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Submission + - China Building Cyberweapons To Hijack Enemy Satellites, Says US Leak (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: China is building sophisticated cyber weapons to “seize control” of enemy satellites, rendering them useless for data signals or surveillance during wartime, according to a leaked US intelligence report. The US assesses that China’s push to develop capabilities to “deny, exploit or hijack” enemy satellites is a core part of its goal to control information, which Beijing considers to be a key “war-fighting domain.” The CIA-marked document, which was issued this year and has been reviewed by the Financial Times, was one of dozens allegedly shared by a 21-year-old US Air Guardsman in the most significant American intelligence disclosures in more than a decade. A cyber capability of this nature would far exceed anything Russia has deployed in Ukraine, where electronic warfare teams have taken a brute-force approach with little effect.

These attacks, first developed in the 1980s, attempt to drown out signals between low-orbit SpaceX satellites and their on-ground terminals by broadcasting on similar frequencies from truck-borne jamming systems such as the Tirada-2. China’s more ambitious cyber attacks aim to mimic the signals that enemy satellites receive from their operators, tricking them into either being taken over completely or malfunctioning during crucial moments in combat. The classified US document said this cyber capability would allow China “to seize control of a satellite, rendering it ineffective to support communications, weapons, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems.” The US has never disclosed whether it has similar capabilities.

Taiwan, which has taken note of how indispensable satellite communications have been to the Ukrainian military, is seeking to build out communications infrastructure that can survive an attack from China. It is courting investors to establish its own satellite provider, while experimenting with non-geostationary satellite receivers in 700 locations around Taiwan to guarantee bandwidth in the event of war or disasters, the Financial Times reported in January. [...]

Submission + - Scientists Finally Solved the Mystery of How the Mayan Calendar Works (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Mayan calendar’s 819-day cycle has confounded scholars for decades, but new research shows how it matches up to planetary cycles over a 45-year span. That’s a much broader view of the tricky calendar than anyone previously tried to take. In a study published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, two Tulane University scholars highlighted how researchers never could quite explain the 819-day count calendar until they broadened their view.

“Although prior research has sought to show planetary connections for the 819-day count, its four-part, color-directional scheme is too short to fit well with the synodic periods of visible planets,” the study authors write. “By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819-days a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar.” That means the Mayans took a 45-year view of planetary alignment and coded it into a calendar that has left modern scholars scratching their heads in wonder.

Mercury was always the starting point for the tricky timeline because its synodic period—117 days—matches nicely into 819. From there, though, we need to start extrapolating out the 819 number, and if you chart 20 cycles of 819, you can fit every key planet into the mix. And Mars may be the kicker for the overall length. With a 780-day synodic period, 21 periods match exactly to 16,380, or 20 cycles of 819. Venus needs seven periods to match five 819-day counts, Saturn has 13 periods to fit with six 819-day counts, and Jupiter 39 periods to hit 19 819-counts.

Submission + - BuzzFeed News Is Shutting Down, Company Laying Off 180 Staffers (variety.com)

Submitted by DevNull127
DevNull127 writes: BuzzFeed is shutting down BuzzFeed News because it is not able to turn a profit, according to a memo CEO Jonah Peretti sent to company staff Thursday. The digital publisher is laying off 15% of its employees, or about 180 people, across BuzzFeed News and other divisions.

Going forward, BuzzFeed will concentrate its news efforts in a single profitable news organization — HuffPost, which it acquired from Verizon in 2020, per Peretti’s memo. The company’s flagship BuzzFeed.com site will remain in place.

Submission + - Seagate To Pay $300 Million Penalty For Shipping Huawei 7 Million Hard Drives (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Seagate has agreed to pay a $300 million penalty in a settlement with U.S. authorities for shipping over $1.1 billion worth of hard disk drives to China's Huawei in violation of U.S. export control laws, the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday. Seagate sold the drives to Huawei between August 2020 and September 2021 despite an August 2020 rule that restricted sales of certain foreign items made with U.S. technology to the company. Huawei was placed on the Entity List, a U.S. trade blacklist, in 2019 to reduce the sale of U.S. goods to the company amid national security and foreign policy concerns.

Seagate shipped 7.4 million drives to Huawei for about a year after the 2020 rule took effect and became Huawei's sole supplier of hard drives, the Commerce Department said. The other two primary suppliers of hard drives ceased shipments to Huawei after the new rule took effect in 2020, the department said. Though they were not identified, Western Digital and Toshiba were the other two, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee said in a 2021 report on Seagate.

