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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-funded neuroscience startup, has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to implant its next patient with its experimental brain chip. This next operation will seek to fix certain issues that occurred following its first implantation operation.

Neuralink previously implanted its experimental brain-computer interface chip in a paraplegic man, Noland Arbaugh, in an operation that was publicly announced this past January. Arbaugh’s identity was revealed during a livestream interview in March, during which the patient demonstrated some of the abilities the chip had given him, including the chance to play computer chess with his mind. It was recently revealed, however, that Arbaugh’s chip had malfunctioned and, for a period of time, experienced data leakage.

The company has now received federal approval to continue implanting patients with its chip, with the promise that it will work out the kinks that caused problems with Arbaugh’s chip, the Wall Street Journal originally reported. Arbaugh’s chip malfunctioned because some of the tiny wires attached to the chip came loose and stopped channeling signals from his brain to the company’s servers. In its next operation, Neuralink plans to embed these tiny wires deeper into the next patient’s brain. A source told the newspaper that the company wants to implant as many as 10 additional people with its chip by the end of this year.

Arbaugh recently opened up about his experience with the company in a series of press interviews. During a conversation with Bloomberg, Arbaugh explained the disappointment he felt when the chip began malfunctioning:

“I started losing control of the cursor. I thought they’d made some changes and that was the reason...But then they told me that the threads were getting pulled out of my brain. At first, they didn’t know how serious it would be or a ton about it...It was really hard to hear. I thought I’d gotten to use it for maybe a month, and then my journey was coming to an end. I thought they would just keep collecting some data but that they were really going to move on to the next person. I cried a little bit.”

However, Arbaugh says that updates to the chip’s software have allowed him to regain many of the abilities that he previously had and that he is still very supportive of Neuralink and what it’s done for him.

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DannyB writes:

Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames

Elon Musk had recently announced that Starship's fourth flight test could be just days away.

[...] SpaceX has yet to provide an update on the explosion, which took place at its Boca Chica Starbase facilities in southern Texas. The footage shows SpaceX's engine test pad going up in flame.

The footage started a little after 4:12 pm local time. Roughly 14 seconds after ignition, the Raptor engine shut off. As the vapor surrounding the test tower dissipated, a fire appeared to start underneath the engine. These flames traveled upwards, causing a second explosion to engulf the entire tower.

In a tweet accompanying a clip from the footage, NASASpaceflight wrote, "The raptor testing stand at McGregor experienced an anomaly a few moments ago. The vapors from the anomaly caused a secondary explosion on the test stand."

A short video is here.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

From Microsoft's Project Natick to China's Hainan Undersea Data Center Demonstration Development Project, we've seen data centers being placed underwater for years, saving precious land space and providing a dust-free, oxygen-free environment, which can protect electronics and help reduce faults.

The biggest benefit of these data centers is the surrounding cold water that helps carry away heat. In the case of the Hainan facility, the cold seawater is forecast to save 122 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 105,000 tons of freshwater annually.

Now, researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Electro-Communications in Japan have found a vulnerability in underwater data centers. All it takes are sound waves directed at the structures. Just a pool speaker playing a high D note – carried by the dense water – could have a significant impact.

The study detailed how sound at the resonant frequency of the hard disk drives causes vibrations at a given velocity and intensity directly proportional to the sound pressure level, affecting the read/write performance of the disk.

"The main advantages of having a data center underwater are the free cooling and the isolation from variable environments on land," said Md Jahidul Islam, Ph.D., a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UF and co-author of the paper. "But these two advantages can also become liabilities, because the dense water carries acoustic signals faster than in air, and the isolated data center is difficult to monitor or to service if components break."

Tests were carried out in a lab-based water tank and in a lake on UF campus. An off-the-shelf underwater speaker playing music tuned to 5.1-5.3 kHz caused a Supermicro rack server configured with RAID 5 storage to experience "consistent throughput degradation."

owl writes:

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/how-shadow-banning-can-silently-shift-opinion-online

"[Social Media] platforms select the content they show you," Zaman says. "They can promote anything, demote anything. That means they can shift opinions any way they want."

As far as most social media users know, the most powerful tool through which platforms steer public opinion is through the outright removal of objectionable content or users. But Zaman argues that there's a more potent means through which social media platforms can control collective opinions over time, called "shadow banning." Part of this tool's power derives from the fact that it's currently near-impossible to uncover, even by policymakers or software engineering experts.

[...] For the study, the researchers built a simulation of a real social network, and then succeeded in using shadow banning to shift simulated users' opinions as well as increasing and decreasing polarization. Even when the goal was to use shadow banning to move collective sentiment to the right or left, Zaman says, the content moderation policy appeared neutral from an outside perspective. That's because it's possible, he discovered, to shift opinions by turning down the volume on accounts on both sides of a debate at the same time.

