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Freeman writes:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eclipses/home/

Safety is the number one priority when viewing a solar eclipse. Be sure you're familiar with and follow these safety guidelines when viewing an eclipse.
[...]
Quick fact:
The U.S. will experience the next two solar eclipses: an annular in October 2023 and a total in April 2024. You can see the paths and download the map of these eclipses here. See Also: Annular Solar Eclipse: October 14, 2023
Total Solar Eclipse: April 8, 2024

from Annular solar eclipse 2023: Everything you need to know about North America's 'ring of fire' eclipse

Roughly 11 years after the same type of solar eclipse crossed the U.S. Southwest on May 20, 2012, this one will be visible from a similar region, crossing eight U.S. states from Oregon to Texas, according to NASA.

During an annular solar eclipse, the moon appears slightly smaller than the sun, so it can't block the entire disk. The result is a beautiful "ring of fire." Here's everything you need to know about this rare event.

The Total Solar Eclipse event on April 8, 2024 will be a Partial Solar Eclipse in the UK. Solar and Lunar Eclipses in Europe – Next 10 Years

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Like the US Navy has long protected sea lanes during conflict, the military could be called upon to defend commercial satellites from attack, particularly as the Pentagon relies more on commercial networks for communication and surveillance, the Space Force's top general said last week.

In comments at a conference in Hawaii on September 20, Gen. Chance Saltzman echoed many statements made by military leaders over the last few years: US military space capabilities are under threat from China and Russia, military leaders need more information about what other countries are doing in space, and commercial satellites are playing an ever-larger role in the military's space programs.

But Saltzman went a little further in his comments when asked about the military's role in protecting commercial satellites from an attack. The questioner specifically asked how the US military might respond if Russia attacked SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, which Ukraine widely uses for Internet connectivity in its war with Russia, despite Elon Musk's refusal to allow Ukraine to employ Starlink services on certain military operations.

Saltzman didn't directly address the scenario posed in the question, but he clearly suggested the US military has a responsibility to defend commercial assets in space.

In a modern war, "there are going to be commercial entities, commercial organizations, commercial capabilities and assets that get caught up in the conflicts," Saltzman said. "Space is no different than sea lanes. It’s no different than civilian airliner traffic in Europe right now. The US has a long history of saying we’re going to protect the things that we need to be successful. So it would stand to reason that that same philosophy would extend into space, and I have no reason to believe that that will be different.”

A hypothetical military operation to defend a commercial satellite from an adversary's attack would likely go through US Space Command, a separate entity from the Space Force, which is charged with equipping and outfitting the military's combatant commands with the people and technology to carry out their missions.

It seems that a couple of recent stories have suddenly disappeared off our screens. We are looking into the cause but I apologize for those who were having a discussion which has now been cut short.

We will keep you informed.

janrinok

looorg writes:

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4218666-ai-girlfriends-are-ruining-an-entire-generation-of-men/

The rise of virtual artificial intelligence (AI) girlfriends is enabling the silent epidemic of loneliness in an entire generation of young men. It is also having severe consequences for America's future.

Are they really lonely if they have their AI girlfriend?

Interesting how this becomes a man problem, and not a woman problem. The blame here is entirely shifted towards the male of the species. While women are somehow innocent victims, as per usual. Are there no AI boyfriends, there are. They just don't seem to be problematic. Which is odd.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IrrADTN-dvg

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The hollowing out of U.S. cities' office and commercial cores is a national trend with serious consequences for millions of Americans. As more people have stayed home following the COVID-19 pandemic, foot traffic has fallen. Major retail chains are closing stores, and even prestigious properties are having a hard time retaining tenants.

The shuttering of a Whole Foods market after only a year in downtown San Francisco in May 2023 received widespread coverage. Even more telling was the high-end department store Nordstrom's decision to close its flagship store there in August after a 35-year run.

In New York City, office vacancy rates have risen by over 70% since 2019. Chicago's Magnificent Mile, a stretch of high-end shops and restaurants, had a 26% vacancy rate in spring 2023.

A recent study from the University of Toronto found that across North America, downtowns are recovering from the pandemic more slowly than other urban areas and that "older, denser downtowns reliant on professional or tech workers and located within large metros" are struggling the hardest.

Over more than 50 years of researching urban policy, I have watched U.S. cities go through many booms and busts. Now, however, I see a more fundamental shift taking place. In my view, traditional downtowns are dead, dying or on life support across the U.S. and elsewhere. Local governments and urban residents urgently need to consider what the post-pandemic city will look like.

U.S. downtowns were in trouble before the COVID-19 pandemic. Today's overhang of excess commercial space was years in the making.

