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hubie writes:

Why Computer Security Advice Is More Confusing Than It Should Be:

If you find the computer security guidelines you get at work confusing and not very useful, you're not alone. A new study highlights a key problem with how these guidelines are created, and outlines simple steps that would improve them – and probably make your computer safer.

At issue are the computer security guidelines that organizations like businesses and government agencies provide their employees. These guidelines are generally designed to help employees protect personal and employer data and minimize risks associated with threats such as malware and phishing scams.

[...] "The key takeaway here is that the people writing these guidelines try to give as much information as possible," Reaves says. "That's great, in theory. But the writers don't prioritize the advice that's most important. Or, more specifically, they don't deprioritize the points that are significantly less important. And because there is so much security advice to include, the guidelines can be overwhelming – and the most important points get lost in the shuffle."

The researchers found that one reason security guidelines can be so overwhelming is that guideline writers tend to incorporate every possible item from a wide variety of authoritative sources.

"In other words, the guideline writers are compiling security information, rather than curating security information for their readers," Reaves says.

Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Today, Wednesday, November 1st, 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. This will be 5pm eastern time depending on your daylight saving time status.

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, and so is invited to the meeting.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/relish-the-halloween-horror-of-this-purple-fungus-that-mummifies-spiders/

It's Halloween, that time of year when we seek out scary things like vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mummies, and all kinds of similar fictional monsters. But Mother Nature has her own horrors—like the strange species of parasitic purple fungus discovered earlier this year in a Brazilian rainforest that infects trapdoor spiders and gradually "mummifies" its hosts.

There are lots of horrifying parasitic examples in nature, such as the lancet liver fluke, whose complicated life cycle relies on successfully invading successive hosts—snails, ants, and grazing mammals—and altering their hosts' behavior via a temperature-dependent "on/off" switch.
[...]
But fungi are arguably the champions for viscerally gruesome parasitic behavior. According to João Araújo, assistant curator of mycology at the New York Botanical Garden, the newly discovered fungus belongs to the Cordyceps family of "zombifying" parasitic fungi. There are more than 400 different species, each targeting a particular type of insect, whether it be ants, dragonflies, cockroaches, aphids, or beetles. In fact, Cordyceps famously inspired the premise of The Last of Us game and subsequent TV series.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Facebook and Instagram are launching subscriptions in most of Europe that will remove adverts from the platforms:

People using the Meta-owned platforms will be able to pay €9.99 (£8.72) per month for an ad-free experience. It will not be available in the UK.

In January, Meta was fined €390m for breaking EU data rules around ads.

The regulator said at the time the firm could not "force consent" by saying consumers must accept how their data is used or leave the platforms.

The subscription tier will be exclusive to people in the EU, European Economic Area and Switzerland from November.

But it will only be accessible for people aged over 18 at first, with the firm looking into how it can serve ads to young people in the EU without breaking the rules.

Meta said its new subscription was about addressing EU concerns, rather than making money.

[...] "We respect the spirit and purpose of these evolving European regulations, and are committed to complying with them."

Users will be given the choice either to continue using the platforms for free - and have their data collected - or to pay and completely opt out of targeted ads by removing them.

[...] The announcement comes after Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, introduced an ad-free Premium+ service priced at £16 per month.

[...] TikTok has also been testing a monthly subscription to remove ads - priced at $4.99 - but there is no indication yet that this will be rolled out globally.

Also at WSJ, The Hacker News

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/sam-bankman-fried-begins-testifying-in-risky-bid-to-beat-ftx-fraud-charges/

Sam Bankman-Fried took the stand in his criminal trial today in an attempt to avoid decades in prison for alleged fraud at cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its affiliate, Alameda Research.

Providing testimony has been called a risky move for Bankman-Fried by many legal observers. After answering questions posted by his own lawyers, Bankman-Fried will have to face cross-examination from federal prosecutors. But after three weeks in which US government attorneys laid out their case, including testimony from former FTX and Alameda executives, Bankman-Fried's legal team announced yesterday that he would take the stand.

