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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/ai-hype-reaches-coca-cola-with-new-y3000-flavor-co-created-with-ai/

Coca-Cola has taken a fizzy leap into the future of AI hype with the release of Coca‑Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar, a "limited-edition" beverage reportedly co-created with artificial intelligence. Its futuristic name evokes flavor in the year 3000 (still 977 years away), but its marketing relies on AI-generated imagery from 2023—courtesy of the controversial image synthesis model Stable Diffusion.

Stable Diffusion, a technology that is mentioned by name when launching the "Coca-Cola Y3000 AI Cam" mobile app, gained its ability to generate images by scraping hundreds of millions of copyrighted works found on the Internet without copyright-holder permission and is currently the subject of litigation related to copyright infringement.
[...]
Coca-Cola says that the zero-sugar version of the new AI-augmented soda will be available for a limited time in "select markets" including the United States, Canada, China, Europe, and Africa. Thirsty futuristic folks in the US, Canada, and Mexico will also be able to buy an "original taste version" of Coca‑Cola Y3000 soon.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In a controversial bid to expose supposed bias in a top journal, a US climate expert shocked fellow scientists by revealing he tailored a wildfire study to emphasize global warming.

While supporters applauded Patrick T. Brown for flagging what he called a one-sided climate "narrative" in academic publishing, his move surprised at least one of his co-authors—and angered the editors of leading journal Nature.

"I left out the full truth to get my climate change paper published," read the headline to an article signed by Brown in the news site The Free Press on September 5.

He said he deliberately focused on the impact from higher temperatures on wildfire risk in a study in the journal, excluding other factors such as land management.

"I just got published in Nature because I stuck to a narrative I knew the editors would like," the article read. "That's not the way science should work."

One of the named co-authors of the study, Steven J. Davis, a professor in the earth system science department at the University of California, Irvine, told AFP Brown's comments took him "by surprise".

"Patrick may have made decisions that he thought would help the paper be published, but we don't know whether a different paper would have been rejected," he said in an email.

"I don't think he has much evidence to support his strong claims that editors and reviewers are biased."

[...] "It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that Patrick felt like he had to be a willing participant in oversimplifying his work to have a career in science. In that long run, that is not a service to him, the field, or humanity."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://hackaday.com/2023/09/11/cheap-lcd-uses-usb-serial/

Browsing the Asian marketplaces online is always an experience. Sometimes, you see things at ridiculously low prices. Other times, you see things and wonder who is buying them and why — a shrimp pillow? But sometimes, you see something that probably could have a more useful purpose than the proposed use case.

That's the case with the glut of "smart displays" you can find at very low prices.
[...]
Like a lot of this cheap stuff, these screens are sold under a variety of names, and apparently, there are some subtle differences. Two of the main makers of these screens are Turing and XuanFang, although you rarely see those names in the online listings. As you might expect, though, someone has reverse-engineered the protocol, and there is Python software that will replace the stock Windows software the devices use.
[...]
We are still tempted to reflash the CH552 to convert it to use a normal serial port. If you decide to give it a go, you'll need to figure out programming.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Israeli software maker Insanet has reportedly developed a commercial product called Sherlock that can infect devices via online adverts to snoop on targets and collect data about them for the biz's clients.

This is according to an investigation by Haaretz, which this week claimed the spyware system had been sold to a country that is not a democracy.

The newspaper's report, we're told, marks the first time details of Insanet and its surveillanceware have been made public. Furthermore, Sherlock is capable of drilling its way into Microsoft Windows, Google Android, and Apple iOS devices, according to cited marketing bumf.

[...] To market its snoopware, Insanet reportedly teamed up with Candiru, an Israel-based spyware maker that has been sanctioned in the US, to offer Sherlock along with Candiru's spyware – an infection of Sherlock will apparently set a client back six million euros ($6.7 million, £5.2 million), mind you.

[...] The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Director of Activism Jason Kelley said Insanet's use of advertising technology to infect devices and spy on clients' targets makes it especially worrisome. Dodgy online ads don't just provide a potential vehicle for delivering malware, such as via carefully crafted images or JavaScript in the ads that exploit vulnerabilities in browsers and OSes, they can be used to go after specific groups of people – such as those who are interested in open source code, or who frequently travel to Asia – that someone might be interested in snooping on.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

California has become the third US state to pass a right-to-repair bill for consumer electronics. After a unanimous vote in favor, Sacramento lawmakers expect Governor Gavin Newsom to sign the bill into law.

