Daily Archives: September 6, 2021

Imaginary numbers help AIs solve the very real problem of adversarial imagery • The Register

Posted on by

Boffins from Duke University say they have figured out a way to help protect artificial intelligences from adversarial image-modification attacks: by throwing a few imaginary numbers their way.

[…]

The problem with reliability: adversarial attacks which modify the input imagery in a way imperceptible to the human eye. In an example from a 2015 paper a clearly-recognisable image of a panda, correctly labelled by the object recognition algorithm with a 57.7 per cent confidence level, was modified with noise – making the still-very-clearly-a-panda appear to the algorithm as a gibbon with a worrying 93.3 per cent confidence.

Guidance counselling

The problem lies in how the algorithms are trained, and it’s a modification to the training process that could fix it – by introducing a few imaginary numbers into the mix.

The team’s work centres on gradient regularisation, a training technique designed to reduce the “steepness” of the learning terrain – like rolling a boulder along a path to reach the bottom, instead of throwing it over the cliff and hoping for the best. “Gradient regularisation throws out any solution that passes a large gradient back through the neural network,” Yeats explained.

“This reduces the number of solutions that it could arrive at, which also tends to decrease how well the algorithm actually arrives at the correct answer. That’s where complex values can help. Given the same parameters and math operations, using complex values is more capable of resisting this decrease in performance.”

By adding just two layers of complex values, made up of real and imaginary number components, to the training process, the team found it could boost the quality of the results by 10 to 20 per cent – and help avoid the problem boulder taking what it thinks is a shortcut and ending up crashing through the roof of a very wrong answer.

“The complex-valued neural networks have the potential for a more ‘terraced’ or ‘plateaued’ landscape to explore,” Yeates added. “And elevation change lets the neural network conceive more complex things, which means it can identify more objects with more precision.”

The paper and a stream of its presentation at the conference are available on the event website.

Source: Imaginary numbers help AIs solve the very real problem of adversarial imagery • The Register

Wooden floors laced with silicon generate electricity from footsteps

Posted on by

Wooden floors infused with silicon and metal ions can generate enough electrical power from human footsteps to light LED bulbs. Researchers hope that they could provide a green energy source for homes.

Some materials can generate an electrical charge when they come into contact with another such material and are then separated, due to a phenomenon called the triboelectric effect. Electrons are transferred from one object to another and generate a charge. Materials that tend to donate electrons are known as tribopositive and those that tend to receive them are known as tribonegative.

Guido Panzarasa at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and his colleagues found that although wood sits in the middle of this spectrum and doesn’t readily pass electrons, it can be altered to generate larger charges. The team infused one panel of wood with silicon, which picks up electrons on contact with an object. A second panel was infused with nanocrystals of zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8), a compound containing metal ions and organic molecules, and these crystals tend to lose electrons. They called this impregnation process “functionalisation”.

The team found that this treatment made a device that contained both wooden panels 80 times more efficient than standard wood at transferring electrons, meaning it was powerful enough to light LED bulbs when human footsteps compressed the device and brought the two wooden panels into contact.

Read more: Wooden floors rotted by fungi generate electricity when walked on

Panzarasa said: “The challenge is making wood that is able to attract and lose electrons. The functionalisation approach is quite simple, and it can be scalable on an industrial level. It’s only a matter of engineering.”

The engineered wood was fitted with electrodes from which the charge could be directed, and the team found that a 2-centimetre-by-3.5-centimetre sample that was placed under 50 newtons of compression – an order of magnitude less than the force of a human footstep – was able to generate 24.3 volts. A larger sample that was around the size of an A4 piece of paper was able to produce enough energy to drive household LED lamps and small electronic devices such as calculators.

Panzarasa and his team now hope to develop chemical coatings for wood that are more environmentally friendly and easier to manufacture.

Source: Wooden floors laced with silicon generate electricity from footsteps | New Scientist

Masks Lead to Less Covid-19, Massive Study Finds

Posted on by

An enormous randomized trial of communities in Bangladesh seems to provide the clearest evidence yet that regular mask-wearing can impede the spread of the covid-19 pandemic. The study found that villages where masks were highly promoted and became more popular experienced noticeably lower rates of covid-like symptoms and confirmed past infections than villages where mask-wearing remained low. These improvements were even more pronounced for villages given free surgical masks over cloth masks.

