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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The US Supreme Court has avoided making a final decision on challenges to the Texas and Florida social media laws, but the majority opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan criticized the Texas law and made it clear that content moderation is protected by the First Amendment.

The Texas law "is unlikely to withstand First Amendment scrutiny," the Supreme Court majority wrote. "Texas has thus far justified the law as necessary to balance the mix of speech on Facebook's News Feed and similar platforms; and the record reflects that Texas officials passed it because they thought those feeds skewed against politically conservative voices. But this Court has many times held, in many contexts, that it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression—to 'un-bias' what it thinks biased, rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences. That principle works for social-media platforms as it does for others."

A Big Tech lobby group that challenged the state laws said it was pleased by the ruling. "In a complex series of opinions that were unanimous in the outcome, but divided 6-3 in their reasoning, the Court sent the cases back to lower courts, making clear that a State may not interfere with private actors' speech," the Computer & Communications Industry Association said.

[...] The Supreme Court said it remanded the cases to the appeals courts because the courts didn't do a full analysis of the laws' effects. "Today, we vacate both decisions for reasons separate from the First Amendment merits, because neither Court of Appeals properly considered the facial nature of [tech industry lobby group] NetChoice's challenge," the court majority wrote.

Justices found that the lower courts focused too much on the biggest platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, without considering the wider effects of the laws. The majority wrote:

The courts mainly addressed what the parties had focused on. And the parties mainly argued these cases as if the laws applied only to the curated feeds offered by the largest and most paradigmatic social-media platforms—as if, say, each case presented an as-applied challenge brought by Facebook protesting its loss of control over the content of its News Feed. But argument in this Court revealed that the laws might apply to, and differently affect, other kinds of websites and apps. In a facial challenge, that could well matter, even when the challenge is brought under the First Amendment.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/the-dangers-of-sneezing-from-ejected-bowels-to-torn-windpipes/

If you were to envision the kind of accident that would cause a person's bowels to explode out of their body, you might imagine some sort of gruesome stabbing or grisly car accident. You'd probably never imagine that something as commonplace and harmless as a sneeze would cause this kind of ghastly injury—but that's exactly what happened to a Florida man earlier this month.

The man had recently had abdominal surgery and was suffering from wound dehiscence—where his surgical scar wasn't healing properly.

[...] Sneezing is normally a protective mechanism that keeps potentially harmful things—such as dust, bacteria and viruses – out of our respiratory system. The process is controlled by the so-called "sneezing center" in the brain's medulla (which governs autonomic functions, including breathing). It's activated by the presence of irritants in the lining of the nose and airways, which send impulses to the center.

The response is a closing of your eyes, throat and mouth while your chest muscles contract—compressing your lungs and driving air out of your respiratory system. This forces whatever triggered the response "out" of your system at an impressive speed—up to 15.9m/s (35mph) in some cases.

[...] Given all the potential injuries a sneeze can cause, you might think it's better to hold them in.

But even that isn't safe to do. In 2023, a Scottish man held in a sneeze by closing his mouth and holding his nose. This resulted in him tearing his windpipe. By closing off his airways, this allowed the pressure generated by the sneeze to build up inside the respiratory system—which can sometimes be up to 20 times the pressure normally seen in the respiratory system. But this energy has to go somewhere, so is typically absorbed by the tissues.

Others have fractured bones of their face holding in sneezes, damaged their larynx (voice box), and torn the tissues in their chest that protect the lungs.

Thankfully, there is one injury that would be impossible for a sneeze to cause. Ever been told that if you sneeze with your eyes open, it'll cause them to pop out? Thankfully, that's just a tall tale.

Original Submission

oregonjohn writes:

Propublica report July 8, 2024 https://www.propublica.org/article/cyber-safety-board-never-investigated-solarwinds-breach-microsoft

"After Russian intelligence launched one of the most devastating cyber espionage attacks in history against U.S. government agencies, the Biden administration set up a new board and tasked it to figure out what happened — and tell the public."

