Monthly Archives: June 2025

A tiny implant just helped paralyzed rats walk again—is human recovery next? | ScienceDaily

Posted on by

A groundbreaking study from the University of Auckland and Chalmers University of Technology is offering new hope for spinal cord injury patients. Researchers have developed an ultra-thin implant that delivers gentle electric currents directly to the injured spinal cord. This device mimics natural developmental signals to stimulate nerve healing, and in animal trials, it restored movement and touch sensation in rats—without causing inflammation or damage.

[…]

Spinal cord injuries shatter the signal between the brain and body, often resulting in a loss of function.”Unlike a cut on the skin, which typically heals on its own, the spinal cord does not regenerate effectively, making these injuries devastating and currently incurable,”

[…]

“We developed an ultra-thin implant designed to sit directly on the spinal cord, precisely positioned over the injury site in rats,” Dr Harland says.

The device delivers a carefully controlled electrical current across the injury site. “The aim is to stimulate healing so people can recover functions lost through spinal-cord injury,” Professor Darren Svirskis, director of the CatWalk Cure Program at the University’s School of Pharmacy says.

[…]

After four weeks, animals that received daily electric field treatment showed improved movement compared with those who did not.

Throughout the 12-week study, they responded more quickly to gentle touch.

“This indicates that the treatment supported recovery of both movement and sensation,” Harland says. “Just as importantly, our analysis confirmed that the treatment did not cause inflammation or other damage to the spinal cord, demonstrating that it was not only effective but also safe.”

[…]

Source: A tiny implant just helped paralyzed rats walk again—is human recovery next? | ScienceDaily

Scientists Discover Unknown Organelle Inside Our Cells

Posted on by

The organelle, a type of specialized structure, has been dubbed a “hemifusome” by its discoverers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. This little organelle has a big job helping our cells sort, recycle and discard important cargo within themselves, the scientists say. The new discovery could help scientists better understand what goes wrong in genetic conditions that disrupt these essential housekeeping functions.

“This is like discovering a new recycling center inside the cell,” said researcher Seham Ebrahim, PhD, of UVA’s Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. “We think the hemifusome helps manage how cells package and process material, and when this goes wrong, it may contribute to diseases that affect many systems in the body.”

[…]

UVA’s expertise in cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) – a powerful imaging method that “freezes” cells in time – to create striking images of the organelle.

The scientists believe hemifusomes facilitate the formation of vesicles, tiny blister-like sacs that act as mixing bowls, and of organelles made up of multiple vesicles. This process is critical to cellular sorting, recycling and debris disposal, the researchers report.

“You can think of vesicles like little delivery trucks inside the cell,” said Ebrahim, of UVA’s Center for Membrane and Cell Physiology. “The hemifusome is like a loading dock where they connect and transfer cargo. It’s a step in the process we didn’t know existed.”

While the hemifusomes have escaped detection until now, the scientists say they are surprisingly common in certain parts of our cells.

[…]

“Now that we know hemifusomes exist, we can start asking how they behave in healthy cells and what happens when things go wrong. That could lead us to new strategies for treating complex genetic diseases.”

Findings Published

The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The research team consisted of Amirrasoul Tavakoli, Shiqiong Hu, Ebrahim and Kachar.

The research was supported by the NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, grant Z01-DC000002; the Owens Family Foundation; and a startup grant from UVA’s Center for Cell and Membrane Physiology.

Source: Scientists Discover Unknown Organelle Inside Our Cells

Update your Brother printer: Multiple Critical Vulnerabilities found

Posted on by

Rapid7 conducted a zero-day research project into multifunction printers (MFP) from Brother Industries, Ltd. This research resulted in the discovery of 8 new vulnerabilities. Some or all of these vulnerabilities have been identified as affecting 689 models across Brother’s range of printer, scanner, and label maker devices. Additionally, 46 printer models from FUJIFILM Business Innovation, 5 printer models from Ricoh, 2 printer models from Toshiba Tec Corporation, and 6 models from Konica Minolta, Inc. are affected by some or all of these vulnerabilities. In total, 748 models across 5 vendors are affected. Rapid7, in conjunction with JPCERT/CC, has worked with Brother over the last thirteen months to coordinate the disclosure of these vulnerabilities.

The most serious of the findings is the authentication bypass CVE-2024-51978. A remote unauthenticated attacker can leak the target device’s serial number through one of several means, and in turn generate the target device’s default administrator password. This is due to the discovery of the default password generation procedure used by Brother devices. This procedure transforms a serial number into a default password. Affected devices have their default password set, based on each device’s unique serial number, during the manufacturing process. Brother has indicated that this vulnerability cannot be fully remediated in firmware, and has required a change to the manufacturing process of all affected models. Only affected models that are made via this new manufacturing process will be fully remediated against CVE-2024-51978. For all affected models made via the old manufacturing process, Brother has provided a workaround.

A summary of the 8 vulnerabilities is shown below:

CVE Description Affected Service CVSS
CVE-2024-51977 An unauthenticated attacker can leak sensitive information. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443), IPP (Port 631) 5.3 (Medium)
CVE-2024-51978 An unauthenticated attacker can generate the device’s default administrator password. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443), IPP (Port 631) 9.8 (Critical)
CVE-2024-51979 An authenticated attacker can trigger a stack based buffer overflow. HTTP (Port 80), HTTPS (Port 443), IPP (Port 631) 7.2 (High)
CVE-2024-51980 An unauthenticated attacker can force the device to open a TCP connection. Web Services over HTTP (Port 80) 5.3 (Medium)
CVE-2024-51981 An unauthenticated attacker can force the device to perform an arbitrary HTTP request. Web Services over HTTP (Port 80) 5.3 (Medium)
CVE-2024-51982 An unauthenticated attacker can crash the device. PJL (Port 9100) 7.5 (High)
CVE-2024-51983 An unauthenticated attacker can crash the device. Web Services over HTTP (Port 80) 7.5 (High)
CVE-2024-51984 An authenticated attacker can disclose the password of a configured external service. LDAP, FTP 6.8 (Medium)

[….]

Source: Multiple Brother Devices: Multiple Vulnerabilities (FIXED) – Rapid7 Blog

Ahold Delhaize says 2.2M affected after cyberattack

Posted on by

Multinational grocery and retail megacorp Ahold Delhaize says upwards of 2.2 million people had their data compromised during its November cyberattack with personal, financial and health details among the trove.

Ahold Delhaize operates a network of stores in Europe and the US via brands including Food Lion, Stop & Shop and Giant. It also has a substantial web business. It employs more than 400,000 staff and serves around 63 million customers a week.

