SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Contemporary linux runs well on decades-old portable hardware : https://raymii.org/s/blog/My_24_year_old_HP_Jornada_can_do_things_your_modern_iPhone_still_cant_do.html

They bother to cite NCommander, even:

NCommander has an excellent video on the 680e and the use of the device at the Dutch Railways (NS).

[hubie] An interesting short article for those who haven't repurposed a mobile device with a new operating system. The author notes:

Boy do I miss the good old days, where devices were programmable by their owners instead of just e-waste consumption slabs.

How many devices do you have lying in a drawer somewhere that are just fine hardware wise, but lack the software updates or development capabilities to be useful today?

[hubie] How often do you extend the life or repurpose retired mobile devices and how have you done it? Through advice and encouragement I got from the SN community, a few years ago I resurrected an old Samsung tablet by installing LineageOS and I use it all the time to play games I get off of F-Droid.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Kim Dotcom still fighting decade-long battle to avoid being shipped to US over copyright abuse:

The decade-long legal brawl over cloud storage locker Megaupload has moved a little closer to resolution after two of the outfit's execs pled guilty to a variety of charges.

Megaupload, fronted by colorful entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, offered users the chance to upload files and store them in a cloud. Files could then be made available to other members. The outfit's heyday was the mid-2000s – a time when plenty of content was available using BitTorrent and before content streaming services offered easy and affordable access to content online.

[...] Big Content of course deluged Megaupload with copyright-related lawsuits, which have been rumbling along for over a decade as Dotcom and his associates argued they should not be held responsible for users' uploads.

US authorities and Big Content have pointed to Megaupload's payments to uploaders of stolen content as evidence the outfit intended to profit from copyright abuse. They attempted to extradite Dotcom and his associates from New Zealand to face American courts.

Yesterday, two of those associates – Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, both programmers for Megaupload – pled guilty in New Zealand's High Court.

DannyB writes:

European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries:

What's old is new again, at least in the European Union. The European Parliament recently voted in favor of new legislation that would overhaul the entire battery life cycle, from design to end-of-life, which includes important caveats for smartphone users.

Among the many changes, the new rules would require batteries in consumer devices like smartphones to be easily removable and replaceable. That's far from the case today with most phones, but that wasn't always the case.

In the earlier days of mobile phones (think Nokia 5190, Nokia 3310, Motorola Razr V3, Palm Treo 700p), swapping out the battery took mere seconds.

[....] For phones with "internal" batteries, you'd simply pop off the rear cover of the device, lift the battery out, put a fresh one in, and button it back up.

Manufacturers eventually moved away from easily swappable batteries in favor of "sealed" handsets sporting sleeker designs. Many consumers were vocal about the change but over time, most accepted it as the new norm and moved on.

[....] This is not the first time the EU has prompted a rethink. Last year, the EU set a deadline of December 28, 2024, for phones and other small electronic devices to include a USB-C port for charging. That's a problem for Apple considering the iPhone uses a proprietary Lightning port.

In that final paragraph, that standard USB-C charging port may be a problem for Tesla and other EV charging unless the EV owner has a really good USB-C cable.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/06/ai-powered-final-beatles-song-due-this-year-says-paul-mccartney/

On Tuesday, BBC Radio 4's Today program aired an interview with Paul McCartney in which he announced that thanks to AI technology, a "final Beatles record" has been finished and will be released later this year. He said that AI techniques have isolated John Lennon's vocals from an old cassette tape demo, enabling him to complete the song.

Though McCartney did not provide the song's title, speculation points towards it being "Now And Then," a 1978 Lennon composition, which McCartney has mentioned wanting to finish in the past. In 1995, the three living Beatles considered including the song in their Anthology series (similar to "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love") but abandoned it due to quality issues and George Harrison's refusal to work on it. Harrison died in 2001.
[...]
During the making of the 2021 Get Back documentary, composer Emile de la Rey and a team of engineers at Peter Jackson's Wingnut Films worked with machine learning researcher Paris Smaragdis of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to develop a neural network called "MAL" (Machine Assisted Learning, also a nod to Beatles roadie Mal Evans) to isolate voices and musical instruments in Beatles recordings. Similar vocal isolation allowed McCartney to virtually duet with Lennon on a recent tour.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Video ads are coming to Uber, so I'm switching to a competitor:

The Wall Street Journal reports that full-length video ads are coming to all Uber apps, including its main ride-hailing app, food delivery service, and alcohol sales platform Drizly. This ad sale is part of a "key growth area," according to Mark Grether, vice president and general manager of Uber Technologies' advertising division.

