Join our Folding@Home team:
Main F@H site
Our team page
Support us: Subscribe Here
and buy SoylentNews Swag
We always have a place for talented people, visit the Get Involved section on the wiki to see how you can make SoylentNews better.
Oregon is now the fourth state in the country to enact a "right to repair" law to make it easier for consumers and independent shops to fix electronic gear. With Gov. Tina Kotek's signing of Senate Bill 1596 on Thursday, manufacturers will be required to offer any necessary documentation, parts, tools or any device needed to repair electronic equipment at a "fair cost" and on "reasonable" terms.
The bill takes effect in January. It was championed by state Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, who first started pushing for the legislation in 2021. The minority of lawmakers who opposed the bill were Republican. The bill had wide support from small businesses and consumer advocates, including OSPIRG, a statewide public interest group. Only one major manufacturer opposed the bill – Apple. An Apple representative who testified against the bill said it would undermine the company's security efforts, a claim lawmakers questioned.
[...] Besides Oregon, Minnesota, New York and California have right to repair laws on technology. Massachusetts has approved a right to repair law on vehicles and Colorado has adopted one for wheelchairs and another for farmers.
By Lester Black / March 27, 2024
https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/calif-cops-forced-to-return-800k-in-cannabis-19370034.php
Michael Moussalli, the owner of Se7enLeaf, said that the cannabis raid has nearly destroyed his business.
American police have been seizing cannabis for decades, but the tables were turned last week, when law enforcement in a California city was forced to return hundreds of pounds of cannabis to a pot distributor.
Costa Mesa police officers returned the massive shipment of cannabis last week to Se7enLeaf, a cannabis distributor in the city, according to the Los Angeles Times. The authorities had accused the company of illegally operating and seized the cannabis in September of last year.
Michael Moussalli, the owner of Se7enLeaf, told SFGATE that he was happy to get his cannabis back after his attorneys explained he was operating legally, but he still blamed the city for taking it in the first place and delaying its return.
"The sad thing is once all this info was shared, there was no apologies. There was only more aggression," Moussalli said, referencing the city's attempt to further delay the return of the products. "The police were not happy that no charges were filed. The police were not happy that the product was being returned."
Vlogger Jeff Geerling wanted to clear up just what might happen if he touched a 6kW AM transmitter's antenna.
IMPORTANT: Do not attempt to replicate our experiment. It is meant to demonstrate the dangers of RF, and there are a number of radio engineers, landscaping professionals, and other personnel who have written RF safety rules with their blood (or, in most cases, a permanent and painful RF burn that goes through the inside of their body). Don't touch radio towers—AM or otherwise.
[...] You really should watch the video for the full effect, though. Pictures can't convey what happens.
I predicted the hot dog would either explode, or do pretty much nothing. My Dad imagined there would be some arcing.
Well, he was right—the hot dog wound up being a very effective loudspeaker, transmitting the audible sound with pretty high fidelity, at a volume around that of a yelling human, maybe 80-100 dBa. (Next time we attempt such an experiment, we may bring a dB meter and spectrum analyzer to judge the sound reproduction capabilities of different meats1).
The bottom line is that experts recommend not messing with live towers. The fence is there for a reason.
The hosting provider Vultr had tried to quietly change its Terms of Service (TOS) to try to pull the same trick which Microsoft has pulled with its GitHub project and hope that no one would notice. That is to say they are trying to grab "perpetual, irrevocable" license to use content hosted there in any way, including modifying it and commercializing it "for purposes of providing the Services to you." They've since backpedaled — but only a little. Most the reaction from Vultr regarding the negative push back has been spin.
I suppose the hip kids would say this is enshittification, but it’s certainly a betrayal.
According to their new Terms of Service:
You hereby grant to Vultr a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid-up, worldwide license (including the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to use, reproduce, process, adapt, publicly perform, publicly display, modify, prepare derivative works, publish, transmit and distribute each of your User Content, or any portion thereof, in any form, medium or distribution method now known or hereafter existing, known or developed, and otherwise use and commercialize the User Content in any way that Vultr deems appropriate, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties, for purposes of providing the Services to you.
This is unacceptable. No other hosting company does this.
– Vultr Just Betrayed Us, Michael W Lucas' blog.
And
This is very similar to changes that Github made to their TOS in 2017. Since then, Github has been rebranded as "The world's leading AI-powered developer platform". The language in their TOS now clearly lets them use content stored in Github for training AI. (Probably this is their second line of defense if the current attempt to legitimise copyright laundering via generative AI fails.)
