SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

It's certain that recently discovered asteroid 2024 YR4 will swing close to Earth in 2032. The chances of an impact remain low — but with relatively limited observations so far, the odds are in flux.

On Jan. 31, the collision impact probability was 1.4 percent. As of Feb. 7, NASA reports it's 2.3 percent, which also means a 97.7 percent chance of missing our humble blue world. But don't be surprised if that number climbs higher: It's normal for the impact odds to increase before falling or disappearing completely.

[...] Asteroid 2024 YR4 — spotted by a telescope from the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System — has been deemed an object worthy of close monitoring because of its size. " Currently, no other known large asteroids have an impact probability above 1 percent," the space agency explained. It's between 130 to 300 feet wide, enough to be dubbed a "city-killer" asteroid — if it indeed hit a city. (For reference, the asteroid that hit Arizona 50,000 years ago and created the 600-foot-deep "Meteor Crater" was 100 to 170 feet, or 30 to 50 meters, across. "A similar-size impact event today could destroy a city the size of Kansas City," David Kring, an impact cratering expert at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, explained in a NASA blog.)

Telescopes will refine the asteroid's orbit around the solar system over the coming months, until it travels too far away to observe (it will return again in 2028). And this added information may likely, though temporarily, boost its Earth impact odds. That's because the asteroid's risk corridor or area of uncertainty around Earth will shrink as astronomers can better define its orbit. But as long as Earth remains in that estimated hazard area — like a catcher's mitt awaiting a high-speed baseball — its relative odds of getting hit increases as the possible range of uncertainty shrinks.

"Earth is taking up a bigger percentage of that uncertain area," Betts explained. "So the impact percentage goes up."

Yet space is vast. And at the same time the area of uncertainty is shrinking, more observations reveal and shift where exactly this zone of uncertainty is. The shrinking area typically moves off of Earth, meaning our planet is no longer in that potential impact area. This happened with the asteroid Apophis — a 1,100-foot-wide behemoth that once had a small chance of impacts in both 2029 and 2036. But more precise telescope observations moved Apophis' range of trajectory off of Earth. The impact probability then plummeted.

"It dropped to zero," Betts said.

"It’s a funny thing about homing in on an asteroid and calculating its path, future position, and probability of impacting Earth – it will often appear risky during initial observations, get riskier, and then suddenly become entirely safe," the European Space Agency noted.

Related:
    Huge 'God of Chaos' Asteroid to Pass Near Earth in 2029
    Asteroid Shock: NASA Preparing for 'Colossal God of Chaos' Rock to Arrive in Next 10 Years
    Feared Apophis Impact Ruled Out – Asteroid Will Pass Close Enough to Earth to See with Naked Eye

Original Submission

[Rescheduled to keep it visible--JR]

Introduction

For most people the holiday season is over. There are a few who have their winter holidays booked as we still have a few months of the skiing season to go yet, but I don't think that this affects any of our staff! So I offer a belated 'Happy New Year' and wish you all the very best for 2025.

Volunteers for the Board

Slightly less than 12 months ago I asked for volunteers to serve on the Board of SoylentNews and fortunately some people stepped forward and took on the 3 key roles (Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary). They have each contributed to the setting up of the site and getting us where we are today. However, they will soon be wanting to stand down from their current posts. The concept of the site is that the governance is provided by the community and that posts should be rotated occasionally. We are again seeking volunteers to assume one of the current positions. The roles are important, they are the most important posts on the site because without them there can be no site, but I don't think that they are particularly arduous. They are not roles that require a daily or even a weekly input. They maintain an overview of the site and they have an independent decision-making role in future site operations.

Volunteers for the posts should remember that they must be prepared to sign site legal business documents and therefore cannot maintain perfect anonymity. On the site we have not given any additional information other than their nicknames and user ids. Nevertheless, somewhere in the masses of paperwork and records that the US demands and maintains their names and contact details are recorded.

