Author Archives: Robin Edgar

About Robin Edgar

Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft

Surprise: EV batteries might have a longer shelf live than once thought

Posted on by

[…]

new research suggests these batteries, once thought to have short-lived, inherently  expendable shelf-lives, may actually last significantly longer than expected. In some cases, properly cared for EVs may even outlive their fossil fuel counterparts. That’s potentially good news: longer-lasting EVs might buy manufacturers much-need time to fabricate components needed to meet increasing global demands.

The new findings, published today in the journal Nature Energy by researchers from the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center, suggest EV batteries may actually last about a third longer than previous forecasts. That means drivers could potentially keep driving their modern EV without replacing the battery for several additional years. The researchers note the shocking disparity in battery life estimates stems from fundamentally unrealistic testing environments that became an industry standard. When the researchers tested batteries for two years in ways they say are more closely aligned with how drivers actually use EVs day-to-day, the battery life expectancy improved significantly.

“We’ve not been testing EV batteries the right way,” Stanford associate professor and paper senior author Simona Onori said in a statement. “To our surprise, real driving with frequent acceleration, braking that charges the batteries a bit, stopping to pop into a store, and letting the batteries rest for hours at a time, helps batteries last longer than we had thought based on industry standard lab tests.”

SLAC-Stanford Battery Center states on its website that its ultimate goal is to “accelerate the deployment of battery and energy storage technologies at scale,” in an effort to address climate change. The research paper was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the Stanford Chevron Fellowship in Energy.

Related: [ ‘Everything has a cost:’ High-tech products and the new era of mineral mining ]

More ‘realistic’ driving led to less battery degradation

Researchers tested 92 commercial lithium ion EV batteries over two years across four different types of driving profiles. The industry standard approach uses a “constant rate of [battery] discharge” followed immediately by a recharge. In the real world, this would look like someone driving their vehicle until the battery is almost fully diminished and then plugging it in to charge completely. This process of constant battery expenditure and recharging resembles how most people use a smartphone.

Stanford school of engineering PhD student and paper coauthor Alexis Geslin told Popular Science these “constant current rates” were adopted as the testing default because it generally requires simpler hardware and is easier to implement for the lab user.

But that’s not how many drivers actually use their vehicles. EV owners, the researchers note, who drive their vehicle in short bursts to and from work or around town, may go several days or even a week without recharging. The researchers attempted to represent that more realistic, periodic driving method in one of the driving profiles. In the end, the more realistic profile resulted in an increased battery lifetime by up to 38%.

“This work illustrates the importance of testing batteries under realistic conditions of use and challenges the broadly adopted convention of constant current discharge in the laboratory,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

The findings similarly seem to contradict commonly held assumptions about what types of driving quickly degrades batteries. Though many drivers believe rapidly accelerating and braking degrades EV batteries faster than steady driving, the researchers found a correlation in their data suggesting sharp, short accelerations may actually lead to slower battery degradation. Pressing down hard on pedals with a lead foot didn’t seem to speed up battery aging. It may have actually had the opposite effect.

[…]

Source: Surprise: EV batteries might have a longer shelf live than once thought | Popular Science

Judge rejects The Onion’s bid for Infowars, changes the rules after the game is played

Posted on by

A US bankruptcy court has blocked the sale of Infowars to parody news site The Onion, ruling that the auction didn’t yield the best potential bids. At the same time, judge Christopher Lopez rejected claims by Infowars‘ owner, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, that any “collusion” was involved in the case.

The Onion reportedly outbid competitor First American United Companies, affiliated with a Jones business, for the rights to the site. Though its cash offer was lower, The Onion valued it at $7 million because Sandy Hook families would allow some of the proceeds to be distributed to other creditors.

However, the appeals judge said that the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee made a “good-faith error” by requesting final offers instead of allowing back-and-forth bidding between The Onion and First American. “This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody,” Lopez said. “It’s clear the trustee left the potential for a lot of money on the table.”

Now, the trustee must work to resolve some of the disputes between creditors before making another attempt to sell Infowars. The trustee, Christopher Murray, said that First American only complained about the process after losing the bid.

Alex Jones was found liable in 2022 for nearly $1.5 billion in damages for spreading conspiracy theories about the 2012 shooting that killed 20 children and six adult staffers. One of the assets put up for sale was Jones’ Infowars site, and The Onion said it received the blessing of the families of the victims to acquire the site. It reportedly planned to transform the site into one with “noticeably less hateful disinformation,” and a gun safety nonprofit reportedly planned to advertise on the rebooted site. Last week, X said that The Onion wouldn’t be given Alex Jones’ Infowars X accounts, opening up a new can of worms about who owns social media handles.

Source: Judge rejects The Onion’s bid for Infowars

300 Artists Back Internet Archive in $621 Million Copyright Attack from Record Labels – over music older than the 1950s

Posted on by

[…]300-plus musicians who have signed an open letter supporting the Internet Archive as it faces a $621 million copyright infringement lawsuit over its efforts to preserve 78 rpm records.

The letter, spearheaded by the digital advocacy group Fight for the Future, states that the signatories “wholeheartedly oppose” the lawsuit, which they suggest benefits “shareholder profits” more than actual artists. It continues: “We don’t believe that the Internet Archive should be destroyed in our name. The biggest players of our industry clearly need better ideas for supporting us, the artists, and in this letter we are offering them.”

[…]

(The full letter, and a list of signatories, is here.)

The lawsuit was brought last year by several major music rights holders, led by Universal Music Group and Sony Music. They claimed the Internet Archive’s Great 78 Project — an unprecedented effort to digitize hundreds of thousands of obsolete shellac discs produced between the 1890s and early 1950s — constituted the “wholesale theft of generations of music,” with “preservation and research” used as a “smokescreen.” (The Archive has denied the claims.)

While more than 400,000 recordings have been digitized and made available to listen to on the Great 78 Project, the lawsuit focuses on about 4,000, most by recognizable legacy acts like Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Ella Fitzgerald. With the maximum penalty for statutory damages at $150,000 per infringing incident, the lawsuit has a potential price tag of over $621 million. A broad enough judgement could end the Internet Archive.

Supporters of the suit — including the estates of many of the legacy artists whose recordings are involved — claim the Archive is doing nothing more than reproducing and distributing copyrighted works, making it a clear-cut case of infringement. The Archive, meanwhile, has always billed itself as a research library (albeit a digital one), and its supporters see the suit (as well as a similar one brought by book publishers) as an attack on preservation efforts, as well as public access to the cultural record.

[…]

“Musicians are struggling, but libraries like the Internet Archive are not our problem! Corporations like Spotify, Apple, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are our problem. If labels really wanted to help musicians, they would be working to raise streaming rates. This lawsuit is just another profit-grab.”

