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fliptop writes:

Google has initiated the discontinuation of support for uBlock Origin, the popular ad-tracking blocker, in Chrome:

The migration to Manifest V3—a new extension framework believed to reduce the effectiveness of certain ad blockers—is the underlying cause and is seen as part of Google's big move against ad and tracking blocks. Developer Raymond Hill highlighted this shift by sharing a screenshot depicting Chrome automatically disabling uBlock Origin due to incompatibility with the upcoming regulations.

To circumnavigate these limitations, Hill has developed uBlock Origin Lite, which conforms to the Manifest V3 guidelines, though it needs to be installed manually because, as Hill points out in a GitHub FAQ, the differences between the original and the Lite versions are too significant for an automatic update.

The essence of a manifest involves defining extension attributes such as name, version, and required permissions. Manifest V3 changes key aspects of this definition, notably removing the ability to execute code from external servers. According to Hill, the newer version of his ad-blocking tool, uBlock Origin Lite, may not perform as robustly as its predecessor due to its diminished filtering capabilities.

Previously: Google Chrome Is Killing The Ublock Origin Ad Blocker Extension

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

UK prime minister Keir Starmer promised to make the nation's competition regulator more inclined toward economic growth the day after a Microsoft executive was appointed chair of the government's Industrial Strategy Advisory Council.

At the UK's International Investment Summit, attended by Google owner Alphabet, insurance group Aviva, and pharma giant GSK, Starmer said it was time to "upgrade the regulatory regime" and make it "fit for the modern age."

"We will rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment," he said. "We will march through the institutions and we will make sure that every regulator in this country – especially our economic and competition regulators – takes growth as seriously as this room does."

Competitors to Microsoft and Google might point out that UK regulators can also promote growth by curbing monopolies.

The Redmond tech giant is one of the companies under the scrutiny of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as it continues to investigate the health of the local cloud market.

But that was not the theme of this week's event, which was preceded by the appointment of Clare Barclay, CEO of Microsoft UK, as chair of the government's new Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, which is said to offer the government expert advice in partnership with business, unions, and other groups from across the UK.

[...] A legal professional in the UK voiced concerns about potential conflict of interest in hiring a Microsoft exec to work in a public sector role.

"Leaving aside the crass stupidity of appointing the UK head of a US HQ'ed global supplier under ongoing active investigation by the CMA for alleged manipulation of their market share, the gov[ernment] have arguably both sent a clear message of their faith and dependency on Microsoft AND dealt the CMA's investigation a crashing blow," he told The Reg.

"If CMA don't chastise Microsoft then the role now played by Barclay will of course be leveraged to suggest political interference, whereas if they do, her position becomes immediately untenable, and affects the gov[ernment]'s flagship plan.

"Maybe this is a precursor to a significantly less harsh outcome all round for all the hyperscalers under CMA examination - only that outcome would conveniently spare the gov[ernment]'s blushes and let their normal cloud service purchases resume unabated."

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.hagerty.com/media/automobilia/the-rise-and-fall-of-matchboxs-toy-car-empire/

The announcement that John Cena has signed on to be the star of the new Matchbox live-action movie raises a few questions. First—there's going to be a Matchbox movie? And second—what will it be about, exactly?

We know that Cena is a car guy of broad tastes: He owns a couple of classic muscle cars but daily-drives Civic Type-R, and he's of course part of the Fast and Furious franchise of films. He's also the kind of charismatic lead that doesn't mind a bit of fun at his own expense. (His comedic timing probably comes from his days as a professional wrestler.)

What's going to be in the script that gets handed to him?

With 2023's Barbie hitting more than $1.4 billion in worldwide box offices, you just know Mattel is looking over its various intellectual properties and imagining a Scrooge McDuck–sized swimming pool of cash. There'll be a Hot Wheels movie at some point, and since that franchise already has spawned multiple video games, it's easy to imagine some kind of film with action-packed racing and huge stunts is in the offing, like a G-rated version of the aforementioned Fast and Furious. Matchbox is different, though, with quintessentially British roots, and a less wildly creative nature than Hot Wheels, its corporate sibling.