Users will start seeing video ads when waiting for their drivers to arrive and even during their trips. For cars that have tablets installed inside, they will also appear there. For the Uber Eats app, video ads will play after customers place orders and continue until their deliveries arrive. Drizly, on its way, will have them in search results on its app and website.

WSJ says Grethen praises Uber's ability to "use data based on users' own travel and purchase histories to target them during the critical period between the time they open each app and the time they complete their transactions." He said that a ride usually takes 15 minutes, and 2 of the people are paying attention to the app.

"We have two minutes of your attention. We know where you are, we know where you are going to, we know what you have eaten," he said. "We can use all of that to then basically target a video ad towards you."

[...] While Uber praises its ability to track users – and I understand it's a core business part of several companies – it feels almost disrespectful how it says it's selling ads. While some people try to escape this unwanted tracking, Uber is proud to get every penny from you.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Martian maps are full of monikers recognizing places on Earth, explorers, and even cartoon characters:

NASA's Perseverance rover is currently investigating rock outcrops alongside the rim of Mars's Belva Crater. Some 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) away, NASA's Curiosity rover recently drilled a sample at a location called "Ubajara." The crater bears an official name; the drill location is identified by a nickname, hence the quotation marks.

Both names are among thousands applied by NASA missions not just to craters and hills, but also to every boulder, pebble, and rock surface they study.

[...] The difference between an official name on Mars and an unofficial one is seemingly simple: Official monikers have been approved by a body of scientists known as the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The IAU sets standards for naming planetary features and logs the names in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.

For example, craters larger than 37 miles (60 kilometers) are named for famous scientists or science-fiction authors; smaller craters are named after towns with populations of less than 100,000 people. Jezero Crater, which Perseverance has been exploring, shares the name with a Bosnian town; Belva, an impact crater within Jezero, is named after a West Virginia town that is, in turn, named after Belva Lockwood, the suffragist who ran for president in 1884 and 1888.

[...] Early Mars missions sometimes took a whimsical route with nicknames, even using cartoon character names. "Yogi Rock," "Casper," and "Scooby-Doo" were among the unofficial names applied by the team behind NASA's first rover, Sojourner, in the late 1990s.

upstart writes:

We've pumped so much groundwater that we've nudged the Earth's spin, says new study:

By pumping water out of the ground and moving it elsewhere, humans have shifted such a large mass of water that the Earth tilted nearly 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) east between 1993 and 2010 alone, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Based on climate models, scientists previously estimated humans pumped 2,150 gigatons of groundwater, equivalent to more than 6 millimeters (0.24 inches) of sea level rise, from 1993 to 2010. But validating that estimate is difficult.

[...] Water's ability to change the Earth's rotation was discovered in 2016, and until now, the specific contribution of groundwater to these rotational changes was unexplored. In the new study, researchers modeled the observed changes in the drift of Earth's rotational pole and the movement of water—first, with only ice sheets and glaciers considered, and then adding in different scenarios of groundwater redistribution.

The model only matched the observed polar drift once the researchers included 2150 gigatons of groundwater redistribution. Without it, the model was off by 78.5 centimeters (31 inches), or 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches) of drift per year.

"I'm very glad to find the unexplained cause of the rotation pole drift," [lead study author Ki-Weon] Seo said. "On the other hand, as a resident of Earth and a father, I'm concerned and surprised to see that pumping groundwater is another source of sea-level rise."

Journal References:
1.) Ki-Weon Seo, et. al. Drift of Earth's Pole Confirms Groundwater Depletion as a Significant Contributor to Global Sea Level Rise 1993–2010, Geophysical Research Letters (DOI: 10.1029/2023GL103509)
2.) Yoshihide Wada, et. al. Global depletion of groundwater resources, Geophysical Research Letters (DOI: 10.1029/2010GL044571)
3.) Surendra Adhikari and Erik R. Ivins, Climate-driven polar motion: 2003–2015, Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501693)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

From the Wall Street Journal: U.S. Spy Agencies Buy Vast Quantities of Americans' Personal Data, U.S. Says

The partially redacted report is available online: ODNI-Declassified-Report-on-CAI-January2022

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Another 16-pin RTX 4090 power adapter has melted, but from the PSU side this time:

Since October, dozens of RTX 4090 owners have reported melting power adapter cables. Despite investigations from Nvidia and third parties, a definitive cause has yet to be determined. It was thought that pairing the GPU with an ATX 3.0 power supply was a safe solution... until now.

A new report of a burnt GeForce RTX 4090 power cable has emerged on Reddit, but this case is fundamentally different from prior incidents. If it's connected to the same flaw, it could cast doubt on earlier theories as to the problem's source.