Submission + - Scientists Identify Mind-Body Nexus In Human Brain (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers said on Wednesday they have discovered that parts of the brain region called the motor cortex that govern body movement are connected with a network involved in thinking, planning, mental arousal, pain, and control of internal organs, as well as functions such as blood pressure and heart rate. They identified a previously unknown system within the motor cortex manifested in multiple nodes that are located in between areas of the brain already known to be responsible for movement of specific body parts — hands, feet and face — and are engaged when many different body movements are performed together.

The researchers called this system the somato-cognitive action network, or SCAN, and documented its connections to brain regions known to help set goals and plan actions. This network also was found to correspond with brain regions that, as shown in studies involving monkeys, are connected to internal organs including the stomach and adrenal glands, allowing these organs to change activity levels in anticipation of performing a certain action. That may explain physical responses like sweating or increased heart rate caused by merely pondering a difficult future task, they said.

Submission + - Facebook Users Can Now File a Claim For $725 Million Privacy Settlement (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook users have until August to claim their share of a $725 million class-action settlement of a lawsuit alleging privacy violations by the social media company, a new website reveals. The lawsuit was prompted in 2018 after Facebook disclosed that the information of 87 million users was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

People who had an active U.S. Facebook account between May 2007 and December 2022 have until Aug. 25 to enter a claim. Individual settlement payments haven’t yet been established because payouts depend on how many users submit claims and how long each user maintained a Facebook account. Facebook users can make a claim by visiting Facebookuserprivacysettlement.com and entering their name, address, email address, and confirming they lived in the U.S. and were active on Facebook between the aforementioned dates.

Submission + - ICANN/Verisign Proposal Would Allow Any Government To Seize Domain Names (freespeech.com)

Submitted by GeorgeK
GeorgeK writes: ICANN and Verisign have quietly proposed enormous changes to global domain name policy in their proposed renewal of the .NET registry agreement, which is now open for public comments.

They’ve proposed allowing any government in the world to cancel, redirect, or transfer to their control applicable domain names! This is an outrageous and dangerous proposal that must be stopped, as it does not respect due process. While this proposal is currently only for .NET domain names, presumably they would want to also apply it to other extensions like .COM as those contracts come up for renewal.

See the full analysis at: https://freespeech.com/2023/04...

Submission + - Scientists Discover 1st 'Neutron-Rich' Isotope of Uranium Since 1979 (livescience.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have discovered and synthesized an entirely new isotope of the highly radioactive element uranium. But it might last only 40 minutes before decaying into other elements. The new isotope, uranium-241, has 92 protons (as all uranium isotopes do) and 149 neutrons, making it the first new neutron-rich isotope of uranium discovered since 1979. While atoms of a given element always have the same number of protons, different isotopes, or versions, of those elements may hold different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. To be considered neutron-rich, an isotope must contain more neutrons than is common to that element.

"We measured the masses of 19 different actinide isotopes with a high precision of one part per million level, including the discovery and identification of the new uranium isotope," Toshitaka Niwase(opens in new tab), a researcher at the High-energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) Wako Nuclear Science Center (WNSC) in Japan, told Live Science in an email. "This is the first new discovery of a uranium isotope on the neutron-rich side in over 40 years." Niwase is the lead author of a study on the new uranium isotope, which was published March 31 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Niwase and colleagues created the uranium-241 by firing a sample of uranium-238 at platinum-198 nuclei at Japan's RIKEN accelerator. The two isotopes then swapped neutrons and protons — a phenomenon called "multinucleon transfer." The team then measured the mass of the created isotopes by observing the time it took the resulting nuclei to travel a certain distance through a medium. The experiment also generated 18 new isotopes, all of which contained between 143 and 150 neutrons.

Submission + - Pacific Garbage Patch Providing a Deep Ocean Home For Coastal Species (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A survey of plastic waste picked up in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre—aka the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch—has revealed that the garbage is providing a home to species that would otherwise not be found in the deep ocean. Over two-thirds of the trash examined plays host to coastal marine species, many of which are clearly reproducing in what would otherwise be a foreign habitat. The findings suggest that, as far as coastal species are concerned, there was nothing inhospitable about the open ocean other than the lack of something solid to latch on to. [...]

Plastics, especially things like buoys, floats, and netting, are often designed to hold up in the difficult marine environment and could provide a stable home at the top of the water column. To find out whether that was taking place, the researchers collected over 100 plastic debris items from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in late 2018/early 2019. While a handful of items could be assigned to either Asian or North American origins, most were pretty generic, such as rope and fishing netting. There was a wide variety of other items present, including bottles, crates, buckets, and household items. Some had clearly eroded significantly since their manufacture, suggesting they had been in the ocean for years. Critically, nearly all of them had creatures living on them.

