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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

D&D and Magic: The Gathering publisher, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), has certainly been pissing folks off as of late. Between its attempt to change its OGL license for D&D both in the future and retroactively last year combined with sending the literal Pinkerton Agency after someone who received some unreleased Magic cards in error, the company appears to have taken a draconian turn in recent years. Then, over the summer, there was a bunch of backlash when WotC was found to have included art from one of its artists that had been partially generated using AI generative art in one of its books. After that whole fiasco, WotC publicly swore off using any art in its products that was not 100% human created.

And it’s important to note that this is a huge thing in the D&D and Magic worlds. The books, cards, and associated items that players and fans buy from these games have always been revered in part for the fantastic art that has come along with them. And the artists contributing to them have been equally celebrated.

So, when sharp-eyed observers of recent promotional art that came out for Magic pointed out it sure looked like the images around the cards showed signs of having been generated by AI, well, WotC came out with a very strong denial.

[...] But, no, it turns out that the images around the cards was in fact generated in part using AI, as admitted later on by WotC itself.

[...] But the real lesson here is that companies have to be very careful with this sort of thing. The internet has enough well-trained Sherlocks out there who are holding companies to their word, looking for anywhere where AI generated content is being snuck in to replace human-made content that, as the technology stands today, there’s a good chance any such uses will be found out. They might as well save themselves the trouble and just make sure the humans are doing the work.

What happens when some of the celebrated artists start using it too?

Original Submission

NYT reports that USA greenhouse gas emissions reduced last year. They open with a graph of U.S. electricity generation by source from 2005-2023 showing natural gas, nuclear, coal and renewable power generation. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/10/climate/us-carbon-emissions-2023-climate.html or https://archive.is/wNgDx

America's greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.9 percent in 2023, in large part because the burning of coal to produce electricity plummeted to its lowest level in half a century, according to estimates published on Wednesday by the Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan research firm.

The drop means that United States emissions have now fallen roughly 17.2 percent since 2005. There was a huge, anomalous dip in planet-warming pollution at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when large segments of the economy shut down, followed by a sharp rebound in the following two years once activity resumed. But over the longer term, America's emissions have been trending downward as power plants and cars have gotten cleaner.

Still, the decline in emissions to date hasn't been nearly steep enough to meet the nation's goals for trying to slow global warming. President Biden wants to reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. To hit that goal, annual emissions would have to fall more than three times as fast for the rest of the decade as they did last year, the report found.

The researchers looked at planet-warming emissions generated by transportation, electricity, industry and buildings but did not include pollution from agriculture, which accounts for roughly 10 percent of the nation's greenhouse gases.

It then continues with more detail on different sectors of the economy and ends off with:

The United States is one of 26 countries around the world that have seen emissions decline in recent years even as they enjoy significant economic growth, a study last year found. That list also includes Brazil, Britain, Japan, much of the European Union and South Africa.

But globally, carbon dioxide emissions still soared to record levels last year, driven in large part by an increase in fossil fuel use in China, India and other fast-growing countries.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Saudi-backed builder of high-end EVs is not having an easy time:

When we saw our first Lucid Air prototype in 2017, we came away extremely impressed. This alpha build appeared far more realized than some prototypes, complete with functioning infotainment software as opposed to the pre-rendered demos that are often more common in such cases. But the startup automaker has had anything but an easy time since then. Yesterday, it announced its Q4 2023 deliveries ahead of an investor call in late February, and the numbers are bad.

Lucid originally planned to launch the Air sedan in 2019. Designed by Tesla's former VP and Chief Vehicle Engineer Peter Rawlinson, together with designer Derek Jenkins, the Air aimed for Mercedes-Benz S-Class levels of space and luxury on the interior but with the footprint of the smaller Mercedes E-Class. Under its ultra-low-drag body was a highly advanced electric vehicle powertrain capable of extremely rapid acceleration, a high top speed, and class-leading range.

