SoylentNews

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/08/ongoing-scam-tricks-kids-playing-roblox-and-fortnite/

Thousands of websites belonging to US government agencies, leading universities, and professional organizations have been hijacked over the last half decade and used to push scammy offers and promotions, new research has found. Many of these scams are aimed at children and attempt to trick them into downloading apps, malware, or submitting personal details in exchange for nonexistent rewards in Fortnite and Roblox.

For more than three years, security researcher Zach Edwards has been tracking these website hijackings and scams. He says the activity can be linked back to the activities of affiliate users of one advertising company. The US-registered company acts as a service that sends web traffic to a range of online advertisers, allowing individuals to sign up and use its systems. However, on any given day, Edwards, a senior manager of threat insights at Human Security, uncovers scores of .gov, .org, and .edu domains being compromised.

[...] The schemes and ways people make money are complex, but each of the websites is hijacked in a similar way. Vulnerabilities or weaknesses in a website's backend, or its content management system, are exploited by attackers who upload malicious PDF files to the website. These documents, which Edwards calls “poison PDFs,” are designed to show up in search engines and promote “free Fortnite skins,” generators for Roblox’s in-game currency, or cheap streams of Barbie, Oppenheimer, and other popular films.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/an-iowa-school-district-is-using-chatgpt-to-decide-which-books-to-ban/

In response to recently enacted state legislation in Iowa, administrators are removing banned books from Mason City school libraries, and officials are using ChatGPT to help them pick the books, according to The Gazette and Popular Science.

The new law behind the ban, signed by Governor Kim Reynolds, is part of a wave of educational reforms that Republican lawmakers believe are necessary to protect students from exposure to damaging and obscene materials. Specifically, Senate File 496 mandates that every book available to students in school libraries be "age appropriate" and devoid of any "descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act," per Iowa Code 702.17.

But banning books is hard work, according to administrators, so they need to rely on machine intelligence to get it done within the three-month window mandated by the law. "It is simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements," said Bridgette Exman, the assistant superintendent of the school district, in a statement quoted by The Gazette. "Therefore, we are using what we believe is a defensible process to identify books that should be removed from collections at the start of the 23-24 school year."

[...] "There's something ironic about people in charge of education not knowing enough to critically determine which books are good or bad to include in curriculum, only to outsource the decision to a system that can't understand books and can't critically think at all," Dr. Margaret Mitchell, chief ethicist scientist at Hugging Face, told Ars.

Also submitted as: https://gizmodo.com/ai-mason-city-iowa-school-libraries-book-ban-1850738954

Original Submission

hubie writes:

If other visual cues are missing, ants build higher nest hills to facilitate homing of foraging nest mates:

Desert ants have outstanding navigational skills. They live in the saltpans of North Africa, an extremely inhospitable environment. To find food for their nest mates, foraging ants have to walk far into the desert. Once they have found food, for example a dead insect, their actual problem begins: How do they find their way back to their nest as quickly as possible in the extremely hot and barren environment? "The desert ant Cataglyphis fortis stands out due its remarkable ability to successfully navigate and forage in even the harshest environments, making it an excellent subject for studying the intricacies of navigation. With an innate navigation mechanism called path integration, these ants use both a sun compass and a step counter to measure the distances they cover. In addition, they possess the ability to learn and utilize visible and olfactory cues. We believe that this extremely harsh habitat has led, during evolution, to a navigation system of unsurpassed precision," said Marilia Freire, the study's lead author, summarizing what is known so far about the amazing orientation skills of these small animals.

The scientists had noticed during previous studies in Tunisia that the nests in the center of the saltpans, where there are hardly any visible landmarks, had high mounds at the nest entrances. In contrast, nest hills near the shrub-covered edges of the saltpans were lower or barely noticeable. So the research team has wondered for some time if these visible differences serve a purpose in helping the ants better find their way home. "It's always hard to tell whether an animal does something on purpose or not. The high nest mounds in the middle of the saltpans could have been a side effect of differences in soil structure or wind conditions. However, crucial for our study was the idea to remove the mounds and to provide some nests with artificial landmarks and others not, and to observe what would happen," Markus Knaden, head of the Project Group Odor-guided Behavior in the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology, explains the goal of the study.