The digital break-in late last year caused disruption across its organization, with some Stop & Shop stores struggling to fill prescriptions due to IT issues, while Food Lion employees took to social media complaining about delayed and missing deliveries.

Now Ahold Delhaize has confirmed more details via a notification filed with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, revealing the data of more than 2.24 million individuals was exposed.

Different people will have had different data points compromised, it added, and said the following may be in the wrong hands:

  • Names
  • Contact information (postal address, email address, and telephone number)
  • Dates of birth
  • Government-issued identification numbers (Social Security, passport and driver’s license numbers)
  • Financial account information (including bank account numbers)
  • Health information (workers’ compensation information and medical information contained in employment records)
  • Employment-related information

In a “Notice of Data Breach” letter sent to impacted individuals, Ahold Delhaize made no reference to customer data, saying only that investigations revealed “personal information contained in employment records related to you or your family member” may have been accessed.

This indicates the breach involved current and former staff.

[…]

Source: Ahold Delhaize says 2.2M affected after cyberattack • The Register

Android 16 can warn you that you might be connected to a fake cell tower

Posted on by

[…] Google has been working on ways to warn Android users or prevent them from sending communications over insecure cellular networks.

Win $5,000!

See all deals

  • Limited Time!

With the release of Android 12, for example, Google added support for disabling 2G connectivity at the modem level. In Android 14, the company followed up by supporting the disabling of connections that use null ciphers — a form of unencrypted communication. More recently, Android 15 added support for notifying the OS when the network requests a device’s unique identifiers or tries to force a new ciphering algorithm. These features directly counter the tactics used by commercial “stingrays,” which trick devices into downgrading to 2G or using null ciphers to make their traffic easier to intercept. Blocking these connections and notifying the user about these requests helps protect them from surveillance.

2G network protection toggle in Android 16
The toggle to disable 2G networks in Android 16 on a Pixel 9a.

Unfortunately, only one of these three features is widely available: the ability to disable 2G connectivity. The problem is that implementing these protections requires corresponding changes to a phone’s modem driver. The feature that notifies the OS about identifier requests, for example, requires a modem that supports version 3.0 of Android’s IRadio hardware abstraction layer (HAL). This dependency is why these security features are missing on current Pixel phones and other devices, and it’s also likely why Google delayed launching the dedicated “mobile network security” settings page it planned for Android 15.

Since upcoming devices launching with Android 16 will support version 3.0 of Android’s IRadio HAL, Google is reintroducing the “mobile network security” settings page in the Safety Center (Settings > Security & privacy). This page contains two subsections:

  • Notifications
    • This subsection contains a “Network notifications” toggle. When enabled, it allows the system to warn you if your device connects to an unencrypted network or when the network requests your phone’s unique identifiers. This toggle is disabled by default in Android 16.
  • Network generation
    • This subsection features a “2G network protection” toggle that enables or disables the device’s 2G connectivity. This is the same toggle found in the main SIM settings menu, and it is also disabled by default in Android 16.
Mobile network security settings in Android 16

The “Mobile network security” page will only appear on devices that support both the “2G network protection” toggle and the “network notifications” feature. This is why it doesn’t appear on any current Pixel devices running Android 16, as they lack the necessary modem support for the network notifications feature.

When the “Network notifications” feature is enabled, Android will post a message in the notification panel and the Safety Center whenever your device switches from an encrypted to an unencrypted network, or vice versa. It will also post an alert in both places when the network accesses your phone’s unique identifiers, detailing the time and number of times they were requested.

[…]

Source: Android 16 can warn you that you might be connected to a fake cell tower – Android Authority

The Conservatives On The Supreme Court Are So Scared Of Nudity, They Threw Out The First Amendment

Posted on by

he Supreme Court this morning took a chainsaw to the First Amendment on the internet, and the impact is going to be felt for decades going forward. In the FSC v. Paxton case, the Court upheld the very problematic 5th Circuit ruling that age verification online is acceptable under the First Amendment, despite multiple earlier Supreme Court rulings that said the opposite.

Justice Thomas wrote the 6-3 majority opinion, with Justice Kagan writing the dissent (joined by Sotomayor and Jackson). The practical effect: states can now force websites to collect government IDs from anyone wanting to view adult content, creating a massive chilling effect on protected speech and opening the door to much broader online speech restrictions.

Thomas accomplished this by pulling off some remarkable doctrinal sleight of hand. He ignored the Court’s own precedents in Ashcroft v. ACLU by pretending online age verification is just like checking ID at a brick-and-mortar store (it’s not), applied a weaker “intermediate scrutiny” standard instead of the “strict scrutiny” that content-based speech restrictions normally require, and—most audaciously—invented an entirely new category of “partially protected” speech that conveniently removes First Amendment protections exactly when the government wants to burden them. As Justice Kagan’s scathing dissent makes clear, this is constitutional law by result-oriented reasoning, not principled analysis.

[…]

The real danger here isn’t just Texas’s age verification law—it’s that Thomas has handed every state legislature a roadmap for circumventing the First Amendment online. His reasoning that “the internet has changed” and that intermediate scrutiny suffices for content-based restrictions will be cited in countless future cases targeting online speech. Expect age verification requirements to be attempted for social media platforms (protecting kids from “harmful” political content), for news sites (preventing minors from accessing “disturbing” coverage), and for any online speech that makes moral authorities uncomfortable.

And yes, to be clear, the majority opinion seeks to limit this just to content deemed “obscene” to avoid such problems, but it’s written so broadly as to at least open up challenges along these lines.

Thomas’s invention of “partially protected” speech, that somehow means you can burden those for which it is protected, is particularly insidious because it’s infinitely expandable. Any time the government wants to burden speech, it can simply argue that the burden is built into the right itself—making First Amendment protection vanish exactly when it’s needed most. This isn’t constitutional interpretation; it’s constitutional gerrymandering.

The conservative justices may think they’re just protecting children from pornography, but they’ve actually written a permission slip for the regulatory state to try to control online expression.

[…]

By creating his “partially protected” speech doctrine and blessing age verification burdens that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, Thomas has essentially told state governments: find the right procedural mechanism, and you can burden any online speech you dislike. Today it’s pornography. Tomorrow it will be political content that legislators deem “harmful to minors,” news coverage that might “disturb” children, or social media discussions that don’t align with official viewpoints.

The conservatives may have gotten their victory against online adult content, but they’ve handed every future administration—federal and state—a blueprint for dismantling digital free speech. They were so scared of nudity that they broke the Constitution. The rest of us will be living with the consequences for decades.

Source: The Conservatives On The Supreme Court Are So Scared Of Nudity, They’ll Throw Out The First Amendment | Techdirt

Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features

Posted on by

The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice.

