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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

If you’ve ever embarrassed yourself by publicly sharing a part of your screen you weren’t supposed to, spare a thought for Mohammad Moniruzzaman, who’s alleged to have shown off the source code he stole from a former employer during a Microsoft Teams call with that same company. The incident has come to light in a lawsuit filed by Moniruzzaman’s old employer, automotive technology company Valeo, which is suing Nvidia — the company Moniruzzaman moved on to — and accusing it of having benefited from these stolen trade secrets.

Nvidia has spent the better part of a decade attempting to branch out into the automotive market. Valeo is alleging that Moniruzzaman “downloaded without authorization the entirety of Valeo’s advanced parking and driving assistance systems source code” in early 2021, along with “scores of Valeo Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, and Excel spreadsheets explaining various aspects of the technology” before leaving to join Nvidia in August that year. 

This alleged theft came to light in March the following year, when employees from both Nvidia and Valeo were on a call together working on a joint parking assistance project for an unnamed automotive parts maker. Nvidia had won the contract to develop software on the project, while Valeo was providing ultrasonic sensor hardware. The lawsuit claims: 

“On March 8, 2022, one of these videoconference meetings was scheduled. Mr. Moniruzzaman, now employed by Nvidia, attended the videoconference call… and shared his computer screen during the call. When he minimized the PowerPoint presentation he had been sharing, however, he revealed one of Valeo’s verbatim source code files open on his computer. So brazen was Mr. Moniruzzaman’s theft, the file path on his screen still read “ValeoDocs.” Valeo participants on the videoconference call immediately recognized the source code and took a screenshot before Mr. Moniruzzaman was alerted of his error. By then it was too late to cover his tracks.”

The lawsuit goes on to state that German police “discovered Valeo documentation and hardware pinned on the walls of Mr. Moniruzzaman’s home office” when they raided his home as part of a criminal investigation, and that Valeo’s software and documents were found on his Nvidia computer when it was seized by investigators. Moniruzzaman admitted to stealing Valeo’s software when questioned by German police, according to the lawsuit.

[...] As a result, Valeo is seeking damages and an injunction to stop Nvidia and its employees from using or sharing its trade secrets.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Almost a week has passed since the OpenAI board fired CEO Sam Altman without explaining its actions. By Tuesday, the board reinstated Altman and appointed a new board to oversee the OpenAI operations. An investigation into what happened was also promised, something I believe all ChatGPT users deserve. We’re talking about a company developing an incredibly exciting resource, AI. But also one that could eradicate humanity. Or so some people fear.

Theories were running rampant in the short period between Altman’s ouster and return, with some speculating that OpenAI has developed an incredibly strong GPT-5 model. Or that OpenAI had reached AGI, artificial general intelligence that could operate just as good as humans. That the board was simply doing its job, protecting the world against the irresponsible development of AI.

It turns out the guesses and memes weren’t too far off. We’re not on the verge of dealing with dangerous AI, but a new report says that OpenAI delivered a massive breakthrough in the days preceding Altman’s firing.

The new algorithm (Q* or Q-Star) could threaten humanity, according to a letter unnamed OpenAI researchers sent to the board. The letter and the Q-Star algorithm might have been key developments that led to the firing of Altman.

Reuters, which has not seen the letter, the document was one factor. There’s apparently a longer list of grievances that convinced the board to fire Altman. The board worried about the company’s fast pace of commercializing ChatGPT advances before understanding the consequences.

OpenAI declined to comment to Reuters, but the company acknowledged project Q-Star in a message to staffers and the letter to the board. Mira Murati, who was the first interim CEO the board appointment after letting Altman go, apparently alerted the staff on the Q-Star news that was about to break.

It’s too early to tell whether Q-Star is AGI, and OpenAI was busy with the CEO drama rather than making public announcements. And the company might not want to announce such innovation anytime soon, especially if caution is needed.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA has celebrated a shipment of half a kilo of plutonium oxide by the US Department of Energy, the largest since US production of plutonium-238 was restarted just over a decade ago.

Plutonium-238 (Pu-238) is essential for NASA missions using Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS). RPS makes use of the natural decay of Pu-238 to provide heat and electricity through systems such as the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG). As such, it's essential for missions where solar power is not an option.

NASA's recent Mars rovers use the fuel, and Perseverance uses an MMRTG to provide the robot with continuous heat and approximately 110 watts of electricity. Other missions, such as Cassini, also used the isotope, and Pu-238 power has kept the Voyager probes running decades after the launch.

