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upstart writes:

Robots will finish a dismantling process that has taken decades:

All of the the world's governments will, at least officially, be out of the chemical weapons business. The US Army tells The New York Times it should finish destroying the world's last declared chemical weapons stockpile as soon as tomorrow, July 7th. The US and most other nations agreed to completely eliminate their arsenals within 10 years after the Chemical Weapons Convention took effect in 1997, but the sheer size of the American collection (many of the warheads are several decades old) and the complexity of safe disposal left the country running late.

The current method relies on robots that puncture, drain and wash the chemical-laden artillery shells and rockets, which are then baked to render them harmless. The drained gas is diluted in hot water and neutralized either with bacteria (for mustard gas) or caustic soda (for nerve agents). The remaining liquid is then incinerated. Teams use X-rays to check for leaks before destruction starts, and they remotely monitor robots to minimize contact with hazardous material.

[...] The US last used chemical weapons in World War I, but kept producing them for decades as a deterrent. Attention to the program first spiked in 1968, when strange sheep deaths led to revelations that the Army was storing chemical weapons across the US and even testing them in the open.

This measure will only wipe out confirmed stockpiles. Russia has been accused of secretly making nerve gas despite insisting that it destroyed its last chemical weapons in 2017. Pro-government Syrian military forces and ISIS extremists used the weapons throughout much of the 2010s. This won't stop hostile countries and terrorists from using the toxins.

Even so, this is a major milestone. In addition to wiping out an entire category of weapons of mass destruction, it represents another step toward reduced lethality in war. Drones reduce the exposure for their operators (though not the targets), and experts like AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton envision an era when robots fight each other. While humanity would ideally end war altogether, efforts like these at least reduce the casualties.

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upstart writes:

Japan schedules August launch for 'Moon Sniper' lander:

Japan's Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has named August 26 as its intended launch date for a lunar lander it hopes will improve humanity's ability to touch down on other worlds – as well as an astronomical observation that might help us understand how they form.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is also known as the "Moon Sniper" thanks to its use of technologies that JAXA claims "make a qualitative shift towards being able to land where we want and not just where it is easy to land." If JAXA can pull that off, it believes "it will become possible to land on planets even more resource scarce than the Moon."

The sobriquet "sniper" has been applied because the craft is equipped with high-resolution cameras and an image processing algorithm. As it swings into lunar orbit, it will be able to recognize craters and measure its position, then decide on an optimal spot to land. JAXA expects it to touch down within 100 meters of its preferred target.

That accuracy is important, because it means future missions can send instruments to specific locations, instead of having to design missions around the places where landing will be easiest. As the guy said – we do this not because it's easy, but because it's hard.

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Halibut writes:

Quoting The Washington Post:

If you're printing something on actual paper, there's a good chance it's important, like a tax form or a job contract.

But popular printing products and services won't promise not to read it. In fact, they won't even promise not to share it with outside marketing firms.

The spread of digital file-sharing — along with obnoxious business practices by printing manufacturers — has pushed many U.S. households to give up at-home printers and rely on nearby printing services instead. At the same time, major printer manufacturers have adopted mobile apps and cloud-based storage, creating new opportunities to collect personal data from customers. Whether you're walking to the corner store or sending your files to the cloud, it's tough to figure out whether you're printing in private.

The article then gives a quick rundown of various printing services and their apparent verbal-vs-actual commitments to privacy.

Also seen on Bruce Schneier's blog.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The laws of physics were likely different in the deep past:

The laws of physics must have been different at the start of the universe than they are now, according to a mind-bending study conducted by University of Florida astronomers, which provides clues to why stars, planets and life itself managed to form in the universe.

After analyzing the distribution of a whopping million, trillion groups of galaxies, the scientists discovered that physical laws once preferred one set of shapes over their mirror images. It's as if the universe itself used to favor right-handed things instead of left-handed things, or vice versa.

The findings, made possible in part by UF's supercomputer HiPerGator, chip away at explaining perhaps the biggest question in cosmology: Why does anything exist? That's because some kind of handedness at the earliest moments of creation is necessary to explain why the universe is made of matter, the stuff that makes everything we see. The results also help confirm a central tenet of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

[...] Their study was designed to look for violation of a concept known as "parity symmetry" in physics, which refers to mirror-image reflections akin to left- or right-handedness. Many things in physics can be said to have a handedness, like the spin of an electron. The laws of physics today don't usually care if this spin is left or right handed, though. That equal, or symmetric, application of the laws of physics regardless of handedness is referred to as parity symmetry.