The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe.

[…]

It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice.

[…]

“In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI.”

He added: “Human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes and I’m not willing to accept that.”

[…]

The changes to Danish copyright law will, once approved, theoretically give people in Denmark the right to demand that online platforms remove such content if it is shared without consent.

It will also cover “realistic, digitally generated imitations” of an artist’s performance without consent. Violation of the proposed rules could result in compensation for those affected.

The government said the new rules would not affect parodies and satire, which would still be permitted.

[…]

Source: Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features | Deepfake | The Guardian

An interesting take on it. I am curious how this goes – defending copyright can be a very detailed thing, so what happens if someone alters someone else’s eyebrows in the deepfake by making them a mm longer? Does that invalidate the whole copyright?

This breakthrough turns old tech into pure gold — No mercury, no cyanide, just light and salt

Posted on by

An interdisciplinary team of experts in green chemistry, engineering and physics at Flinders University in Australia has developed a safer and more sustainable approach to extract and recover gold from ore and electronic waste.

Explained in the leading journal Nature Sustainability, the gold-extraction technique promises to reduce levels of toxic waste from mining and shows that high purity gold can be recovered from recycling valuable components in printed circuit boards in discarded computers.

The project team, led by Matthew Flinders Professor Justin Chalker, applied this integrated method for high-yield gold extraction from many sources – even recovering trace gold found in scientific waste streams.

The progress toward safer and more sustainable gold recovery was demonstrated for electronic waste, mixed-metal waste, and ore concentrates.

“The study featured many innovations including a new and recyclable leaching reagent derived from a compound used to disinfect water,” says Professor of Chemistry Justin Chalker, who leads the Chalker Lab at Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering.

“The team also developed an entirely new way to make the polymer sorbent, or the material that binds the gold after extraction into water, using light to initiate the key reaction.”

Extensive investigation into the mechanisms, scope and limitations of the methods are reported in the new study, and the team now plans to work with mining and e-waste recycling operations to trial the method on a larger scale.

“The aim is to provide effective gold recovery methods that support the many uses of gold, while lessening the impact on the environment and human health,” says Professor Chalker.

The new process uses a low-cost and benign compound to extract the gold. This reagent (trichloroisocyanuric acid) is widely used in water sanitation and disinfection. When activated by salt water, the reagent can dissolve gold.

Next, the gold can be selectively bound to a novel sulfur-rich polymer developed by the Flinders team. The selectivity of the polymer allows gold recovery even in highly complex mixtures.

The gold can then be recovered by triggering the polymer to “un-make” itself and convert back to monomer. This allows the gold to be recovered and the polymer to be recycled and re-used.

[…]

The team also collaborated with experts in the US and Peru to validate the method on ore, in an effort to support small-scale mines that otherwise rely on toxic mercury to amalgamate gold.

Gold mining typically uses highly toxic cyanide to extract gold from ore, with risks to the wildlife and the broader environment if it is not contained properly. Artisanal and small-scale gold mines still use mercury to amalgamate gold. Unfortunately, the use of mercury in gold mining is one of the largest sources of mercury pollution on Earth.

[…]

ARC DECRA Fellow Dr Nicholls, adds: “The newly developed gold sorbent is made using a sustainable approach in which UV light is used to make the sulfur-rich polymer. Then, recycling the polymer after the gold has been recovered further increases the green credentials of this method.”

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by Flinders University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Maximilian Mann, Thomas P. Nicholls, Harshal D. Patel, Lynn S. Lisboa, Jasmine M. M. Pople, Le Nhan Pham, Max J. H. Worthington, Matthew R. Smith, Yanting Yin, Gunther G. Andersson, Christopher T. Gibson, Louisa J. Esdaile, Claire E. Lenehan, Michelle L. Coote, Zhongfan Jia, Justin M. Chalker. Sustainable gold extraction from ore and electronic waste. Nature Sustainability, 2025; DOI: 10.1038/s41893-025-01586-w

Source: This breakthrough turns old tech into pure gold — No mercury, no cyanide, just light and salt | ScienceDaily

Why cats prefer to sleep on their left side may be part of a survival strategy

Posted on by

An international research team that analyzed several hundred YouTube videos of sleeping cats found that they prefer to sleep on their left side. The researchers see this bias as an evolutionary advantage because it favors hunting and escape behavior after waking up.

The team from the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy), Ruhr University Bochum, Medical School Hamburg and other partners in Germany, Canada, Switzerland and Turkey report on the study in the journal Current Biology, published online on June 23, 2025.

All animals are particularly vulnerable while sleeping. Cats sleep around 12 to 16 hours a day, preferably in elevated places where their predators can only access them from below.

The research team led by Dr. Sevim Isparta from the Animal Physiology and Behavior Research Unit in Bari and Professor Onur Güntürkün from the Bochum working group Biopsychology wanted to find out whether cats prefer to sleep on one side or the other. “Asymmetries in behavior can have advantages because both hemispheres of the brain specialize in different tasks,” says Onur Güntürkün.

00:00
01:12
Credit: Current Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.043

Perceiving dangers with the left visual field brings advantages

The group analyzed 408 publicly available YouTube videos in which a single cat was clearly visible with its entire body sleeping on one side for at least 10 seconds. Only original videos were used; modified or flipped material was excluded from the study. Two-thirds of the videos showed sleeping on their left side.

The explanation: Cats that sleep on their left side perceive their surroundings upon awakening with their left visual field, which is processed in the right of the brain. This hemisphere is specialized in spatial awareness, the processing of threats and the coordination of rapid escape movements.

If a cat sleeps on its left shoulder and wakes up, about predators or prey goes directly to the right hemisphere of the brain, which is best in processing them. “Sleeping on the left side can therefore be a survival strategy,” the researchers conclude.

More information: Sevim Isparta et al, Lateralized sleeping positions in domestic cats, Current Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.043

Source: Why cats prefer to sleep on their left side may be part of a survival strategy

Security pro counts the cost of Microsoft dependency

Posted on by

A sharply argued blog post warns that heavy reliance on Microsoft poses serious strategic risks for organizations – a viewpoint unlikely to win favor with Redmond or its millions of corporate customers.

Czech developer and pen-tester Miloslav Homer has an interesting take on reducing an organization’s exposure to security risks. In an article headlined “Microsoft dependency has risks,” he extends the now familiar arguments in favor of improving digital sovereignty, and reducing dependence on American cloud services.

The argument is quite long but closely reasoned. We recommend resisting the knee-jerk reaction of “don’t be ridiculous” and closing the tab, but reading his article and giving it serious consideration. He backs up his argument with plentiful links and references, and it’s gratifying to see several stories from The Register among them, including one from the FOSS desk.