[...] Experiments in which ants could be tracked with particular accuracy during the last meters to the nest, thanks to a grid painted on the floor, showed that the nest hills are important visual cues. If they were removed, fewer ants found their way back to the nest, while their nest mates simultaneously began to rebuild nest mounds as quickly as possible. If, on the other hand, the scientists placed artificial landmarks in the form of small black cylinders near the nest entrances whose mounds they had previously removed, the ants did not invest in building new ones. Apparently, the cylinders were sufficient for orientation.

In ant nests, labor is divided. Ants that go foraging are usually older and more experienced nest members, while younger ants are busy building. Therefore, there must be some kind of information flow between the two groups. The researchers do not yet know exactly how this is achieved. "One possibility would be that ants in the nest somehow notice that fewer foragers return home, and as a result, hill-building activities at the nest entrance are increased," says Marilia Freire.

Markus Knaden has been studying desert ants for 25 years and is still amazed by their fascinating abilities: "The animals can learn visual and olfactory cues despite their small brains. In addition, they are able to decide which information is useful for their navigation and which is not. All this was already known. However, the fact that they even build their own landmarks for orientation and only choose to invest in this work when other environmental cues are missing is quite surprising."

Journal Reference:
Marilia Freire, Antonio Bollig, Markus Knaden, Absence of visual cues motivates desert ants to build their own landmarks, Curr. Biology, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.05.019

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

What’s a plane without an engine? After aerospace company Pratt & Whitney issued a recall on some of its engine models, airline companies in the U.S. and Europe are scrounging for parts, and doing anything they can to prevent canceled flights.

Financial Times reports that after Pratt & Whitney issued a recall on thousands of engines on Airbus aircraft, major airlines like Spirit, JetBlue, Hawaiian Airlines, and Wizz Air were forced to change their schedules dramatically. The outlet says that Wizz Air—a Hungarian airline that serves most of Europe—is temporarily mulling over scrapping some flights while dealing with maintenance issues as the engine recall overworks staff. Spirit Airlines is facing a slump in revenue with seven Airbuses in its fleet being grounded, potentially through the end of the year, while cutting its planned capacity by 5% according to Reuters.

[...] Last month, Pratt & Whitney issued a recall for its Geared Turbofan engines, which are used to power A320neo Airbus jets. Pratt & Whitney said that contaminants were found in the metal used to build the machines. The mishap is affecting around 1,200 engines produced by the company and will require an inspection period that could take as much as two months. The recall is likely to have an impact on the remainder of the busy summer travel season and—if Spirit’s estimates of being grounded throughout the year are correct—could impact the holiday travel window as well.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Unexpected new insights into how COVID-19 infects cells may help explain why coronaviruses are so good at jumping from species to species and will help scientists better predict how COVID-19 will evolve.

Throughout the pandemic, there has been much discussion of how COVID-19 infiltrates cells by hijacking a protein called ACE2 found on human cells. But the new research from the School of Medicine reveals that ACE2 isn't required for infection. Instead, the virus has other means it can use to infect cells.

[...] "The virus that causes COVID-19 uses ACE2 as the front door to infect cells, but we've found that if the front door is blocked, it can also use the back door or the windows," said researcher Peter Kasson, MD, Ph.D., of UVA's Departments of Molecular Physiology and Biomedical Engineering. "This means the virus can keep spreading as it infects a new species until it adapts to use a particular species' front door. So we have to watch out for new viruses doing the same thing to infect us."

[...] As part of this effort, Kasson and his team wanted to better understand how the virus responsible for COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, can enter human cells. Scientists have known that the virus essentially knocks on the cell's door by binding to ACE2 proteins. These proteins are bountiful on the surfaces of cells lining the nose and lungs.

hubie writes:

Particularly if it is an expensive premium product:

Researchers at HSE University in Perm have used electroencephalography (EEG) to determine that consumers are willing to pay 10% more for chocolate when they know it to be a premium product. On the other hand, if consumers are aware that a chocolate product is inexpensive, their willingness to pay decreases by 13%. On average, men are willing to pay 8.8 monetary units more for chocolate than women, and men's willingness to pay decreases by 0.3 monetary units with each additional year of age. The study has been published in Food Quality and Preference.

According to 2021 data, Russians eat an average of 39 kilograms of sugar per year, including confectionery, jams and canned fruit and berries. Chocolate bars are the favourite treat of those with a sweet tooth—they are preferred by one in three Russians.

