Last week, the developers behind the popular Switch emulator Yuzu took down their GitLab and web presence in the face of a major lawsuit from Nintendo. Now, a new project built from the Yuzu source code, cheekily named Suyu, has arisen as "the continuation of the world's most popular, open-source Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu."
Despite the name—which the project's GitLab page notes is "pronounced 'sue-you' (wink, wink)"—the developers behind Suyu are going out of their way to try to avoid a lawsuit like the one that took down Yuzu.
[...]
After consulting with an unnamed "someone with legal experience" (Sharpie would only say "they claimed three years of law school"), the Suyu development team has decided to avoid "any monetization," Sharpie said. The project's GitLab page clearly states that "we do not intend to make money or profit from this project," an important declaration after Nintendo cited Yuzu's profitability a few times in its recent lawsuit. Other emulator makers also told Ars that Yuzu's Patreon opened the project up to a set of pesky consumer demands and expectations.The Suyu devs have also been warned against "providing step-by-step guides" like the ones that Yuzu offered for how to play copyrighted games on their emulator. Those guides were a major focus of Nintendo's lawsuit, as were some examples of developer conversations in the Yuzu Discord that seemed to acknowledge and condone piracy.
[...]
The Suyu GitLab page is upfront that the developers "do not support or condone piracy in any form," a message that didn't appear on Yuzu's GitLab page or website.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Breakthrough Therapy Obliterates Deadly Brain Tumor in Days:
Brain scans of a 72-year-old man diagnosed with a highly aggressive form of cancer known as a glioblastoma have revealed a remarkable regression in his tumor's size within days of receiving an infusion of an innovative new treatment.
Though the outcomes of two other participants with similar diagnoses were somewhat less positive, the case's success still bodes well for the search for a way to effectively cure what is currently an incurable disease.
Glioblastomas are typically about as deadly as cancers can get. Emerging from supporting cells inside the central nervous system, they can rapidly develop into malignant masses that claim up to 95 percent of patient lives within five years.
Researchers from Mass General Cancer Centre in the US suspected a treatment based on the patient's own immune system, known as CAR T-cell therapy, might succeed where other therapies fail.
Journal Reference:
Bryan D. Choi, Elizabeth R. Gerstner, Matthew J. Frigault, et al. Intraventricular CARv3-TEAM-E T Cells in Recurrent Glioblastoma, New England Journal of Medicine (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2314390)
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>SpaceX is reportedly building hundreds of spy satellites for the US government:
According to a report from Reuters, SpaceX has been contracted by the Department of Defense's National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to build a network of hundreds of low-orbiting spy satellites capable of operating as a swarm.
SpaceX has been contracted by the Department of Defense's National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to build a network of hundreds of low-orbiting spy satellites capable of operating as a swarm and tracking targets on the ground, according to Reuters. The Reuters report, which cites five sources with knowledge of the program, builds on earlier reporting by The Wall Street Journal that revealed SpaceX had signed a $1.8 billion contract in 2021 with an unnamed agency.
This network, called Starshield, would reportedly be able to gather continuous imagery all over Earth for US intelligence, using a mix of large imaging satellites to collect data and relay satellites to transmit information. According to one source who spoke to Reuters, it has the potential to make it so "no one can hide." Neither SpaceX nor the NRO directly confirmed the company's involvement in the project, but an NRO spokesperson told Reuters, "The National Reconnaissance Office is developing the most capable, diverse, and resilient space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system the world has ever seen."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>The FCC just quadrupled the download speed required to market internet as 'broadband':
The FCC has raised the speeds required to describe internet service as "broadband" for the first time since 2015. The agency's annual high-speed internet assessment concluded that 100 Mbps downloads and 20 Mbps uploads will be the new standard. The news will likely irk ISPs who would love to keep pointing to 25 Mbps / 3 Mbps speeds (the previous standards) and convincing people they're getting high-speed broadband.
[...] More specifically, the agency said fixed terrestrial broadband service (not including satellite) has yet to be deployed to around 24 million Americans, including about 28 percent of people in rural areas and over 23 percent of those living on Tribal lands. On the mobile front, it added that about nine percent of Americans (including 36 percent in rural areas and over 20 percent on Tribal lands) lack adequate 5G cellular speeds of at least 35 Mbps down / 3 Mbps up.
[...] The FCC can't police ISPs to force them to boost their speeds, but this type of move may be the best card it can play. What it can do is prevent them from marketing their services as "broadband" internet if they don't meet these thresholds. It remains to be seen whether the companies providing the infrastructure play ball or opt for other marketing buzzwords to sell customers on glacial and outdated internet speeds.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Many devices have been made difficult or financially nonviable to repair, whether by design or because of a lack of parts, manuals, or specialty tools. Machines that make ice cream, however, seem to have a special place in the hearts of lawmakers. Those machines are often broken and locked down for only the most profitable repairs.
The Federal Trade Commission and the antitrust division of the Department of Justice have asked the US Copyright Office (PDF) to exempt "commercial soft serve machines" from the anti-circumvention rules of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The governing bodies also submitted proprietary diagnostic kits, programmable logic controllers, and enterprise IT devices for DMCA exemptions.
"In each case, an exemption would give users more choices for third-party and self-repair and would likely lead to cost savings and a better return on investment in commercial and industrial equipment," the joint comment states. Those markets would also see greater competition in the repair market, and companies would be prevented from using DMCA laws to enforce monopolies on repair, according to the comment.
[...] Every three years, the Copyright Office allows for petitions to exempt certain exceptions to DMCA violations (and renew prior exemptions). Repair advocates have won exemptions for farm equipment repair, video game consoles, cars, and certain medical gear. The exemption is often granted for device fixing if a repair person can work past its locks, but not for the distribution of tools that would make such a repair far easier. The esoteric nature of such "release valve" offerings has led groups like the EFF to push for the DMCA's abolishment.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://phys.org/news/2024-03-brighter-cheaper-blue-revolutionize-screen.html
Researchers have found a new way to simplify the structure of high-efficiency blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which could lead to longer-lasting and higher definition television screens.
OLEDs are a class of organic electronics that are already found commercially in smartphones and displays and can be more efficient than competing technologies.
Although OLED television screens have vivid picture quality, they also have drawbacks such as high cost and comparatively short lifespans.
[...] An OLED is built like a sandwich, with organic semiconductor layers between two electrodes. In the middle of the stack is the emissive layer, which lights up when powered with electricity. Electrical energy goes into the molecules, which then release this extra energy as light.
More information: Hwan-Hee Cho et al, Suppression of Dexter transfer by covalent encapsulation for efficient matrix-free narrowband deep blue hyperfluorescent OLEDs, Nature Materials (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-024-01812-4
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Uber and Lyft are quitting Minneapolis over a driver pay increase:
Uber and Lyft say they're ending services in Minneapolis over a city-mandated driver pay increase. The city council pushed through the measure to bring driver pay closer to the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour.
[...] However, Uber and Lyft say they'll end services in the city before the pay rise takes effect on May 1. Lyft says the increase is "deeply flawed," citing a Minnesota study indicating that drivers could meet the minimum wage and still cover health insurance, paid leave and retirement savings at lower rates of $1.21 per mile and 49 cents per minute. "We support a minimum earning standard for drivers, but it should be done in an honest way that keeps the service affordable for riders," spokesperson CJ Macklin told The Verge.
An Uber spokesperson told the publication that the company was disappointed by the council's choice to "ignore the data and kick Uber out of the Twin Cities," putting around 10,000 drivers out of work. They noted Uber's confidence that by working with drivers, drivers and legislators, "we can achieve comprehensive statewide legislation that guarantees drivers a fair minimum wage, protects their independence and keeps rideshare affordable."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>A new IRC client (but don't call it an IRC client) is being developed by Linux Mint:
The Ubuntu-based distro currently includes Hexchat in its default software set. IRC isn't as trendy as Discord or Telegram but it is a free, open standard that no single entity controls, is relatively low-bandwidth, interoperable, and efficient.