Tommy Cappel, who co-founded the group Beats Antique, says the Archive is “hugely valued in the music community” for its preservation of everything from rare recordings to live sets. “This is important work that deserves to continue for generations to come, and we don’t want to see everything they’ve already done for musicians and our legacy erased,” he added. “Major labels could see all musicians, past and present, as partners — instead of being the bad guy in this dynamic. They should drop their suit. Archives keep us alive.”

Rather than suing the Archive, Fight for the Future’s letter calls on labels, streaming services, ticketing outlets, and venues to align on different goals. At the top of the list is boosting preservation efforts by partnering with “valuable cultural stewards like the Internet Archive.” They also call for greater investment in working musicians through more transparency in in ticketing practices, an end to venue merch cuts, and fair streaming compensation.

[…]

Source: Kathleen Hanna, Tegan and Sara, More Back Internet Archive in $621 Million Copyright Fight

How is it possible that there is still income generated from something released in the 1950s to people who had absolutely nothing to do with the creation and don’t put in any effort whatsoever to put out the content?

EA makes photosensitivity and speech recognition tech patents open-source, adding to a pile of accessibility patents already there

Posted on by

In 2021, EA made a pledge to let the wider game industry use its accessibility-related patents at no cost, and now the publisher has added 23 new patents to its lineup.

As of today, third parties can freely use patented technology such as improved speech recognition, simplified speech tech in games, and the ability to create more personalized speech. The broad aim is for this tech to assist players with speech disabilities or those who need help verbally expressing themselves.

For developers, EA suggests they could use this technology to “make it possible for those players’ speech to be more effectively recognized and reflected in-game in a way that is representative of their age, emotion, language and speaking style.”

Another patent highlighted is an internal plugin for Unreal Engine 5 that enables in-engine use of EA’s previously open-sourced photosensitivity analysis tech, IRIS. The plugin now allows developers to catch potential photosensitivity issues in-engine and real-time as they run their games.

“The sooner you start testing, the sooner you find potential issues,” said IRIS engineer Blanca Macazaga Zuaz. According to her, not many free or easy-to-use tools for photosensitivity analysis were available prior to IRIS. The free access takes down two barriers with one stone, which she called an “incredible feeling.”

Previously, the Madden and Dragon Age publisher made technologies like Apex Legends’ ping system and voice controls for NPCs free-use. The decision is all the more notable, as the industry’s accessibility strides have mainly concerned controllers or options in specific games, such as colorblind modes and skipping puzzles.

Kerry Hopkins, EA’s SVP of global affairs, explained this new batch of open-source patents “encourages the industry to work together to make video games more inclusive by removing unintended barriers to access.”

Along with the patents, EA said its PQI team is running accessible design workshops, and expanding its testing capabilities “to ensure we are always designing with accessibility in mind. More to come soon!”

You can see EA’s newly updated crop of free-use accessibility patents here.

Source: EA makes photosensitivity and speech recognition tech patents open-source

A new way to entangle Particles from a distance

Posted on by

[…] Traditionally, entanglement is achieved through local interactions or via entanglement swapping, where entanglement at a distance is generated through previously established entanglement and Bell-state measurements. However, the precise requirements enabling the generation of quantum entanglement without traditional local interactions remain less explored. Here, we demonstrate that independent particles can be entangled without the need for direct interaction, prior established entanglement, or Bell-state measurements, by exploiting the indistinguishability of the origins of photon pairs. Our demonstrations challenge the long-standing belief that the prior generation and measurement of entanglement are necessary prerequisites for generating entanglement between independent particles that do not share a common past. In addition to its foundational interest, we show that this technique might lower the resource requirements in quantum networks, by reducing the complexity of photon sources and the overhead photon numbers.

Source: Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 233601 (2024) – Entangling Independent Particles by Path Identity

the PDF

Krenn Research Grou

IBM develops fast Chips with light signals

Posted on by

An optical fibre technology can help chips communicate with each other at the speed of light, enabling them to transmit 80 times as much information as they could using traditional electrical connections. That could significantly speed up the training times required for large artificial intelligence models – from months to weeks – while also reducing the energy and emissions costs for data centres.

Most advanced computer chips still communicate using electrical signals carried over copper wires. But as the tech industry races to train large AI models – a process that requires networks of AI superchips to transfer huge amounts of data – companies are eager to link chips using the light-speed communication of fibre optics.

[…]

Khare and his colleagues have developed an optics module that would enable chipmakers to add six times as many optical fibres to the edge of a chip, compared to current technologies. The module uses a structure called an optical waveguide to connect as many as 51 optical fibres per millimetre. It also prevents light signals from one fibre from interfering with its neighbours.

[…]

IBM has already put the optical module through stress tests that included high humidity and temperatures ranging from -40°C (-40°F) to 125°C (257°F). Hutcheson expects that major semiconductor manufacturing companies may be interested in licensing the technology.

[…]

Source: Chips linked with light could train AI faster while using less energy | New Scientist

Scientists Built a Tiny DNA ‘Hand’ That Grabs Viruses to Stop Infections

Posted on by

Imagine if scientists could grab virus particles the same way we pick up a tennis ball or a clementine, and prevent them from infecting cells. Well, scientists in Illinois have built a microscopic four-fingered hand to do just that.

A team of scientists, led by Xing Wang of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has created a tiny hand, dubbed the NanoGripper, from a single piece of folded DNA that can grab covid-19 particles. Their findings, detailed in a November 27 study published in the journal Science Robotics, demonstrate that the hand can conduct a rapid test to identify the virus as well as prevent the particles from infecting healthy cells. Although the study focused specifically on the covid-19 virus, the results have important implications for numerous medical conditions.

“We wanted to make a soft material, nanoscale robot with grabbing functions that never have been seen before, to interact with cells, viruses and other molecules for biomedical applications,” Wang said in a university statement. “We are using DNA for its structural properties. It is strong, flexible and programmable. Yet even in the DNA origami field, this is novel in terms of the design principle. We fold one long strand of DNA back and forth to make all of the elements, both the static and moving pieces, in one step.”

a NanoGripper hand and its components
A NanoGripper hand and its components. © Xing Wang

The NanoGripper has four jointed fingers and a palm. The fingers are programmed to attach to specific targets—in the case of covid-19, the virus’ infamous spike protein—and close their grip around them. According to the study, when the researchers exposed cells with NanoGrippers to covid-19, the hands’ gripping mechanisms prevented the viral spike proteins from infecting the cells.

“It would be very difficult to apply it after a person is infected, but there’s a way we could use it as a preventive therapeutic,” Wang explained. “We could make an anti-viral nasal spray compound. The nose is the hot spot for respiratory viruses, like covid or influenza. A nasal spray with the NanoGripper could prevent inhaled viruses from interacting with the cells in the nose.”

The hand is also decked with a unique sensor that detects covid-19 in 30 minutes with the accuracy of the now-familiar qPCR molecular tests used in hospitals.

