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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/dozens-of-google-antitrust-trial-docs-are-still-hidden-from-public-nyt-says/

Dozens of exhibits from the Google antitrust trial are still being hidden from the public, The New York Times Company alleged in a court filing today.

According to The Times, there are several issues with access to public trial exhibits on both sides. The Department of Justice has failed to post at least 68 exhibits on its website that were shared in the trial, The Times alleged, and states have not provided access to 18 records despite reporters' requests.
[...]
Currently, The Times said it is seeking to unseal redactions in two exhibits, and it remains "unclear why the exhibits have been redacted" because "they date to 2007 and relate to a version of an agreement between Apple and Google that has not been operative for more than a decade."

Perhaps most notably, The Times has also asked the court to unseal testimony from Apple exec Eddy Cue and Google vice president and general manager of ads, Jerry Dischler, in their entirety.

"The Court has upheld redactions to certain transcripts in the absence of a showing by the parties on the public record that the sealing is justified and without providing its own 'full explanation of the basis for the redactions," The Times alleged, "even though some of the redactions have been applied to material that is both of great public interest and goes to the core of the litigation."

Previously:
Microsoft CEO Warns of "Nightmare" Future for AI If Google's Search Dominance Continues

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google-verified advertiser + legit-looking URL + valid TLS cert = convincing lookalike:

Google has been caught hosting a malicious ad so convincing that there's a decent chance it has managed to trick some of the more security-savvy users who encountered it.

Looking at the ad, which masquerades as a pitch for the open-source password manager Keepass, there's no way to know that it's fake. It's on Google, after all, which claims to vet the ads it carries. Making the ruse all the more convincing, clicking on it leads to ķeepass[.]info, which when viewed in an address bar appears to be the genuine Keepass site.

A closer link at the link, however, shows that the site is not the genuine one. In fact, ķeepass[.]info —at least when it appears in the address bar—is just an encoded way of denoting xn--eepass-vbb[.]info, which it turns out, is pushing a malware family tracked as FakeBat. Combining the ad on Google with a website with an almost identical URL creates a near perfect storm of deception.

"Users are first deceived via the Google ad that looks entirely legitimate and then again via a lookalike domain," Jérôme Segura, head of threat intelligence at security provider Malwarebytes, wrote in a post Wednesday that revealed the scam.

Information available through Google's Ad Transparency Center shows that the ads have been running since Saturday and last appeared on Wednesday. The ads were paid for by an outfit called Digital Eagle, which the transparency page says is an advertiser whose identity has been verified by Google.

takyon writes:

AMD Unveils Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Family: 96 Core Zen 4 for Workstations and HEDT

Being announced today by AMD for a November 21st launch, this morning AMD is taking the wraps off of their Ryzen 7000 Threadripper CPUs. These high-end chips are being split up into two product lines, with AMD assembling the workstation-focused Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Pro series, as well as the non-pro Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series for the more consumer-ish high-end desktop (HEDT) market. Both chip lines are based on AMD's tried and true Zen 4 architecture – derivatives of AMD's EPYC server processors – incorporating AMD's Zen 4 chiplets and a discrete I/O dies. As with previous generations of Threadripper parts, we're essentially looking at the desktop version of AMD's EPYC hardware.

Threadripper 7000 Pro WX-Series = 12, 16, 24 ($2,650), 32 ($3,900), 64 ($7,350), or 96 ($10,000) Zen 4 cores, 8-channel DDR5-5200 memory support, 128 usable PCIe 5.0 lanes + 8 PCIe 4.0 + 8 (???)

Threadripper 7000 X-Series = 24 ($1,500), 32 ($2,500), or 64 ($5,000) Zen 4 cores, 4-channel DDR5-5200 memory support, 48 usable PCIe 5.0 lanes + 32 PCIe 4.0 + 8 (???)

The Threadripper Pro models will be supported on both WRX90 and TRX50 motherboards, while non-Pro HEDT models will only be supported on TRX50 motherboards.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Relationship patterns among flightless stick insects suggest that birds disperse the eggs after eating gravid females. Lab experiments previously suggested the possibility, but a new genetic analysis of natural populations in Japan by Kobe University researchers now supports the idea.

