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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs is warning residents of under-siege regions to switch off home surveillance systems and dating apps to stop Ukraine from using them for intel-gathering purposes.

Residents of the Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions were issued with the warnings amid what seems like Russia being thoroughly rattled by Ukraine's incursion into the country's southwest.

"The enemy is massively identifying IP ranges in our territories and connecting to unprotected video surveillance cameras remotely, viewing everything from private yards to roads and highways of strategic importance," said the ministry, according to Russian newswire Interfax. "In this regard, if there is no urgent need, it is better not to use video surveillance cameras.

"It is highly discouraged to use online dating services. The enemy actively uses such resources for the covert collection of information."

These warnings were just two of many included in a public memo aimed at protecting the identities of high-value Russian individuals, including military personnel, law enforcement agents, and nuclear energy workers.

They follow an unexpected table-turning offensive launched by Ukraine on August 6, during which it surged into Kursk Oblast, seizing hundreds of square miles of land within mere weeks.

[...] The memo's warnings appear to be driven by fears of Russians with knowledge of Ukrainian interest being captured and having their devices combed for intel.

The military was reminded to avoid opening links that come from anyone other than official sources, and, while they're at it, to avoid using devices at all if they contain a significant amount of state and/or personal information.

Russian police officials reportedly said: "It is necessary to control and moderate chats, and promptly delete from them the accounts of people who have been captured by the enemy, as well as the accounts of people whose phones the enemy has gained access to."

If using Telegram, users were urged to disable the app's feature allowing other users to identify people who are geographically close to them. Deleting all markers that tie an individual to a specific affiliation, such as soldiers, law enforcement workers, and those working in the energy sector – especially nuclear power – was advised too.

"If your number appears in search results as recorded by third parties as 'Lesha FSB,' 'Pasha Rosgvardia,' 'Misha 123 Regiment,' this number needs to be changed, it has been compromised."

Social media posts must be audited too, removing any images or posts that are geotagged, out of fear that they could be used to locate Russian troops.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

There's a Problem With Rescuing the Stranded Astronauts: SpaceX and Boeing Spacesuits Aren't Compatible

While NASA and Boeing maintain that Starliner is ready to take the two crew members down to the surface in the case of an emergency — despite the possibility of several thrusters malfunctioning — even alternative rideshare options could expose Williams and Wilmore to considerable risks.

For one, Starliner's spacesuits aren't compatible with those used on board SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft. That means if the pair were to return on board the SpaceX capsule currently docked to the station, which is one rescue plan under consideration by NASA, they'd be flying without wearing a suit, as NASA confirmed during a teleconference call last week — an unfortunate reality for the space agency that will likely factor into its upcoming decision.

While "launch and entry" or intravehicular (IVA) spacesuits, unlike extravehicular activity (EVA) suits, are worn as a precaution inside spacecraft in case of cabin pressure loss, they could still prove life-saving if an emergency were to occur. They can also help with temperature regulation, and in some cases collect data and pass it on to the spacecraft's software.

[....] Even if Williams and Wilmore were to be loaded into an already fully occupied Crew-8 Crew Dragon, and they somehow had suits ready, Krishna explained, the capsule is only configured for four passengers, despite originally being designed to be occupied by a crew of seven. That means their suits wouldn't have anywhere to plug in anyway.

Fortunately, NASA has an entirely separate option to get the two astronauts back down to the ground: SpaceX's upcoming Crew-9 mission, which could be launched with just two, not four, crew members to make space for Williams and Wilmore, allowing them to return sometime in February.

Boeing should build it to be as safe as their aircraft.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Implantable technologies have significantly improved our ability to study and even modulate the activity of neurons in the brain. However, neurons in the spinal cord are harder to study in action.

“If we understood exactly how neurons in the spinal cord process sensation and control movement, we could develop better treatments for spinal cord disease and injury,” said Yu Wu, a research scientist who is part of a team of Rice University neuroengineers working on a solution to this problem.

