Daily Archives: June 23, 2022

Too Little, Too Late, WTO Finally Eases Patent Rights On COVID Vaccines

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In what definitely feels like a case of way too little, way too late, the WTO last week finally decided to grant the TRIPS waiver on COVID vaccines, allowing others to make more of the vaccine without violating patent rights. The WTO has long had this ability to issue a patent waiver as part of its Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. The idea is that in an emergency, when patents or copyrights are getting in the way of real harm, the WTO can say “hey, let’s grant a waiver to save people.”

You would think that a global pandemic where people are dying would be an obvious time to use such a waiver grant, but that’s because you’re not an obnoxious IP maximalist who cares more about their precious monopoly rents than the health and safety of the global populace. The big pharma and medical device companies freaked out about the possibility of a waiver, and even worse, Hollywood also flipped out about it, with their typical worry that any proof that removing an intellectual monopoly might be good for the world cannot be allowed.

It took forever, but in May of last year (already a year and a half into the pandemic), the US agreed to support the TRIPS waiver. This caused much gnashing of teeth among the maximalists, and then it still took over a year before this agreement was reached, and of course, now it’s both greatly watered down, and very much too late to make much of a difference. But kudos Hollywood and pharma lobbyists. You let thousands of people die, but you sure protected your IP. Good work!

But experts said the proposal was weakened significantly over months of negotiations. They said they did not expect the final agreement to encourage manufacturers in developing countries to start producing Covid vaccines, in part because it does not address the trade secrets and manufacturing know-how that many producers would need.

Even worse, the agreement is limited just to vaccines, and does not apply to either testing or therapeutics

[…]

Source: Too Little, Too Late, WTO Finally Eases Patent Rights On COVID Vaccines | Techdirt

A locust’s brain has been hacked to sniff out human cancer

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Cyborg locust brains can help spot the telltale signs of human cancer in the lab, a new study has shown. The team behind the work hopes it could one day lead to an insect-based breath test that could be used in cancer screening, or inspire an artificial version that works in much the same way.

Other animals have been taught to spot signs that humans are sick. For example, dogs can be trained to detect when their owners’ blood sugar levels start to drop, or if they develop cancer, tuberculosis, or even covid.

In all cases, the animals are thought to be sensing chemicals that people emit through body odor or breath. The mix of chemicals can vary depending on a person’s metabolism, which is thought to change when we get sick. But dogs are expensive to train and look after. And making a device that mimics a dog’s nose has proved extremely difficult to do, says Debajit Saha, one of the scientists behind the latest work, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

“These changes are almost in parts per trillion,” says Saha, a neural engineer at Michigan State University. This makes them hard to pick up even with state-of-the-art technologies, he adds. But animals have evolved to interpret such subtle changes in scents. So he and his colleagues decided to “hijack” an animal brain instead.

view of locust head stabilized

COURTESY OF THE RESEARCHERS

The researchers chose to work with locusts because these insects have been well studied in recent years. In a preliminary setup, they surgically exposed the brain of a living locust. Saha and his colleagues then inserted electrodes into lobes of the brain that receive signals from the insects’ antennae, which they use to sense odors.

The team also grew three different types of human oral cancer cells, as well as human mouth cells that were cancer-free. They used a device to capture gas emitted by each of the cell types, and delivered each of these to the locusts’ antennae.

The locusts’ brains responded to each of the cell types differently. The patterns of electrical activity recorded were so distinct that when the team puffed the gas from one cell type onto the antennae, they could correctly identify whether the cells were cancerous from the recording alone.

It is the first time a living insect brain has been tested as a tool to detect cancer, says Saha.

Natalie Plank, who is developing nanomaterial-based health sensors at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, thinks the work is “super cool.” “The potential of just being able to breathe on something and then know if you’re at risk for cancer … is really powerful,” she says.