The WTP (willingness to pay) indicator is used to assess purchasing power, which represents the maximum amount that a buyer is willing to pay for a product. Marketers use surveys, focus groups and interviews to determine WTP, but this approach can be expensive, time-consuming, and does not always provide an accurate representation of respondents' preferences.

To obtain a more objective assessment of willingness to pay, HSE University-Perm researchers Daria Semenova, Sofia Kulikova, Yulia Zaripova (Shamgunova) and Mariia Molodchik used electroencephalography to measure neurophysiological brain reactions to chocolate tasting.

[...] The authors believe that collecting more data on brain activity during consumer decision-making will advance the field of neuromarketing, and they hope that future studies will build upon their findings.

Journal Reference:
Daria Semenova, et al., Measuring effects of packaging on willingness-to-pay for chocolate: Evidence from an EEG experiment, Food Quality and Preference, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2023.104840

Original Submission

looorg writes:

To improve productivity in the office MS-Office is getting a new UI ... or well it's getting a new default font and some new colours anyway. No more yellow! How this will improve productivity or make people write or calculate or power-point better is probably unclear, it's probably not even the purpose. This seems like change for the sake of change.

Unfortunately they are making the default font a non-serif font again, but they are changing the name cause you can't have a font named "Beer Town" as the default font. Bring back Times New Roman!

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/14/23831190/microsoft-office-new-default-theme-font-release-date

Original Submission

Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee will be Friday, August 18th, 2023 at 20:30 UTC (1:30pm PDT, 4:30pm EDT) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when available.

The agenda for the upcoming meeting will be confirmed pending confirmation of who will be attending. The SoylentNews PBC board has been invited to attend and clarify some things about the transition in structure. We also plan to work on the future bylaws of SoylentNews.

Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information can be found on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/Governance

Per usual, the community is encouraged to observe and participate and is hereby invited to the meeting. SoylentNews is People!

Gaaark writes:

From: https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smoking-gun-evidence-gravity-gaia-wide.html

"Smoking-gun evidence for modified gravity at low acceleration from Gaia observations of wide binary stars"

A new study reports conclusive evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity in the low acceleration limit from a verifiable analysis of the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars, usually referred to as wide binaries in astronomy and astrophysics.

The study carried out by Kyu-Hyun Chae, professor of physics and astronomy at Sejong University in Seoul, used up to 26,500 wide binaries within 650 light years (LY) observed by European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope. The study was published in the 1 August 2023 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

[...] Chae explains, "From the start it seemed clear to me that gravity could be most directly and efficiently tested by calculating accelerations because gravitational field itself is an acceleration.

[...] The study finds that when two stars orbit around with each other with accelerations lower than about one nanometer per second squared start to deviate from the prediction by Newton's universal law of gravitation and Einstein's general relativity.

What is intriguing is that this ... was suggested 40 years ago by theoretical physicist Mordehai Milgrom.

Thus, what the wide binary data show are not only the breakdown of Newtonian dynamics but also the manifestation of the external field effect of modified gravity.

Unlike galactic rotation curves in which the observed boosted accelerations can, in principle, be attributed to dark matter in the Newton-Einstein standard gravity, wide binary dynamics cannot be affected by (Dark Matter) even if it existed. (Emphasis and changes are mine)

Wide binary anomalies are a disaster to the standard gravity and cosmology that rely on dark matter and dark energy concepts. Because gravity follows MOND, a large amount of dark matter in galaxies (and even in the universe) are no longer needed. This is also a big surprise to Chae who, like typical scientists, "believed in" dark matter until a few years ago.

I'm not pushing MOND, just pushing back against Dark Matter.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/isps-complain-that-listing-every-fee-is-too-hard-urge-fcc-to-scrap-new-rule/

The US broadband industry is united in opposition to a requirement that Internet service providers list all of their monthly fees. Five lobby groups representing cable companies, fiber and DSL providers, and mobile operators have repeatedly urged the Federal Communications Commission to eliminate the requirement before new broadband labeling rules take effect.

The trade associations petitioned the FCC in January to change the rules and renewed their call last week in a filing and in a meeting with FCC officials. The requirement that ISPs list all their monthly fees "would add unnecessary complexity and burdens to the label for consumers and providers and could result in some providers having to create many labels for any given plan," the groups said in the filing on Friday.
[...]
Comcast submitted its own filing urging the FCC to scrap the rules in June. The calls to weaken the FCC's truth-in-billing rules angered consumer advocates, as we wrote at the time. "The label hasn't even reached consumers yet, but Comcast is already trying to create loopholes. This request would allow the big ISPs to continue hiding the true cost of service and frustrating customers with poor service," Joshua Stager, policy director at media advocacy group Free Press, told Ars.