“We developed a tiny sensor, spinalNET, that records the electrical activity of spinal neurons as the subject performs normal activity without any restraint,” said Wu, who is the lead author of a study about the sensor published in Cell Reports. “Being able to extract such knowledge is a first but important step to develop cures for millions of people suffering from spinal cord diseases.”

According to the study, the sensor recorded neuronal activity in the spinal cord of freely moving mice for prolonged periods and with great resolution, even tracking the same neuron over multiple days.

“Up until now, the spinal cord has been more or less a black box,” said Lan Luan, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a corresponding author on the study. “The issue is that the spinal cord moves so much during normal activity. Every time you turn your head or bend over, spinal neurons are also moving.”

During such movements, rigid sensors implanted in the spinal cord inevitably disturb or even damage the fragile tissue. SpinalNET, however, is over a hundred times smaller than the width of a hair, which makes it extremely soft and flexible ⎯ nearly as soft as the neural tissue itself.

“This flexibility gives it the stability and biocompatibility we need to safely record spinal neurons during spinal cord movements,” said Chong Xie, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering and a corresponding author of the study. “With spinalNET, we were able to get low-noise signals from hundreds of neurons.”

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Failures

So we just wrote about how advertising on ExTwitter remains in freefall and is likely down between 75 and 85% from when Elon took over. And now the Wall Street Journal has a piece recognizing that the banks that financed about $13 billion of the $44 billion Musk needed are admitting that it may be one of the worst buyout deals of all time.

The headline of the article actually underplays the story, calling it “the worst buyout for banks since the financial crisis.” But that’s just based on the “hang” — the length of time the deal has remained on their books. You see, the way this normally works is that the big banks lend the money and then almost immediately turn around and sell off the debt to other suckers to deal with.

But, in the case of Musk and Twitter, the banks immediately rubber-stamped it on the basis of “Ooooh, that Elon, doesn’t he always make money?” and without doing much (if any) due diligence. The entities who would buy the debt actually care about the return (or lack thereof) and were quick to recognize that Musk was going to tank Twitter’s revenue potential.

Some of this was known before. Just as Musk was about to officially gain control of Twitter, it was reported that the banks were regretting their decision as they realized they couldn’t sell the debt. There was talk of them offering it to other investors for pennies on the dollar. Instead, they all just kept marking down the value of the debt.

To make matters worse for all involved, it has been reported that the banks agreed to a sell-down letter, preventing any bank from taking a deal that isn’t offered to the rest of them. But to make matters even worse for Elon specifically, he apparently promised the bankers they wouldn’t lose money on this deal. It’s unclear how binding that promise is, and Musk is somewhat infamous for breaking promises. But it certainly could impact his ability to borrow in the future.

That said, the WSJ article highlights that the banks have had to hang on to the (greatly devalued) loans for a record length of time.

Maybe the banks will think about due diligence next time? I mean, it was no secret that the basic ideas Musk laid out for how he was going to run Twitter were absolute nonsense from Day One.

But, while the headline and the beginning of the piece compare the performance of this deal to the financial crisis, they admit deeper in the article that it may just be one of the worst of all time...[.]

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Pavel Durov, head of the Dubai-based proprietary "app" Telegram, had been wanted by the French authorities for his lack of cooperation in monitoring and filtering the activities of the users of his "app". This is in spite of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that any weakening of end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. Multiple sites are now reporting that he has been arrested on a warrant in France during a flight layover in his private jet:

The Korea Times, Telegram chief Pavel Durov arrested at French airport: officials:

France's OFMIN, an agency tasked with preventing violence against minors, had issued an arrest warrant for Durov as the coordinating agency in a preliminary investigation into alleged offenses including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and promotion of terrorism, one of the sources close to the case said.

Durov is suspected of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform.

Voice of America, CEO of Telegram messaging app arrested in France, say French media:

Based in Dubai, Telegram was founded by Russian-born Durov. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.

