SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Dennis Austin, co-creator of the ubiquitous if not quite universally-loved presentation software PowerPoint, is dead at 76. With Robert Gaskins, Austin developed the software for Forethought, which led Microsoft to buy the company so that it could include the app in its core Office suite. Though many know Austin's magnum opus from long and perhaps unnecessary workplace meetings, PowerPoint has its fans, including David Byrne:

There's a lot of criticism of PowerPoint" — for encouraging users to do things in a particular way and discouraging them from other things, such as putting more than seven bullet points on a slide, he acknowledged. "But if you can't edit it down to seven, maybe you should think about talking about something else." PowerPoint restricts users no more than any other communication platform, he asserted, including a pencil: "When you pick up a pencil you know what you're getting — you don't think, 'I wish this could write in a million colors.'"…

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Researchers have now applied machine learning (ML) to high-frequency neurophysiologic data to improve hit song prediction accuracy:

Every day, tens of thousands of songs are released. This constant stream of options makes it difficult for streaming services and radio stations to choose which songs to add to playlists. To find the ones that will resonate with a large audience, these services have used human listeners and artificial intelligence. This approach, however, lingering at a 50% accuracy rate, does not reliably predict if songs will become hits.

Now, researchers in the US have used a comprehensive machine learning technique applied to brain responses and were able to predict hit songs with 97% accuracy.

"By applying machine learning to neurophysiologic data, we could almost perfectly identify hit songs," said Paul Zak, a professor at Claremont Graduate University and senior author of the study published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. "That the neural activity of 33 people can predict if millions of others listened to new songs is quite amazing. Nothing close to this accuracy has ever been shown before."

Study participants were equipped with off-the-shelf sensors, listened to a set of 24 songs, and were asked about their preferences and some demographic data. During the experiment, the scientists measured participants' neurophysiologic responses to the songs. "The brain signals we've collected reflect activity of a brain network associated with mood and energy levels," Zak said. This allowed the researchers to predict market outcomes, including the number of streams of a song – based on the data of few.

[...] After data collection, the researchers used different statistical approaches to assess the predictive accuracy of neurophysiological variables. This allowed for direct comparison of the models. To improve predictive accuracy, they trained a ML model that tested different algorithms to arrive at the highest prediction outcomes.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Insufficient packaging capacity is to blame.

The chairman of TSMC admitted that the ongoing short supply of compute GPUs for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications is caused by constraints of its chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging capacity. This shortage is expected to persist for around 18 months due to rising demand for generative AI applicationsand relatively slow expansion of CoWoS capacity at TSMC.  

"It is not the shortage of AI chips, it is the shortage of our CoWoS capacity," said Mark Liu, the chairman of TSMC, in a conversation with Nikkei at Semicon Taiwan. "Currently, we cannot fulfill 100% of our customers' needs, but we try to support about 80%. We think this is a temporary phenomenon. After our expansion of [advanced chip packaging capacity], it should be alleviated in one and a half years."

TSMC is the producer of the majority of AI processors, including Nvidia's A100 and H100 compute GPUs that are integral to AI tools like ChatGPT and are predominantly used in AI data centers. These processors, just like solutions from other players like AMD, AWS, and Google, use HBM memory (which is essential for high bandwidth and proper functioning of extensive AI language models) and CoWoS packaging, which puts additional strain on TSMC's advanced packaging facilities.

Liu said that demand for CoWoS surged unexpectedly earlier this year, tripling year-over-year, leading to the current supply constraints. TSMC recognizes that demand for generative AI services is growing and so is demand for appropriate hardware, so it is speeding up expansion of CoWoS capacity to meet demand for compute GPUs as well as specialized AI accelerators and processors.

At present, the company is installing additional tools for CoWoS at its existing advanced packaging facilities, but this takes time and the company expects its CoWoS capacity to double only by the end of 2024.

TSMC warns AI chip crunch will last another 18 months

Arthur T Knackerbracket has also processed the following story:

Until TSMC can bring additional capacity online, Nvidia's H100 and older A100 – which power many popular generative AI models, such as GPT-4 – are at the heart of this shortage. However, it's not just Nvidia. AMD's upcoming Instinct MI300-series accelerators – which it showed off during its Datacenter and AI event in June – make extensive use of CoWoS packaging technology.

AMD's MI300A APU is currently sampling with customers and is slated to power Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's El Capitan system, while the MI300X GPU is due to start making its way into customers' hands in Q3.