Plenty of data has emerged over the last year and a half to support the use of masks during the covid-19 pandemic, both in the real world and in the lab. But it’s less clear exactly how much of a benefit these masks can provide wearers (and their communities), and there are at least some studies that have been inconclusive in showing a noticeable benefit.

[…]

Last late year, however, dozens of scientists teamed up with public health advocacy organizations and the Bangladesh government to conduct a massive randomized trial of masks—often seen as the gold standard of evidence. And on Wednesday, they released the results of their research in a working paper through the research nonprofit Innovations for Poverty Action.

The study involved 600 villages in a single region of the country with over 350,000 adult residents combined. Similarly matched villages were randomly assigned to two conditions (a pair of villages with similar population density, for instance, would go to one condition or the other). In one condition, the researchers and their partners promoted the use of masks through various incentives between November 2020 and January 2021. These incentives included free masks, endorsements by local leaders, and sometimes financial prizes for villages that achieved widespread mask usage. In two-thirds of the intervention villages, the free masks given were surgical, while one-third were given free cloth masks. In the second condition, the researchers simply observed the villages and did nothing to encourage masks during that time.

Residents in the villages where masks were encouraged did start wearing them more, though no individual nudge or incentive seemed to do better than the others. By the end, about 42% of residents in these villages wore masks regularly, compared to 13% of those in the control group. And in these communities, the odds of people reporting symptoms that may have been covid or testing positive for antibodies to the virus declined.

Overall, the average proportion of people who reported symptoms in the weeks following the mask promotions went down by 11% in these villages compared to the control group, and the average number of people having antibodies went down by over 9%. These differences were larger for surgical mask-wearing villages (12% vs 5% for reducing symptoms) and for residents over 60 (35% for reducing infections for older residents in surgical mask-wearing villages).

Some of this effect might not have come directly from the ability of masks to block transmission of the virus. Those who used masks, the study found, were also more likely to practice social distancing. That’s a relevant finding, the authors note, since some people who have argued against mask mandates do so by claiming that masks will only make people act more carelessly. This study suggests that the opposite is true—that masks make us more, not less, conscientious of others.

[…]

Source: Masks Lead to Less Covid-19, Massive Study Finds

FTC bans spyware maker SpyFone, and orders it to notify hacked victims

Posted on by

The Federal Trade Commission has unanimously voted to ban the spyware maker SpyFone and its chief executive Scott Zuckerman from the surveillance industry, the first order of its kind, after the agency accused the company of harvesting mobile data on thousands of people and leaving it on the open internet.

The agency said SpyFone “secretly harvested and shared data on people’s physical movements, phone use and online activities through a hidden device hack,” allowing the spyware purchaser to “see the device’s live location and view the device user’s emails and video chats.”

SpyFone is one of many so-called “stalkerware” apps that are marketed under the guise of parental control but are often used by spouses to spy on their partners. The spyware works by being surreptitiously installed on someone’s phone, often without their permission, to steal their messages, photos, web browsing history and real-time location data. The FTC also charged that the spyware maker exposed victims to additional security risks because the spyware runs at the “root” level of the phone, which allows the spyware to access off-limits parts of the device’s operating system. A premium version of the app included a keylogger and “live screen viewing,” the FTC says.

But the FTC said that SpyFone’s “lack of basic security” exposed those victims’ data, because of an unsecured Amazon cloud storage server that was spilling the data its spyware was collecting from more than 2,000 victims’ phones. SpyFone said it partnered with a cybersecurity firm and law enforcement to investigate, but the FTC says it never did.

Practically, the ban means SpyFone and its CEO Zuckerman are banned from “offering, promoting, selling, or advertising any surveillance app, service, or business,” making it harder for the company to operate. But FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra said in a separate statement that stalkerware makers should also face criminal sanctions under U.S. computer hacking and wiretap laws.