Most species of stick insects are flightless, yet they are distributed over wide distances and across geographical features that would impede the expansion of flightless animals. This has caused researchers to speculate that their eggs might be dispersed by birds feeding on gravid females, much in the same way as many plant species rely on birds eating their seeds together with fruits and dispersing them while the seeds pass through the digestive tracts of the birds unharmed.

Experimental studies with Ramulus mikado, a common stick insect in Japan, had suggested that this is possible, but since direct observation of such an event in nature is highly unlikely, it has been unclear whether this mechanism actually contributes to the distribution of the insect.

[...] Lead author Suetsugu says, "Astonishingly, amidst a sea of limited active dispersal, we discovered identical genotypes jumping across vast distances, strongly indicating the past occurrence of passive long-distance genetic dispersal." In other words, a few of the flightless insects must have flown from place to place, and the only plausible way in which this could happen is that the eggs of the insects survive the passage through the digestive tract of birds that eat them.

upstart writes:

The spread of light pollution is so fast that it offsets improvements achieved through advances in telescope technology:

Light pollution is a growing threat to astronomy, but a new streetlamp technology could restore clear views of the night sky.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) consume only about 10% of the electricity required by traditional incandescent lights and last up to 25 times longer, so it's no surprise that they have become commonplace over the past two decades.

But there is a downside to LEDs: They're much brighter than old-fashioned energy-guzzling light bulbs. When an entire city gets fitted with energy-saving LED lamps, this bright light scatters through Earth's atmosphere and makes the sky glow with greater intensity.

[...] A study published earlier this year found that stars are disappearing from the sky at an average rate of 10% per year. This trend affects even the world's most remote observatories. Germany-based startup StealthTransit recently tested a solution to this growing issue.

"Unfortunately, this problem haunts almost all observatories today," Vlad Pashkovsky, StealthTransit's founder and CEO, told Space.com in an email. "Modern telescopes are highly sensitive and feel the impact of outdoor lighting of cities located at the distance of 50 or even 200 kilometers [30 to 120 miles]. This means that virtually every observatory on Earth either already needs, or will need in the future 10 years, protection from the light of large cities."

StealthTransit's solution relies on three components: A simple device that makes LED lights flicker at a very high frequency that is imperceptible to the human eye, a GPS receiver, and a specially designed shutter on the telescope's camera that can blink in sync with the LED lights. The GPS technology guides the telescope's shutter to open only during the fleeting moments when the LED lights are switched off.

The experiments, conducted at an observatory in the Caucasus Mountains in Russia, showed that the technology, dubbed the DarkSkyProtector, could reduce unwanted sky glow in astronomical images by 94%.

[...] It might sound impractical to refit an entire town with devices that allow lamps to blink, but Pashkovsky said that most existing LED lights can operate in the blinking mode and that new lamps designed specifically with sky protection in mind would be no costlier than existing LED technology. The most expensive element of the DarkSkyProtector system is the telescope shutter, which needs to be lightweight and agile enough to blink about 150 times per second.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/actively-exploited-cisco-0-day-with-maximum-10-severity-gives-full-network-control/

Cisco is urging customers to protect their devices following the discovery of a critical, actively exploited zero-day vulnerability that's giving threat actors full administrative control of networks.

"Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows an attacker to create an account on the affected device with privilege level 15 access, effectively granting them full control of the compromised device and allowing possible subsequent unauthorized activity," members of Cisco's Talos security team wrote Monday. "This is a critical vulnerability, and we strongly recommend affected entities immediately implement the steps outlined in Cisco's PSIRT advisory."
[...]
Monday's advisory went on to say that after gaining access to a vulnerable device, the threat actor exploits a medium vulnerability, CVE-2021-1435, which Cisco patched two years ago. The Talos team members said that they have seen devices fully patched against the earlier vulnerability getting the implant installed "through an as of yet undetermined mechanism."
[...]
It should go without saying, but the HTTP and HTTPS server feature should never be enabled on Internet-facing systems as is consistent with long-established best practices. Cisco reiterated the guidance in Monday's advisory.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Amazing Flyover Reveals What Soaring Across Mars Would Look Like:

Many of us have dreamed about flying over the surface of Mars—someday. The planet offers so many cool places to study, and doing it in person is something for future Marsnauts to consider.