However, supplies have been limited. Pu-238 is a byproduct of the process used to make nuclear weapons. As the need for new nuclear weapons has ebbed over the years, stockpiles of the fuel have dwindled. In 2015, Popular Science estimated that approximately 35 kg remained available to NASA, and of that, only 17 kg was good enough to use.

Hence the need to restart production. In 2010, the US Department of Energy submitted a report [PDF] to Congress with the goal of achieving an average production rate of 1.5 kg per year by 2015. According to NASA, that target won't be hit until at least 2026.

[...] RTGs are the only option for deep space missions as far as NASA is concerned. Two technologies that could have made more efficient use of Pu-238 – the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG) and the Enhanced Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (eMMRTG) – were axed by the agency due to technical, schedule, and cost issues.

NASA is having another crack with its Next Generation RTGs, which it claims will produce more than twice the power of an MMRTG with a significantly lower power degradation over time.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

It may be dated but contains many years of pranks!

Hackers' delight: A history of MIT pranks and hacks:

• MIT's legacy as one of the world's most prestigious technical universities has a curious byproduct — a history of clever pranks, or "hacks."

  Take a look at the University's long history of clever public disruptions.

  Latest: According to Rachel D., an MIT Admissions blogger, Lobby 7 was converted into the anti-gravity Battle Room from the novel 'Enders Game' on the same weekend the movie adaptation was released. Outside, Killian Court was draped with banners signiying three different armies in the sci-fi story: Grffin, Dragon, and Tiger.

• The day after the "Breaking Bad'' finale, students turned the school's Alchemist into an homage to Heisenberg, the alter-ego of show's main character.

• Unknown persons converted the scaffolding construction workers are using to install a new skylight in MIT's Great Dome into a Pac-Man reference. (Lights along the L-shaped scaffolding, representing the dots from the game, are seen better at night.) This may be the most recent stunt by MIT's student body, but it's far from the first.

• In 2012, MIT hackers turned the Green Building, the tallest building in Cambridge, into a giant, playable, full color game of Tetris. The project was the result of almost five years of planning, according to MIT's school newspaper.

• In April 2012, an odd addition appeared on the Stata Center roof in MIT.

  Hackers placed a Dalek, a cyborg from the British series "Doctor Who" on top of the school's Computer Science and Artificial Laboratory.

• In 2010, Cantabrigians noticed a strange sight atop an MIT building: A police call box reminiscent of the time machine used by science fiction hero Doctor Who.

• In 2009, MIT students built an upside-down room at the Wiesner building on Ames Street in Cambridge, according to the Cambridge Chronicle. The students furnished the room with a pool table, framed painting, and leather seats.

• The upside-down room even featured a cat.

Cheap drugs may be within reach thanks to copper chemistry discovery

taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/medical/copper-oxygen-cheap-drugs/

Copper is not new to medicine, having been used in infection-fighting nanoparticles and implants, among many other innovations. However, it hasn't quite been used in the way some chemists from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have achieved, and it paves the way for simpler and much cheaper drug production in the future.

Using ozone, a form of oxygen, as a reagent and the metal as a catalyst, the scientists were able to break the carbon-carbon bonds of different types of organic molecules. The ozone broke the bonds into hydrocarbons called alkenes, and the copper catalyst coupled the broken bonds with nitrogen, forming carbon-nitrogen bonds, or molecules known as amines.

This process, known as aminodealkenylation, makes good use of an inexpensive metal that is in abundance, as opposed to other similar catalysts that would traditionally be used to develop amines.

"This has never been done before," said organic chemistry professor Ohyun Kwon. "Traditional metal catalysis uses expensive metals such as platinum, silver, gold and palladium, and other precious metals such as rhodium, ruthenium and iridium. But we are using oxygen and copper, one of the world's most abundant base metals."

Amines have strong interactions with molecules found in plants and animals, so are used heavily in the production of pharmaceuticals, plus agricultural chemicals like fertilizers. And, as their name suggests, amphetamine and dopamine are also amines.

Through this versatile combination, the team was able to modify hormones, pharmaceutical reagents, peptides and nucleosides into amines, indicating that this new method has broad application.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/17/battery-electric-vehicles-evs-supersonic-airliner-concorde/

"Today I want to compare the life story of Concorde – the world's first commercial supersonic airliner – with the story to date of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and to suggest a possible future for the latter. Concorde turned out to be a technology too far, and I suggest that BEVs are heading the same way."