[…]

Source: FTC bans spyware maker SpyFone, and orders it to notify hacked victims | TechCrunch

WhatsApp fined over $260M for EU privacy violations, failng to explain how data is shared with Facebook

Posted on by

WhatsApp didn’t fully explain to Europeans how it uses their data as called for by EU privacy law, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said on Thursday. The regulator hit the messaging app with a fine of 225 million euros, about $267 million.

Partly at issue is how WhatsApp share information with parent company Facebook, according to the commission. The decision brings an end to a GDPR inquiry the privacy regulator started in December 2018.

[…]

Source: WhatsApp fined over $260M for EU privacy violations – CNET

EU Bolsters Net Neutrality With Ruling Against Zero Rating

Posted on by

The European Union’s top court has flipped the bird to German mobile network operators Telekom Deutschland and Vodafone, ruling in two separate judgements that their practice of exempting certain services from data caps violated the bloc’s net neutrality rules.

“Zero rating” is when service providers offer customers plans that exempt certain data-consuming services (be it Spotify, Netflix, gaming, or whatever) from contributing towards data caps. Very often, those services are commercial partners of the provider, or even part of the same massive media conglomerate, allowing the provider to exert pressure on customers to use their data in a way that profits them further. This has the convenient benefit of making it easier for providers to keep ridiculous fees for data overages in place while punishing competing services that customers might use more if the zero-rating scheme wasn’t in place. No one wins, except for the telecom racket.

Net neutrality is the principle that telecom providers should treat all data flowing over their networks equally, not prioritizing one service over the other for commercial gain. As Fortune reported, the version of net neutrality rules passed in the European Union in 2015 was at the time weaker than Barack Obama-era rules in the U.S., as they didn’t explicitly ban zero rating. That’s no longer the case, as Donald Trump appointees at the Federal Communications Commission nuked the U.S.’s net neutrality rules in 2017, and a series of subsequent regulatory decisions and court rulings in the EU narrowed the scope of zero-rating practices there.

In 2016, EU regulators found that zero rating would be allowed so long as the zero-rated services were also slowed down when a customer ran up against a data cap, according to Fortune. In 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) confirmed that interpretation and found it was illegal to block or slow down data after a user hit their cap on the basis that a particular service wasn’t part of a zero-rating deal. Still, carriers in the EU have continued to offer zero-rating plans, relying on perceived loopholes in the law.

The CJEU ruled on two separate cases involving Telekom and Vodafone on Thursday, which according to Reuters were brought by Germany’s Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) regulatory agency and VZBV consumer association respectively. At issue in the Telekom case was its “StreamOn” service, which exempts streaming services that work with the company from counting towards data caps—and throttles all video streaming, regardless of whether it’s from one of the StreamOn partners, when the cap is hit. The Vodafone case involved its practice of counting zero-rated services or mobile hotspot traffic towards data cap—advertising those plans with names like “Music Pass” or “Video Pass,” according to Engadget—when a customer leaves Germany to travel somewhere else in the EU.

Both of the companies’ plans violated net neutrality principles, the CJEU found, in a completely unambiguous decision titled “‘Zero tariff options are contrary to the regulation on open internet access.“ Fortune wrote that BNetzA has already concluded that the court’s decision means that Telekom will likely not be able to continue StreamOn in its “current form.”

“By today’s judgments, the Court of Justice notes that a ‘zero tariff’ option, such as those at issue in the main proceedings, draws a distinction within Internet traffic, on the basis of commercial considerations, by not counting towards the basic package traffic to partner applications,” the CJEU told media outlets in a statement. “Such a commercial practice is contrary to the general obligation of equal treatment of traffic, without discrimination or interference, as required by the regulation on open Internet access.”

The court added, “Since those limitations on bandwidth, tethering or on use when roaming apply only on account of the activation of the ‘zero tariff’ option, which is contrary to the regulation on open Internet access, they are also incompatible with EU law.”

Source: EU Bolsters Net Neutrality With Ruling Against Zero Rating

Sky Broadband sends Subscribers browsing data through to Premier League without user knowledge or consent

Posted on by

UK ISP Sky Broadband is monitoring the IP addresses of servers suspected of streaming pirated content to subscribers and supplying that data to an anti-piracy company working with the Premier League. That inside knowledge is then processed and used to create blocklists used by the country’s leading ISPs, to prevent subscribers from watching pirated events.