What Hollywood should do, but probably won't, is tell the real story of Matchbox, because it's the tale of the rise and fall of the greatest toy-car empire in the world. It's a story of postwar resilience, of a company holding out against hard times and fighting off market change. There are plucky East-End Londoners getting away with schemes on the side, a public-transit system sponsored by a toy-car factory, and, at the heart of things, a skilled and slightly rebellious engineer.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

[Editor's Comment: I was sceptical when I first read this report but a little bit of searching suggests that the technique is used elsewhere but at very different frequencies. I will let you reach your own conclusions.]

After years of research, scientists at ETH Zurich have developed a method to make sound waves travel in a single direction. The study was led by Professor Nicolas Noiray, who has spent much of his career studying and preventing potentially dangerous self-sustaining thermo-acoustic oscillations in aircraft engines, believed there was a way to harness similar phenomena for beneficial applications.

The research team, led by Professor Nicolas Noiray from ETH Zurich's Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, in collaboration with Romain Fleury from EPFL, figured out how to prevent sound waves from traveling backward without weakening their forward propagation, building upon similar work from a decade ago.

At the heart of this breakthrough is a circulator device, which utilizes self-sustaining aero-acoustic oscillations. The circulator consists of a disk-shaped cavity through which swirling air is blown from one side through a central opening. When the air is blown at a specific speed and swirl intensity, it creates a whistling sound in the cavity.

Unlike conventional whistles that produce sound through standing waves, this new design generates a spinning wave. The circulator has three acoustic waveguides arranged in a triangular pattern along its edge. Sound waves entering the first waveguide can theoretically exit through the second or third but cannot travel backward through the first.

The critical component is how the system compensates for the inevitable attenuation of sound waves. The self-oscillations in the circulator synchronize with the incoming waves, allowing them to gain energy and maintain their strength as they travel forward. This loss-compensation approach ensures that the sound waves not only move in one direction but also emerge stronger than when they entered the system.

[...] While the current prototype serves as a proof of concept for sound waves, the team believes their loss-compensated non-reciprocal wave propagation method could have applications beyond acoustics, such as metamaterials for electromagnetic waves. This research could lead to advancements in areas such as radar technology, where better control over microwave propagation is essential.

Additionally, the technique could pave the way for developing topological circuits, enhancing signal routing in future communication systems by providing a method to guide waves unidirectionally without energy loss. The research team published its study in Nature Communications.

Reference:
Pedergnana T, Faure-Beaulieu A, Fleury R, Noiray N, Loss-compensated non-reciprocal scattering based on synchronization. Nature Communications 15, 7436 (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-51373-y

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Chinese researchers claim they have found a way to use D-Wave's quantum annealing systems to develop a promising attack on classical encryption.

Outlined in a paper [PDF] titled "Quantum Annealing Public Key Cryptographic Attack Algorithm Based on D-Wave Advantage", published in the late September edition of Chinese Journal of Computers, the researchers assert that D-Wave’s machines can optimize problem-solving in ways that make it possible to devise an attack on public key cryptography.

The paper opens with an English-language abstract but most of the paper is in Chinese, so we used machine translation and referred to the South China Morning Post report on the paper – their Mandarin may be better than Google's ability to translate deeply technical text.

Between the Post, the English summary, and Google, The Reg understands the research team, led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University, used a D-Wave machine to attack Substitution-Permutation Network (SPN) structured algorithms that perform a series of mathematical operations to encrypt info. SPN techniques are at the heart of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) – one of the most widely used encryption standards.

The tech targeted in the attack include the Present and Rectangle algorithms, and the Gift-64 block cipher, and per the Post produced results that the authors presented as “the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today.”