"The intruders used malicious code and a flaw in a Microsoft product to steal intelligence from the National Nuclear Security Administration, National Institutes of Health and the Treasury Department in what Microsoft President Brad Smith called "the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.""

"A full, public accounting of what happened in the Solar Winds case would have been devastating to Microsoft. ProPublica recently revealed that Microsoft had long known about — but refused to address — a flaw used in the hack. The tech company's failure to act reflected a corporate culture that prioritized profit over security and left the U.S. government vulnerable, a whistleblower said."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Meta continues to hit walls with its heavily scrutinized plan to comply with the European Union's strict online competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), by offering Facebook and Instagram subscriptions as an alternative for privacy-inclined users who want to opt out of ad targeting.

Today, the European Commission (EC) announced preliminary findings that Meta's so-called "pay or consent" or "pay or OK" model—which gives users a choice to either pay for access to its platforms or give consent to collect user data to target ads—is not compliant with the DMA.

According to the EC, Meta's advertising model violates the DMA in two ways. First, it "does not allow users to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the 'personalized ads-based service." And second, it "does not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data," the press release said.

[...] "The DMA is there to give back to the users the power to decide how their data is used and ensure innovative companies can compete on equal footing with tech giants on data access," Breton said.

A Meta spokesperson told Ars that Meta plans to fight the findings—which could trigger fines up to 10 percent of the company's worldwide turnover, as well as fines up to 20 percent for repeat infringement if Meta loses.

Meta continues to claim that its "subscription for no ads" model was "endorsed" by the highest court in Europe, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), last year.

[...] However, some critics have noted that the supposed endorsement was not an official part of the ruling and that particular case was not regarding DMA compliance.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/neinnines/

I picked up the new book Compromised last week and was intrigued to discover that it may have shed some light on a small (and rather esoteric) cryptologic and espionage mystery that I've been puzzling over for about 15 years. Compromised is primarily a memoir of former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok's investigation into Russian operations in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, but this post is not a review of the book or concerned with that aspect of it.

Early in the book, as an almost throwaway bit of background color, Strzok discusses his work in Boston investigating the famous Russian "illegals" espionage network from 2000 until their arrest (and subsequent exchange with Russia) in 2010. "Illegals" are foreign agents operating abroad under false identities and without official or diplomatic cover. In this case, ten Russian illegals were living and working in the US under false Canadian and American identities. (The case inspired the recent TV series The Americans.)

Strzok was the case agent responsible for two of the suspects, Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova (posing as a Canadian couple under the aliases Donald Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley). The author recounts watching from the street on Thursday evenings as Vavilova received encrypted shortwave "numbers" transmissions in their Cambridge, MA apartment.

Given that Bezrukov and Vaviloa were indeed, as the FBI suspected, Russian spies, it's not surprising that they were sent messages from headquarters using this method; numbers stations are part of time-honored espionage tradecraft for communicating with covert agents. But their capture may have illustrated how subtle errors can cause these systems to fail badly in practice, even when the cryptography itself is sound.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The UN's Radio Regulations Board (RRB) has asked Russia to play nice with Europe and not interfere with satellites.

The RRB, a part of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the telecom agency for the United Nations, held its 96th meeting [PDF] last week to discuss a number of topics, including alleged satellite interference several European countries suspect is coming from Russia. France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Ukraine all said they had experienced some sort of interference in the last few months.

The disruption has resulted in taking down broadcasts and even TV hijacking in two cases, which involved children's TV shows in the Netherlands being replaced with Russian war videos.

Although Russia has denied any knowledge of the interference, telling the RRB it hasn't detected any whatsoever, the evidence is stacking up against the country. The interference has largely targeted channels with Ukrainian programming, and Sweden claims it only started seeing meddling after it joined NATO.