Vultr is currently in damage control mode, accusing their concerned customers of spreading "conspiracy theories" (-- founder David Aninowsky) and updating the TOS to remove some of the problem language. Although it still allows them to "make derivative works", so could still allow their AI division to scrape VPS images for training data.
– the vulture in the coal mine, Joey Hess' blog.
Hosting providers seem to be adding a new disaster to deal with.
Previously:
(2022) Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!
https://medium.com/@rxseger/electronic-project-kits-hands-on-with-a-vintage-160-in-1-eea39e6193f4
It is a Medium post, so here's an archive link in case the original goes missing: https://archive.is/QV7cr
In this day and age with the bewildering availability of electronics readily available, deciding on a project to embark on can be paralyzing. This sentiment was best summed up recently in this Hacker News comment on an article announcing the CHIP Pro:
I have the chip, esp8266, rpi, teensies, trinkets, arduinos... I studied electronics principles and built various circuits.. yet I have no idea what I can practically use these devices for in my life. They all sit in a box and I have a hard time justifying buying more of them.
See also: the paradox of choice, analysis paralysis, etc. Decades ago, all-in-one electronic project kits were popular. Shown above is the Science Fair 160-in-1 Electronic Project Kit, #28–258 (image source: eBay), © 1982.
With a modest number of components, 160 projects could easily be built by inserting wires into the spring terminals connected to each component. An included manual guided you through each of the projects, introducing new concepts and providing structure, while still offering some latitude of freedom to tinker — but, crucially, not the nearly-infinite amount of latitude available on modern electronic marketplaces today. You are constrained by the components in the kit (unless you add your own), and the included project documentation (unless you invent your own), a finite possibility.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
AIxCC is the two-year competition that DARPA announced last summer at Black Hat which challenges teams to build AI-based tools that automatically secure code used in critical infrastructure.
The new government agency partner is the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an independent research entity within the US National Institutes of Health.
By joining forces with the Pentagon's research arm, ARPA-H aims to promote the development of AI-based tech that can find and fix critical vulnerabilities in medical devices, biotech, and hospital IT systems, thus preventing destructive cyberattacks against life-saving equipment and facilities.
"Healthcare is both acutely being targeted, and it's been more and more targeted over the last few years," ARPA-H program manager Andrew Carney told The Register. "It's also uniquely sensitive to disruptions compared to many other critical infrastructure sectors."
[...] Most of America witnessed this first hand over the past month as a ransomware infection shuttered Change Healthcare's IT systems in February, knocking many pharmacies offline and preventing patients from receiving medication and other care.
"While the repercussions of this incident have been primarily – though not wholly – financial, what keeps me up at night is the possibility of a similar widespread attack directly affecting patient care and safety," US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) said earlier this month.
[...] This is where DARPA, partnering with APRA-H, comes into play to boost AI-enabled technology to secure healthcare systems — and sweeten the monetary rewards.
Competing teams receive challenges based on real-world software used in critical infrastructure systems. Bringing on APRA-H as a partner will help ensure the competition addresses critical flaws in healthcare. Plus, the research agency has committed an additional $20 million in rewards for the contest.
[...] While Carney can't give away too much about what the contests will involve, one that's already been announced is the Linux kernel challenge project [PDF]. "We know that the Linux operating system powers a lot of the devices and systems in many – if not all – of our critical infrastructure sectors," he said.
This example challenge reintroduces a real-life vulnerability, CVE-2021-43267, in the Linux kernel's Transparent Inter Process Communication (TIPC) subsystem, which allows communication across clusters on a network. The challenge vulnerability is a heap-based buffer overflow flaw.
"And successes that we have against that challenge are implicitly very representative of the software that we would need to secure in these sectors at large," Carney said.
"And then specific to healthcare, if we start looking at medical devices, 60 percent of all medical devices run some flavor of Linux operating system," he added. "So once again, as competitors find and fix vulnerabilities in that example challenge, that translates into real-world safety, and better defended, safer systems."
Ancient brains archive created as Oxford boffins challenge historic theory:
Oxford University researchers have created a new archive of ancient human brains.
The record of ancient brains highlights the different environments they can be saved in, ranging from the frozen Arctic to deserts.
The collection of shrunken, discoloured samples was found preserved in all manner of people including Egyptian and Korean royalty as well as explorers and victims of war.
It gives researchers the chance to analyse the early evolution of humans.
Many of the brains were up to 12,000 years old and found in records dating back to the mid-17th century.
The ancient human brains were found across a range of different sites, including the shores of a lakebed in Stone Age Sweden and the depths of an Iranian salt mine around 500 BC.