But as I reported in February: Hexchat is no more.
Hexchat quitting the chat leaves —I so badly want to type leafs there— Linux Mint with a dilemma and an opportunity.
The dilemma being: "should we continue shipping an IRC client, and what role does it serve?" and the opportunity being: "could we replace it with something better?".
[...] Ever wondered why Linux Mint comes with an IRC client preinstalled? It's mainly to offer a way for users of the distro to talk to, ask questions, and get support from other users of the distro in (relative) real time.
[...] Since its official IRC channels remain active, with users and developers using them daily to answer questions, offer support, and connect over a shared interest, should the demise of Hexchat have to mean moating of IRC entirely?
As is, IRC isn't user-friendly. It's a kind of an arcane magic involving strange commands. Its onboarding is obtuse. And the protocol doesn't natively support things like media sharing (screenshots are useful when troubleshooting), clickable links, or other modern "niceties".
And yet, IRC is a fast, established, open, and versatile protocol. It's not as flashy as Discord but it's not encumbered by superfluous social excesses or corporate caveats. It's free and immediate (no sign-up required to use it) which makes it ideal for 'when you need it' use.
So work has begun on a new dedicated "chat room" app to replace Hexchat, called Jargonaut.
Linux Mint's goal is not to build a fully-featured IRC client, or even an IRC client at all. Jargonaut is a chat app that just happens to use IRC as its underlying chat protocol.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://phys.org/news/2024-03-dont-materials-electricity.html
Is there a way to stick hard and soft materials together without any tape, glue or epoxy? A new study published in ACS Central Science shows that applying a small voltage to certain objects forms chemical bonds that securely link the objects together. Reversing the direction of electron flow easily separates the two materials. This electroadhesion effect could help create biohybrid robots, improve biomedical implants and enable new battery technologies.
When an adhesive is used to attach two things, it binds the surfaces either through mechanical or electrostatic forces. But sometimes those attractions or bonds are difficult, if not impossible, to undo. As an alternative, reversible adhesion methods are being explored, including electroadhesion (EA).
Though the term is used to describe a few different phenomena, one definition involves running an electric current through two materials causing them to stick together, thanks to attractions or chemical bonds. Previously, Srinivasa Raghavan and colleagues demonstrated that EA can hold soft, oppositely charged materials together, and even be used to build simple structures. This time, they wanted to see if EA could reversibly bind a hard material, such as graphite, to a soft material, such as animal tissue.
[...] For EA to occur, the authors found that the hard material needs to conduct electrons, and the soft material needs to contain salt ions They hypothesize that the adhesion arises from chemical bonds that form between the surfaces after an exchange of electrons. This may explain why some metals that hold onto their electrons strongly, including titanium, and some fruits that contain more sugar than salts, including grapes, failed to adhere in some situations.
A final experiment showed that EA can occur completely underwater, revealing an even wider range of possible applications. The team says that this work could help create new batteries, enable biohybrid robotics, enhance biomedical implants and much more.
Journal Reference:
Wenhao Xu, Faraz A. Burni, and Srinivasa R. Raghavan, Reversibly Sticking Metals and Graphite to Hydrogels and Tissues, ACS Central Science (2024). https://doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.3c01593
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>A 20-year-old Trojan resurfaced recently with new variants that target Linux and impersonate a trusted hosted domain to evade detection.
Researchers from Palo Alto Networks spotted a new Linux variant of the Bifrost (aka Bifrose) malware that uses a deceptive practice known as typosquatting to mimic a legitimate VMware domain, which allows the malware to fly under the radar. Bifrost is a remote access Trojan (RAT) that's been active since 2004 and gathers sensitive information, such as hostname and IP address, from a compromised system.
There has been a worrying spike in Bifrost Linux variants during the past few months: Palo Alto Networks has detected more than 100 instances of Bifrost samples, which "raises concerns among security experts and organizations," researchers Anmol Murya and Siddharth Sharma wrote in the company's newly published findings.
Moreover, there is evidence that cyberattackers aim to expand Bifrost's attack surface even further, using a malicious IP address associated with a Linux variant hosting an ARM version of Bifrost as well, they said.
"By providing an ARM version of the malware, attackers can expand their grasp, compromising devices that may not be compatible with x86-based malware," the researchers explained. "As ARM-based devices become more common, cybercriminals will likely change their tactics to include ARM-based malware, making their attacks stronger and able to reach more targets."
[...] Though it may be an old-timer when it comes to malware, the Bifrost RAT remains a significant and evolving threat to individuals and organizations alike, particularly with new variants adopting typosquatting to evade detection, the researchers said.
[...] In their post, the researchers shared a list of indicators of compromise, including malware samples and domain and IP addresses associated with the latest Bifrost Linux variants. The researchers advise that enterprises use next-generation firewall products and cloud-specific security services — including URL filtering, malware-prevention applications, and visibility and analytics — to secure cloud environments.
Ultimately, the process of infection allows the malware to bypass security measures and evade detection, and ultimately compromise targeted systems, the researchers said.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has long been an outspoken opponent of what he sees as Valve's unreasonable platform fees for listing games on Steam, which start at 30 percent of the total sale price. Now, though, new emails from before the launch of the competing Epic Games Store in 2018 show just how angry Sweeney was with the "assholes" at companies like Valve and Apple for squeezing "the little guy" with what he saw as inflated fees.
The emails, which came out this week as part of Wolfire's price-fixing case against Valve (as noticed by the GameDiscoverCo newsletter), confront Valve managers directly for platform fees Sweeney says are "no longer justifiable."
[...]
The first mostly unredacted email chain from the court documents, from August 2017, starts with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell asking Sweeney if there is "anything we [are] doing to annoy you?" That query was likely prompted by Sweeney's public tweets at the time questioning "why Steam is still taking 30% of gross [when] MasterCard and Visa charge 2-5% per transaction, and CDN bandwidth is around $0.002/GB." Later in the same thread, he laments that "the internet was supposed to obsolete the rent-seeking software distribution middlemen, but here's Facebook, Google, Apple, Valve, etc."
[...]
The second email chain revealed in the lawsuit started in November 2018, with Sweeney offering Valve a heads-up on the impending launch of the Epic Games Store that would come just weeks later. While that move was focused on PC and Mac games, Sweeney quickly pivots to a discussion of Apple's total control over iOS, the subject at the time of a lawsuit whose technicalities were being considered by the Supreme Court.
[...]
In a follow-up email on December 3, just days before the Epic Games Store launch, Sweeney took Valve to task more directly for its policy of offering lower platform fees for the largest developers on Steam.
[...]
After being forwarded the message by Valve's Erik Johnson, Valve COO Scott Lynch simply offered up a sardonic "You mad bro?"
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/charges-against-journalist-tim-burke-are-a-hack-job/
Caitlin Vogus is the deputy director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation and a First Amendment lawyer. Jennifer Stisa Granick is the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. The opinions in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of Ars Technica.
Imagine a journalist finds a folder on a park bench, opens it, and sees a telephone number inside. She dials the number. A famous rapper answers and spews a racist rant. If no one gave her permission to open the folder and the rapper's telephone number was unlisted, should the reporter go to jail for publishing what she heard?
If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. And yet, add in a computer and the Internet, and that's basically what a newly unsealed federal indictment accuses Florida journalist Tim Burke of doing when he found and disseminated outtakes of Tucker Carlson's Fox News interview with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, going on the first of many antisemitic diatribes.
[...]
According to Burke, the video of Carlson's interview with Ye was streamed via a publicly available, unencrypted URL that anyone could access by typing the address into your browser. Those URLs were not listed in any search engine, but Burke says that a source pointed him to a website on the Internet Archive where a radio station had posted "demo credentials" that gave access to a page where the URLs were listed.The credentials were for a webpage created by LiveU, a company that provides video streaming services to broadcasters. Using the demo username and password, Burke logged into the website, and, Burke's lawyer claims, the list of URLs for video streams automatically downloaded to his computer.
