SoylentNews

fliptop writes:

EU leaders suspect sabatoge:

An internet cable connecting Finland to Germany and another one between Lithuania and Sweden, both running under the Baltic Sea, were cut within 24 hours of one another. While accidental damage on undersea cables happens, CNN says these are rare events. So, the disruption of two cables around 65 miles apart and happening nearly simultaneously is a sign of sabotage, says German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

"Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed," said Pistorius. "We have to know that, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a hybrid action, and we also have to assume that, without knowing by whom yet, that this is sabotage." The Finnish and German foreign ministers have also issued a joint statement, saying, "The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicious of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times." They also add, "Our European security is not only under threat from Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors."

These events came a few months after NATO warned that Russia was developing strategies to disrupt the global internet, with the latter mapping undersea fiber optic cables as future reference. Right before the suspected sabotage occurred, the US government also recently allowed Ukraine to use some long-range US weapons to attack targets in the Kursk region inside Russia, enflaming tensions further and heightening suspicions of Russian involvement.

[...] Despite these attacks, internet disruption remains limited. Telia Lithuania, the company that runs the Lithuania-Sweden cable, says that the damaged cable handled about a third of Lithuania's internet capacity but that traffic has already been restored even though the cable is yet to be repaired. Cinia, the company behind Finland-Germany fiber optic cable, also confirmed that service through that line was down. It also said that its telecommunications network is run through multiple links, thus limiting disruption.

Update 11/20/2024 03:38 PT: The Danish Navy has boarded and detained the Chinese Bulk Carrier Yi Peng 3 in the Danish Straits, near the exit of the Great Belt, according to reports in Eurasia Daily and Defence24. The detention reportedly took place on the evening of November 18. Officials have not verified those reports, however. According to Financial Times sources, Swedish authorities are "carefully studying the Chinese vessel."

Related:

• Opinion: What's Really Up With Data Disconnects in the Deep Blue Sea?
• UK Official Warns of Russian Risk to Undersea Cables
• Could Russian Subs Stop the Internet?

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Science X's Phys.org site describes a report about the harm from tire particles, which account for about a third of all microplastic contamination in the environment. Unlike other types of plastic, tire particles are smaller, have greater chemical complexity, and different behavior in ecosystems. Thus the call is for them to be placed in a new, separate enviromental category.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, highlights the gap in current knowledge about the environmental presence, transportation, and toxic impact of these particles. The authors have identified ten priority research questions across four key themes: environmental detection, chemical composition, biotic impacts, and regulation.

The research brought together an interdisciplinary network of experts from countries including the U.K., U.S., Norway, Australia, South Korea, Finland, Austria, China, and Canada. Their findings underscore the need for a standardized framework to quantify and manage TPs and their leachates, especially as the global presence of these contaminants rises.

A second study is being carried out on the effects from tire chemicals and particles on marine life in UK waters.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

In operation since 1992, RCS Labs is a relatively unknown Italian company, and just one node in a web of spyware vendors operating out of Italy with little oversight:

In April 2022, about four months after Kazakhstan's government violently cracked down on nationwide protests, cybersecurity researchers discovered that authorities in the country were deploying spyware on smartphones to eavesdrop on citizens.

[...] The spyware, known as Hermit, is believed to have been used in several other countries including Syria and Italy. Documents published by Wikileaks in 2015 show that RCS had engaged with military and intelligence agencies in Pakistan, Chile, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and Turkmenistan, according to a blog post from Lookout, the cloud security company which discovered Hermit.

[...] Although much attention is given to sophisticated, zero-click spyware developed by companies like Israel's NSO Group, the Italian spyware marketplace has been able to operate relatively under the radar by specializing in cheaper tools. According to an Italian Ministry of Justice document, as of December 2022 law enforcement in the country could rent spyware for €150 a day, regardless of which vendor they used, and without the large acquisition costs which would normally be prohibitive.

As a result, thousands of spyware operations have been carried out by Italian authorities in recent years, according to a report from Riccardo Coluccini, a respected Italian journalist who specializes in covering spyware and hacking.

