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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/08/google-and-meta-ignored-their-own-rules-in-secret-teen-targeting-ad-deals/

Google and Meta made a secret deal to target advertisements for Instagram to teenagers on YouTube, skirting the search company's own rules for how minors are treated online.

According to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the matter, Google worked on a marketing project for Meta that was designed to target 13- to 17-year-old YouTube users with adverts that promoted its rival's photo and video app.

[...] The companies worked with Spark Foundry, a US subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, to launch the pilot marketing program in Canada between February and April this year, according to the people and documents seen by the Financial Times.

Due to its perceived success, it was then trialed in the US in May. The companies had planned to expand it further, to international markets and to promote other Meta apps such as Facebook, people familiar with the matter said.

[...] When contacted by the FT, Google initiated an investigation into the allegations. The project has now been canceled, a person familiar with the decision said.

Google said: "We prohibit ads being personalized to people under-18, period. These policies go well beyond what is required and are supported by technical safeguards. We've confirmed that these safeguards worked properly here" because no registered YouTube users known to be under 18 were directly targeted by the company.

However, Google did not deny using the "unknown" loophole, adding: "We'll also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Each August, the Perseid meteor shower provides a breathtaking sight of bright meteors and fireballs, best viewed in the early hours of August 12. These meteors, hitting atmospheric speeds up to 132,000 mph, are part of a display originating from Comet Swift-Tuttle.

They may not attract as much attention as last month’s daylight fireball over New York City, but stargazers can still anticipate seeing some shooting stars with the upcoming Perseid meteor shower. Caused by Earth passing through trails of debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle, the shower has become famous over the centuries because of its consistent display of celestial fireworks.

“The Perseids is the best annual meteor shower for the casual stargazer,” said Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “Not only is the shower rich in bright meteors and fireballs – No. 1 in fact – it also peaks in mid-August when the weather is still warm and comfortable. This year, the Perseid maximum will occur on the night of August 11 and pre-dawn hours of August 12. You’ll start seeing meteors from the shower around 11 p.m. local time and the rates will increase until dawn. If you miss the night of the 11th, you will also be able to see quite a few on the night of the 12th between those times.”

The best way to see the Perseids is to find the darkest possible sky and visit between midnight and dawn on the morning of August 12. Allow about 45 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the dark. Lie on your back and look straight up. Avoid looking at cell phones or tablets because their bright screens ruin night vision and take your eyes off the sky.

Perseid meteors travel at the blistering speed of 132,000 mph – or 500 times faster than the fastest car in the world. At that speed, even a smidgen of dust makes a vivid streak of light when it collides with Earth’s atmosphere. Peak temperatures can exceed 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as they speed across the sky. The Perseids pose no danger to people on the ground as practically all burn up 60 miles above our planet.

The first Perseid captured by NASA’s All Sky Meteor Camera Network was recorded at 9:48 p.m. EDT on July 23. The meteor – about as bright as the planet Jupiter, so not quite bright enough to be considered a fireball – was caused by a piece of Comet Swift-Tuttle about 5 millimeters in diameter entering the atmosphere over the Atlantic and burning up 66 miles above St. Cloud, Florida, just south of Orlando.

It wasn’t part of the Perseids, but a rare daylight fireball streaked across the sky over New York City at 11:15 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, July 16. The event gained national attention and was reported in media outlets across the U.S.

The fireball, defined as a meteor brighter than the planet Venus, is estimated to have soared over New York City before traversing a short path southwest and disintegrating about 31 miles above Mountainside, New Jersey. Cooke said the meteor was likely about 1 foot in diameter, which would have made the rock bright enough to see during the day. Seeing a meteor of this size is rarer than catching sight of the smaller particles a few millimeters in size typically seen in the night sky.

“To see one in the daytime over a populated area like New York is fairly rare,” Cooke said during an interview with ABC 7 in New York.