If you wish to volunteer for a post then you should have an account in good standing i.e. not banned or created within the last few months, and with a reasonable level of karma. Please volunteer either here in the comments or directly via email to admin@soylentnews.org. If you have volunteered for a post previously then it does not preclude you from volunteering again. If you have questions regarding a role then please raise them here. If appropriate, I will ask the person currently in that post to reply so that you get the information direct from 'the horses mouth'.

Once we have a volunteer or volunteers for a post we will hold an election for the community to approve and select a person for a post. This will be done openly and everyone with an active account created before the date and time that this Meta is published will have a single vote. The reason for this restriction is to prevent a mass of new accounts attempting to unfairly influence the outcome of the vote. The current Board will make the final decision on who is chosen.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

[...] The research team, led by Professor Tobin Filleter, has engineered nanomaterials that offer unprecedented strength, weight, and customizability. These materials are composed of tiny building blocks, or repeating units, measuring just a few hundred nanometers – so small that over 100 lined up would barely match the thickness of a human hair.

The researchers used a multi-objective Bayesian optimization machine learning algorithm to predict optimal geometries for enhancing stress distribution and improving the strength-to-weight ratio of nano-architected designs. The algorithm only needed 400 data points, whereas others might need 20,000 or more, allowing the researchers to work with a smaller, high-quality data set. The Canadian team collaborated with Professor Seunghwa Ryu and PhD student Jinwook Yeo at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science & Technology for this step of the process.

This experiment was the first time scientists have applied machine learning to optimize nano-architected materials. According to Peter Serles, the lead author of the project's paper published in Advanced Materials, the team was shocked by the improvements. It didn't just replicate successful geometries from the training data; it learned from what changes to the shapes worked and what didn't, enabling it to predict entirely new lattice geometries.

The team used a two-photon polymerization 3D printer to create prototypes for experimental validation, building optimized carbon nanolattices at the micro- and nano-scale. The team's optimized nanolattices more than doubled the strength of existing designs, withstanding stress of 2.03 megapascals for every cubic meter per kilogram of density – about five times stronger than titanium.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A robotic spacecraft has beamed home crisp videos and snapshots of Earth eclipsing the moon.

Though lunar eclipses generally aren't that unusual — stargazers can watch Earth's shadow obscuring the moon a few times a year — this was different.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander, a private spacecraft hired by NASA to take experiments to the moon, got a rare front-row seat of the spectacle in space. The phenomenon occurred when the blue marble came between the moon and the spacecraft.

Blue Ghost, named after an exotic species of firefly, captured the below footage while flying laps around Earth as it gears up for its first attempt at a lunar touchdown. Almost two weeks ago, the spacecraft witnessed another majestic moment when Earth eclipsed the sun. 

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Intel has already received $2.2B in federal grants for chip production:

Semiconductor giant Intel Corporation has already received $2.2 billion in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce through the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, the company shared during its Thursday earnings call.

Dave Zinsner, Intel's co-interim CEO, executive vice president, and CFO, said the Silicon Valley-based company received the first tranche of $1.1 billion in federal grants at the end of 2024 and an additional $1.1 billion in January 2025.

These grants are based on reaching certain milestones, Zinsner added. Another $5.66 billion has yet to be dispersed.

The company was awarded a total of $7.86 billion in federal grants to build semiconductors in the U.S. in November as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce's U.S. CHIPS and Science Act. While a sizable sum, this total was less than the original $8.5 billion estimate.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The threatened Eurasian otter appears to have disappeared in Kyrgyzstan, officials and scientists warned on Friday, following a long decline in its numbers linked to human activity.

The playful carnivorous mammal was already rare in the land-locked Central Asian country, but is now no longer visible in its one known habitat there, a ministry spokesman said.

The Eurasian otter "in Kyrgyzstan is either on the verge of disappearance or has already disappeared", the spokeswoman for the Kyrgyz natural resources ministry told AFP.

The Ilbirs Foundation, which seeks to protect the mammal, on Friday released a report saying "the otter has disappeared" from its sole known habitat, "putting in question the species' existence in Kyrgyzstan".