“When the virus is held in the NanoGripper’s hand, a fluorescent molecule is triggered to release light when illuminated by an LED or laser,” said Brian Cunningham, one of Wang’s colleagues on the study, also from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “When a large number of fluorescent molecules are concentrated upon a single virus, it becomes bright enough in our detection system to count each virus individually.”

Like a true Swiss army knife, scientists could modify the NanoGripper to potentially detect and grab other viruses, including HIV, influenza, or hepatitis B, as detailed in the study. The NanoGripper’s “wrist side” could also attach to another biomedical tool for additional functions, such as targeted drug delivery.

Wang, however, is thinking even bigger than viruses: cancer. The fingers could be programmed to target cancer cells the same way they currently identify covid-19’s spike proteins, and then deliver focused cancer-fighting treatments.

A Nanogripper's Applications
An artistic rendering of the NanoGripper’s potential applications. © Xing Wang

“Of course it would require a lot of testing, but the potential applications for cancer treatment and the sensitivity achieved for diagnostic applications showcase the power of soft nanorobotics,” Wang concluded.

Here’s to hoping NanoGrippers might give scientists the ability to grab the next pandemic by the nanoballs.

Source: Scientists Built a Tiny DNA ‘Hand’ That Grabs Viruses to Stop Infections

I am very curious how the detection and delivery are programmed.

Boffins build diamond battery that lasts millennia

Posted on by

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the University of Bristol have built a diamond battery capable of delivering power, albeit a tiny amount, for thousands of years.

The university had an idea for a battery powered by carbon-14, the longest-lived radioactive isotope of carbon with a half-life of around 5,700 years. For safety reasons, they wanted to encapsulate it in synthetic diamond so there was no risk of human harm, and so went to the UKAEA for help.

The result is a microwatt-level battery around the same diameter as a standard lithium-ion coin battery, albeit much thinner, as shown below. As the carbon-14 decays, the electrons produced are focused by the diamond shell and can be used to power devices – if they only require very little power, of course.

“This is about UK innovation and no one’s ever done this before,” said Professor Tom Scott, professor in materials at the University of Bristol. “We can offer a technology where you never have to replace the battery because the battery will literally, on human timescales, last forever.”

Working together, the team built a plasma deposition system at UKAEA’s Culham Campus. This lays down thin layers of synthetic diamond around the battery’s carbon-14 heart. The team is now trying to scale up the machinery so that larger batteries can be developed.

“Diamond batteries offer a safe, sustainable way to provide continuous microwatt levels of power. They are an emerging technology that uses a manufactured diamond to safely encase small amounts of carbon-14,” said Sarah Clark, director of Tritium Fuel Cycle at UKAEA.

The first use case for the technology would be extreme environments like powering small satellites (the European Space Agency funded some of the research) or sensors on the sea floor. But the team also envisaged the technology being implanted in humans to power devices such as pacemakers or cochlear implants that could receive power for longer than the human carrying them would need. ®

Source: Boffins build diamond battery that lasts millennia • The Register

Chinese scammers, criminals and businesses are exploiting its surveillance state

Posted on by

Chinese tech company employees and government workers are siphoning off user data and selling it online – and even high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials and FBI-wanted hackers’ sensitive information is being peddled by the Middle Kingdom’s thriving illegal data ecosystem.

“While Western cybercrime research focuses heavily on criminals in the English- and Russian-speaking worlds, there is also a large community of Chinese-speaking cybercriminals who engage in scammy, low-level, financially motivated cybercrime,” SpyCloud senior security researcher Kyla Cardona said during a talk at last month’s Cyberwarcon in Arlington, Virginia.

It’s no secret that President Xi Jinping’s government uses technology companies to help maintain the nation’s massive surveillance apparatus.

But in addition to forcing businesses operating in China to stockpile and hand over info about their users for censorship and state-snooping purposes, a black market for individuals’ sensitive data is also booming. Corporate and government insiders have access to this harvested private info, and the financial incentives to sell the data to fraudsters and crooks to exploit.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Cardona told The Register during an interview alongside SpyCloud infosec researcher Aurora Johnson.

“The data is being collected by rich and powerful people that control technology companies and work in the government, but it can also be used against them in all of these scams and fraud and other low-level crimes,” Johnson added.

China’s thriving data black market

To get their hands on the personal info, Chinese data brokers often recruit shady insiders with wanted ads seeking “friends” working in government, and promise daily income of 20,000 to 70,000 yuan ($2,700 and $9,700) in exchange for harvested information. This data is then used to pull off scams, fraud, and suchlike.

Some of these data brokers also claim to have “signed formal contracts” with the big three Chinese telecom companies: China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. The brokers’ marketing materials tout they are able to legally obtain and sell details of people’s internet habits via the Chinese telcos’ deep packet inspection systems, which monitor as well as manage and store network traffic. (The West has also seen this kind of thing.)

Crucially, this level of surveillance by the telcos gives their employees access to users’ browsing data and other info, which workers can then swipe and then resell themselves through various brokers, Cardona and Johnson said.

Scammers and other criminals are buying copies of this personal information, illicitly obtained or otherwise, for their swindles, but it’s also being purchased by legitimate businesses for sales leads — to sell people car insurance when theirs is about to expire, for example.

Information acquired through DPI also seems to be a major source of the stolen personal details that goes into the so-called “social engineering databases,” or SGKs (short for shegong ku​), according to the researchers.

In addition to amassing information collected from DPI, these databases contain personal details provided by underhand software development kits (SDKs) buried in apps and other programs, which basically spy on users in real time, as well as records stolen during IT security breaches.

SGK records include personal profiles (names, genders, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, email and social media account details, zodiac signs), bank account and other financial information, health records, property and vehicle information, facial recognition scans and photos, criminal case details, and more. Some of the SGK platforms allow users to do reverse lookups on potential targets, allowing someone to be ultimately identified from their otherwise non-identifying details.

[…]

One SGK that has since been taken down had more than 3 million users. As of now, one of the biggest stolen-info databases has 317,000 subscribers, we’re told, while most of the search services each see about 90,000 users per month.

[…]

One also displayed a ton of sensitive details belonging to a high-ranking CCP member.

​A free SGK search query about this individual pulled up the person’s name, physical address, mobile number, national ID number, birth date, gender, and issuing authority, which the researcher surmised is the issuing authority for the ID card.

An additional query produced even more: The person’s WeChat ID, vehicle information, hobbies and industry information, marital status, and monthly salary, and his phone’s International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number with a link to click for more information about the device.

The researchers found similar info about a People’s Liberation Army member using SGKs, plus details about suspected nation-state-backed criminals wanted by the FBI.