"It's like a frog sitting in a pot of water; the frog's relaxing, and suddenly, he's cooked," Zaman said. "A network could, in fact, be driving people towards one point of view, but if someone tries to call them out on it—like a regulatory body—they're going to see the network censoring both sides equally," Zaman says. "It looks like there's nothing untoward happening, so they leave the network alone—and suddenly everybody thinks the earth's flat. That's what we find you could do with our technique, which is a little scary."

[...] Zaman plans to share his research with policymakers. "I want to show them, 'Here's what this network can do; this is the danger,'" he says. "If you're not going to ban them but want to regulate them, this is how to do it—by quantifying their content algorithm. This is how we should be regulating all of the networks—X, Meta, Instagram, YouTube, all of them.'"

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Reuters has a story about Google attempting to pay to avoid a jury trial:

May 20 (Reuters) - Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google has preemptively paid damages to the U.S. government, an unusual move aimed at avoiding a jury trial in the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit over its digital advertising business.

Google disclosed the payment, but not the amount, in a court filing last week that said the case should be heard and decided by a judge directly. Without a monetary damages claim, Google argued, the government has no right to a jury trial.

The Justice Department, which has not said if it will accept the payment, declined to comment on the filing. Google asserted that its check, which it said covered its alleged overcharges for online ads, allows it to sidestep a jury trial whether or not the government takes it.

The Justice Department filed the case last year with Virginia and other states, alleging Google was stifling competition for advertising technology. The government has said Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite.

Stanford Law School's Mark Lemley told Reuters he was skeptical Google's gambit would prevail. He said a jury could ultimately decide higher damages than whatever Google put forward.

"Antitrust cases regularly go to juries. I think it is a sign that Google is worried about what a jury will do," Lemley said.

Another legal scholar, Herbert Hovenkamp of the University of Pennsylvania's law school, called Google's move "smart" in a post on X. "Juries are bad at deciding technical cases, and further they do not have the authority to order a breakup," he wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 2016 case that an offer for "complete relief" did not wipe out a class-action claim. But Google argued its payment is different, because it submitted an actual check and not merely an offer.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Foxit PDF Reader Flaw Exploited by Hackers to Deliver Diverse Malware Arsenal:

Multiple threat actors are weaponizing a design flaw in Foxit PDF Reader to deliver a variety of malware such as Agent Tesla, AsyncRAT, DCRat, NanoCore RAT, NjRAT, Pony, Remcos RAT, and XWorm.

"This exploit triggers security warnings that could deceive unsuspecting users into executing harmful commands," Check Point said in a technical report. "This exploit has been used by multiple threat actors, from e-crime to espionage."

It's worth noting that Adobe Acrobat Reader – which is more prevalent in sandboxes or antivirus solutions – is not susceptible to this specific exploit, thus contributing to the campaign's low detection rate.

The issue stems from the fact that the application shows "OK" as the default selected option in a pop-up when users are asked to trust the document prior to enabling certain features to avoid potential security risks.

Once a user clicks OK, they are displayed a second pop-up warning that the file is about to execute additional commands with the option "Open" set as the default. The command triggered is then used to download and execute a malicious payload hosted on Discord's content delivery network (CDN).

"If there were any chance the targeted user would read the first message, the second would be 'Agreed' without reading," security researcher Antonis Terefos said.

"This is the case that the Threat Actors are taking advantage of this flawed logic and common human behavior, which provides as the default choice the most 'harmful' one."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

If you're a majority Chinese-owned company looking for cheap real estate in the US, you might want to steer clear of American missile silos and military bases.

Cryptomining firm MineOne found this out the hard way after President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Monday forcing the blockchain biz to sell its facilities, located outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, within 120 days.

Why? The China-backed MineOne facility is located less than a mile from the Francis E. Warren Air Force base, where a not insignificant number of nuclear tipped Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles are housed. This, according to the White House, makes MineOne a national security risk.

"There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that MineOne Partners Limited, a British Virgin Islands company ultimate majority owned by Chinese nationals… through the acquisition of certain real estate that is located within 1 mile of Francis E. Warren Air Force base… might take action that impair the national security of the United States," the order reads.

MineOne acquired the property in 2022 with the goal of operating a crypto mining facility on the site, the order states. However, the sale wasn't registered with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) until after the government body received a tip from a member of the public about the facility.

[...] "The proximity of foreign-owned real estate to a strategic missile base and key element of America's Nuclear triad, and the presence of specialized and foreign sourced equipment, potentially capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities, presents a national security risk to the United States," the order reads.