And that, the government says, is a crime. It charges Burke with violating the CFAA's prohibition on intentionally accessing a computer "without authorization" because he accessed the LiveU website and URLs without having been authorized by Fox or LiveU. In other words, because Burke didn't ask Fox or LiveU for permission to use the demo account or view the URLs, the indictment alleges, he acted without authorization.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Multiple sites are covering H.R.7521 - Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act which aims to ban Bytedance's Tiktok, a platform for influence and surveillance, from the US.
The app has been a diplomatic hot potato between the United States and China since the administration of former president Donald Trump, who once wanted to ban the app.
Now, a bill in Congress aims to force the company to cut ties with ByteDance or be barred from the United States.
The bill's supporters say ByteDance as a Chinese firm simply cannot go against the wishes of Beijing, and can provide access to the data on more than 170 million American users for everything from spying to election influence campaigns.
And
But that glosses over the deeper TikTok security problem, which the legislation does not fully address. In the four years this battle has gone on, it has become clear that the security threat posed by TikTok has far less to do with who owns it than it does with who writes the code and algorithms that make TikTok tick.
Those algorithms, which guide how TikTok watches its users and feeds them more of what they want, are the magic sauce of an app that 170 million Americans now have on their phones. That's half the country.
But TikTok doesn't own those algorithms; they are developed by engineers who work for its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, which assembles the code in great secrecy in its software labs, in Beijing, Singapore and Mountain View, Calif. But China has issued regulations that appear designed to require government review before any of ByteDance's algorithms could be licensed to outsiders. Few expect those licenses to be issued — meaning that selling TikTok to an American owner without the underlying code might be like selling a Ferrari without its famed engine.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://newatlas.com/science/cows-low-cost-insulin-production/
A genetically modified cow has produced milk containing human insulin, according to a new study. The proof-of-concept achievement could be scaled up to, eventually, produce enough insulin to ensure availability and reduced cost for all diabetics requiring the life-maintaining drug.
Unable to rely on their own supply due to damaged pancreatic cells, type 1 diabetics need injectable insulin to live. As do some type 2 diabetics. The World Health Organization estimates that of those who require insulin, between 150 and 200 million people worldwide, only about half are being treated with it. Access to insulin remains inadequate in many low- and middle-income countries – and some high-income countries – and its cost and unavailability have been well-documented.
In a newly published study led by the Department of Animal Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Universidade de São Paulo, researchers say they may have developed a way of eliminating insulin scarcity and reducing its cost using cows. Yep, cows.
"Mother Nature designed the mammary gland as a factory to make protein really, really efficiently," said Matt Wheeler, corresponding author of the study. "We can take advantage of that system to produce a protein that can help hundreds of millions of people worldwide."
[...] In the current study, the researchers inserted a segment of human DNA coding for proinsulin into the cells of ten cow embryos implanted into the uteruses of regular Brazilian cows. The implantation resulted in the birth of one transgenic calf. The term 'transgenic' describes an organism that contains artificially introduced DNA from an unrelated organism. Here, the human DNA used was targeted for expression in milk-producing, that is, mammary tissue only. Of course, a cow's mammary gland is more commonly called an udder.
...
When the calf matured, she was given hormones to stimulate her first lactation. While the volume of milk was less than would ordinarily be produced, the researchers found that it contained human proinsulin and – surprisingly – insulin.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>AI assistants have been widely available for a little more than a year, and they already have access to our most private thoughts and business secrets. People ask them about becoming pregnant or terminating or preventing pregnancy, consult them when considering a divorce, seek information about drug addiction, or ask for edits in emails containing proprietary trade secrets. The providers of these AI-powered chat services are keenly aware of the sensitivity of these discussions and take active steps—mainly in the form of encrypting them—to prevent potential snoops from reading other people's interactions.
But now, researchers have devised an attack that deciphers AI assistant responses with surprising accuracy. The technique exploits a side channel present in all of the major AI assistants, with the exception of Google Gemini.
[...] By carefully monitoring these sources, attackers can assemble enough information to recover encrypted keystrokes or encryption keys from CPUs, browser cookies from HTTPS traffic, or secrets from smartcards, The side channel used in this latest attack resides in tokens that AI assistants use when responding to a user query.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/voyager_1_not_dead/
Engineers are hopeful that the veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 might have turned a corner after spending the last three months spouting gibberish at controllers.
On March 1, the Voyager team sent a command, dubbed a "poke," to get the probe's Flight Data System (FDS) to try some other sequences in its software in the hope of circumventing whatever had become corrupted.
Readers of a certain vintage will doubtless have memories of poke sheets for various 1980s games. Not that this hack ever used a poke to get infinite lives in Jet Set Willy, of course.
While Voyager 1's lifespan is not infinite, it has endured far longer than anticipated and might be about to dodge yet another bullet. On March 3, the mission team saw something different in the stream of data returned from the spacecraft, which had been unreadable since December.
An engineer with the Deep Space Network (DSN) was able to decode it, and by March 10, the team determined that it contained a complete memory dump from the FDS.
[...] The next step is to study the memory read-out and compare it to one transmitted before the problem arose. A solution to the issue could then be devised.
One of the original Voyager scientists, Garry Hunt, told The Register that engineers at JPL were determined to get communications with the stricken probe working again: "This requires both skills and patience with the long time between communication instructions and response."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Back when scientific publications came in paper form, libraries played a key role in ensuring that knowledge didn't disappear. Copies went out to so many libraries that any failure—a publisher going bankrupt, a library getting closed—wouldn't put us at risk of losing information. But, as with anything else, scientific content has gone digital, which has changed what's involved with preservation.
[...] The work was done by Martin Eve, a developer at Crossref. That's the organization that organizes the DOI system, which provides a permanent pointer toward digital documents, including almost every scientific publication. If updates are done properly, a DOI will always resolve to a document, even if that document gets shifted to a new URL.
But it also has a way of handling documents disappearing from their expected location, as might happen if a publisher went bankrupt. There is a set of what's called "dark archives" that the public doesn't have access to but should contain copies of anything that has had a DOI assigned. If anything goes wrong with a DOI, it should trigger the dark archives to open access and the DOI to update to point to the copy in the dark archive.
For that to work, however, copies of everything published must be in the archives. So Eve decided to check whether that's the case.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm
During my time at Atari/Atari Games I worked on several XY games. This article represents what I know about XY Monitors. XY was Atari's name for what the Computer Graphics industry calls '"Random Scan" and the Video Game Community calls "Vector Games." The major parts of the XY Monitor are the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT), the Deflection Amplifiers, and the High Voltage Supply.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Boeing has come in for criticism from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) over documentation detailing who was responsible for failures in the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 door plug attachment.
NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy spoke before the Senate Commerce Committee on March 6. Responding to a question from ranking member Senator Ted Cruz regarding cooperation from the parties involved in the incident, Homendy said: "Boeing has not provided us with the documents and information that we have requested numerous times over the past few months. Specifically with respect to opening, closing, and removal of the door and the team that does that work at the Renton facility."
[...] Investigations have since focused on the door plug and how it was fitted. A preliminary investigation found that the door plug had not been properly bolted into place following work to deal with damaged rivets at the edge of the door frame.
"Wow," said Cruz. "Are you telling us that even two months later, you still do not know who actually opened the door plug?"
"That's correct, Senator," replied Homendy. "We don't know, and it's not for lack of trying." Homendy acknowledged that it can take a while for all the paperwork to be forthcoming. "But for this one, it's two months later."
Homendy told the committee that despite inquiries, the NTSB had not received the names of the 25-member team handling the door plugs. It had also not received all the records regarding the work to deal with the door plug and was having to use email dates and photographs to work out the timeline.