[...] "Better technology will help, of course, but not enough. In 1974, when I bought my first electronic calculator, the AA battery had a carbon rod core and an outer casing of zinc. Intensive research and development since then has provided us with the lithium-ion battery, which can store six times as much electrical energy in the same volume. However, the energy density is still 40 times worse than petrol. Experts suggest that the best we can hope for is an improvement by a factor of two over the next 50 years.

None of these problems will be solved in the next few years, and there is now evidence that many car manufacturers are having second thoughts about involvement in the sector. The most likely outcome is that BEVs will be a rerun of the Concorde story, ending up as a short-lived plaything for the wealthy few, and for a similar complex set of reasons."

I think a mix of EV and ICE is best, both have strong and weak sides. It is stupid to develop a crash program for expensive technology as a solution to what many good scientists consider a non-problem.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Gaming on RISC-V? Well, that's a possibility.

A little over two years ago an enthusiast managed to make AMD's Radeon RX 6700 XT work on a RISC-V development board under Linux, which was not a particularly easy task. Since then, AMD's Linux graphics drivers have made a big leap in working with RISC-V systems and now it is possible to use AMD's latest graphics cards, including the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, with RISC-V platforms out of the box. 

Legacy AMD Radeon graphics cards, such as those based on the company's original GCN architecture from early 2010s, can run on practically all platforms under Linux, according to Phoronix. By contrast, AMD's latest GPUs, such as those powered by the Navi architecture (which are among the best graphics cards), use a different display code to initialize and kernel-mode FPU support that were not supported on RISC-V — which is why they could not work on RISC-V boards out of the box, and required manual patching.

This issue is now being fixed thanks to new updates from SiFive, and it looks promising for the upcoming Linux 6.8 kernel release.

"This series allows using newer AMD GPUs (e.g., Navi) on RISC-V boards such as SiFive's HiFive Unmatched," a statement by SiFive reads. "Those GPUs need CONFIG_DRM_AMD_DC_FP to initialize, which requires kernel-mode FPU support."

These changes are under review and are expected to be included in the next Linux 6.8 kernel release, and will make it easier to use the latest AMD Radeon graphics cards with RISC-V and open-source drivers.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Abandoned animals, kids with cancer, disabled veterans: These and other pitches for charity can move your emotions and have you reaching for your credit card.

But beware: Especially around the holidays, fake charity scammers are hard at work trying to part you from your hard-earned cash.

But scammers also know how to build trust, she warned.

"They may call you using a local phone number," Parti said in a Virginia Tech news release. "That tactic can give you a false sense of security."

You then start listening to their pitch, expertly designed to play on your emotions and often confusingly misleading.

"It will be a good one. It will tug at your heartstrings," Parti said. "But listen closely because they will never actually specify how they will help. They may even claim that you've donated before and ask you to do it again."

Is this a real charity or a scammer? To quickly find out, check databases like the search tool for tax-exempt organizations at the Internal Revenue Service or watchdog groups such as Charity Watch to see if the group being pitched is legit, Parti said.

And pay very close attention to the name of the charity: One common ruse is to give listeners a name that very closely mimics that of a legitimate charity. If it's just a shade different from the title of another well-known charity (for example, American Society for Cancer, not American Cancer Society), it could be a scam.

Scammers will try and get all the personal info from you they can: While a legit charity may simply want credit card info for a donation, a scammer may go further and try and get your Social Security number or bank account details. Don't fall for it, Parti said.

Have you ever fallen for a scam, or do you know family or friends that have?

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-archaeologists-uncover-europe-hidden-bronze.html

Archaeologists from University College Dublin, working with colleagues from Serbia and Slovenia, have uncovered a previously unknown network of massive sites in the heart of Europe that could explain the emergence of the continent's Bronze Age megaforts—the largest prehistoric constructions seen prior to the Iron Age.

Using satellite images and aerial photography to stitch together the prehistoric landscape of the south Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, the team discovered more than 100 sites belonging to a complex society.

Their commonplace use of defensible enclosures was a precursor and likely influence behind the famous hillforts of Europe, built to protect communities later in the Bronze Age.

"Some of the largest sites, we call these mega-forts, have been known for a few years now, such as Gradište Iđoš, Csanádpalota, Sântana or the mind-blowing Corneşti Iarcuri enclosed by 33km of ditches and eclipsing in size the contemporary citadels and fortifications of the Hittites, Mycenaeans or Egyptians," said lead author Associate Professor Barry Molloy, UCD School of Archaeology.

