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upstart writes:

NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data:

The National Security Agency (NSA) has admitted to buying records from data brokers detailing which websites and apps Americans use, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed Thursday.

This news follows Wyden's push last year that forced the FBI to admit that it was also buying Americans' sensitive data. Now, the senator is calling on all intelligence agencies to "stop buying personal data from Americans that has been obtained illegally by data brokers."

"The US government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans' privacy are not just unethical but illegal," Wyden said in a letter to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines. "To that end, I request that you adopt a policy that, going forward," intelligence agencies "may only purchase data about Americans that meets the standard for legal data sales established by the FTC."

Wyden suggested that the intelligence community might be helping data brokers violate an FTC order requiring that Americans are provided "clear and conspicuous" disclosures and give informed consent before their data can be sold to third parties. In the seven years that Wyden has been investigating data brokers, he said that he has not been made "aware of any company that provides such a warning to users before collecting their data."

The FTC's order came after reaching a settlement with a data broker called X-Mode, which admitted to selling sensitive location data without user consent and even to selling data after users revoked consent.

In his letter, Wyden referred to this order as the FTC outlining "new rules," but that's not exactly what happened. Instead of issuing rules, FTC settlements often serve as "common law," signaling to marketplaces which practices violate laws like the FTC Act.

According to the FTC's analysis of the order on its site, X-Mode violated the FTC Act by "unfairly selling sensitive data, unfairly failing to honor consumers' privacy choices, unfairly collecting and using consumer location data, unfairly collecting and using consumer location data without consent verification, unfairly categorizing consumers based on sensitive characteristics for marketing purposes, deceptively failing to disclose use of location data, and providing the means and instrumentalities to engage in deceptive acts or practices."

canopic jug writes:

Web developer Trevor Morris has a short post on the attrition of web sites over the years.

I have run the Laravel Artisan command I built to get statistics on my outgoing links section. Exactly one year later it doesn't make good reading.

[...] The percentage of total broken links has increased from 32.8% last year to 35.7% this year. Links from over a decade ago have a fifty per cent chance of no longer working. Thankfully, only three out of over 550 have gone missing in the last few years of links, but only time will tell how long they'll stick around.

As pointed out in the early and mid 1990s, the inherent centralization of sites, later web sites, is the basis for this weakness. That is to say one single copy exists which resides under the control of the publisher / maintainer. When that one copy goes, it is gone.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

From the Abstract:

Despite technical and non-technical countermeasures, humans continue to be tricked by phishing emails. How users make email response decisions is a missing piece in the puzzle to identifying why people still fall for phishing emails. We conducted an empirical study using a think-aloud method to investigate how people make 'response decisions' while reading emails. The grounded theory analysis of the in-depth qualitative data has enabled us to identify different elements of email users' decision-making that influence their email response decisions. Furthermore, we developed a theoretical model that explains how people could be driven to respond to emails based on the identified elements of users' email decision-making processes and the relationships uncovered from the data. The findings provide deeper insights into phishing email susceptibility due to people's email response decision-making behavior. We also discuss the implications of our findings for designers and researchers working in anti-phishing training, education, and awareness interventions.

The conclusion:

In this paper, we investigate in-depth how people make email response decisions while reading their emails. Analysis of the collected qualitative data enabled us to develop a theoretical model that describes how people can be driven to respond to emails by clicking on email links and replying to or downloading attachments based on people's email response decision-making elements and their relationships. Based on an improved understanding of how people make email responses, this study enables us to identify how people can be susceptible to manipulation, even in our controlled experiment environment. We proposed five concrete enhancements to state-of-the-art anti-phishing education, training, and awareness tools to support users in making safe email responses. Among others, we suggest that the goal of anti-phishing education, training, and awareness tools should shift from accurate email legitimacy judgments to secure email responses. Therefore, we believe our work lays the foundation for improving future anti- phishing interventions to make a significant difference in how we prevent phishing email attacks in the future.

Journal Reference: Why People Still Fall for Phishing Emails: An Empirical Investigation into How Users Make Email Response Decisions, Asangi Jayatilaka, Nalin Asanka Gamagedara Arachchilage, Muhammad Ali Babar - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.13199.pdf

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-gulls-swap-natural-urban-habitats.html

A recent study published in Ecological Informatics by a team of University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers has used artificial intelligence to further illuminate a habitat swap among short-billed gulls.