[...] The exact method outlined in the report does remain elusive, and the authors declined to speak with the Post due to the implications of their work.

But the mere fact that an off-the-shelf one quantum system has been used to develop a viable angle of attack on classical encryption will advance debate about the need to revisit the way we protect data.

[...] Vendors, meanwhile, are already introducing “quantum safe” encryption that can apparently survive future attacks.

That approach may not be effective if, as alleged, China is stealing data now to decrypt it once quantum computers can do the job.

Or perhaps no nation needs quantum decryption, given Microsoft’s confession that it exposed a golden cryptographic key in a data dump caused by a software crash, leading a Chinese crew to obtain it and put it to work peering into US government emails.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Intel has begun to send formal notifications to 1,300 employees at its Gordon Moore Park facility, saying that they only have until next month to stay in their position. This massive job cut is part of the company’s plan to cut more than 15% of its workforce as part of its plan to help turn around after suffering massive losses. According to a report by The Oregonian, this reduction-in-force will affect more than 5% of the Intel workforce in Oregon, and would make it one of the largest layoffs in the state’s history.

Note that this does not include the number of employees that took voluntary severance, buyouts, and early retirement options. Given that the company had 23,000 workers in its Oregon site earlier this year, a 15% reduction would drop this to less than 20,000 employees. The 1,300 affected workers would be less than half of Intel’s target reduction. So, if the company will apply its reduction evenly across the board, we could expect the number of workers that will leave Intel, whether voluntary or not, to reach over 3,000.

Nevertheless, other parts of the company have been hit harder by the cuts. With the Sales and Marketing Group (SMG) getting a 35% cut in costs. While Intel did not indicate how many jobs will be lost in SMG, many jobs and programs are under threat with this massive budget reduction.

The company’s woes were brought to light during its quarterly earnings call in August. The call revealed a $1.6 billion loss driven by Intel falling behind in the AI arms race and widespread failures in its 13th/14th-generation CPUs. Now the company is fighting to stay alive, with the plans to cut assets and put projects on hold. There are even rumors that Qualcomm is making an offer to Intel to buy a part of its business.

Aside from this, Intel is also keen on getting its awards from Washington’s CHIPS Act. It’s currently on track to receive it $8.5 billion direct funding award from the federal government by the end of the year, which will give it a lot of room to breathe. Furthermore, the company confirmed that it will receive a $3 billion award for Secure Enclave, which will allow the company to provide its latest 18A chips to the Pentagon.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

NASA successfully launched the Europa Clipper, the largest spacecraft the agency has ever built for a planetary mission. Clipper is now successfully on its multi-year journey to Europa, bristling with equipment to study the Jovian moon's potential to support life—but just a few months ago, the mission was almost doomed. In July, researchers at NASA found out that a group of Europa Clipper's transistors would fail under Jupiter's extreme radiation levels. They spent months testing devices, updating their flight trajectories, and ultimately adding a warning "canary box" to monitor the effects of radiation as the mission progresses.

The canary box "is a very logical engineering solution to a problem," says Alan Mantooth, an IEEE Fellow and a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Arkansas. But ideally, it wouldn't have been needed at all. If NASA had caught the issues with these transistors earlier or designed their circuits with built-in monitoring, this last minute scramble wouldn't have occurred. "It's a clever patch," says Mantooth, "but it's a patch."

Scientists have been "radiation hardening" electronics—designing them to function in a radioactive environment—since the 1960s. But as missions to space become more ambitious, radiation hardening techniques have had to evolve. "It's kind of like cybersecurity," says Mantooth. "You're always trying to get better. There's always a more harsh environment."

... In future space exploration, we'll see more systems made with alternative semiconductors like silicon carbide, specialized CMOS transistors, integrated photonics, and new kinds of radiation-resistant memory. Here's your guide to the next generation of radiation hardened technology.

