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oaklandwatch writes:

A half century later Steve Wozniak reunited with nine members of the "Homebrew Computer Club" for a special YouTube event (hosted by John "Captain Crunch" Draper).

And Woz remembers that it was that club that inspired him to rig his own continent-spanning connection to ARPAnet. Later the club passed around a datasheet for an upcoming 8-bit microprocessor, Woz did some tinkering, and "You can hear the excitement in Wozniak's voice as he remembers what happened next..."

HP had a single computer that 40 people were sharing. But now, "I had this little tiny computer with my own TV set, sitting on my desk at Hewlett-Packard, and I could type in my own programs and come up with solutions ... I was just having the time of my life!" Wozniak, of course, would go on to build Apple's first personal computers, which helped Apple become the most profitable company on earth. But Wozniak closes by saying the Homebrew Computer Club "was the heart of it all. It's what turned me on to the fact that people were interested in things like computers we could afford."

Woz also says he even gave tens of millions of his Apple stock to early Apple employees who'd come from the Homebrew Computer Club, because "I just felt they deserved it as much as I did. Because that was really where all my inspiration came from." And he would also fly into computer clubs around the U.S., "because I wanted to tell them where Apple came from, where I came from: It was the Homebrew Computer Club."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

It's not easy making green. For years, scientists have fabricated small, high-quality lasers that generate red and blue light. However, the method they typically employ—injecting electric current into semiconductors—hasn't worked as well in building tiny lasers that emit light at yellow and green wavelengths.

Researchers refer to the dearth of stable, miniature lasers in this region of the visible-light spectrum as the "green gap." Filling this gap opens new opportunities in underwater communications, medical treatments and more.

Green laser pointers have existed for 25 years, but they produce light only in a narrow spectrum of green and are not integrated in chips where they could work together with other devices to perform useful tasks.

Now scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have closed the green gap by modifying a tiny optical component: a ring-shaped microresonator, small enough to fit on a chip. The research is published in the journal Light: Science & Applications.

A miniature source of green laser light could improve underwater communication because water is nearly transparent to blue-green wavelengths in most aquatic environments. Other potential applications are in full-color laser projection displays and laser treatment of medical conditions, including diabetic retinopathy, a proliferation of blood vessels in the eye.

Compact lasers in this wavelength range are also important for applications in quantum computing and communication, as they could potentially store data in qubits, the fundamental unit of quantum information. Currently, these quantum applications depend on lasers that are larger in size, weight and power, limiting their ability to be deployed outside the laboratory.

For several years, a team led by Kartik Srinivasan of NIST and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a research partnership between NIST and the University of Maryland, has used microresonators composed of silicon nitride to convert infrared laser light into other colors. When infrared light is pumped into the ring-shaped resonator, the light circles thousands of times until it reaches intensities high enough to interact strongly with the silicon nitride. That interaction, known as an optical parametric oscillation (OPO), produces two new wavelengths of light, called the idler and the signal.

upstart writes:

Here's what the science says in the wake of actress Danielle Fishel's diagnosis:

Stage 0 cancer is a condition where cells in the body look like cancer cells under a microscope but haven't left their original location. It's also known as carcinoma in situ or noninvasive cancer, because it hasn't invaded any of the surrounding tissues. Sometimes it's not even called cancer at all.

"A lot of people think of these as kind of precancer lesions," says Julie Nangia, an oncologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

There are many different types of Stage 0 cancer, depending on which tissue or organ the cells are from. Some cancers, like sarcomas (cancers of the bones or skin), don't have a Stage 0.

Fishel's diagnosis is called ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS. This means some cells in the milk ducts in the breast look abnormal, but those cells haven't grown outside the milk ducts and moved into the rest of the breast tissue.

The trouble is, they could. If the abnormal cells do break through the milk duct, the severity of the ensuing cancer can range from Stage 1 to the most advanced Stage 4, depending on how big the tumor is and how far the cancer has spread throughout the body.

Before regular screening mammograms became the norm, DCIS accounted for just 5 percent of breast cancer diagnoses, says breast cancer surgeon Sara Javid of the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle (SN: 6/13/14).

Now, DCIS accounts for about 20 percent of newly diagnosed breast cancers. About 50,000 cases are diagnosed in the United States every year, and it turns up in one out of every 1,300 mammograms.

