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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The parents of a Massachusetts child are taking his school to court after the student was punished for using AI in a class project.

The individual, named only as RNH, admitted to teachers that they had used AI when writing a Social Studies project in December, but claimed it was only for research and not to write the whole paper. The student was given a Saturday detention and marked down on the project, something his parents are now suing to rectify.

"The Plaintiff Student will suffer irreparable harm that far outweighs any harm that may befall the Defendants," their filing reads [PDF].

"He is applying to elite colleges and universities given his high level of academic and personal achievement. Early decision and early action applications in a highly competitive admissions process are imminent and start in earnest on October 1, 2024. Absent the grant of an injunction by this Court, the Student will suffer irreparable harm that is imminent."

RNH was temporarily held back from joining the National Honor Society and parents want their offspring's academic records cleared of any mention of the incident. In addition, they want the student to receive a B grade for the project and the removal of any indication that cheating was involved.

The school, however, is fighting back with a motion to dismiss [PDF] the case. The school argues that RNH, along with his classmates, was given a copy of the student handbook in the Fall of last year, which specifically called out the use of AI by students. The class was also shown a presentation about the school's policy.

Students should "not use AI tools during in-class examinations, processed writing assignments, homework or classwork unless explicitly permitted and instructed," the policy states.

"RNH unequivocally used another author’s language and thoughts, be it a digital and artificial author, without express permission to do so," the school argues.

"Furthermore, he did not cite to his use of AI in his notes, scripts or in the project he submitted. Importantly, RNH’s peers were not allowed to cut corners by using AI to craft their projects; thus, RNH acted 'unfairly in order to gain an advantage.'"

Unless the school and parents reach a settlement, the case will go to court later this month.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The US government's probe into the necessity of ISP data caps has escalated with the launch of a formal inquiry and the publication of hundreds of testimonials from those affected to drum up support for potential regulatory action.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday announced the launch of its inquiry into ISPs, both terrestrial and mobile, for their use of artificial data caps and speed throttling to limit internet access for subscribers on lower-cost tiers. These limits, said FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, are indefensible in the post-pandemic era.

"During the pandemic, many fixed and mobile internet service providers refrained from enforcing or imposing data caps, suggesting that our networks have the capacity to meet consumer demand without these restrictions," Rosenworcel said.

But as the pandemic wound down, the caps returned, triggering an initial look into how consumers were affected by data caps in 2023. That effort centered on getting consumer feedback on how they were bilked by their ISPs through reinstated caps and subscription price hikes, the results of which were released yesterday alongside the formal notice of inquiry.

In one case, a family reported having to take their children to use public Wi-Fi because the only unlimited option in their area is $190. In an another instance, a telemedicine provider said that it was forced to pay for higher-priced services due to their need for bandwidth, while a disabled individual said an ISP had more than doubled the cost of their plan since the pandemic and added a data cap.

"For most people in the United States, rationing their internet usage would be unthinkable and impractical," Rosenworcel said of the comments. "But, for millions, limitations on how much data they can use online is a constant concern."

To that end, the FCC is seeking more comments from the public and the broadband industry on why, among other things, caps persist despite the demonstrated technical ability of companies to offer unlimited data plans without harming their networks.

Most crucial to the notice of inquiry, at least for those looking to the FCC for regulatory cues, is the Commission's question about whether it has the legal authority to take action on data caps. In 2023, when the FCC was first looking into the matter, it said it was exploring its legal authority to address the issue of caps without needing to pass new laws, and has seemingly identified a few possible avenues to do so.

looorg writes:

https://torrentfreak.com/sony-defeated-as-cjeu-finds-datels-ram-data-cheat-non-copyright-infringing-241018/

The Directive on the legal protection of computer programs does not allow the holder of that protection to prohibit the marketing by a third party of software which merely changes variables transferred temporarily to game console's RAM.

[...] The CJEU judgment clarifies the limits of copyright protection in respect of source/object code, while highlighting an area of freedom (subject to boundaries and conditions) in which data generated by software can be modified without triggering a lawsuit.