In the experiment, the team took brain recordings from multiple locusts and combined their responses. It currently takes recordings from 40 neurons to get a clear signal, which means the system requires between six and 10 locust brains. But Saha hopes to use electrodes that can record from more neurons, which would allow him to get recordings from the brain of a single locust. He also hopes to be able to use the brain and antennae in a portable device, which could then be tested on real people.

[…]

Saha says that locusts do not feel pain, so they don’t need anesthesia. But some research suggests that insects can sense and avoid things we might consider “painful” and might develop lasting sensitivity after an injury, similar to chronic pain. “The insect is dead in terms of its body function,” says Saha. “We are just keeping its brain alive.”

If the team can figure out which receptors on the insects’ antennae are the most important for detecting cancer, they might be able to create versions in the lab and use those instead, says Plank. In her own research, she uses lab-made proteins that mimic receptors in fruit flies. “Long term, there are different ways it might play out to become a mass screening technique,” she says.

Source: A locust’s brain has been hacked to sniff out human cancer | MIT Technology Review

Historic borders, Mapping the boundaries of history

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Historical country borders through time

Screenshot from the Historic Borders site
 
 

While geographic boundaries can often seem like a semi-static thing, they’ve changed a lot when you look at them on the scale of centuries. Point in History, by Hans Hack, presents a map of what boundaries used to be. Click anywhere to see the history.

The map is based on the historical basemaps project, which you can access here.

Source: Mapping the boundaries of history | FlowingData

Cloudflare explains hour long outage which broke a lot of internets

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The incident began at 0627 UTC (2327 Pacific Time) and it took until 0742 UTC (0042 Pacific) before the company managed to bring all its datacenters back online and verify they were working correctly. During this time a variety of sites and services relying on Cloudflare went dark while engineers frantically worked to undo the damage they had wrought short hours previously.

“The outage,” explained Cloudflare, “was caused by a change that was part of a long-running project to increase resilience in our busiest locations.”

Oh, the irony.

What had happened was a change to the company’s prefix advertisement policies, resulting in the withdrawal of a critical subset of prefixes. Cloudflare makes use of BGP (Border Gateway Protocol). As part of this protocol, operators define which policies (adjacent IP addresses) are advertised to or accepted from networks (or peers).

Changing a policy can result in IP addresses no longer being reachable on the Internet. One would therefore hope that extreme caution would be taken before doing a such a thing…

Cloudflare’s mistakes actually began at 0356 UTC (2056 Pacific), when the change was made at the first location. There was no problem – the location used an older architecture rather than Cloudflare’s new “more flexible and resilient” version, known internally as MCP (Multi-Colo Pop.) MCP differed from what had gone before by adding a layer of routing to create a mesh of connections. The theory went that bits and pieces of the internal network could be disabled for maintenance. Cloudflare has already rolled out MCP to 19 of its datacenters.

Moving forward to 0617 UTC (2317 Pacific) and the change was deployed to one of the company’s busiest locations, but not an MCP-enabled one. Things still seemed OK… However, by 0627 UTC (2327 Pacific), the change hit the MCP-enabled locations, rattled through the mesh layer and… took

Five minutes later the company declared a major incident. Within half an hour the root cause had been found and engineers began to revert the change. Slightly worryingly, it took until 0742 UTC (0042 Pacific) before everything was complete. “This was delayed as network engineers walked over each other’s changes, reverting the previous reverts, causing the problem to re-appear sporadically.”

One can imagine the panic at Cloudflare towers, although we cannot imagine a controlled process that resulted in a scenario where “network engineers walked over each other’s changes.”

We’ve asked the company to clarify how this happened, and what testing was done before the configuration change was made, and will update should we receive a response.

Mark Boost CEO of Cloud native outfit Civo (formerly of LCN.com) was scathing regarding the outage: “This morning was a wake-up call for the price we pay for over-reliance on big cloud providers. It is completely unsustainable for an outage with one provider being able to bring vast swathes of the internet offline.