We've reached out to AMD for comment on whether the shortage of CoWoS packaging capacity could impact availability of the chip and we'll let you know if we hear anything back.

It's worth noting that TSMC's CoWoS isn't the only packaging tech out there. Samsung, which is rumored to pick up some of the slack for the production of Nvidia GPUs, has I-Cube and H-Cube for 2.5D packaging and X-Cube for 3D packaging.

Intel, meanwhile, packages several of the chiplets used in its Ponte Vecchio GPU Max cards, but doesn't rely on CoWoS tech to stitch them together. Chipzilla has developed its own advanced packaging tech, which can work with chips from different fabs or process nodes. It's called embedded multi-die interconnect bridge (EMIB) for 2.5D packaging and Foveros for vertically stacking chiplets on top of one another.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Scientists testing coffee against plain caffeine found that plain caffeine only partially reproduces the effects of drinking a cup of coffee:

For many people, the day doesn't start until their coffee mug is empty. Coffee is often thought to make you feel more alert, so people drink it to wake themselves up and improve their efficiency. Portuguese scientists studied coffee-drinkers to understand whether that wakefulness effect is dependent on the properties of caffeine, or whether it's about the experience of drinking coffee.

"There is a common expectation that coffee increases alertness and psychomotor functioning," said Prof Nuno Sousa of the University of Minho, corresponding author of the study in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience and Field Chief Editor of the journal. "When you get to understand better the mechanisms underlying a biological phenomenon, you open pathways for exploring the factors that may modulate it and even the potential benefits of that mechanism."

[...] Because of the known neurochemical effects of drinking coffee, the scientists expected that the functional MRI scans would show that the people who drank coffee had higher integration of networks that are linked to the prefrontal cortex, associated with executive memory, and the default mode network, involved in introspection and self-reflection processes. They found that the connectivity of the default mode network was decreased both after drinking coffee and after taking caffeine, which indicates that consuming either caffeine or coffee made people more prepared to move from resting to working on tasks.

However, drinking coffee also increased the connectivity in the higher visual network and the right executive control network – parts of the brain which are involved in working memory, cognitive control, and goal-directed behavior. This didn't happen when participants only took caffeine. In other words, if you want to feel not just alert but ready to go, caffeine alone won't do – you need to experience that cup of coffee.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Sharon Daniels, 66, had lived in Antioch, California, since 1984.

But growing concerned about crime, she and her husband decided it was time to move away from the East Bay and its delta breezes to a more affordable, far-flung community in the San Joaquin Valley.

She and her husband, Anthony, saw ads for new developments in the city of Lathrop in San Joaquin County, where they could build a new home for the same price as buying an existing one in Antioch. The median home in Lathrop sold for $530,400 in June 2023, compared with $930,000 in Antioch's Contra Costa County, according to the California Association of Realtors.

[...] As with most communities in California, the stark difference in home prices between the Danielses' former and current counties of residence is inversely related to the climate: The hotter a region is, the more affordable housing is.

[...] A Times analysis showed a clear link between projected extreme heat and home prices in California: Counties with higher home prices are less likely to face dire heat projections, and vice versa.

[...] Part of the dynamic is explained by the fact that the state's most expensive counties are coastal, and thus less likely to be hit hardest by extreme heat, though other climate change-fueled dangers such as sea level rise are still of concern.

The most efficient places to grow are California's coastal cities, both in terms of lessening the environmental footprint of residents and limiting their exposure to heat, said Zack Subin, an associate research director for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley.

However, these cities are the least affordable places to build and live in the state.

looorg writes:

AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) have released a report on the most common UFO observation spots going back 27 years. So what happened 28 years ago?

Also there seems to be a band around the earth where they appear to like to visit. Japan, Saudi Arabia, northern Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada.

The most common shape are various forms of round shapes such as orbs, spheres and circles.

No info on which alien type, what they are doing here or what they like for dinner and entertainment -- but from previous news/stories/eyewitnesses I guess they are into probing and BBQ.

https://www.aaro.mil/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/04/japan-hotspot-ufos-pentagon-website/

Original Submission

NASA Finally Admits What Everyone Already Knows: SLS is Unaffordable

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/nasa-finally-admits-what-everyone-already-knows-sls-is-unaffordable/

In a new report, the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently US taxpayer dollars are spent, the Government Accountability Office, says NASA lacks transparency on the true costs of its Space Launch System rocket program.