He discusses incidents such as Microsoft allegedly blocking the email account of International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, one of several incidents that caused widespread concern. The Windows maker has denied it was responsible for Khan’s blocked account. Homer also considers the chances of US President Donald Trump getting a third term, as Franklin Roosevelt did, the lucrative US government contracts with software and services vendors, and such companies’ apparent nervousness about upsetting the volatile leader.

We like the way Homer presents his arguments, because it avoids some of the rather tired approaches of FOSS advocates. He assigns financial value to the risks, using the established measurement of Return on Security Investment [PDF]. He uses the Crowdstrike outage from last July as a comparison. For instance, what if a US administration instructed Microsoft to refuse service to everyone in certain countries or even regions?

He tries to put some numbers on this, and they are worryingly large. He looks at estimated corporate Microsoft 365 usage worldwide, and how relatively few vendors offer pre-installed Linux systems. He considers the vast market share of Android on mobile devices compared to everything else, with the interesting comparison that there are more mobile phone owners than toothbrush owners. However, every Android account is all but tied to at least one Google account – another almost unavoidable US dependency.

There is a genuine need for people to ask questions like this. And, importantly, many of the decisions are made by people who are totally tech-illiterate – as many movers and shakers are these days – so it’s also important to express the arguments in terms of numbers, and specifically, in terms of costs. Few IT directors or CEOs know what an OS is or how it matters, but they’re all either former beancounters or guided by beancounters.

Another issue we rarely see addressed is the extreme reach of Microsoft in business computing. The problem is not just bigwigs who mostly don’t know a hypervisor from an email server; the techies who advise them are also a problem. We have personally talked to senior decision-makers and company leaders who know nothing but Windows, who regard Macs as acceptable toys (because they can run MS Office and Outlook and Teams), but who have never used a Linux machine.

There’s a common position that a commodity is only worth what you pay for it, and if you don’t have to pay for it, then it’s worthless. Many people apply this to software, too. If it’s free, it must be worthless.

It’s hard to get through to someone who is totally indifferent to software on technical grounds. When choices of vendors and suppliers are based on erroneous assumptions, challenging those false beliefs is hard.

(We’ve had a few abusive comments and emails from anti-vaxxers following our coverage of Xlibre. They’re wrong, but it’s tricky to challenge the mindset of someone who doesn’t believe in the basic concepts of truth, falsehood, or evidence.)

One way to define “information” is that it is data plus context. We all need contrast and context and comparisons to understand. Any technologist who only knows one company’s technologies and offerings lacks necessary context. In fact, the more context the better. Looking around the IT world today, it would be easy to falsely conclude that Windows NT and various forms of Unix comprise everything there is to know about operating systems. That is deeply and profoundly wrong. Nothing in computing is universal, not even binary; there have been working trinary or ternary computers, and you can go and see a working decimal computer at Bletchley Park.

Lots of important decision-makers believe that Microsoft is simply a given. It is not, but telling them that is not enough. It’s like telling an anti-vaxxer that the Earth is an oblate spheroid and there are no such things as chemtrails. After all, some US legislators want to ban chemtrails, so they must be real, right?

But if you can put a price on false beliefs, and then show that changing those beliefs could reduce risk in a quantifiable way, you can maybe change the minds of IT decision-makers, without needing to tell them that they’re science deniers and the Earth isn’t flat. ®

Source: Security pro counts the cost of Microsoft dependency • The Register

The Blue Screen of Death Is Dead. All hail the black screen of death.

Posted on by

Microsoft’s iconic Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is dead after 40 years. RIP to the most panic-inducing screen a Windows user can encounter. Now, get ready to fear the Black Screen of Death.

In a blog post on its website today, the company revealed it’s ready to go live with an error screen redesign it’s been testing since March. In an update to all Windows 11, version 24H2 devices coming “later this summer,” the BSOD will finally be put out of its misery.

It’s likely to be a bittersweet moment for Windows users, who will undoubtedly have mixed feelings about the warning’s fate. Despite its ominous name, getting a BSOD wasn’t always as serious as it seemed—a simple crash could trigger it, and restarting could easily fix it. It could be worse than that, too, but in many cases, the old BSOD simply added a bit of personality to the most annoying interruptions to your workflow. Especially in recent years, when you would see a sideways frowning emoticon alongside your error message.

But sometimes, personality isn’t what you need, especially when you’re already stressed out about your computer encountering a serious error. Businesses and travelers alike were bombarded with a particularly unsolvable Blue Screen of Death during last year’s extended Crowdstrike outage, so it makes sense why Microsoft might want to move away from any association with it.

Black Screen of Death
Credit: Microsoft

Enter the new Black Screen of Death. Looking more like other Windows error messages, this is a simple black screen that says, in white text, that “Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart.” Below that is a progress counter, alongside your error code and which process triggered it.

“The updated UI improves readability and aligns better with Windows 11 design principles,” Microsoft Vice President of Enterprise and OS Security David Weston said in today’s blog post.

[…]

Source: The Blue Screen of Death Is Dead

TBH the new blue screen was pretty useless. The older one used to give you actual information about the problem and what triggered it.

Join the EU stakeholder consultation on classification of AI systems as high-risk

Posted on by

The EU is asking for feedback on how the AI act classifies and handles high risk AI systems

This consultation is targeted to stakeholders of different categories. These categories include, but are not limited to, providers and deployers of (high-risk) AI systems, other industry organisations, as well as academia, other independent experts, civil society organisations, and public authorities.

[…]

The purpose of the present targeted stakeholder consultation is to collect input from stakeholders on practical examples of AI systems and issues to be clarified in the Commission’s guidelines on the classification of high-risk AI systems and future guidelines on high-risk requirements and obligations, as well as responsibilities along the AI value chain.

As not all questions may be relevant for all stakeholders, respondents may reply only to the section(s) and the questions they would like. Respondents are encouraged to provide explanations and practical cases as a part of their responses to support the practical usefulness of the guidelines.

The targeted consultation is available in English only and will be open for 6 weeks starting on 6 June until 18 July 2025.

Source: EUSurvey – Survey

So if you are at all interested in how AI systems will be allowed to impact your life (also as a consumer!), join in and let the EU know what you think.

A review of the impacts of boredom: A review of the best evidence

Posted on by

Undoubtedly, one of the most important social issues is the discussion of boredom and disillusionment, which is currently observable in many societies, and perhaps many individuals, as well as our loved ones, have encountered it and are seeking treatment to be relieved of it and resolve the crisis. The issue of boredom is a perennial topic that has always been on the list of fundamental human crises from the past to the present, and perhaps in the future as well. This work examines the meaning and concept of boredom, as well as its effects, reasons, treatments, and outcomes. Five articles that have provided accurate insights into explaining and defining the issue have been reviewed, and important questions have been answered that may have occupied individuals’ minds for a long time.

