SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Massive Reserve of Helium Found by Minnesota Exploratory Drill, Likely the Biggest Find Ever in North America:

A new find of underground helium in Minnesota could turn out to be one of the largest in the world, Minneapolis's WCCO-TV reported Thursday. The drill site, just outside Babbitt in the northeastern part of the state, took about a month from initially breaking ground to get to a depth of 2,200 feet.

What it found there, Pulsar Helium CEO Thomas Abraham-James called "a dream." "There was a lot of screaming, a lot of hugging and high fives. It's nice to know the efforts all worked out and we pulled it off," Abraham-James told WCCO.

He said that the concentration of helium sampled was 12.4 percent — about 30 times what the outlet referred to as "the industry standard," and higher even than the company had forecast. "12.4% is just a dream," the CEO told the outlet. "It's perfect."

Further analysis remains to be done, of course, but the finding confirmed work completed in 2011 that indicated the presence of helium deep under the surface, the Duluth News Tribune reported.

Companies generally pursue helium concentrations above 0.3 percent that they can locate, the outlet noted. "So now the real hard begins to find out what is it truly that we have and the size of the prize," Abraham-James told the News Tribune.

Studying the size of the find and the feasibility of a full-sized mining operation could take up to a year, the company told WCCO. The Topez Project, as the drill site is called, was initially planned to go to a depth of 2,250 feet, but had to stop earlier than expected because of "abnormally warm temperatures and looming road weight restrictions," according to the paper.

anubi writes:

Looks like VISA credit card has developed a way of storing biometric data on our cellphones, then use that as an authenticator.

https://reclaimthenet.org/visa-applies-for-biometric-authentication-patent

What could possibly go wrong here?

I guess I am really leery of cellphone security and app resilience. Is it so complex that it's too finicky to use? Does it require a good internet connection to work? ( Can you hear me now? ), or maybe it's based on QR codes?

I have been wrestling with a fast-food burger app over login issues. I am quite jaded over trusting anything I have to log on to to get a fresh timeout permission. For this, all I am risking is the cost of a trip to the restaurant vs. the liklihood the coupon offer will still work when I present at the register. ( The Wendy's Story already discussed here ).

How much impact would a denial-of-service cause for you? How robust is this technology. I've already seen the most expensive cars shut down for the most trivial crap. That's why I drive an old one made before their design became enshittified.

Cut n paste snippets below.

taylorvich writes:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-40hz-sensory-gamma-rhythm-amyloid.html

Studies at MIT and elsewhere are producing mounting evidence that light flickering and sound clicking at the gamma brain rhythm frequency of 40 Hz can reduce Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression and treat symptoms in human volunteers as well as lab mice.

In a new study in Nature using a mouse model of the disease, researchers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory of MIT reveal a key mechanism that may contribute to these beneficial effects: clearance of amyloid proteins, a hallmark of AD pathology, via the brain's glymphatic system, a recently discovered "plumbing" network parallel to the brain's blood vessels.

"Ever since we published our first results in 2016, people have asked me how does it work? Why 40 Hz? Why not some other frequency?" said study senior author Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience and director of The Picower Institute and MIT's Aging Brain Initiative.

"These are indeed very important questions we have worked very hard in the lab to address."

The new paper describes a series of experiments, led by Mitch Murdock when he was a Brain and Cognitive Sciences doctoral student at MIT, showing that when sensory gamma stimulation increases 40 Hz power and synchrony in the brains of mice, that prompts a particular type of neuron to release peptides.

The study results further suggest that those short protein signals then drive specific processes that promote increased amyloid clearance via the glymphatic system.

"We do not yet have a linear map of the exact sequence of events that occurs," said Murdock, who was jointly supervised by Tsai and co-author and collaborator Ed Boyden, Y. Eva Tan Professor of Neurotechnology at MIT, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and an affiliate member of The Picower Institute. "But the findings in our experiments support this clearance pathway through the major glymphatic routes."