But starting a new car company is neither easy nor cheap. Lucid struggled to obtain funding until Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund invested a billion dollars in the company in 2018, allowing Lucid to complete work on its factory in Arizona and push on with developing the Air.

[...] But those big numbers were matched by an equally big price—$169,000, or $139,000 for the slightly less powerful, slightly shorter-range Air Grand Touring.

[...] Since then, the company added some cheaper variants to its lineup—Lucid will sell you an Air Pure for $74,000 after its current incentives are taken into account. But that hasn't resulted in a glut of orders.

For the last three months of 2023, Lucid built just 2,231 Air EVs and delivered 1,734 of those to customers. The results for the whole year weren't any better—Lucid built 8,428 cars and delivered 6,001 of those.

Previously:
    Elon Musk's Ex-Chief Engineer Creates a New Car
    Lucid Air Demos Real World Electric Range of 490 Miles
    Lucid Motors' Flagship 'Air' to Offer 200+ MPH Performance
    Start-Up Lucid Motors Launches With 300-Mile Plus Premium Electric Sedan

Original Submission

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/power-supplies/chinese-developed-nuclear-battery-has-a-50-year-lifespan

Chinese company Betavolt has announced an atomic energy battery for consumers with a touted 50-year lifespan. The Betavolt BV100 will be the first product to launch using the firm's new atomic battery technology, constructed using a nickel -63 isotope and diamond semiconductor material. Betavolt says that its nuclear battery will target aerospace, AI devices, medical, MEMS systems, intelligent sensors, small drones, and robots – and may eventually mean manufacturers can sell smartphones that never need charging.

Buying an electronics product that can go mains-free for 50 years would be amazing. However, the BV100, which is in the pilot stage ahead of mass production, doesn't offer a lot of power. This 15 x 15 x 5mm battery delivers 100 microwatts at 3 volts. It is mentioned that multiple BV100 batteries can be used together in series or parallel depending on device requirements. Betavolt also asserts that it has plans to launch a 1-watt version of its atomic battery in 2025.

[...] In its press release, Betavolt says its atomic battery is very different from similarly described power cells developed by the US and USSR in the 1960s. It says that the old nuclear batteries were large, dangerous, hot, and expensive products. [...] Meanwhile, the Betavolt BV100 is claimed to be safe for consumers and won't leak radiation even if subjected to gunshots or puncture.

The new, improved levels of safety stem from the choice of materials. Betavolt's battery uses a nickel -63 isotope as the energy source, which decays to a stable isotope of copper. This, plus the diamond semiconductor material, helps the BV100 operate stably in environments ranging from -60 to 120 degrees Celsius, according to the firm.

Original Submission

ElizabethGreene writes:

@KenKirtland17 on Twitter has created a fascinating infographic summary of NASA's plan (PDF) for sending Astronauts to Mars.

It shows 13 SLS Block 2 Cargo launches from 2032 to 2038 and two crewed SLS Block 2 launches to build various spacecraft in Cislunar space. The spacecraft are then fueled by an unspecified number of Commercial Launch Vehicle flights. The mission series culminates with 4 people making a nuclear-powered 180-day trip to Mars, 2 people spending 30 days on the surface, and a 350-day return trip with both Venus and Lunar flybys.

Original Submission

Snotnose writes:

No word on why he didn't run Wireshark to see exactly what the data was, but a word of warning concerning smart devices.

An LG washing machine owner and self-confessed fintech geek has asked the Twitterverse why his smart home appliance ate an average of 3.66GB of data daily. Concerned about the washer's internet addiction, Johnie forced the device to go cold turkey and blocked it using his router UI. Had the LG washer been hacked, hijacked, or otherwise tampered with over the net – or is this the average data consumption for a modern smart appliance?

[...] For now, it looks like the favored answer to the data mystery is to blame Asus for misreporting it. We may never know what happened with Johnie, who is now running his LG washing machine offline. LG did not immediately reply to a request by Tom's Hardware for more information.