[…]

In recent weeks, an anonymous source shared a small trove of information relating to the systems used to find, positively identity, and then ultimately block pirate streams at ISPs. According to the documents, the module related to the Premier League work is codenamed ‘RedBeard’.

The activity appears to start during the week football matches or PPV events take place. A set of scripts at anti-piracy company Friend MTS are tasked with producing lists of IP addresses that are suspected of being connected to copyright infringement. These addresses are subsequently dumped to Amazon S3 buckets and the data is used by ISPs to block access to infringing video streams, the documents indicate.

During actual event scanning, content is either manually or fingerprint matched, with IP addresses extracted from DNS information related to hostnames in media URLs, load balancers, and servers hosting Electronic Program Guides (EPG), all of which are used by unlicensed IPTV services.

Confirmed: Sky is Supplying Traffic Data to Assist IPTV Blocking

The big question then is how the Premier League’s anti-piracy partner discovers the initial server IP addresses that it subsequently puts forward for ISP blocking.

According to documents reviewed by TF, information comes from three sources – the anti-piracy company’s regular monitoring (which identifies IP addresses and their /24 range), manually entered IP addresses (IP addresses and ports), and a third, potentially more intriguing source – ISPs themselves.

“ISPs provide lists of Top Talker IP addresses, these are the IP addresses that they see on their network which many consumers are receiving a large sum of bandwidth from,” one of the documents reveals.

“The IP addresses are the uploading IP address which host information which the ISP’s customers are downloading information from. They are not the IP addresses of the ISP’s customer’s home internet connections.”

The document revealing this information is not dated but other documents in the batch reference dates in 2021. At the time of publishing date, the document indicates that ISP cooperation is currently limited to Sky Broadband only. TorrentFreak asked Friend MTS if that remains the case or whether additional ISPs are now involved.

[…]

Source: Sky Subscribers’ Piracy Habits Directly Help Premier League Block Illegal Streams * TorrentFreak

Gift Card Gang Extracts Cash From 100k Inboxes Daily

Posted on by

Some of the most successful and lucrative online scams employ a “low-and-slow” approach — avoiding detection or interference from researchers and law enforcement agencies by stealing small bits of cash from many people over an extended period. Here’s the story of a cybercrime group that compromises up to 100,000 email inboxes per day, and apparently does little else with this access except siphon gift card and customer loyalty program data that can be resold online.

The data in this story come from a trusted source in the security industry who has visibility into a network of hacked machines that fraudsters in just about every corner of the Internet are using to anonymize their malicious Web traffic. For the past three years, the source — we’ll call him “Bill” to preserve his requested anonymity — has been watching one group of threat actors that is mass-testing millions of usernames and passwords against the world’s major email providers each day.

Bill said he’s not sure where the passwords are coming from, but he assumes they are tied to various databases for compromised websites that get posted to password cracking and hacking forums on a regular basis. Bill said this criminal group averages between five and ten million email authentication attempts daily, and comes away with anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 of working inbox credentials.

[…]

You might think that whoever is behind such a sprawling crime machine would use their access to blast out spam, or conduct targeted phishing attacks against each victim’s contacts. But based on interactions that Bill has had with several large email providers so far, this crime gang merely uses custom, automated scripts that periodically log in and search each inbox for digital items of value that can easily be resold.

And they seem particularly focused on stealing gift card data.

“Sometimes they’ll log in as much as two to three times a week for months at a time,” Bill said. “These guys are looking for low-hanging fruit — basically cash in your inbox. Whether it’s related to hotel or airline rewards or just Amazon gift cards, after they successfully log in to the account their scripts start pilfering inboxes looking for things that could be of value.”

A sample of some of the most frequent search queries made in a single day by the gift card gang against more than 50,000 hacked inboxes.

According to Bill, the fraudsters aren’t downloading all of their victims’ emails: That would quickly add up to a monstrous amount of data. Rather, they’re using automated systems to log in to each inbox and search for a variety of domains and other terms related to companies that maintain loyalty and points programs, and/or issue gift cards and handle their fulfillment.