"It's absurd that we don't have that," said Homendy.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://hellgatenyc.com/nypd-warrantless-subpoena-copwatcher-social-media
The NYPD sent a sweeping subpoena seeking information from the social media account of the president of a New York City police accountability organization in February, records reviewed by Hell Gate show, only to withdraw its subpoena when told they would need to justify the subpoena in court.
Michael Clancy, better known to friends on and off social media as Rabbi, received a notice last month from X, formerly known as Twitter, alerting him to the fact that the NYPD had sent X a subpoena requesting "all records consisting but not limited to all subscriber name(s), Email address(s), Phone number(s), account creation date, IP logs with timestamps (IP address of account logins and logouts), all logs of previous messages sent and received." The subpoena also requested "all videos sent and received, including but not limited to meta-data. exit data about the messages and videos" for the account.
The notification included a copy of the subpoena, which warned X not to tell Clancy of its existence. "You are not to disclose or notify any customer or third party of the existence of this subpoena or that records were provided pursuant to this subpoena," the document read.
But X, following its own corporate policy, told Clancy anyway, and suggested he might want to get some legal representation to fight the subpoena, recommending the American Civil Liberties Union.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Banana Pi's low-cost router supports 2.5G+5G WiFi with LAN ports:
Banana Pi is now selling a fully built Wi-Fi 6 router with some solid features for just $30 excluding shipping via Ali Express. This router uses OpenWRT firmware and dual-core Arm A9 Processor-based Triductor TR6560 SoC with Triductor's TR5220 WiFi 6 chipset.
The company has been selling this WiFi 6 router board on its own, but now you can buy an out-of-box unit that contains an enclosure for the board with six external antennas, Ethernet cables, and a power adapter with either EU or US plugs. The only difference here is that one of the LAN ports is removed.
[...] The router supports the 802.11ax bandwidth protocol and provides WPA3 password protection. Power over Ethernet is optional and can be added via a module, but it needs to be soldered. Banana Pi's wiki page specifies that its 2.4G signal works up to 40 meters to provide 573.5 Mbps bandwidth and 5G works up to 160 meters up to 2,401.9 Mbps.
Read the specs here.
Related:
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://newatlas.com/energy/sand-battery-finland/
A new industrial-scale 'sand battery' has been announced for Finland, which packs 1 MW of power and a capacity of up to 100 MWh of thermal energy for use during those cold polar winters. The new battery will be about 10 times bigger than a pilot plant that's been running since 2022.
The sand battery, developed by Polar Night Energy, is a clever concept. Basically, it's a big steel silo of sand (or a similar solid material) that's warmed up through a heat exchanger buried in the center, using excess electricity from the grid – say, that generated during a spike from renewable sources, when it's cheap.
That energy can then be stored for months at a time, with reportedly very little loss, before being extracted as heat on demand. This could theoretically be converted back into electricity, although with some energy loss. But Polar Night says that the most efficient method is to just use the heat itself.
In a chilly place like Finland, that means feeding it into the local district heating system, which shares heat produced from industry or energy production through the community. Networks of pipes carry this heat as hot water or steam to warm up houses, buildings, even swimming pools. In this case, the new sand battery would be trialed in the district heating system of the Finnish municipality of Pornainen, run by a company called Loviisan Lämpö.
This new sand battery is expected to stand 13 m (42.7 ft) tall and 15 m (49.2 ft) wide, providing an output power of 1 MW and a capacity of 100 MWh. That, the companies claim, equates to a week's worth of Pornainen's heat demands in winter, or a month's worth in summer. By comparison, Polar Night's previous sand battery stands 4 x 7 m (13 x 23 ft), for a nominal power rating of 100 kW and a capacity of 8 MWh.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Since Broadcom's $61 billion acquisition of VMware closed in November 2023, Broadcom has been charging ahead with major changes to the company's personnel and products. In December, Broadcom began laying off thousands of employees and stopped selling perpetually licensed versions of VMware products, pushing its customers toward more stable and lucrative software subscriptions instead. In January, it ended its partner programs, potentially disrupting sales and service for many users of its products.
This week, Broadcom is making a change that is smaller in scale but possibly more relevant for home users of its products: The free version of VMware's vSphere Hypervisor, also known as ESXi, is being discontinued.
ESXi is what is known as a "bare-metal hypervisor," lightweight software that runs directly on hardware without requiring a separate operating system layer in between. ESXi allows you to split a PC's physical resources (CPUs and CPU cores, RAM, storage, networking components, and so on) among multiple virtual machines. ESXi also supports passthrough for PCI, SATA, and USB accessories, allowing guest operating systems direct access to components like graphics cards and hard drives.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Reddit aims for $6.4bn valuation ahead of initial public offering:
Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world, is hoping for a valuation of up to $6.4bn (£5bn) when its shares go public next week.
The social media company, which has never made a profit, will float shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
A filing in the US revealed that Reddit and its investors are hoping to sell 22 million shares for between $31 and $34 each.
However, many users worry the move will fundamentally change the website.
Some shares will be specially reserved for some Reddit users and moderators.
The company is planning an initial public offering (IPO) which would make some of its shares publicly available to buy for the first time.
"Our users have a deep sense of ownership over the communities they create on Reddit," wrote co-founder Steve Huffman in a letter to prospective investors released a few weeks ago.
"We want this sense of ownership to be reflected in real ownership - for our users to be our owners. Becoming a public company makes this possible."
Reddit, which was founded almost 20 years ago, is an online forum where users can post questions and comment on topics that interest them.
[...] However, some users are worried that the IPO would change the site for the worse.
"When the most important customers shift from [users] to shareholders, the product always [suffers]," said one person.
"It becomes 'what can we do this quarter to squeak out an additional point of revenue', instead of 'how can we make this product better'."
[Hmmm, a site built on user-submitted topics and user-submitted comments that has never made a profit might be worth $6B . . . maybe after the new site is set up we should IPO while the iron is still hot! --hubie]
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>The Verge is reporting, in what appears to be a surprise move, that Microsoft is ending support for its Android subsystem in Windows.
Microsoft is ending support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 next year. The software giant first announced it was bringing Android apps to Windows 11 with Amazon's Appstore nearly three years ago, but this Windows Subsystem for Android will now be deprecated starting March 5th, 2025.
"Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android" (WSA), reads a new support document from Microsoft. "As a result, the Amazon Appstore on Windows and all applications and games dependent on WSA will no longer be supported beginning March 5, 2025."
If you currently use Android apps from the Amazon Appstore, then you'll continue to have access to these past the support cutoff date, but you won't be able to download any new ones once Microsoft makes its Android subsystem end of life next year. [Since] March 6th [2024], Windows 11 users will no longer be able to search for Amazon Appstore or associated Android apps from the Microsoft Store.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://newatlas.com/biology/tap-honeybee-colony/
Delivering a gentle automated tap to the outside of a hive and recording the honeybees' collective response can give an indication of the colony's health without having to look inside, new research has found.
At last check, there were an estimated 115,000 to 125,000 beekeepers in the US, most of whom were hobbyists. In particular, ownership of honeybee colonies appears to have risen in recent years, with amateur apiarists wanting to help preserve these powerful pollinators in addition to generating their own source of sweet, sticky goodness.
But caring for honeybees can be tricky. Colonies follow very specific activity patterns throughout the year; they should be very busy in warmer months and idle when it's cold. So, they need to be checked regularly for health and productivity. Beekeepers can inspect hives by opening them, but this invasive process risks harm to the colony, particularly the all-important queen.
A new study led by researchers from Nottingham Trent University in the UK suggests they have a solution: gauging health by gently tapping the hive and listening for the bees' collective response.
"It's a bit like a bear that falls asleep for the winter; sometimes, you cannot tell if the animal is alive or not," said Martin Bencsik, the study's lead and corresponding author. "A gentle tap, causing a tiny, but measurable reaction, will reveal whether the animal is in its normal state or not."
