SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Last week the internet was abuzz with talk that Singapore's commercial Changi airport was no longer going to require passports for clearance at immigration. Although it is true the paper documentation will be replaced by biometric measures, it's not quite time to pack the document away.

The news came through as Singapore passed its Immigration Amendment Bill which, among other things, enables the use of end-to-end biometric clearance at airports and checkpoints, beginning in the first half of 2024.

"Singapore will be one of the first few countries in the world to introduce automated, passport-free immigration clearance," said minister for communications and information Josephine Teo in a wrap-up speech for the bill. Teo did concede that Dubai had such clearance for select enrolled travelers, but there was no assurance of other countries planning similar actions.

And therein lies one of the most important reasons passports will not yet go away.

[...] What travelers will see is an expansion of a program already taking form. Changi airport currently uses facial recognition software and automated clearance for some parts of immigration.

The plan is to expand to universal coverage, which Teo called one of the keys to the successful implementation of the New Clearance Concept (NCC).

"This requires a willingness to phase out traditional methods of identifying and authenticating travelers. The alternative of running two systems in parallel is not only costly but also cumbersome," said Teo.

fliptop writes:

Some gas station owners are falling victim to a sophisticated scam. Scammers are using cellphone's Bluetooth option to hack the pump - and get it for free:

Paying at the pump is for chumps - when you can get gas for free - and illegal, but it didn't stop a Detroit man from stealing almost 800 gallons of gas at the Shell at Eight Mile and Wyoming.

[...] And when the clerks inside try to stop it - they can't.

"Every time we push Pump Three stop, it wasn't doing anything," [station owner Mo] said. "We have to shut off the whole pumps - we have emergency stops."

[...] But it's not just one guy, and this maneuver is not new, just re-surfacing.

Like at a Speedway station Downriver – in Riverview this month. In that case, they used a bait-and-switch. One guy distracted the clerk with a Cash App problem inside, while the other hacked the pump.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Set your watches! Scientists have set the clock ticking for the development of a new generation of timepieces with accuracy of up to 1 second in 300 billion years or about 22 times the age of the universe.

Researchers working at European XFEL X-ray have examined the potential of scandium as the basis for nuclear clocks, long seen as the next step forward in accuracy over the current generation of atomic clocks.

Most atomic clocks rely on oscillators such as caesium, which can oscillate at very reliable frequencies when excited by microwave radiation. For example, the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology's NIST-F2 clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 300 million years.

But scientists have held the ambition of going one step further by using the oscillation of the atomic nucleus – rather than the electron shell – to create the next level in timekeeping.

[...] Ralf Röhlsberger, researcher at Germany's Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, was part of the team. He said the level of accuracy possible from a nuclear clock using scandium could be equivalent to one second in 300 billion years, according to a statement.

In other words, if your watch loses a second a year, it will be 9,512 years slow by the time a nuclear clock based on scandium is a second out.

Journal Reference:
Shvyd'ko, Y., Röhlsberger, R., Kocharovskaya, O. et al. Resonant X-ray excitation of the nuclear clock isomer 45Sc [open]. Nature (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06491-w

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/covid-anti-viral-drug-is-actively-helping-sars-cov-2-mutate-and-evolve/

With every new infection, the pandemic coronavirus gets new chances to mutate and adapt, creating opportunities for the virus to evolve new variants that are better at dodging our immune systems and making us sicker.

Anti-viral drugs, such as Paxlovid and remdesivir, aim to halt this incessant evolution in individual patients—shortening illnesses, snuffing out opportunities for mutation, and reducing transmission. But one antiviral appears to be backfiring—allowing SARS-CoV-2 more opportunities to mutate.