Source: (PDF) A review of the impacts of boredom: A review of the best evidence

What exactly is boredom? And what is it good for? What does it signal to us? What are it’s effects. It turns out that boredom is interesting!

Federal judge sides with Meta in lawsuit over training AI models on copyrighted books, close on Federal judge ruling for Anthropic

Posted on by

A federal judge sided with Meta on Wednesday in a lawsuit brought against the company by 13 book authors, including Sarah Silverman, that alleged the company had illegally trained its AI models on their copyrighted works.

Federal Judge Vince Chhabria issued a summary judgment — meaning the judge was able to decide on the case without sending it to a jury — in favor of Meta, finding that the company’s training of AI models on copyrighted books in this case fell under the “fair use” doctrine of copyright law and thus was legal.

The decision comes just a few days after a federal judge sided with Anthropic in a similar lawsuit. Together, these cases are shaping up to be a win for the tech industry, which has spent years in legal battles with media companies arguing that training AI models on copyrighted works is fair use.

However, these decisions aren’t the sweeping wins some companies hoped for — both judges noted that their cases were limited in scope.

Judge Chhabria made clear that this decision does not mean that all AI model training on copyrighted works is legal, but rather that the plaintiffs in this case “made the wrong arguments” and failed to develop sufficient evidence in support of the right ones.

“This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,” Judge Chhabria said in his decision. Later, he said, “In cases involving uses like Meta’s, it seems like the plaintiffs will often win, at least where those cases have better-developed records on the market effects of the defendant’s use.”

Judge Chhabria ruled that Meta’s use of copyrighted works in this case was transformative — meaning the company’s AI models did not merely reproduce the authors’ books.

Furthermore, the plaintiffs failed to convince the judge that Meta’s copying of the books harmed the market for those authors, which is a key factor in determining whether copyright law has been violated.

“The plaintiffs presented no meaningful evidence on market dilution at all,” said Judge Chhabria.

[…]

Source: Federal judge sides with Meta in lawsuit over training AI models on copyrighted books | TechCrunch

I have covered the Silverman et al case before here several times and it was retarded on all levels, which is why it was thrown out against OpenAI. Most importantly is that this judge and the judge in the Anthropic case rule that AI’s use of ingested works is transformative and not a copy. Just like when you read a book, you can recall bits of it for inspiration, but you don’t (well, most people don’t!) remember word for word what you read.

Vitamin C flips your skin’s “youth genes,” reversing age-related skin thinning

Posted on by

[…] “VC seems to influence the structure and function of epidermis, especially by controlling the growth of epidermal cells. In this study, we investigated whether it promotes cell proliferation and differentiation via epigenetic changes,” explains Dr. Ishigami, while talking about this study.

To investigate how VC affects skin regeneration, the team used human epidermal equivalents, which are laboratory-grown models that closely mimic real human skin. In this model, skin cells are exposed to air on the surface while being nourished from underneath by a liquid nutrient medium, replicating the way human skin receives nutrients from underlying blood vessels while remaining exposed to the external environment.

The researchers used this model and applied VC at 1.0 and 0.1 mM — concentrations comparable to those typically transported from the bloodstream into the epidermis. On assessing its effect, they found that VC-treated skin showed a thicker epidermal cell layer without significantly affecting the stratum corneum (the outer layer composed of dead cells) on day seven. By day 14, the inner layer was even thicker, and the outer layer was found to be thinner, suggesting that VC promotes the formation and division of keratinocytes. Samples treated with VC showed increased cell proliferation, demonstrated by a higher number of Ki-67-positive cells — a protein marker present in the nucleus of actively dividing cells.

Importantly, the study revealed that VC helps skin cells grow by reactivating genes associated with cell proliferation. It does so by promoting the removal of methyl groups from DNA, in a process known as DNA demethylation. When DNA is methylated, methyl groups attach to cytosine bases, which can prevent the DNA from being transcribed or read, thereby suppressing gene activity. Conversely, by promoting DNA demethylation, VC promotes gene expression and helps cells to grow, multiply, and differentiate.

The study suggests that VC supports active DNA demethylation by sustaining the function of TET enzymes (ten-eleven translocation enzymes), which regulate gene activity. These enzymes convert 5-methylcytosine (5-mC) into 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC), a process in which Fe2+ is oxidized to Fe3+. VC helps maintain TET enzyme activity by donating electrons to regenerate Fe2+ from Fe3+, enabling continued DNA demethylation.

The researchers further identified over 10,138 hypomethylated differentially methylated regions in VC-treated skin and observed a 1.6- to 75.2-fold increase in the expression of 12 key proliferation-related genes. When a TET enzyme inhibitor was applied, these effects were reversed, confirming that VC functions through TET-mediated DNA demethylation.

These findings reveal how VC promotes skin renewal by triggering genetic pathways involved in growth and repair. This suggests that VC may be particularly helpful for older adults or those with damaged or thinning skin, boosting the skin’s natural capacity to regenerate and strengthen itself.

“We found that VC helps thicken the skin by encouraging keratinocyte proliferation through DNA demethylation, making it a promising treatment for thinning skin, especially in older adults,” concludes Dr. Ishigami.

This study was supported by grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI: grant number 19K05902.

Source: Vitamin C flips your skin’s “youth genes,” reversing age-related thinning | ScienceDaily

How much you need to take to achieve this effect is however a mystery.

Brain reboot: Gene therapy reverses Alzheimer’s memory loss in mice

Posted on by

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a gene therapy for Alzheimer’s disease that could help protect the brain from damage and preserve cognitive function. Unlike existing treatments for Alzheimer’s that target unhealthy protein deposits in the brain, the new approach could help address the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease by influencing the behavior of brain cells themselves.

Alzheimer’s disease affects millions of people around the world and occurs when abnormal proteins build up in the brain, leading to the death of brain cells and declines in cognitive function and memory. While current treatments can manage symptoms of Alzheimer’s, the new gene therapy aims to halt or even reverse disease progression.

Studying mice, the researchers found that delivering the treatment at the symptomatic stage of the disease preserved hippocampal-dependent memory, a critical aspect of cognitive function that is often impaired in Alzheimer’s patients. Compared to healthy mice of the same age, the treated mice also had a similar pattern of gene expression, suggesting that the treatment has the potential to alter the behavior of diseased cells to restore them to a healthier state.