Still, because Stage 0 breast cancer doesn't really have any symptoms, it's possible to have it and never notice. "A lot of women have DCIS and don't know, especially older women, as it's typically a disease of aging," Nangia says.

For other Stage 0 cancers, the situation is different. Stage 0 cancers in other internal organs are often too small to show up on a scan. Widespread screening tests in other organs might be unsafe or take too many resources to run on a whole population.

The main exception is melanoma in situ, or Stage 0 skin cancer, which can be visible on the skin. That diagnosis is even more common than DCIS: Nearly 100,000 cases are expected in the United States in 2024.

"This is exactly why we want women to have screening mammograms," Nangia says. "We want to catch cancer at its earliest stages where it's incredibly easy to cure."

Journal References:
    • DOI: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2214122
    • DOI: https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2019.37.15_suppl.TPS603
    • DOI: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2214122
    • DOI: https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2019.37.15_suppl.TPS603

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Internet Archive Responds to Appellate Opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive:

We are disappointed in today's opinion about the Internet Archive's digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court's opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.

Take Action
Sign the open letter to publishers, asking them to restore access to the 500,000 books removed from our library: https://change.org/LetReadersRead

The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case:

The Internet Archive has lost a major legal battle—in a decision that could have a significant impact on the future of internet history. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found that one of the Internet Archive's book digitization projects violated copyright law.

Notably, the appeals court's ruling rejects the Internet Archive's argument that its lending practices were shielded by the fair use doctrine, which permits for copyright infringement in certain circumstances, calling it "unpersuasive."

In March 2020, the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, launched a program called the National Emergency Library, or NEL. Library closures caused by the pandemic had left students, researchers, and readers unable to access millions of books, and the Internet Archive has said it was responding to calls from regular people and other librarians to help those at home get access to the books they needed.

The NEL was an offshoot of an ongoing digital lending project called the Open Library, in which the Internet Archive scans physical copies of library books and lets people check out the digital copies as though they're regular reading material instead of ebooks. The Open Library lent the books to one person at a time—but the NEL removed this ratio rule, instead letting large numbers of people borrow each scanned book at once.

The NEL was the subject of backlash soon after its launch, with some authors arguing that it was tantamount to piracy. In response, the Internet Archive within two months scuttled its emergency approach and reinstated the lending caps. But the damage was done. In June 2020, major publishing houses, including Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley, filed the lawsuit.

upstart writes:

What were previously thought to be pristine archaeological deposits, ripe for investigation, could be contaminated with plastics:

Scientists in the UK have found evidence that microplastics are contaminating archaeological soil samples. The discovery has the potential to upend the way historical remains are preserved.

Tiny particles of microplastics were discovered seven metres underground in samples dating from the first or early second century. They were first excavated in the 1980s.

"This feels like an important moment, confirming what we should have expected: that what were previously thought to be pristine archaeological deposits, ripe for investigation, are in fact contaminated with plastics, and that this includes deposits sampled and stored in the late 1980s," says Professor John Schofield from the University of York's Department of Archaeology.

[...] "We think of microplastics as a very modern phenomenon as we have only really been hearing about them for the last 20 years," says David Jennings, chief executive of York Archaeology.

But, he adds, research from 2004 revealed that they have been prevalent in our seas since the 1960s due to the post-Second World War boom in plastic pollution.

"This new study shows that the particles have infiltrated archaeological deposits and, like the oceans, this is likely to have been happening for a similar period, with particles found in soil samples taken and archived in 1988 at Wellington Row in York," Jenning explains.

[...] The team says that the concern for archaeologists is whether microplastics compromise the scientific value of preserved remains. Preserving archaeology in the place where it was found has been the preferred approach to conservation for a number of years. But these new findings could change that.

"Our best-preserved remains - for example, the Viking finds at Coppergate - were in a consistent anaerobic waterlogged environment for over 1,000 years, which preserved organic materials incredibly well," Jennings says.

"The presence of microplastics can and will change the chemistry of the soil, potentially introducing elements which will cause the organic remains to decay. If that is the case, preserving archaeology in situ may no longer be appropriate."