User "Shiftyeyes67k" posted a picture of severe burn damage on a 16-pin 4090 12VHPWR power cable connector and the corresponding connection port on a 1000W BeQuet Dark Power 13 ATX 3.0 power supply. This case is potentially significant because despite looking similar to previous examples of scorched 4090 cables, it lacks two common factors between the others.

The few dozen cases that have emerged since October resulted in damage to the connectors plugged into the graphics card. Furthermore, they all affected customers who used the 4090's bundled 16-pin connection adapters to plug the GPU into an ATX 2.0 power supply's 12-pin socket.

Shiftyeyes67k bought an ATX 3.0 PSU with a 16-pin socket specifically to avoid this problem. Prior incidents led users to blame the adapter, and upgrading to an ATX 3.0 power supply is a small investment compared to the $1,600 4090, but this instance involved no adapter. Another owner who reported the problem last month had used a high-end third-party adapter, casting early doubt on Nvidia's included attachments as the source of the issue.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/06/russia-backed-hackers-unleash-new-usb-based-malware-on-ukraines-military/

Hackers working for Russia's Federal Security Service have mounted multiple cyberattacks that used USB-based malware to steal large amounts of data from Ukrainian targets for use in its ongoing invasion of its smaller neighbor, researchers said.

"The sectors and nature of the organizations and machines targeted may have given the attackers access to significant amounts of sensitive information," researchers from Symantec, now owned by Broadcom, wrote in a Thursday post. "There were indications in some organizations that the attackers were on the machines of the organizations' human resources departments, indicating that information about individuals working at the various organizations was a priority for the attackers, among other things."
[...]
Thursday's post includes IP addresses, hashes, file names, and other indicators of compromise people can use to detect if they have been targeted. The post also warns that the group poses a threat that targets should take seriously.

"This activity demonstrates that Shuckworm's relentless focus on Ukraine continues," they wrote. "It seems clear that Russian nation-state-backed attack groups continue to laser in on Ukrainian targets in attempts to find data that may potentially help their military operations."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/

Google may soon be ordered to break up its lucrative ad business, which amounted to nearly $225 billion in 2022 and represented nearly 80 percent of Google's total revenue. Today, as expected, the European Commission (EC) sent Google a statement of objections, detailing ad tech antitrust charges and explaining exactly why the EC thinks that breaking up Google's ad business may be the only acceptable remedy.

"We are concerned that Google may have illegally distorted competition in the online advertising technology industry," Margrethe Vestager, the EC's executive vice president, said in remarks published today.

According to Vestager, an EC investigation launched in 2021 found that Google may have favored its own ad tech services when serving as an intermediary ad exchange, matching advertiser supply and publisher demand for advertising space online.

To the EC, it seems like Google has its hand in too many pots to be trusted to conduct business fairly. Google operates an ad exchange, AdX, as well as ad tech services for advertisers—Google Ads and Google Display & Video 360 (DV 360)—and services for publishers, DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP).

Vestager said there's potential for misconduct because "Google may hold a dominant position on both ends of the ad tech supply chain" and "appears to have abused its market position" by ensuring that both advertising and publisher services allegedly favored AdX over other ad exchanges when matching advertisers and publishers.

Original Submission

acid andy writes:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a44097391/college-student-solves-seemingly-paradoxical-math-problem/

For 30 years, mathematicians wondered if you could have an infinite set of numbers where each pair of numbers adds up to a unique value, and have those values each be fairly large.

In March, a graduate student [Cédric Pilatte] from Oxford University finally solved the problem by turning to an unlikely solution: geometry.

In 1993, Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—one of the most prolific mathematicians of the 20th century—posed a question with two components seemingly at odds with one another: Could a Sidon set be an "asymptotic basis of order three?"

[...] Named after another Hungarian mathematician, Simon Sidon, these sets are basically a collection of numbers where no two numbers in the set add up to the same integer. For example, in the simple Sidon set (1, 3, 5, 11), when any of the two numbers in the set are added together, they equal a unique number. Constructing a Sidon set with only four numbers is extremely easy, but as the set increases in size, it just gets harder and harder. As soon as two sums are the same, the collection of numbers is no longer considered a Sidon set.

The second element of Erdős' problem—that scary-sounding "asymptotic basis of order three" part—means that:

1. a set must be infinitely large
2. any large enough integer can be written as the result of adding together at most 3 numbers in the set.

So, this 30-year-old conundrum centered on whether or not these two elements could exist in the same set of numbers. For decades, the answer seemed to be no.

[...] So how did Pilatte get a mathematically square peg to fit a seemingly round hole? He took an unconventional approach and turned to geometry rather than the probabilistic method championed by Erdős and what's called additive number theory. Pilatte replaced numbers with polynomials and made use of the recent work of Columbia University mathematicians. Combining these ideas, Pilatte successfully created a Sidon set dense enough and random enough to finally solve Erdős's original problem.