Senate Bill 244 (SB-244) contains more consumer protections than similar laws passed in New York and Minnesota. It stipulates that for electronics costing between $50 and $100, manufacturers must provide consumers and independent repair shops with replacement parts and repair manuals for three years after the initial manufacture date. That timespan extends to seven years for devices costing over $100. Although the law goes into effect on July 1, 2024, it applies retroactively to products manufactured after July 1, 2021.

The law mainly applies to devices like phones, tablets, laptops, and other general-purpose appliances, but not alarm systems or video game consoles. Although manufacturers extracted fewer concessions in California than Minnesota or New York, a few significant ones remain.

First, the bill doesn't require companies to provide instructions for bypassing security measures, which can often prove a significant obstacle to independent repairs. John Deere is notorious for using software locks to force users to spend extra money on first-party maintenance and replacements.

Another caveat to the California bill is that independent repair vendors must disclose when they use refurbished replacement parts or originate components from third-party makers. This condition could affect how companies handle issues such as official repairs or warranties.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/the-spectacular-downfall-of-a-common-useless-cold-medicine/

After spending decades on pharmacy shelves, the leading nasal decongestant in over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines has met its downfall.

Advisers for the Food and Drug Administration this week voted unanimously, 16 to 0, that oral doses of phenylephrine—found in brand-name products like Sudafed PE, Benadryl Allergy Plus Congestion, Mucinex Sinus-Max, and Nyquil Severe Cold & Flu—are not effective at treating a stuffy nose.

The vote was years in the making. In 2007, amid doubts, FDA advisers called for more studies. With the data that has trickled in since then, the agency's own scientists conducted a careful review and came to the firm conclusion that oral phenylephrine "is not effective as a nasal decongestant."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/private-ai-summit-with-senate-titans-of-tech-garners-controversy/

On Wednesday, US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hosted an "AI Insight Forum" in the Senate's office building about potential AI regulation. Attendees included billionaires and modern-day industry titans such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia. But this heavily corporate guest list—with 14 out of 22 being CEOs—had some scratching their heads.

"This is the room you pull together when your staffers want pictures with tech industry AI celebrities. It's not the room you'd assemble when you want to better understand what AI is, how (and for whom) it functions, and what to do about it," wrote Signal President Meredith Whittaker on X.

upstart writes:

Tech Industry Leaders Endorse Regulating Artificial Intelligence at Rare Summit in Washington:

The nation's biggest technology executives on Wednesday loosely endorsed the idea of government regulations for artificial intelligence at an unusual closed-door meeting in the U.S. Senate. But there is little consensus on what regulation would look like, and the political path for legislation is difficult.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who organized the private forum on Capitol Hill as part of a push to legislate artificial intelligence, said he asked everyone in the room — including almost two dozen tech executives, advocates and skeptics — whether government should have a role in the oversight of artificial intelligence, and "every single person raised their hands, even though they had diverse views," he said.

Among the ideas discussed was whether there should be an independent agency to oversee certain aspects of the rapidly-developing technology, how companies could be more transparent and how the United States can stay ahead of China and other countries.

"The key point was really that it's important for us to have a referee," said Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and X, during a break in the daylong forum. "It was a very civilized discussion, actually, among some of the smartest people in the world."

Schumer will not necessarily take the tech executives' advice as he works with colleagues on the politically difficult task of ensuring some oversight of the burgeoning sector. But he invited them to the meeting in hopes that they would give senators some realistic direction for meaningful regulation.

Congress should do what it can to maximize AI's benefits and minimize the negatives, Schumer said, "whether that's enshrining bias, or the loss of jobs, or even the kind of doomsday scenarios that were mentioned in the room. And only government can be there to put in guardrails."

Other executives attending the meeting were Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Musk said the meeting "might go down in history as being very important for the future of civilization."

First, though, lawmakers have to agree on whether to regulate, and how.

Congress has a lackluster track record when it comes to regulating new technology, and the industry has grown mostly unchecked by government in the past several decades. Many lawmakers point to the failure to pass any legislation surrounding social media, such as for stricter privacy standards.

coolgopher writes:

As reported in New Atlas and many other places, the 2023 Ig Nobel winners have been announced.

The Ig Nobel Prize celebrates the most trivial and ridiculous things our best and brightest have studied. The 2023 award winners are now world-class experts that have advanced mankind's knowledge on big questions. Questions like "how much do horny anchovies influence ocean water mixing?" Or "if a group of people stand in the street looking upward, does the size of the group influence how many unrelated passers-by also decide to look up?" Or that old chestnut, "do we need toilets that analyze our excreta and identify us by taking photos of our anuses?"

Just a couple of examples to raise the level of excitement...