Durov was traveling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation.

The Guardian, Telegram app founder Pavel Durov reportedly arrested at French airport:

The Russia-born entrepreneur lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates.

Durov, who is estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of $15.5bn (£12bn), left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.

Reuters, Telegram messaging app CEO Durov arrested in France:

The encrypted Telegram, with close to one billion users, is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union. It is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.

SomeGuy writes:

Axios reports: locked up items are driving frustrated consumers to shop online more.

Locking up merchandise at drugstores and discount retailers hasn't curbed retail theft but is driving frustrated consumers to shop online more, retail experts tell Axios. Retail crime is eating into retailers' profits and high theft rates are also leading to a rise in store closures. Secured cases can cause sales to drop 15% to 25%, Joe Budano, CEO of anti-theft technology company Indyme, previously told Axios. Barricading everything from razors to laundry detergent has largely backfired and broken shopping in America, Bloomberg reports.

Aisles full of locked plexiglass cases are common at many CVS and Walgreens stores where consumers have to wait for an employee to unlock them. Target, Walmart, Dollar General and other retailers have also pulled back on self-checkout to deter shoplifting. "Locking up products worsens the shopping experience, and it makes things inconvenient and difficult," GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders said, adding it pushes shoppers to other retailers or to move purchases online.

Driving the news: Manmohan Mahajan, Walgreens global chief financial officer, said in a June earnings call that the retailer was experiencing "higher levels of shrink." Amazon CEO Andy Jassy spoke of the "speed and ease" of ordering online versus walking into pharmacies on a call with investors last week. "It's a pretty tough experience with how much is locked behind cabinets, where you have to press a button to get somebody to come out and open the cabinets for you," Jassy said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A team of archaeologists says humans may have braced the butt of their weapons against the ground in a way that would impale a charging animal:

How did early humans use sharpened rocks to bring down megafauna 13,000 years ago? Did they throw spears tipped with carefully crafted, razor-sharp rocks called Clovis points? Did they surround and jab mammoths and mastadons? Or did they scavenge wounded animals, using Clovis points as a versatile tool to harvest meat and bones for food and supplies?

UC Berkeley archaeologists say the answer might be none of the above.

Instead, researchers say humans may have braced the butt of their pointed spears against the ground and angled the weapon upward in a way that would impale a charging animal. The force would have driven the spear deeper into the predator's body, unleashing a more damaging blow than even the strongest prehistoric hunters would have been capable of on their own.

Drawing upon multiple sources of writings and artwork, a team of Berkeley archaeologists reviewed historical evidence from around the world about people hunting with planted spears.

They also ran the first experimental study of stone weapons that focused on pike hunting techniques, revealing how spears react to the simulated force of an approaching animal. Once the sharpened rock pierced the flesh and activated its engineered mounting system, they say, the spear tip functioned like a modern day hollow-point bullet and could inflict serious wounds to mastodons, bison and saber-toothed cats.

"This ancient Native American design was an amazing innovation in hunting strategies," said Scott Byram, a research associate with Berkeley's Archeological Research Facility and first-author of a paper on the topic published today in the journal PLOS ONE. "This distinctive Indigenous technology is providing a window into hunting and survival techniques used for millennia throughout much of the world."

upstart writes:

Victory! Grand Jury Finds Sacramento Cops Illegally Shared Driver Data:

For the past year, EFF has been sounding the alarm about police in California illegally sharing drivers' location data with anti-abortion states, putting abortion seekers and providers at risk of prosecution. We thus applaud the Sacramento County Grand Jury for hearing this call and investigating two police agencies that had been unlawfully sharing this data out-of-state.

The grand jury, a body of 19 residents charged with overseeing local government including law enforcement, released their investigative report on Wednesday. In it, they affirmed that the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office and Sacramento Police Department violated state law and "unreasonably risked" aiding the potential prosecution of "women who traveled to California to seek or receive healthcare services."