Journal Reference:
Li-Huei Tsai, Multisensory gamma stimulation promotes glymphatic clearance of amyloid, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07132-6.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/02/dark-forces-remastered-makes-a-classic-star-wars-shooter-feel-fast-and-fluid/

I remember Dark Forces, or Star Wars: Doom, as a slog. Running a demo of the 1995 game on a Gateway system with an Intel 486DX at 33 MHz, I trudged through seemingly endless gray hallways. I shot at a steady trickle of Stormtroopers with one of their own (intentionally) semi-accurate blaster rifles. After a while, I would ask myself a pertinent, era-specific question: Why was I playing this low-energy nostalgia trip instead of actual Doom?
[...]
Nightdive Studios continues its streak of providing spiffed-up but eminently faithful remasters of classic titles with Dark Forces Remastered. The studio's leaders told Ars last year that their goal was games that "play the way you remember them playing. Not the way they actually did on your 486 [computer], but in an evocative manner." For me, Dark Forces Remastered feels far, far better than I remember, and so I've gotten a chance to absorb a lot more of the world it's trying to evoke.
[...]
The little voice stings—"Stop!" "You're not authorized!"—were a delight, if often cut short by the quick dispatching of their speaker. For the first few levels, I felt like the Rebellion could have destroyed five Death Stars in just two movies if they had a few more Kyles like me. But Dark Forces does ramp up as you go on.

All the same cheat codes from the original game work—Nightdive even gives you places to type them in and then activate them in menus—and I had to lean on a couple level skips and resupplies to get through the first seven levels.
[...]
There are new lighting effects, much nicer menus and options, gamepad support (including rumble), and polished cutscenes, in addition to the gameplay that now tilts a bit more toward Motörhead than Rush in speed and feel. But, really, what sells Dark Forces Remastered is the game beneath the upgrades. If you have any interest in hopping on Jabba the Hutt's barge again, this is the way to do it.

Nostalgia, guaranteed to cause "irregular heartbeat, fever, and [...] death". Okay, this isn't the 17th century, so none of those apply.
We once thought nostalgia was a disease, but it might be key to our survival

I've tried to replay Dark Forces II (the sequel to the game mentioned in the article) and the experience was pretty terrible. Game design has really advanced since those dark ages and you really feel it on most older titles. For another example, the nostalgia of Wing Commander is real. However, the interface is beyond atrocious.

[Ed.: Are there any games you think are worth remastering, or is it that you can't compete with nostalgia and the past is best left in the past? --hubie]

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

HP launched a subscription service today that rents people a printer, allots them a specific amount of printed pages, and sends them ink for a monthly fee. HP is framing its service as a way to simplify printing for families and small businesses, but the deal also comes with monitoring and a years-long commitment.

Prices range from $6.99 per month for a plan that includes an HP Envy printer (the current model is the 6020e) and 20 printed pages. The priciest plan includes an HP OfficeJet Pro rental and 700 printed pages for $35.99 per month.
[...]
HP calls this an All-In-Plan; if you subscribe, the tech company will be all in on your printing activities.

One of the most perturbing aspects of the subscription plan is that it requires subscribers to keep their printers connected to the Internet. In general, some users avoid connecting their printer to the Internet because it's the type of device that functions fine without web access.

A web connection can also concern users about security or HP-issued firmware updates that make printers stop functioning with non-HP ink.

But HP enforces an Internet connection by having its TOS also state that HP may disrupt the service—and continue to charge you for it—if your printer's not online.
[...]
The All-In-Plan privacy policy also says that HP may "transfer information about you to advertising partners" so that they can "recognize your devices," perform targeted advertising, and, potentially, "combine information about you with information from other companies in data sharing cooperatives" that HP participates in. The policy says that users can opt out of sharing personal data.

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-mm-fish-decibel-communicate-turbid.html

An international research team, along with Senckenberg scientist Dr. Ralf Britz, has studied Danionella cerebrum, a small species of fish with a length of no more than 12 millimeters. Despite its diminutive size, the fish can produce sounds close to its body of over 140 decibels—comparable to a jet engine during take-off in 100 meter distance.

In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers show that the tiny, translucent fish possess a special sound-generating apparatus. The animals presumably use the sounds to communicate with each other in turbid waters.

The snapping shrimp can generate a popping sound of up to 250 decibels with its claws. The mating calls of the flightless kakapo reach 130 decibels, and elephants can produce noise of up to 125 decibels with their trunks.