Typically gulls live along coastlines and near water sources such as rivers. They feed on bugs and other small mammals, fish or birds.

The team found that from May to August, short-billed gulls occupied areas that have typically been the haunts of scavenging ravens. Those include supermarket and fast-food restaurant parking lots and other human-made structures, such as industrial gravel pads and garbage dumpsters.

The study is the first of its kind to compile a three-year dataset using a citizen science-based, opportunistic research method to include a large sample of gulls and other sub-Arctic birds in urban Alaska. The study provides a current snapshot of the habitat shift to an urban landscape.

UAF professor Falk Huettmann, first author on the paper, and his team used artificial intelligence modeling that was given predictors—environmental variables for specific locations—to extrapolate information about the gull occurrences. A similar, earlier study analyzed the distribution of the great gray owl.

In this study, researchers used U.S. census data as well as urban municipality data, such as distances to roads, restaurants, waterways and waste transfer stations.

"Using socioeconomic datasets like the U.S. census is a real game-changer," said Moriz Steiner, a graduate student in Huettmann's lab. "It allows us to mirror the real-world environment and simulate a situation as true to nature as possible by including them as variables in the models."

The findings indicate that the gulls' transition from natural habitats to a more urban landscape is spurred by the availability of human food, as well as industrial changes.

"They are exploiting the waste opportunity left behind by humans," said Huettmann, who is associated with UAF's Institute of Arctic Biology.

More information: Falk Huettmann et al, Model-based prediction of a vacant summer niche in a subarctic urbanscape: A multi-year open access data analysis of a 'niche swap' by short-billed Gulls, Ecological Informatics (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2023.102364

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year, and there's a lot planned for it

"We have just fromed [sic] Tactical Studies Rules, and we wish to let the wargaming community know that a new line of miniature rules is available."

With this letter, written by Gary Gygax to wargaming zine publisher Jim Lurvey, one of the founders of what would become TSR announced that a January 1974 release for Dungeons & Dragons was forthcoming. This, plus other evidence compiled by Jon Peterson (as pointed out by the Grognardia blog), points to the last Sunday of January 1974 as the best date for the "anniversary" of D&D. The first sale was in "late January 1974," Gygax later wrote, and on the last Sunday of January 1974, Gygax invited potential customers to drop by his house in the afternoon to try it out.

You could argue whether a final draft, printing, announcement, sale, or first session counts as the true "birth" of D&D, but we have to go with something, and Peterson's reasoning seems fairly sound. Gygax's memory, and a documented session at his own house, are a good point to pin down for when we celebrate this thing that has shaped a seemingly infinite number of other things.

As with playing a good campaign, you've got a lot of options for how you acknowledge D&D's long presence and deep influence. The game system itself, now under Wizards of the Coast, will this year push "One D&D," a name the D&D leaders sometimes stick with and sometimes don't. Whatever the next wave is called, it includes new handbooks, guides, and Monster Manual books that are not exactly a new "edition," but also an evolution. Books like Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will be codified and unified by a new sourcebook at some point, but all of it will be compatible with 5th Edition material.

Also, at some point this year, stamps celebrating D&D's 50th will be available from the US Postal Service, at least if you rush. Ten different designs, leaning heavily on the dragons, were commissioned based on existing illustrations. There's a documentary from Joe Manganiello (still in pre-production, seemingly). And there's a 500-plus-page non-fiction book, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1976, with research help from the aforementioned Peterson, containing never-before-seen correspondence between co-creators Gygax and Dave Arneson.

[...] Take a moment on this occasion to look back through some notable D&Dcoverage at Ars:

• A preview of D&D "Next"in 2012, when the system started streamlining on its way toward 5th Edition
• A full review of 5th Edition in 2016, after a year that saw staggering sales based on warm reception
• D&D's entry into the Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong National Museum of Play, alongside such icons as the Frisbee, the Barbie doll, and the Atari 2600
• Annalee Newitz's review of Rise of the Dungeon Master, a graphic novel about Gygax's powerful creativity but also notable flaws
• Last year's controversy over Wizards of the Coast's attempt to rework its Open Gaming License, the exodus it fomented, and its eventual rollback.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-physicists-phenomenon-aging-materials.html

Physicists in Darmstadt are investigating aging processes in materials. For the first time, they have measured the ticking of an internal clock in glass. When evaluating the data, they discovered a surprising phenomenon.