The researchers' 'gentle tap' was delivered at random times by an electromagnetic shaker attached to a hive's outer wall, driven by a computer that provided a 0.1-second pulse at 340 Hz. The honeybees' response was recorded by an accelerometer embedded in the middle of the hive's frame, which was sensitive to the insects' vibrations.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>SpaceX Plans Test Launch of Super Heavy and Starship:
The third flight test of Starship is targeted to launch Thursday, March 14. The 110-minute test window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT (8:00 a.m. ET).
A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates.
Starship's second flight test achieved a number of major milestones and provided invaluable data to continue rapidly developing Starship. Each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test. They aren't occurring in a lab or on a test stand, but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning.
The third flight test aims to build on what we've learned from previous flights while attempting a number of ambitious objectives, including the successful ascent burn of both stages, opening and closing Starship's payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration during the upper stage's coast phase, the first ever re-light of a Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry of Starship. It will also fly a new trajectory, with Starship targeted to splashdown in the Indian Ocean. This new flight path enables us to attempt new techniques like in-space engine burns while maximizing public safety.
This rapid iterative development approach has been the basis for all of SpaceX's major innovative advancements, including Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink. Recursive improvement is essential as we work to build a fully reusable transportation system capable of carrying both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and ultimately travel to Mars and beyond.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Google's swanky new "Bay View" campus apparently has a major problem: bad Wi-Fi. Reuters reports that Google's first self-designed office building has "been plagued for months by inoperable or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi, according to six people familiar with the matter." A Google spokesperson confirmed the problems and said the company is working on fixing them.
Bay View opened in May 2022. At launch, Google's VP of Real Estate & Workplace Services, David Radcliffe, said the site "marks the first time we developed one of our own major campuses, and the process gave us the chance to rethink the very idea of an office." The result is a wild tent-like structure with a striking roofline made up of swooping square sections. Of course, it's all made of metal and glass, but the roof shape looks like squares of cloth held up by poles—each square section has high points on the four corners and sags down in the middle. The roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, and Google calls it the "Gradient Canopy."
According to one AI engineer assigned to the building, which also houses members of the advertising team, the wonky Wi-Fi has been no help for Google pushing a three day per week return-to-office mandate.
"You'd think the world's leading internet company would have worked this out," he said. Like others, he spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity because Google has not authorized them to talk about work conditions.
Managers have encouraged workers to stroll outside or sit at the adjoining cafe where the Wi-Fi signal is stronger.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>On Wednesday, Midjourney banned all employees from image synthesis rival Stability AI from its service indefinitely after it detected "botnet-like" activity suspected to be a Stability employee attempting to scrape prompt and image pairs in bulk. Midjourney advocate Nick St. Pierre tweeted about the announcement, which came via Midjourney's official Discord channel.
[...] Siobhan Ball of The Mary Sue found it ironic that a company like Midjourney, which built its AI image synthesis models using training data scraped off the Internet without seeking permission, would be sensitive about having its own material scraped. "It turns out that generative AI companies don't like it when you steal, sorry, scrape, images from them. Cue the world's smallest violin."
[...] Shortly after the news of the ban emerged, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque said that he was looking into it and claimed that whatever happened was not intentional. He also said it would be great if Midjourney reached out to him directly. In a reply on X, Midjourney CEO David Holz wrote, "sent you some information to help with your internal investigation."
[...] When asked about Stability's relationship with Midjourney these days, Mostaque played down the rivalry. "No real overlap, we get on fine though," he told Ars and emphasized a key link in their histories. "I funded Midjourney to get [them] off the ground with a cash grant to cover [Nvidia] A100s for the beta."
Midjourney stories on SoylentNews: https://soylentnews.org/search.pl?tid=&query=Midjourney&sort=2
Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) stories on SoylentNews: https://soylentnews.org/search.pl?tid=&query=Stable+Diffusion&sort=2
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Russian troops in Ukraine have allegedly been using SpaceX’s Starlink terminals to get internet access during the ongoing war that has seen hundreds of thousands of casualties on each side. And now, House Democrats are finally asking hard questions of SpaceX leadership about how this could be happening, according to an open letter published on Thursday.
The letter to SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell from some top Democrats in the House makes the case that Starlink’s high-speed satellite internet access is considered essential to Ukraine’s continued ability to fight against Russia’s invasion, which first started in February 2022.
The letter from the Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Rep. Robert Garcia of California, stresses that Russia’s use of Starlink tech would be “potentially in violation of U.S. sanctions and export controls.”
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on February 15 that Russian troops have been using Starlink internet for “quite a long time,” according to Ukraine’s Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov.
Russia is believed to be acquiring the Starlink terminals from black market sellers, sometimes posing as German appliance manufacturers according to the Journal, but SpaceX leaders presumably have insight into who and how these terminals might be used by illicit Russian actors. For example, Musk shut off Starlink access for Ukrainian-controlled devices in Crimea early in the war, ostensibly to stop an “escalation” of the conflict.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>For more than 45 years, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been cruising through the cosmos, crossing the boundary of our solar system to become the first human-made object to venture to interstellar space. Iconic in every regard, Voyager 1 has delivered groundbreaking data on Jupiter and Saturn, and captured the loneliest image of Earth. But perhaps nothing is lonelier than an aging spacecraft that has lost its ability to communicate while traveling billions of miles away from home.
NASA’s Voyager 1 has been glitching for months, sending nonsensical data to ground control. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been trying to resolve the issue, but given how far the spacecraft currently is, the process has been extremely slow. Things are looking pretty bleak for the aging mission, which might be nearing the end. Still, NASA isn’t ready to let go of its most distant spacecraft just yet.
“The team continues information gathering and are preparing some steps that they’re hopeful will get them on a path to either understand the root of the problem and/or solve it,” a JPL spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email.
The anomaly may have something to do with the spacecraft’s flight data system (FDS). FDS collects data from Voyager’s science instruments, as well as engineering data about the health of the spacecraft and combines them into a single package that’s transmitted to Earth through one of the probe’s subsystems, the telemetry modulation unit (TMU), in binary code.
FDS and TMU, however, may be having trouble communicating with one another. As a result, TMU has been sending data to mission control in a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes.
Related:
Humanity's Most Distant Space Probe Jeopardized by Computer Glitch
Engineers Work to Fix Voyager 1 Computer
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>On Friday afternoon Pacific Time, OpenAI announced the appointment of three new members to the company's board of directors and released the results of an independent review of the events surrounding CEO Sam Altman's surprise firing last November. The current board expressed its confidence in the leadership of Altman and President Greg Brockman, and Altman is rejoining the board.
[...]
The independent review, conducted by law firm WilmerHale, investigated the circumstances that led to Altman's abrupt removal from the board and his termination as CEO on November 17, 2023. Despite rumors to the contrary, the board did not fire Altman because they got a peek at scary new AI technology and flinched. "WilmerHale... found that the prior Board's decision did not arise out of concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI's finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners."Instead, the review determined that the prior board's actions stemmed from a breakdown in trust between the board and Altman.
[...]
Altman's surprise firing occurred after he attempted to remove Helen Toner from OpenAI's board due to disagreements over her criticism of OpenAI's approach to AI safety and hype. Some board members saw his actions as deceptive and manipulative. After Altman returned to OpenAI, Toner resigned from the OpenAI board on November 29.In a statement posted on X, Altman wrote, "i learned a lot from this experience. one think [sic] i'll say now: when i believed a former board member was harming openai through some of their actions, i should have handled that situation with more grace and care. i apologize for this, and i wish i had done it differently."
[...]