The Mars Express spacecraft has been mapping the Red Planet for years. It now gives us an up-close look now, through an animation of thousands of images of Mars from its cameras.

One of the most striking areas on Mars is its Noctis Labyrinthus—Latin for the "Labyrinth of Night." It lies between Mars's Valles Marineris and the gigantic volcanoes of the Tharsis Bulge.

This shattered terrain is a system of valleys that stretch out across nearly 1,200 kilometers. Scientists combined ESA's Mars Express images into an amazing flyover of this terrain, giving us a tasty hint of what future explorers will see.

[...] It's cool to think of Mars Express focusing a high-resolution movie camera on the surface. However, this movie comprises many individual images. The views come from more than eight Mars Express orbits.

In addition to images, the team combined images with topographic information from a digital terrain model. That helped the visualization team generate a three-dimensional landscape, with every second of the video comprising 50 separate frames rendered according to a pre-defined camera path.

In addition to showing the ancient history of Mars terrain, the video also shows some Mars Express history. The opening credits (Mars globe, first 24 seconds) were created using the recent 20-year Mars global color mosaic.

Haze has been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. It starts building up at a distance of between 150 and 200 km. The video is centered at the Martian coordinates of 7°S, 265°E.

A four-minute video of the flyby.

Original Submission

owl writes:

http://www.righto.com/2023/10/intel-386-die-versions.html

You might think of the Intel 386 processor (1985) as just an early processor in the x86 line, but the 386 was a critical turning point for modern computing in several ways.1 First, the 386 moved the x86 architecture to 32 bits, defining the dominant computing architecture for the rest of the 20th century. The 386 also established the overwhelming importance of x86, not just for Intel, but for the entire computer industry. Finally, the 386 ended IBM's control over the PC market, turning Compaq into the architectural leader.

[...] The 80386 was a major advancement over the 286: it implemented a 32-bit architecture, added more instructions, and supported 4-gigabyte segments. The 386 is a complicated processor (by 1980s standards), with 285,000 transistors, ten times the number of the original 8086.4 The 386 has eight logical units that are pipelined5 and operate mostly autonomously.

[...] The design process of the 386 is interesting because it illustrates Intel's migration to automated design systems and heavier use of simulation.23 At the time, Intel was behind the industry in its use of tools so the leaders of the 386 realized that more automation would be necessary to build a complex chip like the 386 on schedule. By making a large investment in automated tools, the 386 team completed the design ahead of schedule. Along with proprietary CAD tools, the team made heavy use of standard Unix tools such as sed, awk, grep, and make to manage the various design databases.

[...] Once the processor was released, the problems weren't over.25 Some early 386 processors had a 32-bit multiply problem, where some arguments would unpredictably produce the wrong results under particular temperature/voltage/frequency conditions. (This is unrelated to the famous Pentium FDIV bug that cost Intel $475 million.) The root cause was a layout problem, not a logic problem; they didn't allow enough margin to handle the worst case data in combination with manufacturing process and environment factors. This tricky problem didn't show up in simulation or chip verification, but was only found in stress testing.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Signatures of the Space Age: Spacecraft metals left in the wake of humanity's path to the stars:

The Space Age is leaving fingerprints on one of the most remote parts of the planet—the stratosphere—which has potential implications for climate, the ozone layer and the continued habitability of Earth.

Using tools hitched to the nose cone of their research planes and sampling more than 11 miles above the planet's surface, researchers have discovered significant amounts of metals in aerosols in the atmosphere, likely from increasingly frequent launches and returns of spacecraft and satellites. That mass of metal is changing atmospheric chemistry in ways that may impact Earth's atmosphere and ozone layer.

"We are finding this human-made material in what we consider a pristine area of the atmosphere," said Dan Cziczo, one of a team of scientists who published a study on these results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "And if something is changing in the stratosphere—this stable region of the atmosphere—that deserves a closer look."

Cziczo, professor and head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences in Purdue's College of Science, is an expert in atmospheric science who has spent decades studying this rarefied region.

Led by Dan Murphy, an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the team detected more than 20 elements in ratios that mirror those used in spacecraft alloys.

