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Submission + - The first Twitter eviction for unpaid bills (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by quonset
quonset writes: After saying Twitter would pay rent "over his dead body", Musk's Twitter office in Boulder, Colorado is being evicted.

The company moved into the office in February 2020 using a letter of credit worth nearly $1 million, drawing on this to cover rent until March, per TechCrunch.

After the landlord took Twitter to court last month, the judge issued an order on May 31 that the sheriff should help evict Elon Musk's company within 49 days, according to TechCrunch.

Twitter's Boulder office once had as many as 300 employees, per the outlet. According to The Denver Post, 87 staff were fired last year, before another 38 quit.

In addition to Colorado, Twitter owes back rent on several other offices, nor has it paid its bills to cleaning companies, among others.

Submission + - Intel To Start Shipping a Quantum Processor (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Intel does a lot of things, but it's mostly noted for making and shipping a lot of processors, many of which have been named after bodies of water. So, saying that the company is set to start sending out a processor called Tunnel Falls would seem unsurprising if it weren't for some key details. Among them: The processor's functional units are qubits, and you shouldn't expect to be able to pick one up on New Egg. Ever. Tunnel Falls appears to be named after a waterfall near Intel's Oregon facility, where the company's quantum research team does much of its work. It's a 12-qubit chip, which places it well behind the qubit count of many of Intel's competitors—all of which are making processors available via cloud services. But Jim Clarke, who heads Intel's quantum efforts, said these differences were due to the company's distinct approach to developing quantum computers.

Intel, in contrast, is attempting to build silicon-based qubits that can benefit from the developments that most of the rest of the company is working on. The company hopes to "ride the coattails of what the CMOS industry has been doing for years," Clarke said in a call with the press and analysts. The goal, according to Clarke, is to make sure the answer to "what do we have to change from our silicon chip in order to make it?" is "as little as possible." The qubits are based on quantum dots, structures that are smaller than the wavelength of an electron in the material. Quantum dots can be used to trap individual electrons, and the properties of the electron can then be addressed to store quantum information. Intel uses its fabrication expertise to craft the quantum dot and create all the neighboring features needed to set and read its state and perform manipulations.

However, Clarke said there are different ways of encoding a qubit in a quantum dot (Loss-DiVincenzo, singlet-triplet, and exchange-only, for those curious). This gets at another key difference with Intel's efforts: While most of its competitors are focused solely on fostering a software developer community, Intel is simultaneously trying to develop a community that will help it improve its hardware. (For software developers, the company also released a software developer kit.) To help get this community going, Intel will send Tunnel Falls processors out to a few universities: The Universities of Maryland, Rochester, Wisconsin, and Sandia National Lab will be the first to receive the new chip, and the company is interested in signing up others. The hope is that researchers at these sites will help Intel characterize sources of error and which forms of qubits provide the best performance.

Submission + - Amazon shuts down smart home when driver falsely accuses homeowner of racism (medium.com)

Submitted by bryanandaimee
bryanandaimee writes: A homeowner was locked out of his smart home devices after an Amazon driver complained that he had heard a racist remark from someone in the house. Fortunately the homeowner was able to prove that no one was home at the time. Most likely the driver had misheard the Eufy doorbell's automated response.

Submission + - Tesla's "Full Self Driving" feature is 10x more dangerous than a human (prospect.org)

Submitted by drinkypoo
drinkypoo writes: Despite Elon Musk's assorted arguably fraudulent claims about full self driving, "an analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data conducted by The Washington Post" has revealed that Self-Driving Teslas are about ten times more dangerous than a human driver. It's become clear that the strategy of removing radar from their entire lineup, past and present runs directly contrary to the idea of being safer than a human driver. While Tesla has been removing sensors, other automakers have been adding them to avoid embarrassingly fatal mistakes like mistaking motorcycles for distant cars. If full self driving can't avoid a student getting off a school bus, what hope does it have of correctly handling unusual situations?

Submission + - SPAM: Amazon Locks a Man Out of His Smart Home Over Racism Allegations

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Brandon Jackson recently found himself in the midst of a problem. On May 25, he discovered that his smart home, which is tied to Amazon, was no longer doing that which he was paying for it to do. In a piece on Medium, Jackson noted that his primary way of interfacing with all of this wondrous technology is through Amazon Echo via Alexa. And lo and behold, suddenly nothing would respond to his requests or commands.