"Fishes, on the other hand, are generally considered to be rather quiet members of the animal kingdom," explains Dr. Ralf Britz of the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden. "However, there are certain fish species that can be surprisingly loud. For example, the male plainfin midshipman fish attracts its females with an audible vibrato of around 100 hertz and 130 decibels."

In their current study, Britz and an international research team led by Benjamin Judkewitz from Charité in Berlin examined the fish species Danionella cerebrum, which only reaches a length of about 12 millimeters.

"This tiny fish can produce sounds of over 140 decibels at a distance of 10 to 12 millimeters—this is comparable to the noise a human perceives of an airplane during take-off at a distance of 100 meter and quite unusual for an animal of such diminutive size. We tried to understand how the fish manages this and what mechanisms are responsible for this achievement," explains the ichthyologist from Dresden.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/02/emulation-community-expresses-defiance-in-wake-of-nintendos-yuzu-lawsuit/

Nintendo's recent lawsuit against Switch emulator maker Yuzu seems written like it was designed to strike fear into the heart of the entire emulation community. But despite legal arguments that sometimes cut at the very idea of emulation itself, members of the emulation development community I talked to didn't seem very worried about coming under a Yuzu-style legal threat from Nintendo or other console makers. Indeed, those developers told me they've long taken numerous precautions against that very outcome and said they feel they have good reasons to believe they can avoid Yuzu's fate.
[...]
"This lawsuit is not introducing any new element that people in the emulation community have not known of for a long time," said Parsifal, a hobbyist developer who has written emulators for the Apple II, Space Invaders, and the CHIP-8 virtual machine. "Emulation is fine as long as you don't infringe on copyright and trademarks."
[...]
And others feel operating internationally protects them from the worst of the DMCA and other US copyright laws. "I have written an NES emulator and I am working on a Game Boy emulator... anyway I'm not a US citizen and Nintendo can kiss my ass," said emulator developer ZJoyKiller, who didn't provide his specific country of residence.
[...]
Chief among those differences is the fact that Yuzu emulates a Switch console that is still actively selling millions of hardware and software units every year. Most current emulator development focuses on older, discontinued consoles that the developers I talked to seemed convinced were much less liable to draw legal fire.

Freeman writes:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240216135820.htm

Penn Engineers have developed a new chip that uses light waves, rather than electricity, to perform the complex math essential to training AI. The chip has the potential to radically accelerate the processing speed of computers while also reducing their energy consumption.

[...] The interaction of light waves with matter represents one possible avenue for developing computers that supersede the limitations of today's chips, which are essentially based on the same principles as chips from the earliest days of the computing revolution in the 1960s.

[...] Instead of using a silicon wafer of uniform height, explains Engheta, "you make the silicon thinner, say 150 nanometers," but only in specific regions. Those variations in height -- without the addition of any other materials -- provide a means of controlling the propagation of light through the chip, since the variations in height can be distributed to cause light to scatter in specific patterns, allowing the chip to perform mathematical calculations at the speed of light.

[...] this design is already ready for commercial applications, and could potentially be adapted for use in graphics processing units (GPUs), the demand for which has skyrocketed with the widespread interest in developing new AI systems. "They can adopt the Silicon Photonics platform as an add-on," says Aflatouni, "and then you could speed up training and classification."

Original Source: New Chip Opens Door to AI Computing at Light Speed
Linked Paper from Original Source: Inverse-designed low-index-contrast structures on a silicon photonics platform for vector–matrix multiplication
Arxiv link to original paper: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2302.00793

Original Submission

Username writes:

The German frigate Hessen, which was deployed to the Red Sea as part of an EU mission, mistakenly fired on an American drone earlier this week, the German Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

Berlin had previously disclosed the Hessen's first successful engagement, in which the vessel shot down two Houthi drones within 15 minutes of one another on Tuesday.

On Monday evening, however, the frigate used two SM-2 missiles to target an unidentified drone, but both failed to hit the target, according to German Defense Ministry spokesman Michael Stempfle.

"The case was resolved in the sense that it was not a hostile drone, which only became clear afterwards," Stempfle said.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius confirmed Stempfle's statement while visiting a military base in Bavaria on Wednesday evening, telling reporters that there had been an incident "in which shots were fired, but no one was hit."