Urban property markets are speculative enterprises. When the economy is booming, individual developers decide to build more—and the collective result of these rational individual decisions is excess buildings.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration allowed a quicker depreciation of commercial real estate that effectively lowered tax rates for developers. With financial globalization, foreign money flowed into the U.S. property sector, especially to very big development projects that could absorb large pools of liquid capital looking for relatively safe long-term investments.

Years of low interest rates meant cheap money for developers to finance their projects. City governments were eager to greenlight projects that would generate tax revenues. In many downtowns, office space now takes up between 70% and 80% of all real estate.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Not all yeasts are created equally. Unlike the yeast used by bakers and beer brewers for converting sugars to carbon dioxide and fermentation, oleaginous yeasts convert sugars from inedible biomass into fats and oils.

A research group jointly led by Kyoto University and Ryukoku University has discovered two new species of oil-forming yeast in the soil of Shiga Prefecture. Published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, their study also examines the relationship between the prefecture's diverse climate and microbial ecology.

"We are gauging the potential benefits of applying oleaginous yeast to sustainable oil and fat production through isolation technology, particularly in reducing carbon dioxide emissions," says team leader and first author Ayumi Tanimura of KyotoU's Society Academia Collaboration for Innovation.

The discovery of two species—Hannaella oleicumulans, named after its oil-accumulating properties, and Hannaella higashiohmiensis from Higashiomi City—suggest the high potential of microbial resources in this region. They join the roughly 160 species of known oil yeast, including the previously known Lipomyces starkeyi, Rhodotorula toruloides, and Yarrowia lipolytica.

mrpg writes:

We finally know for sure what a trilobite ate

Trilobites first appear early in the Cambrian and are one of the earliest examples of arthropods, the group that includes all insects. They flourished for over 100 million years, leaving fossils that are seemingly ubiquitous—we've described over 20,000 different trilobite species. That's over three times the number of mammalian species we're aware of.

Despite all those fossils, however, we've never found one with a meal inside it. We've been able to infer what some of them were likely to have been dining on based on their appearance and the ecosystems they were found in, but we haven't been able to establish what they ate with certainty. But today, researchers are describing an exquisitely preserved sample that includes several of the animal's last meals, which suggests that this particular animal was a bit like an aquatic vacuum cleaner.

[...] The one caution the researchers raise about this find is that the feeding behavior of the trilobite may not be entirely normal. There's a discontinuity in the animal's shell between two of its segments, which can be an indication that it's getting ready to molt. If that's the case, the animal may have been overeating to generate additional pressure to help it break out of its old shell.

So, after tens of thousands of trilobite fossils, we finally have one with food inside of it. Yet it seems to be from a species that had a bizarre feeding pattern, and this particular individual may have been sucking down more food than usual. So, we'll probably need to find a few more of these to get a better picture of what trilobites ate.

Journal Reference:
Petr Kraft, Valéria Vaškaninová, Michal Mergl, et al. Uniquely preserved gut contents illuminate trilobite palaeophysiology Nature (2023). (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06567-7)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

This robotic exoskeleton can help runners sprint faster:

The exosuit could prove a useful tool for athletes looking to speed up during training. "Although this is a preliminary study, we can say the exosuit can augment the human ability to run," says Giuk Lee, an associate professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, who led the research.

Lee and his team built a lightweight exosuit with steel cables powered by electrical motors attached to the runner's thighs. The motors pull the cables, mimicking the contraction of muscles. The exosuit helps people run faster by assisting their hip extension—the powerful motion that propels a runner forward.

The exosuit tracks the wearer's lower-body movements in real time through sensors on both thighs. This data feeds into an algorithm designed to monitor gait, which works in tandem with other algorithms to track each runner's individual running style and speed.

Journal Reference:
Junyoung Moon, Kimoon Nam, Jaewook Ryu, et al. Reducing sprint time with exosuit assistance in the real world (DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adf5611)

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

Backdoored firmware lets China state hackers control routers with "magic packets"

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/china-state-hackers-are-camping-out-in-cisco-routers-us-and-japan-warn/

Hackers backed by the Chinese government are planting malware into routers that provides long-lasting and undetectable backdoor access to the networks of multinational companies in the US and Japan, governments in both countries said Wednesday.

The hacking group, tracked under names including BlackTech, Palmerworm, Temp.Overboard, Circuit Panda, and Radio Panda, has been operating since at least 2010, a joint advisory published by government entities in the US and Japan reported. The group has a history of targeting public organizations and private companies in the US and East Asia. The threat actor is somehow gaining administrator credentials to network devices used by subsidiaries and using that control to install malicious firmware that can be triggered with "magic packets" to perform specific tasks.