Today's testimony was unusual because US District Judge Lewis Kaplan sent the jury home for the day to conduct a hearing on whether certain parts of his testimony are admissible. "That means Bankman-Fried will give some of his testimony to the judge without the jury present. The judge will then decide whether Bankman-Fried is allowed to say the same testimony in front of a jury," The Wall Street Journal wrote in its live coverage. The trial is not being streamed via audio or video.
[...]
"Bankman-Fried said he believed that under FTX's terms of service, sister firm Alameda was allowed in many circumstances to borrow funds from the exchange," the WSJ wrote. Bankman-Fried reportedly said the terms of service were written by FTX lawyers and that he only "skimmed" certain parts.

"I read parts in depth. Parts I skimmed over," Bankman-Fried reportedly said after Kaplan asked if he read the entire terms of service document.

Sassoon asked Bankman-Fried if he had "any conversations with lawyers about Alameda spending customer money that was deposited into FTX bank accounts," according to Bloomberg's live coverage. "I don't recall any conversations that were contemporaneous and phrased that way," Bankman-Fried answered.
[...]
One decision for Kaplan is whether Bankman-Fried will be allowed to blame FTX lawyers when the jury is back in the courtroom. As we previously wrote, this is called an "advice-of-counsel defense" in which SBF could argue that he sought advice from company lawyers, received advice that his conduct was legal, and "relied on that advice in good faith."

Before the trial began, Kaplan issued an order that prohibited Bankman-Fried from using the advice-of-counsel defense in opening statements. But Kaplan left the door open for SBF to use the advice-of-counsel defense "on a case-by-case basis" as the trial continues.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Is your smart home spying on you?

International researchers are issuing a dire warning of security and privacy concerns lurking within smart homes. Led by IMDEA Networks and Northeastern University, scientists were able to demonstrate a variety of security and privacy threats due to the local network interactions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and mobile apps.

As smart homes continue to evolve, they encompass a wide array of consumer-focused IoT devices, including smartphones, smart TVs, virtual assistants, and CCTV cameras. These devices come equipped with cameras, microphones, and various sensors that can perceive activities within our most intimate spaces – our homes. However, can we truly trust these devices to handle and safeguard the sensitive data they collect?

[...] For the study, researchers delved into the intricacies of local network interactions among 93 IoT devices and mobile apps and were able to unveil numerous previously undisclosed security and privacy concerns with real-world implications.

Contrary to the common perception that local networks are secure environments, the study highlights new threats linked to the inadvertent exposure of sensitive data by IoT devices within local networks using standard protocols like UPnP or mDNS. These threats include the revelation of unique device names, UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers), and even the geographic location of households. These can be exploited by companies involved in surveillance capitalism without the users' knowledge.

"Analyzing the data collected by IoT Inspector, we found evidence of IoT devices inadvertently exposing at least one PII (Personally Identifiable Information), like unique hardware address (MAC), UUID, or unique device names, in thousands of real world smart homes," explains study co-author Vijay Prakash, PhD student from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. "Any single PII is useful for identifying a household, but combining all three of them together makes a house very unique and easily identifiable. For comparison, if a person is fingerprinted using the simplest browser fingerprinting technique, they are as unique as one in 1,500 people. If a smart home with all three types of identifiers is fingerprinted, it is as unique as one in 1.12 million smart homes."

Anyone remember these tongue-in-cheek predictions made 75 years ago?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Scientists have devised a new technique for finding and vetting possible radio signals from other civilizations in our galaxy:

Most of todays SETI searches are conducted by Earth-based radio telescopes, which means that any ground or satellite radio interference ranging from Starlink satellites to cellphones, microwaves and even car engines can produce a radio blip that mimics a technosignature of a civilization outside our solar system. Such false alarms have raised and then dashed hopes since the first dedicated SETI program began in 1960.

Currently, researchers vet these signals by pointing the telescope in a different place in the sky, then return a few times to the spot where the signal was originally detected to confirm it wasn't a one-off. Even then, the signal could be something weird produced on Earth.