Medicine Prize: Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person's two nostrils. Don't miss their riveting work "The Quantification and Measurement of Nasal Hairs in a Cadaveric Population."

Education Prize: Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students. If anything could be more exciting than boredom, it's surely their paper, "Boredom Begets Boredom: An Experience Sampling Study on the Impact of Teacher Boredom on Student Boredom and Motivation."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Mistranslation Of Newton's First Law Discovered After Nearly 300 Years:

For hundreds of years, we have been told what Newton's First Law of Motion supposedly says, but recently a paper published in Philosophy of Science (preprint) by [Daniel Hoek] argues that it is based on a mistranslation of the original Latin text. As noted by [Stephanie Pappas] in Scientific American, this would seem to be a rather academic matter as Newton's Laws of Motion have been superseded by General Relativity and other theories developed over the intervening centuries. Yet even today Newton's theories are highly relevant, as they provide very accessible approximations for predicting phenomena on Earth.

Similarly, we owe it to scientific and historical accuracy to address such matters, all of which seem to come down to an awkward translation of Isaac Newton's original Latin text in the 1726 third edition to English by Andrew Motte in 1729. This English translation is what ended up defining for countless generations what Newton's Laws of Motion said, along with the other chapters in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

In 1999 a new translation (Cohen-Whitman translation) was published by a team of translators, which contains a number of notable departures from the 1729 translation. Most notable herein is the change of the original (Motte) translation:

Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impress'd thereon.

to the following in the Cohen-Whitman translation:

Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by the forces impressed.

This more correct translation of the Latin nisi quatenus has significant implications for the law's effects, as while Newton's version does not require force-free bodies, the weak reading introduced by Motte's translation incites exactly the kind of debate which has been seen over the centuries about why the First Law even exists, when in this translated form it automatically follows from the Second Law, rendering it redundant.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The decision, published Friday, was hailed by conservative litigation group the New Civil Liberties Alliance as a victory for free speech. But Eric Goldman, a professor, Santa Clara University School of Law, believes Biden administration foes may have scored an own-goal.

The lower court ruling [PDF], from Louisiana federal district Judge Terry A. Doughty on July 4, partially granted an injunction that broadly limited the extent to which US government agencies can deem content so potentially harmful that they urge social media sites to remove it from their services.

Judge Doughty determined that the plaintiffs – the State of Missouri, the State of Louisiana, Dr Aaron Kheriaty, Dr Martin Kulldorff, Jim Hoft, Dr Jayanta Bhattacharya, and Jill Hines – made sufficiently strong arguments that their speech was suppressed at the direction of the government that they are likely to succeed at trial.

In short: the judge partially granted their request to prohibit the government from telling social media companies how to moderate content.

The United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth'

"Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the court is only examining it in terms of plaintiffs' likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario," Judge Doughty wrote in a memorandum explaining his ruling.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth.'"

upstart writes:

Free Download Manager Site Compromised to Distribute Linux Malware to Users for 3+ Years:

A download manager site served Linux users malware that stealthily stole passwords and other sensitive information for more than three years as part of a supply chain attack.

The modus operandi entailed establishing a reverse shell to an actor-controlled server and installing a Bash stealer on the compromised system. The campaign, which took place between 2020 and 2022, is no longer active.

"This stealer collects data such as system information, browsing history, saved passwords, cryptocurrency wallet files, as well as credentials for cloud services (AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Azure)," Kaspersky researchers Georgy Kucherin and Leonid Bezvershenko said.

The website in question is freedownloadmanager[.]org, which, according to the Russian cybersecurity firm, offers a legitimate Linux software called "Free Download Manager," but starting in January 2020, began redirecting some users who attempted to download it to another domain deb.fdmpkg[.]org that served a booby-trapped Debian package.

It's suspected that the malware authors engineered the attack based on certain predefined filtering criteria (say, a digital fingerprint of the system) to selectively lead potential victims to the malicious version. The rogue redirects ended in 2022 for inexplicable reasons.

[...] It's not immediately clear how the compromise actually took place and what the end goals of the campaign were. What's evident is that not everyone who downloaded the software received the rogue package, enabling it to evade detection for years.

"While the campaign is currently inactive, this case of Free Download Manager demonstrates that it can be quite difficult to detect ongoing cyberattacks on Linux machines with the naked eye," the researchers said.

"Thus, it is essential that Linux machines, both desktop and server, are equipped with reliable and efficient security solutions."

