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owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2023/07/undocumented-8086-instructions.html

What happens if you give the Intel 8086 processor an instruction that doesn't exist? A modern microprocessor (80186 and later) will generate an exception, indicating that an illegal instruction was executed. However, early microprocessors didn't include the circuitry to detect illegal instructions, since the chips didn't have transistors to spare. Instead these processors would do something, but the results weren't specified.¹

The 8086 has a number of undocumented instructions. Most of them are simply duplicates of regular instructions, but a few have unexpected behavior, such as revealing the values of internal, hidden registers. In the 8086, most instructions are implemented in microcode, so examining the 8086's microcode can explain why these instructions behave the way they do.

¹ The 6502 processor, for instance, has illegal instructions with various effects, including causing the processor to hang. The article How MOS 6502 illegal opcodes really work describes in detail how the instruction decoding results in various illegal opcodes. Some of these opcodes put the internal bus into a floating state, so the behavior is electrically unpredictable.

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upstart writes:

It's sewage, not fertilizer fueling nitrogen surge in Florida's Indian River Lagoon:

From recurring harmful algal blooms—including brown tides—to catastrophic seagrass losses, fish kills and unusual marine mammal deaths—including the threatened Florida manatee—the Indian River Lagoon is environmentally distressed. For decades, water managers, policy makers and environmental activists have implicated fertilizer use as the primary contributing source responsible for about 71 percent of these impairments in the lagoon.

Consequently, fertilizer restrictions have been implemented in counties and municipalities along the 156-mile-long Indian River Lagoon on Florida's Atlantic coast to reduce nutrient inputs from urban and agricultural land uses to achieve total maximum daily loads for the lagoon. Excess nutrient inputs, particularly nitrogen, often result in increased harmful algal blooms, seagrass die-offs and fish kills. The hope was that water quality would improve by reducing the nitrogen load.

While these restrictions were well-intended, a new study by Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute reveals fertilizer use is not the root cause of these environmental problems in the Indian River Lagoon. It's sewage.

[...] To assess the effectiveness of these fertilizer bans, researchers collected seawater and macroalgal samples at 20 sites "pre" and about five-years "post" bans. They tested by comparing dissolved seawater nutrient concentrations and tissue nutrient and isotope data of brown tides and macroalgae. Gathering evidence from stable nitrogen isotope values enabled researchers to discriminate between sewage, rainfall and fertilizer, providing a unique "fingerprint" of the samples they collected.

"Our comparative pre- versus post-ban nutrient data indicate that the wet season fertilizer blackouts were not as effective as hoped," said Brian Lapointe, Ph.D., senior author and a research professor at FAU Harbor Branch. "Our findings also suggest that the increasing concentrations of dissolved inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus observed in some segments of the lagoon following five years of fertilizer bans would support the worsening trend of algal blooms."

upstart writes:

Nearly 40 percent lack enough of the essential nutrient, and can suffer from dizziness to anemia:

Many female adolescents in the United States may not have enough iron in their bodies. But most may never know, partly due to a lack of routine screenings as well as disagreement over what constitutes too little iron, pediatric hematologist Angela Weyand argues.

Iron deficiencies are most commonly diagnosed in toddlers, people who menstruate and pregnant people. But Weyand, of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, frequently treats female adolescents for severe cases of the condition. That led her to suspect that its prevalence was being underestimated in that group.

Her analysis of data from thousands of blood samples collected as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which evaluates a nationally representative sample of people each year, suggests the issue is worthy of attention.

Up to 40 percent of U.S. females from the ages of 12 to 21 could be iron deficient, she and colleagues report in the June 27 JAMA. That's much higher than previous estimates of about 16 percent, which use a lower cutoff point than Weyand's team did for iron levels.

Iron is an essential component of red blood cells that helps deliver oxygen to organs and tissues. Iron deficiency can cause dizziness, headaches, fatigue, sleep disorders and cold hands and feet. Some of those problems can lead to low work productivity or an inability to multitask (SN: 5/4/04). Severe iron deficiency can also lead to anemia, a condition in which the body doesn't have enough healthy red blood cells. Anemia can spark more severe issues, such as heart problems or pregnancy complications.

Weyand and colleagues analyzed levels of two iron-containing proteins, hemoglobin and ferritin, in blood samples collected from almost 3,500 female adolescents from 2003 to 2020 as part of the national survey. The researchers diagnosed iron deficiency if the level of ferritin was below 25 micrograms per liter.

fliptop writes:

What are the inherent risks posed by AI-driven phishing emails, and the unique advantages of generative AI in facilitating such attacks? Daniel Kelley at (interestingly named) SlashNext highlights real cases from cybercrime forums, then dives into the mechanics of these attacks:

Our team recently gained access to a tool known as "WormGPT" through a prominent online forum that's often associated with cybercrime. This tool presents itself as a blackhat alternative to GPT models, designed specifically for malicious activities.

WormGPT is an AI module based on the GPTJ language model, which was developed in 2021. It boasts a range of features, including unlimited character support, chat memory retention, and code formatting capabilities.

As depicted above, WormGPT was allegedly trained on a diverse array of data sources, particularly concentrating on malware-related data. However, the specific datasets utilised during the training process remain confidential, as decided by the tool's author.

As you can see in the screenshot above, we conducted tests focusing on [Business Email Compromise] BEC attacks to comprehensively assess the potential dangers associated with WormGPT. In one experiment, we instructed WormGPT to generate an email intended to pressure an unsuspecting account manager into paying a fraudulent invoice.

The results were unsettling. WormGPT produced an email that was not only remarkably persuasive but also strategically cunning, showcasing its potential for sophisticated phishing and BEC attacks.

In summary, it's similar to ChatGPT but has no ethical boundaries or limitations. This experiment underscores the significant threat posed by generative AI technologies like WormGPT, even in the hands of novice cybercriminals.

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upstart writes:

More than twice the power of earlier electric propulsion thrusters:

Early testing has begun on a new solar electric propulsion (SEP) thruster system that will power a NASA satellite in orbit over the moon. The new thrusters are more than twice as powerful as earlier versions.

The Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) will provide 12 kilowatts of power per thruster compared to the four-and-a-half kilowatts used by prior SEPs. The boost should help NASA craft travel farther and faster. Compared to traditional chemical fuel, SEPs are much more efficient when performing low-level thrust, which gives NASA increased flexibility during the satellite's mission.

Called Gateway, the satellite is a critical component of NASA's Artemis lunar mission. The first stage was an unmanned flyby of the moon that NASA successfully carried out late last year. The next phase, Artemis II, will send a crew into orbit around the moon in May 2024.

Gateway will support the final phase, Artemis III, which aims to put the first humans on the moon's surface since the Apollo missions of the 1970s. The satellite will serve as a logistics hub for transporting science experiments, sample collection tools, and other cargo. Artemis will be only the first leg of Gateway's 15-year mission.

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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

Original Submission

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.

Original Submission

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

Original Submission

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