"Spyware is being used more in Italy than in the rest of Europe because it's more accessible," Fabio Pietrosanti, president of Italy's Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights and a prominent ethical hacker there told Recorded Future News. "Like any technology or any investigative tool, if it's more accessible, then it will be more used. That's just the natural consequence."

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Previously: Italian Government Spyware Infiltrated Google Play

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Infosys founder Narayama Murthy has tripled down on his previous statements that 70-hour work weeks are what's needed in India and revealed he also thinks weekends were a mistake.

Speaking on Indian TV channel CNBC-TV18 at the Global Leadership Summit in Mumbai last week Murthy once again declared he did not “believe in work-life balance.”

“I have not changed my view; I will take this with me to my grave,” he asserted .

The argument from Murthy, and like-minded colleagues he quotes, is that India is a poor country that has work to do improving itself. Work-life balance can wait.

The Infosys founder held prime minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet up as an example of proper workaholics, claiming the PM toils for 100 hours a week, and suggested that not following suit demonstrates a lack of appreciation.

“Frankly I was a little bit disappointed in 1986 when we moved from a six-day week to a five-day week,” he added.

[...] In response to his Murthy’s comments, some have suggested that long working hours are acceptable when you own your own company, but perhaps not ideal as an employee.

“This man has been given too much of an importance by asking his opinion about everything under the sun. His words remind me of those exploitative barons of medieval ages from whom the 8 hours work day rights had to be snatched,” quipped a commenter who claims to be a former Infosys employee.

[...] Despite its founder’s firm stance that India’s workforce be fully engaged, Infosys has recently received attention for promising 2,000 graduates a job and them making them wait up to two years to start work.

The engineers-in-waiting were allegedly kept busy with occasional training and promises after being selected for employment during Infosys’ 2022/23 recruitment drive.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

T-Mobile's network was among the systems hacked in a damaging Chinese cyber-espionage operation that gained entry into multiple US and international telecommunications companies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday citing people familiar with the matter:

Hackers linked to a Chinese intelligence agency were able to breach T-Mobile as part of a monthslong campaign to spy on the cellphone communications of high-value intelligence targets, the Journal added, without saying when the attack took place.

[...] It was unclear what information, if any, was taken about T-Mobile customers' calls and communications records, according to the WSJ report.

[...] On Wednesday, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US cyber watchdog agency CISA said China-linked hackers have intercepted surveillance data intended for American law enforcement agencies after breaking into an unspecified number of telecom companies.

Earlier in October, the Journal reported that Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers, including Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping.

Previously: U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

NASA May Have Inadvertently Killed Life on Mars, Scientist Says

from science alert ...

[....] decades ago in the 1970s, when the Viking landers became the first US mission to safely land on and explore the red planet, we may have been close.

One researcher raises the possibility that life existed in a sample of Martian soil. And then, in our quest to sniff it, we snuffed it out. Just like that.

[....] an experiment to detect the signs of microbial life on Mars could have been deadly.

[....] it's essential for us to consider thoroughly the ecology of Mars when designing future experiments.

[....] One of those experiments, the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GCMS), found chlorinated organics. At the time, that result was interpreted as contamination from human cleaning products, and thus a null detection for signs of biology.

We know now that chlorinated organics are native to Mars, although whether they are produced by biological or non-biological processes remains unknown.

There has been some speculation in recent years about the destructiveness of the Viking biological experiments. The GCMS needed to heat the samples to separate out the various materials therein. That, subsequent analysis revealed, could have incinerated the very organics it was hoping to find.

[....] what would happen if you poured water over these dry-adapted microbes. Might that overwhelm them? In technical terms, we would say that we were hyperhydrating them, but in simple terms, it would be more like drowning them," Schulze-Makuch explained in his column.

"It would be as if an alien spaceship were to find you wandering half-dead in the desert, and your would-be saviors decide, 'Humans need water. Let's put the human in the middle of the ocean to save it!'

Kidney stones weigh less on Mars.