The Meteoroid Environments Office studies meteoroids in space so that NASA can protect our nation’s satellites, spacecraft and even astronauts aboard the International Space Station from these bits of tiny space debris.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Common blood thinner heparin shows promise as cobra bite antidote:

Scientists at the University of Sydney and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine have made a remarkable discovery: a commonly-used blood thinner, heparin, can be repurposed as an inexpensive antidote for cobra venom.

Cobras kill thousands of people a year worldwide and perhaps a hundred thousand more are seriously maimed by necrosis—the death of body tissue and cells—caused by the venom, which can lead to amputation.

Current antivenom treatment is expensive and does not effectively treat the necrosis of the flesh where the bite occurs.

"Our discovery could drastically reduce the terrible injuries from necrosis caused by cobra bites—and it might also slow the venom, which could improve survival rates," said Professor Greg Neely, a corresponding author of the study from the Charles Perkins Center and Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney.

Using CRISPR gene-editing technology to identify ways to block cobra venom, the team, which consisted of scientists based in Australia, Canada, Costa Rica and the UK, successfully repurposed heparin (a common blood thinner) and related drugs and showed they can stop the necrosis caused by cobra bites.

The research is published on the front cover of Science Translational Medicine.

c0lo writes:

Study Finds Faces Evolve to Match Names Over Time

The researchers sought to determine whether parents choose a baby name based on what seems fitting for the baby's appearance, or if the process is the other way around — that, over the years, the individual's facial appearance changes to match the name given to them by their parents.

A new study reveals that a person's face tends to evolve to suit their name, demonstrating the profound impact of social expectations. The research showed that adults' faces could be matched to their names with high accuracy, while children's faces could not.

Machine learning also found significant similarities among adults with the same name. This effect, known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, suggests that social constructs can influence physical appearance over time.

Key Facts:

• Adults' faces evolve to match their names due to social expectations.
• Children's faces do not show the same name-based similarities as adults.
• The study used both human participants and machine learning to confirm findings.

Reference:
Yonat Zwebner, et. al., "Can names shape facial appearance?", PNAS, July 15, 2024, 121 (30) e24053341 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2405334121

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owl writes:

https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/a-completely-different-kind-of-disc-brake-1949-chrysler/

In 1949, the Chrysler Corporation introduced a new disc brake system, but it was nothing like the disc brakes we know today. Here's how it worked.

...

As we can see, the Ausco Lambert bears no similarity to the caliper-type disc brakes developed for aircraft in the 1940s, or those later adopted by Crosley, Dunlop, and ultimately the entire auto industry. In its basic configuration, the Lambert design sort of resembles the familiar clutch-disc and pressure-plate arrangment for a conventional manual transmission (as do the Milan and Kinmont brakes) but there are some important differences there, too.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Users of Cryptonator – an online digital wallet and cryptocurrency exchange – received an unpleasant surprise last weekend after the service was shuttered in a combined operation run by the FBI, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and German police.

Cryptonator allows people to store crypto-coins remotely, transfer funds, and exchange cryptocurrencies for other types. It could be used for innocent purposes, though given it was happy to turn a blind eye to whoever was using it, it is no surprise it was allegedly utilized by questionable netizens, hence its seizure by the Feds.

According to testimony [PDF] from IRS special agent Justin Allen, Bitcoin wallet addresses controlled by Cryptonator have been used to send and receive $71 million to and from entities sanctioned by US authorities. Another $54 million passing through the service involved "hacked or stolen funds," $25 million was transacted with dark-web marketplaces or fraud outfits, and over $8 million linked to ransomware campaigns.

The court documents state that the exchange took a 0.9 percent cut of merchant transactions.

"The operation of Cryptonator involved an international money laundering scheme that, by virtue of its business model, catered to criminals," states a criminal indictment [PDF] filed by the Feds in a Tampa, Florida court.