At first, Jackson thought he had possibly been hacked. But he goes to great lengths to keep his passwords secure. So with security issues off the table, what could it have been? The answer is stranger than you think. Or maybe it is part and parcel of 21st century America, and should serve as a lesson for those who are so enamored of having a “House of the Future.”

On May 24, a package was delivered to Jackson’s home. His doorbell camera was programmed to say, “Excuse me, can I help you?” For one reason or another the driver who was walking away from the door and wearing headphones decided that the doorbell camera had somehow uttered a racial slur. The driver filed a complaint andlights out, so to speak.

It took a week, but Jackson was eventually able to gain access to his devices once again. He wrote:

Through sharing my experience, I hope to encourage Amazon to reform and rethink their approach to handling such situations in the future. It’s essential for customers to feel confident in the security and reliability of their services, especially when those services are integral to the functionality of their homes. It’s time for Amazon to take a more customer-focused approach to problem-solving and conflict resolution.

The problem, however, is not with Amazon’s customer service. Well, it is in that any large company can be painfully slow in reacting to the needs of a customer or any problems with products. But the issue is with the Almighty Algorithm (blessed be its name) that did exactly what it was supposed to do. It received an accusation of racism and doled out what it deemed to be the appropriate punishment. This is what one risks when one turns one’s life over to a corporation. One wrong move and it all goes away with a flip of a switch. If that. Note that Jackson did not make a racist remark. He only needed to be accused of one to have his life turned off.

Clarke and Kubrick Tried to Warn Us: ‘Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal.’
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Hackers Can Steal Cryptographic Keys By Video-Recording Power LEDs 60 Feet Away (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have devised a novel attack that recovers the secret encryption keys stored in smart cards and smartphones by using cameras in iPhones or commercial surveillance systems to video record power LEDs that show when the card reader or smartphone is turned on. The attacks enable a new way to exploit two previously disclosed side channels, a class of attack that measures physical effects that leak from a device as it performs a cryptographic operation. By carefully monitoring characteristics such as power consumption, sound, electromagnetic emissions, or the amount of time it takes for an operation to occur, attackers can assemble enough information to recover secret keys that underpin the security and confidentiality of a cryptographic algorithm. [...]

On Tuesday, academic researchers unveiled new research demonstrating attacks that provide a novel way to exploit these types of side channels. The first attack uses an Internet-connected surveillance camera to take a high-speed video of the power LED on a smart card reader—or of an attached peripheral device—during cryptographic operations. This technique allowed the researchers to pull a 256-bit ECDSA key off the same government-approved smart card used in Minerva. The other allowed the researchers to recover the private SIKE key of a Samsung Galaxy S8 phone by training the camera of an iPhone 13 on the power LED of a USB speaker connected to the handset, in a similar way to how Hertzbleed pulled SIKE keys off Intel and AMD CPUs. Power LEDs are designed to indicate when a device is turned on. They typically cast a blue or violet light that varies in brightness and color depending on the power consumption of the device they are connected to.

There are limitations to both attacks that make them unfeasible in many (but not all) real-world scenarios (more on that later). Despite this, the published research is groundbreaking because it provides an entirely new way to facilitate side-channel attacks. Not only that, but the new method removes the biggest barrier holding back previously existing methods from exploiting side channels: the need to have instruments such as an oscilloscope, electric probes, or other objects touching or being in proximity to the device being attacked. In Minerva's case, the device hosting the smart card reader had to be compromised for researchers to collect precise-enough measurements. Hertzbleed, by contrast, didn’t rely on a compromised device but instead took 18 days of constant interaction with the vulnerable device to recover the private SIKE key. To attack many other side channels, such as the one in the World War II encrypted teletype terminal, attackers must have specialized and often expensive instruments attached or near the targeted device. The video-based attacks presented on Tuesday reduce or completely eliminate such requirements. All that’s required to steal the private key stored on the smart card is an Internet-connected surveillance camera that can be as far as 62 feet away from the targeted reader. The side-channel attack on the Samsung Galaxy handset can be performed by an iPhone 13 camera that’s already present in the same room.

Submission + - The Surprising Power of Documentation

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "My advice to all the young tech enthusiasts, future engineering managers, and CTOs is simple," writes Vadim Kravcenko in The Surprising Power of Documentation. "Cultivate a love for documentation. You may view it as a chore, an afterthought, or a nuisance. But trust me when I say this: Documentation isn't just a task on your to-do list; it's a pillar for success and a bridge that connects ideas, people, and vision. Treat it not as a burden but as an opportunity to learn, share, and create an impact."