According to the German military blog Augen geradeaus, the US-made missiles failed for "technical reasons," which prompted the Hessen to use its 76mm main gun to engage the Houthi drones on Tuesday. The German warship then used short-range RAM missiles to shoot down another Houthi drone on Wednesday morning.

taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/science/glowing-jellyfish-protein-fingerprint-lifting/

An experimental new forensic spray allows latent fingerprints to be made visible in just 10 seconds, plus it doesn't require the use of any messy powders. What it does incorporate, however, is a glowing protein that's obtained from jellyfish.

Current methods of lifting fingerprints from crime scenes utilize fine powders or fuming chemical reagents. In both cases, obtaining a usable print takes at least a few minutes. Additionally, compounds in the powders or reagents may damage DNA in the sweat or skin oil that makes up the print.

Scientists from Britain's University of Bath and China's Shanghai Normal University have now come up with an alternative, in the form of the new non-toxic, water-soluble spray.

As soon as the spray has been applied to a surface, the positively-charged dye molecules bind with negatively-charged fatty or amino acid molecules in the fingerprint sweat or oil. The dye molecules are then "locked in place" along all the telltale whorls and ridges of the print.

Both dyes are derived from a substance produced by jellyfish, called Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). That protein is already widely used in scientific studies to visualize biological processes, without affecting those processes. It likewise doesn't affect the DNA which may be present in fingerprints.

When exposed to blue light, those molecules fluoresce in their yellow or red color within no more than 10 seconds. A smartphone camera can then be used to record their images for subsequent reference.

There are actually two versions of it containing two different dyes, namely LFP-Yellow and LFP-Red. Users choose one or the other depending on the color of the surface from which they're lifting prints, so that the prints really stand out against their background when made visible.

Journal: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, 146, 3, 2072–2079. Publication Date:January 8, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.3c11277

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/sbf-asks-for-5-year-prison-sentence-calls-100-year-recommendation-grotesque/

Convicted FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded for a lenient prison sentence in a court filing yesterday, saying that he isn't motivated by greed and "is already being punished."

Bankman-Fried requested a sentence of 63 to 78 months, or 5.25 to 6.5 years. Because of "Sam's charitable works and demonstrated commitment to others, a sentence that returns Sam promptly to a productive role in society would be sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply with the purposes of sentencing," the court filing said.

[...] The filing urged the court to "reject the PSR's barbaric proposal" of 100 years, saying that such sentences should only be for "heinous conduct" like terrorism and child sexual abuse.

The founder and ex-CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven charges with a combined maximum sentence of 110 years after a monthlong trial in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The charges included wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering.

[...] Kaplan said before the trial that SBF "could be looking at a very long sentence" if convicted. After the conviction, law professors were quoted as saying that Bankman-Fried's sentence was likely to be at least 20 or 25 years and conceivably as much as 50 years.

[...] "Sam was not predatory. He did not set out to prey on the elderly, the unsophisticated, or implement a plan to poach pension assets. His conduct falls far lower on the culpability scale," the filing said. He also "never intended to cause loss for the purpose of his own personal gain," his legal team said.

Bankman-Fried's conduct should be characterized as "risk shifting," the filing said. Risk-shifting "offenses are not specifically intended to cause loss. Instead, they shift the risk of any potential loss from the defendant (or from others involved in the criminal undertaking) to a third party, such as the victim of the offense."

According to Bankman-Fried's legal team, this makes his offenses similar in severity to "false statements for the purpose of obtaining a bank loan that is intended to be repaid. Such offenses are generally less culpable than those where loss is specifically intended."

[...] Bankman-Fried's sentencing submission was accompanied by letters of support from his parents and others. His mother, Barbara Fried, wrote that "Sam is the first person we would call if we needed an angel of mercy in a pinch," and that he "lived an exemplary life in every way prior to the events that brought FTX down."

bmimatt writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/malicious-ai-models-on-hugging-face-backdoor-users-machines/

At least 100 instances of malicious AI ML models were found on the Hugging Face platform, some of which can execute code on the victim's machine, giving attackers a persistent backdoor.

Hugging Face is a tech firm engaged in artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML), providing a platform where communities can collaborate and share models, datasets, and complete applications.

JFrog's security team found that roughly a hundred models hosted on the platform feature malicious functionality, posing a significant risk of data breaches and espionage attacks.

