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upstart writes:

IFS addresses inexpensive low-power applications with Intel 16 process:

Intel Foundry Services has introduced its new 16nm-class process technology called Intel 16 to address mobile, RF, IoT, consumer, storage, military, aerospace, and government applications. The new technology complements Intel's 22nm FFL process and is said to be an inexpensive FinFET-based node.

According to press releases from Synopsys, Cadence Digital and Ansys, IFS's Intel 16 is specifically designed to address a wide variety of customers' applications RF and analog capability (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth), mmWave, consumer electronics, storage, military, aerospace, and government applications. The 16nm-class technology promises to offer higher transistor density, higher performance, lower power, fewer masks, and simpler back-end design rules compared to planar production nodes used for these applications today.

There are hundreds of widely used applications with long lifecycles that rely on mature process technologies, particularly in fields like application processors, controllers, analog, consumer electronics, and radio. Many of them use planar transistors-based process technologies due to costs, design simplicity, and high yields. While industry experts at large tend to admire massively powerful processors like AMD's Instinct MI300 or Nvidia's H100, there are plenty of chips — even in industries like artificial intelligence and high-performance computing — that are considerably smaller and consume only a fraction of power.

[...] All three leading providers of electronic design automation (EDA) and IP — Ansys, Cadence, and Synopsys — already support Intel 16 process technology with their certified software flows and IP. For example, Cadence has ported a variety of its IP blocks to Intel 16, including PCIe 5.0; 25G-KR Ethernet multi-protocol PHY; multi-protocol PHY for consumer applications supporting standards such as PCIe 3.0 and USB 3.2; multi-standard PHY for LPDDR5/4/4X memory; andMIPI D-PHY v1.2 for cameras and displays. Meanwhile, Synopsys offers its AI-enabled Synopsys.ai set of tools for faster chip implementation.

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hubie writes:

An unexpected discovery about temperature feedback has led to new bionic technology that allows amputees to sense the temperature of objects:

"When I touch the stump with my hand, I feel tingling in my missing hand, my phantom hand. But feeling the temperature variation is a different thing, something important... something beautiful," says Francesca Rossi.

Rossi is an amputee from Bologna, Italy. She recently participated in a study to test the effects of temperature feedback directly to the skin on her residual arm. She is one of 17 patients to have felt her phantom, missing hand, change in temperature thanks to new EPFL technology. More importantly, she reports feeling reconnected to her missing hand.

"Temperature feedback is a nice sensation because you feel the limb, the phantom limb, entirely. It does not feel phantom anymore because your limb is back," Rossi continues.

[...] If you place something hot or cold on the forearm of an intact individual, that person will feel the object's temperature locally, directly on their forearm. But in amputees, that temperature sensation on the residual arm may be felt­... in the phantom, missing hand.

By providing temperature feedback non-invasively, via thermal electrodes (aka thermodes) placed against the skin on the residual arm, amputees like Rossi report feeling temperature in their phantom limb. They can feel if an object is hot or cold, and can tell if they are touching copper, plastic or glass. In a collaboration between EPFL, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies (SSSA) and Centro Protesi Inail, the technology was successfully tested in 17 out of 27 patients. The results are published in Science.

[...] The scientists found that small areas of skin on the residual arm project to specific parts of the phantom hand, like the thumb, or the tip of an index finger. As expected, they discovered that the mapping of temperature sensations between the residual arm and the entire projected phantom one is unique to each patient.

If you prefer your story summary in video format: Feeling Warmth With A Phantom Hand

Journal article DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adf6121

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upstart writes:

EU-US Data Privacy Framework to face serious legal challenges, experts say:

Nine months after US President Joe Biden signed an executive order that updated rules for the transfer of data between the US and the EU, the European Commission this week ratified the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Industry experts, however, say it will be challenged at the European Court of Justice (CJEU), and stands a good chance of being struck down.

The move comes three years after the CJEU shut down the previous EU-US data sharing agreement, known as Privacy Shield, on grounds that the US doesn't provide adequate protection for personal data, particularly in relation to state surveillance. In 2015, a previous attempt to forge a data sharing pact, dubbed Safe Harbor, was also struck down by the CJEU.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the new framework should provide "legal certainty" to transatlantic businesses, calling the commitments "unprecedented."