Ninety-eight percent of the items found had some form of invertebrate living on them. In almost all cases, that included species found in the open ocean (just shy of 95 percent of the plastic). But a handful had nothing but coastal species present. And over two-thirds of the items had a mixed population of coastal and open-ocean species. While the open-ocean species were found on more items, the researchers tended to find the same species repeatedly. All told, coastal species accounted for 80 percent of the 46 taxonomic richness represented by the organisms identified. Significantly, the coastal species were breeding. In a number of cases, the researchers were able to identify females carrying eggs; in others, it was clear that the individuals present had a wide range of sizes, suggesting they were at different stages of maturity.

Submission + - ChatGPT has a GDPR problem (youtube.com)

Submitted by exodude
exodude writes: French attorney, Dr. T. Devergranne, recently conducted an in-depth analysis of ChatGPT's adherence to GDPR regulations and uncovered numerous issues (watch the analysis on YouTube). The problems identified include unauthorized collection of personal data via websites, breaches of transparency principles that require ChatGPT to inform users about data usage and collection, and the unlawful gathering of sensitive data (Article 9 — medical information, etc.), which raises serious legal concerns.

ChatGPT fails to provide proper notifications to users when collecting their personal information, nor does it disclose the full extent of data collected. The legal foundation for these practices is also under scrutiny, as another AI company, Clearview.ai, was penalized by the French CNIL for similar reasons.

Although OpenAI could take significant steps to improve compliance and safeguard user data, the company is currently in blatant violation of GDPR regulations. In light of these findings, Dr. Devergranne concludes that OpenAI has a 65% chance of weathering regulatory scrutiny. However, considering the combination of privacy and copyright violations, it is advised not to build a business solely reliant on ChatGPT, as it could face potential shutdown at any time.

Submission + - Valve restricts accounts of 2500 users who marked a negative game review useful

Submitted by jth1234567
jth1234567 writes: In late January, a Steam user posted a negative review for the game Warlander, warning potential buyers about the shady anti-cheat system the game was using, the apparent problems being intrusive data collection and difficult removal after the game itself had been uninstalled (the review text is no longer available). This review stayed on top as the most helpful review for nearly three months, which must have been a big thorn in the side for the developer and the publisher.

Until yesterday, when they managed to get a Steam moderator to remove the negative review. In a perfect, consumer-friendly world it should have been another way around, and the game's sales page removed until the claims were investigated by Valve, but this is not a perfect world. However, things didn't end there.

Apparently the Steam moderator categorized the negative review as "attempting to scam users or other violations of Steam's Rules & Guidelines", which meant that all those 2439 people (plus people who have it 437 awards) got their accounts restricted for 30 days, during this time none of them can up- or downvote any Steam reviews at all.

Support tickets from affected users to Steam Support have received a default response saying Support will not help nor adjust the length of vote bans.

The Steam review system was never perfect, but the impact of this kind of behavior from Valve will render the whole system completely pointless, as negative reviews can be culled by the developers/publishers at any time, and people will just stop marking any negative review as useful to avoid these kinds of repercussions.

Submission + - EVE Online Player Uses Obscure Rule To Pull Off Biggest Heist In Game's History (pcgamer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Back in 2017, we learned about the biggest heist in EVE Online history: A year-long inside job that ultimately made off with an estimated 1.5 triillion ISK, worth around $10,000 in real money. But now another EVE player claims to have pulled off a heist worth significantly more than that—and with significantly less work involved. The 2017 heist, like so many of EVE's most interesting stories, relied primarily on social engineering: Investing months or years of time into grooming a target before pulling the rug out from beneath them. But redditor Flam_Hill said this job was less bloody: Instead of betrayal, this theft was dependent upon learning and exploiting the "shares mechanic" in EVE Online in order to leverage a takeover of Event Horizon Expeditionaries, a 299-member corporation that was part of the Pandemic Horde alliance.

Using a "clean account with a character with a little history," Flan_Hill and an unnamed partner applied for membership in the EHEXP corporation. After the account was accepted, Flan_Hill transferred enough of his shares in the corporation to the infiltrator to enable a call for a vote for a new CEO. The conspirators both voted yes, while nobody else in the corporation voted at all. This was vital, because after 72 hours the two "yes" votes carried the day. The infiltrating agent was very suddenly made CEO, which was in turn used to make Flan_Hill an Event Horizon Expeditionaries director, at which point they removed all the other corporate directors and set to emptying the coffers. They stripped 130 billion ISK from the corporate wallet, but that was only a small part of the haul: Counting all stolen assets, including multiple large ships, Flam_Hill estimated the total value of the heist at 2.23 trillion ISK, which works out to more than $22,300 in real money. ISK can't be legally cashed out of EVE Online, but it can be used to buy Plex, an in-game currency used to upgrade accounts, purchase virtual goods, and activate other services.