"Cryptonator facilitated crimes, including but not limited to, computer hacking, ransomware, fraud, and identity theft. Since its founding Cryptonator received criminal proceeds of, among other crimes, numerous computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, various fraud markets, and identity theft schemes," prosecutors allege.

The accused CEO of the site, Roman Boss – who also uses the surname Pikulev – is a Russian national living in Germany. He is said to have set up the exchange in December 2013, using the email address trucksale@gmail.com.

When presented with a warrant to access that Gmail account, Google found it had a message in it from the address contact@cryptonator.com to a financial institution with the note: "I'm Roman, CEO of Cryptonator."

In a sting operation in July, 2021, a FBI operative in Florida registered an account with Cryptonator. The agent spent around $4,195 in digicash at a known dark web site that, it's claimed, trades in stolen identification records. Court documents allege that Boss facilitated that purchase via Cryptonator, telling the agent all transactions were anonymous and currency would be "mixed" at his end to disguise its source.

In September another FBI agent, who had been operating undercover as an affiliate of a known ransomware group, is said to have used a Cryptonator account to offer the criminals fictitious stolen data in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. That agent received Bitcoin worth $14,500 in two transactions through Cryptonator, it's said.

Boss is charged with two offenses: Operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The DoJ and IRS are seeking his arrest and the forfeiture of any and all illegal funds. Neither agency has responded to The Register's request for comment at the time of writing.

Original Submission

NASA Weighs SpaceX Rescue for Stranded Boeing Starliner Crew

upstart writes:

NASA weighs SpaceX rescue for stranded Boeing Starliner crew:

A final decision on whether to persist with Boeing's troubled Starliner -- which experienced worrying propulsion issues as it flew up to the orbital platform in June -- is expected later this month, officials said Wednesday in a call with reporters.

Detailed planning is already underway with Boeing's rival SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, to potentially launch their scheduled Crew-9 mission on September 24 with just two astronauts rather than the usual four.

Boeing's Starliner Astronauts Could Return on SpaceX Capsule in Feb 2025, NASA Says

upstart writes:

Boeing's Starliner astronauts could return on SpaceX capsule in Feb 2025, NASA says - West Hawaii Today:

NASA officials said on Wednesday the two astronauts delivered to the International Space Station in June by Boeing's Starliner could return on SpaceX's Crew Dragon in February 2025 if Starliner is still deemed unsafe to return to Earth.

The U.S. space agency has been discussing potential plans with SpaceX to leave two seats empty on an upcoming Crew Dragon launch for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first crew to fly Boeing's Starliner capsule.

The astronauts' test mission, initially expected to last about eight days on the station, has been drawn out by issues on Starliner's propulsion system that have increasingly called into question the spacecraft's ability to safely return them to Earth as planned.

A Boeing spokesperson said if NASA decides to change Starliner's mission, the company "will take the actions necessary to configure Starliner for an uncrewed return."

Thruster failures during Starliner's initial approach to the ISS in June and several leaks of helium – used to pressurize those thrusters – have set Boeing off on a testing campaign to understand the cause and propose fixes to NASA, which has the final say. Recent results have unearthed new information, causing greater alarm about a safe return.

The latest test data have stirred disagreements and debate within NASA about whether to accept the risk of a Starliner return to Earth, or make the call to use Crew Dragon instead.

Using a SpaceX craft to return astronauts that Boeing had planned to bring back on Starliner would be a major blow to an aerospace giant that has struggled for years to compete with SpaceX and its more experienced Crew Dragon.

Starliner has been docked to the ISS for 63 of the maximum 90 days it can stay, and it is parked at the same port that Crew Dragon will have to use to deliver the upcoming astronaut crew.

Early Tuesday morning, NASA, using a SpaceX rocket and a Northrop Grumman capsule, delivered a routine shipment of food and supplies to the station, including extra clothes for Wilmore and Williams.