[...] The executive order also placed limits on who MineOne could sell to, presumably in an attempt to prevent the datacenter from being transferred into another foreign firm. If MineOne fails to comply with the order, the White House has authorized the Attorney General to take any steps necessary to enforce it, which presumably includes seizing property and assets.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/arizona-woman-accused-of-helping-north-koreans-get-remote-it-jobs-at-300-companies/

An Arizona woman has been accused of helping generate millions of dollars for North Korea's ballistic missile program by helping citizens of that country land IT jobs at US-based Fortune 500 companies.

Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, raised $6.8 million in the scheme, federal prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed Thursday.

[...] In the indictment, prosecutors wrote:

The conspiracy perpetrated a staggering fraud on a multitude of industries, at the expense of generally unknowing US companies and persons. It impacted more than 300 US companies, compromised more than 60 identities of US persons, caused false information to be conveyed to DHS on more than 100 occasions, created false tax liabilities for more than 35 US persons, and resulted in at least $6.8 million of revenue to be generated for the overseas IT workers. The overseas IT workers worked at blue-chip US companies, including a top-5 national television network and media company, a premier Silicon Valley technology company, an aerospace and defense manufacturer, an iconic American car manufacturer, a high-end retail chain, and one of the most recognizable media and entertainment companies in the world, all of which were Fortune 500 companies.

[...] The indictment came alongside a criminal complaint charging a Ukrainian man with carrying out a similar multiyear scheme. Oleksandr Didenko, 27, of Kyiv, Ukraine, allegedly helped individuals in North Korea "market" themselves as remote IT workers.

Chapman was arrested Wednesday. It wasn't immediately known when she or Didenko were scheduled to make their first appearance in court. If convicted, Chapman faces 97.5 years in prison, and Didenko faces up to 67.5 years.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Nickel monosilicide (NiSi) is widely used to connect transistors in semiconductor circuits. Earlier theoretical calculations had incorrectly predicted that NiSi was not magnetic. As a result, researchers had never fully explored magnetism in NiSi.

Recently, however, scientists used neutron scattering to identify an elusive form of magnetic order in NiSi. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

[...] Because NiSi is extensively used by the semiconductor industry, it is already compatible with chip manufacturing. Physicists used neutron scattering at the Spallation Neutron Source, a Department of Energy user facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to uncover magnetic order in single crystal NiSi that had not been previously known.

[...] The robust magnetic structure and coupling of magnetic-electronic properties of NiSi offer the opportunity to use NiSi for magnetic memory applications. The research team also applied density functional theory combined with the self-(electron) interaction correction method (instead of using the local density approximation) to identify the origin of magnetism as arising from hybridization between Ni 3d orbitals and Si sp states.

Harnessing the newly discovered magnetism of NiSi in semiconductors may lead to faster computers and computer memory. The unique magnetism in NiSi is attractive because electronics that use magnetism to store and process data are reliable, fast, and small. The result is increased capabilities at lower costs. The work also highlights the need for improvements in how scientists apply conventional modeling to certain materials.

More information: Pousali Ghosh et al, NiSi: A New Venue for Antiferromagnetic Spintronics, Advanced Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202302120

Original Submission

owl writes:

COBOL Programmers are Back In Demand. Seriously.

https://cacm.acm.org/news/cobol-programmers-are-back-in-demand-seriously/

As millions of American workers have been thrown out of work by the Covid-19 pandemic and filed unemployment claims, many states' computer systems have not been able to keep pace.

In early April, during his daily press conference related to the coronavirus crisis, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy made an appeal for volunteer programmers who know COBOL, the computer language on which the state's unemployment benefits system operates.

"Literally, we have systems that are 40-plus-years-old," Murphy said. "There'll be lots of postmortems. and one of them on our list will be, how did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?"

Decades-Old Programming Languages Fortran And Cobol Are Still Thriving

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The May 2024 edition of the TIOBE Index includes a couple of surprising results, placing two of the most ancient programming languages among the top spots in popularity among developers.

[...] Fortran, a compiled language originally created by IBM in 1957, is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing tasks. According to the index, this ancient language is still the 10th most popular programming technology. Fortran reentered the top 10 after more than 20 years, and TIOBE Software CEO Paul Jansen has provided some explanations for this seemingly odd situation.

The TIOBE Index simply "publishes what has been measured," and Fortran is apparently the subject of more than a thousand books available on Amazon. New, "cool" languages such as Kotlin and Rust barely hit 300 books for the same search query, Jansen said, while Fortran is still evolving, with the latest ISO definition for the language published in 2023.