“Users today rely on constant connectivity to access the online services that are part of the fabric of all our lives, making outages hugely damaging…

“We should remember that scale is no guarantee of uptime. Large cloud providers have to manage a vast degree of complexity and moving parts, significantly increasing the risk of an outage.”

Source: Cloudflare explains today’s mega-outage • The Register

South Korea Launches First Satellite With Homegrown Rocket

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South Korea conducted its first successful satellite launch using a domestically developed rocket on Tuesday, officials said, boosting its growing aerospace ambitions and demonstrating it has key technologies needed to launch spy satellites and build larger missiles amid tensions with rival North Korea.

The three-stage Nuri rocket placed a functioning “performance verification” satellite at a target altitude of 700 kilometers (435 miles) after its 4 p.m. liftoff from South Korea’s space launch center on a southern island, the Science Ministry said.

The satellite transmitted signals about its status to an unmanned South Korean station in Antarctica. It is carrying four smaller satellites that will be released in coming days for Earth observation and other missions, ministry officials said.

[…]

Source: South Korea Launches First Satellite With Homegrown Rocket – The Diplomat

Transparent Display Hacked to Look Like Shower Door

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[…] The most practical use for transparent LCDs has been in hospitals, where rooms with large windows can be made private at the push of a button that causes the panels to instantly become opaque.

µProto「Wipe Fake」

That’s presumably what inspired this team of designers from IMG SRC, who in just two months created the “Wipe Fake” prototype. The transparent LCD screen was paired with a touchscreen interface that reacts to swipes and finger gestures to wipe away the opaque parts of the panel, revealing what’s behind it like a layer of steam and humidity being wiped off a shower door. The effect looks especially convincing thanks to the virtual water drops that appear to run down the panel as the thin layer of simulated humidity coalesces into larger drops.

Is it the most practical alternative to a whiteboard when it comes to jotting down and working through ideas? Probably not, but just think back to how many eureka moments you’ve had while in the shower. […]

Source: Transparent Display Hacked to Look Like Shower Door

Popular blockchains can be centralised fairly easily | Trail of Bits study funded by DARPA

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[…]Over the past year, Trail of Bits was engaged by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to examine the fundamental properties of blockchains and the cybersecurity risks associated with them. DARPA wanted to understand those security assumptions and determine to what degree blockchains are actually decentralized.

[…]

The report also contains links to the substantial supporting and analytical materials. Our findings are reproducible, and our research is open-source and freely distributable. So you can dig in for yourself.

Key findings

  • Blockchain immutability can be broken not by exploiting cryptographic vulnerabilities, but instead by subverting the properties of a blockchain’s implementations, networking, and consensus protocols. We show that a subset of participants can garner undue, centralized control over the entire system:
    • While the encryption used within cryptocurrencies is for all intents and purposes secure, it does not guarantee security, as touted by proponents.
    • Bitcoin traffic is unencrypted; any third party on the network route between nodes (e.g., internet service providers, Wi-Fi access point operators, or governments) can observe and choose to drop any messages they wish.
    • Tor is now the largest network provider in Bitcoin; just about 55% of Bitcoin nodes were addressable only via Tor (as of March 2022). A malicious Tor exit node can modify or drop traffic.
  • More than one in five Bitcoin nodes are running an old version of the Bitcoin core client that is known to be vulnerable.
  • The number of entities sufficient to disrupt a blockchain is relatively low: four for Bitcoin, two for Ethereum, and less than a dozen for most proof-of-stake networks.
  • When nodes have an out-of-date or incorrect view of the network, this lowers the percentage of the hashrate necessary to execute a standard 51% attack. During the first half of 2021, the actual cost of a 51% attack on Bitcoin was closer to 49% of the hashrate—and this can be lowered substantially through network delays.
  • For a blockchain to be optimally distributed, there must be a so-called Sybil cost. There is currently no known way to implement Sybil costs in a permissionless blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum without employing a centralized trusted third party (TTP). Until a mechanism for enforcing Sybil costs without a TTP is discovered, it will be almost impossible for permissionless blockchains to achieve satisfactory decentralization.