The new technique, developed by researchers at the Breakthrough Listen project at the University of California, Berkeley, checks for evidence that the signal has actually passed through interstellar space, eliminating the possibility that the signal is mere radio interference from Earth.

canopic jug writes:

Google has rolled out plans to drop the Ogg Theora video codec from its Chrome web browser starting M123. The removal of that open standard for video will trickle down through Chromium and its derivatives.

Chrome will deprecate and remove support for the Theora video codec in desktop Chrome due to emerging security risks. Theora's low (and now often incorrect) usage no longer justifies support for most users.

Notes:
- Zero day attacks against media codecs have spiked.
- Usage has fallen below measurable levels in UKM.
- The sites we manually inspected before levels dropped off were incorrectly preferring Theora over more modern codecs like VP9.
- It's never been supported by Safari or Chrome on Android.
- An ogv.js polyfill exists for the sites that still need Theora support.
- We are not removing support for ogg containers.

Our plan is to begin escalating experiments turning down Theora support in M120. During this time users can reactivate Theora support via chrome://flags/#theora-video-codec if needed.

The tentative timeline for this is (assuming everything goes smoothly):
- ~Oct 23, 2023: begin 50/50 canary dev experiments.
- ~Nov 1-6, 2023: begin 50/50 beta experiments.
- ~Dec 6, 2023: begin 1% stable experiments.
- ~Jan 8, 2024: begin 50% stable experiments.
- ~Jan 16th, 2024: launch at 100%.
- ~Feb 2024: remove code and chrome://flag in M123.
- ~Mar 2024: Chrome 123 will roll to stable.

Google is going with unstable and insecure WebP. In contrast, Ogg Theora is both patent-free and mature. The last CVE for Theora was in 2011. Any word as to which patents affect WebP?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

'This significantly increases the chances of finding environments where life could, in theory, develop.'

The chances of finding alien life may have just gotten a significant boost.

A new analysis of exoplanets suggests that there is a much greater chance than previously thought of these worlds hosting liquid water, an essential ingredient for life on Earth.

The universe could therefore be filled with more habitable planets than scientists had previously believed, with a greater chance of these worlds possessing environments in which alien life could develop, even if they have icy outer shells.

"We know that the presence of liquid water is essential for life. Our work shows that this water can be found in places we had not much considered," research leader and Rutgers University scientist Lujendra Ojha said in a statement. "This significantly increases the chances of finding environments where life could, in theory, develop."

[...] "Before we started to consider this subsurface water, it was estimated that around one rocky planet [in] every 100 stars would have liquid water," Ojha explained. "The new model shows that, if the conditions are right, this could approach one planet per star. So we are 100 times more likely to find liquid water than we thought."

Because there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, "that represents really good odds for the origin of life elsewhere in the universe," he added.

How icy worlds could hold on to liquid water

The researchers investigated planets found around the most common type of stars in our galaxy, red dwarfs, which are smaller and cooler than the sun. Not only do red dwarfs, also known as M-dwarfs, make up about 70% of the stars in the Milky Way, but they are also the stars around which the majority of Earth-like rocky worlds have been found.

[...] Not only has this effect made Europa and Enceladus prime candidates for finding life elsewhere in the solar system, but it has implications for life-maintaining environments on worlds orbiting other stars.

NASA will soon explore at least one ice world, albeit within the bounds of the solar system: Its Europa Clipper probe is scheduled to launch toward the Jovian system in 2024 and arrive six years later.

[...] "The prospect of oceans hidden under ice sheets expands our galaxy's potential for more habitable worlds," Méndez said. "The major challenge is to devise ways to detect these habitats by future telescopes."

Journal Reference:
Ojha, L., Troncone, B., Buffo, J. et al. Liquid water on cold exo-Earths via basal melting of ice sheets. Nat Commun 13, 7521 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35187-4

Original Submission

upstart writes:

I'm banned for life from advertising on Meta because I teach Python:

I'm a full-time instructor in Python and Pandas, teaching in-person courses at companies around the world (e.g., Apple and Cisco) and with a growing host of online products, including video courses and a paid newsletter with weekly Pandas exercises. Like many online entrepreneurs, I've experimented with a host of different products over the years, some free and some paid. And like many other online entrepreneurs, I've had some hit products and some real duds.