Experts say preservation of soft tissue such as brains is relatively rare in the geological record.
[...] The findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, bring together the records of more than 4,000 preserved human brains from some two hundred sources, across six continents.
The analyses revealed patterns in the environmental conditions associated with different modes of preservation through time.
More than 1,300 of the human brains were the only soft tissues preserved, prompting questions as to why the brain may persist when other organs perish.
These brains also represent the oldest in the archive with several dating to the last Ice Age.
Alexandra Morton-Hayward, lead author of the study, said: "In the forensic field, it's well known that the brain is one of the first organs to decompose after death yet this huge archive clearly demonstrates that there are certain circumstances in which it survives.
"Whether those circumstances are environmental, or related to the brain's unique biochemistry, is the focus of our ongoing and future work.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
According to YouTube channel Bellular Warcraft, World of Warcraft currently has around 7.25 million subscribers. While the game appears to have recovered from the disaster following the Warlords of Draenor expansion almost 10 years ago, it remains far from its peak of 12 million in 2010 during Wrath of the Lich King.
Subscriptions had been declining steadily since Cataclysm in late 2010, when Draenor managed to boost them up to 10 million. Unfortunately, the spike was short-lived, and Blizzard soon confirmed that WoW had plummeted to 5.5 million subscribers – the last hard number the company ever released.
However, sources recently provided Bellular Warcraft with slides from the company's GDC 2024 postmortem, which included a graph showing WoW subscription growth since 2016. The only exact numbers on the chart are the years displayed on the X-axis, but comments from Blizzard over the years gave Bellular Warcraft just enough context to estimate the real figures.
An earnings report from the first quarter of 2017 mentioned that the 2016 expansion, Legion, slightly surpassed its immediate predecessor, Draenor. From there, Bellular Warcraft estimated that the game had around 5.8 million subscribers at that time. They arrived at the current number of 7.25 million by counting the chart's pixels upward from early 2017.
[...] After War for Azeroth sank subscriptions to approximately 4.07 million, Classic bounced them back to 8.27 million. Then, the ensuing pandemic likely helped sustain subscriber counts at a higher average compared to the earlier trend of peaks and troughs. However, the critically panned Shadowlands, which Blizzard's panel admitted was badly executed, led to a collapse to 4.5 million in 2022. Subscriptions then recovered somewhat leading to Dragonflight later that year, which missed Blizzard's projections.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
EU leaders have gathered today (22 March) to sign what they are calling a Quantum Pact that recognises the importance of advancing quantum computing technologies to enhance the bloc’s scientific and industrial competitiveness.
Quantum computing has been rapidly advancing with major breakthroughs taking place around the world. The emerging technology has potential to transform a range of sectors, including medicine, energy, communications, cybersecurity, space, defence, as well as climate and weather modelling.
“It will enable huge productivity gains, revitalise industry and open up new markets, applications and job opportunities,” said Thomas Skordas, deputy director-general responsible for communications networks, content and technology in the European Commission.
Skordas was filling in for EU commissioner Thierry Breton at the Shaping Europe’s Quantum Future conference held in Brussels, Belgium today. He describes the Quantum Pact as the EU’s attempt to make Europe the “Quantum Valley” of the world.
“Only by building on our strengths, by working together, by being ambitious, by targeting the whole spectrum of activities – research, industry, infrastructures, talent, external partnerships and more – can we transform Europe into the leading region globally for quantum excellence and innovation. Quantum will help us to challenge the boundaries of what is possible.”
[...] A declaration was first signed in December, setting the stage for cooperation, investment and innovation in quantum computing technologies in the EU and positioning it as a global leader in the space.
The pact today has been signed by 20 European countries: Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. Ireland has not signed the pact.
Last month, the EU and Canada announced intentions to boost their strategic digital partnership to address “new challenges in digital transformation” such as in the areas of AI, quantum science, semiconductors, public policy related to online platforms, secure international connectivity, cybersecurity and digital identity.
xz-utils are compromised and inject malicious code
= Debian:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2024/msg00057.html
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2024-3094Debian Security Advisory DSA-5649-1
[SECURITY] [DSA 5649-1] xz-utils security updatePackage : xz-utils
CVE ID : CVE-2024-3094Andres Freund discovered that the upstream source tarballs for xz-utils,
the XZ-format compression utilities, are compromised and inject
malicious code, at build time, into the resulting liblzma5 library.Right now no Debian stable versions are known to be affected.