Published on Thursday, the new report (see .pdf) examines the billions of dollars spent by NASA on the development of the massive rocket, which made a successful debut launch in late 2022 with the Artemis I mission. Surprisingly, as part of the reporting process, NASA officials admitted the rocket was too expensive to support its lunar exploration efforts as part of the Artemis program.

"Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable," the new report states.
[...]
NASA recently said that it is working with the primary contractor of the SLS rocket's main engines, Aerojet, to reduce the cost of each engine by 30 percent, down to $70.5 million by the end of this decade.

However, NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, said this claim was dubious. According to Martin, when calculating the projected cost savings of the new RS-25 engines, NASA and Aerojet only included material, engineering support, and touch labor, while project management and overhead costs are excluded.

And even at $70.5 million, these engines are very, very far from being affordable compared to the existing US commercial market for powerful rocket engines. Blue Origin manufactures an engine of comparable power and size, the BE-4, for less than $20 million. And SpaceX is seeking to push the similarly powerful Raptor rocket engine costs even lower, to less than $1 million per engine.

FAA grounds Starship until SpaceX takes 63 'corrective actions'

Arthur writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

"The vehicle’s structural margins appear to be better than we expected," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joked with reporters in the wake of the late April test launch. Per the a report from the US Fish and WIldlife Service, however, the failed launch resulted in a 385-acre debris field that saw concrete chunks flung more than 2,600 feet from the launchpad, a 3.5-acre wildfire and "a plume cloud of pulverized concrete that deposited material up to 6.5 miles northwest of the pad site.”

"Corrective actions include redesigns of vehicle hardware to prevent leaks and fires, redesign of the launch pad to increase its robustness, incorporation of additional reviews in the design process, additional analysis and testing of safety critical systems and components including the Autonomous Flight Safety System, and the application of additional change control practices," the FAA release reads. Furthermore, the FAA says that SpaceX will have to not only complete that list but also apply for and receive a modification to its existing license "that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next Starship launch." In short, SpaceX has reached the "finding out" part.

[...] "SpaceX is also implementing a full suite of system performance upgrades unrelated to any issues observed during the first flight test," the blog reads. Those improvements include a new hot-stage separation system which will more effectively decouple the first and second stages, a new electronic "Thrust Vector Control (TVC) system" for its Raptor heavy rockets, and "significant upgrades" to the orbital launch mount and pad system which just so happened to have failed in the first test but is, again, completely unrelated to this upgrade. Whether those improvements overlap with the 63 that the FAA is imposing, could not be confirmed at the time of publication as the FAA had not publically released them.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

A buzzy startup offering financial infrastructure to crypto companies has found itself bankrupt primarily because it can't gain access to a physical crypto wallet with $38.9 million in it. The company also did not write down recovery phrases, locking itself out of the wallet forever in something it has called "The Wallet Event" to a bankruptcy judge:

Prime Trust pitches itself as a crypto fintech company designed to help other startups offer crypto retirement plans, know-your-customer interfaces, ensure liquidity, and a host of other services. It says it can help companies build crypto exchanges, payment platforms, and create stablecoins for its clients. The company has not had a good few months. In June, the state of Nevada filed to seize control of the company because it was near insolvency. It was then ordered to cease all operations by a federal judge because it allegedly used customers' money to cover withdrawal requests from other companies.

The company filed for bankruptcy, and, according to a filing by its interim CEO, which you really should read in full, the company offers an "all-in-one solution for customers that remains unmatched in the marketplace." A large problem, among more run-of-the-mill crypto economy problems such as "lack of operational and spending oversight" and "regulatory issues," is the fact that it lost access to a physical wallet it was keeping a tens of millions of dollars in, and cannot get back into it.

"In March of 2018, the Company created cold-storage wallets for purposes of maintaining cryptocurrency assets that included ETH, BTC, and ERC-20 compliant cryptocurrencies," the company wrote in its filing. It called one of these wallets the "98f Wallet," because its address ended in "98f."

"To enhance security, the Company set up the 98f Wallet so that those who can 'sign' (i.e., approve) transactions would need to be in physical possession of hand-held Trezor or Ledger hardware devices," the filing says.

The filing then states that, if the wallet is lost, most users create "seed phrases" that serve as backup codes that allow people to get into the wallet virtually: "Many users store seed phrases on hard copies of handwritten paper, images, and pictures. If a user loses both the hardware device and the seed phrases, it is virtually impossible for that user to regain access to the digital wallet."