After OpenAI's announcements on Friday, resigned OpenAI board members Toner and Tasha McCauley released a joint statement on X. "Accountability is important in any company, but it is paramount when building a technology as potentially world-changing as AGI," they wrote. "We hope the new board does its job in governing OpenAI and holding it accountable to the mission. As we told the investigators, deception, manipulation, and resistance to thorough oversight should be unacceptable."
Previously on SoylentNews:
Sam Altman Officially Back as OpenAI CEO: "We Didn't Lose a Single Employee" - 20231202
AI Breakthrough That Could Threaten Humanity Might Have Been Key To Sam Altman's Firing - 20231124
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Purged, President Brockman Quits, but Maybe They'll All Come Back After All - 20231119
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>If you're looking for a long-term relationship or to boost your social status, lower your pitch, according to researchers studying the effects of voice pitch on social perceptions. They found that lower voice pitch makes women and men sound more attractive to potential long-term partners, and lower voice pitch in males makes the individual sound more formidable and prestigious among other men.
[...] "Vocal communication is one of the most important human characteristics, and pitch is the most perceptually noticeable aspect of voice," said David Puts, study co-author and professor of anthropology at Penn State. "Understanding how voice pitch influences social perceptions can help us understand social relationships more broadly, how we attain social status, how we evaluate others on social status and how we choose mates."
[...] The researchers found that women and men preferred lower-pitched voices when asked which voice they would prefer for a long-term relationship such as marriage. They also found that a lower male voice pitch made the individual sound more formidable, especially among younger men, and more prestigious, particularly among older men. Perceptions of formidability and prestige had a larger impact in societies with more relational mobility — where group members interact more often with strangers — and more violence.
[...] The fact that study participants across cultures perceived a lower male voice pitch as conferring formidability and high social status suggests that these characteristics were likely conferred to our ancestors as well, said Puts, who is co-funded by the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State. He likened the effect to that of Darth Vader's voice in the Star Wars franchise: no matter where the character goes in the galaxy, his low pitch is perceived as formidable because larger beings tend to produce lower frequencies.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://phys.org/news/2024-03-hidden-star-sand-dune-mystery.html
Scientists have solved the mysterious absence of star-shaped dunes from Earth's geological history for the first time, dating one back thousands of years.
[...] Star dunes are massive sand dunes that owe their name to arms that spread from a central peak. These sand pyramids, which look like stars when viewed from above, are widespread in modern deserts including sand seas in Africa, Arabia, China, and North America.
The research reveals the oldest parts of the base of the Moroccan dune are 13,000 years old. However, the discovery that it formed rapidly in the last thousand years surprised scientists who had thought larger dunes were far older.
Believed to be the tallest dunes on Earth—with one in the Badain Jaran Desert in China reaching 300 meters high—star dunes are also found elsewhere in the solar system, on Mars and on Saturn's moon Titan.
Despite being common today, star dunes have almost never been found in the geological record. Their absence has bemused scientists as past deserts are a common part of the history of Earth, preserved in rocks deep underground.
Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the new study dated the foundations of a star dune in the southeast of Morocco known as Lala Lallia, meaning "highest sacred point" in the Berber language, to about 13,000 years old.
The dune sits in the Erg Chebbi area of the Sahara Desert close to the border with Algeria, an area featured in TV series like SAS Rogue Heroes and blockbuster films such as The Mummy and Sahara.
The research shows that the sand pyramid reached its current 100-meter height and 700-meter width due to rapid growth in the past thousand years as it shifted slowly to the west.
More information: C. S. Bristow et al, Structure and chronology of a star dune at Erg Chebbi, Morocco, reveals why star dunes are rarely recognised in the rock record, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-53485-3
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Attackers have transformed hundreds of hacked sites running WordPress software into command-and-control servers that force visitors’ browsers to perform password-cracking attacks.
A web search for the JavaScript that performs the attack showed it was hosted on 708 sites at the time this post went live on Ars, up from 500 two days ago. Denis Sinegubko, the researcher who spotted the campaign, said at the time that he had seen thousands of visitor computers running the script, which caused them to reach out to thousands of domains in an attempt to guess the passwords of usernames with accounts on them.
“This is how thousands of visitors across hundreds of infected websites unknowingly and simultaneously try to bruteforce thousands of other third-party WordPress sites,” Sinegubko wrote. “And since the requests come from the browsers of real visitors, you can imagine this is a challenge to filter and block such requests.”
Like the hacked websites hosting the malicious JavaScript, all the targeted domains are running the WordPress content management system. The script—just 3 kilobits in size—reaches out to an attacker-controlled getTaskURL, which in turn provides the name of a specific user on a specific WordPress site, along with 100 common passwords. When this data is fed into the browser visiting the hacked site, it attempts to log into the targeted user account using the candidate passwords. The JavaScript operates in a loop, requesting tasks from the getTaskURL reporting the results to the completeTaskURL, and then performing the steps again and again.
[...] With 418 password batches as of Tuesday, Sinegubko has concluded the attackers are trying 41,800 passwords against each targeted site.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://phys.org/news/2024-03-birds-smart.html
Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum explain how it is possible for the small brains of pigeons, parrots and corvids to perform equally well as those of mammals, despite their significant differences.
Since the late 19th century, it has been a common belief among researchers that high intelligence requires the high computing capacity of large brains. They also discovered that the cerebral cortex as typical of mammals is necessary to analyze and link information in great detail.
Avian brains, by contrast, are very small and lack any structure resembling a cortex. Nevertheless, scientists showed that parrots and corvids are capable of planning for the future, forging social strategies, recognizing themselves in mirrors and building tools. These and similar aptitudes put them on a par with chimpanzees.
...
The authors of the study show that birds have developed four similar innovations for intelligence during their evolution, independently of mammals.First, birds have many more nerve cells in their small brains than previously believed. Corvids in particular place this extra portion of computing capacity in those areas of the brain that are most important for cognition.
The second reason is that birds have a specialized brain structure that is similar to the prefrontal cortex in mammals and is crucial for abstraction and planning. This brain region is moreover exceptionally large in intelligent birds and mammals.
Third, birds and mammals alike have a system that uses the neurotransmitter dopamine to constantly feedback the quality of their decisions to the prefrontal system. As a result, the prefrontal computational processes continuously adapt to changing situations and the success or failure of the decisions of the individual.
Finally, birds have independently developed a very similar working memory to temporarily hold things in short-term memory. Like jugglers who constantly keep many balls spinning in the air, birds and mammals use a flexible activity pattern of their nerve cells to keep a lot of information active at the same time
More information: Onur Güntürkün et al, Why birds are smart, Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2023.11.002
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>It's well known, Americans don't trust Chinese IT hardware. Well, guess what?
They don't trust ours either!
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-technology-software-delete-america-2b8ea89f
Can you blame them? It's got to the point I trust an Arduino - that I personally program - far more than anything out there.
I believe computers also follow the "Peter Principle". Each new update becomes more and more encrusted with layers of fix code that no matter how fast the CPU runs, or how much memory one has, the "attack surface" grows so immense that deliberately hiding secret backdoors and "sleeper cell" code makes vetting trusted code nearly impossible.
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=peter%20principle
So the Chinese don't trust American IT. Gee, I don't trust it either!
I am sure the Chinese are really fed up with all the nebulous terms, conditions, disclaimers, hold harmless, copyright violation threats, and the risk of being given the Roku treatment, with contracts written in such a manner they can be changed after payment clears, enforced by code, then forcing whatever terms to continue or consider the investment in the proprietary technology a sunk cost.
If you need it done right, learn to do it yourself, or forever be under the control of someone else who does.
Another thing ... If you are strong enough, you can dictate the rules of the game too
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>A group of cloud infrastructure providers in Europe has delivered an ultimatum to Microsoft: End the "unjustified feature and pricing discriminations against fair competition" or face legal action.
With 27 member organizations – including 26 headquartered in the region plus US-based AWS – Cloud Infrastructure Providers in Europe (CISPE) is a non-profit industry group based in Brussels. It filed a complaint against Microsoft with the EU's antitrust cops in November 2022.