Compromised packages were part of the Debian testing, unstable and
experimental distributions, with versions ranging from 5.5.1alpha-0.1
(uploaded on 2024-02-01), up to and including 5.6.1-1. The package has
been reverted to use the upstream 5.4.5 code, which we have versioned
5.6.1+really5.4.5-1.Users running Debian testing and unstable are urged to update the
xz-utils packages.For the detailed security status of xz-utils please refer to
its security tracker page at:
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/xz-utilsFurther information about Debian Security Advisories, how to apply
these updates to your system and frequently asked questions can be
found at: https://www.debian.org/security/Mailing list: debian-security-announce@lists.debian.org
= Red Hat:
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/urgent-security-alert-fedora-41-and-rawhide-users
"What distributions are affected by this malicious code?
Current investigation indicates that the packages are only present in Fedora 41 and Fedora Rawhide within the Red Hat community ecosystem.
No versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are affected.
We have reports and evidence of the injections successfully building in xz 5.6.x versions built for Debian unstable (Sid). Other distributions may also be affected. Users of other distributions should consult with their distributors for guidance."
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4
= OpenWall: (With more details at openwall link above)
"After observing a few odd symptoms around liblzma (part of the xz package) on
Debian sid installations over the last weeks (logins with ssh taking a lot of
CPU, valgrind errors) I figured out the answer:The upstream xz repository and the xz tarballs have been backdoored.
At first I thought this was a compromise of debian's package, but it turns out
to be upstream."
This camera captures 156.3 trillion frames per second:
Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels — equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying micro-events that come and go too quickly for today's most expensive scientific sensors.
SCARF has successfully captured ultrafast events like absorption in a semiconductor and the demagnetization of a metal alloy. The research could open new frontiers in areas as diverse as shock wave mechanics or developing more effective medicine.
Leading the research team was Professor Jinyang Liang of Canada's Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS). He's a globally recognized pioneer in ultrafast photography who built on his breakthroughs from a separate study six years ago. The current research was published in Nature, summarized in a press release from INRS and first reported on by Science Daily.
Professor Liang and company tailored their research as a fresh take on ultrafast cameras. Typically, these systems use a sequential approach: capture frames one at a time and piece them together to observe the objects in motion. But that approach has limitations. "For example, phenomena such as femtosecond laser ablation, shock-wave interaction with living cells, and optical chaos cannot be studied this way," Liang said.
The new camera builds on Liang's previous research to upend traditional ultrafast camera logic. "SCARF overcomes these challenges," INRS communication officer Julie Robert wrote in a statement. "Its imaging modality enables ultrafast sweeping of a static coded aperture while not shearing the ultrafast phenomenon. This provides full-sequence encoding rates of up to 156.3 THz to individual pixels on a camera with a charge-coupled device (CCD). These results can be obtained in a single shot at tunable frame rates and spatial scales in both reflection and transmission modes."
In extremely simplified terms, that means the camera uses a computational imaging modality to capture spatial information by letting light enter its sensor at slightly different times. Not having to process the spatial data at the moment is part of what frees the camera to capture those extremely quick "chirped" laser pulses at up to 156.3 trillion times per second. The images' raw data can then be processed by a computer algorithm that decodes the time-staggered inputs, transforming each of the trillions of frames into a complete picture.
Remarkably, it did so "using off-the-shelf and passive optical components," as the paper describes. The team describes SCARF as low-cost with low power consumption and high measurement quality compared to existing techniques.
Although SCARF is focused more on research than consumers, the team is already working with two companies, Axis Photonique and Few-Cycle, to develop commercial versions, presumably for peers at other higher learning or scientific institutions.
For a more technical explanation of the camera and its potential applications, you can view the full paper in Nature.
Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill that bans children aged under 14 from social media platforms and requires 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent, a measure supporters say will protect them from online risks to their mental health.
The measure requires social media platforms to terminate the accounts of people under 14 and those of people under 16 who do not have parental consent. It requires them to use a third-party verification system to screen out those who are underage.
The amended version allows for parents to provide consent for older children to engage on social media platforms. It will become law on Jan. 1, 2025.
[...] "Social media harms children in a variety of ways," DeSantis said in a statement. He said the legislation "gives parents a greater ability to protect their children."
[...] Critics have said the bill violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections for free speech and that parents, not the government, should make decisions about the online presence of their children of all ages.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
A newly devised procedure to de-ice Euclid's optics has performed significantly better than hoped. Light coming in to the visible "VIS" instrument from distant stars was gradually decreasing due small amounts of water ice building up on its optics. Mission teams spent months devising a procedure to heat up individual mirrors in the instrument's complex optical system, without interfering with the finely tuned mission's calibration or potentially causing further contamination. After the very first mirror was warmed by just 34°, Euclid's sight was restored.