[...] Since 2016, California law has prohibited sharing ALPR data with out-of-state or federal law enforcement agencies. Despite this, dozens of rogue California police agencies continued sharing this information with other states, even after the state's attorney general issued legal guidance in October "reminding" them to stop.

In Sacramento County, both the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office and the Sacramento Police Department have dismissed calls for them to start obeying the law. Last year, the Sheriff's Office even claimed on Twitter that EFF's concerns were part "a broader agenda to promote lawlessness and prevent criminals from being held accountable." That agency, at least, seems to have had a change of heart: The Sacramento County Grand Jury reports that, after they began investigating police practices, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office agreed to stop sharing ALPR data with out-of-state law enforcement agencies.

NASA decided Saturday it's too risky to bring two astronauts back to Earth in Boeing's troubled new capsule, and they'll have to wait until next year for a ride home with SpaceX. What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months.

The seasoned pilots have been stuck at the International Space Station since the beginning of June. A cascade of vexing thruster failures and helium leaks in the new capsule marred their trip to the space station, and they ended up in a holding pattern as engineers conducted tests and debated what to do about the flight back.

After almost three months, the decision finally came down from NASA's highest ranks on Saturday. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will come back in a SpaceX capsule in February. Their empty Starliner capsule will undock in early September and attempt to return on autopilot with a touchdown in the New Mexico desert.

[...] "A test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The decision "is a result of a commitment to safety."

Nelson said lessons learned from NASA's two space shuttle accidents played a role. This time, he noted, open dialogue was encouraged rather than crushed.

"This has not been an easy decision, but it is absolutely the right one," added Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator.

AnonTechie writes:

Across different cultures and countries, people perceive the wisest people to be logical and reflective as well as able to consider other people's feelings and perceptions.

What makes someone seem wise? People view wisdom through the lens of applying knowledge and thinking logically as well as considering others' feelings and perceptions, finds a new study led by University of Waterloo researchers who looked at perceptions of wisdom across 12 countries and five continents.

Researchers examined the underlying principles guiding who we perceive as wise in political leadership, science, and daily life. Across different cultures, participants' judgements converged on two dimensions: reflective orientation and socio-emotional awareness. Reflective orientation includes characteristics such as thinking logically, emotion control and application of knowledge. Socio-emotional awareness includes characteristics like care for other's feelings and attention to social context.

"To our surprise, the two dimensions emerged across all cultural regions we studied, and both were associated with explicit attribution of wisdom," said Dr. Maksim Rudnev, a postdoctoral research associate in psychology at Waterloo and lead author.

The study suggests how people around the world might judge, support and trust leaders, educators and others in positions of influence. One example is how people view U.S. former president Donald Trump and current president Joe Biden.

[...] The collaboration among 26 research institutions was coordinated by the Geography of Philosophy consortium and included researchers from North and South Americas (Canada, U.S., Ecuador and Peru), Asia (China, India, Japan, and South Korea), Africa (Morocco and South Africa), and Europe (Slovakia).

[Source]: University of Waterloo

[Journal reference]: nature communications

[Also Covered By]: PHYS.ORG

More information: M. Rudnev et al, Dimensions of wisdom perception across twelve countries on five continents, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50294-0

Do you think that people who exhibit these characteristics are wise ??

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/08/feds-probe-of-hard-braking-in-cruise-robotaxi-crashes-ends-after-recall/

Following a successful recall, federal safety investigators have concluded an investigation that was sparked after a number of Cruise robotaxis crashed after braking inappropriately when being followed by other cars. It's a spot of good news for the autonomous driving startup, which has been under heavy scrutiny by federal and state regulators lately.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation opened a preliminary evaluation in December 2022 after reports emerged that Cruise's robotaxis could engage in "inappropriately hard braking" or become immobilized while driving, thus becoming obstacles and potentially causing a crash.