Starliner's high-stakes mission is a final test required before NASA can certify the spacecraft for routine astronaut flights to and from the ISS. Crew Dragon received NASA approval for astronaut flights in 2020.

Starliner development has been set back by management issues and numerous engineering problems. It has cost Boeing $1.6 billion since 2016, including $125 million from Starliner's current test mission, securities filings show.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Intel will be releasing a microcode update to prevent further damage to crashing 13th- and 14th-generation desktop processors sometime this month if it can stick to its previously announced schedule. This fix should be available via BIOS updates from PC and motherboard makers and from Microsoft as a Windows update. But it will take time for those updates to roll out to users, and Intel has said that processors that are already exhibiting crashes have been permanently damaged and won't be fixed by the microcode update.

In an effort to provide peace of mind to buyers and cover anyone whose CPU is subtly damaged but not showing explicit signs of instability, Intel is extending the warranty on all affected 13th- and 14th-generation CPUs by an additional two years, Tom's Hardware reports. This raises the warranty on a new boxed Intel CPU from three years to five, and it applies to both previously purchased processors and new ones that are bought from today onward. For processors that came installed in pre-built PCs, Intel says users are covered, but that they should reach out to their PC's manufacturer for support. Those customers should only contact Intel directly if they have a problem getting a new CPU from the PC company.

[...] According to Intel, the root cause of the issue was "a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor," a bug that caused motherboards to supply too much power to a CPU. This resulted in damage to the silicon over time, leading to crashing and instability. The problem was also exacerbated by enthusiast motherboards that didn't stick to Intel's recommended default power and performance settings.

Intel says it is also "investigating options to easily identify affected processors" to help give users peace of mind.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://matduggan.com/teaching-to-the-test/

A lot has been written in the last few weeks about the state of IT security in the aftermath of the CrowdStrike outage. A range of opinions have emerged, ranging from blaming Microsoft for signing the CrowdStrike software (who in turn blame the EU for making them do it) to blaming the companies themselves for allowing all of these machines access to the Internet to receive the automatic template update. Bike-shedding among the technical community continues to be focused on the underlying technical deployment, which misses the forest for the trees.

The better question is what was the forcing mechanism that convinced every corporation in the world that it was a good idea to install software like this on every single machine? Why is there such a cottage industry of companies that are effectively undermining Operating System security with the argument that they are doing more "advanced" security features and allowing (often unqualified) security and IT departments to make fundamental changes to things like TLS encryption and basic OS functionality? How did all these smart people let a random company push updates to everyone on Earth with zero control? The justification often give is "to pass the audit".

These audits and certifications, of which there are many, are a fundamentally broken practice. The intent of the frameworks was good, allowing for the standardization of good cybersecurity practices while not relying on the expertise of an actual cybersecurity expert to validate the results. We can all acknowledge there aren't enough of those people on Earth to actually audit all the places that need to be audited. The issue is the audits don't actually fix real problems, but instead create busywork for people so it looks like they are fixing problems. It lets people cosplay as security experts without needing to actually understand what the stuff is.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A federal judge declared what many have known for years: Google is a monopoly. Specifically, it has a monopoly over online search and the search text ad market.

If you’ve used Google in the past few years, you know that it sucks. It once felt like magic: a search engine that would quickly take you wherever you needed to go online. But in 2024 all that old magic is gone. Relevant search results are buried under ads and worthless AI answers scraped from Reddit.

This 286-page ruling issued by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Monday helps explain why. Google has no competition in search and doesn’t need to appeal to consumers the way it would in a competitive market. The judgment is the result of a year-long showdown between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Google. It’s the biggest antitrust lawsuit since the DOJ went after Microsoft 20 years ago.

[...] If you’ve bought a device or searched the web in the past 15 years then you’ve experienced Google’s market dominance. Google comes pre-loaded onto countless devices and browsers. It’s so ubiquitous that its name has become the common verb for “searching on the internet.”