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

IBM is hopeful of completing the $6.4 billion purchase of Hashicorp relatively smoothly given what Big Blue perceives to be a "more rational" and "pro-competition" regulatory environment.

The comments were made on Wednesday night during an exec earnings call with analysts to discuss IBM's latest results for calendar Q4 and 2024 as a whole, before the Justice Department sued to block HPE's buy of Juniper Networks.

Responding to a question about possible M&A activity as the US enters a "period of relatively low regulatory overhang," IBM boss Arvind Krishna, said:

"We are looking forward to a regulatory environment that is a bit more rational and a bit more pro-competition. So I think what that implies for us is that we think reasonable deals have a very good chance of getting through in a reasonable amount of time and not being held up for years."

IBM's acquisition of Hashicorp was first announced in April, intended as a way for Red Hat's Ansible Automation Platform's configuration management and Terraform's automation to "simplify provisioning and configuration of applications across hybrid cloud environments."

The deal has since been held up on both sides of the pond, with the US FTC opening an antitrust review in July and the UK's CMA launching an inquiry into the proposed transaction last month.

In expectation of a friendlier business approach from regulators, Krishna said with that in mind, "we are going to lean in more, which is reasonable. If you look at our free cash flow and you look at what we are setting out for the year, that could leave as much as $7 billion or a bit more."

Don't worry investors, IBM has your back and there is still enough tucked away for a dividend. The corporation ended last year with $12.7 billion in free cash and says it has flexibility to borrow if needed but intends to live within its means. "And if we find targets that meet our criteria, we are going to lean in and get things done."

"I'm going to just finish that by saying Hashi has been waiting out there for almost a year. We certainly hope that with a friendlier environment, that gets done soon and that then begins to open up the aperture for getting more deals done. So I think hopefully that address both the cash flows and the regulations around M&A."

CFOP James Kavanaugh chimed in, saying "we fully expect to close the Hashi transaction in a relatively soon period of time… We fully expect that in this new administration environment."

[...] Just [recently], however, the Justice Department – which was already examining the transaction's implications – said it would "eliminate fierce head-to-head competition between the companies, raise prices, reduce innovation, and diminish choice for scores of American businesses and institutions."

It has sued to block the marriage between HPE and Juniper, the second and third biggest providers of wireless local area networks in the US, filing a complaint in the Northern District of California.

Hashicorp doesn't command the same market share as Juniper Networks in its sector, and no such legal action has het been launched. With a multi-billion war chest at its disposal, IBM will be keeping a watchful eye on the case.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

It might be the first time this type of stealer has cracked iPhones:

Researchers from Kaspersky have identified malware being distributed within apps on both Android and iOS mobile storefronts. Dmitry Kalinin and Sergey Puzan shared their investigation into a malware campaign, which they have dubbed SparkCat, that has likely been active since March 2024.

"We cannot confirm with certainty whether the infection was a result of a supply chain attack or deliberate action by the developers," the pair wrote. "Some of the apps, such as food delivery services, appeared to be legitimate, whereas others apparently had been built to lure victims." They said SparkCat is a stealthy operation that at a glance appears to be requesting normal or harmless permissions.

[...] The malware in question uses optical character recognition (OCR) to review a device's photo library, seeking screenshots of recovery phrases for crypto wallets. Based on their assessment, infected Google Play apps have been downloaded more than 242,000 times. Kaspersky says "This is the first known case of an app infected with OCR spyware being found in Apple's official app marketplace."

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://chiraaggohel.com/posts/llms-eda/

One paper that caught my attention a bit ago was Selective attention in hypothesis-driven data analysis by Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher. In their study, students who were given specific hypotheses to test were much less likely to notice an obvious "gorilla in the data" compared to students who explored the data freely.

[...] I use large language models relatively often to assist with smaller portions of my daily bioinformatics work and have been interested in studying their ability to perform complete bioinformatics analyses. A key part of any analysis is exploratory data analysis (EDA), and I wondered how well large language models would perform at this task. This naturally begs the question: are large language models able to notice the "gorilla in the data" given the same prompts given to human students?