The hackers then use control of those devices to infiltrate networks of companies that have trusted relationships with the breached subsidiaries.

"Specifically, upon gaining an initial foothold into a target network and gaining administrator access to network edge devices, BlackTech cyber actors often modify the firmware to hide their activity across the edge devices to further maintain persistence in the network," officials wrote in Wednesday's advisory. "To extend their foothold across an organization, BlackTech actors target branch routers—typically smaller appliances used at remote branch offices to connect to a corporate headquarters—and then abuse the trusted relationship of the branch routers within the corporate network being targeted. BlackTech actors then use the compromised public-facing branch routers as part of their infrastructure for proxying traffic, blending in with corporate network traffic, and pivoting to other victims on the same corporate network."

[...] To install their modified bootloader, the US and Japanese advisory said, the threat actors install an older version of the legitimate firmware and then modify it as it runs in memory. The technique overrides signature checks in the Cisco ROM monitor signature validation functions, specifically functions of Cisco's IOS Image Load test and the Field Upgradeable ROMMON Integrity test. The modified firmware, which consists of a Cisco IOS loader that installs an embedded IOS image, allows the compromised routers to make connections over SSH without being recorded in event logs.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/big-dairy-still-sour-over-plant-based-milk-labels-tries-to-outlaw-them/

In an utterly firm effort to undercut plant-based rivals, big players in the dairy industry are again putting the squeeze on lawmakers to outlaw the use of the term "milk" for non-dairy beverages—or, in Food and Drug Administration lingo, beverages that are not the "lacteal secretion of cows."

Earlier this year, the dairy industry's blood curdled when the regulatory agency released a draft guidance stating that plant-based milk alternatives can keep using the term. It was a move that followed years of sour resentment over the labeling.

The FDA did humbly admit that almonds and other sources of plant-based milk don't, in fact, lactate;

[...] Following the FDA's milk ruling, dairy industry groups rounded up support from lawmakers to try to reverse it. Specifically, they got members of the House and Senate to push a bill called the DAIRY PRIDE Act.

[...] Dairy-state lawmakers are now trying to get the bill signed into law in the coming months as part of the 2023 farm bill reauthorization, according to a report by Stat News.

People that drink milk alternatives, don't want to drink milk. People that want to drink milk, don't confuse Almond/Coconut "milk" for milk.

What about goats' milk? Cleansing milk for removing makeup, milk of magnesia (medication), the milksnake (a reptile)?

Original Submission

"dalek" writes:

If Congress does not pass a measure to fund the government by Sunday, October 1, a partial shutdown of the United States government will begin. Much of the federal government is funded each fiscal year by 12 appropriations bills. None of the appropriations bills for the 2024 fiscal year have been signed into law, which is not especially uncommon at the start of a new fiscal year. Instead, Congress authorizes funding at the levels from the previous fiscal year through a continuing resolution (CR), and then the appropriations bills are signed into law when they are ready. The Senate is scheduled to vote on such a CR on Saturday, though any Senator can refuse the expedited process for debating the bill, and delay the vote until Monday. Although the CR is expected to pass the Senate with bipartisan support, the House is highly unlikely to pass any funding bills before the government shutdown begins.

The impending government shutdown is likely to have significant effects on scientific research, as noted in a Nature article:

Fuelled by infighting among Republicans in the House of Representatives over spending cuts, the United States is barreling towards a government shutdown. Lawmakers in the US Congress have until 30 September (the end of the fiscal year) to reach an agreement over how to keep money flowing to federal agencies, or the government will have to close many of its doors and furlough staff — including tens of thousands of scientists — without pay. Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, work at science agencies will stop, interrupting experiments, delaying the approval of research grants and halting travel to scientific conferences.

upstart writes:

Bing Chat responses infiltrated by ads pushing malware:

Bing Chat responses infiltrated by ads pushing malware

Malicious advertisements are now being injected into Microsoft's AI-powered Bing Chat responses, promoting fake download sites that distribute malware.

Bing Chat, powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 engine, was introduced by Microsoft in February 2023 to challenge Google's dominance in the search industry.

By offering users an interactive chat-based experience instead of the traditional search query and result format, Bing Chat aimed to make online searches more intuitive and user-friendly.

In March, Microsoft began injecting ads into Bing Chat conversations to generate revenue from this new platform.

However, incorporating ads into Bing Chat has opened the door to threat actors, who increasingly take out search advertisements to distribute malware.

Furthermore, conversing with AI-powered chat tools can instill unwarranted trust, potentially convincing users to click on ads, which isn't the case when skimming through impersonal search results.

