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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A newly formed group of UK electronics companies is advocating for the removal of VAT (value-added tax) on electronic spare parts, repairs, and labor in the government's upcoming autumn budget, claiming this would encourage consumers to get kit repaired instead of replacing it.

The group, which calls itself CLEAR (Circular Leadership for Electronics and Recycling), says it aims to address the growing issue of electronic waste and the barriers preventing consumers from repairing rather than replacing electrical items.

Members of the group include consumer brands such as ProCook, Positec Power Tools Europe, Glen Dimplex Home Appliances, and Melitta, while the group is chaired by James Rigg, chief exec of Trojan Electronics, which provides repair, refurbishment, and resell services as well as contract manufacturing.

According to Rigg, getting rid of VAT charges on electronic repairs is a "crucial step" in creating a more circular economy. However, CLEAR is going further and also lobbying for the British government to follow the example of countries like Austria and France, which have introduced subsidies for electrical repairs. 

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owl writes:

The Terminator: How James Cameron's 'science-fiction slasher film' predicted AI fears, 40 years ago

[...] With its killer robots and its rogue AI system, Skynet, The Terminator has become synonymous with the spectre of a machine intelligence that turns against its human creators. Picture editors routinely illustrate articles about AI with the chrome death's head of the film's T-800 "hunter-killer" robot. The roboticist Ronald Arkin used clips from the film in a cautionary 2013 talk called How NOT to build a Terminator.

[...] The layperson is likely to imagine unaligned AI as rebellious and malevolent. But the likes of Nick Bostrom insist that the real danger is from careless programming. Think of the sorcerer's broom in Disney's Fantasia: a device that obediently follows its instructions to ruinous extremes. The second type of AI is not human enough it lacks common sense and moral judgement. The first is too human - selfish, resentful, power-hungry. Both could in theory be genocidal.

The Terminator therefore both helps and hinders our understanding of AI: what it means for a machine to "think", and how it could go horrifically wrong. Many AI researchers resent the Terminator obsession altogether for exaggerating the existential risk of AI at the expense of more immediate dangers such as mass unemployment, disinformation and autonomous weapons. "First, it makes us worry about things that we probably don't need to fret about," writes Michael Woolridge. "But secondly, it draws attention away from those issues raised by AI that we should be concerned about."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

It has been claimed that fish farming is a sustainable source of food that will help us feed the growing global human population while protecting wild fish populations – but this isn’t true.

“Fish farming is not a substitute for catching wild fish out of the ocean,” says Matthew Hayek at New York University. “In fact, it relies on catching wild fish out of the ocean.”

Hayek and his colleagues have shown that the amount of wild fish killed in order to feed farmed fish is between 27 and 307 per cent higher than previous estimates.

Farmed carnivorous fish eat multiple times more weight in wild fish caught from the ocean than is obtained by farming them, says Hayek. For instance, producing a kilogram of salmon may require 4 or 5 kilograms of wild fish.

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Why Hurricanes Like Milton In The Us And Cyclones In Australia Are Becoming More Intense And Harder

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Tropical cyclones, known as hurricanes and typhoons in other parts of the world, have caused huge damage in many places recently. The United States has just been hit by Hurricane Milton, within two weeks of Hurricane Helene. Climate change likely made their impacts worse.

[...] The bureau's forecast is consistent with scientific evidence suggesting climate change is likely to result in fewer but more severe tropical cyclones. They are now more likely to bring stronger winds and more intense rain and flooding.

Our knowledge of tropical cyclones and climate change is based on multiple lines of evidence globally and for the Australian region. This work includes our studies based on observations and modeling.

[...] Many ocean heat records have been set recently. This means we have been in "uncharted waters" from a temperature perspective. It adds further uncertainty if relying on what occurred in the past when making predictions for the current climate.

The science makes it clear we need to plan for tropical cyclone impacts in a different way from what might have worked in the past. This includes being prepared for potentially fewer tropical cyclones overall, but with those that do occur being more likely to cause more damage. This means there are higher risks of damaging winds, flooding and coastal erosion.

Eyeing The Damage Of Hurricane Season

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In the aftermath of hurricanes like Helene and Milton, the damaging effects of these natural disasters are the center of national conversations, including questions about the long-term impact to infrastructure. However, current methods for damage assessment don't offer clear and timely answers to these questions.

That's where AI and engineering can help. Researchers from Texas A&M University are pioneering the use of AI and machine learning to create faster methods to assess damages caused by hurricanes.

[...] Using this dataset, Manzini and fellow graduate student Priya Perali trained an AI system to recognize building and road damage caused by disasters. Learning these models took hours of high-performance computing but have resulted in a damage assessment system that can sort through the building and road damages of a large neighborhood after a disaster in only four minutes using a laptop.

"AI offers tremendous value for rural counties which do not have the budget or workforce to conduct physical damage assessments but do have inexpensive drones," said Murphy, a Raytheon Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

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owl writes:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/17/meta-staff-sacked-for-using-25-takeaway-vouchers-wine-glass/

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has sacked a number of staff after they abused the company's $25 (£19) meal scheme to order household goods such as toothpaste and washing powder.

Almost 30 staff in the company's Los Angeles office were dismissed after they were found to be routinely using takeaway credits to order groceries and cosmetics, employees said.

The sackings included high-paid engineers earning six-figure salaries, according to posts on the anonymous chat app Blind.

Meta, which is currently worth $1.5 trillion, provides staff with free breakfast, lunch and dinner at its larger offices.

Those in smaller offices without staff canteens instead receive vouchers for delivery apps such as Grubhub, which they can use to order food when working at the office.

However, Meta recently discovered that some employees were using the $25 vouchers to order household items from stores that feature on the apps.

In some cases, staff were using the scheme to buy wine glasses and laundry detergent, according to the Financial Times.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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