[...] However, industry experts expect the accord to face a plethora of legal challenges from privacy advocates before ultimately being struck down like its predecessors.

"We have various options for a challenge already in the drawer, although we are sick and tired of this legal ping-pong," said Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who founded NOYB (None of Your Business) – European Center for Digital Rights. In 2016 and 2020, Schrems initiated legal proceedings against Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield, respectively, which led to the CJEU invalidating both agreements.

"We currently expect this to be back at the Court of Justice by the beginning of next year," Schrems said in a statement published on NOYB's website.

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upstart writes:

Microsoft blocks a new batch of system drivers, but the loophole empowering them remains:

Hackers are using open source software that's popular with video game cheaters to allow their Windows-based malware to bypass restrictions Microsoft put in place to prevent such infections from occurring.

The software comes in the form of two software tools that are available on GitHub. Cheaters use them to digitally sign malicious system drivers so they can modify video games in ways that give the player an unfair advantage. The drivers clear the considerable hurdle required for the cheat code to run inside the Windows kernel, the fortified layer of the operating system reserved for the most critical and sensitive functions.

Researchers from Cisco's Talos security team said Tuesday that multiple Chinese-speaking threat groups have repurposed the tools—one called HookSignTool and the other FuckCertVerifyTimeValidity. Instead of using the kernel access for cheating, the threat actors use it to give their malware capabilities it wouldn't otherwise have.

"During our research we identified threat actors leveraging HookSignTool and FuckCertVerifyTimeValidity, signature timestamp forging tools that have been publicly available since 2019 and 2018 respectively, to deploy these malicious drivers," the researchers wrote. "While they have gained popularity within the game cheat development community, we have observed the use of these tools on malicious Windows drivers unrelated to game cheats."

[...] While attackers who gain such privileges can steal passwords and take other liberties, their malware typically must run in the Windows kernel to perform a large number of more advanced tasks. Under the policy put in place with Vista, all such drivers can be loaded only after they've been approved in advance by Microsoft and then digitally signed by a trusted certificate authority to verify they are safe.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/why-ai-detectors-think-the-us-constitution-was-written-by-ai/

If you feed America's most important legal document—the US Constitution—into a tool designed to detect text written by AI models like ChatGPT, it will tell you that the document was almost certainly written by AI. But unless James Madison was a time traveler, that can't be the case. Why do AI writing detection tools give false positives? We spoke to several experts—and the creator of AI writing detector GPTZero—to find out.

[...] In machine learning, perplexity is a measurement of how much a piece of text deviates from what an AI model has learned during its training. As Dr. Margaret Mitchell of AI company Hugging Face told Ars, "Perplexity is a function of 'how surprising is this language based on what I've seen?'"

So the thinking behind measuring perplexity is that when they're writing text, AI models like ChatGPT will naturally reach for what they know best, which comes from their training data. The closer the output is to the training data, the lower the perplexity rating. Humans are much more chaotic writers—or at least that's the theory—but humans can write with low perplexity, too, especially when imitating a formal style used in law or certain types of academic writing. Also, many of the phrases we use are surprisingly common.

Let's say we're guessing the next word in the phrase "I'd like a cup of _____." Most people would fill in the blank with "water," "coffee," or "tea." A language model trained on a lot of English text would do the same because those phrases occur frequently in English writing. The perplexity of any of those three results would be quite low because the prediction is fairly certain.

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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/the-senate-just-lobbed-a-tactical-nuke-at-nasas-mars-sample-return-program/

The US Senate on Thursday slashed the budget for NASA's ambitious mission to return soil and rock samples from Mars' surface.

NASA had asked for $949 million to support its Mars Sample Return mission, or MSR, in fiscal year 2024. In its proposed budget for the space agency, released Thursday, the Senate offered just $300 million and threatened to take that amount away.

"The Committee has significant concerns about the technical challenges facing MSR and potential further impacts on confirmed missions, even before MSR has completed preliminary design review," stated the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee in its report on the budget.