The only problem is that parity symmetry must have been broken at some point. Some ancient parity violation – some kind of preference for right-handed or left-handed stuff in the distant past – is required to explain how the universe created more matter than antimatter. If parity symmetry held during the Big Bang, equal portions of matter and antimatter would have combined, annihilated one another, and left the universe completely empty.

Journal Reference:
Cahn, Robert N., Zachary Slepian, and Jiamin Hou, Test for Cosmological Parity Violation Using the 3D Distribution of Galaxies, Phys. Rev. Lett, 130, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.201002

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hubie writes:

Put simply, science is good for us:

[...] How are we supposed to judge the value of large scientific projects? With traditional projects the cost-benefit analysis is rather straightforward. We sink in a bunch of time and money into a project, and we judge the success of those projects based on how much money they make or how many benefits they provide to society.

But by their very nature large scientific projects don't return any money on the investment. And they don't have any immediate impact on society. So are they really worth it?

[...] The first benefit that large scientific projects have is that they provide a training ground for highly skilled workers. The vast majority of the people working in large collaborations are temporary researchers, hired right out of grad school for a limited period of time to accomplish the goals of the collaboration. Once the project is over those people move on to other things, and since there are essentially no jobs in academia most of those people go into industry.

[...] Secondly, many corporations are involved in the process of assisting scientific goals. They may make instruments or optics or specialized sensors, for example. Those industries get paid to do their work and they develop new technological solutions that can then be applied to other problems or spun off into their own revenue generating products.

When it comes to satisfaction, we are all ultimately human. Part of what makes us human is our innate curiosity about the world around us. Science satisfies that curiosity in an enormous way. Science makes the results of its research available for public consumption. What we learn in science is available and open to all. We enjoy the fruits of scientific labor the same way we enjoy the work of artists and musicians. It is something that touches all of us and impacts all of us.

Journal Reference:
Avner Offer and Ofer Lahav, The Social Value of Dark Energy arXiv:2305.17982

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Study shows how accounting practices distort economic reality:

Accounting standards don't properly reflect the difference between losses driven by investments and actual business performance shortfalls, according to new University at Buffalo School of Management research.

Forthcoming in the Review of Accounting Studies, the study found that Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) mask the true value of companies by marking investments in intangibles like technology, brands and human capital as losses.

"Even as the economy boomed in 2019 following a decade of growth, about half of all public companies reported losses because accounting rules force them to report losses despite initial success," says Feng Gu, Ph.D., chair and professor of accounting and law in the UB School of Management. "This is just another indication of how broken accounting is. We need to treat intangible investments as real economic assets."

[...] "GAAP losers are less likely to decline, more likely to reverse their losses, and even have better future stock performance than real losers or profitable firms," says Gu. "This is an alarming consequence for a group of highly dynamic and innovative firms that are the driving force behind the growing intangible revolution in our economy."

Journal Reference:
Gu, Feng, Lev, Baruch, Zhu, Chenqi. All Losses Are Not Alike: Real versus Accounting-Driven Reported Losses, (DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3847359)

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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/openais-most-powerful-chatbot-api-rolls-out-for-all-paying-customers/

On Thursday, OpenAI announced that all paying API customers now have access to the GPT-4 API. It also introduced updates to chat-based models, announced a shift from the Completions API to the Chat Completions API, and outlined plans for deprecation of older models.

Generally considered its most powerful API product, the GPT-4 API first launched in March but has been under closed testing until now.
[...]
OpenAI also announced that "based on the stability and readiness of these models for production-scale use," it is also making APIs for Whisper, DALL-E, and GPT-3.5 Turbo "generally available." And the company expects to continue fine-tuning the models throughout the year.

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upstart writes:

Researchers discover safe, easy, and affordable way to store and retrieve hydrogen:

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) in Japan have discovered a compound that uses a chemical reaction to store ammonia, potentially offering a safer and easier way to store this important chemical.

This discovery, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on July 10, makes it possible not only to safely and conveniently store ammonia, but also the important hydrogen is [sic] carries. This finding should help lead the way to a decarbonized society with a practical hydrogen economy.

For society to make the switch from carbon-based to hydrogen-based energy, we need a safe way to store and transport hydrogen, which by itself is highly combustible. One way to do this is to store it as part of another molecule and extract it as needed. Ammonia, chemically written as NH₃, makes a good hydrogen carrier because three hydrogen atoms are packed into each molecule, with almost 20% of ammonia being hydrogen by weight.