The team says further research into the impact of microplastics will be a priority for archaeologists given their potential impact on historical sites.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

This vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-39717, is being abused to plant custom, credential-harvesting web shells on customers' networks, according to Black Lotus Labs. Lumen Technologies' security researchers have attributed "with moderate confidence" both the new malware, dubbed VersaMem, and the exploitation of Volt Typhoon, warning that these attacks are "likely ongoing against unpatched Versa Director systems."

Volt Typhoon is the Beijing-backed cyberspy crew that the feds have accused of burrowing into US critical infrastructure networks while readying "disruptive or destructive cyberattacks" against these vital systems.

Versa Director is a software tool that allows for the central management and monitoring of Versa SD-WAN software. It's generally used by internet service providers (ISPs) and managed service providers (MSPs) to maintain their customers' network configurations — and this makes it an attractive target for cybercriminals because it gives them access to the service providers' downstream customers.

That appears to be the case with this CVE, as Versa notes the attacks target MSPs for privilege escalation. 

[...] Versa has since released a patch, and encourages all customers to upgrade to Versa Director version 22.1.4 or later and apply the hardening guidelines. But the advice comes too late for some, as we're told: "This vulnerability has been exploited in at least one known instance by an Advanced Persistent Threat actor."

[...] "Analysis of our global telemetry identified actor-controlled small-office/home-office (SOHO) devices exploiting this zero-day vulnerability at four U.S. victims and one non-U.S. victim in the Internet service provider (ISP), managed service provider (MSP) and information technology (IT) sectors as early as June 12, 2024," the threat hunters noted.

After gaining access to the victims' networks via the exposed Versa management port, the attackers deployed the VersaMem web shell, which steals credentials and then allows Volt Typhoon to access the service providers' customers' networks as authenticated users. 

"VersaMem is also modular in nature and enables the threat actors to load additional Java code to run exclusively in-memory," the security shop added.

canopic jug writes:

Smithsonian Magazine has a retrospective on the 70th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster. That very popular model of electric guitar has been manufactured since 1954.

The Stratocaster also had timing on its side. It came out amid two other transformative innovations: television and rock 'n' roll. Sales picked up once Buddy Holly showcased a Strat on the "Ed Sullivan Show" in 1957. For the American and English kids who came of age in the '60s—Hendrix, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, the electrified Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival—the guitar's look was as groundbreaking as its sound. "Cool" depends more on appearance than on wiring, and the Strat's double-cut profile (producing two "wings" at the top) and sensuous body lines were mind-blowing. It looked, one early '60s British pop musician recalled, like "the equivalent of a bullet-finned '59 Cadillac."

Not to be confused with air guitar.

Previously:
(2016) Don't Give Up on the Guitar. Fender is Begging You
(2015) Our Musical Instruments May Become Obsolete

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

(FAI - Fully Automatic Installation)
https://fai-project.org/FAIme/live/

-= Custom Live Media, also for Newer Hardware
-= A web service for building your own customized Debian live image

"At this years Debian conference in South Korea I've presented[1] the new feature of the FAIme web service. You can now build your own Debian live media/ISO.

The web interface provides various settings, for e.g. adding a user name and its password, selecting the Debian release (stable or testing), the desktop environment and the language. Additionally you can add your own list of packages, that will be installed into the live environment. It's possible to define a custom script that gets executed during the boot process. For remote access to the live system, you can easily sepcify a github, gitlab or salsa account, whose public ssh key will be used for passwordless root access. If your hardware needs special grub settings, you may also add those. I'm thinking about adding an autologin checkbox, so the live media could be used for a kiosk system.

And finally newer hardware is supported with the help of the backports kernel for the Debian stable release (aka bookworm). This combination is not available from the official Debian live images or the netinst media because the later has some complicated dependencies which are not that easy to resolve2[2]. At DebConf24 I've talked to Alper who has some ideas[3] how to improve the Debian installer environment which then may support a backports kernel."

- Thomas Lange,
- https://blog.fai-project.org/
- https://blog.fai-project.org/posts/faime-live/

[Editor's Comment: OK, I've downloaded a Debian build featuring software that I have chosen. It boots OK and looks fine. Do I trust it? No, not yet. I have no idea who FAI are although I can see who they claim to be. Nor do I know if they are using the correct packages. But I will run it on a spare machine and wireshark it to death when I have some spare time. If any of you know Thomas Lange (Thomas Lange is the main author of FAI. He's a Debian Developer since 2000 and a sysadmin since 1992. He started the FAI project in 1999.) or know more about the project then please leave a comment.]