Novel research within the report

  • Analysis of the Bitcoin consensus network and network topology
  • Updated analysis of the effect of software delays on the hashrate required to exploit blockchains (we did not devise the theory, but we applied it to the latest data)
  • Calculation of the Nakamoto coefficient for proof-of-stake blockchains (once again, the theory was already known, but we applied it to the latest data)
  • Analysis of software centrality
  • Analysis of Ethereum smart contract similarity
  • Analysis of mining pool protocols, software, and authentication
  • Combining the survey of sources (both academic and anecdotal) that support our thesis that there is a lack of decentralization in blockchains

The research to which this blog post refers was conducted by Trail of Bits based upon work supported by DARPA under Contract No. HR001120C0084 (Distribution Statement A, Approved for Public Release: Distribution Unlimited). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Government or DARPA

[…]

Source: Are blockchains decentralized? | Trail of Bits Blog

How to Search Reddit and Actually Find What You Want using keywords

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These keywords allow you to tell Reddit to search for only specific things, rather than the entirety of Reddit. These aren’t menu-based, meaning you’ll need to know which terms to enter into the search bar to get the results you want. There are eight in total, and you can use them in the following ways:

  • author: This word filters by username of the named account. For example, entering author:PresidentObama lists content posted only by u/PresidentObama.
  • flair: This word filters by a subreddit’s flair, which means this filter will vary based on the subreddit. Some subreddits use flair to categorize posts, so entering flair:discussion will only show results that are based on user conversation and debate, rather than, say, news.
  • self: This word filters posts made by an individual account, rather than posts linking to another site. Use self:true to search for only text-based posts, and self:false for all other types.
  • selftext: This word searches text posts for a specific query. Entering selftext:dogs, for example, will search text posts for the word dog.
  • site: This word filters for specific URLs. For example, use site:lifehacker.com to search for Reddit posts sharing Lifehacker articles.
  • subreddit: This word filters for the specific subreddit listed. Use subreddit:askreddit to search for posts from only r/askreddit. Alternatively, if you search for something while browsing a subreddit, Reddit will automatically search only within that subreddit.
  • title: This word filters for specific submission titles. If you search title:”broken keyboard,” you’ll only see posts that contain broken keyboard in the title. Note: always put multi-word searches in quotes.
  • url: This word filters for specific words in a website’s URL, to narrow down a website search. You should combine this one with the site filter. For example, site:lifehacker.com url:iphone will only return Reddit posts with Lifehacker URLs containing the word iPhone.

On their own, these filters can range from helpful to useless. However, combining them will make your searches way more accurate. If you’re trying to find an answer to why your iPhone is heating up, you can string together something like subreddit:iPhone title:overheating flair:question and find ultra-specific posts about your question. There’s apparently no limit on the amount of strings you can put together, so go ham.

Source: How to Search Reddit and Actually Find What You Want

Miners flood market with GPUs they no longer need as cryptocurrencies crash

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As the cryptocurrency market currently goes through one of its worst nosedives in recent years, miners are trying to get rid of their mining hardware. Due to the crashing prices of popular crypto coins, numerous Chinese miners and e-cafes are flooding the market with graphics cards they no longer need.

Miners, e-cafes, and scalpers are now trying to sell their hardware stock on streams and auctions. As a result, users can snag a second-hand GPU, such as the RTX 3060 Ti, for $350 or even less. Many popular graphics cards going for MSRP or even less is quite a sight to behold after astronomically high prices and scarce availability during the last two years.

As tempting as it might be to snag a powerful Nvidia or AMD GPU for a price lower than its MSRP, it is not the best idea to go after a graphics card that went through seven rings of mining hell. Potential buyers should be aware that the mining GPUs are often not in their best conditions after spending months in always-on, always-100% mode.

With manufacturers increasing their supply and prices going down like never before, you may better spend a little more and get a new graphics card with a warranty and peace of mind. As a bonus, you can enjoy the view of scalpers getting desperate to get at least some money from their stock.