They found that the mass of lithium, aluminum, copper and lead from spacecraft reentry far exceeded those metals found in natural cosmic dust. Nearly 10% of large sulfuric acid particles—the particles that help protect and buffer the ozone layer—contained aluminum and other spacecraft metals.

Scientists estimate that as many as 50,000 more satellites may reach orbit by 2030. The team calculates that means that, in the next few decades, up to half of stratospheric sulfuric acid particles would contain metals from reentry. What effect that could have on the atmosphere, the ozone layer and life on Earth is yet to be understood.

More information: Murphy, Daniel M. et al, Metals from spacecraft reentry in stratospheric aerosol particles, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2313374120. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2313374120

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Johns Hopkins philosophers and psychologists used auditory illusions to solve an ancient puzzle: whether people can hear more than sounds:

Silence might not be deafening, but it's something that literally can be heard, concludes a team of philosophers and psychologists who used auditory illusions to reveal how moments of silence distort people's perception of time.

The findings address the debate of whether people can hear more than sounds, which has puzzled philosophers for centuries.

"We typically think of our sense of hearing as being concerned with sounds. But silence, whatever it is, is not a sound—it's the absence of sound," said lead author Rui Zhe Goh, a Johns Hopkins University graduate student in philosophy and psychology. "Surprisingly, what our work suggests is that nothing is also something you can hear."

The team adapted well-known auditory illusions to create versions in which the sounds of the original illusions were replaced by moments of silence. For example, one illusion made a sound seem much longer than it really was. In the team's new silence-based illusion, an equivalent moment of silence also seemed longer than it really was.

The fact that these silence-based illusions produced exactly the same results as their sound-based counterparts suggests that people hear silence just as they hear sounds, the researchers said.

[...] "There's at least one thing that we hear that isn't a sound, and that's the silence that happens when sounds go away," said co-author Ian Phillips, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Psychological and Brain Sciences. "The kinds of illusions and effects that look like they are unique to the auditory processing of a sound, we also get them with silences, suggesting we really do hear absences of sound too."

The findings establish a new way to study the perception of absence, the team said.

Includes a two-minute video with a brief explanation and demonstration for your ears.

Journal Reference:
Rui Zhe Goh, Ian B. Phillips, and Chaz Firestone, The perception of silence, PNAS, July 10, 2023, 120 (29) e2301463120 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301463120

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption:

A prominent cryptography expert has told New Scientist that a US spy agency could be weakening a new generation of algorithms designed to protect against hackers equipped with quantum computers.

Daniel Bernstein at the University of Illinois Chicago says that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is deliberately obscuring the level of involvement the US National Security Agency (NSA) has in developing new encryption standards for "post-quantum cryptography" (PQC). He also believes that NIST has made errors – either accidental or deliberate – in calculations describing the security of the new standards. NIST denies the claims.

"NIST isn't following procedures designed to stop NSA from weakening PQC," says Bernstein. "People choosing cryptographic standards should be transparently and verifiably following clear public rules so that we don't need to worry about their motivations. NIST promised transparency and then claimed it had shown all its work, but that claim simply isn't true."

[...] Although it is unclear when such computers will emerge, NIST has been running a project since 2012 to standardise a new generation of algorithms that resist their attacks. Bernstein, who coined the term post-quantum cryptography in 2003 to refer to these kinds of algorithms, says the NSA is actively engaged in putting secret weaknesses into new encryption standards that will allow them to be more easily cracked with the right knowledge. NIST's standards are used globally, so flaws could have a large impact.

Bernstein alleges that NIST's calculations for one of the upcoming PQC standards, Kyber512, are "glaringly wrong", making it appear more secure than it really is. He says that NIST multiplied two numbers together when it would have been more correct to add them, resulting in an artificially high assessment of Kyber512's robustness to attack.

"We disagree with his analysis," says Dustin Moody at NIST. "It's a question for which there isn't scientific certainty and intelligent people can have different views. We respect Dan's opinion, but don't agree with what he says."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/canadas-84-year-radio-time-check-has-stopped-because-of-accuracy-concerns/

"The beginning of the long dash indicates exactly 1 o'clock Eastern daylight time."