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/fbi-busts-musicians-elaborate-ai-powered-10m-streaming-royalty-heist/

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors charged a North Carolina musician with defrauding streaming services of $10 million through an elaborate scheme involving AI, as reported by The New York Times. Michael Smith, 52, allegedly used AI to create hundreds of thousands of fake songs by nonexistent bands, then streamed them using bots to collect royalties from platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.

While the AI-generated element of this story is novel, Smith allegedly broke the law by setting up an elaborate fake listener scheme. The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, announced the charges, which include wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. If convicted, Smith could face up to 20 years in prison for each charge.

To avoid detection, Smith spread his streaming activity across numerous fake songs, never playing a single track too many times. He also generated unique names for the AI-created artists and songs, trying to blend in with the quirky names of legitimate musical acts. Smith used artist names like "Callous Post" and "Calorie Screams," while their songs included titles such as "Zygotic Washstands" and "Zymotechnical."

[...] Initially, Smith uploaded his own original compositions to streaming platforms but found that his small catalog failed to generate significant income. In an attempt to scale up, he briefly collaborated with other musicians, reportedly offering to play their songs for royalties, though these efforts failed. This led Smith to pivot to AI-generated music in 2018 when he partnered with an as-yet-unnamed AI music company CEO and a music promoter to create a large library of computer-generated songs. The district attorney announcement did not specify precisely what method Smith used to generate the songs.

[...] When confronted by a music distribution company about "multiple reports of streaming abuse" in 2018, The New York Times says that Smith acted shocked and strongly denied any wrongdoing, insisting there was "absolutely no fraud going on whatsoever."

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

City of Columbus sues man after he discloses severity of ransomware attack

Mayor said data was unusable to criminals; researcher proved otherwise.

A judge in Ohio has issued a temporary restraining order against a security researcher who presented evidence that a recent ransomware attack on the city of Columbus scooped up reams of sensitive personal information, contradicting claims made by city officials.

[....] after the city of Columbus fell victim to a ransomware attack on July 18 that siphoned 6.5 terabytes of the city's data.

[....] Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said on August 13 that a "breakthrough" in the city's forensic investigation of the breach found that the sensitive files Rhysida obtained were either encrypted or corrupted, making them "unusable" to the thieves.

[....] Shortly after Ginther made his remarks, security researcher David Leroy Ross contacted local news outlets and presented evidence that showed the data Rhysida published was fully intact and contained highly sensitive information regarding city employees and residents.

[....] On Thursday, the city of Columbus sued Ross for alleged damages for criminal acts, invasion of privacy, negligence, and civil conversion. The lawsuit claimed that downloading documents from a dark web site run by ransomware attackers amounted to him "interacting" with them and required special expertise and tools. The suit went on to challenge Ross alerting reporters to the information, which it claimed would not be easily obtained by others.

[....] In a press conference Thursday, Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein defended his decision to sue Ross and obtain the restraining order.

[....] the screenshot of the Rhysida dark web site on Friday morning, the sensitive data remains available to anyone who looks for it. Friday's order may bar Ross from accessing the data or disseminating it to reporters, but it has no effect on those who plan to use the data for malicious purposes.

Whew! I feel safer already!

Original Submission

coolgopher writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/sep/05/common-food-dye-found-to-make-skin-and-muscle-temporarily-transparent

"Researchers have peered into the brains and bodies of living animals after discovering that a common food dye can make skin, muscle and connective tissues temporarily transparent.

Applying the dye to the belly of a mouse made its liver, intestines and bladder clearly visible through the abdominal skin, while smearing it on the rodent's scalp allowed scientists to see blood vessels in the animal's brain.

Treated skin regained its normal colour when the dye was washed off, according to researchers at Stanford University, who believe the procedure opens up a host of applications in humans, from locating injuries and finding veins for drawing blood to monitoring digestive disorders and spotting tumours.

"Instead of relying on invasive biopsies, doctors might be able to diagnose deep-seated tumours by simply examining a person's tissue without the need for invasive surgical removal," said Dr Guosong Hong, a senior researcher on the project. "This technique could potentially make blood draws less painful by helping phlebotomists easily locate veins under the skin."