The committee report, obtained by Ars, noted that Congress has spent $1.739 billion on the Mars Sample Return mission to date but that the public launch date—currently 2028—is expected to slip, and cost overruns threaten other NASA science missions.

[...] The Senate's proposed budget for the Mars mission follows a report by Ars three weeks ago that delved into its exploding costs. Internally, NASA has been discussing scenarios in which the total mission costs might reach $9 billion.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A novel biosensor for detecting neurodegenerative disease proteins:

By combining multiple advanced technologies into a single system, EPFL researchers have made a significant step forward in diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD).

This novel device is known as the ImmunoSEIRA sensor, a biosensing technology that enables the detection and identification of misfolded protein biomarkers associated with NDDs. The research, published in Science Advances, also harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) by employing neural networks to quantify disease stages and progression.

This significant technological advance holds promise not only for early detection and monitoring of NDDs, but also for assessing treatment options at various stages of the disease's progression.

[...] It is hypothesized that healthy proteins misfold first into oligomers in early stages and into fibrils in later stages of the disease. These misfolded protein aggregates circulate in the brain and biofluids and also accumulate as deposits in the brains of deceased NDD sufferers. But the development of tools to detect these tell-tale signs of disease—known as biomarkers—has remained elusive until now. The hurdles to accurate detection are multiple, including limits of current technology to accurately separate and quantify different protein aggregates. Combing multiple advanced technologies into one sensor

[...] "Unlike current biochemical approaches which rely on measuring the levels of these molecules, our approach is focused on detecting their abnormal structures. This technology also allows us to differentiate the levels of the two main abnormal forms implicated in the development and progression of NDDs, oligomers and fibrils," says Lashuel

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/07/ohio-bans-doctor-after-botched-surgeries-on-tiktok-threaten-patients-lives/

Yesterday, an Ohio plastic surgeon, Katharine Grawe—who accumulated nearly 15 million likes by livestreaming operations on TikTok as "Doctor Roxy"—was permanently banned from practicing medicine and surgery in Ohio.

The decision came following a November 2022 suspension temporarily barring Grawe from seeing patients after the State Medical Board of Ohio reviewed "clear and convincing evidence" from multiple patients who were harmed during Grawe's livestreamed surgeries. The board decided to suspend Grawe's license, saying that her "continued practice presents a danger of immediate and serious harm to the public."

Related: (Don't do dumb things while operating. Sure doesn't help, if you screw things up and it's all on video either.)
Dentist Accused of Extracting Teeth While Riding Hoverboard - 20170426

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owl writes:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/07/human-powered-air-compressor-and-energy-storage-system/

When I look around my motorcycle shop, pneumatic tools are everywhere. From handheld tools such as impact guns, sanders, shears, saws and grinders to large equipment including a sandblast cabinet and tire machine; air is a vital part of taking on a wide variety of tasks.

The air compressor I've used since the 1990's uses a 220V, 7hp electric motor to turn a two stage air pump at 800 rpm, which fills the 80 gallon tank to 150 psi in about five minutes. It has been a very reliable machine, to the point where I hardly ever think about it. Only when there is a power outage do I realize how much I rely on a ready supply of compressed air.

In a rapidly changing world where inexpensive and reliable energy going forward is no longer a given, I set out to build a system to fill my air tanks without the use of electricity or fuel. My design would be free of electronics of any type, and with minimal maintenance the components should last a lifetime. I wanted to use as many second hand parts as possible, in an effort to reduce costs and inspire recycling and repurposing.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/fran-drescher-we-are-all-going-to-be-in-jeopardy-of-being-replaced-by-machines/

On Thursday, members of the SAG-AFTRA actors' union (and its president, actor Fran Drescher) announced their decision to go on strike in solidarity with the WGA strike that has been ongoing since May. One of the central issues raised in this conflict is the threat of using artificial intelligence models to replace human labor, a concern echoed in the writers' strike.

As reported by The Verge and Reuters, The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) is particularly concerned about the use of AI to create digital likenesses of actors without ongoing consent or appropriate compensation. These digital replicas, powered by advancements in computer graphics techniques and machine learning, are becoming increasingly lifelike, creating new challenges and ethical considerations for the film and television industry. SAG-AFTRA represents over 160,000 film and television actors.