Millions of Canadians grew accustomed to hearing a version of this daily affirmation on CBC Radio One. The National Research Council Time Signal, and the series of 800 Hz "pips" that preceded and followed the time-setting dash, worked its way into everyday rituals. Human listeners, and automated radio receivers at railways, shipping firms, and other entities, could set their mechanical clocks to it. That is why it started broadcasting on November 5, 1939, the same year as Canada's entry into World War II.

The long dash's last broadcast was, somewhat unexpectedly, October 9, 2023.

Both the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the NRC have cited accuracy as the reason the 84-year ritual was halted. The CBC told its own reporters that because the CBC is now heard over satellite and Internet connections, not just terrestrial radio, there are delays when people hear it. A spokesperson acknowledged Canadians' "fondness" for the daily ritual but said it "can no longer ensure that the time announcement can be accurate."

Original Submission

Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Today, Wednesday, October 18th, 2023 at 21:00 UTC (5pm Eastern) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when complete.

The agenda for the upcoming meeting will also be published when available. Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information are to be found on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/Governance

The community is welcome to observe and participate--you are hereby invited to the meeting.

hubie writes:

Psychologist Steven Jay Lann and colleagues debunk common myths about hypnosis:

A strange mystic swings a pocket watch back and forth, repeating the phrase "You're getting sleepy, very sleepy," giving them absolute command over their subject. That's not how hypnotism really works, but it's the way it's often depicted in pop culture. Even some clinicians and hypnosis educators propagate harmful myths about hypnosis.

Steven Jay Lynn, a professor of psychology at Binghamton University, State University of New York, is an expert on hypnosis who has made major contributions to the judicial system for his insight on the practice. Lynn believes that hypnosis has many useful clinical applications, but that myths keep it from being utilized to its full potential.

[...] These are a few of the common myths that are widely believed and commonly circulated in popular culture.

Hypnotized people can't resist suggestions

A hypnotized person is believed to display "blind obedience," going along automatically with whatever the hypnotist suggests. [...]

Hypnosis is a "special state"

Hypnosis is often mischaracterized as a "special state" in which defense mechanisms are reduced and a "unique state of physical relaxation and conscious unconsciousness" allows us to enter our subconscious depths through hypnosis. [...]

People are either hypnotizable or they are not

Responsiveness to hypnosis can be relatively stable over time. Yet it is inaccurate to assume that people are either hypnotizable or not. [...]

Responsiveness to suggestions reflects nothing more than compliance or faking

Suggested behaviors during hypnosis can seem so much a departure from the mundane that questions inevitably arise regarding whether hypnotic responses are genuine. However, neuroimaging studies reveal that the effects of hypnotic suggestions activate brain regions (e.g, visual processing) consistent with suggested events (e.g., hallucinating an object). [...]

Hypnotic methods require great skill to administer

One popular misconception is that of the mesmerist, or a magician-like hypnotist with special powers of influence who can "hypnotize" anyone. [...]

Hypnotic age regression can retrieve accurate memories from the distant past

TV shows and movies often feature people being able to recall extremely accurate memories from a distant past life under hypnosis. But research suggests a contrary view.

Journal Reference:
Stein, M., Lynn, S., & Terhune, D. (2023). Reconciling myths and misconceptions about hypnosis with scientific evidence. BJPsych Advances, 1-2. doi:10.1192/bja.2023.30

Original Submission

Both Freeman and upstart wrote in with:

After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff:

Stack Overflow used to be every developer's favorite site for coding help, but with the rise of generative AI like ChatGPT, chatbots can offer more specific help than a 5-year-old forum post ever could.

[...] You might think of Stack Overflow as "just a forum," but the company is working on a direct answer to ChatGPT in the form of "Overflow AI," which was announced in July. Stack Overflow's profitability plan includes cutting costs, and that's the justification for the layoffs. Stack Overflow doubled its headcount in 2022 with 525 people. ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022, making for unfortunate timing.

[... ] OpenAI is working on web crawler controls for ChatGPT, which would let sites like Stack Overflow opt out of crawling. [...] Chandrasekar has argued that sites like Stack Overflow are essential for chatbots, saying they need "to be trained on something that's progressing knowledge forward. They need new knowledge to be created."

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2