[Editor's Comment:: Title changed to more accurately reflect summary content--JR ]

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute identified an intriguing new deep sea species off of California. It's see-through, can glow, and nabs prey with a large hood. At one point while filming, researchers watched it detach one of its finger-like appendages, likely as a decoy for a predator. The glowing appendage floated away.

[...] Below, you can view brilliant footage of the animal, which biologists have dubbed the "mystery mollusc." It now also has a scientific name, Bathydevius caudactylus, and after years of observation and genetic testing, scientists have concluded it's a species of nudibranch, more popularly known as sea slugs.

[...] It primarily lives between some 3,300 to 13,100 feet below the ocean surface, a vast region of the lightless sea called the midnight zone (this zone accounts for some 70 percent of seawater on Earth but is largely unexplored). To eat, it uses a hood to "trap crustaceans like a Venus fly trap plant," the institute explains. It's a hermaphrodite (like other sea slugs), and exploits its transparency to hide in plain sight. But as described above, when needed it can detach parts of its body as a decoy.

Bathydevius caudactylus is so unusual that it took 150 deep water sightings over 20 years before marine biologists could accurately identify the animal. The discovery has been published in the science journal Deep-Sea Research Part I.

[...] Ocean research organizations, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, are now vigilantly documenting and mapping the deep sea. Scientists want to shine a light — literally and figuratively — on what's down there. The implications of knowing are incalculable, particularly as deep sea mineral prospectors prepare to run tank-like industrial equipment across parts of the seafloor. For example, research expeditions have found that ocean life carries great potential for novel medicines. "Systematic searches for new drugs have shown that marine invertebrates produce more antibiotic, anti-cancer, and anti-inflammatory substances than any group of terrestrial organisms," notes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Instructional press video.

Journal Reference: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2024.104414

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

'We are deeply alarmed [the Department of Homeland Security] has not publicly disclosed when this investigation will begin,' the senators stated in a letter:

A bipartisan group of senators has urged a federal review board to immediately begin an investigation into a Chinese hacking group's attacks against the United States, according to a recent letter sent to Robert Silvers, undersecretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Led by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), the senators wrote in a letter dated Nov. 14 that the independent Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) had announced in late October that it would initiate a review "at the appropriate time," a DHS spokesman confirmed in a statement to the Wall Street Journal, following media reports that Salt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored threat group, had breached several U.S. telecommunications companies.

[...] The senators noted that the CSRB's announcement "is a good first step." The CSRB, established by the DHS in 2022, consists of federal officials and private-sector cybersecurity experts.

"We are deeply alarmed DHS has not publicly disclosed when this investigation will begin," the senators wrote. "While details of the attack are still being revealed, the scope of this attack is historic in nature and the hacking technique used by Salt Typhoon holds countless senior U.S. officials and millions of U.S. citizens at risk.

"With all due speed and urgency, the CSRB should begin investigating how this happened immediately."

Previously: U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Jawboning In Plain Sight: The Unconstitutional Censorship Tolerated By The DMCA

For better or worse, jawboning has been a hot topic recently, and it's unlikely that interest will fade any time soon. Jawboning, in broad strokes, is when the government pressures a third party to make that third party chill the speech of another instead of going after the speech directly. Because the First Amendment says that the government cannot go after speech directly, this approach can at first seem to be the "one easy trick" for the government to try to affect the speech it wants to affect so that it could get away with it constitutionally. But as the Supreme Court reminded earlier this year in NRA v. Vullo, it's not actually constitutional to try this sort of end-run around the First Amendment.

[....] there should be concern about Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and how it operates to force intermediaries to act against users and their speech, whether they would want to or not, and whether the targeted speech is wrongful or not.

[....] "Why now?" After all, the DMCA has been working its unconstitutional way for a quarter of a century, and we've been tolerating it. But tolerating the intolerable does not make it tolerable.

Yep! Just pretend it's a copyright issue and fraudulently file a DMCA, under plenty of perjury, to silence what you don't like.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A US order to TSMC to cut AI chip supplies to China over Huawei sanctions won't cause problems for Apple. However, Taiwan's prohibition of TSMC producing 2-nanometer chips elsewhere could make an impact.