You can probably see where this is going.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Original Submission

NotSanguine writes:

Ars Technica is reporting on the dismissal of a lawsuit against YouTube by one of its "content creators."

From the Ars Technica piece:

A prominent anti-vaccine activist, Joseph Mercola, yesterday lost a lawsuit attempting to force YouTube to provide access to videos that were removed from the platform after YouTube banned his channels.

Mercola had tried to argue that YouTube owed him more than $75,000 in damages for breaching its own user contract and denying him access to his videos. However, in an order dismissing Mercola's complaint, US magistrate judge Laurel Beeler wrote that according to the contract Mercola signed, YouTube was "under no obligation to host" Mercola's content after terminating his channel in 2021 "for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines by posting medical misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines."

"The court found no breach because 'there is no provision in the Terms of Service that requires YouTube to maintain particular content' or be a 'storage site for users' content,'" Beeler wrote.

Because Mercola's contract with YouTube was found to be enforceable and "YouTube had the discretion to take down content that harmed its users," Beeler said that Mercola did not plausibly plead claims for breach of contract or unjust enrichment.

Mercola's complaint was dismissed without leave to amend.
[...]
In his complaint, Mercola described himself as "a board-certified physician and leader in the field of natural health" who "was an early user of YouTube and began sharing video content in or around 2005, the year YouTube was founded."

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/ai-generated-child-sex-imagery-has-every-us-attorney-general-calling-for-action/

On Wednesday, American attorneys general from all 50 states and four territories sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to establish an expert commission to study how generative AI can be used to exploit children through child sexual abuse material (CSAM). They also call for expanding existing laws against CSAM to explicitly cover AI-generated materials.

"As Attorneys General of our respective States and territories, we have a deep and grave concern for the safety of the children within our respective jurisdictions," the letter reads. "And while Internet crimes against children are already being actively prosecuted, we are concerned that AI is creating a new frontier for abuse that makes such prosecution more difficult."

In particular, open source image synthesis technologies such as Stable Diffusion allow the creation of AI-generated pornography with ease, and a large community has formed around tools and add-ons that enhance this ability. Since these AI models are openly available and often run locally, there are sometimes no guardrails preventing someone from creating sexualized images of children, and that has rung alarm bells among the nation's top prosecutors. (It's worth noting that Midjourney, DALL-E, and Adobe Firefly all have built-in filters that bar the creation of pornographic content.)

"Creating these images is easier than ever," the letter reads, "as anyone can download the AI tools to their computer and create images by simply typing in a short description of what the user wants to see. And because many of these AI tools are 'open source,' the tools can be run in an unrestricted and unpoliced way."

As we have previously covered, it has also become relatively easy to create AI-generated deepfakes of people without their consent using social media photos.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Employees report a rare round of layoffs at Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture

Several employees at Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin are reporting that they've been laid off, marking a rare turnabout in the rapid growth of Jeff Bezos' space venture.

The reduction in force appears to be focused in the areas of human resources and talent acquisition [ . . . . ]

[ . . . . ] it looked as if "some (but not all) folks were given the opportunity to find another role" within the privately held company.

[ . . . . ] The company's workforce tally was less than 1,000 as recently as 2018. Two years ago, that count was reported at nearly 4,000 employees, and the figure rose to 6,000 by July 2022. Blue Origin's current number of employees — including workers in Kent as well as in Alabama, California, Florida, Texas, the Washington, D.C., area and other locales — is said to have hit nearly 11,000.

[ . . . . ] Blue Origin is continuing to hire employees for other types of jobs, primarily in technical fields.

Blue Origin needs to produce their BE-4 engine in volume and reusable. Their New Glenn rocket needs that engine and ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket needs that same engine.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Microsoft is alerting users and system administrators that Windows will soon phase out support for older TLS specifications. TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 will be disabled in upcoming Windows releases, as announced in the Windows message center. This change is only for future versions of Windows and newer Windows 11 releases, as indicated by Redmond. It applies to both client and server editions, but current versions of Windows will remain unaffected.

[...] TLS 1.0 (introduced in 1999) and TLS 1.1 (introduced in 2006) have long been outperformed by TLS 1.2 and 1.3. Modern internet software's TLS implementations are engineered to attempt a connection using the highest available protocol version. Data indicates that the usage of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 is relatively low currently. Microsoft is evidently striving to enhance the security of the Windows platform by promoting the adoption of contemporary protocols.