The problem, however, is that ammonia is a highly corrosive gas, making it difficult to store and use. Currently, ammonia is generally stored by liquefying it at temperatures well below freezing in pressure-resistant containers. Porous compounds can also store ammonia at room temperature and pressure, but storage capacity is low, and the ammonia cannot always be retrieved easily.

The new study reports the discovery of a perovskite, a material with a distinctive repetitive crystal structure, which can easily store ammonia and also allows easy and complete retrieval at relatively low temperatures.

The research team led by Masuki Kawamoto at RIKEN CEMS focused on the perovskite ethylammonium lead iodide (EAPbI₃), chemically written as CH₃CH₂NH₃PbI₃. They found that its one-dimensional columnar structure undergoes a chemical reaction with ammonia at room temperature and pressure, and dynamically transforms into a two-dimensional layered structure called lead iodide hydroxide, or Pb(OH)I.

Journal Reference:
Jyorthana Rajappa Muralidhar, Krishnachary Salikolimi, Kiyohiro Adachi, et al., Chemical Storage of Ammonia through Dynamic Structural Transformation of a Hybrid Perovskite Compound, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2023. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c04181

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/book-authors-sue-openai-and-meta-over-text-used-to-train-ai/

On Friday, the Joseph Saveri Law Firm filed US federal class-action lawsuits on behalf of Sarah Silverman and other authors against OpenAI and Meta, accusing the companies of illegally using copyrighted material to train AI language models such as ChatGPT and LLaMA.

Other authors represented include Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, and an earlier class-action lawsuit filed by the same firm on June 28 included authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad. Each lawsuit alleges violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, unfair competition laws, and negligence.

[...] Authors claim that by utilizing "flagrantly illegal" data sets, OpenAI allegedly infringed copyrights of Silverman's book The Bedwetter, Golden's Ararat, and Kadrey's Sandman Slime. And Meta allegedly infringed copyrights of the same three books, as well as "several" other titles from Golden and Kadrey.

[...] Authors are already upset that companies seem to be unfairly profiting off their copyrighted materials, and the Meta lawsuit noted that any unfair profits currently gained could further balloon, as "Meta plans to make the next version of LLaMA commercially available." In addition to other damages, the authors are asking for restitution of alleged profits lost.

"Much of the material in the training datasets used by OpenAI and Meta comes from copyrighted works—including books written by plain­tiffs—that were copied by OpenAI and Meta without consent, without credit, and without compensation," Saveri and Butterick wrote in their press release.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

China curbs exports of key computer chip materials:

The Chinese government is tightening controls over exports of two key materials used to make computer chips.

From next month, special licenses will be needed to export gallium and germanium from China, which is the world's biggest producer of the metals.

It comes in response to Washington's efforts to curb Chinese access to some advanced microprocessors.

[...] On Monday, China's Ministry of Commerce said the restrictions were needed to "safeguard national security and interests".

[...] Semiconductors, which power everything from mobile phones to military hardware, are at the centre of a bitter dispute between the world's two largest economies.

[...] "I think we gain and China gains from trade and investment that is as open as possible, and it would be disastrous for us to attempt to decouple from China," [said US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen] during an appearance before Congress last month.

upstart writes:

Expect the saga of this release to stretch out a bit over northern summer:

Linux kernel overseer Linus Torvalds has delivered the first release candidate for version 6.5 of the kernel, but warned this release may not go entirely smoothly.

Torvalds's headline assessment of rc1 is "none of it looks hugely unusual."

"The biggest single mention probably goes to what wasn't merged, with the bcachefs pull request resulting in a long thread (we didn't hit a hundred emails yet, but it's not far away)."

As The Register reported in 2022, bcachefs is a filesystem that's been in development for nigh on a decade without being added to the kernel.

[...] In his announcement post for rc1, Torvalds wrote "Let's calm this party down."

[...] The release candidate is yours for the downloading here.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Plus: Facebook corp loses appeal on crossing data streams in Germany:

Elon Musk's Twitter can breathe easy when it comes to the European Union – Meta's "Threads" will be steering clear.

This is because Mark Zuckerberg's company – which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and more – will not launch its new Twitter-like service anywhere in the EU for the foreseeable future. But yes, it has arrived in Britain, London vultures have informed us.

Ireland's data protection watchdog, which oversees all the tech giants headquartered in the corporate tax-light country, told The Register that Meta had "confirmed to the DPC that they have no plans to roll out the service in the EU at present."