Source: Miners flood market with GPUs they no longer need as cryptocurrencies crash – Neowin

Spain, Austria not convinced location data is personal

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[…]

EU privacy group NOYB (None of your business), set up by privacy warrior Max “Angry Austrian” Schrems, said on Tuesday it appealed a decision of the Spanish Data Protection Authority (AEPD) to support Virgin Telco’s refusal to provide the location data it has stored about a customer.

In Spain, according to NOYB, the government still requires telcos to record the metadata of phone calls, text messages, and cell tower connections, despite Court of Justice (CJEU) decisions that prohibit data retention.

A Spanish customer demanded that Virgin reveal his personal data, as allowed under the GDPR. Article 15 of the GDPR guarantees individuals the right to obtain their personal data from companies that process and store it.

[…]

Virgin, however, refused to provide the customer’s location data when a complaint was filed in December 2021, arguing that only law enforcement authorities may demand that information. And the AEPD sided with the company.

NOYB says that Virgin Telco failed to explain why Article 15 should not apply since the law contains no such limitation.

“The fundamental right to access is comprehensive and clear: users are entitled to know what data a company collects and processes about them – including location data,” argued Felix Mikolasch, a data protection attorney at NOYB, in a statement. “This is independent from the right of authorities to access such data. In this case, there is no relevant exception from the right to access.”

[…]

The group said it filed a similar appeal last November in Austria, where that country’s data protection authority similarly supported Austrian mobile provider A1’s refusal to turn over customer location data. In that case, A1’s argument was that location data should not be considered personal data because someone else could have used the subscriber phone that generated it.

[…]

Location data is potentially worth billions. According to Fortune Business Insights, the location analytics market is expected to bring in $15.76 billion in 2022 and $43.97 billion by 2029.

Outside the EU, the problem is the availability of location data, rather than lack of access. In the US, where there’s no federal data protection framework, the government is a major buyer of location data – it’s more convenient than getting a warrant.

And companies that can obtain location data, often through mobile app SDKs, appear keen to monetize it.

In 2020, the FCC fined the four largest wireless carriers in the US for failing to protect customer location data in accordance with a 2018 commitment to do so.

Source: Spain, Austria not convinced location data is personal • The Register

YouTube Has a Hidden List of Keyboard Shortcuts

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[…]

what’s this secret shortcut that unlocks all hidden keyboard shortcuts? Shift + /. Or, of course, ?.

This button combo is your ticket to see the hidden list of keyboard shortcuts for your favorite websites. I first stumbled upon it while browsing YouTube: Somehow, I accidentally hit Shift + /, and, all of a sudden, I was presented with this complete collection of keyboard shortcuts for the site. Many of these shortcuts I already knew, as you might already know: K plays and pauses a video, J and L rewinds and fast forwards, respectively. However, other shortcuts might come as a surprise: You can rewind and fast forward frame-by-frame using , and . while paused. You can also slow down or speed up playback speed using < and > (Shift + ,) and (Shift + .).

It’s worth scanning the full list to see if any of these keyboard shortcuts are new to you, and whether some of them might actually be helpful during your next YouTube binge. As someone who takes screenshots on YouTube as part of his job, the frame-by-frame scanning is particularly useful.

Image for article titled YouTube Has a Hidden List of Keyboard Shortcuts
Screenshot: Jake Peterson

Many websites hide their keyboard shortcuts from users, too

It’s not just YouTube: Other popular websites you use every day hide keyboard shortcuts behind Shift + /. Twitter, for example, taught me that g + m launches DMs, while u and x can mute and block an account, respectively. Facebook also has a list of keyboard shortcuts: You might know that L likes a post, but did you know you can use / to search Facebook, or that you can pin keyboard shortcuts to the bottom right corner of the window that change depending on what you’re doing? That’s the most helpful option I’ve seen so far.

[…]

Source: YouTube Has a Hidden List of Keyboard Shortcuts