Perhaps most damning of all, two satellite operators traced the interference to three sites: Russia's capital city Moscow, the Kaliningrad exclave next to Poland and Lithuania, and Pavlovka, though it remains unclear which Pavlovka, as there are more than one located in Russia.

Calling the interference "extremely worrisome and unacceptable," the RRB has told Russia to stop messing with the satellites, give the agency info surrounding Russia's internal investigation of the interference, and search the areas that the satellite operators say the interference originates from.

However, the agency softened its stance by saying it wouldn't grant requests made by France, Sweden, and the Netherlands to pursue the matter with a formal investigation just yet.

In the meantime, the RRB has asked Russia and its alleged victims to "exercise the utmost goodwill and mutual assistance" and to hold a meeting to discuss the dispute. It's not clear how effective this will be as Russia doesn't exactly have a stellar diplomatic reputation.

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

https://www.advrider.com/survue-ai-powered-danger-detector-bicycle-tech-that-could-work-for-motorcyclists/

A radar system can indicate when another motorist is close to your vehicle, but what if it gave you more information—like, a warning of sketchy driving behaviors? A US-based startup is building such a system for bicyclists, but Survue's new technology might also have an application for motorcyclists.

Electro-safety systems are the latest add-on that motorcycle OEMs are pioneering, having reached the practical limits of power and braking. These days, the action is all in the world of adaptive cruise control systems, which are governed by radar sensors. These smart systems can keep you following another vehicle at a constant distance in traffic, and they can also warn you that someone is approaching quickly from behind.

Survue's technology takes this idea a step further. Rear-facing radar systems have been available for bicyclists for years, but they can't interpret the information they collect. Survue's system uses AI (or so they call it) to analyze the data taken in by its sensors, and then their on-bike gadgetry can inform the rider of an impending dangerous situation—a too-close pass or a rear-end collision—and it can also flash a brake light brightly, to alert a distracted driver of an impending crash.

Survue says it works this way:

Videos of collisions from behind and close passing vehicles are recorded using the predicted vehicle course rather than accelerometers. This reduces false positives and endless sifting of video data. Survue is the only taillight that automatically records close passing vehicles ... Cyclists receive alerts based upon approaching vehicle speed, direction, and vehicle type rather than just the speed.

Their assembly on the back of the bike has a brake light that flashes for the benefit of following motorists, as well as an onboard speaker that emits a tone to alert the rider of the situatuion. Their device also connects to an app which can give audio or visual cues, so the rider isn't startled.

Sifting through their Kickstarter campaign here, you can see how the technology is designed for bicyclists, but could definitely be adapted for motorcyclists. No doubt some of the big OEMs are already working on similar tech, and if not, once they see this they will be. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/survue/survue-the-smart-bike-light-for-safe-and-confident-rides/

So, AI again. Almost certainly overhyped - but - cyclists (whether bicycles or motorcycles) need all the help they can get in traffic. I mean, sure, I know there's a car behind me, but I can't spend all my time studying how that car is driven. An "AI" that is constantly analyzing the traffic flow could save my arse. OK, so maybe it doesn't save me, but at least it documents that the driver rear ended me. It should even record the license plate number, in states/provinces that have a front license plate.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

There's a new bill before federal parliament calling for housing to be considered a fundamental human right.

The bill, introduced by independent federal parliamentarians Kylea Tink and David Pocock, would require the government to create a 10-year National Housing and Homelessness Plan.

One part of the bill states housing should be considered a fundamental human right for all Australians. Here's how this would work.

Since its election in 2022, the Albanese government has had to fight political battles to pass its housing policies.

This includes the Housing Australia Future Fund: a $10 billion fund to provide an annual $500 million for social and affordable rental housing. It passed the parliament last year.

There's also the "Help to Buy" shared equity scheme. Under this scheme, 10,000 households a year would be eligible for a government equity contribution of up to 40% of the purchase price of a new home. It's yet to pass the parliament.