Another relatively innocent reason for the supposed high volume of uploads could be an error in the Asus router firmware. In a follow-up post a day after his initial Tweet, Johnie noted "inaccuracy in the ASUS router tool," with regard to Apple iMessage data use. Other LG smart washing machine users showed device data use from their router UIs. It turns out that these appliances more typically use less than 1MB per day.

Though Johnie's Tweets were relatively light-hearted, hacking smart connected devices can be severe. Consider what could happen if medical or industrial IoT devices get taken over by attackers, for example. A case in point is provided by a story from earlier this week when Bosch network-connected wrenches used in factories all around the world were found to be riddled with vulnerabilities.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The CAMM2 spec was recently finalized, and memory makers are testing the waters:

Of all the PC-related things to come out of CES this year, my favorite wasn't Nvidia's graphics cards or AMD's newest Ryzens or Intel's iterative processor refreshes or any one of the oddball PC concept designs or anything to do with the mad dash to cram generative AI into everything.

No, of all things, the thing that I liked the most was this Crucial-branded memory module spotted by Tom's Hardware. If it looks a little strange to you, it's because it uses the Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) standard—rather than being a standard stick of RAM that you insert into a slot on your motherboard, it lies flat against the board where metal contacts on the board and the CAMM module can make contact with one another.

CAMM memory has been on my radar for a while, since it first cropped up in a handful of Dell laptops. Mistakenly identified at the time as a proprietary type of RAM that would give Dell an excuse to charge more for it, Dell has been pushing for the standardization of CAMM modules for a couple of years now, and JEDEC (the organization that handles all current computer memory standards) formally finalized the spec last month.

[...] It used to be easy to save some money on a new PC by buying a version without much RAM and performing an upgrade yourself, using third-party RAM sticks that cost a fraction of what manufacturers would charge. But most laptops no longer afford you the luxury.

Most PC makers and laptop PC buyers made an unspoken bargain in the early- to mid-2010s, around when the MacBook Air and the Ultrabook stopped being special thin-and-light outliers and became the standard template for the mainstream laptop: We would jettison nearly any port or internal component in the interest of making a laptop that was thinner, sleeker, and lighter.

[...] The CAMM standard (technically finalized as CAMM2) tries to offer the best of all possible worlds.

canopic jug writes:

OpenSSH developer, Damien Miller, has announced plans to remove support for DSA keys from OpenSSH in the near future. His announcement describes the rationale, process, and proposed timeline.

The next release of OpenSSH (due around 2024/03) will make DSA optional at compile time, but still enable it by default. Users and downstream distributors of OpenSSH may use this option to explore the impact of DSA removal in their environments, or to hard-deprecate it early if they desire.

Around 2024/06, a release of OpenSSH will change this compile-time default to disable DSA. It may still be enabled by users/distributors if needed.

Finally, in the first OpenSSH release after 2025/01/01 the DSA code will be removed entirely.

In summary:

2024/01 - this announcement
2024/03 (estimated) - DSA compile-time optional, enabled by default
2024/06 (estimated) - DSA compile-time optional, *disabled* by default
2025/01 (estimated) - DSA is removed from OpenSSH

Very few will notice this change. However, for those few to whom this matters the effects are major.

Previously:
(2021) scp Will Be Replaced With sftp Soon
(2020) SHA-1 to be Disabled in OpenSSH and libssh
(2019) How SSH Key Shielding Works
(2016) Upgrade Your SSH Keys
(2014) OpenSSH No Longer has to Depend on OpenSSL

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-hummingbirds-mental-gears-flight.html

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Bizarre Galaxy Discovered With Seemingly No Stars Whatsoever:

A newly discovered object is stretching our understanding of what constitutes a galaxy.

Called J0613+52, this massive blob of something some 270 million light-years away appears to have no stars whatsoever. At least, none that can be seen. It's just a haze made of the kind of gas that's found between stars in normal galaxies, drifting around by its lone self like an absolute badass.