[...] Furthermore, their data analysis capabilities seem to focus much more on quantitative metrics and summary statistics, and less on the visual structure of the data. In some ways, this could be seen as a feature rather than a bug. While humans are hard-wired to see faces in clouds and trends in random noise, these models appear to err in the opposite direction.

I have a few thoughts on potential implications:

First, it suggests that current LLMs might be particularly valuable in domains where avoiding confirmation bias is critical. They could serve as a useful check against our tendency to over-interpret data, especially in fields like genomics or drug discovery where false positives are costly. (But also it's not like LLMs are immune to their own form of confirmation bias)

However, this same trait makes them potentially problematic for exploratory data analysis. The core value of EDA lies in its ability to generate novel hypotheses through pattern recognition. The fact that both Sonnet and 4o required explicit prompting to notice even dramatic visual patterns suggests they may miss crucial insights during open-ended exploration.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Messaging app said it had 'high confidence' some users were targeted and 'possibly compromised' by Paragon Solutions spyware:

Nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged on Friday.

The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had "high confidence" that the 90 users in question had been targeted and "possibly compromised".

It is not clear who was behind the attack. Like other spyware makers, Paragon's hacking software is used by government clients and WhatsApp said it had not been able to identify the clients who ordered the alleged attacks.

Experts said the targeting was a "zero-click" attack, which means targets would not have had to click on any malicious links to be infected.

[...] WhatsApp said it had sent Paragon a "cease and desist" letter and that it was exploring its legal options. WhatsApp said the alleged attacks had been disrupted in December and that it was not clear how long the targets may have been under threat.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Related:

• Journalist Sues Predator Spyware Maker for Allegedly Helping Government Surveil Him
• Israeli Spyware Maker Is in Spotlight Amid Reports of Wide Abuses
• The Great iPwn -- Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage 'Zero-Click' Exploit

Original Submission

looorg writes:

https://torrentfreak.com/meta-torrented-over-81-tb-of-data-through-annas-archive-despite-few-seeders-250206/

Facebook/Meta torrented over 81+TB of books/data to feed their models. Odd that the law isn't pounding on their door or they have some kind of strikes to get disconnected from the internet. Zuck likes his torrents and pirated books ...

Freshly unsealed court documents reveal that Meta downloaded significant amounts of data from shadow libraries through Anna's Archive. The company's use of BitTorrent was already known, but internal email communication reveals sources and terabytes of downloaded data, as well as a struggle with limited availability and slow download speeds due to a lack of seeders.

"Meta downloaded millions of pirated books from LibGen through the bit torrent protocol using a platform called LibTorrent. Internally, Meta acknowledged that using this protocol was legally problematic," the third amended complaint noted.

Meta's employees were not oblivious to potential copyright concerns. According to the unsealed records, one employee stated: "I feel that using pirated material should be beyond our ethical threshold."

Clearly not beneath them.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

[...] For Danny Glavin, a senior sample scientist, he wanted to solve a relentless mystery in his life's work: Why are all known living things only based on the left-handed forms of amino acids, the molecules that build proteins? 

His moment arrived nearly a decade later. Glavin and a team of researchers probed the grit from Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid made of loosely bound boulders, but what they found threw them a curveball. Rather than supporting one of the leading hypotheses — that the early solar system favored the left-handed variety and brought those ingredients to primitive Earth — it showed no favoritism at all. 

[...] Many amino acids, whether they're used in biology or not, come in two mirror-image forms. Each molecule has a central carbon atom with other atom groups attached, oriented in one direction or the reverse. This property, called chirality, is like a left and right hand: They're similar, but if you stacked them, the thumbs would be hitchhiking opposite ways.

In Earth life, the amino acids are always "left-handed," and sugars, which partly make up the backbone of DNA, are always right-handed, giving the double helix its signature twist to the right. The homogeneity found among both is especially confounding to scientists because the left and right-handed versions of all these molecules are equally available in nonliving chemical mixes. 