[EDITOR'S NOTE: We have been informed by the Free Download Manager Team that all their sites are now secure. This does not in any way affect the content of this story which covers a 3 year period beginning in 2020. JR, 18092023-06:32UTC]

Original Submission

Unity's new "per-install" pricing enrages the game development community

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/game-developers-unite-against-unitys-new-per-install-pricing-structure/

For years, the Unity Engine has earned goodwill from developers large and small for its royalty-free licensing structure, which meant developers incurred no extra costs based on how well a game sold. That goodwill has now been largely thrown out the window due to Unity's Tuesday announcement of a new fee structure that will start charging developers on a "per-install" basis after certain minimum thresholds are met.
[...]
"There's no royalties, no fucking around," Unity CEO John Riccitiello memorably told GamesIndustry.biz when rolling out the free Personal tier in 2015. "We're not nickel-and-diming people, and we're not charging them a royalty. When we say it's free, it's free."

Now that Unity has announced plans to nickel-and-dime successful Unity developers (with a fee that is not technically a royalty), the reaction from those developers has been swift and universally angry, to put it mildly. "I can say, unequivocally, if you're starting a new game project, do not use Unity," Necrosoft Games' Brandon Sheffield—a longtime Unity Engine supporter—said in a post entitled "The Death of Unity." "Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted."
[...]
Unity initially told Axios' Stephen Totilo that the "per-install" fee applies even if a single user deleted and re-installed a game or installed it on two devices. A few hours later, though, Totilo reported that Unity had "regrouped" and decided to only charge developers for a user's initial installation of a game on a single device (but an initial installation on a secondary device—such as a Steam Deck—would still count as a second install).

Meanwhile, in its FAQ, Unity made a vague promise to adapt "fraud detection practices in our Ads technology, which is solving a similar problem" to prevent developers from being charged for pirated copies.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Biden administration is trying to take a paternalistic role in stewarding the development of AI for major tech firms. It’s not exactly leading from the front but is instead placing a gentle, reaffirming hand on the shoulders of big tech, telling them to be cautious and open about how they lay out the future of the transformative tech.

Some of the biggest tech firms have agreed to the White House’s voluntary commitment on ethical AI, including some companies that are already using AI to help militaries kill more effectively and to monitor citizens at home.

On Tuesday, the White House proclaimed that eight more big tech companies have accepted President Joe Biden’s guiding hand. These commitments include that companies will share safety and safeguarding information with other AI makers. They would have to share information with the public about their AI’s capability and limitations and use AI to “help address society’s greatest challenges.” Among the few tech companies to agree to the White House’s latest cooperative agreement is the defense contractor Palantir, a closed-door data analytics company known for its connections with spy agencies like the CIA and FBI as well as governments and militaries around the world.

The other seven companies to agree to the voluntary commitment include major product companies like Adobe, IBM, Nvidia, and Salesforce. In addition, several AI firms such as Cohere, Scale AI, and Stability have joined the likes of Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google in facilitating third-party testing and watermarking for their AI systems.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Clogs in water recovery systems on the international space station have been so backed up that hoses have had to be sent back to Earth for cleaning and refurbishing. This is thanks to the build up of biofilms: a consortium of microorganisms that stick to each other, and often also to surfaces — the insides of water recover tubing, for instance. These microbial or fungal growths can clog filters in water processing systems and make astronauts sick.

[...] In a cross collaboration between researchers at the University of Colorado, MIT and the NASA Ames Research Center, researchers studied samples from the space station using a specific and well-understood gram-negative kind of bacteria. The scientists also joined forces with experts at LiquiGlide, a company run by MIT researcher Kripa Varanasi that specializes in “eliminating the friction between solids and liquids.” The multidisciplinary study found covering surfaces with a thin layer of nucleic acids prevented bacterial growth on the ISS-exposed samples.

The scientists concluded that these acids carried a slight negative electric charge that stopped microbes from sticking to surfaces. It's worth noting though, that the bacteria were up against a unique physical barrier as well as a chemical one: testing surfaces were etched into "nanograss." These silicon spikes, which resembled a tiny forest, were then slicked with a silicon oil, creating a slippery surface which biofilms struggled to adhere to.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Researchers have built their own computer game to test the impact of meters which give players a morality score for the decisions they make while playing:

Two papers published by a multi-disciplinary research team reveal that most of us ignore the meter when a moral choice is clear, but we use it when the choice is more morally ambiguous. And some of us, about 10 per cent, will do anything to win.

[...] The game story centres on Frankie, an usher in a cinema in regional Australia in the 1940s, who is confronted by a murderous psychopath.

Along the way, players must make choices which affect the progress and outcome of the game. Some are simple black and white decisions, such as whether to take money or not, but others are what developers call 'trolley problems', where players must decide whether they will kill or harm someone if it saves others.