U.S. sanctions against Huawei has caused problems for TSMC over attempts by intermediaries to order certain AI-based chip designs on Huawei's behalf. From Monday, TSMC is suspending shipments of the AI-focused chips to China, on the orders of the United States.

[...] The blocked shipments by the Department of Commerce certainly impacts TSMC's sales with Huawei, but it could also cause other problems.

[...] Lower production means it has to shift around its production line to maximize the utility of its facilities. For its relatively new Arizona production plant, its relatively low amount of production could make it a viable facility to temporarily mothball.

While largely risking the Arizona investment temporarily, the order probably won't do much to harm Apple's supplies from the company.

Apple relies on assembly partners in China to produce its products, including the iPhone, and TSMC's chips therefore need to be imported. As chips that have AI benefits in the form of the Neural Engine, this is the sort of chip that the Commerce Department is wary about handing over to Huawei.

hubie writes:

It's memory-safe, with a few caveats:

Developers looking to continue working in the C and C++ programming languages amid the global push to promote memory-safe programming now have another option that doesn't involve learning Rust.

Filip Pizlo, senior director of language engineering at Epic Games, has created his own memory-safe flavor of C and – because why not? – named it after himself.

Pizlo got in touch after seeing our report on TrapC – a memory-safe C-fork due for release next year.

"I wanted to alert you to the existence of Fil-C, a personal project of mine, which exists today, does just about everything TrapC claims to do (including being totally memory-safe), and is freely available," Pizlo explained. "It aims for 100 percent compatibility with C and C++ – just compile your stuff with my compiler and you get memory safety."

The US government and other interested parties are rather keen to encourage memory safety – something not available out of the box for C and C++ code. C and C++ require manual memory management, which has been shown to be inadequate for preventing memory safety bugs like out of bounds reads and writes.

Since the majority of serious vulnerabilities in large codebases can be attributed to memory safety failings, the common refrain over the past few years has been to develop in a programming language like Rust that (optionally) produces memory-safe code. And more recently there have been efforts to rewrite legacy code in critical libraries and applications using Rust.

There are many other memory-safe languages – such as C#, Java, Python, Swift, Go, and JavaScript. But Rust, for better or worse, has become the most commonly cited option in memory safety evangelism because it's fast, suited for low-level code, and does a lot of things well (safe concurrency and a well-conceived package management system). What's more, the non-profit Rust Foundation has been run well enough to attract funding and support from the tech firms likely to be interested in Rust's qualities.

Also, Rust came out of Mozilla, which isn't seen by the major tech platforms – several of which have their own home-grown programming languages – as a competitor. Consider that Rust debuted in late 2013 and Apple's Swift arrived a year later – during that period, Rust has attracted a broad constituency, while Swift is mainly used by Apple-aligned developers.

But the thing about Rust is that it's not all that easy to learn. So calls to rewrite everything in Rust have elicited pushback from those with significant C or C++ experience – like Linux kernel maintainers, who would prefer to continue working in languages they've mastered.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Britain's mobile telcos will get to bid for mmWave spectrum to provide high-speed wireless services next year, according to Ofcom, which just published the final draft of the regulations governing the auction.

The UK telecoms regulator says it plans to release spectrum in the 25.1-27.5 GHz and 40.5-43.5 GHz bands in 2025, and make them available for operators to deliver faster services. These are set to be restricted to urban areas, since these high frequencies can typically only operate over a range of a few kilometers.

This will be a big shift for the country's telcos, which have until now only had access to frequencies below about 4 GHz to deliver a mobile service. Higher frequencies allow for higher transmission rates and lower latencies, and for this reason are already used in countries such as the US for 5G data services.

The spectrum planned for release amounts to 2.4 GHz of spectrum in the 26 GHz band, and another 3 GHz in the 40 GHz band. Because of the range factor, this will not replace the existing spectrum UK operators already use, but compliment it for higher-bandwidth services in high-density areas.