But many in the community continue to struggle with unaffordable rents, barriers to home ownership and rising rates of homelessness.

Housing and homelessness problems are complex because they crossover different areas of policy and different levels of government. There are many agencies that do housing policy.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The right to repair movement may be gaining traction, with several states passing laws that force companies to improve the repairability of their products, but a trio of letters the Federal Trade Commission just sent to firms that market and sell gaming PCs, graphics chips, motherboards, and other accessories show that resistance by manufacturers is as strong as ever.

The Federal Trade Commission staff has sent letters to ASRock, Zotac, and Gigabyte warning that their warranty practices may be violating consumers' right to repair products they have purchased. Namely, the commission singled out the use of stickers containing "warranty void if removed" or similar language as illegal. These are usually placed on products in such a way that makes it difficult for consumers to perform routine maintenance and repairs on their products, the FTC said.

"These warning letters put companies on notice that restricting consumers' right to repair violates the law," said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "The commission will continue our efforts to protect consumers' right to repair and independent dealers' right to compete."

[...] Illegal warranties are just the tip of the problem, consumer advocates say, as manufacturers try all sorts of tactics to control the repair process – and these tactics are working. Americans waste $40 billion each year from not being able to repair products, according to a report by the US PIRG, a public-interest research group. That comes to about $330 per household annually.

"It's getting harder for people to buy things that are repairable. The problem is getting worse, much worse," said Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association, a small lobbying group that advocates for independent repair shops.

One example is the use of components that are glued or soldered together.

"Ten years ago you could slide off the back of the phone, and pop out the battery," said Olivia Webb, spokesperson for iFixit, a parts retailer and online community dedicated to repair. "Now, they are adhered with screws, battery pull tabs, some of them are glued in. People don't want you to replace your battery – they want you to buy a new phone."

[...] "You're hitting a point where you cannot upgrade your technology anymore. And I think that is another way of forcing people to buy a new machine instead of upgrading an old machine," she said.

Proprietary screws are another example. Disassembling the iPhone 12 requires four different types of screwdrivers, according to Hugh Jeffreys, an advocate of the Right to Repair movement.

Manufacturers are also not shying away from engaging in outright illegal practices that the FTC has called out. For example, many companies still have warranties that are voided if anyone, except the company that made the product, has repaired it. A few years ago the FTC warned six companies against such void-warranty language. The recipients were eventually revealed to be ASUSTeK, HTC, Hyundai, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony Computer Entertainment.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Two slightly burnt, fat-covered sticks discovered inside an Australian cave are evidence of a healing ritual that was passed down unchanged by more than 500 generations of Indigenous people over the last 12,000 years, according to new research.

The wooden sticks, found poking out of tiny fireplaces, showed that the ritual documented in the 1880s had been shared via oral traditions since the end of the last ice age, a study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour said on Monday.

The discovery was made inside Cloggs Cave in the foothills of the Victorian Alps in Australia's southeast, in a region long inhabited by the Gunaikurnai people.

[...] Carefully digging through the soil, the team found a small stick poking out—then they found another one. Both well-preserved sticks were made from the wood of casuarina trees.

Each one was found in a separate fireplace around the size of the palm of a hand—far too small to have been used for heat or cooking meat.

The slightly charred ends of the sticks had been cut specially to stick into the fire, and both were coated in human or animal fat.

One stick was 11,000 years old and the other 12,000 years old, radiocarbon dating found.

"They've been waiting here all this time for us to learn from them," said Gunaikurnai elder Russell Mullett, a co-author of the study and head of GLaWAC.

Mullett spent years trying to find out what they could have been used for, before discovering the accounts of Alfred Howitt, a 19th-century Australian anthropologist who studied Aboriginal culture.