Its mass and motion appear to be normal for what we'd expect of a spiral galaxy... in fact, if you extracted the stars from a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way or Andromeda, J0613+52 is pretty much what you'd end up with.

According to a team of astronomers led by astrophysicist Karen O'Neil of the Green Bank Observatory, it could be the first discovery of a primordial galaxy in the nearby Universe – a galaxy made up mostly of the gas that formed at the beginning of time.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Astrobotic's latest update is optimistic, all things considered:

All may not be lost for Astrobotic's Peregrine moon lander.

Soon after launching on the first-ever flight of United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur rocket on Monday (Jan. 8), the lander encountered an anomaly due to a stuck valve in its propulsion system, damaging the spacecraft and causing a significant propellant leak. The company announced on Tuesday (Jan. 9) that a soft lunar landing would be impossible in light of those issues.

Yet on Thursday (Jan. 11), Astrobotic issued its 12th mission update via X, indicating that, despite the crippling propulsion system anomaly, there's some good news. Peregrine was able to power up its payloads — the ones that require power, anyway — and establish connections to ground teams using NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) of communication antennas.

"As Peregrine emerges from a planned communications blackout with NASA's DSN ground network, we're pleased to announce the team's efforts to gather payload data have been fruitful," Astrobotic wrote on X. "We have successfully received data from all 9 payloads designed to communicate with the lander. All 10 payloads requiring power have received it, while the remaining 10 payloads aboard the spacecraft are passive."

It's unclear if any of those payloads will be able to complete the missions for which they were designed, but Astrobotic's update is relatively optimistic. "These payloads have now been able to prove operational capability in space, and payload teams are analyzing the impact of this development now. We are proud of the mission team for achieving this incredible feat under such challenging circumstances."

Accompanying the update is a photograph taken by Peregrine in which the wheels of the tiny Iris lunar rover, built by Carnegie Mellon University, can be seen.

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-fastest-insect-uncrewed-boat.html

Whirligig beetles, the world's fastest-swimming insect, achieve surprising speeds by employing a strategy shared by speedy marine mammals and waterfowl, according to a new Cornell University study that rewrites previous explanations of the physics involved.

The centimeter-long beetles can reach a peak acceleration of 100 meters per second and a top velocity of 100 body lengths per second (or one meter per second).

Not only do the results explain the whirligig's Olympian speeds, but they also offer valuable insights for bio-inspired designers of near-surface water robots and uncrewed boats.

Until now, researchers have believed that whirligigs attain their impressive speeds using a propulsion system called drag-based thrust. This type of thrust requires the insect's legs to move faster than the swimming speed, in order for the legs to generate any thrust. For the whirligig beetle to achieve such fast swimming speeds, its legs would need to push against the water at unrealistic speeds.

"It could have well been questioned," said Chris Roh, assistant biological and environmental engineering professor. "The fastest swimmer and drag-based thrust don't usually go together in the same sentence."

In fact, fast-swimming marine mammals and waterfowls tend to forgo drag-based thrust in favor of lift-based thrust, another propulsion system. The finding was described in a study published Jan. 8 in the journal Current Biology.
...
Using two high-speed cameras synchronized at different angles, the researchers could film a whirligig and observe a lift-based thrust mechanism at play. Lift-based thrust works like a propeller, where the thrusting motion is perpendicular to the water surface, eliminating drag and allowing for more efficient momentum capable of greater speed.

More information: Yukun Sun et al, Whirligig beetle uses lift-based thrust for fastest insect swimming, Current Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.11.008

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The innovation that gets an Alzheimer's drug through the blood-brain barrier:

Last week, researchers at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute reported that by using focused ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier, they

improved delivery of a new Alzheimer's treatment and sped up clearance of the sticky plaques that are thought to contribute to some of the cognitive and memory problems in people with Alzheimer's by 32%.