While further studies will be required to translate these findings into human clinical trials, the gene therapy offers a unique and promising approach to mitigating cognitive decline and promoting brain health.

The study, published in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, was led by senior author Brian Head, Ph.D., professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs research career scientist, and co-senior author Shanshan Wang, M.D. Ph.D., an assistant professor of anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. The gene therapy technology was licensed by UC San Diego to Eikonoklastes Therapeutics in 2021. Eikonoklastes was granted Orphan Drug Designation (ODD) by the FDA for the use of the patented gene therapy in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Source: Brain reboot: Gene therapy reverses Alzheimer’s memory loss in mice | ScienceDaily

PNG is updated! After 20 years, Exif data and animations are possible

Posted on by

PNG is back to its former glory after its progress stalled for over two decades. Did you know the U.S. Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, and the National Archives of Australia recommend PNG? It is important that we keep PNG current and competitive. After 20 years of stagnation, PNG is back with renewed vigor!

What’s new?

Figure 1. Adapted from Wikipedia’s CIE xy 1931 Rec. 2020 and Rec. 709 images under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license.

  • Proper HDR support (future‐proof, too!)

    Figure 1 shows the colors our eyes can see.
    The smaller, inner triangle represents the color space of most images.
    The larger, outer triangle represents the colors that are typical with a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image.

    This new HDR support uses only 4 bytes (plus the usual PNG chunk overhead).

    Chris Lilley—one of PNG’s original co‐authors and current Technical Director contributing to the new PNG work—wrote an excellent article explaining how this works.

  • Finally recognizes APNGs (animations!)

    Animated PNGs were proposed by Mozilla quite some time ago. Support was added to Firefox, but other programs hesitated to adopt them.

    Today, animated PNGs are widely supported. It is time for the spec to reflect reality.

  • Officially supports Exif data

    Exif stores additional information such as copyright information and even camera lens and GPS location of a photograph.

  • General tidying up—fixing errata, clarifications, etc.

[…]

Source: PNG is back!

Cisco fixes two critical make-me-root bugs

Posted on by

Cisco has dropped patches for a pair of critical vulnerabilities that could allow unauthenticated remote attackers to execute code on vulnerable systems.

Tracked as CVE-2025-20281 and CVE-2025-20282, Cisco assigned them both maximum 10/10 severity ratings, although the former was reduced to 9.8 by the National Vulnerability Database.

Both bugs affect Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC), allowing attackers to execute code on the underlying OS as root.

Put simply, it means they are both about as bad as they come.

ISE is a network access control solution, which can be found running on secure network servers, VMs, and some cloud instances.

ISE-PIC is used in the user authentication process, passively gathering up identity data and feeding it into other security tools.

Cisco said the two vulnerabilities are independent – they can be exploited individually, and exploiting one is not a requirement for exploiting the other.

[…]

Source: Cisco fixes two critical make-me-root bugs • The Register

Swarms of tiny nose robots could clear infected sinuses and more, researchers say

Posted on by

Swarms of tiny robots, each no larger than a speck of dust, could be deployed to cure stubborn infected sinuses before being blown out through the nose into a tissue, researchers have claimed.

The micro-robots are a fraction of the width of a human hair and have been inserted successfully into animal sinuses in pre-clinical trials by researchers at universities in China and Hong Kong.

Swarms are injected into the sinus cavity via a duct threaded through the nostril and guided to their target by electromagnetism, where they can be made to heat up and catalyse chemical reactions to wipe out bacterial infections. There are hopes the precisely targeted technology could eventually reduce reliance on antibiotics and other generalised medicines.

The tiny devices are part of the expanding field of micro- and nano-robots for use in medicine. They have also been developed to deliver drugs and to remove bacteria from medical implants such as stents and hernia meshes.

Experts believe they could be in clinical use for treating infections in bladders, intestines and sinuses in five to 10 years. Scientists in China, Switzerland, the US and the UK are developing more sophisticated versions capable of moving through the bloodstream.

The latest development came from a collaboration of academics at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, and universities in Guangxi, Shenzhen, Jiangsu, Yangzhou and Macau.

Researchers in the emerging field acknowledge risks include some of the tiny micro-robots being left behind after treatment which could cause longer-term side effects.

[…]

The study, published in Science Robotics, showed the robots were capable of eradicating bacteria from pig sinuses and could clear infections in live rabbits with “no obvious tissue damage”.

The researchers have produced a model of how the technology could work on a human being, with the robot swarms being deployed in operating theatre conditions, allowing doctors to see their progress by using X-rays. Future applications could include tackling bacterial infections of the respiratory tract, stomach, intestine, bladder and urethra, they suggested.

“Our proposed micro-robotic therapeutic platform offers the advantages of non-invasiveness, minimal resistance, and drug-free intervention,” they said.

[…]

Source: Swarms of tiny nose robots could clear infected sinuses, researchers say | Medical research | The Guardian

HDMI 2.2 is here with new ‘Ultra96’ Cables — up to 16K resolution, higher maximum 96 Gbps bandwidth than DisplayPort, backwards compatibility & more

Posted on by

The HDMI Forum has officially finalized HDMI 2.2, the next generation of the video standard, rolling out to devices throughout the rest of this year. We already saw a bunch of key announcements at CES in January, but now that the full spec is here, it’s confirmed that HDMI 2.2 will eclipse DisplayPort in maximum bandwidth support thanks to the new Ultra96 cables.

What the heck is an “Ultra96” cable?

The key improvement with HDMI 2.2 over its predecessor, HDMI 2.1, is the bump in bandwidth from 48 GB/s to 96 GB/s. In order to ensure a consistent experience across all HDMI 2.2 devices, you’ll be seeing new HDMI cables with an “Ultra96” label denoting the aforementioned transfer rate capability. These cables will be certified by the HDMI Forum with clear branding that should make them easy to identify.

HDMI 2.2 Bandwidth

(Image credit: HDMI Forum)

This new bandwidth unlocks 16K resolution support at 60 Hz and 12K at 120 Hz, but with chroma subsampling. That being said, you can expect 4K 240 Hz at up to 12-bit color depth without any compression. DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR 20 was the first to do this with some monitors already available on the market, but that standard is limited to only 80 GB/s and HDMI 2.2 edges it by just a bit, which allows for even uncompressed 8K at 60 Hz.

It’s important to keep in mind that only cables explicitly labeled Ultra96 can allow for all this video goodness. As always, the HDMI Forum will allow manufacturers to make the claim that their devices are HDMI 2.2 compliant, but without actually enforcing the bandwidth rule. Therefore, it’s important to look for the Ultra96 label so you know you’re getting the real deal.