"What is new, however, is finding that these massive sites did not stand alone, they were part of a dense network of closely related and codependent communities. At their peak, the people living within this lower Pannonian network of sites must have numbered into the tens of thousands."

The Carpathian Basin extends across parts of central and southeast Europe, with the vast Pannonian Plain lying at its center, with the River Danube cutting through it.

More information: Barry Molloy et al, Resilience, innovation and collapse of settlement networks in later Bronze Age Europe: New survey data from the southern Carpathian Basin, PLOS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288750

Journal information: PLoS ONE

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

After 25 years of keeping the internet strong and stable, the nonprofit ICANN -- responsible for its technical infrastructure -- is warning that increasingly polarized geopolitics could start cracking the foundations of the online world:

"It's super important to differentiate between what countries decide to do with controlling content, as opposed to the technical infrastructure," the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' interim chief executive Sally Costerton told AFP in a recent interview.

"The risk of fragmentation at the technical level is enormous. The foundation crumbles and game over."

[...] But as online abuses -- from misinformation to hateful content -- have grown more insidious, interest has heightened in giving governments more control of the internet, including aspects that have previously been covered by ICANN.

Shifting control of the internet's infrastructure to governments and trade groups, and shutting out the technical community, could crack its foundation, Costerton warned.

[...] "We are living in an increasingly nationalistic, polarized world," Costerton said.

"If you want all that wonderful content, and you want the magic trick to carry on, you must maintain the current trust-based model."

Also at TechXplore, MSN and DNyuz.

Related: ICANN Warns UN May Sideline Techies From Internet Governance

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Nvidia has given the world a "SuperNIC" – another device to improve network performance, just like the "SmartNIC," the "data processing unit" (DPU), and the "infrastructure processing unit" (IPU). But the GPU-maker insists its new device is more than just a superlative.

So what exactly is a SuperNIC? An Nvidia explainer describes it as a "new class of networking accelerator designed to supercharge AI workloads in Ethernet-based networks." Key features include high-speed packet reordering, advanced congestion control, programmable I/O pathing, and, critically, integration with Nvidia's broader hardware and software portfolio.

If that sounds like what a SmartNIC or DPU would do, you're not wrong. The SuperNIC is even based on a current Nvidia DPU, the BlueField-3.

Nvidia's BlueField-3 SuperNIC promises Infiniband-ish network performance – if you buy Nvidia's fancy 51.2Tbit/sec switches – Click to enlarge. Source: Nvidia.

The difference is the SuperNIC is designed to work alongside Nvidia's own Spectrum-4 switches as part of its Spectrum-X offering.

Nvidia's senior veep for networking, Kevin Deierling, emphasized in an interview with The Register that the SuperNIC isn't a rebrand of the DPU, but rather a different product.

Before considering the SuperNIC, it's worth remembering that SmartNICs/IPUs/DPUs are network interface controllers (NICs) that include modest compute capabilities – sometimes fixed-function ASICs, with or without a couple of Arm cores sprinkled in, or even highly customizable FPGAs.

Many of Intel and AMD's SmartNICs are based around FPGAs, while Nvidia's BlueField-3 class of NICs pairs Arm cores with a bunch of dedicated accelerator blocks for things like storage, networking, and security offload.

This variety means that certain SmartNICs are better suited, or at the very least marketed, towards certain applications more than others.

For the most part, we've seen SmartNICs – or whatever your preferred vendor wants to call them – deployed in one of two scenarios. The first is in large cloud and hyperscale datacenters where they're used to offload and accelerate storage, networking, security, and even hypervisor management from the host CPU.

Amazon Web Services' custom Nitro cards are a prime example. The cards are designed to physically separate the cloudy control plane from the host. The result is that more CPU cycles are available to run tenants' workloads.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-reveals-clues-whales-dolphins-echolocation.html

A study published in Diversity provides new insight into how toothed whales and dolphins came to navigate the underwater world using sound waves.

Whales and dolphins, which lack external ears, rely on a technique called echolocation to navigate and hunt in the dark. Much like shouting and listening for echoes, these animals emit high-pitched sounds that bounce off objects and reflect back at them, allowing them to map out their surroundings.

Their skulls and soft tissues near and within the blowhole are asymmetrical, meaning that a structure on one side is larger or differently shaped than its counterpart on the other side. This "lopsidedness" enables the production of sound. At the same time, a fat-filled lower jawbone conducts sound waves to the internal ear, allowing the animals to locate where sounds are coming from (directional hearing).