Ofcom published a notice of its plans back in May and invited views on the proposals. It says in its latest missive that having considered the responses, it decided to enact the regulations largely in the form it consulted on, but with some tweaks.

The proposals were to auction the available spectrum in three categories, with each lot comprising a block of 200 MHz. The categories consist of 26 GHz lower (25.1-26.5 GHz), 26 GHz upper (26.5-27.5 GHz), and 40 GHz (40.5-43.5 GHz).

That split of the 26 GHz band into two categories is because some incumbent users continue to operate in the 25.1-26.5 GHz part of the band, Ofcom says.

Reserve prices are expected to be £2 million ($2.55 million) for each lot of the 26 GHz band, and £1 million ($1.27 million) for each lot in the 40 GHz space.

However, the comms regulator has previously said the auction cannot proceed until the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has reached a decision on the proposed merger between Three and Vodafone, which might otherwise complicate matters.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Many migratory birds use Earth's magnetic field as a compass, but some can also use information from that field to determine more or less where they are on a mental map.

Eurasian reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) appear to calculate their geographical position by drawing data from different distances and angles between magnetic fields and the Earth's shape. The findings suggest that the birds use magnetic information as a sort of "GPS" that tells them not only where to go, but where they are initially, says Richard Holland at Bangor University in the UK.

“When we travel, we have a map – which tells us where we are – and we have a compass, which tells us which way to go to reach our destination,” he says. “We don’t think birds have quite this level of accuracy or degree of knowledge of the whole Earth. Even so, they see how magnetic cues change as they move along their normal path – or even if they’re far displaced from that path.”

Scientists have known for decades that migratory birds rely on cues from the sun, the stars and Earth’s magnetic field to determine which direction to head towards. But figuring out direction using a compass is markedly different from knowing where in the world they are, and scientists still debate about whether – and how – birds figure out their current map position.

[...] However, we still don’t fully understand the neurological mechanisms that enable birds to sense these aspects of Earth’s magnetic field.

[...] While the research confirms reed warblers rely on these magnetic fields for positioning, it doesn’t mean that all birds do so, he adds. “Not all birds work the same way.”

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2024.1363

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Writer and blogger Alex Ewerlöf has written a discussion of cargo cult programming, including a bit of background on the term itself.

Cargo culting refers to a phenomenon where people imitate the superficial aspects of a practice or process without understanding the underlying logic or reasons behind it.

Although the term originated from historical events, its usage expanded to other areas like software, systems, and organizations.

Here's the story of how cargo cults came to be, with some examples from software and corporate world. In Pro-Tips we discuss actionable insights to prevent, spot, and dismantle cargo culting in your organization.

🤖🚫 Note: No AI is used to generate this content or images.

It's apparently a problem which keeps coming up repeatedly. What examples of cargo cult programming, if any, have soylentils encountered (or caused) over the years?

Original Submission

hellcat writes:

From the article. https://thepenngazette.com/demographic-winter-is-coming/

Is the world's population destined to shrink? Penn economics professor JF-V puts it bluntly: "If you're 55 years or younger, you are likely to witness something no human has observed for around 60,000 years, not even during was or pandemics: a systematic decrease in the world population."

His analysis of trends in more than 180 countries suggests that in many places, UN estimates of fertility rates are probably too high. His calculations suggest that a crucial moment has arrived: the global fertility rate, may have already dipped below the replacement rate. He allows that the global population is still growing, but expects it to peak in roughly 30 years, with a steep decline unfolding in its wake. When the transition comes—when the world's population eventually tips into contraction—he believes the impacts will be disruptive and swift.

Dramatic declines in childbirths are evident in every region of the world, across rich, poor, and middle-income countries alike. Shifting social norms are partly responsible, as young people don't view parenthood fitting into their lives. "Raising children is no longer a priority for many young people," he says, "either in the more traditional societies of eastern Asia or the more progressive countries of northern Europe."

[my aside] Fun fact, his findings parallel those made by my own UPenn research group back in 1981. We used a different technique, and could only "narrow" the event window down to the latter half of this century. What kind of economy will it be where there is one worker for every 3 old farts like me?

Original Submission