[...] "The most surprising part of this study is that we usually expect dye molecules to make things less transparent. For example, if you mix blue pen ink in water, the more ink you add, the less light can pass through the water," Hong said. "In our experiment, when we dissolve tartrazine in an opaque material like muscle or skin, which normally scatters light, the more tartrazine we add, the clearer the material becomes. But only in the red part of the light spectrum. This goes against what we typically expect with dyes."

The researchers describe the process as "reversible and repeatable", with skin reverting to its natural colour once the dye is washed away. At the moment, transparency is limited to the depth the dye penetrates, but Hong said microneedle patches or injections could deliver the dye more deeply.

The procedure has not yet been tested on humans and researchers will need to show it is safe to use, particularly if the dye is injected beneath the skin.

More Information:

Turning tissues temporarily transparent

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Losing ground in the race to produce electric vehicles, German and French carmakers are heading toward a disruptive wave of factory closures:

Volkswagen AG is considering factory closures in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history, parting with tradition and risking a feud with unions in a step that reflects the deep woes roiling Europe's auto industry.

After years of ignoring overcapacity and slumping competitiveness, the German auto giant's moves are likely to kick off a broader reckoning in the industry. The reasons are clear: Europe's efforts to compete with Chinese rivals and Tesla Inc. in electric cars are faltering. (full article is paywalled)

"If even VW mulls closing factories in Germany, given how hard that process will be, it means the seas have gotten very rough," Pierre-Olivier Essig, a London-based equities analyst at AIR Capital, told Bloomberg. "The situation is very alarming."

[...] Car sales in Europe are down nearly one-fifth from prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and EV demand has slackened as Germany and Sweden have removed and reduced incentives to purchase the vehicles, Bloomberg reported. As a result, Chinese EV manufacturer BYD has jumped into the European market, pricing its Seagull model at just $9,700 before tax, a far cry from the European's average EV cost of $48,000 in 2022.

VW began downsizing in July, with its Audi subsidiary cutting 90% of its 3,000 person workforce at its manufacturing plant in Brussels, Belgium, according to Bloomberg.

The company's share price is now approaching the lows of its 2015 "diesel crisis," when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accused the company of installing illegal software in its cars in order to artificially improve its results on diesel emission tests, BBC News reported. The company also posted a €100 million net cash flow loss on its automotive business in the first half of 2024.

Related:

• South Korean EV Battery Makers Reporting Big Losses as EV Demand Slows
• General Motors Lays Off Hundreds Of US Workers
• Auto Woes
• Why are All the EVs so Expensive?

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/09/sailors-hid-an-unauthorized-starlink-on-the-deck-of-a-us-warship-and-lied-about-it/

It's no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. The records retention! The security! So government workers occasionally take IT into their own hands with creative but, err, unauthorized solutions.

For instance, a former US Ambassador to Kenya in 2015 got in trouble after working out of an embassy compound bathroom—the only place where he could use his personal computer (!) to access an unsecured network (!!) that let him log in to Gmail (!!!), where he did much of his official business—rules and security policies be damned.

Still, the ambassador had nothing on senior enlisted crew members of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, who didn't like the Navy's restriction of onboard Internet access. In 2023, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a Starlink terminal to the "O-5 level weatherdeck" of a US warship.
[...]
The Navy Times has all the new and gory details, and you should read their account, because they went to the trouble of using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to uncover the background of this strange story.
[...]
the chiefs don't appear to have taken amazing security precautions once everything was installed. For one thing, they called the network "STINKY." For another, they were soon adding more gear around the ship, which was bound to raise further questions. The chiefs found that the Wi-Fi signal coming off the Starlink satellite transceiver couldn't cover the entire ship, so during a stop in Pearl Harbor, they bought "signal repeaters and cable" to extend coverage.

Sailors on the ship then began finding the STINKY network and asking questions about it.
[...]
Ship officers heard the scuttlebutt about STINKY, of course, and they began asking questions and doing inspections, but they never found the concealed device. On August 18, though, a civilian worker from the Naval Information Warfare Center was installing an authorized SpaceX "Starshield" device and came across the unauthorized SpaceX device hidden on the weatherdeck.
[...]
All of the chiefs who used, paid for, or even knew about the system without disclosing it were given "administrative nonjudicial punishment at commodore's mast," said Navy Times.