[…]

“There is a huge ecosystem of Chinese breached and leaked data, and I don’t know that a lot of Western cybersecurity researchers are looking at this,” Johnson continued. “It poses privacy risks to all Chinese people across all groups. And then it also gives us Western cybersecurity researchers a really interesting source to track some of these actors that have been targeting critical infrastructure.” ®

Source: How Chinese insiders exploit its surveillance state • The Register

Which goes to show – large centralised databases give away their data to far too many people. Bad security (like government backdoors to encryption) is bad for everyone – anyone with the key can (and will) get in (like the US is finding out: In massive U-turn, FBI Warns Americans to Start Using Encrypted Messaging Apps, after discovering the problem with backdoors)

Why Italy’s Piracy Shield destroys huge internet companies and small businesses with no recourse (unless you are rich) and can lay out the entire internet in Italy to… protect against football streaming?!

Posted on by

Walled Culture has been following the sorry saga of Italy’s automated blocking system Piracy Shield for a year now. Blocklists are drawn up by copyright companies, without any review, or the possibility of any objections, and those blocks must be enforced within 30 minutes. Needless to say, such a ham-fisted and biased approach to copyright infringement is already producing some horrendous blunders.

For example, back in March Walled Culture reported that one of Cloudflare’s Internet addresses had been blocked by Piracy Shield. There were over 40 million domains associated with the blocked address – which shows how this crude approach can cause significant collateral damage to millions of sites not involved in any alleged copyright infringement.

Every new system has teething troubles, although not normally on this scale. But any hope that Italy’s national telecoms regulator, Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (Authority for Communications Guarantees, AGCOM), the body running Piracy Shield, would have learned from the Cloudflare fiasco in order to stop it happening again was dispelled by what took place in October. TorrentFreak explains:

After blocking Cloudflare to prevent IPTV piracy just a few months ago, on Saturday the rightsholders behind Piracy Shield ordered Italy’s ISPs to block Google Drive. The subsequent nationwide blackout, affecting millions of Italians, wasn’t just a hapless IP address blunder. This was the reckless blocking of a Google.com subdomain that many 10-year-olds could identify as being important. Reckless people and internet infrastructure, what could possibly go wrong next?

The following day, there was a public discussion online involving the current and former AGCOM Commissioners, as well as various experts in relevant areas. The current AGCOM Commissioner Capitanio showed no sense of remorse for what happened. According to TorrentFreak’s report on the discussion:

Capitanio’s own focus on blocking to protect football was absolute. There was no concern expressed towards Google or the millions of users affected by the extended blackout, only defense of the Piracy Shield system.

Moreover:

AGCOM’s chief then went on to complain about Google’s refusal to delete Android apps already installed on users devices and other measures AGCOM regularly demands, none of which are required by law.

It seems that Capitanio regards even the current, one-sided and extreme Piracy Shield as too weak, and was trying to persuade Google to go even further than the law required – a typical copyright maximalist attitude. But worse was to come. Another participant in the discussion, former member of the Italian parliament, IT expert, and founder of Rialto Venture Capital, Stefano Quintarelli, pointed out a deeply worrying possibility:

the inherent insecurity of the Piracy Shield platform introduces a “huge systemic vulnerability” that eclipses the fight against piracy. Italy now has a system in place designed to dramatically disrupt internet communications and since no system is entirely secure, what happens if a bad actor somehow gains control?

Quintarelli says that if the Piracy Shield platform were to be infiltrated and maliciously exploited, essential services like hospitals, transportation systems, government functions, and critical infrastructure would be exposed to catastrophic blocking.

In other words, by placing the sanctity of copyright above all else, the Piracy Shield system could be turned against any aspect of Italian society with just a few keyboard commands. A malicious actor that managed to gain access to a system that has twice demonstrated a complete lack of even the most basic controls and checks could wreak havoc on computers and networks throughout Italy in a few seconds. Moreover, the damage could easily go well beyond the inconvenience of millions of people being blocked from accessing their files on Google Drive. A skilled intruder could carry out widespread sabotage of vital services and infrastructure that would cost billions of euros to rectify, and could even lead to the loss of lives.

No wonder, then, that an AGCOM board member, Elisa Giomi, has gone public with her concerns about the system. Giomi’s detailed rundown of Piracy Shield’s long-standing problems was posted in Italian on LinkedIn; TorrentFreak has a translation, and summarises the current situation as follows:

Despite a series of failures concerning Italy’s IPTV blocking platform Piracy Shield and the revelation that the ‘free’ platform will cost €2m per year, telecoms regulator AGCOM insists that all is going to plan. After breaking ranks, AGCOM board member Elisa Giomi called for the suspension of Piracy Shield while decrying its toll on public resources. When she was warned for her criticism, coupled with a threat of financial implications, Giomi came out fighting.

It’s clear that the Piracy Shield tragedy is far from over. It’s good to see courageous figures like Giomi joining the chorus of disapproval.

Source: Why Italy’s Piracy Shield risks moving from tiresome digital farce to serious national tragedy – Walled Culture

Italy, copyright – retarded doesn’t even begin to describe it.

In massive U-turn, FBI Warns Americans to Start Using Encrypted Messaging Apps, after discovering the problem with backdoors

Posted on by

America’s top cybersecurity and law enforcement officials made a coordinated push Tuesday to raise awareness about cyber threats from foreign actors in the wake of an intrusion of U.S. telecom equipment dubbed Salt Typhoon. The hackers are linked to the Chinese government and they still have a presence in U.S. systems, spying on American communications, in what Sen. Mark Warner from Virginia has called “the worst hack in our nation’s history.”

Officials with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI went so far as to urge Americans to use encrypted messaging apps, according to a new report from NBC News, something that’s ostensibly about keeping foreign hackers out of your communications.

[…]

“Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication. Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible,” Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, said on a press call Tuesday according to NBC News.

The unnamed FBI agent on the call with reporters echoed the message, according to NBC News, urging Americans to use “responsibly managed encryption,” which is a rather big deal when you remember that agencies like the FBI have been most resistant to Silicon Valley’s encryption efforts.

The hackers behind Salt Typoon failed to monitor or intercept anything encrypted, meaning that anything sent through Signal and Apple’s iMessage was likely protected, according to the New York Times. But the intrusion for all other communications was otherwise extremely galling. The hackers had access to metadata, including information on messages and phone calls along with when and where they were delivered. The hackers reportedly focused on targets around Washington, D.C.

The most alarming sort of intrusion in Salt Typhoon involved the system used by U.S. officials to wiretap Americans with a court order

[…]

Source: FBI Warns Americans to Start Using Encrypted Messaging Apps

It’s not like people have not been warning governments all over the world that there is no such thing as a safe backdoor to encryption and that forbidding encryption leads to a world of harm. We knew this, but still the idiots in charge wanted keys to encryption. The key, once it is in the hands of “baddies” will still work. It really does show the absolute retardation of government spy people who say breaking encryption will make us safer.

Training AI through human interactions instead of datasets

Posted on by

[…] AI learns primarily through massive datasets and extensive simulations, regardless of the application.