Some of Howitt's notes had never been published, and Mullett said he spent a long time convincing a local museum to share them.

c0lo writes:

Mica Nguyen Worthy Submits First-of-its-Kind Claim to NASA Seeking Recovery From Damages Sustained from Space Debris

A precedent-setting case that could set the standard for the future of space debris claims in both the public and private sectors

On May 22, 2024, Mica Nguyen Worthy submitted a claim to NASA to recover for her clients' damages resulting from a space debris incident involving property owner, Alejandro Otero and his family.

On March 8, 2024, a piece of space debris hit the family home of Alejandro Otero, while his son Daniel was present and left a sizable hole from the roof through the sub-flooring. The space debris was confirmed by NASA to be from its flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.

The Oteros retained Worthy to navigate the insurance and legal process and to make a formal claim against NASA. The damages for the Otero family members include non-insured Property Damage loss, Business Interruption damages, Emotional/Mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties required in the process. Additionally, the Oteros' homeowner's insurance carrier submitted a simultaneous claim for the damages to the property that it had subrogated.

...
Worthy, a Partner in the Charlotte office of Cranfill Sumner LLP and Chair of the firm's Aviation & Aerospace Practice Group, worked with her litigation team with experience in handling claims to prepare the Federal Torts Claim Act ("FTCA") submission with proofs of loss to NASA to fully articulate a negligence claim on behalf of her clients. However, Worthy also implored NASA to consider that persons in the U.S. should not have to make a claim under a negligence legal theory when the U.S. government has committed to being "absolutely liable" under international treaty law for damage to persons or property on the surface of the Earth caused by its space objects.

"If the incident had happened overseas, and someone in another country were damaged by the same space debris as in the Oteros' case, the U.S. would have been absolutely liable to pay for those damages under the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects also known as the 'Space Liability Convention." We have asked NASA not to apply a different standard towards U.S. citizens or residents, but instead to take care of the Oteros and make them whole," she said. "Here, the U.S. government, through NASA, has an opportunity to set the standard or 'set a precedent' as to what responsible, safe, and sustainable space operations ought to look like. If NASA were to take the position that the Oteros' claims should be paid in full, it would send a strong signal to both other governments and private industries that such victims should be compensated regardless of fault."

USSR paid $3M (from a total of $6M operation cost) for spreading nuclear space litter over Canada in 1997

A $400 littering ticket to NASA was issued in 1979 by the Esperance council (Western Australia) and was paid in full 30 years later by crowdfunding

Other space debris incidents, some resulting in injuries.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Cloudflare has released a new free tool that prevents AI companies' bots from scraping its clients' websites for content to train large language models. The cloud service provider is making this tool available to its entire customer base, including those on free plans. "This feature will automatically be updated over time as we see new fingerprints of offending bots we identify as widely scraping the web for model training," the company said.

In a blog post announcing this update, Cloudflare's team also shared some data about how its clients are responding to the boom of bots that scrape content to train generative AI models. According to the company's internal data, 85.2 percent of customers have chosen to block even the AI bots that properly identify themselves from accessing their sites.

[...] It's proving very difficult to fully and consistently block AI bots from accessing content. The arms race to build models faster has led to instances of companies skirting or outright breaking the existing rules around blocking scrapers. Perplexity AI was recently accused of scraping websites without the required permissions. But having a backend company at the scale of Cloudflare getting serious about trying to put the kibosh on this behavior could lead to some results.

"We fear that some AI companies intent on circumventing rules to access content will persistently adapt to evade bot detection," the company said. "We will continue to keep watch and add more bot blocks to our AI Scrapers and Crawlers rule and evolve our machine learning models to help keep the Internet a place where content creators can thrive and keep full control over which models their content is used to train or run inference on."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

China's government wants to develop a standard for brain-computer interfaces.

News of the effort emerged yesterday when the nation's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology posted a plan to establish a technical committee charged with doing the job.

An accompanying document explains that the committee will be asked to devise input and output interfaces, and research topics including brain information encoding and decoding, data communication, and data visualization.