A number of years ago, I decided to advertise some of my products on Facebook. I ran a bunch of ads, none of which were particularly successful, mostly because I didn't put a lot of effort into them. I decided to try other things, and basically forgot about my advertising account.

It was only a year or so ago that I thought that maybe, just maybe, I should do some advertising on Facebook (now Meta). I went to my advertising page, and was a bit surprised to see that my account had been suspended for violating Meta's advertising rules. I decided that this was weird, but didn't think about it too much more, and went on to do other, more productive things.

Just a few months ago, I again visited my ad management page, and again saw the notice that I was not allowed to advertise because I had violated their rules. This time, for whatever reason, I decided that I was going to look into this further. [...] I got e-mail from Meta saying that they had reviewed my case, I had definitely violated their policy, and now I was banned for life from ever advertising on a Meta platform.

All of this seemed utterly bizarre to me. What could I possibly have said or done that would get me permanently restricted? And is there any way that I can get out of this situation?

[...] The good news? I got an answer right away from a friend on LinkedIn. He told me that he also had problems advertising his Python training courses on Meta platforms because — get this — Meta thought that he was dealing in live animals, which is forbidden.

hubie writes:

Tiny fish called Trinidadian guppies have surprised scientists when faced with the so-called "volunteer's dilemma":

Tiny fish called Trinidadian guppies have surprised scientists when faced with the so-called "volunteer's dilemma".

The idea of the dilemma is that individuals are less likely to cooperate if they are in a large group.

Various studies have demonstrated this in humans – but guppies appear to buck the trend.

"When faced with a possible predator, guppies have to balance risks," said Rebecca Padget, from Exeter's Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour.

"At least one guppy needs to approach, to find out if there is a threat.

"An individual that does this could get eaten. However, if none of the guppies take this risk, the whole group is in danger.

"In this 'volunteer's dilemma', mathematical models suggest that individuals in larger groups should be less willing to cooperate.

"In a larger group, there's more chance another guppy will take the risk."

To test this, the researchers placed a clay model of a pike cichlid (a natural predator of guppies) in a tank containing small (5), medium (10) and large (20) groups of guppies.

[...] "We can't be sure why guppies in large groups cooperated more," Padget said.

"We know guppies have different personalities, so it could be that larger groups are more likely to contain more cooperative individuals – and others then follow their lead."

Journal Reference:
Padget Rebecca F. B., Fawcett Tim W. and Darden Safi K. 2023 Guppies in large groups cooperate more frequently in an experimental test of the group size paradox, Proc. R. Soc. B 290: 20230790 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0790

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Everybody’s coming for Google, but Google is doing just fine, according to parent company Alphabet’s third quarter earnings on Tuesday.

While Google has been dealing with fierce competition on all sides and is investing a lot into infusing AI into as many products as it can, its ads business, the company’s bread and butter, is still humming along. The Search business earned $44 billion, an 11 percent jump year over year. 

The big question coming up is how Google’s focus on AI will impact that core business. Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience [SGE] is still only available on an opt-in basis, so we don’t yet know how much it’ll impact the company’s ad business.

Google is already moving to head off that problem. On Google’s earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company would be experimenting with new formats native to the way SGE works — the company has already shown off some ideas — so perhaps we’ll start to see some of those formats debut in the coming weeks and months. Later in the call, chief business officer Philipp Schindler added that “it’s extremely important to us that in this new experience, advertisers still have the opportunity to reach potential customers along their search journeys.”

As the company rolls out SGE, “we are making sure the product works well, and we’re generating value for our ecosystem and that ads transition well,” Pichai said.

Infusing AI in search is a long-term play for Google. Pichai said he sees an opportunity to “evolve search and Assistant over the next decade ahead.” Last quarter, he declared that over time, SGE will “just be how search works,” and given the comments about ads on Tuesday’s call, it seems the company is starting to think seriously about how to make its AI-powered search into more of a business.