Now, researchers from Duke University and the Army Research Laboratory have developed a platform to help AI learn to perform complex tasks more like humans. Nicknamed GUIDE for short

[…]

“It remains a challenge for AI to handle tasks that require fast decision making based on limited learning information,” […]

“Existing training methods are often constrained by their reliance on extensive pre-existing datasets while also struggling with the limited adaptability of traditional feedback approaches,” Chen said. “We aimed to bridge this gap by incorporating real-time continuous human feedback.”

GUIDE functions by allowing humans to observe AI’s actions in real-time and provide ongoing, nuanced feedback. It’s like how a skilled driving coach wouldn’t just shout “left” or “right,” but instead offer detailed guidance that fosters incremental improvements and deeper understanding.

In its debut study, GUIDE helps AI learn how best to play hide-and-seek. The game involves two beetle-shaped players, one red and one green. While both are controlled by computers, only the red player is working to advance its AI controller.

The game takes places on a square playing field with a C-shaped barrier in the center. Most of the playing field remains black and unknown until the red seeker enters new areas to reveal what they contain.

As the red AI player chases the other, a human trainer provides feedback on its searching strategy. While previous attempts at this sort of training strategy have only allowed for three human inputs — good, bad or neutral — GUIDE has humans hover a mouse cursor over a gradient scale to provide real-time feedback.

The experiment involved 50 adult participants with no prior training or specialized knowledge, which is by far the largest-scale study of its kind. The researchers found that just 10 minutes of human feedback led to a significant improvement in the AI’s performance. GUIDE achieved up to a 30% increase in success rates compared to current state-of-the-art human-guided reinforcement learning methods.

[…]

Another fascinating direction for GUIDE lies in exploring the individual differences among human trainers. Cognitive tests given to all 50 participants revealed that certain abilities, such as spatial reasoning and rapid decision-making, significantly influenced how effectively a person could guide an AI. These results highlight intriguing possibilities such as enhancing these abilities through targeted training and discovering other factors that might contribute to successful AI guidance.

[…]

The team envisions future research that incorporates diverse communication signals using language, facial expressions, hand gestures and more to create a more comprehensive and intuitive framework for AI to learn from human interactions. Their work is part of the lab’s mission toward building the next-level intelligent systems that team up with humans to tackle tasks that neither AI nor humans alone could solve.

Source: Training AI through human interactions instead of datasets | ScienceDaily

In 2020 something like this was done as well: Researchers taught a robot to suture by showing it surgery videos

Drones can avoid GPS jammers by navigating with the stars

Posted on by

[…] Remote sensing engineers at the University of South Australia have built a new, low cost prototype system that merges celestial triangulation with vision-based algorithmic computing for UAVs flying at night. But unlike existing GPS, the novel design doesn’t emit any signals, making it impervious to current jamming methods.

[…]

To make it work, engineers designed and constructed a strapdown payload using only a Raspberry Pi 5 miniature computer and a monochrome sensor fitted with a wide angle lens. They then connected the tool to a fixed-wing drone’s onboard autonomous piloting system, where it captured and algorithmically analyzed visual data taken from stars seen at night.

“If we’re able to identify those stars and compare them against a database, given that we know the orientation the camera was facing and the point in time at which that image was taken, we can actually infer the location of the aircraft from that data,” explained Samuel Teague, a research assistant and study co-author, in an accompanying university video.

Teague and senior researcher, Javaan Chahl, tested their system with a UAV, and showed that their drone upgrade allowed it to consistently estimate its location to within an accuracy of 4 km (roughly 2.48 mi) while performing fixed altitude and airspeed orbits. While not currently as precise as modern GPS, the tool may still soon provide a powerful backup in the event of jamming or malfunction. It also still requires a clear sky to assess its surroundings, although the team believes additional research could address this issue, as well.

[…]

Source: Drones can avoid GPS jammers by navigating with the stars | Popular Science

Snowfall in the Alps is a third less than a hundred years ago, meteorologists find

Posted on by

From 23% less in the northern Alps to a decrease of almost 50% on the southwestern slopes: Between 1920 and 2020, snowfall across the entirety of the Alps has decreased on average by a significant 34%. The results come from a study coordinated by Eurac Research and were published in the International Journal of Climatology. The study also examines how much altitude and climatological parameters such as temperature and total precipitation impact on snowfall.

The data on seasonal snowfall and rainfall was collected from 46 sites throughout the Alps, the most recent of which was collected from modern weather stations, and the historical data was gathered from handwritten records in which specially appointed observers recorded how many inches of snow were deposited at a given location.

[…]

“The most negative trends concern locations below an altitude of 2,000 meters and are in the southern regions such as Italy, Slovenia and part of the Austrian Alps.

In the Alpine areas to the north such as Switzerland and northern Tyrol, the research team observed the extent to which altitude also plays a central role. Although there has been an increase in precipitation during the winter seasons, at lower altitudes, snowfall has increasingly turned to rain as temperatures have risen. At higher elevations, however, thanks to sufficiently cold temperatures, snowfall is being maintained. In the southwestern and southeastern areas, temperatures have risen so much that even at , rain is frequently taking over .

[…]

Source: Snowfall in the Alps is a third less than a hundred years ago, meteorologists find

‘What many of us feel’: why ‘enshittification’ is Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year | Oxford names ‘Brain rot’ (out of a very poor list)

Posted on by

[…] In 2022, Doctorow coined the word “enshittification”, which has just been crowned Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year. The dictionary defined the word as follows.

“The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.”

Social media users, if they don’t know the word, will viscerally understand the concept, the way trolls and extremists and bullshitters and the criminally vacuous have overtaken the platforms.

[…]

Doctorow wrote that this decay was a three-stage process.

“First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves,” he wrote.

[…]

Source: ‘What many of us feel’: why ‘enshittification’ is Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year | Language | The Guardian

Following a public vote in which more than 37,000 people had their say, we’re pleased to announce that the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 is ‘brain rot’.

Our language experts created a shortlist of six words to reflect the moods and conversations that have helped shape the past year. After two weeks of public voting and widespread conversation, our experts came together to consider the public’s input, voting results, and our language data, before declaring ‘brain rot’ as the definitive Word of the Year for 2024.

[…]

‘Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”.

Our experts noticed that ‘brain rot’ gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024.

The first recorded use of ‘brain rot’ was found in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, which reports his experiences of living a simple lifestyle in the natural world. As part of his conclusions, Thoreau criticizes society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas, or those that can be interpreted in multiple ways, in favour of simple ones, and sees this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

The term has taken on new significance in the digital age, especially over the past 12 months. Initially gaining traction on social media platform—particularly on TikTok among Gen Z and Gen Alpha communities—’brain rot’ is now seeing more widespread use, such as in mainstream journalism, amidst societal concerns about the negative impact of overconsuming online content.

[…]

Find out more about our Word of the Year shortlist for 2024

Source: ‘Brain rot’ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024

The oxford list contained brain rot, demure, dynamic pricing, lore, romantasy and slop. No ideas how they got to this list, maybe they didn’t want anything with a swear word in it? Maybe they were afraid of offending anyone? Well, it definitely shows the enshittification of the Oxford word list.