Devising a format for brain data is also on the to-do list, as is a focus on acquiring data using electroencephalograms.

Researching and developing interfaces for applications in medicine, health, education, and entertainment is also on the agenda, accompanied by work on ethics and safety.

The committee's members are expected to be drawn from relevant research institutions and government departments.

Once their job is done, China's researchers in this field will be organized into clusters and all will be working to the standards the committee has helped develop.

That last goal makes this committee more than a bureaucratic thought bubble: by setting standards and insisting researchers use it, China can focus its efforts.

Perhaps it can also develop standards before other nations and bring them to international forums.

[...] Some of China's efforts to dominate standards processes and the bodies that drive them have flopped, but observers have also warned that standards bodies are susceptible to manipulation in ways that could see China have its domestic standards adopted.

In the field of brain-computer interfaces, China may be starting a little late: the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) already hosts a group dedicated to Neurotechnologies for Brain-Machine Interfacing and in 2020 published a roadmap [PDF] for standards development in the field.

And of course private outfits – most prominently Elon Musk's Neuralink – are already conducting brain-computer interface experiments. If such efforts take off, market presence could easily trump standards.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a 35-nation effort to create electricity from nuclear fusion, has torn up its project plans and pushed operations of its tokamak back by at least eight years.

Tokamaks are typically designed around a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber, inside of which gases are subjected to extreme heat and pressure and become a plasma. Strong magnets are used to keep that hot plasma away from the chamber's walls, and the heat is used to boil water into steam that turns turbines to make electricity.

ITER has built what it claims is the world's largest tokamak and hopes it will achieve a deuterium-tritium plasma – in which the fusion conditions are sustained mostly by internal fusion heating, rather than needing constant input of energy. The org aims to produce 500MW of fusion power from 50MW of input, as a demo that lights the way for commercial machines.

ITER director-general Pietro Barabaschi yesterday outlined [PDF] a new project baseline to replace the one in use since 2016. That older document foresaw "first plasma" in 2025 – but only as "a brief, low-energy machine test, with relatively minimal scientific value." A planned series of experiments would proceed until 2033.

The org has known since 2020 that it would not achieve first plasma in 2025, so these changes are not unexpected.

[...] By 2039, ITER wants its Deuterium-Tritium Operation Phase to start – four years later than first planned.

[...] An extra €5 billion ($5.4 billion) will be needed to realize this plan. ITER members are considering that requirement.

ITER's post announcing the new baseline notes that the org's "costs historically have been difficult to estimate precisely because the bulk of financial contributions are provided in-kind by ITER Members in the form of components, for most of which Member governments are not required to publish their actual costs."

So take that €5 billion figure with a hearty pinch of plasma.

Fusion experiments have shown the tech has great promise as a source of clean energy. Which is why governments are throwing money at it. To date, however, no experiment has come close to ITER's planned output – or even reliable operations – making Microsoft's deal to source energy from fusion by 2028 vastly optimistic.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Volunteers who lived in NASA's Mars simulation for over a year will finally emerge today:

After 378 days inside a mock Mars habitat, the four volunteers for NASA's yearlong simulation of a stay on the red planet are coming home. The crew — Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones — is scheduled to exit the 3D-printed habitat in Houston this evening. You can watch the livestream of their return on NASA TV (below) starting at 5PM ET.

This marks the end of NASA's first Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission. There are plans already for two more one-year missions, one of which NASA recently accepted applications for.

The Mission 1 crew entered the 1700-square-foot habitat at the Johnson Space Center on June 25 of last year and has spent the months since conducting simulated Marswalks, growing vegetables and performing other tasks designed to support life and work in that environment, like habitat maintenance. No exact dates for the second CHAPEA mission have been set yet, but it's expected to begin in spring 2025.

The crew — Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones — is scheduled to exit the 3D-printed habitat in Houston this evening. You can watch the livestream of their return on NASA TV (below) starting at 5PM ET.

Original Submission