[...] The main reason for Fortran's resurgence, however, is its aptitude for mathematical computing. Fortran has some competition, but each newer language has its own issues. Python is slow, MATLAB is "very easy" for math-related computations but costly, and C/C++ are fast but lack native support for complex math. In this jungle of languages, Jansen said, Fortran still has a reason to exist.

As for Cobol, its popularity is even easier to understand. The English-like language was designed for business use in 1959 and is now the 20th most popular programming technology. Cobol is still widely used in mainframe computers employed in critical industries such as banking, automotive, insurance, and more. IBM is proposing an AI-based solution designed to "translate" Cobol applications into something more modern like Java, but the ancient language will likely remain relevant for the foreseeable future.

[Editor's Comment: FYI - Perl comes at a #30 in the list with 0.58% rating.]

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Within approximately 12 seconds, two highly educated brothers allegedly stole $25 million by tampering with the ethereum blockchain in a never-before-seen cryptocurrency scheme, according to an indictment that the US Department of Justice unsealed Wednesday.

In a DOJ press release, US Attorney Damian Williams said the scheme was so sophisticated that it "calls the very integrity of the blockchain into question."

"The brothers, who studied computer science and math at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, allegedly used their specialized skills and education to tamper with and manipulate the protocols relied upon by millions of ethereum users across the globe," Williams said. "And once they put their plan into action, their heist only took 12 seconds to complete."

Anton, 24, and James Peraire-Bueno, 28, were arrested Tuesday, charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Each brother faces "a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each count," the DOJ said.

The alleged scheme was launched in December 2022 by the brothers, who studied at MIT, after months of planning, the indictment said. The pair seemingly relied on their "specialized skills" and expertise in crypto trading to fraudulently gain access to "pending private transactions" on the blockchain, then "used that access to alter certain transactions and obtain their victims’ cryptocurrency," the DOJ said.

The indictment goes into detail explaining that the scheme allegedly worked by exploiting the ethereum blockchain in the moments after a transaction was conducted but before the transaction was added to the blockchain.

These pending transactions, the DOJ explained, must be structured into a proposed block and then validated by a validator before it can be added to the blockchain, which acts as a decentralized ledger keeping track of crypto holdings. It appeared that the brothers tampered with this process by "establishing a series of ethereum validators" through shell companies and foreign exchanges that concealed their identities and masked their efforts to manipulate the blocks and seize ethereum.

upstart writes:

Assange wins High Court bid to appeal against extradition to US over spying charges:

Julian Assange wins High Court bid to appeal against extradition to US over spying charges

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has won a last-ditch bid to appeal his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges.

High Court judges on Monday granted him permission to appeal his removal to the US where he is being prosecuted over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information over the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The decision has granted the 52-year-old a reprieve in order for lawyers to challenge his extradition at a full appeal hearing at a later date.

It was feared he could have been put on a plane within days if his bid was denied. However, his legal team had vowed to apply to the European Court of Human Rights for an emergency injunction to halt his removal if they were unsuccessful.

looorg writes:

Flying cars within six years.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Transportation/Boeing-aims-to-bring-flying-cars-to-Asia-by-2030
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240517_28/

Made by Boeing, that might not inspire one with confidence due the current aircraft issues they have.

U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing plans to enter the flying car business in Asia by 2030, looking to tap demand for the fast, short-distance travel the vehicles could provide in the region's traffic-choked cities.

[...] The company is developing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) craft at subsidiary Wisk Aero. The aircraft will adopt autonomous technology, rare among eVTOL craft.

The plan is to first obtain certification in the U.S. before expanding into Asia. Details of the Asia business will be finalized in the future, including whether Boeing will sell the aircraft to companies aiming to provide eVTOL transportation services or operate the services itself.

Boeing is currently selecting its first Asian market, including Japan. In Japan, domestic startup SkyDrive and Germany's Volocopter are scheduled to operate air taxi services at the 2025 Osaka World Expo.

Boeing opened a research and development base in Nagoya on Thursday. It first established R&D operations in Japan in 2022 but had been renting space from other companies until now.

[...] The single-occupant aircraft was developed by a US company. It measures 4.5 meters wide and 2.6 meters high. [...] Officials said the craft can fly at a maximum speed of about 100 kph. It can stay aloft for approximately 15 minutes.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-cloud-accidentally-nukes-customer-account-causes-two-weeks-of-downtime/

Buried under the news from Google I/O this week is one of Google Cloud's biggest blunders ever: Google's Amazon Web Services competitor accidentally deleted a giant customer account for no reason. UniSuper, an Australian pension fund that manages $135 billion worth of funds and has 647,000 members, had its entire account wiped out at Google Cloud, including all its backups that were stored on the service. UniSuper thankfully had some backups with a different provider and was able to recover its data, but according to UniSuper's incident log, downtime started May 2, and a full restoration of services didn't happen until May 15.