... As space exploration and satellite launches continue to ramp up, radiation hardening will only become more vital to our designs. "What's exciting is that as we advance our capabilities, we're able to go places we haven't been able to go before and stay there longer," says Mantooth. "We can't fly electronics into the Sun right now. But one day, maybe we will."

[Source]: IEEE SPECTRUM

Original Submission

Sometime last Tuesday, our IRC went offline. If you made any changes prior to that, could you please reverse them?

In the meantime, we have a backup server that you might want to use:

irc.libera.chat/6697 channel: ##soylentnews

This can always be used to contact staff when, as now, our own IRC is having problems. It is thought that the problems might not be internal to our servers and I am told that a ticket has been raised with Linode.

You can always use this IRC channel for general chat at any time.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Over the past four years, the Dragon spacecraft has returned eight NASA crews by performing a parachute-assisted splashdown in the ocean, but the crew capsule now has a backup landing method in the event of an emergency.

SpaceX’s Dragon can land propulsively using its eight SuperDraco thrusters, a feature that was originally intended to be the spacecraft’s main way of returning to Earth but was later scrapped due to safety concerns. During the live webcast of the Crew-9 launch on September 27, NASA officials announced that in the event that all four parachutes fail to deploy, Dragon would land on a solid surface using the SuperDracos launch abort system.

“Dragon was always designed to land propulsively, but I didn’t want to risk it as the primary method,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X. During the early days of its development, SpaceX marketed Dragon’s ability to land using its eight SuperDraco engines, which would slow the spacecraft down during its descent until its velocity reached zero, at that point its landing legs would extend so the capsule can touch down on the pad. However, a lot can change in ten years.

[...] By now, NASA has plenty of reason to trust SpaceX and its ability to launch and return its crew of astronauts safely to Earth. The Dragon spacecraft that recently launched to the International Space Station is also responsible for bringing back two astronauts who had flown to orbit on board Boeing’s cursed Starliner spacecraft, which was later deemed unfit to return its crew back to Earth. That might have been why the Dragon spacecraft was finally allowed to keep its propulsive landing system handy in case of an emergency.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

More than 6,500 volunteers have supported the accurate identification of approximately 1,000 prehistoric burial mounds in the Netherlands in just four months, proving the value of involving volunteers in archaeology.

In 2018, the Heritage Quest project was launched to harness the power of citizen scientists, utilizing crowd-sourcing to identify archaeological features on lidar imagery of the central Netherlands.

Through the involvement of thousands of people online, prehistoric burial mounds were identified across the region in a short amount of time. However, the accuracy of crowd-sourced data has been questioned in the past, as the majority of volunteers are not professional archaeologists.

"While the volume of data exceeded our expectations, we faced a key challenge common to large citizen science projects: how reliable are the detections made by volunteers?" states lead author of the research, Dr. Quentin Bourgeois from Leiden University.

To assess the accuracy of the data, the authors performed a ground-based survey of 380 sites identified during the study, examining them in person to determine whether they were in fact prehistoric barrows. Their results are published in the journal Antiquity.

According to Dr. Bourgeois, the results are clear. "Citizen science works. We found a direct correlation between the number of volunteers identifying a potential archaeological object and its likelihood of being a prehistoric burial mound."

This means that the Heritage Quest project has discovered 1,000 previously-unknown burial mounds, doubling the number of known mounds from the region in just four months.

Importantly, this shows the value of involving volunteers in archaeological projects, allowing for the identification of archaeological features much more quickly than could be achieved by professionals alone.

[...] "But for me the most amazing outcome is seeing the passion the volunteers had for our research. They have now become vocal advocates for the preserved traces of prehistoric landscapes in their region."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The search giant will purchase small reactors to provide energy that will enable the growth of energy-guzzling AI technologies.

Google has signed a corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from small modular reactors (SMRs) to be developed by Kairos Power in the US. The search giant claimed this deal will “accelerate the clean energy transition across the US”.