According to a new peer-reviewed study in the journal Nature, the anti-viral drug dubbed molnupiravir is linked to specific SARS-CoV-2 mutation signatures that happened to spring up in 2022 when the drug was introduced.
[...]
Beyond simply finding molnupiravir-linked mutations, the researchers noted concerning features of them. The researchers found evidence that some of the molnupiravir-linked mutations were under positive selection—that is, they increased in frequency, suggesting that they were advantageous to the virus in some way. They also noted that some viruses with molnupiravir-linked mutations were passed on from person to person in clusters, which suggested onward transmission of these drug-induced mutations.
[...]
When molnupiravir was authorized in the US, there was concern about its potential to cause mutations in people's DNA, rather than the virus. For this reason, it is not recommended for use in pregnant people. But the new data gives birth to more concern about mutations. And this risk is coupled with lackluster efficacy data. In a final data analysis for the Food and Drug Administration, molnupiravir's maker, Merck, combined two sets of trial data to come up with an estimate of just 30 percent efficacy at preventing hospitalization and death.
[...]
FDA advisers summarized the data at the time as "not overwhelmingly good" and "modest at best." They voted in favor of authorizing the drug in a narrow 13 to 10 vote. The drug has never gained a foothold in Europe. Earlier this year, the European Medicines Agency refused to issue marketing authorization for molnupiravir. Upon the EMA's rejection, Merck said it was confident of the drug's role in fighting COVID-19 and that it would appeal the decision. In addition to the US, molnupiravir is approved for use in over two dozen countries, including Australia, China, Japan, and the UK, though use of the drug has been scaled back in many places.

Journal Reference:
Sanderson, T., Hisner, R., Donovan-Banfield, I. et al. A molnupiravir-associated mutational signature in global SARS-CoV-2 genomes. Nature (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06649-6

Original Submission

"dalek" writes:

As recently as less than a year ago, NASCAR stated it planned to implement hybrid engines in 2024. Although rumors indicate that this timeline may have changed, IndyCar has successfully tested the hybrid engines it will begin using in 2024, and NASCAR probably won't be too far behind. A hybrid engine simply means that it's powered from more than one source of energy, usually a combination of gasoline and electricity.

Formula 1 began using hybrid power units in 2014, which are powered both with gasoline and electric power, and use fuel more efficiently than cars without hybrid components. F1's experiences with hybrid power units and their mistakes could provide some guidance for how other racing series might switch to hybrid engines. Chain Bear provides an excellent discussion of how F1 power units work. They still contain an internal combustion engine, but the efficiency is increased and energy is recovered in a few ways.

F1 engines are turbocharged, meaning that energy from exhaust getting expelled is used for forced induction. This means that the air in the intake is compressed, and the combustion is more efficient than in a naturally aspirated engine. However, the turbo requires a high exhaust pressure, meaning that there is a lag between when the car accelerates and when the turbo can operate efficiently, which is known as turbo lag. One of the hybrid components is the MGU-K (K for kinetic energy), which captures energy through regenerative braking. Instead of energy being lost as heat during braking, the energy is used to charge the energy store, which is usually a capacitor or a battery. Another component is the MGU-H (H is for heat), which captures energy from the exhaust as it goes through the turbo, and can charge the energy store. The MGU-H can also put energy into the turbo during acceleration to avoid turbo lag.

The last time F1 ran a points race on a true oval track was the 1960 Indianapolis 500, only going to street circuits and road courses since then. These tracks usually have hard braking zones, providing frequent opportunities to capture energy during braking. Even without the MGU-H, F1 cars have many opportunities to capture energy during a lap.

NASCAR runs a few races each year on road courses, and some short ovals like Martinsville and Gateway also have hard braking zones. This is a combination of high speeds on relatively long straights and much slower speeds through corners with small radii and low banking. Regenerative braking would work well at these tracks. However, most other oval tracks do not require nearly as hard of braking, limiting the opportunity to capture energy through regenerative braking. For hybrid engines to have an effect without hard braking zones, energy will need to be captured in other ways these tracks. Despite the lack of a turbo, the obvious solution would seem to be capturing energy from exhaust heat while on throttle.

upstart writes:

Reddit is removing ability to opt out of ad personalization based on your activity on the platform:

Reddit said Wednesday that the platform is revamping its privacy settings with an aim to make ad personalization and account visibility toggles consistent. Most notably though, it is removing the ability to opt out of ad personalization based on Reddit activity.

The company said that it will still have opt-out controls in "select countries" without specifying which ones. It mentioned in a blog post that users won't see more ads but they will see better-targeted ads following this change.

"Reddit requires very little personal information, and we like it that way. Our advertisers instead rely on on-platform activity—what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals—to get an idea of what you might be interested in," Reddit said.

The company is essentially removing the option to not track you based on whatever you do on Reddit.

[...] The company noted that ad-limiting controls will possibly show you fewer ads from mentioned categories if the toggles are turned off, but won't possibly filter out all ads. Reddit justified this by saying it uses manual tagging and machine learning to label ads, so there is a chance that it is not 100% accurate.