At the time, NHTSA had three reports of Cruise robotaxis braking hard in response to another vehicle or cyclist approaching quickly from behind, resulting in the robotaxi being rear-ended.
[...]
In total, NHTSA identified 10 crashes that were caused by inappropriately hard braking by a Cruise robotaxi, four of which also involved a vulnerable road user and ended in injury.
[...]
Earlier this month, Cruise initiated a safety recall, pushing out new software due to meetings between the AV developer and NHTSA to go over the data from Cruise and its peers. The recall notes that software updates throughout 2023 and until May 2024 reduced the propensity for this problem to occur, thanks to improvements in how the robotaxis perceive, predict, and plan.
[...]
"We are committed to building trust and increasing transparency with respect to autonomous vehicle technology and look forward to our continued work with NHTSA toward that end," a Cruise spokesperson told Ars.

That work will continue in the context of a second safety investigation opened last October after a pedestrian was hit by another car and then dragged down the road underneath the Cruise robotaxi. That incident also resulted in California suspending Cruise's license and the departure of then-CEO Kyle Vogt.

Previously on SoylentNews:
California Suspends Cruise Robotaxis After Car Dragged Pedestrian 20 Feet - 20231027

canopic jug writes:

Ben Hawkes over at Isoceles has a review of the two OpenSSH Backdoor attempts. One, the XZ backdoor, was attempted this year in early 2024. The other, in 2002, was a matter of attempting to trojanize some distribution files.

Inserting an exploitable bug (a "bugdoor"), one that's subtle enough that developers might not even notice during code review, is probably the winning move. However, it's interesting to note that in both 2002 and 2024 we got a backdoor rather than a bugdoor. That's probably because exploits are hard, and server-side exploits are really hard. Given how much work it is to be in a position to change the source code in the first place, it's not entirely surprising that attackers want to go with a reliable option. The counter-argument is that we may just never get to see any bugdoors because they never get caught (or if they do, they don't get flagged as subterfuge), so we're biased towards the events that we can actually detect.

There are other similarities. Both the 2002 and 2024 events targeted the build system, for example. This also makes sense, because build systems are a perfect mix of inscrutability and expressiveness. There's really no constraints on what you can do with most build systems. They have to be like this in order to make everything work everywhere that it's supposed to. Making something compile on Linux, MacOS, and Windows simultaneously is no easy feat. Add in support for multiple architectures and legacy versions, and well... you see where I'm going with this. The guiding design principle for build systems has been "just make it work", and so they end up being a complicated mess of directives, rules, variables, and command invocations. As long as they're working correctly, I suspect very few people are paying close attention to the contents of their build scripts, and that includes the developers/maintainers themselves. It's the ideal place to insert the first hook for a backdoor, hiding in plain sight.

Most bugs have not been added intentionally.

Previously:
(2024) The Mystery of 'Jia Tan,' the XZ Backdoor Mastermind
(2024) xz: Upstream Repository and the xz Tarballs Have Been Backdoored

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Google has reached a deal with California lawmakers to fund local news in the state after previously protesting a proposed law that would have required it to pay media outlets. Under the terms of the deal, Google will commit tens of millions of dollars to a fund supporting local news as well as an AI “accelerator program” in the state.

The agreement ends a months-long dispute between lawmakers and Google over the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that would have required Google, Meta and other large platforms to pay California publishers in exchange for linking to their websites. Google strongly opposed the measure, which was similar to laws passed in Canada and Australia.

[...] Now, under the new agreement, Google will direct “at least $55 million” to “a nonprofit public charity housed at UC Berkeley’s journalism school,” Politico reports. The university will distribute the fund, which also includes “at least $70 million” from the state of California. Google will also “commit $50 million over five years to unspecified ‘existing journalism programs.’”

The agreement also includes funding for a “National AI Innovation Accelerator.” Details of that program are unclear, but Cal Matters reports that Google will dedicate “at least $17.5 million” to the effort, which will fund AI experiments for local businesses and other organizations, including newsrooms. That aspect of the deal, which is so far unique to Google's agreement in California, could end up being more controversial as it could exacerbate existing tensions between publishers and AI companies.