We experience time as having only one direction. Who has ever seen a cup smash on the floor, only to then spontaneously reassemble itself? To physicists, this is not immediately self-evident because the formulae that describe movements apply irrespective of the direction of time.

A video of a pendulum swinging unimpeded, for instance, would look just the same if it ran backwards. The everyday irreversibility we experience only comes into play through a further law of nature, the second law of thermodynamics. This states that the disorder in a system grows constantly. If the smashed cup were to reassemble itself, however, the disorder would decrease.

You might think that the aging of materials is just as irreversible as the shattering of a glass. However, when researching the movements of molecules in glass or plastic, physicists from Darmstadt have now discovered that these movements are time-reversible if they are viewed from a certain perspective.

The team led by Till Böhmer at the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt has published its results in Nature Physics.

Glasses or plastics consist of a tangle of molecules. The particles are in constant motion, causing them to slip into new positions again and again. They are permanently seeking a more favorable energetic state, which changes the material properties over time—the glass ages.

In useful materials such as window glass, however, this can take billions of years. The aging process can be described by what is known as the "material time." Imagine it like this: the material has an internal clock that ticks differently to the clock on the lab wall. The material time ticks at a different speed depending on how quickly the molecules within the material reorganize.

Since the concept was discovered some 50 years ago, though, no one has succeeded in measuring material time. Now, the researchers in Darmstadt led by Prof. Thomas Blochowicz have done it for the first time.

canopic jug writes:

Developer Hugo Landau has hacked a train's restroom door, based on the model found in the UK's Class 800 train:

Of course, there is a reason for the separation of the closing and locking functions, but not the opening and unlocking functions: it avoids a Denial of Service attack where someone can just press "close" and then jump out before the door closes. If the interior "close" button automatically locked the door, this would result in the toilet becoming permanently inaccessible.

The problem with this design is that most people don't understand state machines, and this design confused a lot of people who were unable to lock the door correctly, or believed they'd locked the door when they hadn't.

The result is a denial of service, being able to lock the door from the inside while no one is actually inside to subsequently unlock the door again.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-bacteria-plastic-multipurpose-spider-silk.html

Move over Spider-Man: Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a strain of bacteria that can turn plastic waste into a biodegradable spider silk with multiple uses.

Their new study, published in Microbial Cell Factories, marks the first time scientists have used bacteria to transform polyethylene plastic—the kind used in many single-use items—into a high-value protein product.

That product, which the researchers call "bio-inspired spider silk" because of its similarity to the silk spiders use to spin their webs, has applications in textiles, cosmetics, and even medicine.

"Spider silk is nature's Kevlar," said Helen Zha, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and one of the RPI researchers leading the project. "It can be nearly as strong as steel under tension. However, it's six times less dense than steel, so it's very lightweight. As a bioplastic, it's stretchy, tough, nontoxic, and biodegradable."

All those attributes make it a great material for a future where renewable resources and avoidance of persistent plastic pollution are the norm, Zha said.

Polyethylene plastic, found in products such as plastic bags, water bottles, and food packaging, is the biggest contributor to plastic pollution globally and can take upward of 1,000 years to degrade naturally. Only a small portion of polyethylene plastic is recycled, so the bacteria used in the study could help "upcycle" some of the remaining waste.

upstart writes:

The British claim to know a thing or two when it comes to making a good cup of tea:

The beverage is a cultural institution in the UK, where an estimated 100 million cups are drunk every day.

But now a scientist based more than 3,000 miles away in the US claims to have found the secret to a perfect cuppa that many Brits would initially find absolutely absurd - adding salt.

Prof Michelle Francl's research has caused quite the stir in the UK, and has even drawn a diplomatic intervention from the US Embassy.

"We want to ensure the good people of the UK that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain's national drink is not official United States policy. And never will be," the embassy said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

[...] It turns out that it is not a new idea - the ingredient is even mentioned in eighth century Chinese manuscripts, which Prof Francl analysed to perfect her recipe.

"What is new is our understanding of it as chemists," Prof Francl said.

She explains that salt acts as a blocker to the receptor which makes tea taste bitter, especially when it has been stewed.

By adding a pinch of table salt - an undetectable amount - you will counteract the bitterness of the drink.