While in this case it's specifically about DATEL selling their various cheating devices. But it also kind of seems like the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) just made some versions of cracking software protections legal. As long as you leave the code alone in the executables and only do changes in RAM then it's all fine and dandy. So for example having another program that just patches part of the RAM while running or executing the code in RAM. It's not really harder to patch in more lives, infinite gold or just not checking for various protection mechanisms. Either removing them or just flipping some bits to everything is alright. Protection check passed. No copyright there.

Original Submission

Booga1 writes:

Wales Online reports: James Howells has spent more than a decade trying to get back a dumped hard drive. Now he has assembled a team of top lawyers to sue the council he claims has 'ignored' him "I'm suing the council for £495m because they won't give me back my bin bag."

A man has filed a court claim against Newport council in a "last resort" to get back almost half a billion pounds' worth of Bitcoin. A mix-up saw James Howells' hard drive dumped at a recycling centre in 2013 causing him to lose access to cryptocurrency coins which have since rocketed in value.

WalesOnline has seen a court document that says Mr Howells, 39, is suing the council for £495,314,800 in damages, which was the peak valuation of his 8,000 Bitcoins from earlier this year. But he told us this is not a reflection of "what is really going on" and the point is to "leverage" the council into agreeing to an excavation of its landfill to avoid a legal battle. Mr Howells says he has assembled a team of experts who would carry out the £10million dig at no cost to the council. He is also offering the council 10% of the coins' value if recovered.

...

The hard drive disaster unfolded after a miscommunication between the IT engineer and his then-partner. Mr Howells, who learned about Bitcoin in 2009 by spending time on IT forums, believes he was one of the very first miners of the cryptocurrency. In basic terms he created the 8,000 coins himself and they cost him nothing beyond pennies' worth of electricity to run his laptop. He stored the private key needed to access the coins on a 2.5in hard drive which he put in a drawer at his home office.

In August 2013 he had a clearout of equipment. Looking through his drawers he came across two hard drives of the same size. One contained the Bitcoin data while the other was blank. Mistakenly he put the Bitcoin one into a black bin liner. When he went to bed that evening he asked his then-partner if after the school run the next morning she would take that bin bag and another one to Newport household waste recycling centre. "His partner refused and stated that she did not wish to do that," write Mr Howells' team of barristers in the claim.

The claim says Mr Howells was "not overly concerned" by her refusal because he had made a mental note to double-check if he had put the right hard drive in the bin bag. But when he woke at 9am his partner had already returned from the school run and had taken the bin bags to the tip. Mr Howells' lost Bitcoins were worth less than £1m at the time but within three months they had soared to a value of £9m. One day they could be worth billions, Mr Howells believes, citing predictions from asset management firm VanEck.

...

Newport council sent us a statement hitting back at the "weak" court claim and the criticism over its environmental breaches. Its spokesman said: "The council has told Mr Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. The council is the only body authorised to carry out operations on the site.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

There's good earnings news for U.S. members: Salaries are rising. Base salaries increased by about 5 percent from 2022 to 2023, according to the IEEE-USA 2024 Salary and Benefits Survey Report.

Last year's report showed that inflation had outpaced earnings growth but that's not the case this year.

In current dollars, the median income of U.S. engineers and other tech professionals who are IEEE members was US $174,161 last year, up about 5 percent from $169,000 in 2022, excluding overtime pay, profit sharing, and other supplemental earnings. Unemployment fell to 1.2 percent in this year's survey, down from 1.4 percent in the previous year.

As with prior surveys, earned income is measured for the year preceding the survey's date of record—so the 2024 survey reports income earned in 2023.

To calculate the median salary, IEEE-USA considered only respondents who were tech professionals working full time in their primary area of competence—a sample of 4,192 people.

I suppose it is good news for many of our members. Interesting analysis of salary trends ...

[Source]: IEEE SPECTRUM

Original Submission

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