Consequently, starting with the Windows 11 Insider Preview builds set for release in September 2023, TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1 will be disabled by default. This change will also be seen in Windows 12 and subsequent versions. Microsoft has conducted tests on TLS deprecation and identified a "non-exhaustive" list of applications that are dependent on TLS 1.0 or 1.1. This list features older versions of SQL Server, Turbo Tax, BlueStacks, ACDSee Photo Studio, among others.

Microsoft clarified that most contemporary applications support TLS 1.2 or higher versions, so the majority of users should face no issues. However, if an application does encounter problems, forthcoming updates for Windows 11 and Windows 12 will offer an option to reactivate the older protocols through a modification to the System Registry.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/connected-cars-are-a-privacy-nightmare-mozilla-foundation-says/

Today, the Mozilla Foundation published its analysis of how well automakers handle the privacy of data collected by their connected cars, and the results will be unlikely to surprise any regular reader of Ars Technica. The researchers were horrified by their findings, stating that "cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy."
[...]
For example, Nissan's privacy policy says it can collect "sensitive personal information, including driver's license number, national or state identification number, citizenship status, immigration status, race, national origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, sexual activity, precise geolocation, health diagnosis data, and genetic information," although it's unlikely your car knows whether you're getting busy in the back seat. While this might be technically possible with a car fitted with a camera-based driver-monitoring system, Nissan's privacy policy notes the data source for the quoted paragraph as "direct contact with users and Nissan employees."

(Although more sophisticated driver-monitoring systems that claim to detect emotional states have been demonstrated at shows like CES, we're unaware of any that are in production.)

Mozilla found plenty more to worry about. Eighty-four percent of the brands they analyzed said they can share your data, and 76 percent said they can sell it. And more than half say they'll share data with the government and law enforcement by request.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has authorized its members employed in the interactive media industry at giant games studios – including Activision, Epic Games, and Electronic Arts – to strike.

[...] In its announcement, Guild president Fran Drescher said AI is partly to blame for the impasse. The statement explains that plenty of work covered by the Interactive Media Agreement is "performance capture" in which artists, some of them stunt performers, "provide digitally captured performances used to give expressive movement to video game characters."

Using AI to replace those performances "poses an enormous threat to these artists' professions," the Guild asserts.

[...] The Guild wants AI protections for its members, and an initial wage rise of 11 percent dated to the expiration of the current deal, plus four percent increases in the second and third years of a new deal. The Guild argues those hikes are "necessary for members' wages to keep up with inflation."

Authorizing the strike doesn't mean it will happen – the Guild's announcement simply means members head into their next round of negotiations, from late September, with approval to withdraw labor.

A representative of the games companies whose staff could strike told CNN the outfits she represents want to reach a fair deal that reflects the value Guild workers bring to games – and sort it out soon.

[...] The concurrent strikes by actors and writers are already kicking holes in broadcasters' and streamers' schedules. Some shows have been suspended indefinitely and others – like the planned Apple TV series Metropolis, based on the classic sci-fi film – have been cancelled outright.

If games suffer the same fate, that could make for a poor holiday season – the peak sales period for game publishers – if not this year, then perhaps in 2024 given the long development cycle required to produce premium games.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The risk of running obsolete code and hardware was highlighted after attackers exfiltrated data from a UK supplier of high-security fencing for military bases. The initial entry point? A Windows 7 PC.

While the supplier, Wolverhampton-based Zaun, said it believed that no classified information was downloaded, reports indicated that attackers were able to obtain data that could be used to gain access to some of the UK's most sensitive military and research sites.

The LockBit Ransom group conducted the attack on the company's network, and Zaun admitted the group may have exfiltrated 10GB of data. The company also confessed that the attack might have reached its server beyond the Windows 7 entry point.

[...] Zaun specializes in high-security perimeter fencing. It isn't a government-approved security contractor, although is approved for government use via the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI). The fact it has fallen victim to a cyberattack and had data downloaded is a reminder for enterprises and organizations to be vigilant regarding every link in the supply chain.

The company boasts: "All our fencing systems can be designed and manufactured with a wide variety of security additions, including toppings and detection technology to complete your perimeter." Unless, it appears, your perimeter is running some distinctly outdated kit.

[...] Paul Brucciani, Cyber Security Advisor at WithSecure, noted the success of LockBit, saying: "The significance of this attack is that by undermining IT security, it is also possible to undermine the physical security of its [the supplier] customers."

Original Submission