Submission + - Better camouflage is needed to hide from new electronic sensors (economist.com)

Submitted by SpzToid
SpzToid writes: Camouflage ranks highly among the arts of war. Thanks to innovations such as fractal colouration patterns, which mimic nature by repeating shapes at different scales, the distance from which naked eyes can quickly spot soldiers wearing the best camouflage has shrunk, by one reckoning, by a fifth over the past two decades. That is impressive.

On today’s battlefields, however, it is no longer enough to merely hide from human eyes. People and kit are given away as well by signals beyond the visual spectrum, and devices that detect these wavelengths are getting better, lighter and cheaper. Thermal sensors are a case in point. Today, one that costs about $1,000 and weighs as little as five sachets of sugar can, in good weather, detect a warm vehicle as far off as 10km.

As Hans Kariis, deputy head of signatures research at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, notes, that is well beyond the range at which a small drone would be spotted. Two decades ago, he adds, a less sensitive thermal sensor weighing a kilogram cost ten times as much.

For forces in Ukraine keen to go unnoticed, the challenge is not just that precision sensors are multiplying, on land, in the skies and in orbit. It is also that better automatic target-detection software is helping operators find needles in the haystacks of data being collected.
Look out!

For example, software called Kestrel, developed by Sentient Vision Systems of Melbourne, Australia, scans feeds of visual, infrared and radar data, and places red boxes around people and other potential targets, even as their positions in the frame move. Sentient says Kestrel has been deployed on more than 3,500 crewed and uncrewed aircraft since its introduction in 2009. The pertinent data processing, which also classifies objects and calculates ranges, can be done aloft—a bonus, for an aircraft may collect more data than can be streamed to computers on the ground.

As Maksym Zrazhevsky, an analyst with Molfar, an intelligence firm in Dnipro, Ukraine, observes, the fighting in his country shows how these advances have made it far harder to camouflage military assets. This no doubt helps explain why, as Mr Zrazhevsky notes, Russian forces in Ukraine have resorted to using sections of timber to disguise military refuelling vehicles as civilian logging lorries. However clever that may seem, there’s a rub. The 1949 Geneva Convention on warfare bans “the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status”, as Article 37’s “Prohibition of perfidy” puts it.

But there is a different, convention-compliant approach to reducing the chance of appearing in an enemy’s cross-hairs. Rather than make targets seem civilian, design special camouflage that tricks electronic sensors as well as human eyes.

One developer of such “multispectral” camouflaging is Saab, a Swedish industrial giant. Its Barracuda unit sells camouflage netting for vehicles and soldiers that reduces both radar reflections and heat signals. To handle radar, it contains a layer of specially crafted (but secret) semi-conducting polymers that absorb a portion of the incoming beam. That stops reflections revealing tanks and other military gear underneath. Formulating the polymer is tricky, says Johan Jersblad, a senior camouflage engineer at Saab. If it is too conductive, the netting itself will appear on a radar screen and become a target.

Saab’s nets’ heat-signature reduction comes from an insulating material, also of undisclosed composition, which reflects infrared radiation from what it is covering back towards its source, be it an engine, a gun or a body. To better fool soldiers or software scanning thermal imagery, the material also reflects cooler wavelengths emitted by surroundings like the ground and vegetation—in effect, stealing their temperature from them. The material in question is distributed unevenly, to mimic heat variation in the natural world. Dr Kariis reckons today’s multispectral camouflage cuts in half the range at which an asset can be spotted by many sensors.

Submission + - Crooks are stealing cars by breaking through smart devices to attack the CAN bus (theregister.com)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: Thieves has discovered new ways to steal cars by pulling off smart devices (like smart headlights) to get at and attack via the CAN bus. From the article:

"... It was driven by the theft of Tabor's RAV4. Leading up to the crime, Tabor noticed the front bumper and arch rim had been pulled off by someone, and the headlight wiring plug removed. The surrounding area was scuffed with screwdriver markings, which, together with the fact the damage was on the kerbside, seemed to rule out damage caused by a passing vehicle. More vandalism was later done to the car: gashes in the paint work, molding clips removed, and malfunctioning headlamps.

A few days later, the Toyota was stolen."

Comment Theft isn't the important part (Score 1) 447

by Aphoxema (#43326141) Attached to: HBO Says <em>Game of Thrones</em> Piracy Is "a Compliment"

I'll sit through something that's playing on TV that I don't really want to watch (often as a home care aid at a client's house), but I won't download a torrent of something I don't care to sit through. Even if I had the drive space for it, why would I put any additional effort into doing something entirely for myself that I don't want to do?

I suppose it says a lot more if I actually go out and buy the DVD for it, but my time is valuable to me and it should say a lot what I choose to do instead of what I'm essentially forced to settle for due to scheduling and what other people around me want.

Look less at the "we're not making a sale" part and more at the "what is someone getting out of this".

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