That complaint laid out how Microsoft discounts its own software when bundled with its own Azure cloud services – meaning it is more expensive to run Redmond’s wares in rival clouds. The Windows goliath tried to settle the case out of court last May. CISPE told The Register Microsoft's offer was "paltry" and rejected it.
The parties recently resumed negotiations, and the timing of today's statement to The Register seems designed to ratchet pressure on Microsoft's lawyers to offer bigger concessions. CISPE told us it used the Azure Pricing Calculator to highlight the pricing disparity at the heart of the issue – see the table below, provided by CISPE.
It shows, if CISPE is right, that although a member of the cloud association – a rival of Azure – can offer remote desktop virtual machines at lower cost than Microsoft, the red-tape put in place by Redmond leaves the competing provider worse off for customers in comparison, causing the rival to potentially lose sales to Azure.
"According to the Azure Pricing Calculator with the multi-session capabilities allowed on Azure, a customer can run a typical virtual desktop implementation supporting 32 users using just three virtual machines," the group explained.
"The licensing restrictions on multi-session use of Microsoft software outside of Azure impose on CISPE members to provision 32 virtual machines – that is ten time more machines – to support the same number of users. Even with lower cost hardware (VM cost per hour) the cost of supporting 32 users for a CISPE member is 2.5 times higher than what Microsoft charges."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>In a notable shift toward sanctioned use of AI in schools, some educators in grades 3–12 are now using a ChatGPT-powered grading tool called Writable, reports Axios. The tool, acquired last summer by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is designed to streamline the grading process, potentially offering time-saving benefits for teachers. But is it a good idea to outsource critical feedback to a machine?
[...]
"Make feedback more actionable with AI suggestions delivered to teachers as the writing happens," Writable promises on its AI website. "Target specific areas for improvement with powerful, rubric-aligned comments, and save grading time with AI-generated draft scores." The service also provides AI-written writing-prompt suggestions: "Input any topic and instantly receive unique prompts that engage students and are tailored to your classroom needs."
[...]
The reliance on AI for grading will likely have drawbacks. Automated grading might encourage some educators to take shortcuts, diminishing the value of personalized feedback. Over time, the augmentation from AI may allow teachers to be less familiar with the material they are teaching. The use of cloud-based AI tools may have privacy implications for teachers and students. Also, ChatGPT isn't a perfect analyst. It can get things wrong and potentially confabulate (make up) false information, possibly misinterpret a student's work, or provide erroneous information in lesson plans.
[...]
there's a divide among parents regarding the use of AI in evaluating students' academic performance. A recent poll of parents revealed mixed opinions, with nearly half of the respondents open to the idea of AI-assisted grading.As the generative AI craze permeates every space, it's no surprise that Writable isn't the only AI-powered grading tool on the market. Others include Crowdmark, Gradescope, and EssayGrader. McGraw Hill is reportedly developing similar technology aimed at enhancing teacher assessment and feedback.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Intel is on track to receive $3.5 billion in US CHIPS Act funding to produce advanced semiconductors for American military and intelligence programs.
The chipmaker has been a top contender for the cash with rumors swirling since November that the x86 giant would receive anywhere from $3-$4 billion. This funding, siphoned from the overall $39 billion in CHIPS and Science Act allotment, would presumably support the development of a "secure enclave," which we understand to be a separate production line dedicated to military chip production.
According to Bloomberg the $3.5 billion will be dispersed over the next three years. The news was tucked away in a spending bill passed by the US House of Reps Wednesday, and will cement Intel as the leading producer of silicon for the defense market.
However, it's not like Uncle Sam had much of a choice if it wanted to keep production of military silicon in the US. Intel is so now the only American chipmaker producing leading edge silicon domestically.
New York-based GlobalFoundries abandoned development of 7nm and smaller process tech back in 2018 in order to focus on more mature and niche process tech in areas like radio communications, imaging, optical, automotive, industrial, and IoT.
Even still, many of GlobalFoundries' processes still have military applications, with the company still in early deliver on a 10-year $3.1 billion DoD contract to produce semiconductors for aerospace and defense applications awarded last fall.
That leaves Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung Electronics, which are building fabs in Arizona and Texas, as the only other US producers of leading edge chips. However, in this case, it seems that the US government would rather entrust its secrets to American companies.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>These are some of the latest disasters listed on the AI Incident Database – a website keeping tabs on all the different ways the technology goes wrong.
Initially launched as a project under the auspices of the Partnership On AI, a group that tries to ensure AI benefits society, the AI Incident Database is now a non-profit organization funded by Underwriters Laboratories – the largest and oldest (est. 1894) independent testing laboratory in the United States. It tests all sorts of products – from furniture to computer mouses – and its website has cataloged over 600 unique automation and AI-related incidents so far.
"There's a huge information asymmetry between the makers of AI systems and public consumers – and that's not fair", argued Patrick Hall, an assistant professor at the George Washington University School of Business, who is currently serving on the AI Incident Database's Board of Directors. He told The Register: "We need more transparency, and we feel it's our job just to share that information."
The AI Incident Database is modeled on the CVE Program set up by the non-profit MITRE, or the National Highway Transport Safety Administration's website reporting publicly disclosed cyber security vulnerabilities and vehicle crashes. "Any time there's a plane crash, train crash, or a big cyber security incident, it's become common practice over decades to record what happened so we can try to understand what went wrong and then not repeat it."
[...] The organization currently collects incidents from media coverage and reviews issues reported by people on Twitter. The AI Incident Database logged 250 unique incidents before the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, and now lists over 600 unique incidents.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>https://www.theverge.com/24073300/smart-home-new-house-old-tech
My brother and his wife got a house. He mentioned it appeared to have a lot of tech installed by the last owner. I told him that was an exciting mystery for the two of us. Whatever speakers and weird smart home junk had been set up, we'd be able to repurpose. But then he moved in. Slowly, over weeks of tech support calls and hours digging through shockingly deep coat closets, we learned that while the old owner was gone, his digital ghost remained. It was lurking in the home's lights and shades and thermostat, turning what should have been a smart home into a very haunted one.
I didn't think I'd have to be the IT equivalent of a Ghostbuster when my brother first texted me about it. I've set up multiple smart homes, worked in IT, and currently am surrounded by some of the smartest tech journalists around. As smart home troubleshooting resources go, I have more than the average person.
It was no problem walking him through maximizing the performance of the Google Nest Wifi system still in place (including a full factory reset). But then... the trouble started. There were the window shades that always opened at 8AM and always closed at sundown. My brother disconnected everything that looked like a hub, and still, operating on some inaccessible internal clock, the shades carried on as they were once programmed to do.
[...] Some former homeowners will provide onboarding to the home's smart home system, but most do as the guy who used to own my brother's house did. They walk away and leave it as an adventure for the next person. I know because I've now done it twice myself. I really hope the new renters of my old Brooklyn walk-up appreciate all the 2014 Philips Hue lights I left installed in the basement.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>The ubiquitous phone feature has powered a surveillance technique used to catch suspected kidnappers and pedophiles. It's also fueled fears of a 'privacy nightmare' at a time when abortion is criminalized:
The alleged pedophile "LuvEmYoung" had worked to stay anonymous in the chatrooms where he bragged about sexually abusing children. A criminal affidavit said he covered his tracks by using TeleGuard, an encrypted Swiss messaging app, to share a video of himself last month with a sleeping 4-year-old boy.
But the FBI had a new strategy. A foreign law enforcement officer got TeleGuard to hand over a small string of code the company had used to send push alerts — the pop-up notifications that announce instant messages and news updates — to the suspect's phone.
An FBI agent then got Google to quickly hand over a list of email addresses this month linked to that code, known as a "push token," and traced one account to a man in Toledo, an affidavit shows. The man, Michael Aspinwall, was charged with sexual exploitation of minors and distribution of child pornography and arrested within a week of the Google request.