Why go after hotel or airline rewards? Because these accounts can all be cleaned out and deposited onto a gift card number that can be resold quickly online for 80 percent of its value.

[…]

Bill’s data also shows that this gang is so aggressively going after gift card data that it will routinely seek new gift card benefits on behalf of victims, when that option is available. For example, many companies now offer employees a “wellness benefit” if they can demonstrate they’re keeping up with some kind of healthy new habit, such as daily gym visits, yoga, or quitting smoking.

Bill said these crooks have figured out a way to tap into those benefits as well.

“A number of health insurance companies have wellness programs to encourage employees to exercise more, where if you sign up and pledge to 30 push-ups a day for the next few months or something you’ll get five wellness points towards a $10 Starbucks gift card, which requires 1000 wellness points,” Bill explained. “They’re actually automating the process of replying saying you completed this activity so they can bump up your point balance and get your gift card.”

[…]

several large Internet service providers (ISPs) in Germany and France are heavily represented in the compromised email account data.

“With some of these international email providers we’re seeing something like 25,000 to 50,000 email accounts a day get hacked,” Bill said. “I don’t know why they’re getting popped so heavily.”

[…]

Source: Gift Card Gang Extracts Cash From 100k Inboxes Daily – Krebs on Security

Apple stalls CSAM auto-scan on devices after ‘feedback’ from everyone on Earth – will still scan all your pics at some point

Posted on by

Apple on Friday said it intends to delay the introduction of its plan to commandeer customers’ own devices to scan their iCloud-bound photos for illegal child exploitation imagery, a concession to the broad backlash that followed from the initiative.

“Previously we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them and to help limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material,” the company said in a statement posted to its child safety webpage.

“Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.”

[…]

Apple – rather than actually engaging with the security community and the public – published a list of Frequently Asked Questions and responses to address the concern that censorious governments will demand access to the CSAM scanning system to look for politically objectionable images.

“Could governments force Apple to add non-CSAM images to the hash list?” the company asked in its interview of itself, and then responded, “No. Apple would refuse such demands and our system has been designed to prevent that from happening.”

Apple however has not refused government demands in China with regard to VPNs or censorship. Nor has it refused government demands in Russia, with regard to its 2019 law requiring pre-installed Russian apps.

Tech companies uniformly say they comply with all local laws. So if China, Russia, or the US were to pass a law requiring on-device scanning to be adapted to address “national security concerns” or some other plausible cause, Apple’s choice would be to comply or face the consequences – it would no longer be able to say, “We can’t do on-device scanning.”

Source: Apple stalls CSAM auto-scan on devices after ‘feedback’ from everyone on Earth • The Register

Lenovo pops up tips on its tablets. And by tips, Lenovo means: Unacceptable ads

Posted on by

Lenovo has come under fire for the Tips application on its tablets, which has been likened to indelible adware that forces folks to view ads.

One customer took to the manufacturer’s support forum late last month to say they were somewhat miffed to see an ad suddenly appear on screen to join Amazon Music on their Android-powered Lenovo Tab P11. The advertisement was generated as a push notification by the bundled Tips app.

“There is no option to dismiss,” the fondleslab fondler sighed. “You have to click to find out more. Further, these notifications cannot be disabled, nor can the Lenovo ‘Tips’ app be disabled.”

They went on to say: “This is not a tip. This is a push that is advertising a paid service. I loathe this sort of thing.”

Another chipped in: “I have a Lenovo Tab that also has this bloatware virus installed. There’s no way to disable the adverts (they call the ads tips, they’re not, they’re adverts for Amazon music etc.) This is ridiculous, Lenovo, I didn’t spend £170 on a tablet to be pumped with ads. Will not buy another Lenovo product.”

[…]

Source: Lenovo pops up tips on its tablets. And by tips, Lenovo means: Unacceptable ads • The Register

A New Navy Weapon Actually Stops You From Talking

Posted on by

The U.S. Navy has successfully invented a special electronic device that is designed to stop people from talking. A form of non-lethal weapon, the new electronic device effectively repeats a speaker’s own voice back at them, and only them, while they attempt to talk.