According to Google, Kairos will bring its first SMR online “quickly and safely” by 2030, with more reactors to be deployed by 2035. “Overall, this deal will enable up to 500MW of new 24/7 carbon-free power to US electricity grids and help more communities benefit from clean and affordable nuclear power,” said Michael Terrell, Google’s senior director for energy and climate. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

The move by Google and other tech companies to find more and bigger sources of energy to power their data centres is in large part due to the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. AI models require huge computing power. An industry report estimates that the proportion of power used for AI in data centres globally will grow to 10pc next year, up from about 2pc this year.

“Overall, our total GHG emissions increased by 13pc [year over year] – highlighting the challenge of reducing emissions while compute intensity increases and we grow our technical infrastructure investment to support this AI transition,” Google said at the time.

“Predicting the future environmental impact of AI is complex and evolving, and our historical trends likely don’t fully capture AI’s future trajectory.”

[...] Kairos Power was founded in 2016 with the goal of developing “innovative nuclear technology”. The company only secured permission to build a test reactor in December last year. The reactor is called Hermes and will be based in Tennessee. In February, the US Department of Energy agreed to provide up to $303m to help build Hermes.

It is possible that Google’s SMRs will face delays. The completion date for Hermes has already slipped to 2027 in the time since permission to build was granted, according to an article in MIT Technology Review. The issue of sourcing uranium was also highlighted in this article. After Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, the US banned uranium imports from Russia and now has just three years’ supply left. Kairos says it is working with a European consortium to source uranium.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Activision Blizzard reports that exposure to toxic voice chat in Call of Duty has declined by 43 percent since the beginning of this year. The publisher credits the recent implementation of AI-based moderation for the results, which have convinced it to expand its use when Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches on October 25.

The publisher introduced the moderator, ToxMod, when it launched Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III last November. According to ToxMod's website, the system analyzes text transcripts of in-game voice chat and detects keywords based on multiple factors.

To tell the difference between trash talk and harassment, ToxMod monitors keywords and reactions to comments, recognizing player emotions and understanding the game's code of conduct. Furthermore, the system estimates the perceived age and gender of the speaker and recipients to understand each conversation's context better.

ToxMod can't ban anyone on its own, but it can quickly flag violations for review by human moderators. Activision then decides whether to warn or mute players, only issuing bans after repeated infractions. The number of repeat offenders in Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone fell by 67 percent since Activision implemented improvements in June 2024. In July alone, 80 percent of players caught violating voice chat rules didn't re-offend.

All regions except Asia currently support ToxMod, and Call of Duty uses the system to moderate voice chat in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. When Black Ops 6 launches, Activision will add support for French and German.

Meanwhile, text-based chat and username moderation expanded from 14 to 20 languages in August. Community Sift has been Call of Duty's text moderation partner since the first Modern Warfare reboot game launched in 2019, blocking 45 million messages since Modern Warfare III's November release.

Using AI to moderate player behavior is far less controversial than employing the technology for in-game assets. Late last year, AI-generated art appeared in content skins for Modern Warfare III. Amid the historic number of gaming industry layoffs occurring around that time, some fear publishers will try to replace artists with AI models.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

If we were to draw an infosec Venn diagram, with one circle representing "sensitive info that attackers would want to steal" and the other "limited resources plus difficult-to-secure IT environments," education would sit in the overlap.

Schools – including K-12, colleges, and universities – store health and medical records, data belonging to minors, financial information, sensitive research, AI training models and other proprietary IP. At the same time, they are famously understaffed (with the exception of some well-heeled private institutions) and underfunded – especially when it comes to IT and security. 

Their network users include students – some as young as five years old – teachers and professors, doctors and patients, food service workers, janitors, staff, and visitors.

Plus, educational facilities and campuses have to secure IT environments that span both legacy and modern systems, covering everything from payment processing systems to medical equipment as well as personal phones, computers, and gaming consoles.