[...] The social platform has made several changes to increase monetization. It infamously made changes to its data API terms that led to many third-party clients shutting down and subreddits protesting inretaliation. Last week, it rolled out a new creator rewards program to incentivize people to post more and better content on the platform. But it also introduced a change that made it easier for users to purchase Gold rewards.

In an interview with The Verge in June, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman responded to IPO rumors and said "Getting to breakeven is a priority for us in any climate."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Microsoft CEO warns of 'nightmare' future for AI if Google's search dominance continues

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned on Monday of a "nightmare" scenario for the internet if Google's dominance in online search is allowed to continue, a situation, he said, that starts with searches on desktop and mobile but extends to the emerging battleground of artificial intelligence.

Nadella testified on Monday as part of the US government's sweeping antitrust trial against Google, now into its 14th day. He is the most senior tech executive yet to testify during the trial that focuses on the power of Google as the default search engine on mobile devices and browsers around the globe.

[...] even more worrisome, Nadella argued, is that the enormous amount of search data that is provided to Google through its default agreements can help Google train its AI models to be better than anyone else's — threatening to give Google an unassailable advantage in generative AI that would further entrench its power.

[...] In addition to training its models on search queries, Google has also been moving to secure agreements with content publishers to ensure that it has exclusive access to their material for AI training purposes, according the Microsoft CEO. In Nadella's own meetings with publishers, he said that he now hears that Google "wants ... to write this check and we want you to match it." (Google didn't immediately respond to questions about those deals.)

The requests highlight concerns that "what is publicly available today [may not be] publicly available tomorrow" for AI training, according to the testimony.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Most enterprises have gotten very mature at network and perimeter security, but are still juvenile in their understanding and workflow around open source provenance and software supply chain security. Hackers have shifted their attention towards not only the security of individual open source projects themselves, but the gaps between software artifacts: their transitive dependencies and the build systems they touch.

We need to fix this, and the way to do so is arguably not at the individual project level but rather at the level of the distribution.

“Basically open source got much more popular, and the front door got harder to break into so attackers are targeting the back door,” said Dan Lorenc, CEO and cofounder at Chainguard, in an interview. Bad actors, in other words, needn’t target your code. They can attack one of the dependencies you didn’t even know you had.

The cost of open source popularity is that a lot of the mechanisms of trust never really got built in at the onset. Linux (and other) distributions have played a critical role in the adoption of open source historically by doing a lot of the heavy lifting of packaging, building, and signing open source. Distros like Debian, Alpine, or Gentoo have well-deserved reputations as authorities, so users didn’t have to trust all open source blindly and got some guardrail guarantees.

But the pace of new open source packages being introduced has far exceeded the ability of distros to keep up. Even a single popular registry (like npm for JavaScript) gets more than 10,000 new packages per day. This basic mismatch between the pace of new open source technology and the relatively glacial speed of the distros results in developers going outside of the distros. They’re installing packages to get the latest and greatest as fast as possible but losing trust guarantees in the process.

It’s not that distributions have intentionally slowed the pace of progress; rather, they have to balance update speed with distribution stability. Still, given developer impatience, the distributions need to figure out how to accelerate updates and thereby keep better pace with the rampant adoption and security upkeep of open source software.

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and other signals, such as the OpenSSF Scorecard offer great metrics on specific vulnerabilities and their severity. But modern operating system distributions ship with so many packages preinstalled that the average OS is flush with these vulnerabilities. If your car’s check engine light were on all of the time, how would you know when you actually needed to see your mechanic? The prevalence of vulnerabilities is so great across Linux distributions they’ve become easy to ignore.

looorg writes:

https://blog.google/technology/ai/an-update-on-web-publisher-controls/ [blog.google]

Today we're announcing Google-Extended, a new control that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products. By using Google-Extended to control access to content on a site, a website administrator can choose whether to help these AI models become more accurate and capable over time.

Google-Extended

A standalone product token that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products.

User agent token Google-Extended
Full user agent string Google-Extended doesn't have a separate HTTP request user agent string. Crawling is done with existing Google user agent strings; the robots.txt user-agent token is used in a control capacity.

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

Just like you could previously modify your robots.txt file to not be included in Googles webcrawling you are now supposed to be able to opt out of being used as language model fodder for their AI. So adding those two lines should apparently do the trick. No word on if other models will adhere to it.