UniSuper's website is now full of must-read admin nightmare fuel about how this all happened. First is a wild page posted on May 8 titled "A joint statement from UniSuper CEO Peter Chun, and Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian." This statement reads, "Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian has confirmed that the disruption arose from an unprecedented sequence of events whereby an inadvertent misconfiguration during provisioning of UniSuper's Private Cloud services ultimately resulted in the deletion of UniSuper's Private Cloud subscription. This is an isolated, 'one-of-a-kind occurrence' that has never before occurred with any of Google Cloud's clients globally. This should not have happened. Google Cloud has identified the events that led to this disruption and taken measures to ensure this does not happen again."

[...] A June 2023 press release touted UniSuper's big cloud migration to Google, with Sam Cooper, UniSuper's Head of Architecture, saying, "With Google Cloud VMware Engine, migrating to the cloud is streamlined and extremely easy. It's all about efficiencies that help us deliver highly competitive fees for our members."

[...] The second must-read document in this whole saga is the outage update page, which contains 12 statements as the cloud devs worked through this catastrophe. The first update is May 2 with the ominous statement, "You may be aware of a service disruption affecting UniSuper's systems." UniSuper immediately seemed to have the problem nailed down, saying, "The issue originated from one of our third-party service providers, and we're actively partnering with them to resolve this." On May 3, Google Cloud publicly entered the picture with a joint statement from UniSuper and Google Cloud saying that the outage was not the result of a cyberattack.

[...] The joint statement and the outage updates are still not a technical post-mortem of what happened, and it's unclear if we'll get one. Google PR confirmed in multiple places it signed off on the statement, but a great breakdown from software developer Daniel Compton points out that the statement is not just vague, it's also full of terminology that doesn't align with Google Cloud products. The imprecise language makes it seem like the statement was written entirely by UniSuper. It would be nice to see a real breakdown of what happened from Google Cloud's perspective, especially when other current or potential customers are going to keep a watchful eye on how Google handles the fallout from this.

Anyway, don't put all your eggs in one cloud basket.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Register is reporting on the issues raised by an anecdote about how library e-book reading habits get reflected in mobile ads, with the observation that tracking is occurring and with the underlying question being about how the tracking is occurring. The context is that many libraries use DRM'd mobile phone apps to allow limited, temporary access to e-books to the subset of patrons willing to install the app to the subset of patrons willing to agree to the app's terms of service to the subset of patrons with smart phones.

In December, 2023, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign information sciences professor Masooda Bashir led a study titled "Patron Privacy Protections in Public Libraries" that was published in The Library Quarterly. The study found that while libraries generally have basic privacy protections, there are often gaps in staff training and in privacy disclosures made available to patrons.

It also found that some libraries rely exclusively on social media for their online presence. "That is very troubling," said Bashir in a statement. "Facebook collects a lot of data – everything that someone might be reading and looking at. That is not a good practice for public libraries."

Salo said that the amount of visitor-tracking scripts on many library websites is just beyond the pale.

"I have been watching actually the situation with healthcare organizations getting absolutely nailed to the wall for Google pixels and Facebook pixels and what have you, as potential HIPAA violations," she said.

"And you know, it's the same kind of thing [with libraries]. If we think this stuff is confidential, we should act like it and we're very frequently not. So yes, I am absolutely on a one-librarian war against Google and Facebook pixels. That just has got to stop."

— The Register, An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen.

The assertion is that this level of tracking is not supposed to happen with library services, as per professional decisions by earlier generations of librarians. The terms of service and licensing which both the libraries and their patrons gave the nod to may even explicitly allow the surveillance and warn of it buried in scores of pages of legalese. Be that as it may, the apps creators (and the purchasers, the libraries) may even be unknowingly affected by trackers built into the Software Development Kits used to build the app. Thus the bigger question is why so many librarians and their patrons have become so unversed in mobile ICT as to buy and deploy such DRMed software-as-a-service, which contain two kinds of violations of basic rights: digital restrictions and tracking. Academic librarian, Dorothea Salo, is off to a good start in mitigating the problems but there is a lot to catch up on.

For what its worth, there are DRM-free, public domain options including LibriVox for audio books and Project Gutenberg for e-books in several formats. Some regions will have their own analog for public domain literature, such as Project Runeberg for Nordic literature in the public domain.

Original Submission