[...] There’s also a shadow over Google due to the Department of Justice’s huge antitrust trial against the company, which kicked off in September.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

UCalgary-led study, published in the medical journal Pediatrics, can reduce parental fears:

The angst parents feel when their children sustain injuries is surely one of the universal conditions of parenthood. That anxiety is heightened greatly when those injuries involve concussions. But a new study led out of the University of Calgary, published July 17 in the medical journal Pediatrics, may set worried parental minds slightly at ease.

The findings — taken from emergency room visits in children's hospitals in Canada and the United States — show that IQ and intelligence is not affected in a clinically meaningful way by paediatric concussions.

[...] "Obviously there's been a lot of concern about the effects of concussion on children, and one of the biggest questions has been whether or not it affects a child's overall intellectual functioning," says Dr. Keith Yeates, PhD, a professor in UCalgary's Department of Psychology and senior author of the Pediatrics paper. Yeates is a renowned expert on the outcomes of childhood brain disorders, including concussion and traumatic brain injuries.

"The data on this has been mixed and opinions have varied within the medical community," says Yeates. "It's hard to collect big enough samples to confirm a negative finding. The absence of a difference in IQ after concussion is harder to prove than the presence of a difference."

[...] "Understandably, there's been a lot of fear among parents when dealing with their children's concussions," Ware says. "These new findings provide really good news, and we need to get the message to parents."

upstart writes:

First module of new space station to be launched in 2027:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a project to build an Orbital Station following a meeting regarding the development of the country's space industry. Moscow mouthpiece TASS reported the move, and lurking within the grandstanding about space station ambitions was an admission of how much Russia's human spaceflight program still depends on the International Space Station (ISS).

Roscosmos boss Yuri Borisov said the funds have been allocated and the green light given to start work on the project. This is convenient because the prospects for Russian human spaceflight will start to look bleak once the ISS hurtles back to Earth around 2030. According to TASS, Borisov said that ensuring the continuity of Russia's program was a "pressing task" and he added that there was a genuine risk of a situation where "the ISS is no longer there, and the Russian station is not yet there."

Considering the lengthy delays associated with space programs, the timelines are ambitious. The first component – the scientific and energy module – is supposedly planned for late 2027 and will be followed by others between 2028 and 2030.

The plan calls for the first crew to be launched six months after the first module launch.

[...] According to the timelines reported by TASS, Russia intends to construct, test, and launch the first element of its space station in four years. Hopefully, with a puncture repair kit on board.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers at Stockholm University have unveiled the hidden intricacies of how sperm go from passive bystanders to dynamic swimmers. This transformation is a pivotal step in the journey to fertilization, and it hinges on the activation of a unique ion transporter. Their research has been published in Nature.

Imagine sperm as tiny adventurers on a quest to reach the ultimate treasure, the egg. They don't have a map, but they make use of something even more extraordinary: chemo-attractants. These are chemical signals released by the egg that act as siren call, directing and activating the sperm. When these signals bind to receptors on the sperm's surface, it triggers a series of events, starting their movement towards the egg. And in this intricate scenario, one key player is a protein known as "SLC9C1."

It's exclusively found in sperm cells, and it is usually not active. However, when the chemo-attractants interact with the sperm's surface, everything changes.

[...] The activation of SLC9C1 is driven by a change in voltage that occurs when chemo-attractants attach to the sperm. To accomplish this, SLC9C1 uses a unique feature called a voltage-sensing domain (VSD). Typically, VSD domains are associated with voltage-gated ion channels. But in the case of SLC9C1, it's something truly exceptional in the realm of transporters.

Researchers, led by David Drew, have unveiled the secrets behind SLC9C1's inner workings and provides the first example of voltage-sensing domain activation of a transporter and its connection via an unusually long voltage-sensing (S4) helix.

[...] "Transporters work very differently than channels and, as such, the VSD is coupled to the sperm protein in a way that we have just never seen before, or even imagined. Its exciting to see how nature has done this and perhaps, in the future, we can learn from this to make synthetic proteins that can be turned-on by voltage or develop novel male contraceptives that work by blocking this protein," David Drew notes.

Journal Reference:
Yeo, H., Mehta, V., Gulati, A. et al. Structure and electromechanical coupling of a voltage-gated Na+/H+ exchanger. Nature (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06518-2

Original Submission