The breakthrough relied on a little-known quirk of push alerts, a basic staple of modern phones: Those tokens can be used to identify users and are stored on servers run by Apple and Google, which can hand them over at law enforcement's request.
[...] The data has become prized evidence for federal investigators, who have used push tokens in at least four cases across the country to arrest suspects in cases related to child sexual abuse material and a kidnapping that led to murder, according to a Washington Post review of court records. And law enforcement officials have defended the technique by saying they use court-authorized legal processes that give officers a vital tool they need to hunt down criminals.
Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Belgian beer brewer Duvel says a ransomware attack has brought its facility to a standstill while its IT team works to remediate the damage.
Spokesperson Ellen Aarts had a statement on tap for local media on Wednesday: "At 0130 last night, the alarms went off in Duvel's IT department because ransomware had been detected. Production was therefore immediately stopped. It is not yet known when it could start again. We hope today or tomorrow.
"Our IT department immediately intervened and is currently still mapping everything out. They are looking for a solution as quickly as possible."
[...] Other manufacturing organizations hit by ransomware often aren't so lucky and any kind of downtime can be operationally and financially damaging.
It's why the industry is such a common target for ransomware miscreants since they know that theoretically, manufacturers are more motivated to pay ransoms quickly, minimizing costly downtime.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>A 2.9-ton cargo pallet, once used for a critical battery upgrade mission on the International Space Station (ISS), is now approaching the end of its journey and is expected to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere in the coming days.
The pallet, tossed from the ISS in March 2021 by the trusty Canadarm2, is facing imminent destruction in Earth’s atmosphere three years after serving its purpose in a major battery replacement project on the station. According to Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell, the pallet “will not totally burn up on reentry—about half a ton of fragments will likely hit the Earth’s surface,” McDowell noted on X.
It’s the end of the orbital road for the heaviest piece of ISS space trash, which has been gradually falling towards Earth like a fly getting sucked up in a kitchen drain. The expected reentry of the cargo pallet into Earth’s atmosphere is between March 8 at 7:30 a.m. ET and March 9 at 3:30 a.m. ET, according to McDowell. The exact location of reentry is not known.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Veterinary scientists seem to have unraveled a mystery about why certain dogs simply can’t ever get enough to eat. In research out this week, they found evidence that a common mutation in Labrador retrievers causes them to experience greater hunger than usual while also reducing their metabolic rate, both of which make the dogs predisposed to obesity. The findings might help better understand and treat obesity in both dogs and their owners.
Labradors are one of the most popular dog breeds in the world, treasured for their playful energy and their adeptness as a working dog (they’re often used as service dogs). But while labs do live relatively long lives—about 13 years on average—they’re also known to have a ravenous appetite and accordingly high rates of obesity.
Labs aren’t alone in their plight: Much like humans, dogs in general are experiencing higher rates of obesity. University of Cambridge scientist Eleanor Raffan has been working to unpack the genetics of obesity and metabolic disease in dogs. Her team has especially focused on the Labrador retriever, given its reputation for obesity, and its close relative the flat-coated retriever.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Roku customers are threatening to stop using, or to even dispose of, their low-priced TVs and streaming gadgets after the company appears to be locking devices for people who don't conform to the recently updated terms of service (ToS).
This month, users on Roku's support forums reported suddenly seeing a message when turning on their Roku TV or streaming device reading: "We've made an important update: We’ve updated our Dispute Resolution Terms. Select ‘Agree’ to agree to these updated Terms and to continue enjoying our products and services. Press * to view these updated Terms." A large button reading "Agree" follows. The pop-up doesn't offer a way to disagree, and users are unable to use their device unless they hit agree.
Customers have left pages of complaints on Roku's forum. One user going by "rickstanford" said they were "FURIOUS!!!!" and expressed interest in sending their reported six Roku devices back to the company since "apparently I don't own them despite spending hundreds of dollars on them."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Bruce Perens is working on licensing for a new, post-Open Source era to take open source licensing past the apparent stalling point it has reached on its way towards software freedom. As he noted earlier, current licenses are not meeting that goal and businesses have either found loophole or just plain been allowed to ignore the licensing. A move more towards a contract is needed.
At the link below is the first draft of the Post-Open License. This is not yet the product of a qualified attorney, and you shouldn't apply it to your own work yet. There isn't context for this license yet, so some things won't make sense: for example the license is administered by an entity called the "POST-OPEN ADMINISTRATION" and I haven't figured out how to structure that organization so that people can trust it. There are probably also terms I can't get away with legally, this awaits work with a lawyer.
Because the license attempts to handle very many problems that have arisen with Open Source licensing, it's big. It's approaching the size of AGPL3, which I guess is a metric for a relatively modern license, since AGPL3 is now 17 years old
The draft license is quite long since it covers quite a few scenarios.
Previously:
(2023) What Comes After Open Source? Bruce Perens is Working on It
(2018) The Next 20 Years of Open Source Software Begins Today
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>Microsoft's AI text-to-image generator, Copilot Designer, appears to be heavily filtering outputs after a Microsoft engineer, Shane Jones, warned that Microsoft has ignored warnings that the tool randomly creates violent and sexual imagery, CNBC reported.
Jones told CNBC that he repeatedly warned Microsoft of the alarming content he was seeing while volunteering in red-teaming efforts to test the tool's vulnerabilities. Microsoft failed to take the tool down or implement safeguards in response, Jones said, or even post disclosures to change the product's rating to mature in the Android store.
[...] Bloomberg also reviewed Jones' letter and reported that Jones told the FTC that while Copilot Designer is currently marketed as safe for kids, it's randomly generating an "inappropriate, sexually objectified image of a woman in some of the pictures it creates." And it can also be used to generate "harmful content in a variety of other categories, including: political bias, underage drinking and drug use, misuse of corporate trademarks and copyrights, conspiracy theories, and religion to name a few."
[...] Jones' tests also found that Copilot Designer would easily violate copyrights, producing images of Disney characters, including Mickey Mouse or Snow White. Most problematically, Jones could politicize Disney characters with the tool, generating images of Frozen's main character, Elsa, in the Gaza Strip or "wearing the military uniform of the Israel Defense Forces."
Ars was able to generate interpretations of Snow White, but Copilot Designer rejected multiple prompts politicizing Elsa.
If Microsoft has updated the automated content filters, it's likely due to Jones protesting his employer's decisions. [...] Jones has suggested that Microsoft would need to substantially invest in its safety team to put in place the protections he'd like to see. He reported that the Copilot team is already buried by complaints, receiving "more than 1,000 product feedback messages every day." Because of this alleged understaffing, Microsoft is currently only addressing "the most egregious issues," Jones told CNBC.
Related stories on SoylentNews:
Cops Bogged Down by Flood of Fake AI Child Sex Images, Report Says - 20240202
New "Stable Video Diffusion" AI Model Can Animate Any Still Image - 20231130
The Age of Promptography - 20231008
AI-Generated Child Sex Imagery Has Every US Attorney General Calling for Action - 20230908
It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine - 20230904
US Judge: Art Created Solely by Artificial Intelligence Cannot be Copyrighted - 20230824
"Meaningful Harm" From AI Necessary Before Regulation, says Microsoft Exec - 20230514 (Microsoft's new quarterly goal?)
the Godfather of AI Leaves Google Amid Ethical Concerns - 20230502
Stable Diffusion Copyright Lawsuits Could be a Legal Earthquake for AI - 20230403
AI Image Generator Midjourney Stops Free Trials but Says Influx of New Users to Blame - 20230331
Microsoft's New AI Can Simulate Anyone's Voice With Three Seconds of Audio - 20230115
Breakthrough AI Technique Enables Real-Time Rendering of Scenes in 3D From 2D Images - 20211214
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
]]>