No word on if they will remove content already gathered, don't bet on it, or how this will be punished in the future. The current claim is that it will not effect ranking in the search engine. But that could always change.

I like how they phrase it as you "help these AI models" and by then opting out of that you are not being helpful or nice. You help and they reap all the rewards of your work, that sounds like a good deal .. right!?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Game theory study shows that being uncooperative gives weaker parties the upper hand:

In a time of income inequality and ruthless politics, people with outsized power or an unrelenting willingness to browbeat others often seem to come out ahead.

New research from Dartmouth, however, shows that being uncooperative can help people on the weaker side of a power dynamic achieve a more equal outcome—and even inflict some loss on their abusive counterpart.

[...] Published in the latest issue of PNAS Nexus, the study takes a fresh look at what are known in game theory as "zero-determinant strategies" developed by renowned scientists William Press, now at the University of Texas at Austin, and the late Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

Zero-determinant strategies dictate that "extortionists" control situations to their advantage by becoming less and less cooperative—though just cooperative enough to keep the other party engaged—and by never being the first to concede when there's a stalemate. Theoretically, they will always outperform their opponent by demanding and receiving a larger share of what's at stake.

[...] "Unbending players who choose not to be extorted can resist by refusing to fully cooperate. They also give up part of their own payoff, but the extortioner loses even more," says Chen, who is now an assistant professor at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

"Our work shows that when an extortioner is faced with an unbending player, their best response is to offer a fair split, thereby guaranteeing an equal payoff for both parties," she says. "In other words, fairness and cooperation can be cultivated and enforced by unbending players."

[...] "The empirical evidence to date suggests that people do engage in these extortionate behaviors, especially in asymmetric situations, and that the extorted party often tries to resist it, which is then costly to both parties," Hilbe says.

Journal Reference:
Xingru Chen, Feng Fu, Outlearning extortioners: unbending strategies can foster reciprocal fairness and cooperation, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 6, June 2023, pgad176, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad176

Original Submission

upstart writes:

In a feat of engineering, the X-59 travels faster than the speed of sound, while making barely any sound at all:

The Lockheed Martin X-59 is probably the strangest airplane ever designed. Its razor-sharp nose takes half of the airplane's length; there's no cockpit in sight; the wings are tiny compared to the entire fuselage; and its oversized tail engine looks like a weird hump about to fall off. Of course, there's a method to this madness. The design is the secret sauce that has produced a true unicorn: a supersonic jet that doesn't boom the hell out of people and buildings on the ground.

[...] The X-59's "quiet" supersonic boom isn't made possible by expensive magical materials or exotic engines, Richardson explains. "There is no radical technology in the airplane itself. It really is just the shape of the aircraft." And if the shape looks more like an anime alien spaceship than an actual vehicle created by human beings, that's because it was dreamed up in another dimension—by computers and humans—through special software created by the Bethesda, Maryland, company's engineers.

Many of the problems that plague supersonic flight can be traced back to the Concorde, the famous supersonic passenger jet that could travel from New York to London in a mere three and a half hours. When the Concorde first took flight in 1969, people were enthralled by the idea of super-fast air travel. It sounded like a technological marvel . . . until they heard the actual sound.

[...] The Concorde continued to fly until it was decommissioned in 2003, but most airlines couldn't justify the cost of operating the airplane if its supersonic abilities could be used only over water. "The real breakthrough for supersonic flight would be to be able to fly over land again so that you have those long routes where that supersonic flight is more advantageous," Richardson says. So that's exactly what Lockheed Martin set out to build.

mrpg writes:

Devs say a hotfix is incoming for the code, if not for the early access vibes:

When it comes to early access games, the only thing harder than code and quality assurance may be setting expectations.

Kerbal Space Program 2 was initially announced for 2020, then, after a whole bunch of development shifts, arrived in early access in February 2023—a bit too early, as suggested by player feedback. There were complaints about missing features and missing tutorials, but now there's an issue with having too much of something: Windows registry entries.

As detailed in a bug report, Kerbal Space Program 2 (KSP2) drops lots and lots of "PqsObjectState" entries into the Windows registry. The initial bug report offers a 322MB text file of them, to the point that the game started throwing "PlayerPrefsException" errors and refusing to load. The issue seems to be with how the game is using the Unity engine's PlayerPrefs game preference storing system.