[Command Senior Chief Grisel] Marrero herself was relieved of her post last year, and she pled guilty during a court-martial this spring.

So there you go, kids: two object lessons in poor decision-making. Whether working from an embassy bathroom or the deck of a littoral combat ship, if you're a government employee, think twice before giving in to the sweet temptation of unsecured, unauthorized wireless Internet access.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Cops Are Starting To Tow Away Teslas To 'Secure' Recordings Captured By The Cars' Cameras

Well, here's a not-so-fun new twist in the search-and-seizure narrative. Car owners are being deprived of their vehicles just because cops think footage of a crime may have been captured by the car's on-board cameras.

[....] But being in the wrong place at the wrong time might mean drivers going without cars because cops have decided the best way to secure this potential evidence is to take cars away from their drivers. Here's Rachel Swan, reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle. (h/t Bluesky user Hypervisible)

A Canadian tourist was visiting Oakland recently when he had to talk someone out of taking his Tesla from a hotel parking lot.

This was no thief. It was the Oakland Police Department. Turns out, the Tesla may have witnessed a homicide.

In Oakland and beyond, police called to crime scenes are increasingly looking for more than shell casings and fingerprints. They're scanning for Teslas parked nearby, hoping their unique outward-facing cameras captured key evidence. And, the Chronicle has found, they're even resorting to obtaining warrants to tow the cars to ensure they don't lose the video.

[....] At least warrants appear to be involved at this point, which means there's a paper trail documenting law enforcement's seizure of the inanimate "witness." Unfortunately, that's not going to mean much to car owners who may walk out of their houses, businesses, or places of worship to discover their vehicle missing.

Even though this is handled about as well as it can be at this point in time, this kind of thing is only going to become more common. And, inevitably, some cops are going to decide they don't have time to get a warrant, much less make a good faith effort to secure the recordings from the vehicle's owner before initiating a seizure.

Coming soon! Owners of cars without cameras considered to be obstructing justice.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

In the hunt for alien life, is man truly 'the measure of all things?':

Enrico Fermi's lunchtime question at wartime Los Alamos, "Where is everybody?" has been both a gift and a problem to scientists ever since. Known as "Fermi's Paradox," it simply asks, why, since life on Earth is ubiquitous and developed very early in Earth's history, and the galaxy is very old and not overly large, aren't there intelligent, advanced extraterrestrials everywhere? In particular, why can't we detect any, and why haven't any (obvious) aliens visited us?

There have been a few dozen proposed explanations of Fermi's Paradox, in which, as is the human way, mankind is placed at the center of the picture. It's about what we see, how we evolved to this technological state, what we have or haven't heard from space.

Vojin Rakić, a Serbian philosopher, calls these anthropocentric solutions, because they put humans at the center of the picture. In a paper that studies the existing proposals for solving the paradox, he puts forth a new, possible explanation: Alien life might be unobservable to the senses humans have developed, or even live in part of the wider universe we don't know of or can' t yet detect and observe.

His epistemological approach discards the role of man in the nature of the universe and the search for life. A scholar from the Center for the Study of Bioethics at the University of Belgrade, Rakić's work has been published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

[...] Rakić begins by classifying the many proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox as exceptionality solutions, annihilation solutions and communication barrier solutions. The first posits that life is extremely unlikely to develop and we might be the only life in the Milky Way galaxy, if not the universe, and there may be nobody out there. The development of intelligent life might be even rarer, much rarer, requiring a series of crucial but exceedingly rare jumps in its path.

Annihilation solutions hold that planet-wide catastrophes happen from time to time, like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, or that intelligent species cause their own extinctions with war, weapons or environmental damage, or destroy intelligent life elsewhere either as a means of protection or to grab resources.

Communication barrier solutions question whether alien civilizations are too far away, are incomprehensible to humans, or if they (or we) only exist for a relatively short period of time, or whether intelligent extraterrestrials chose to hide themselves, a scenario discussed in Liu Cixin's sci-fi trilogy "Remembrance of Earth's Past."

The zoo hypothesis proposes that extraterrestrials leave Earth alone to let it develop naturally, a kind of Prime Directive, as was self-imposed by human space explorers in the "Star Trek" universe.