherals, a practice that eventually resulted in a de facto standard whose descendants we still use today.

If you want to experience what using an old IBM PC was like, you could drop a few hundred dollars on a used one on eBay. Or you could roll the dice on this new oddball laptop on AliExpress. The "Book 8088" laptop PC combines modern components with an Intel 8088 processor and 640KB (yes, that's kilobytes) of memory.
[...]
Update, 5/20/2023: After this story was published, Ars was contacted by developer Sergey Kiselev, who maintains an open-source 8088 BIOS on GitHub. He alleged that the creators of the Book 8088 re-used his BIOS for the system while removing his name and language about the GPL v2 license that the BIOS is distributed under; we can't confirm the claim by comparing the code directly, but there are several distinct similarities in a screenshot Kiselev shared and one used in the Book 8088 retail listing.

"While my work is open source, and I don't mind people using it in their projects, I do care deeply about the principles of open source software development and licensing. And whoever manufacturers this machine, bluntly violates copyright law and licensing," wrote Kiselev to Ars detailing his claim. "Since you start your article with the discussion of how Compaq reverse engineered IBM's BIOS, I think it would be suitable to mention that the manufacturer pirated the BIOS, without crediting the work, and they violate GPL by not releasing the source code of their modified BIOS."

Original Submission

JoeMerchant writes:

https://www.howtogeek.com/894161/the-great-raspberry-pi-shortage-might-be-coming-to-an-end/

According to Raspberry Pi CEO, Eben Upton, in an interview with YouTuber Jeff Geerling, the company put together 750,000 Raspberry Pi units in the first quarter of the year. That isn't a lot, but it also says that it's on track for building 2 million units this second quarter, helping it fill backlogged orders and paving the way for "unconstrained" supply during the remaining half of the year. Ultimately though, it means that you should expect units such as the Raspberry Pi 4 to be more widely available by the end of this year.

Original Submission

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