[...] Discussion on Reddit, Steam, and elsewhere differs on the severity of the issue, with speculation that the developers simply set the wrong kind of variable for preferences, leading to the windfall of Registry entries. While there's heated debate about whether a stuffed registry can contribute to game performance issues or wider system problems, beyond a few hundred MB of chewed-up space, there is one broad point of agreement: It's a bad look for a game already viewed as having been offered up too early, even with a prominent Early Access label.

[...] Steam, among other platforms, continues to let customers review early access games. Kerbal Space Program is aggregated for all reviews as "Overwhelmingly Positive," while KSP2 is "Mixed" for all reviews, and "Mostly Negative" for 342 recent reviews, as of this writing. We will see whether this kind of feedback helps shape the game for its final release.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Elon Musk's X removes general option to report misleading info about politics:

X (formerly Twitter) appears to have removed an option that allowed users in a handful of markets to directly report misleading information about politics.

An Australian digital research group called Reset.Australia spotted the change and posted an open letter (via the Guardian), addressed to X's country manager, in which it writes:

A recent change to your reporting process appears to have left Australian users unable to report electoral misinformation.  This is because the categories for reporting in Australia offer no option to report electoral misinformation. Users are offered inappropriate categories such as hate speech, abuse, spam, imitation etc. Previously Australian users could select 'It's misleading' about 'Politics' category. This may leave violative content subject to an inappropriate review process and not labelled or removed in compliance with your policies.

The group warns X that the change could breach Australia's misinformation code — which it notes requires signatories to enable users to "report content or behaviours to Signatories that violate their policies... through publicly available and accessible reporting tools".

"X's Civic Integrity Policy makes clear that electoral misinformation is against your policies (see appendix 2). Users should be able to report this content appropriately," it adds. The letter also points out the timing of the change comes ahead of a major vote — dubbing it "extremely concerning that Australians would lose the ability to report serious misinformation weeks away from a major referendum".

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The WEA test will play out on consumer cellular phones that are turned on, within range of an active tower, and whose provider participates in WEA testing. The test text message will read, "THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed."

A translated version of the text message will be displayed on devices with Spanish set as their primary language and will state the following: "ESTA ES UNA PRUEBA del Sistema Nacional de Alerta de Emergencia. No se necesita acción." The message will be broadcast for approximately 30 minutes, we are told.

WEA messages are free and do not count against texting limits on metered plans. There is no way to opt out of the test, and you will apparently receive an audible alert even if your device is on silent mode.

FEMA said WEA alerts are accompanied by a unique tone and vibration as to ensure they are accessible to the entire public, including those with disabilities. They are reserved for federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments and are sent to participating wireless providers, who pass them along to devices in geo-targeted regions.

The ESA test, meanwhile, will run for approximately one minute and be conducted in cooperation with television and radio broadcasters as well as over cable systems, weather radios, and via satellite radio. The message seen on these platforms will resemble familiar monthly ESA test messages, and will be be served as a common alerting protocol (CAP) message via the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System-Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS-OPEN).

The public tests can be a minor inconvenience but are a necessary evil to ensure that emergency alert services are operating as intended in the event of a true emergency. A backup date of October 11 is also in place should widespread severe weather or other significant events occur on October 4.

[...] Download Press Release PDF Accessible TXT Tags:Preparedness IPAWS News & Media

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Nissan to go all-electric by 2030 despite petrol ban delay:

Nissan will accelerate plans towards electrification by committing that all vehicles sold in Europe will be electric by 2030.

The announcement comes despite the UK postponing its 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035.

Nissan's boss said the firm's move was "the right thing to do".

Car trade body the SMMT has voiced concerns that the postponement of the ban would see consumers delay the switch to electric vehicles.

Nissan will also introduce new battery technology by the end of the decade that it said will reduce both the charging time and cost of electric vehicles (EVs).

"Nissan will make the switch to full electric by 2030 in Europe. We believe it is the right thing to do for our business, our customers and for the planet," said Nissan's chief executive Makoto Uchida.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Uchida said the company was aiming to bring down the cost of electric vehicles for customers, so that they were no more expensive than petrol and diesel cars.

"It may take a bit of time, but we are looking at the next few years," he said.

"We are looking at it from the point of view of the technology, from the point of view of cooperating with suppliers, and of course working with the government on how we can deliver that kind of cost competitiveness to the consumer," Mr Uchida added.

Will that price parity happen by 2030? "That's what we're aiming for," confirmed Mr Uchida.

Original Submission