It was developed, and patented back in 2019 but has only recently been discovered, according to a report by the New Scientist.

The main idea of the weapon is to disorientate a target so much that they will be unable to communicate effectively with other people.

Called acoustic hailing and disruption (AHAD), the weapon is able to record speech and instantly broadcast it at a target in milliseconds. Much like an annoying sibling, this action will disrupt the target’s concentration, and, in theory, discourage them from continuing to speak.

It is important to note that the device is unlikely to be used on the battlefield anytime soon and will probably be used as a form of crowd control.

[…]

“According to an illustrative embodiment of the present disclosure, a target’s speech is directed back to them twice, once immediately and once after a short delay. This delay creates delayed auditory feedback (DAF), which alters the speaker’s normal perception of their own voice. In normal speech, a speaker hears their own words with a slight delay, and the body is accustomed to this feedback. By introducing another audio feedback source with a sufficiently long delay, the speaker’s concentration is disrupted and it becomes difficult to continue speaking.”

If you want to see the thing in action, the patent filing handily also includes a sort of promotional video of another device that works in a similar way.

The device effectively annoys someone into not speaking

AHAD works by using a series of directional microphones and speakers that can target a speaker’s voice. The speech is then recorded and transmitted back in the same direction.

Interestingly, the broadcasted sound is on a narrow beam and will only be heard by the speaker. This will not only confuse the target but, ultimately, prevent them from being to concentrate and stop talking. The behavior of the target will be noticeably altered by the action, likely also confusing anyone who was listening to the target person. Put another way, such a weapon will make you think you’re going crazy — so too the people around you.

[…]

Source: A New Navy Weapon Actually Stops You From Talking

Huge GTA San Andreas Mod Because Of Take-Two Harassment

Posted on by

After months of Take-Two Interactive attacking and fighting GTA modders, the folks behind the long-in-development San Andreas mod, GTA Underground, have killed the project and removed it from the web over “increasing hostility” from Take-Two and fears of further legal problems.

Over the last few months, Take-Two Interactive — the parent company of GTA devs Rockstar Games —has gone on a digital murder spree, sending multiple takedown notices to get old 3D-era GTA mods and source ports removed from the internet. The publisher is also suing the creators behind reverse-engineered source ports of Vice City and GTA III. As a result of this hostility, GTA Underground lead developer dkluin wrote in a post yesterday on the GTAForums that they and the other modders working on the project were now “officially ceasing the development” of GTA: Underground.

“Due to the increasing hostility towards the modding community and imminent danger to our mental and financial well-being,” explained dkluin, “We sadly announce that we are officially ceasing the development of GTA: Underground and will be shortly taking all official uploads offline.”

Dkluin also thanked the community for the support they received over the last six years and mentioned all the “incredible work” that went into the mod and the “great times” the team experienced working on it together. A final video, simply named “The End.” was uploaded today on the modding team’s YouTube channel.

Related Stories

Bungie Has Big Plans For Destiny 2
Sonic Colors: Ultimate Glitches Could Cause Seizures
After 15 Years, Bemani Composer TAG Says He’s Leaving Konami

GTA Underground is a mod created for GTA San Andreas with the goal of merging all of the previous GTA maps into one mega environment. The mod even aimed to bring other cities from non-GTA games developed by Rockstar into San Andreas, including the cities featured in Bully and Manhunt.

The mod had already faced some problems from Take-Two in July. As result, it was removed from ModDB. It is now removed from all other official sources and sites.

In 2018, Kotaku interviewed dkluin about the mod and all the work going into it. He had started development on it back in 2014, when he was only 14 years old. GTA Underground isn’t a simple copy-and-paste job, instead, the modders added AI and traffic routines to every map, making them fully playable as GTA cities. The team also had plans to add more cities to the game, including their own custom creations.