How to identify an Ultra96 HDMI cable

(Image credit: HDMI Forum)

Thankfully, though, if you don’t care about the super high resolutions or frame rates, HDMI 2.2 will be backwards compatible. That means you can use the new cables with older ports (or new ports with older cables) and get the lowest common denominator experience.

[…]

Apart from backwards compatibility, HDMI 2.2 will bring another comfort feature called “Latency Indication Protocol” (LIP) that will help with syncing audio and video together. This only really matters for large, complicated home theater setups incorporating a lot of speaker channels with receivers and projectors (or screens). If you’re part of the crowd, expect reduced lip-sync issues across the board.

[…]

Source: HDMI 2.2 is here with new ‘Ultra96’ Cables — up to 16K resolution, higher maximum 96 Gbps bandwidth than DisplayPort, backwards compatibility & more | Tom’s Hardware

Google to Gemini Users: We’re Going to Look at Your Texts Whether You Like It or Not

Posted on by

[…]As highlighted in a Reddit post, Google recently sent out an email to some Android users informing them that Gemini will now be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” That change, according to the email, will take place on July 7. In short, that sounds—at least on the surface—like whether you have opted in or out, Gemini has access to all of those very critical apps on your device.

Google email about Gemini privacy.
© Reddit / Screenshot by Gizmodo

Google continues in the email, which was screenshotted by Android Police, by stating that “if you don’t want to use these features, you can turn them off in Apps settings page,” but doesn’t elaborate on where to find that page or what exactly will be disabled if you avail yourself of that setting option. Notably, when App Activity is enabled, Google stores information on your Gemini usage (inputs and responses, for example) for up to 72 hours, and some of that data may actually be reviewed by a human. That’s all to say that enabling Gemini access to those critical apps by default may be a bridge too far for some who are worried about protecting their privacy or wary of AI in general.

[…]

The worst part is, if we’re not careful, all of that information might end up being collected without our consent, or at least without our knowledge. I don’t know about you, but as much as I want AI to order me a cab, I think keeping my text messages private is a higher priority.

Source: Google to Gemini Users: We’re Going to Look at Your Texts Whether You Like It or Not

UK doesn’t learn lesson, buys more lemon F-35s to Go Nuclear With – is the US blackmailing it?

Posted on by

After years of speculation, the United Kingdom has finally announced it will buy conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) F-35A stealth fighters to operate alongside the short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B models it already uses. The F-35A offers a number of advantages over the F-35B, but the U.K. Ministry of Defense specifically highlights its ability to join the NATO nuclear mission, which would see the jets armed with U.S.-owned B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs. However, the British will initially only buy a dozen F-35As, and the Royal Air Force notes that these will be assigned to a training unit and will primarily be used in that role.

[…]

Earlier this month, a Strategic Defense Review, published by the U.K. Ministry of Defense, had suggested that the future Lightning Force could comprise a mix of F-35As and F-35Bs. The F-35A, of course, is unable to operate from aircraft carriers, but such a mix could be adopted “according to military requirements to provide greater value for money.”

Now, nuclear strike is one of those official “military requirements.”

Currently, the United Kingdom relies exclusively on a submarine-based nuclear deterrent, based around Trident II D5 missiles.

[…]

The new F-35As will be based at RAF Marham, in eastern England, a base that was previously used for the nuclear strike role by Tornados armed with WE.177.

[…]

“Day-to-day, the F-35As will be used in a training role on 207 Squadron, the Operational Conversion Unit (OCU),” the Royal Air Force says. “As the F-35A carries more fuel than the F-35B variant, it can stay airborne for longer, extending the available training time in each sortie for student pilots. As F-35As also require fewer maintenance hours, there will be increased aircraft availability on the OCU. These factors combined will improve pilot training and reduce the amount of time for pilots to reach the frontline squadrons.”

Of course, a pilot can’t use the F-35A to train for STOVL missions, but the tradeoff should be more F-35Bs available to deploy aboard the two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.

[…]

In the meantime, the United Kingdom faces a growing problem of supporting U.S.-origin military aircraft — E-7 Wedgetail, P-8 Poseidon, RC-135W Rivet Joint, and now the F-35A — with a fleet of Voyager tankers that don’t have refueling booms.

[…]

As it stands, a fleet of just 12 jets adds another type with some different maintenance and infrastructure requirements, and a relatively low availability rate, at least historically. At the same time, the training that it offers is not 1:1 for the STOVL F-35B, and it is questionable whether it will save money in the long run.

[…]

the decision to buy the F-35A could have repercussions on the future of the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP), the future air combat initiative at the heart of which is the Tempest crewed stealth fighter.

[…]

Source: Royal Air Force Goes Nuclear With F-35A

A great choice (not) considering the US can kill F-35 operations pretty quickly by stopping supply lines, which they may do if they decide they don’t like the UK doing certain things (eg helping the Ukraine vs Russia). And then there is the fact that the TR3 built F-35s (all of them built in the last 1.5 years) can only be used in a training role due to deeply rooted problems – so not operationally (which is probably why these things will only be used in the training role). With the US being a fickle ally and the need for Europe to re-arm this smacks of US blackmailing in order to get the UK to buy a shitty and hugely expensive weapons system, that will come at a cost to the EU / UK defence industry and sovereign abilities.

Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors’ copyright lawsuit, but should only have used legally bought books.

Posted on by
A federal judge in San Francisco ruled late on Monday that Anthropic’s use of books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system was legal under U.S. copyright law.
Siding with tech companies on a pivotal question for the AI industry, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Anthropic made “fair use”
, opens new tab of books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson to train its Claude large language model.
Sign up here.
Alsup also said, however, that Anthropic’s copying and storage of more than 7 million pirated books in a “central library” infringed the authors’ copyrights and was not fair use. The judge has ordered a trial in December to determine how much Anthropic owes for the infringement.
U.S. copyright law says that willful copyright infringement can justify statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work.
An Anthropic spokesperson said the company was pleased that the court recognized its AI training was “transformative” and “consistent with copyright’s purpose in enabling creativity and fostering scientific progress.”
The writers filed the proposed class action against Anthropic last year, arguing that the company, which is backed by Amazon (AMZN.O) and Alphabet (GOOGL.O), used pirated versions of their books without permission or compensation to teach Claude to respond to human prompts.
The proposed class action is one of several lawsuits brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright owners against companies including OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Meta Platforms (META.O) over their AI training.
The doctrine of fair use allows the use of copyrighted works without the copyright owner’s permission in some circumstances.
Fair use is a key legal defense for the tech companies, and Alsup’s decision is the first to address it in the context of generative AI.
AI companies argue their systems make fair use of copyrighted material to create new, transformative content, and that being forced to pay copyright holders for their work could hamstring the burgeoning AI industry.
Anthropic told the court that it made fair use of the books and that U.S. copyright law “not only allows, but encourages” its AI training because it promotes human creativity. The company said its system copied the books to “study Plaintiffs’ writing, extract uncopyrightable information from it, and use what it learned to create revolutionary technology.”
Copyright owners say that AI companies are unlawfully copying their work to generate competing content that threatens their livelihoods.
Alsup agreed with Anthropic on Monday that its training was “exceedingly transformative.”
“Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,” Alsup said.
Alsup also said, however, that Anthropic violated the authors’ rights by saving pirated copies of their books as part of a “central library of all the books in the world” that would not necessarily be used for AI training.
Anthropic and other prominent AI companies including OpenAI and Meta Platforms have been accused of downloading pirated digital copies of millions of books to train their systems.
Anthropic had told Alsup in a court filing that the source of its books was irrelevant to fair use.
“This order doubts that any accused infringer could ever meet its burden of explaining why downloading source copies from pirate sites that it could have purchased or otherwise accessed lawfully was itself reasonably necessary to any subsequent fair use,” Alsup said on Monday.