"It is not like adding sugar. I think people are afraid they will be able to taste the salt."

She urges tea-loving Brits to have an open mind before pre-judging her research, which she has documented in her new book Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

"It is okay to experiment," she says. "I did experiments in my kitchen for this - channel your inner scientist."

upstart writes:

How does a legacy test account grant access to read every Office 365 account?

The hackers who recently broke into Microsoft's network and monitored top executives' email for two months did so by gaining access to an aging test account with administrative privileges, a major gaffe on the company's part, a researcher said.

The new detail was provided in vaguely worded language included in a post Microsoft published on Thursday. It expanded on a disclosure Microsoft published late last Friday. Russia-state hackers, Microsoft said, used a technique known as password spraying to exploit a weak credential for logging into a "legacy non-production test tenant account" that wasn't protected by multifactor authentication. From there, they somehow acquired the ability to access email accounts that belonged to senior executives and employees working in security and legal teams. A "pretty big config error"

In Thursday's post updating customers on findings from its ongoing investigation, Microsoft provided more details on how the hackers achieved this monumental escalation of access. The hackers, part of a group Microsoft tracks as Midnight Blizzard, gained persistent access to the privileged email accounts by abusing the OAuth authorization protcol, which is used industry-wide to allow an array of apps to access resources on a network. After compromising the test tenant, Midnight Blizzard used it to create a malicious app and assign it rights to access every email address on Microsoft's Office 365 email service.

[...] Kevin Beaumont—a researcher and security professional with decades of experience, including a stint working for Microsoft—pointed out on Mastodon that the only way for an account to assign the all-powerful full_access_as_app role to an OAuth app is for the account to have administrator privileges. "Somebody," he said, "made a pretty big config error in production."

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240124132830.htm

Add a dash of creamer to your morning coffee, and clouds of white liquid will swirl around your cup. But give it a few seconds, and those swirls will disappear, leaving you with an ordinary mug of brown liquid.

Something similar happens in quantum computer chips -- devices that tap into the strange properties of the universe at its smallest scales -- where information can quickly jumble up, limiting the memory capabilities of these tools.

That doesn't have to be the case, said Rahul Nandkishore, associate professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In a new coup for theoretical physics, he and his colleagues have used math to show that scientists could create, essentially, a scenario where the milk and coffee never mix -- no matter how hard you stir them.

The group's findings may lead to new advances in quantum computer chips, potentially providing engineers with new ways to store information in incredibly tiny objects.

"Think of the initial swirling patterns that appear when you add cream to your morning coffee," said Nandkishore, senior author of the new study. "Imagine if these patterns continued to swirl and dance no matter how long you watched."

Researchers still need to run experiments in the lab to make sure that these never-ending swirls really are possible. But the group's results are a major step forward for physicists seeking to create materials that remain out of balance, or equilibrium, for long periods of time -- a pursuit known as "ergodicity breaking."

The team's findings appeared this week in the latest issue of Physical Review Letters.

Journal Reference:

David T. Stephen, Oliver Hart, Rahul M. Nandkishore. Ergodicity Breaking Provably Robust to Arbitrary Perturbations. Physical Review Letters, 2024; 132 (4) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.040401

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Recently, Sam Altman commented at Davos that future AI depends on energy breakthrough, in this article I would like to expand on this concept and explore how AI would revolutionize our economy:

AI tokens, distinct from cryptocurrency tokens, are fundamental textual units used in ChatGPT and similar language models. These tokens can be conceptualized as fragments of words. In the language model's processing, inputs are segmented into these tokens. AI tokens are crucial in determining the pricing models for the usage of core AI technologies.

This post explores the concept of "tokenomy," a term coined to describe the role of AI tokens, such as those in ChatGPT, as a central unit of exchange in a society increasingly intertwined with AI. These tokens are central to a future where AI permeates all aspects of life, from enhancing personal assistant functions to optimizing urban traffic and essential services. The rapid progress in generative AI technologies is transforming what once seemed purely speculative into tangible reality.

We examine the significant influence that AI is expected to have on our economic frameworks, guiding us towards a 'tokenomy' – an economy fundamentally driven and characterized by AI tokens.