This happens despite Hugging Face's security measures, including malware, pickle, and secrets scanning, and scrutinizing the models' functionality to discover behaviors like unsafe deserialization.

[...] The analysts deployed a HoneyPot to attract and analyze the activity to determine the operators' real intentions but were unable to capture any commands during the period of the established connectivity (in one day).

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/fuel_pump_leap_year_bug/

Today is February 29, an unusual day in that it is added to the common 28 in years that are multiples of four to keep the calendar in sync with the astronomical year.

This kludge prevents our seasons from drifting out of whack, but it presents a problem for computers and software, which have to be programmed to account for the extra day to avoid error conditions and incorrect data.

We are all using a computer of one sort or another to read this and hopefully nothing has caught fire, yet every leap year, something somewhere falls over hard.

In New Zealand, which has a head start on most of the world, it was payment systems at fuel pumps that have just staggered back to their feet after a nationwide outage lasting more than ten hours.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

OpenAI has asked a federal judge to dismiss parts of the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against it, arguing that the newspaper "hacked" its chatbot ChatGPT and other artificial-intelligence systems to generate misleading evidence for the case:

OpenAI said in a filing in Manhattan federal court on Monday that the Times caused the technology to reproduce its material through "deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI's terms of use."

"The allegations in the Times's complaint do not meet its famously rigorous journalistic standards," OpenAI said. "The truth, which will come out in the course of this case, is that the Times paid someone to hack OpenAI's products."

OpenAI did not name the "hired gun" who it said the Times used to manipulate its systems and did not accuse the newspaper of breaking any anti-hacking laws.

[...] Courts have not yet addressed the key question of whether AI training qualifies as fair use under copyright law. So far, judges have dismissed some infringement claims over the output of generative AI systems based on a lack of evidence that AI-created content resembles copyrighted works.

Also at The Guardian, MSN and Forbes.

Previously:

• New York Times Sues Microsoft, ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Over Copyright Infringement
• Report: Potential NYT lawsuit could force OpenAI to wipe ChatGPT and start over
• Why the New York Times Might Win its Copyright Lawsuit Against OpenAI
• AI Threatens to Crush News Organizations. Lawmakers Signal Change Is Ahead

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Evolution has produced a wondrously diverse variety of lifeforms here on Earth. It just so happens that talking primates with opposable thumbs rose to the top and are building a spacefaring civilization. And we're land-dwellers. But what about other planets? If the dominant species on an ocean world builds a technological civilization of some sort, would they be able to escape their ocean home and explore space?

A new article in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society examines the idea of civilizations on other worlds and the factors that govern their ability to explore their solar systems. Its title is "Introducing the Exoplanet Escape Factor and the Fishbowl Worlds (Two conceptual tools for the search of extra-terrestrial civilizations)." The sole author is Elio Quiroga, a professor at the Universidad del Atlántico Medio in Spain.

We have no way of knowing if other Extraterrestrial Intelligences (ETIs) exist or not. There's at least some possibility that other civilizations exist, and we're certainly in no position to say for sure that they don't. The Drake Equation is one of the tools we use to talk about the existence of ETIs. It's a kind of structured thought experiment in the form of an equation that allows us to estimate the existence of other active, communicative ETIs. Some of the variables in the Drake Equation (DE) are the star formation rate, the number of planets around those stars, and the fraction of planets that could form life and on which life could evolve to become an ETI.

In his new research article, Quiroga comes up with two new concepts that feed into the DE: the Exoplanet Escape Factor and Fishbowl worlds.

[...] Quiroga's Exoplanet Escape Factor (Fex) can help us imagine what kinds of worlds could host ETIs. It can help us anticipate the factors that prevent or at least inhibit space travel, and it brings more complexity into the Drake Equation. It leads us to the idea of Fishbowl Worlds, inescapable planets that could keep a civilization planet-bound forever.

Without the ability to ever escape their planet and explore their solar systems, and without the ability to communicate beyond their worlds, could entire civilizations rise and fall without ever knowing the Universe they were a part of? Could it happen right under our noses, so to speak, and we'd never know ?

[Source]: Universe Today

[Also Covered By]: Phys.Org

An interesting conjecture worth pondering about !!

Original Submission