Congress required the FCC to implement broadband labels with exact prices for Internet service plans in a 2021 law, but gave the FCC some leeway in how to structure the rules. The FCC adopted specific label rules in November 2022.
[...]
Latino advocacy group ALLvanza also objected to the data-collection rule on privacy grounds, saying, "Many Latinos are already hesitant and/or unwilling to provide identifying information to companies or the government due to privacy concerns, fear of discrimination, potential immigration status issues, mistrust of institutions, and cultural preferences for privacy."

ISPs could avoid the requirement to collect identifying information from consumers in retail stores by providing hard copies of the label. The FCC defended the compliance plan in a submission to the OMB last month as part of the Paperwork Reduction Act review, saying it needs detailed information to ensure ISPs follow the rules.

Previously:
Comcast Complains to FCC That Listing All of its Monthly Fees is Too Hard - 20230615

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Internet Archive was recently found guilty of copyright infringement in a case related to its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) service, which provides users with free access to a digital library of books. US District Judge John Koeltl decided that the IA infringed the copyright of four publishers when it relaxed its CDL limitations during the pandemic, but now the Archive has seemingly reached an agreement with said publishers which could clear the way for an appeal.

The consent judgment between the Archive and Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House will require the IA to pay an unspecified amount of money to the four publishers if the appeal is unsuccessful. The publishing companies are "extremely pleased" with the proposed injunction, as it extends the copyright controversy to thousands of books still in their catalogs.

The IA was sued in 2020 after it started lending free digital copies of its books during the pandemic, a practice the Archive compared to book lending from traditional, physical libraries. The CDL service was protected by the fair use doctrine, the Archive argued, but Koeltl decided otherwise. The Archive was lending free ebooks that were being licensed to traditional libraries, the judge determined.

If accepted, the consent judgment will provide the Archive a chance to overturn Koeltl's unfavorable decision in the appeal. The publishers defined the CDL service as a mass copyright infringement operation, but the Archive now says that its fight is "far from over." The IA team firmly believes that libraries should be able to "own, preserve, and lend digital books" outside the limitations of temporary licensed access (i.e., copyright).

[...] Current efforts to curb the strength and presence of digital libraries – and the Internet Archive itself – are cutting off the public's access to truth "at a key time in our democracy," [Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle] said. Strong libraries are paramount for a healthy democracy, and that's why the IA is appealing Judge Koeltl's decision.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A unique record of medieval live comedy performance has been identified in a 15th-century manuscript:

The texts contain the earliest recorded use of 'red herring' in English, extremely rare forms of medieval literature, as well as a killer rabbit worthy of Monty Python. The discovery changes the way we should think about English comic culture between Chaucer and Shakespeare.

[...] Throughout the Middle Ages, minstrels travelled between fairs, taverns and baronial halls to entertain people with songs and stories.

Fictional minstrels are common in medieval literature but references to real-life performers are rare and fleeting. We have first names, payments, instruments played and occasionally locations, but until now virtually no evidence of their lives or work.

Dr James Wade, from the University of Cambridge's English Faculty and Girton College, came across the texts by accident while researching in the National Library of Scotland. He then had a "moment of epiphany" when he noticed the scribe had written:

'By me, Richard Heege, because I was at that feast and did not have a drink.'

"It was an intriguing display of humour and it's rare for medieval scribes to share that much of their character," Wade says. That made him investigate how, where and why Heege had copied out the texts.

[...] This booklet contains three texts and Wade concludes that around the year 1480 Heege copied them from a now lost memory-aid written by an unknown minstrel performing near the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border.

[...] "Most medieval poetry, song and storytelling has been lost", Wade says. "Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art. This is something else. It's mad and offensive, but just as valuable."

[...] Wade thinks the minstrel wrote part of his act down because its many nonsense sequences would have been extremely difficult to recall. "He didn't give himself the kind of repetition or story trajectory which would have made things simpler to remember," Wade says.

[...] The texts add to what we thought minstrels did. Fictional depictions suggest they performed ballads about Robin Hood, chivalric romances, adventure stories and songs about great battles.