Google pays billions of dollars every year to make that happen. Around $26 billion in 2021 alone, according to the judgment. “Usually, the amount is calculated as a percentage of the advertisements revenue that Google generates from queries run through the default search access points,” the judgment said.

[...] Basically, Google pays huge sums of cash to every other tech company, including rivals like Apple, to keep itself the default search engine. Being the default engine gives it dominance when serving ads. It uses the ad money to pay to keep itself the default search engine. And on and on and on.

[...] And what would happen if Google stopped paying to be the default engine? A catastrophic loss of revenue.

“In 2020, Google’s internal modeling projected that it would lose between 60-80% of its iOS query volume should it be replaced as the default GSE on Apple devices…which would translate into net revenue losses between $28.2 and $32.7 billion,” the judgment said.

upstart writes:

A Japanese company becomes the first to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit:

There are more than 2,000 mostly intact dead rockets circling the Earth, but until this year, no one ever launched a satellite to go see what one looked like after many years of tumbling around the planet.

In February, a Japanese company named Astroscale sent a small satellite into low-Earth orbit on top of a Rocket Lab launcher. A couple of months later, Astroscale's ADRAS-J (Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan) spacecraft completed its pursuit of a Japanese rocket stuck in orbit for more than 15 years.

ADRAS-J photographed the upper stage of an H-IIA rocket from a range of several hundred meters and then backed away. This was the first publicly released image of space debris captured from another spacecraft using rendezvous and proximity operations.

Since then, Astroscale has pulled off more complex maneuvers around the H-IIA upper stage, which hasn't been controlled since it deployed a Japanese climate research satellite in January 2009. Astroscale attempted to complete a 360-degree fly-around of the H-IIA rocket last month, but the spacecraft triggered an autonomous abort one-third through the maneuver after detecting an attitude anomaly.

ADRAS-J flew away from the H-IIA rocket for several weeks. After engineers determined the cause of the glitch that triggered the abort, ADRAS-J fired thrusters to approach the upper stage again this month. The ADRAS-J spacecraft is about the size of a kitchen oven, while the H-IIA rocket it's visiting is nearly the size of a city bus.

[...] These types of complex maneuvers, known as rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), are common for crew and cargo spacecraft around the International Space Station. Other commercial satellites have demonstrated formation-flying and even docking with a spacecraft that wasn't designed to connect with another vehicle in orbit.

canopic jug writes:

The IETF has published a discussion about how to deal with networking in high-latency situations with occasional interruptions, such as interplanetary space where packet round trip times can make the traditional 3-way and 4-way handshake protocols quite impractical.

It takes some 2.4 to 2.7 seconds to send a signal to the moon and back. If we are talking about sending a signal to Mars and back, then the comparable delays are between 10 to 45 minutes. There is also the factor of extended interruption where an orbiting spacecraft is behind the object it is orbiting. If we look at communications with other planets in the solar system, there is a periodic interval when the planet aligns with the sun. For example, for an interval of around two weeks, the Earth's view of Mars is blocked by the Sun every two years.

Such protracted Round-Trip Time (RTT) intervals are well beyond what we experience in the everyday Internet, even in the most bizarre of fault scenarios! For an end-to-end reliable protocol, the sender must retain a copy of the sent data until it is acknowledged as received from the other end. We have become used to a network where the RTT intervals are of a few tens of milliseconds, so simple interactions, such as a three-way TCP handshake, or a DNS query and response can happen within the limits of human perception. When such interactions blow out to some 30 minutes or so, is an end-to-end interaction model the right architectural choice?

There are a lot of assumptions which need to be verified or debunked. It is clear that a wholly new digital environment will be needed for deep space.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

OpenAI Afraid to Release ChatGPT Detection Tool That Might Piss Off Cheaters:

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has new search and voice features on the way, but it also has a tool at its disposal that's reportedly pretty good at catching all those AI-generated fake articles you see on the internet nowadays. The company has been sitting on it for nearly two years, and all it would have to do is turn it on. All the same, the Sam Altman-led company is still contemplating whether to release it as doing so might anger OpenAI's biggest fans.