Every week, the education/research sector faces an average of 2,507 attempted cyber attacks, with everyone from nation-state groups to ransomware gangs and other financially motivated criminals putting schools in their crosshairs. At least according to Microsoft, which, in its Cyber Signals report published today, warned that Iran and North Korea are among the miscreants targeting schools.

As of the second quarter of 2024, education holds the dubious distinction of being the third most targeted industry, based on analyzed security events, Redmond notes.

upstart writes:

Ex-Twitter execs push for $200M severance as Elon Musk runs X into ground:

Former Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, are urging a court to open discovery in a dispute over severance and other benefits they allege they were wrongfully denied after Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022.

According to the former executives, they've been blocked for seven months from accessing key documents proving they're owed roughly $200 million under severance agreements that they say Musk willfully tried to avoid paying in retaliation for executives forcing him to close the Twitter deal. And now, as X's value tanks lower than ever—reportedly worth 80 percent less than when Musk bought it—the ex-Twitter leaders fear their severance claims "may be compromised" by Musk's alleged "mismanagement of X," their court filing said.

The potential for X's revenue loss to impact severance claims appears to go beyond just the former Twitter executives' dispute. According to their complaint, "there are also thousands of non-executive former employees whom Musk terminated and is now refusing to pay severance and other benefits" and who have "sued in droves."

In some of these other severance suits, executives claimed in their motion to open discovery, X appears to be operating more transparently, allowing discovery to proceed beyond what has been possible in the executives' suit[e].

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Intel LGA 1700 socket, compatible with Intel’s 12th, 13th, and 14th Gen Core processors, has gained a lot of attention due to a unique issue: bending and warping of the CPUs. This phenomenon has been associated with higher operating temperatures, as it affects the evenness of contact with the CPU cooler. In response, several companies have developed contact frame replacements to mitigate these effects. This article will explore how these frames work, their benefits, and what recent developments mean for users of Intel’s latest processors.

The elongated design of Intel's LGA 1700 CPUs makes them susceptible to bending when installed in the motherboard's socket. This happens due to the pressure exerted by the Independent Loading Mechanism (ILM), which secures the CPU in place. When the CPU is not in full contact with the cooler, it can lead to uneven heat distribution and ultimately, higher temperatures.

Several manufacturers, including Thermal Grizzly and Thermalright, have developed replacement ILMs for the LGA 1700 socket, aiming to enhance cooling efficiency by ensuring better contact.

Replacing the stock ILM with a custom contact frame is a popular solution for addressing the bending issue. These aftermarket contact frames offer several key benefits:

• Better Thermal Contact: Custom frames reduce bending, allowing the integrated heat spreader (IHS) of the CPU to make more consistent contact with the cooler's base. This helps in maintaining more even temperature distribution.
• Improved Temperature Management: For example, testing with Thermalright's LGA1700-BCF contact frame on an Asus TUF Gaming Z790 Plus motherboard, paired with an Intel Core i9-13900K, showed a temperature reduction of up to 12°C. This significant decrease can be crucial for users looking to overclock their CPUs or simply maintain cooler, more stable systems.

Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake processors, such as the Core Ultra 9, bring new challenges. Although the LGA 1700 and LGA 1851 sockets are similar in size, the Arrow Lake CPUs are slightly taller and thinner, with a shifted hotspot. This means that existing contact frames may not provide optimal performance, as they could interfere with the CPU’s metal casing.

Arrow Lake processors are designed to work on the next-generation Z890 motherboards, which are rumored to include a Reduced Load ILM. This new ILM design spreads contact points over more areas of the IHS, potentially reducing the likelihood of CPU warping and thereby improving cooling efficiency without needing aftermarket solutions.

While new contact frames have not been announced for the Z890 motherboard lineup, this could imply that Intel’s Reduced Load ILM design might address the temperature issues seen with previous LGA 1700 sockets. By reducing pressure on the CPU and ensuring uniform contact with the cooler, these new ILMs could help minimize warping and optimize thermal performance.

Original Submission