During a press conference on Thursday, SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, best known as the star of the 1990s sitcom The Nanny, underscored the union's concerns, warning of a future where AI-powered digital doubles might replace human actors. As she put it, "If we don't stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Cloudflare CEO Says Twitter's Traffic Is 'Tanking':

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has shared a graph that shows a steady decline in Twitter's traffic since January 2023, hitting an all-year low in July. Prince didn't go into details about why Twitter's traffic has taken a nosedive, but other data analytics services paint a similar picture, including Ahrefs and Statista. The latter company claims that Twitter's global visits dropped from 6.9 billion monthly in January 2023 to 6.4 billion in April 2023.

[...] As Twitter's traffic goes on a downward spiral, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has been having fun on Threads, taking cheeky jabs at Musk, reveling in the explosive sign-up rate, and discussing how Threads can replace Twitter at its own game. "I've always thought there would be a town square app with 1 billion+ people," Zuckerberg replied to a user's analysis of Twitter's monthly active users and its appeal as a public town square. "It's wild that after a few days it seems possible to people that Threads has a shot."

Twitter loses nearly half advertising revenue since Elon Musk takeover:

Twitter has lost almost half of its advertising revenue since it was bought by Elon Musk for $44bn (£33.6bn) last October, its owner has revealed.

He said the company had not seen the increase in sales that had been expected in June, but added that July was a "bit more promising".

[...] Meanwhile, Twitter is struggling under a heavy debt load. Cash flow remains negative, Mr Musk said at the weekend, although the billionaire did not put a time frame on the 50% drop in ad revenue.

In a tweet he said: "Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else."

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

hubie writes:

Tunnels deep underground in North Yorkshire are providing a unique opportunity to study how humans might be able to live and operate on the Moon or on Mars:

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have launched the Bio-SPHERE project in a unique research facility located 1.1 km below the surface, in one of the deepest mine sites in the UK. The project investigates how scientific and medical operations would take place in the challenging environments of the Moon and Mars.

It is the first of a series of new laboratory facilities planned to study how humans might work – and stay healthy – during long space missions, a key requirement for ensuring mission continuity on other planets.

[...] The Bio-SPHERE project is based in a 3,000m³ tunnel network adjacent to the Boulby Laboratory, which go through 250-million-year-old rock salt deposits, consisting of Permian evaporite layers left over from the Zechstein Sea. This geological environment, together with the deep subsurface location, have enabled researchers to recreate the operational conditions humans would experience working in similar caverns on the Moon and Mars. This includes remoteness, limited access to new materials and challenges in moving heavy equipment around.

At the same time, thanks to the ultra-low radiation environment provided by that depth, the location will enable scientists to investigate how effective underground habitats might be in protecting space crews from deep-space radiation, which is a significant risk in space exploration, as well as other hazards, such as falling debris from meteorites, which risks damaging the life-support infrastructure.

[...] Lead researcher Dr Alexandra Iordachescu, in the University of Birmingham's School of Chemical Engineering, said: "We are excited to be partnering with the fantastic science team at the Boulby Underground Laboratory. This new capability will help to gather information that can advise on the life support systems, devices and biomaterials which could be used in medical emergencies and tissue repair following damage in deep-space missions.

"These types of metrics can guide system design and help to assess the scientific needs and acceptable timeframes in bioengineering operations under the constraints of isolated environments, such as space habitats. The data is likely to bring numerous benefits for Earth-based applications as well, such as delivering biomedical interventions in remote areas or in hazardous environments and more generally, understanding biomedical workflows in these non-ideal environments."

Journal Reference:
Iordachescu, A., Eisenstein, N. & Appleby-Thomas, G. Space habitats for bioengineering and surgical repair: addressing the requirement for reconstructive and research tissues during deep-space missions [open]. npj Microgravity 9, 23 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41526-023-00266-3

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A placebo effect can make users overconfident when they think tech is helping them:

A new study suggests that a placebo effect is at play when people expect their performance to be enhanced by augmentation technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI). The researchers found that individuals with high expectations of these technologies engage in riskier decision-making, which could be a problem as people adopt these technologies without properly understanding their benefits and limits.