In a statement, Alphabet’s President of Global Affairs, Kent Walker, credited the “thoughtful leadership” of California Governor Gavin Newsom and other state officials in reaching the agreement. “California lawmakers have worked with the tech and news sectors to develop a collaborative framework to accelerate AI innovation and support local and national businesses and nonprofit organizations,” he said. “This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy.”

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

An unusually bright burst of radio waves—dubbed the Wow! signal—discovered in the 1970s has baffled astronomers ever since, given the tantalizing possibility that it just might be from an alien civilization trying to communicate with us. A team of astronomers think they might have a better explanation, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv: clouds of atomic hydrogen that essentially act like a naturally occurring galactic maser, emitting a beam of intense microwave radiation when zapped by a flare from a passing magnetar.

As previously reported, the Wow! signal was detected on August 18, 1977, by The Ohio State University Radio Observatory, known as “Big Ear.” Astronomy professor Jerry Ehman was analyzing Big Ear data in the form of printouts that, to the untrained eye, looked like someone had simply smashed the number row of a typewriter with a preference for lower digits. Numbers and letters in the Big Ear data indicated, essentially, the intensity of the electromagnetic signal picked up by the telescope over time, starting at ones and moving up to letters in the double digits (A was 10, B was 11, and so on). Most of the page was covered in ones and twos, with a stray six or seven sprinkled in.

But that day, Ehman found an anomaly: 6EQUJ5 (sometimes misinterpreted as a message encoded in the radio signal). This signal had started out at an intensity of six—already an outlier on the page—climbed to E, then Q, peaked at U—the highest power signal Big Ear had ever seen—then decreased again. Ehman circled the sequence in red pen and wrote “Wow!” next to it. The signal appeared to be coming from the direction of the Sagittarius constellation, and the entire signal lasted for about 72 seconds. Alas, SETI researchers have never been able to detect the so-called “Wow! Signal” again, despite many tries with radio telescopes around the world.

[...] Astrobiologist Abel Mendez of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo and his co-authors think they have the strongest astrophysical explanation to date with their cosmic maser hypothesis. The team was actually hunting for habitable exoplanets using signals from red dwarf stars. In some of the last archival data collected at the Arecibo radio telescope (which collapsed in 2020), they noticed several signals that were remarkably similar to the Wow! signal in terms of frequency—just much less intense (bright).

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In a new letter, OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon insists that AI regulations should be left to the federal government. As reported previously by Bloomberg, Kwon says that a new AI safety bill under consideration in California could slow progress and cause companies to leave the state.

[...] The letter is addressed to California State Senator Scott Wiener, who originally introduced SB 1047, also known as the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act.

According to proponents like Wiener, it establishes standards ahead of the development of more powerful AI models, requires precautions like pre-deployment safety testing and other safeguards, adds whistleblower protections for employees of AI labs, gives California’s Attorney General power to take legal action if AI models cause harm, and calls for establishing a “public cloud computer cluster” called CalCompute.

In a response to the letter published Wednesday evening, Wiener points out that the proposed requirements apply to any company doing business in California, whether they are headquartered in the state or not, so the argument “makes no sense.” He also writes that OpenAI “...doesn’t criticize a single provision of the bill” and closes by saying, “SB 1047 is a highly reasonable bill that asks large AI labs to do what they’ve already committed to doing, namely, test their large models for catastrophic safety risk.”

Following concerns from politicians like Zoe Lofgren and Nancy Pelosi, companies like Anthropic, and organizations such as California’s Chamber of Commerce, the bill passed out of committee with a number of amendments that included tweaks like replacing criminal penalties for perjury with civil penalties and narrowing pre-harm enforcement abilities for the Attorney General.

The bill is currently awaiting its final vote before going to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk.

Original Submission