The author goes on to discuss using AI tokens as currency, measuring economic efficiency FLOPs per joule, and how the influence and power that companies owning the Foundation Model could equal or even surpass that of central banks. He concludes:

The concentration of such immense control and influence in a handful of corporations raises significant questions about economic sovereignty, market dynamics, and the need for robust regulatory frameworks to ensure fair and equitable AI access and to prevent the monopolistic control of critical AI infrastructure.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Senescent cells accumulate as we age. CAR T cells can be programmed to seek them out and destroy them:

CSHL scientists have found a way to reprogram T cells to fight aging. After using them to eliminate specific cells in mice, the scientists discovered they lived healthier lives and didn't develop aging-associated conditions like obesity and diabetes. Just one dose provided young mice with lifelong benefits and rejuvenated older mice.

The fountain of youth has eluded explorers for ages. It turns out the magic anti-aging elixir might have been inside us all along.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Assistant Professor Corina Amor Vegas and colleagues have discovered that T cells can be reprogrammed to fight aging, so to speak. Given the right set of genetic modifications, these white blood cells can attack another group of cells known as senescent cells. These cells are thought to be responsible for many of the diseases we grapple with later in life.

Senescent cells are those that stop replicating. As we age, they build up in our bodies, resulting in harmful inflammation. While several drugs currently exist that can eliminate these cells, many must be taken repeatedly over time.

As an alternative, Amor Vegas and colleagues turned to a "living" drug called CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cells. They discovered CAR T cells could be manipulated to eliminate senescent cells in mice. As a result, the mice ended up living healthier lives. They had lower body weight, improved metabolism and glucose tolerance, and increased physical activity. All benefits came without any tissue damage or toxicity. Amor Vegas says:

"If we give it to aged mice, they rejuvenate. If we give it to young mice, they age slower. No other therapy right now can do this."

upstart writes:

Taylor Swift deepfakes spark calls in Congress for new legislation:

Deepfakes use artificial intelligence (AI) to make a video of someone by manipulating their face or body. A study in 2023 found that there has been a 550% rise in the creation of doctored images since 2019, fuelled by the emergence of AI.

US Representative Joe Morelle called the spread of the pictures "appalling".

In a statement, X said it was "actively removing" the images and taking "appropriate actions" against the accounts involved in spreading them.

It added: "We're closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed." While many of the images appear to have been removed at the time of publication, one photo of Swift was viewed a reported 47 million times before being taken down.

[...] There are currently no federal laws against the sharing or creation of deepfake images, though there have been moves at state level to tackle the issue.

In the UK, the sharing of deepfake pornography became illegal as part of its Online Safety Act in 2023.

Original Submission

California Bill Calls for Tech to Make New Cars Unable to Speed

owl writes:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a46554218/new-car-regulated-speed-limit-california-bill/

Someday in the not too distant future, it might no longer be possible to drive a brand-new car faster than 80 mph in California. That's because state senator Scott Wiener earlier this week proposed a new bill that aims to prevent certain new vehicles from going more than 10 mph over the speed limit. In California, the maximum posted speed limit is 70 mph, meaning anything north of 80 mph would be off limits.

The Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets—or SAFER California Streets, for short—is a package of bills that includes SB 961 that was published Tuesday, which essentially calls for speed governors on new cars and trucks built or sold in California starting with the 2027 model year. These vehicles would be required to have an "intelligent speed limiter system" that electronically prevents the driver from speeding above the aforementioned threshold.

Stopping Speeding With Tech

Snotnose writes:

California senator Scott Wiener (D) wants to require new cars to have tech to prevent cars from speeding.

A California lawmaker announced a bill Wednesday that would require new passenger vehicles and large trucks sold in California to be equipped with technology that would prevent them from going more than 10 miles an hour above the speed limit.

If passed, Senate Bill 961 would require vehicles, beginning with model year 2027, that are manufactured or sold in California to come with a speed governor, also known as an intelligent speed limiter. It would make California the first state in the nation to mandate this technology.

These devices match a vehicle's global positioning system (GPS) location with a database of speed limits to figure out what speed a vehicle should be traveling at during any given time. They also sometimes use onboard cameras to read speed limit signs. With this information, the devices are then able to prevent the driver from speeding more than 10 miles an hour above the speed limit.

Drivers would be able to temporarily override the speed governor device, according to the proposal.

The requirement for speed governors would not apply to emergency vehicles.

I for one can't wait for the hackers to change the database so freeway speed limits are 15 MPH.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2