 

Mass education was designed to quash critical thinking, argues researcher

Posted on by

Education should promote deep inquiry and individual autonomy, but often, it has been used as a vehicle for indoctrination. That’s what Agustina S. Paglayan, a UC San Diego assistant professor of political science in the School of Social Sciences and the School of Global Policy and Strategy, argues in her new book, “Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education.”

Paglayan uses evidence from both the past and the present to argue that schools around the world are failing to cultivate critical thinking skills in students—and that these institutions are actually designed to promote conformity. The book has already been praised by 2024 Nobel Laureate James Robinson as “path-breaking and iconoclastic,” and Paglayan’s perspective promises to open new debates in politics and education.

[…]

Primary education was created well before the arrival of democracy, sometimes under oligarchic or absolutist regimes. That made me doubt the conventional wisdom that democracy was the main driver behind the expansion of .

[…]

the majority of children in most countries gained access to primary schooling long before democracy took root. This is true not only for countries like China or Russia, but also for most Western countries.

[…]

Mass education was really crafted as a clever system to instill obedience to the state and its laws. Schools used rewards and punishments to enforce rules, moral education dominated the curriculum and even basic reading and writing exercises taught compliance, like when students were asked to spell words like “duty” and “order.”

School routines—following schedules, marching in lines, asking permission—all reinforced discipline. The entire system, from teacher training to inspections, aimed to create citizens who wouldn’t question authority or disrupt the status quo.

Governments saw schools as essential to maintaining internal security, viewing primary education less as a means to reduce poverty or promote industrialization than as a way to prevent social disorder.

The timing of when primary education expanded is revealing: It often followed episodes of mass violence or rebellion. Prussia created its public primary education system after peasant revolts, Massachusetts passed its first education law after Shays’ Rebellion in the late 1780s, and Colombia accelerated education access after La Violencia, which lasted from 1948 to 1958.

In each case, internal threats heightened elites’ anxieties about mass violence and the breakdown of social order, intensifying their fear of the masses and driving them to support mass education to transform “unruly” and “savage” children into compliant, law-abiding citizens

[…]

The anti-critical race theory curriculum reforms and textbook bans of the last four years and Donald Trump’s recent announcement that he’ll promote “patriotic education” and prohibit “radicalized” ideas from entering the classroom—while these may sound unprecedented—are no anomaly. They fit the cross-national pattern I uncover in the book. For the last 200 years, politicians in Western societies have become especially interested in teaching children that the status quo is okay following episodes of mass uprising against existing institutions.

This is precisely what has happened in the U.S. The Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020 made Republican politicians especially anxious about institutional reform. Then-President Trump responded by setting up the 1776 Commission to strengthen patriotic education and to prevent children’s exposure to the concept of institutionalized racism. Republican state legislators and governors followed suit with curriculum reforms in red states, and the president-elect has made it clear he intends to extend these efforts to blue states too.

A key lesson from my book is that curriculum reforms tend to stick around for a very long time, outlasting the government that adopted them. It’s important for people to be aware of this fact. If you care about the content of education, now is the time to become involved in shaping the curriculum.

[…]

Roughly a third of children remain unable to read a simple sentence even after four years of schooling. This deficit of skills disproportionately affects low-income students. It exists in both developing and developed countries, and the problem has been recognized by numerous international organizations.

In the U.S., for example, children from high-income families enter kindergarten with much stronger literacy skills than low-income children, and K-12 schools fail to close that gap. I argue that these problems are rooted in the very origins of modern education systems, which were not designed to promote skills or equity.

[…]

For public schools to live up to their promise, education systems need to be deeply transformed. The systems we have today were inherited from a time when promoting compliance was the goal, a time when critical thinking was considered dangerous. In the 21st century, critical thinking skills are essential to safeguard liberal democracy, to get a good job and to remain internationally competitive.

The task ahead is not about fine-tuning the specific subjects taught. The challenge is to reimagine K-12 public schools as spaces that genuinely foster critical inquiry and creative, independent thought.

[…]

Source: Q&A: Mass education was designed to quash critical thinking, argues researcher

Data broker SL leaves 600K+ sensitive files exposed online, doesn’t fix it despite warnings

Posted on by

More than 600,000 sensitive files containing thousands of people’s criminal histories, background checks, vehicle and property records were exposed to the internet in a non-password protected database belonging to data brokerage SL Data Services, according to a security researcher.

We don’t know how long the personal information was openly accessible. Infosec specialist Jeremiah Fowler says he found the Amazon S3 bucket in October and reported it to the data collection company by phone and email every few days for more than two weeks.

In addition to not being password protected, none of the information was encrypted, he told The Register. In total, the open bucket contained 644,869 PDF files in a 713.1 GB archive.

“Even when I would make phone calls to the multiple numbers on different websites and tell them there was a data incident, they would tell me they use 128-bit encryption and use SSL certificates – there were many eye rolls,” he claimed.

Some 95 percent of the documents Fowler saw were labeled “background checks,” he said. These contained full names, home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, employment, family members, social media accounts, and criminal record history belonging to thousands of people. In at least one of these documents, the criminal record indicated that the person had been convicted of sexual misconduct. It included case details, fines, dates, and additional charges.

[…]

Source: Data broker leaves 600K+ sensitive files exposed online • The Register

There’s a Surprisingly Easy Way to Remove Microplastics From Drinking Water – boil it (preferably in hard water)

Posted on by

Tiny fragments of microplastics are making their way deep inside our bodies in concerning quantities, significantly through our food and drink.

Scientists have recently found a simple and effective means of removing them from water.

[…]

In some cases, up to 90 percent of the NMPs were removed by the boiling and filtering process, though the effectiveness varied based on the type of water.

Of course the big benefit is that most people can do it using what they already have in their kitchen.

“This simple boiling water strategy can ‘decontaminate’ NMPs from household tap water and has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of NMPs through water consumption,” write biomedical engineer Zimin Yu from Guangzhou Medical University and colleagues.

Graphic depicting boiling water to remove NMPs
This simple boiling water strategy can ‘decontaminate’ NMPs from household tap water. (Yu et al., Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 2024)

A greater concentration of NMPs was removed from samples of hard tap water, which naturally forms a build-up of limescale (or calcium carbonate) as it is heated.

Commonly seen inside kitchen kettles, the chalky substance forms on the plastic’s surface as changes in temperature force the calcium carbonate out of solution, effectively trapping the plastic fragments in a crust.

[…]

Even in soft water, where less calcium carbonate is dissolved, roughly a quarter of the NMPs were snagged from the water.

[…]

The team behind this latest study wants to see more research into how boiled water could keep artificial materials out of our bodies – and perhaps counter some of the alarming effects of microplastics that are emerging.