Euclid is on a mission to uncover the secrets of dark matter and dark energy, which are thought to make up 95% of the universe yet cannot be directly observed. But a few nanometers of ice—the width of a large molecule—have been accumulating on the mission's optics each month, causing a drop in the light coming in from distant galaxies.
[...] "It was an enormous team effort over the last months to plan, execute and analyze the heating of selected mirrors onboard Euclid, resulting in the fantastic result we see now," explains Ralf Kohley, Euclid instrument scientist and in charge of the anomaly review board.
"The mirrors, and the amount of light coming in through VIS will continue being monitored, and the results from this first test will continue to be analyzed as we turn this experiment into a core part of flying and operating Euclid."
One by one, then group by group, they planned to heat up mirrors in Euclid's optics and test the effect on the light coming in. They had reason to believe, but couldn't know for sure, that the first mirror they would heat was causing most of the problems.
"It was midnight at ESOC mission control when we de-iced the first two mirrors in the procedure. We were very careful with our timings, ensuring we had constant contact between the spacecraft and our ground station in Malargüe, Argentina, so we could be ready to react in real time if there were any anomalies," explains Micha Schmidt, Euclid Spacecraft Operations Manager.
"Thankfully, it all went as planned. When we saw the first analysis provided by the science experts, we knew that they would be very happy—the result was significantly better than expected."
[...] "Our primary suspect, the coldest mirror behind the main telescope optics, was heated from –147°C to –113°C. It didn't need to get hot, because in a vacuum this temperature is enough to quickly evaporate all the ice. And it worked like a charm! Almost immediately, we were receiving 15% more light from the universe. I was certain that we would see a considerable improvement, but not in such a spectacular way."
With Euclid's vision cleared at the very first stage of the procedure, scientists and engineers could tell where precisely the ice had formed, and where it is likely to form again. "Euclid's 'eye' has been cleared, allowing it to clearly see faint light from distant galaxies, and more of them than would otherwise be possible without this operation," explains Reiko Nakajima, VIS instrument scientist.
"We expect ice to cloud the VIS instrument's vision again in the future. But it will be simple to repeat this selective decontamination procedure every six to 12 months and with very little cost to science observations or the rest of the mission help future satellites likely to face the same, common icy problem.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/reddit-faces-new-reality-after-cashing-in-on-its-ipo/
In an interview on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor ahead of Reddit's market debut on Thursday, chief executive Steve Huffman acknowledged that the mischievous retail investors that congregate on the social media platform might deliberately drive down its share price.
"It's a free market!" he said.
For Reddit, as for Huffman, the bet on a public offering for a site he described as a "fun and special, but sometimes crazy place" has appeared to pay off.
[...] The chief executive sold 500,000 of his shares in the IPO, cashing out a plump $17 million, and is due to receive additional equity awards as a result of listing the company above a $5 billion valuation. He also received an estimated $193 million pay package last year, mostly made up of equity awards, according to filings.
[...] "Reddit, more so than many social media platforms, has been a very community-based, non-commercial space and people know and love it for [this]," said Samuel Woolley, a propaganda expert and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
"I think the big question that should be on everyone's mind for Reddit is to what extent the IPO will change the very nature and fabric of the platform."
If you enter "how to see the eclipse" into your favorite search engine, you're bound to see thousands—millions?—of helpful guides. Some of these are extremely detailed and thorough, almost as if the author were getting paid by the word or augmented by AI.
In reality, seeing a solar eclipse is just about the easiest thing one can do in one's life. Like, it's difficult to think of anything else that has the greatest reward-lowest effort ratio in life. You just need to know a couple of things. For the sake of simplicity, here is Ars' four-step guide to having a four-star eclipse-viewing experience. Steps are listed in order of ascending importance.
[...] In reality, a total solar eclipse is probably going to be the most spectacular celestial event most of us see in our lifetimes. Certainly, there could be more spectacular ones. A supernova within 100 light-years of Earth would be amazing. Witnessing a large asteroid streaking through Earth's atmosphere before impact would be incredible.
Unfortunately, those would also be lethal.
Related stories on SoylentNews:
Daily Telescope: A Solar Eclipse From the Surface of Mars - 2024-02-14
Annular Solar Eclipse October 2023 and Total in April 2024 - 2023-10-02
NASA's Perseverance Rover Captures Video of Solar Eclipse on Mars - 2022-04-22
How to Watch Rare "Ring of Fire" Solar Eclipse - 2021-06-09
Coming Jan 31st: a Super Blue Blood Moon Eclipse - First Time in 150 Years - 2018-01-05