Source: Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors’ copyright lawsuit | Reuters

This makes sense to me. The training itself is much like any person reading a book and using that as inspiration. It does not copy it. And any reader should have bought (or borrowed) the book. Why Anthropic apparently used pirated copies and why they kept a seperate library of the books is beyond me .

Judge Denies Creating ‘Mass Surveillance Program’ Harming All ChatGPT Users after ordering all chats (including “deleted” ones) be kept indefinitely

Posted on by

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After a court ordered OpenAI to “indefinitely” retain all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats, of millions of users, two panicked users tried and failed to intervene. The order sought to preserve potential evidence in a copyright infringement lawsuit raised by news organizations. In May, Judge Ona Wang, who drafted the order, rejected the first user’s request (PDF) on behalf of his company simply because the company should have hired a lawyer to draft the filing. But more recently, Wang rejected (PDF) a second claim from another ChatGPT user, and that order went into greater detail, revealing how the judge is considering opposition to the order ahead of oral arguments this week, which were urgently requested by OpenAI.

The second request (PDF) to intervene came from a ChatGPT user named Aidan Hunt, who said that he uses ChatGPT “from time to time,” occasionally sending OpenAI “highly sensitive personal and commercial information in the course of using the service.” In his filing, Hunt alleged that Wang’s preservation order created a “nationwide mass surveillance program” affecting and potentially harming “all ChatGPT users,” who received no warning that their deleted and anonymous chats were suddenly being retained. He warned that the order limiting retention to just ChatGPT outputs carried the same risks as including user inputs, since outputs “inherently reveal, and often explicitly restate, the input questions or topics input.”

Hunt claimed that he only learned that ChatGPT was retaining this information — despite policies specifying they would not — by stumbling upon the news in an online forum. Feeling that his Fourth Amendment and due process rights were being infringed, Hunt sought to influence the court’s decision and proposed a motion to vacate the order that said Wang’s “order effectively requires Defendants to implement a mass surveillance program affecting all ChatGPT users.” […] OpenAI will have a chance to defend panicked users on June 26, when Wang hears oral arguments over the ChatGPT maker’s concerns about the preservation order. In his filing, Hunt explained that among his worst fears is that the order will not be blocked and that chat data will be disclosed to news plaintiffs who may be motivated to publicly disseminate the deleted chats. That could happen if news organizations find evidence of deleted chats they say are likely to contain user attempts to generate full news articles.

Wang suggested that there is no risk at this time since no chat data has yet been disclosed to the news organizations. That could mean that ChatGPT users may have better luck intervening after chat data is shared, should OpenAI’s fight to block the order this week fail. But that’s likely no comfort to users like Hunt, who worry that OpenAI merely retaining the data — even if it’s never shared with news organizations — could cause severe and irreparable harms. Some users appear to be questioning how hard OpenAI will fight. In particular, Hunt is worried that OpenAI may not prioritize defending users’ privacy if other concerns — like “financial costs of the case, desire for a quick resolution, and avoiding reputational damage” — are deemed more important, his filing said.

Source: Judge Denies Creating ‘Mass Surveillance Program’ Harming All ChatGPT Users

NB you would be pretty dense to think that anything you put into an externally hosted GPT would not be kept and used by that company for AI training and other analysis, so it’s not surprising that this data could be (and will be) requisitioned by other corporations and of course governments.

Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol

Posted on by

Bacteria can be used to turn plastic waste into painkillers, researchers have found, opening up the possibility of a more sustainable process for producing the drugs.

Chemists have discovered E coli can be used to create paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, from a material produced in the laboratory from plastic bottles.

“People don’t realise that paracetamol comes from oil currently,” said Prof Stephen Wallace, the lead author of the research from the University of Edinburgh. “What this technology shows is that by merging chemistry and biology in this way for the first time, we can make paracetamol more sustainably and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time.”

Writing in the journal Nature Chemistry, Wallace and colleagues report how they discovered that a type of chemical reaction called a Lossen rearrangement, a process that has never been seen in nature, was biocompatible. In other words, it could be carried out in the presence of living cells without harming them.

The team made their discovery when they took polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – a type of plastic often found in food packaging and bottles – and, using sustainable chemical methods, converted it into a new material.

When the researchers incubated this material with a harmless strain of E coli they found it was converted into another substance known as Paba in a process that must have involved a Lossen rearrangement.

Crucially, while the Lossen rearrangement typically involves harsh laboratory conditions, it occurred spontaneously in the presence of the E coli, with the researchers discovering it was catalysed by phosphate within the cells themselves.

The team add that Paba is an essential substance that bacteria need for growth, in particular the synthesis of DNA, and is usually made within the cell from other substances. However, the E coli used in the experiments was genetically modified to block these pathways, meaning the bacteria had to use the PET-based material.

The researchers say the results are exciting as they suggest plastic waste can be converted into biological material.

“It is a way to just completely hoover up plastic waste,” said Wallace.

The researchers then genetically modified the E coli further, inserting two genes – one from mushrooms and one from soil bacteria – that enabled the bacteria to convert PABA into paracetamol.

The team say that by using this form of E coli they were able to turn the PET-based starting material into paracetamol in under 24 hours, with low emissions and a yield of up to 92%.

While further work would be needed to produce paracetamol in this way at commercial levels, the results could have a practical application.

“It enables, for the first time, a pathway from plastic waste to paracetamol, which is not possible using biology alone, and it’s not possible using chemistry alone,” Wallace said.

Source: Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol | Drugs | The Guardian