[…]

Source: There’s a Surprisingly Easy Way to Remove Microplastics From Drinking Water

Diamond optical discs could store data for millions of years

Posted on by

[…] According to a study published on November 27th in the journal Nature Photonics, researchers at China’s University of Science and Technology in Hefei have achieved a record-breaking diamond storage density of 1.85 terabytes per cubic centimeter.

[…]

The artificial intelligence industry as well as quantum and supercomputers often need petabytes, not gigabytes or even terabytes, of information storage. As New Scientist explained on Wednesday, a diamond optical disc can store the same amount of information as roughly 2,000, same-sized Blu-rays. What’s more, researchers need to ensure all that data remains safe, uncorrupted, and accessible for as long as possible.

[…]

“Once the internal data storage structures are stabilised using our technology, diamond can achieve extraordinary longevity—data retention for millions of years at room temperature—without requiring any maintenance,” Wang explained to New Scientist.

To create the recordbreaking data storage device, Wang and his team employed diamond slivers measuring just a few millimeters wide. The researchers placed these shards in front of a laser that fired ultrafast pulses of light at the diamonds, which subsequently shifted some of the mineral’s carbon atoms. These atom-sized hollow spaces could then be arranged in precise configurations based on overall density to influence a microscopic area’s general brightness.

Wang and colleagues then stored test images including Henri Mattise’s painting, Cat with Red Fish, as well as Eadweard Muybridge’s historic photographic sequence displaying a man riding a horse. To do this, they matched each image pixel based on brightness to their correspondingly bright spaces on the diamond. Subsequent tests showed the new method almost perfectly retained data in the diamond.

“Owing to the excellent processability of the diamond storage medium, we have been able to achieve a 3D spatial data storage density that is close to the optical diffraction limit,” the authors explained in the study, adding that, “… Here, we store 55,596 bits of data in a diamond storage medium, achieving a total fidelity (storage and readout) of 99.48 percent.”

[…]

 

Source: Diamond optical discs could store data for millions of years | Popular Science

Police bust pirate streaming service making €250 million per month: doesn’t this show the TV market is hugely broken?

Posted on by

An international law enforcement operation has dismantled a pirate streaming service that served over 22 million users worldwide and made €250 million ($263M) per month.

Italy’s Postal and Cybersecurity Police Service announced the action, codenamed “Taken Down,” stating they worked with Eurojust, Europol, and many other European countries, making this the largest takedown of its kind in Italy and internationally.

“More than 270 Postal Police officers, in collaboration with foreign law enforcement, carried out 89 searches in 15 Italian regions and 14 additional searches in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, Croatia, and China, involving 102 individuals,” reads the announcement.

“As part of the investigative framework initiated by the Catania Prosecutor’s Office and the Italian Postal Police, and with international cooperation, the Croatian police executed 11 arrest warrants against suspects.”

“Additionally, three high-ranking administrators of the IT network were identified in England and the Netherlands, along with 80 streaming control panels for IPTV channels managed by suspects throughout Italy,” mentions the police in the same announcement.

The pirated TV and content streaming service was operated by a hierarchical, transnational organization that illegally captured and resold the content of popular content platforms.

The copyrighted content included redistributed IPTV, live broadcasts, and on-demand content from major broadcasters like Sky, Dazn, Mediaset, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, and Paramount.

The police say that these illegal streams were made accessible through numerous live-streaming websites but have not published any domains.

It is estimated that the amount of financial damages suffered annually from the illegal service is a massive €10 billion ($10.5B).

These broadcasts were resold to 22 million subscribed members via multiple distribution channels and an extensive seller network.

As a result of operation “Taken Down,” the authorities seized over 2,500 illegal channels and their servers, including nine servers in Romania and Hong Kong.

[…]

Source: Police bust pirate streaming service making €250 million per month

Bad licensing decisions by TV stations and broadcasters have given these streamers a product that people apparently really really want and are willing to pay for.

Don’t shut down the streamers, shut down the system that makes this kind of product impossible to get.

Is ‘bypassing’ a better way to battle misinformation? Researchers say new approach has advantages over the standard

Posted on by

Misinformation can lead to socially detrimental behavior, which makes finding ways to combat its effects a matter of crucial public concern. A new paper by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General explores an innovative approach to countering the impact of factually incorrect information called “bypassing,” and finds that it may have advantages over the standard approach of correcting inaccurate statements.

“The gold standard for tackling misinformation is a correction that factually contradicts the misinformation” by directly refuting the claim […]

in the study “Bypassing versus correcting misinformation: Efficacy and fundamental processes.” Corrections can work, but countering misinformation this way is an uphill battle: people don’t like to be contradicted, and a belief, once accepted, can be difficult to dislodge.

Bypassing works differently. Rather than directly addressing the misinformation, this strategy involves offering that has an implication opposite to that of the misinformation. For example, faced with the factually incorrect statement “genetically modified foods have health risks,” a bypassing approach might highlight the fact that genetically modified foods help the bee population. This counters the negative implication of the misinformation with positive implications, without taking the difficult path of confrontation

[…]

“bypassing can generally be superior to correction, specifically in situations when people are focused on forming beliefs, but not attitudes, about the information they encounter.” This is because “when an attitude is formed, it serves as an anchor for a person’s judgment of future claims. When a belief is formed, there is more room for influence, and a bypassing message generally exerts more.”

[…]

“bypassing can generally be superior to correction, specifically in situations when people are focused on forming beliefs, but not attitudes, about the information they encounter.” This is because “when an attitude is formed, it serves as an anchor for a person’s judgment of future claims. When a belief is formed, there is more room for influence, and a bypassing message generally exerts more.”

Source: Is ‘bypassing’ a better way to battle misinformation? Researchers say new approach has advantages over the standard

China complete pwn of US all telco means a physical rebuild is necessary

Posted on by

The Biden administration on Friday hosted telco execs to chat about China’s recent attacks on the sector, amid revelations that US networks may need mass rebuilds to recover.

Details of the extent of China’s attacks came from senator Mark R Warner, who on Thursday gave both The Washington Post and The New York Times insights into info he’s learned in his role as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Warner told the Post, “my hair is on fire,” given the severity of China’s attacks on US telcos. The attacks, which started well before the US election, have seen Middle Kingdom operatives establish a persistent presence – and may require the replacement of “literally thousands and thousands and thousands” of switches and routers.

The senator added that China’s activities make Russia-linked incidents like the SolarWinds supply chain incident and the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline look like “child’s play.”

Warner told The Times the extent of China’s activity remains unknown, and that “The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open.”

The senator, a Democrat who represents Virginia, also confirmed previously known details, claming it was likely Chinese state employees could listen to phone calls – including some involving president-elect Donald Trump – perhaps by using carriers’ wiretapping capabilities. He also said attackers were able to steal substantial quantities of data about calls made on networks.