Yet, how whales and dolphins evolved this sophisticated "built-in sonar" is not fully understood.

Now, research co-authored by Jonathan Geisler, Ph.D., professor and chair of anatomy at New York Institute of Technology, and first author Robert Boessenecker, Ph.D., paleontologist and research associate at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, provides vital clues.

The researchers analyzed a large collection of fossils that included two ancient species of dolphins within the genus Xenorophus, one of which is new to science. These species are some of the primitive members of Odontoceti, the suborder of marine mammals that includes all living echolocating whales and dolphins.

Journal Reference:
Robert W. Boessenecker et al, New Skeletons of the Ancient Dolphin Xenorophus sloanii and Xenorophus simplicidens sp. nov. (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the Oligocene of South Carolina and the Ontogeny, Functional Anatomy, Asymmetry, Pathology, and Evolution of the Earliest Odontoceti, Diversity (2023). DOI: 10.3390/d15111154

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A system of ancient ceramic water pipes, the oldest ever unearthed in China, shows that neolithic people were capable of complex engineering feats without the need for a centralised state authority:

In a study published in Nature Water, the archaeological team describe a network of ceramic water pipes and drainage ditches at the Chinese walled site of Pingliangtai dating back 4,000 years to a time known as the Longshan period. The network shows cooperation amongst the community to build and maintain the drainage system, though no evidence of a centralised power or authority.

Dr Yijie Zhuang (UCL Institute of Archaeology), senior and corresponding author on the paper, said: "The discovery of this ceramic water pipe network is remarkable because the people of Pingliangtai were able to build and maintain this advanced water management system with stone age tools and without the organisation of a central power structure. This system would have required a significant level of community-wide planning and coordination, and it was all done communally."

The ceramic water pipes make up a drainage system which is the oldest complete system ever discovered in China. Made by interconnecting individual segments, the water pipes run along roads and walls to divert rainwater and show an advanced level of central planning at the neolithic site.

What's surprising to researchers is that the settlement of Pingliangtai shows little evidence of social hierarchy. Its houses were uniformly small and show no signs of social stratification or significant inequality amongst the population. Excavations at the town's cemetery likewise found no evidence of a social hierarchy in burials, a marked difference from excavations at other nearby towns of the same era.

The level of complexity associated with these pipes refutes an earlier understanding in archaeological fields that holds that only a centralised state power with governing elites would be able to muster the organisation and resources to build a complex water management system. While other ancient societies with advanced water systems tended to have a stronger, more centralised governance, or even despotism, Pingliangtai demonstrates that was not always needed, and more egalitarian and communal societies were capable of these kinds of engineering feats as well.

Journal Reference:
Li, C., Cao, Y., Zhang, C. et al. Earliest ceramic drainage system and the formation of hydro-sociality in monsoonal East Asia [open]. Nat Water 1, 694–704 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00114-4

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Google's Threat Analysis Group announced a zero-day against the Zimbra Collaboration email server that has been used against governments around the world:

In June 2023, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) discovered an in-the-wild 0-day exploit targeting Zimbra Collaboration, an email server many organizations use to host their email. Since discovering the 0-day, now patched as CVE-2023-37580, TAG has observed four different groups exploiting the same bug to steal email data, user credentials, and authentication tokens. Most of this activity occurred after the initial fix became public on Github. To ensure protection against these types of exploits, TAG urges users and organizations to keep software fully up-to-date and apply security updates as soon as they become available.

TAG first discovered the 0-day, a reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability, in June when it was actively exploited in targeted attacks against Zimbra's email server. Zimbra pushed a hotfix to their public Github on July 5, 2023 and published an initial advisory with remediation guidance on July 13, 2023. They patched the vulnerability as CVE-2023-37580 on July 25, 2023.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Related: State Hackers Breach Defense, Energy, Healthcare Orgs Worldwide

Original Submission

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/starships-33-engines-created-the-mother-of-all-shock-diamonds

The War Zone has an interesting report on the shock diamonds produced by the engines of the Starship rocket during the recent launch attempt.

"When you typically see a shock diamond or a mach diamond, it can be from like a jet engine test, or a single rocket nozzle test. [When you] look at those up close... you see the same shock diamond effect on the smaller scale."

"But what was interesting, specifically about this case [the second Starship launch], is you had 33 engines firing together, which you would kind of intuitively think would make for a pretty messy environment. I think close up [this] is probably true, there's some complicated dynamics happening there."

Additionally, the article features a passel of pictures of the launch.

Original Submission