Journal References:

1.) Pilatte, Cédric. A solution to the Erdős-Sárközy-Sós problem on asymptotic Sidon bases of order 3, arXiv (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2303.09659)

2.) Sawin, Will. Square-root cancellation for sums of factorization functions over squarefree progressions in F_q[t], arXiv (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2102.09730)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

In an amendment to his wrongful termination suit, Yintao Yu outlines his alleged witnessing of how ByteDance supplies user data to the CCP:

Yintao "Roger" Yu, a former ByteDance executive based in California, filed a lawsuit against his former employer alleging a list of wrongdoings. According to Yu, ByteDance has stolen content from other creators online, discriminated against employees, and inflated its engagement metrics.

A striking allegation Yu made against ByteDance has been highly suspected but yet to be proven. Yu alleges that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the ruling political party in China, can and has accessed TikTok user data.

Yu alleges that the CCP uses ByteDance as a political propaganda tool and cites two examples in which he witnessed ByteDance promote or demote content on TikTok that aligned with the CCP's political goals.

According to the court filings, "Mr. Yu observed that ByteDance has been responsive to the CCP's requests to share information, and even to elevate or remove content at the request of the CCP."

Yu alleges that ByteDance promoted content that expressed hatred for Japan, and in 2018, ByteDance demoted content that expressed support for political protests in Hong Kong. Yu alleges this was possible in Hong Kong because the CCP monitored activists' locations via backdoor data access.

[...] According to Yu's filing, storing US user data on US soil does not mean the CCP cannot access the data, and the only way to ensure China cannot access the data is to shut the backdoor.

[...] TikTok declined to address Yu's allegations, but a ByteDance spokesperson discredited the allegations by mentioning that Yu did not work for TikTok but for Flipagram, another ByteDance-owned app.

ByteDance's spokesperson questioned Yu's intentions by mentioning that Yu was terminated from Flipagram in 2018 and is now coming forward with his allegations.

[...] However, these allegations are found in a wrongful termination lawsuit and do not supply any further evidence, like internal memos or messages. Yu is the first former ByteDance employee to publicly allege that the relationship between ByteDance and the CCP is too close for comfort.

Original Submission

requerdanos writes:

Scientists hope studying the rare asteroid will provide new insights into our own planet:

Riches beyond our wildest dreams are apparently within reach--at least, within the reach of NASA--in the form of an asteroid made of gold and other metals valued in the neighborhood of ten thousand quadrillion dollars.

[Psyche,] the ultra-valuable asteroid—which appears to be made largely of iron, nickel, gold and other rare metals—orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. It measures 140 miles wide and is shaped somewhat like a potato, according to astronomers.

It's been said that Psyche could be worth $10,000 quadrillion—more than the entire economy on our planet.

[...] The Psyche mission would be NASA's first-ever visit to a world rich in metal, rather than rock or ice. The spacecraft is expected to reach [the] asteroid in August 2029[.]

Journal Reference:
Becker, Tracy et. al. HST UV Observations of Asteroid (16) Psyche, The Planetary Science Journal (DOI: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/abb67e)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Launching a fleet of space telescopes is not the solution to the Starlink problem:

The sky is rapidly filling with fast-moving satellites reflecting sunlight and zapping astronomers' detectors. It is, after all, exceedingly difficult to see faint galaxies in the distant cosmos when someone is shining a flashlight down your telescope.

The biggest culprit is SpaceX, which has launched a massive and growing fleet of Starlink Internet satellites since 2018. Of the more than 7,500 total working satellites in orbit around the Earth, over 3,900 are Starlinks—meaning more than half of the birds circling our planet fly the SpaceX flag.

These satellites are already menacing astronomy. Many telescopes, especially those doing wide-angle surveys of the sky to search for Earth-threatening asteroids, are seeing observations ruined by bright satellites streaking across their field of view. If not caught, these can cause false positives: things at first assumed to be real but that can take exhaustive efforts to discover are not. This will only get worse as more Starlinks are flown; 12,000 are planned, and SpaceX has filed paperwork for an additional 30,000 beyond that. If this comes to pass, the sky will be filled with satellites zipping across it.

But, in a potential irony, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has claimed that the cause of this woe may also be its cure. The company is currently testing its huge Starship rocket, which, if it works as planned, will have the capability to launch extremely large and heavy payloads. This, Musk said, can be used to send large telescopes into space above the fleet of Starlink satellites, potentially alleviating the contamination issue and ushering in a new era of widespread space-based astronomy.