While it's hitting the US and the UK tomorrow – British and American influencers have reportedly already been offered early access – this Berlin-based vulture can confirm there's none of that here, not unless you wish to pipe your data across via VPN.

[...] Data privacy laws in the US are very loose, especially on a federal level, which is part of the reason why the various frameworks for data exchange between the European Union's member states and the United States keep failing when challenged in court.

However, it might come as a surprise to some that Meta doesn't appear to anticipate any regulatory trouble in the UK.

It's a signal that at least one tech giant expects the UK's "replacement for GDPR" – the second take on the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (DPDIB II) – to be more sympathetic than current British privacy legislation. Brexit dividend, anyone?

Meanwhile, over in Germany, Meta can't combine the data it collects about you on Facebook with the stuff you spill on Instagram and WhatsApp, or with other websites and apps you use, without getting your explicit permission.

[...] Back in January, Ireland's regulator stopped Meta from launching advertising services on WhatsApp that uses data from Facebook or Instagram.

The crossing of the data streams is not a problem for the Facebook giant in the US and UK, it seems.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Plastic production is skyrocketing, pushing microplastic pollution to dangerous new levels:

Not even the Arctic Ocean is immune to the incessant growth of microplastic pollution. In a new study that analyzed sediment core samples, researchers quantified how many of the particles have been deposited since the early 1930s. As scientists have shown elsewhere, the team found that microplastic contamination in the Arctic has been growing exponentially and in lockstep with the growth of plastic production—which is now up to a trillion pounds a year, with the global amount of plastic waste projected to triple by 2060.

These researchers analyzed the seawater and sediment in the western part of the Arctic Ocean, which makes up 13 percent of its total area. But in just that region, they calculated that 210,000 metric tons of microplastic, or 463 million pounds, have accumulated in the water, sea ice, and sediment layers that have built up since the 1930s. In their study, published last week in the journal Science Advances, they cataloged 19 synthetic polymer types in three forms: fragments, fibers, and sheets. That reflects a dizzying array of microplastic sources, including fragments from broken bottles and bags and microfibers from synthetic clothing.

Overall, the team found that microplastic levels have been doubling in Arctic Ocean sediments every 23 years. That mirrors a previous study of ocean sediments off the coast of Southern California, which found concentrations to be doubling every 15 years. Other researchers have found an exponential rise in contamination in urban lake sediments.

[...] The atmosphere, too, is increasingly infested with microplastics. By one calculation, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of disintegrated plastic bottles could be falling on the United States alone. A study of a peatland area in the Pyrenees found that in the 1960s, less than five atmospheric microplastics were being deposited per square meter of land each day. It's now more like 180.

oumuamua writes:

[This is mix of an advertisement and a blog post, rather than an actual story, but it piqued my interest by including 3 different text-to-image generators in one package. Some of us are already learning the limits of, and skills required for, image generation, and I suspect that it will not be too long before collaborative mixes of AI language generation will be appearing, at least in the areas of research. Anyway, lets see what you make of it... JR]

Genolve.com is jumping into the generative AI game with a version upgrade that integrates three major players in AI art:

Genolve, a platform for creating professional designs, has just released a major version upgrade which integrates three popular AI text-to-image generators: DALL-E 2, Stability.ai and Midjourney! Just type in a description of the desired image and generate it in seconds for pennies per image. Still, it can be tricky to get exactly what you need and in this blog post you'll learn the tricks and techniques to coax the AI to generate mind-blowing results through prompt engineering. You'll also learn step-by-step how to AI edit your own photos to remove unwanted items or add something extra using a technique called inpainting.

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hubie writes:

A Canadian judge ruled that a thumbs-up emoji could be considered an agreement to a contract:

A Canadian judge has ordered a farmer to pay more than $CAD82,000 ($92,000) in damages following a legal battle over what the thumbs-up emoji means.

Chris Achter, the owner of a farming company in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, had sent a thumbs-up emoji in response to a photograph of a flax-buying contract from a grains buyer in 2021.

Months later, the buyer — which had been doing business with Mr Achter for several years — did not receive the flax as expected.

That started a dispute that led to "a far-flung search" to unearth what the thumbs-up emoji means, according to the June court ruling that surfaced in local media this week.

The buyer, South West Terminal, argued that the emoji implied acceptance of contractual terms, while Mr Achter said he used it only to indicate that he had received the contract, but not to indicate his agreement.

[...] He [the judge] said: "I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that Chris okayed or approved the contract just like he had done before except this time he used a thumbs-up emoji."

Original Submission