[…]

Source: China’s telco attacks mean ‘thousands’ of boxes compromised • The Register

QNAP NAS users locked out after firmware update snafu, can’t reset

Posted on by

Owners of QNAP network-attached storage (NAS) boxes are finding that a firmware update has left them unable to log into their device, and a reset doesn’t seem to fix the issue.

The Taiwan-based storage biz specializes in NAS kit and offers a whole portfolio of models to address various needs. However, users are complaining of issues following a firmware release that went out to some products last week.

According to posts on the company’s community forums, the update in question is QTS 5.2.2.2950, build 20241114. QTS is the firm’s Linux-based operating system for its entry-level and mid-range products.

The firmware upgrade was removed for some models sometime after it was released, yet users are contiuing to gripe that QNAP has failed to disclose which models were affected by the errant update.

“I thought I had a problem with my QNAP, so I used three second reset and now I can’t log in at all,” one customer complained, who added they still see an error message saying: “Your login credentials are incorrect or account is no longer valid.”

The user explained they have two identical TS-653D NAS servers. “Because I can no longer get to either machine, I have completely reset one by holding the reset button for 10 seconds and after two beeps released. This has been completely reset as I can see in Qfinder [QNAP’s desktop tool], only I still cannot access it with ‘admin’ and The Cloud Key Password.”

A seemingly more tech-savvy user revealed: “I have raised this with QNAP, but so far the devs/support are silent. Not even any guidance to any possible issues.”

Another user said: “It is also available as an update for my TS-453D in AMIZ. But AMIZ is not able to apply it.” AMIZcloud is a SaaS tool for deploying, managing, and monitoring QNAP devices.

In response to our queries, a QNAP spokesperson told us: “We recently released the QTS 5.2.2.2950 build 20241114 operating system update and received feedback from some users reporting issues with device functionality after installation.

“In response, QNAP promptly withdrew the operating system update, conducted a comprehensive investigation, and re-released a stable version of QTS 5.2.2.2950 build 20241114 within 24 hours.”

Source: QNAP NAS users locked out after firmware update snafu • The Register

US and UK Armed Forces Dating & Social Networking Service Exposed Over 1 Million Records Online through coding error

Posted on by

Cybersecurity Researcher, Jeremiah Fowler, discovered and reported to vpnMentor about a non-password-protected database that contained more than 1.1 million records belonging to Conduitor Limited (trading as Forces Penpals) — a service that offers dating services, and social networking for military members and their supporters.

The publicly exposed database was not password-protected or encrypted. It contained a total of 1,187,296 documents. In a limited sampling, a majority of the documents I saw were user images, while others were photos of potentially sensitive proof of service documents. These contained full names (first, last, and middle), mailing addresses, SSN (US), National Insurance Numbers, and Service Numbers (UK). These documents also listed rank, branch of the service, dates, locations, and other information that should not be publicly accessible.

Upon further research, I identified that the records belonged to Forces Penpals, a dating service and social networking community for military service members and their supporters. I immediately sent a responsible disclosure notice, and public access was restricted the following day. It is not known how long the database was exposed or if anyone else gained access to it. Only an internal forensic audit could identify additional access or potentially suspicious activity. I received a response from Forces Penpals after my disclosure notice stating: “Thank you for contacting us. It is much appreciated. Looks like there was a coding error where the documents were going to the wrong bucket and directory listing was turned on for debugging and never turned off. The photos are public anyway so that’s not an issue, but the documents certainly should not be public”. It is not known if the database was owned and managed by Forces Penpals directly or via a third-party contractor.

According to their website, the service operates social networking and support for members of the US and UK armed forces. It claims to have over 290,000 military and civilian users. Founded in 2002, Forces Penpals allowed UK citizens to write to soldiers on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

[…]

Source: US and UK Armed Forces Dating & Social Networking Service Exposed Over 1 Million Records Online

Oh Look, It Was Trivial To Buy Troop And Intelligence Officer Location Data From Dodgy, Unregulated Data Brokers

Posted on by

There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite a parade of dangerous scandals. One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress is too corrupt to do its job. Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits this privacy dysfunction to dodge domestic surveillance warrants.

If we imposed safeguards on consumer data, everybody from app makers to telecoms would make billions less per quarter. So our corrupt lawmakers pretend the vast human harms of our greed are a distant and unavoidable externality. Unless the privacy issues involve some kid tracking rich people on their planes, of course, in which case Congress moves with a haste that would break the sound barrier.

So as a result, we get a steady stream of scandals related to the over-collection and monetization of wireless location data, posing no limit of public safety, market trust, or national security issues. Including, for example, stalkers using location data to track and harm women. Or radical right wing extremists using it to target vulnerable abortion clinic visitors with health care disinformation.

Even when U.S. troop safety is involved U.S. officials have proven too corrupt and incompetent to act. Just the latest case in point: Wired this week released an excellent new report documenting how it was relatively trivial to buy the sensitive and detailed movement data of U.S. military and intelligence workers as they moved around Germany:

“A collaborative analysis of billions of location coordinates obtained from a US-based data broker provides extraordinary insight into the daily routines of US service members. The findings also provide a vivid example of the significant risks the unregulated sale of mobile location data poses to the integrity of the US military and the safety of its service members and their families overseas.”

The data purchased by Wired doesn’t just track troops as they head out for a weekend at the bars. It provides granular, second-by-second detail of their movements around extremely sensitive facilities:

“We tracked hundreds of thousands of signals from devices inside sensitive US installations in Germany. That includes scores of devices within suspected NSA monitoring or signals-analysis facilities, more than a thousand devices at a sprawling US compound where Ukrainian troops were being being trained in 2023, and nearly 2,000 others at an air force base that has crucially supported American drone operations.”

Wired does note that the FTC is poised to file several lawsuits recognizing these kinds of facilities as protected sites, though it’s unclear those suits will survive Lina Khan’s inevitable ouster under a Trump administration looking to dismantle the federal regulatory state for shits and giggles.

When our underfunded and undermined regulators have tried to hold wireless companies or app makers accountable, they’re routinely derailed by either a Republican Congress (like when the GOP in 2017 killed FCC broadband privacy rules before they could even take effect), or more recently by a Trump Supreme Court keen to declare all federal consumer protection effectively illegal.

Even the most basic of FCC efforts to impose a long overdue fine against AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have run aground thanks to the Trump-stocked 5th, 6th, and Supreme Court efforts to block anything even vaguely resembling corporate oversight. I’m told by the nation’s deepest thinkers that this corruption and greed is, somehow, “populism.”

Time and time and time again the U.S. has prioritized making money over protecting consumer privacy, market health, or national security. And it’s certain to only get worse during a second Trump term stocked with folks like new FCC boss Brendan Carr, dedicated to ensuring his friends at AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile never face anything close to accountability for anything, ever.

[…]

Source: Oh Look, It Was Trivial To Buy Troop And Intelligence Officer Location Data From Dodgy, Unregulated Data Brokers | Techdirt