This isn't that defunct AI detection algorithm the company released in 2023, but something much more accurate. OpenAI is hesitant to release this AI-detection tool, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Sunday based on some anonymous sources from inside the company. The program is effectively an AI watermarking system that imprints AI-generated text with certain patterns its tool can detect. Like other AI detectors, OpenAI's system would score a document with a percentage of how likely it was created with ChatGPT.

OpenAI confirmed this tool exists in an update to a May blog post posted Sunday. The program is reportedly 99.9% effective based on internal documents, according to the WSJ. This would be far better than the stated effectiveness of other AI detection software developed over the past two years. The company claimed that while it's good against local tamping, it can be circumvented by translating it and retranslating with something like Google Translate or rewording it using another AI generator. OpenAi also said those wishing to circumvent the tool could "insert a special character in between every word and then deleting that character."

Internal proponents of the program say it will do a lot to help teachers figure out when their students have handed in AI-generated homework. The company reportedly sat on this program for years over concerns that close to a third of its user base wouldn't like it. In an email statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said:

"The text watermarking method we're developing is technically promising, but has important risks we're weighing while we research alternatives, including susceptibility to circumvention by bad actors and the potential to disproportionately impact groups like non-English speakers. We believe the deliberate approach we've taken is necessary given the complexities involved and its likely impact on the broader ecosystem beyond OpenAI."

The other problem for OpenAI is the concern that if it releases its tool broadly enough, somebody could decipher OpenAI's watermarking technique. There is also an issue that it might be biased against non-native English speakers, as we've seen with other AI detectors.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Make Bitcoin great again - what Donald Trump's backing of crypto could mean for the industry

On July 27, the former US president and Republican nominee for the upcoming election, Donald Trump, headlined the biggest Bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville. In his speech, Trump claimed he will make the US the "crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world" if returned to the White House after November's election.

Bitcoin Price Tanks Hours After Trump Floats Using it as US Reserve Asset

Bitcoin prices plummeted after former President Donald Trump suggested that the cryptocurrency could be used to pay off the country's $35 trillion national debt.

Bitcoin dropped 12 percent in the past 24 hours and ether plunged by 21 percent in the same time period. The price of bitcoin has been dropping since Friday, and briefly dropped to below $50,000 on Monday. This was the first time it had dropped below these levels since February.

In recent weeks Trump has been attempting to position himself firmly as pro-crypto. Speaking at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee on July 27, the Republican presidential candidate unveiled his plans to make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the planet" if he is elected for a second term.

He also spoke about the U.S. creating a "strategic national bitcoin reserve."

Original Submission

upstart writes: Robot Performs First Ever Fully Autonomous Dental Surgery on Live Patient:

Devices

A dental robotics company claims to have used an AI-controlled robot to perform a fully autonomous dental procedure on a human patient — for the first time, heralding a possible new era for dental treatment.

Perceptive, the company behind the robot, claims its system can shave off a considerable amount of time for routine procedures. The bot can replace crowns in just 15 minutes, it says, which takes a human dentist two hours across two office visits to complete.

The company says it's tested the device on a patient in Colombia, but has yet to release any peer-reviewed clinical data. As Stat points out, the company will need this data to apply for Food and Drug Administration approval, something that's still around five years away, according to Perceptive CEO Chris Ciriello.

Nonetheless, the company is celebrating the test as a big win.

"We're excited to successfully complete the world's first fully automated robotic dental procedure," said Ciriello in a press release. "This medical breakthrough enhances precision and efficiency of dental procedures, and democratizes access to better dental care, for improved patient experience and clinical outcomes."

The robotic system uses a handheld 3D scanner that captures highly detailed 3D images of beneath the gum line, allowing patients to "clearly visualize their dental conditions."