Augmentation technologies boosting our physical, cognitive, or sensory performance have become commonplace. Some are so widely in use that they've become invisible – spellcheck, for example – and new technologies are emerging that could push our abilities beyond human limits, like exoskeletons and AI-based vision-enhancement. But the hype around these technologies also builds expectations, which could lead people to change their behaviour.

'Individuals are more inclined to take risks when they believe they are enhanced by cutting-edge technologies like AI or brain-computer interfaces,' says Robin Welsch, assistant professor at Aalto University. 'This occurs even if no actual enhancement technology is involved, indicating that it's about people's expectations rather than any noticeable improvement. The findings also imply that a strong belief in improvement, based on a fake system, can alter decision-making.'

[...] 'The hype surrounding these technologies skews people's expectations,' says Steeven Villa, doctoral researcher at LMU Munich. 'It can lead people to make riskier decisions and favourable user evaluations, which can have real consequences.'

[...] 'AI-based technologies that enhance users are increasingly common and play a role in real-life decisions that impact people's lives, well-being, confidence, and safety.' says Thomas Kosch, professor at HU Berlin. 'To ensure the effectiveness of new technologies beyond the hype, placebo-controlled studies are necessary for accurate evaluation and validation to tell apart snake-oil from real innovation.'

Journal Reference:
Steeven Villa, Thomas Kosch, Felix Grelka, Albrecht Schmidt, Robin Welsch (2023). The placebo effect of human augmentation: Anticipating cognitive augmentation increases risk-taking behavior, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 146. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107787

Original Submission

upstart writes:

This should prevent future buyers from experiencing the worst that 12VHPWR connectors have to offer:

Nvidia's melting 12VHPWR power connectors are still out there, although a wave of media coverage last year has increased awareness of the dangers posed by improper contact or bending the power cables too much to make them fit inside compact PC cases. Fortunately, Team Green has been quietly replacing the power connector on newly-manufactured RTX 40 series graphics cards, so those of you who have yet to upgrade will have a lower chance of encountering the problematic 12VHPWR design.

Earlier this month, we learned that the PCI-SIG had developed a new and improved specification for the controversial 16-pin power connector known as 12VHPWR, which has been a major source of headaches for owners of Nvidia's higher-end RTX graphics cards. AMD has yet to adopt the standard, so it has largely avoided criticism in this area, with reviewers mostly lamenting about the high price of RDNA 3 cards and their relatively low energy efficiency compared to Nvidia's Ada Lovelace counterparts.

If a recent post from the Nvidia subreddit is any indication, the company is silently upgrading RTX 4090 Founders Edition cards with the updated 16-pin power connector. Notably, the company has also applied the same treatment to recently manufactured Founders Edition RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Ti cards, and partners like MSI have also integrated the new connector on upcoming PSU designs showcased at Computex.

That's good news for RTX 40 series users, some of whom have seen their connectors melt from not making proper contact. Those who were lucky enough to avoid that would sometimes find their cards did not perform at their best even though the power plug appeared to be fully inserted into the card's connector.

Original Submission

fab23 writes:

Bruce Schneier published:

French Police Will Be Able to Spy on People through Their Cell Phones

The French police are getting new surveillance powers:

French police should be able to spy on suspects by remotely activating the camera, microphone and GPS of their phones and other devices, lawmakers agreed late on Wednesday, July 5.

[...]

Covering laptops, cars and other connected objects as well as phones, the measure would allow the geolocation of suspects in crimes punishable by at least five years' jail. Devices could also be remotely activated to record sound and images of people suspected of terror offenses, as well as delinquency and organized crime.

[...]

During a debate on Wednesday, MPs in President Emmanuel Macron's camp inserted an amendment limiting the use of remote spying to "when justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime" and "for a strictly proportional duration." Any use of the provision must be approved by a judge, while the total duration of the surveillance cannot exceed six months. And sensitive professions including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges and MPs would not be legitimate targets.

Original Submission