"These texts are far more comedic and they serve up everything from the satirical, ironic, and nonsensical to the topical, interactive and meta-comedic. It's a comedy feast," Wade says.

[...] "People back then partied a lot more than we do today, so minstrels had plenty of opportunities to perform. They were really important figures in people's lives right across the social hierarchy. These texts give us a snapshot of medieval life being lived well."

Journal Reference:
J. Wade, Entertainments from a medieval minstrel's repertoire book [open], The Review of English Studies (2023). DOI: 10.1093/res/hgad053

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Climate change will make stomach bugs an even bigger problem, a new report has found. The study concludes that expected changes in temperature, precipitation, and humidity will make foodborne infections and toxins all the more common—at least in Germany. That said, other research has indicated that these increased risks will be seen globally as well.

The research is part of a special series by scientists in Germany looking at the regional health impacts on climate change. It was published earlier this June in the Journal of Health Monitoring. It’s a review of the literature and focuses on common foodborne illnesses caused by Salmonella, Campylobacter,and Vibrio bacteria, the parasites Cryptosporidium and Giardia, and other toxins produced by marine life.

Across the board, the researchers found evidence that all these infections and toxin poisonings will steadily increase in the years to come due to climate change, though for many varying reasons.

[...] Important as these warnings are, the authors of the current report say that it’s well past time to start taking action to mitigate these risks, both on a small and large scale.

“Our main recommendations for minimizing the health risk from foodborne infections and intoxications lie in the area of kitchen hygiene, which should always be applied when preparing food,” the scientists wrote. “This includes thorough handwashing and the use of fresh kitchen utensils after handling raw meat and fish, as well as avoidance of cross-contamination,” the authors wrote.

To which they added: “We also recommend the use of new technologies to track supply chains. Given a globalized food distribution network and the use of different processing and preservation techniques, it can be difficult to track a product’s supply chain to identify potential risks.”

Journal Reference:
Dietrich J, Hammerl JA, Johne A, Kappenstein, Loeffler C et al. (2023) Impact of climate change on foodborne infections and intoxications [open]. J Health Monit 8(S3): 78–92. DOI 10.25646/11403

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Last Friday, Illinois became one of the few states to pass an anti-doxxing law, making it possible for victims to sue attackers who "intentionally" publish their personally identifiable information with intent to harm or harass them. (Doxxing is sometimes spelled "doxing.")

The Civil Liability for Doxing Act, which takes effect on January 1, 2024, passed after a unanimous vote. It allows victims to recover damages and to request "a temporary restraining order, emergency order of protection, or preliminary or permanent injunction to restrain and prevent the disclosure or continued disclosure of a person's personally identifiable information or sensitive personal information."

It's the first law of its kind in the Midwest, the Daily Herald reported, and is part of a push by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to pass similar laws at the state and federal levels.

ADL's Midwest regional director, David Goldenberg, told the Daily Herald that ADL has seen doxxing become "over the past few years" an effective way of "weaponizing" the Internet. ADL has helped similar laws pass in Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

[...] Illinois state representative Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz told the Daily Herald that she introduced the anti-doxxing law as "a way to hold accountable those who perpetuate hate online."

The law does not involve criminal charges but imposes civil liability on individuals who dox any Illinois residents. Actions can also be brought against individuals when "any element" of a doxxing offense occurs in the state.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Sick of paying through the nose for cable TV? Just cut the cord! For years, that was a mantra of gleeful cord-cutters looking to save on their favorite TV services. But after a seemingly endless series of streaming price hikes, cord-cutting costs are finally catching up to cable.

According to a recent analysis of streaming and cable TV prices conducted by the Financial Times (by way of 9to5Mac), subscripting to the top streaming services now cost more than the average price of a cable TV bundle.

Specifically, the analysis found that a “basket” of the most popular streaming services now costs $87 a month, up $10 from just a year ago. That’s more than the monthly cost for the typical cable bundle, which is $83 a month, the Financial Times reports.

[...] Why have streaming prices gone up so quickly? Because the streaming gold rush is over, and rather than looking for growth from the big streamers, Wall Street now wants to see profits.

Of course, those of us who cut the cord years ago probably won’t be in any rush to go back to Big Cable. But if you’re still looking to save money through cord-cutting, you’ll be better off investing in an over-the-air DVR than forking over for Netflix or Disney+.

Original Submission