So, what would Goldilocks make of your organization's documentation — Too much? Too little? Just right? Got any recommended tools and management tips for creating useful and sustainable documentation?

Submission + - Thousands of Reddit communities 'go dark' in protest of new developer fees (npr.org) 7

Submitted by koavf
koavf writes: Thousands of sections of the popular online message board Reddit are "going dark" for two days starting Monday to protest controversial new fees the site is charging third-party developers.

Some of the largest communities on Reddit are being set to private for 48 hours, meaning they will not be publicly available. By doing this, Redditers aim to pressure company executives to reverse their decision to charge developers for access to the site, which until now has been free.

In a Reddit post about the boycott, organizers wrote that the charges are "a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit."

Submission + - Debian 12 bookworm released (debian.org)

Submitted by e065c8515d206cb0e190
e065c8515d206cb0e190 writes: After 1 year, 9 months, and 28 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 12 (code name bookworm).

bookworm will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team.

This release contains over 11,089 new packages for a total count of 64,419 packages, while over 6,296 packages have been removed as obsolete. 43,254 packages were updated in this release. The overall disk usage for bookworm is 365,016,420 kB (365 GB), and is made up of 1,341,564,204 lines of code.

bookworm has more translated man pages than ever thanks to our translators who have made man-pages available in multiple languages such as: Czech, Danish, Greek, Finnish, Indonesian, Macedonian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Russian, Serbian, Swedish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. All of the systemd man pages are now completely available in German.

The Debian Med Blend introduces a new package: shiny-server which simplifies scientific web applications using R. We have kept to our efforts of providing Continuous Integration support for Debian Med team packages. Install the metapackages at version 3.8.x for Debian bookworm.

The Debian Astro Blend continues to provide a one-stop solution for professional astronomers, enthusiasts, and hobbyists with updates to almost all versions of the software packages in the blend. astap and planetary-system-stacker help with image stacking and astrometry resolution. openvlbi, the open source correlator, is now included.

Support for Secure Boot on ARM64 has been reintroduced: users of UEFI-capable ARM64 hardware can boot with Secure Boot mode enabled to take full advantage of the security feature.

Comment Re:I'm glad (Score 1) 442

by MECC (#44338041) Attached to: Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One
Ironic really. At it's inception, microsoft got in on the paradigm transition from mainframe to desktop computing, albeit not through any real innovation or offering of value. IBM and mainframes are still around and arguably profitable, but not relevant in terms of what drives current trends of innovation - at that point new and interesting directions started coming from the desktop computing world. Think of every thing you do on a desktop computer now, and it's likely something that didn't arise from the IBM/Mainframe computing world. Now things like google glass, new distribution models like hadoop, hyperscale computing, and "cloud" computing (yes I held my nose when typing the "C" word) are arising in a sense from the budding influence of the mobile computing world.

So now the paradigm is shifting to mobile, and MS has missed the boat in almost every definable way. But like IBM, they'll stay around and still be profitable, but they just won't be relevant in terms of new directions in the information landscape. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, no pun intended.

Comment Re:I see (Score 1) 646

by MECC (#41420949) Attached to: Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed
Mint has actually done a pretty good job of making Gnome3 work very much like Gnome2. You can run it with a UI called Cinnamon, that's even more like Gnome2.

However, Mint puts their own google search in the browser so when you use the browser's search field, it uses Mint's google search. Still, that beats adware built into the desktop.

If neither Mint nor Amazon/Unity/Ubuntu works and Gnome 3 sucks, try Lubuntu.

Comment Re:Errrm what? (Score 2) 214

by MECC (#41345677) Attached to: Patent Troll Sues X-Plane

Turns out the patent has nothing to do with "things X-Plane has done for decades".

Kind of and kind of not. The patent the troll is claiming has been infringed on is for things others have done for decades - remote license checking:

Section 107 of the patent, which they claim I violated, contains: “107. code for verifying the license data stored on the licensing medium by communicating with a registration authority having verification data.”

The article goes on to point out a few others that have been doing this for decades. HP Openview has been doing it for as long as it has existed. I'm sure scores of others not listed have as well. Honestly, it's been a common practice for decades to be certain.

This is just another example of how software patenting is bad for the industry. Trolls can get patents on nearly anything, then file a lawsuit that while doomed by prior art will cost the victim a lot to show that prior art. Which the Patent office should have found before granting the patent in the first place.

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