[…]

Source: Fan Dev Shuts Down Huge GTA San Andreas Mod Because Of Take-Two

Way to piss off your fan base

Judge Says an AI Can’t Be Listed as an Inventor on a Patent because they are not people

Posted on by

U.S. federal judge Leonie Brikema ruled this week that an AI can’t be listed as an inventor on a U.S. patent under current law. The case was brought forward by Stephen Thaler, who is part of the Artificial Inventor Project, an international initiative that argues that an AI should be allowed to be listed as an inventor in a patent (the owner of the AI would legally own the patent).

Thaler sued the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after it denied his patent applications because he had listed the AI named DABUS as the inventor of a new type of flashing light and a beverage container. In various responses spanning several months, the Patent Office explained to Thaler that a machine does not qualify as an inventor because it is not a person. In fact, the machine is a tool used by people to create inventions, the agency maintained.

Brikema determined that the Patent Office correctly enforced the nation’s patent laws and pointed out that it basically all boils down to the everyday use of language. In the latest revision of the nation’s patent law in 2011, Congress explicitly defined an inventor as an “individual.” The Patent Act also references an inventor using words such as “himself” and herself.”

“By using personal pronouns such as ‘himself or herself’ and the verb ‘believes’ in adjacent terms modifying ‘individual,’ Congress was clearly referencing a natural person,” Brikema said in her ruling, which you can read in full at the Verge. “Because ‘there is a presumption that a given term is used to mean the same thing throughout a statute,’ the term ‘individual’ is presumed to have a persistent meaning throughout the Patent Act.”

[…]

“As technology evolves, there may come a time when artificial intelligence reaches a level of sophistication such that might satisfy accepted meanings of inventorship. But that time has not yet arrived, and, if it does, it will be up to Congress to decide how, if it at all, it wants to expand the scope of patent law,” Brikema said.

Source: Judge Says an AI Can’t Be Listed as an Inventor on a Patent

Does that mean gender neutral people can’t be inventors either?

Gorgeous Hand-Drawn Game Guides Kickstarter Cancelled By Nintendo – copyright is seriously broken

Posted on by

Hand-Drawn Game Guides creator Philip Summers knew it was a legal risk to launch his gorgeous, story book-style Nintendo game guides on Kickstarter, but it was a risk he was willing to take. When you pour through all the gorgeous artwork of his unofficial Metroid, Contra, Ninja Gaiden and Legend of Zelda guides, you can see why.

The Kickstarter for the project showed off a range of fantastic, full-colour comic walkthroughs designed to take players through the complex missions and goals of each featured game. According to Summers, the intention behind these guides was to replicate the feeling of leafing through a good game guide as a child, with all the wonder and spectacle that used to go along with it.

But while the game guides look absolutely stunning — and were a major success on Kickstarter, raking in over $300,000 — the project has now been cancelled, courtesy of Nintendo.

Image for article titled Gorgeous Hand-Drawn Game Guides Kickstarter Cancelled By Nintendo
Image: Hand-Drawn Game Guides

In a recent update, Summers shared the grim news that the books would no longer go into production.

“Tonight I pulled the plug on the Hand-Drawn Game Guides Kickstarter. Yes, for exactly the reason you think it’s for,” he said in an update on Kickstarter. “I had hoped that I could successfully navigate any legal trouble, but alas I wasn’t able to do so.”

For fans of the project, it’s a major bummer — but Summers says he’s still grateful for the experience.

“Of course I’m disappointed, but I completely understand why this happened,” he explained. “It’s okay. I’m not mad.”

For now, all orders for the game guides will be cancelled, although Summers says he’ll find out whether the project is truly dead in the water “in the coming days”. Backers can expect a cancellation email shortly if they don’t already have one, and all money will be refunded via your payment method.

It really is a disappointing turn of events.

While these game guides were always going to have IP issues with Nintendo being notoriously strict about protecting their assets, each book is a lavish work of art, created after painstaking hours of work. Summers’ talent and passion is clear in every page and frankly, his game guides look far better than anything else on the market.

Here’s to hoping Summers is still able to produce these guides in some capacity, whether that be through official channels or an entire rework of the project.

These Hand-Drawn Game Guides deserve their time in the sun, and a place on all our shelves, regardless of Nintendo’s efforts to nuke the project.

Source: Gorgeous Hand-Drawn Game Guides Kickstarter Cancelled By Nintendo