This conversation-like interaction can imbue AI-provided URLs with a misplaced sense of authority and trustworthiness, so the existing problem of malvertizing in search platforms is amplified by the introduction of AI assistants.

The fact that these ads are labeled as promoted results when the user hovers over a link in Bing Chat conversations is likely too weak of a measure to mitigate the risk.

[...] The display of malvertising within Bing Chat conversations highlights the expanding frontier of cyber threats and makes it crucial for users to be wary of chatbot results and always double-check URLs before downloading anything.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Disney's password-sharing crackdown has begun:

Starting on November 1st, Disney Plus will begin restricting password sharing. In Canada.

The company announced the change in an email sent to Canadian subscribers. Disney has not provided many details on how it plans to enforce this policy — its email merely states that "we're implementing restrictions on your ability to share your account or login credentials outside of your household." The announcement reads more like a strong finger wag than anything else. "You may not share your subscription outside of your household," reads the company's updated Help Center.

A new "account sharing" section in the Canadian subscriber agreement also notes that the company may "analyze the use of your account" and that failing to comply with the agreement could lead to account limits or termination.

The announcement comes over a month after Disney's Q3 earnings call, where CEO Bob Iger said that the company was "actively exploring" ways to address shared accounts. Iger said that a "significant" number of people are currently sharing passwords across Disney's services and added that Disney has the "technical capability" to monitor sign-ins.

Disney Plus is just the latest streaming service to attempt to tackle password sharing. Netflix has been testing such restrictions for over a year in various countries and began cracking down in the US in May 2023. Netflix accounts are restricted based on a user's IP address; subscribers, depending on the plan they select, have the option of adding additional members to their accounts for an additional fee. The company said in its Q2 earnings call that its policy has driven more subscribers to the service.

But hey, if it's any consolation: Canadian users now have access to the cheaper ad-supported tier. This next turn in the streaming wars is going to get pricey.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Cloudflare Users Exposed to Attacks Launched From Within Cloudflare: Researchers:

Gaps in Cloudflare's security controls allow users to bypass customer-configured protection mechanisms and target other users from the platform itself, technology consulting firm Certitude warns.

The issue, the company says, arises from the shared infrastructure that all Cloudflare tenants have access to, allowing malicious actors to abuse the trust customers place in the platform's protections to target them via Cloudflare.

A major cybersecurity vendor offering web application firewall (WAF), bot management, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protections, Cloudflare relies on a network of reverse-proxy servers to inspect all traffic headed to customers' web servers for malicious activity.

According to Certitude, because traffic originating from Cloudflare's own infrastructure is considered trusted by default, it is not passed through the configured reverse-proxy servers, as is traffic from other parties.

Because of that, the consulting firm says, an attacker registered with Cloudflare can target other users on the platform, essentially bypassing the platform's protections.

One gap Certitude discovered is related to the 'Authenticated Origin Pulls' on Transport Layer mechanism, which relies on a Cloudflare SSL certificate for authentication.

When setting up the authentication mechanism to their web servers (origin servers), customers can opt for using a Cloudflare certificate or for using their own certificate.

However, because the available options are insufficiently documented, and because a custom certificate can only be used with an API, "it is reasonable to assume that customers will opt for the more convenient choice of using the Cloudflare certificate," Certitude notes.

upstart writes:

Dianne Feinstein, longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at 90:

Dianne Feinstein, whose three decades in the Senate made her the longest-serving female US senator in history, has died following months of declining health. She was 90.

Trailblazing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein dies at 90:

Dianne Feinstein, who became California's first female senator and went on to serve six terms, the longest of any woman in Senate history -- and whose political career was forever changed by the assassination of two colleagues -- has died. She was 90.

Her office said in a statement that she died on Thursday night at her home in Washington. The cause was not disclosed. She had voted as recently as earlier that day.

"There are few women who can be called senator, chairman, mayor, wife, mom and grandmother," her chief of staff, James Sauls, said in a statement. He called Feinstein "a force of nature who made an incredible impact on our country and her home state."

"She left a legacy that is undeniable and extraordinary. There is much to say about who she was and what she did," Sauls said, "but for now, we are going to grieve the passing of our beloved boss, mentor and friend."

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seemed at varying points to choke back tears as he memorialized Feinstein in remarks from the chamber on Friday morning, hailing her as "one of the most amazing people to ever grace the Senate." In memoriam, her Senate desk appeared to be draped in black cloth beneath a vase bursting with white roses. Flags outside the Capitol were also lowered to half-staff.

President Joe Biden, in his own statement, called Feinstein a "pioneering American," a "true friend" and "a role model for so many."