In the West Virginia study, three people with mild Alzheimer's received monthly doses of aducanumab, a lab-made antibody that is delivered via IV. This drug, first approved in 2021,  helps clear away beta-amyloid, a protein fragment that clumps up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. (The drug's approval was controversial, and it's still not clear whether it actually slows progression of the disease.)  After the infusion, the researchers treated specific regions of the patients' brains with focused ultrasound, but just on one side. That allowed them to use the other half of the brain as a control. PET scans revealed a greater reduction in amyloid plaques in the ultrasound-treated regions than in those same regions on the untreated side of the brain, suggesting that more of the antibody was getting into the brain on the treated side.

Aducanumab does clear plaques without ultrasound, but it takes a long time, perhaps in part because the antibody has trouble entering the brain. "Instead of using the therapy intravenously for 18 to 24 months to see the plaque reduction, we want to see if we can achieve that reduction in a few months," says Ali Rezai, a neurosurgeon at West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and an author of the new study. Cutting the amount of time needed to clear these plaques might help slow the memory loss and cognitive problems that define the disease.

The device used to target and deliver the ultrasound waves, developed by a company called Insightec, consists of an MRI machine and a helmet studded with ultrasound transducers. It's FDA approved, but for an entirely different purpose: to help stop tremors in people with Parkinson's by creating lesions in the brain. To open the blood-brain barrier, "we inject individuals intravenously with microbubbles," Rezai says. These tiny gas bubbles, commonly used as a contrast agent, travel through the bloodstream. Using the MRI, the researchers can aim the ultrasound waves at very specific parts of the brain "with millimeter precision," Rezai says. When the waves hit the microbubbles, the bubbles begin to expand and contract, physically pushing apart the tightly packed cells that line the brain's capillaries. "This temporary opening can last up to 48 hours, which means that during those 48 hours, you can have increased penetration into the brain of therapeutics," he says.

Journal Reference: DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2308719

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

US hospitals will be required to meet basic cybersecurity standards before receiving federal funding, according to rules the White House is expected to propose in the next few weeks.

This comes as hospitals and health clinics nationwide continue to be menaced by ransomware, and cybercrims resort to diabolical tactics to make victims pay up.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an arm of the US Department of Health and Human Services, is reportedly drawing up rules connecting hospital IT security with funding, which are set to take effect before the end of the year.

Citing an unnamed government official, this Messenger report says the proposed rules will focus on "those key cybersecurity practices that we really do believe bring a meaningful impact." And federal funding will hinge on hospitals enacting these basic network defenses.

[...] And while no one is going to argue against improving hospitals' security posture, cutting off their funding may not help the situation, according to some.

"Denying funding to hospitals doesn't seem like the best way to help them improve their security," Emsisoft Threat Analyst Brett Callow told The Register. "In fact, it may do the exact opposite."

Original Submission

Why Google is Phasing Out Third-party Cookies - Marketplace

upstart writes:

Google will roll out a set of new tools that still track your behavior online — so we'll still be getting those targeted ads:

From pretty much the very beginning, the web has been fueled by ads. And those ads have been finding their way to relevant users via cookies — those are little bits of code that websites can place on your computer so advertisers can basically follow you around online.

And from pretty much the very beginning, privacy advocates have complained that cookies are a privacy nightmare.

This week, Google started its project to phase out third-party cookies on its Chrome browser, the world's most popular browser. But the change isn't about all cookies.

"Websites still allow for first-party cookies, which is very useful for the website to be able to remember, for instance, that you've found a product that you want to purchase, and it will stay in your checkout," said Garrett Johnson, a professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business.

[...] "The deprecation of the third-party cookie in 2024, is really poised to shake things up. Because, you know, we're essentially going to have to recalibrate how we effectively find voters and target to them online," said Kate Holliday, vice president of politics and public affairs at advertising firm Powers Interactive Digital.

With this phaseout, Google is introducing what it calls its "privacy sandbox": a set of new tools that still track your behavior online.