Practically speaking, if all biological molecules took the reverse form, that might work just fine. So if life could have taken the other path, why didn't it? Is uniform "handedness" a secret ingredient in the recipe for life, and more specifically, did it have to turn left? Did the bias toward left-handed amino acids begin in the cosmos, or did it happen later on this planet?

"A fundamental question for all of us is whether life had to be the way it is," said Iris Chen, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA, who wasn't involved in the asteroid study. "Is the universe predisposed to our kind of life, or is our biology the result of accidents and chance?"

Scientists knew early on they would use the material collected by NASA's $800 million OSIRIS-Rex mission, short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, to analyze the "handedness" of individual amino acids. Bennu's mineral fragments could be older than the 4.6 billion-year-old solar system. These grains of stardust could have come from dying stars or supernovas that eventually led to the creation of the sun and planets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-encryption-backdoor-uk/ [Paywalled]

"Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

"The British government's undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies. Its application would mark a significant defeat for tech companies in their decades-long battle to avoid being wielded as government tools against their users, the people said, speaking under the condition of anonymity to discuss legally and politically sensitive issues."

From the BBC:

The UK government has demanded to be able to access encrypted data stored by Apple users worldwide in its cloud service.

Currently only the Apple account holder can access data stored in this way - the tech giant itself cannot view it.

The demand has been served by the Home Office under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), which compels firms to provide information to law enforcement agencies. Apple declined to comment, but says on its website that it views privacy as a "fundamental human right". Under the law, the demand cannot be made public.

The Home Office said: "We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices."

Privacy International called it an "unprecedented attack" on the private data of individuals. "This is a fight the UK should not have picked," said the charity's legal director Caroline Wilson Palow. "This overreach sets a hugely damaging precedent and will embolden abusive regimes the world over."

owl writes:

http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/

If you're reading this page, chances are that you're already well aware that E.T. for the Atari 2600 is one of the most reviled games ever made. I never understood why. As a child, it was one of my favorite games. I still think it's a good game. Apparently, I'm not alone.

On this page I'm going to briefly explore why people hate E.T., and how the game can be fixed.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Law enforcement officers across Europe assembled again to collectively disrupt major facilitators of cybercrime, with at least one of those cuffed apparently a fan of the dramedy series The Gilmore Girls.

Two crime forums, Cracked and Nulled, were pulled offline.

Together, the platforms amassed more than 9 million users and were often budding e-miscreants' first foray into pursuing a life of cybercrime.

Similar to BreachForums, which was briefly taken down by law enforcement last year, Cracked and Nulled offered users a platform to discuss all things devious and a marketplace to sell their tools and ill-gotten wares.

The collective takedown action was led by German authorities in a campaign dubbed Operation Talent and took place between January 28-30.

It led to two arrests following the search of seven properties. Law enforcement seized 17 servers, 12 domains, 50 devices, and around €300,000 ($311,279) worth of cash and cryptocurrency tokens. Given that Cracked and Nulled generated millions in revenue, the amount seized is just a fraction - but still a notable disruption to their operations.

Lucas Sohn, a 29-year-old Argentine, was the only named suspect. A video released by Europol showed Sohn, who resides in Spain, being arrested and his devices combed through by the Guardia Civil. The video also showed the arrest of a second, unnamed individual.

[...] The Justice Department said Cracked had been on the scene since 2018 and raked in $4 million in the process. Its primary offering was a marketplace that offered access to stolen credentials, hacking tools, and servers to host malware and stolen data.

[...] Meanwhile, in a separate crackdown, the US and Dutch Politie jointly announced the disruption of a Pakistan-based fraud network.

The network was comprised of websites devoted to selling products like phishing kits, which were later used to carry out Business Email Compromise (BEC) schemes – the most economically damaging cybercrime in the US, the FBI reckons.

Run by a group known as Saim Raza, aka HeartSender, a total of 39 domains and their associated servers were seized by the US and Netherlands.

Authorities didn't specify victim numbers, only that 'numerous' US-based cases resulted in over $3 million in losses.

Original Submission