A new study is redefining how we understand affective polarization. The study proposes that disappointment, rather than hatred, may be the dominant emotion driving the growing divide between ideological groups.
The findings are published in the journal Cognition and Emotion. The team was led by Ph.D. student Mabelle Kretchner from the Department of Psychology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the supervision of Prof. Eran Halperin and in collaboration with Prof. Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler from Reichman University and Dr. Julia Elad-Strenger from Bar Ilan University.
Affective polarization, characterized by deepening negative feelings between members of opposing ideological groups, is a major concern to democratic stability worldwide. While numerous studies have examined the causes and potential solutions to this phenomenon, the emotional underpinnings of affective polarization have remained poorly understood.
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“Disappointment is an emotion that encapsulates both positive and negative experiences,” explains Kretchner.
“While hatred is destructive and focuses on viewing the outgroup as fundamentally evil, disappointment reflects a more complex dynamic. It includes unmet expectations and a sense of loss, but also retains a recognition of shared goals and the potential for positive change. This dual nature makes it a more accurate representation of the complexity embedded in ideological intergroup relations.”
Across five studies conducted in the US and Israel, disappointment was the only emotion consistently linked to affective polarization, while other negative emotions did not show the same consistent association. Notably, hatred did not predict affective polarization in any of the studies, even during politically charged periods such as the Capitol riots, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Supreme Court hearings on Roe v. Wade.
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This finding suggests that interventions aimed at reducing affective polarization might be more effective if they target specific emotions underlying affective polarization like disappointment.
As societies across the globe grapple with rising political tensions, the insights from this study offer a fresh perspective on how to heal divisions
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More information: Eran Halperin et al, The affective gap: a call for a comprehensive examination of the discrete emotions underlying affective polarization, Cognition and Emotion (2024). DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2348028
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, known commonly as PFAS, could take over 40 years to flush out of contaminated groundwater in North Carolina’s Cumberland and Bladen counties, according to a new study from North Carolina State University. The study used a novel combination of data on PFAS, groundwater age-dating tracers, and groundwater flux to forecast PFAS concentrations in groundwater discharging to tributaries of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.
The researchers sampled groundwater in two different watersheds adjacent to the Fayetteville Works fluorochemical plant in Bladen County.
“There’s a huge area of PFAS contaminated groundwater — including residential and agricultural land — which impacts the population in two ways,” says David Genereux, professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State and leader of the study.
“First, there are over 7,000 private wells whose users are directly affected by the contamination. Second, groundwater carrying PFAS discharges into tributaries of the Cape Fear River, which affects downstream users of river water in and near Wilmington.”
The researchers tested the samples they took to determine PFAS types and levels, then used groundwater age-dating tracers, coupled with atmospheric contamination data from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and the rate of groundwater flow, to create a model that estimated both past and future PFAS concentrations in the groundwater discharging to tributary streams.
They detected PFAS in groundwater up to 43 years old, and concentrations of the two most commonly found PFAS — hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid (HFPO−DA) and perfluoro-2-methoxypropanoic acid (PMPA) — averaged 229 and 498 nanograms per liter (ng/L), respectively. For comparison, the maximum contaminant level (MCL) issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for HFPO-DA in public drinking water is 10 ng/L. MCLs are enforceable drinking water standards.
“These results suggest it could take decades for natural groundwater flow to flush out groundwater PFAS still present from the ‘high emission years,’ roughly the period between 1980 and 2019,” Genereux says. “And this could be an underestimate; the time scale could be longer if PFAS is diffusing into and out of low-permeability zones (clay layers and lenses) below the water table.”
The researchers point out that although air emissions of PFAS are substantially lower now than they were prior to 2019, they are not zero, so some atmospheric deposition of PFAS seems likely to continue to feed into the groundwater.
“Even a best-case scenario — without further atmospheric deposition — would mean that PFAS emitted in past decades will slowly flush from groundwater to surface water for about 40 more years,” Genereux says. “We expect groundwater PFAS contamination to be a multi-decade problem, and our work puts some specific numbers behind that. We plan to build on this work by modeling future PFAS at individual drinking water wells and working with toxicologists to relate past PFAS levels at wells to observable health outcomes.”
Craig R. Jensen, David P. Genereux, D. Kip Solomon, Detlef R. U. Knappe, Troy E. Gilmore. Forecasting and Hindcasting PFAS Concentrations in Groundwater Discharging to Streams near a PFAS Production Facility. Environmental Science & Technology, 2024; 58 (40): 17926 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c06697
The personal care products we use on a daily basis significantly affect indoor air quality, according to new research by a team at EPFL. When used indoors, these products release a cocktail of more than 200 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air, and when those VOCs come into contact with ozone, the chemical reactions that follow can produce new compounds and particles that may penetrate deep into our lungs. Scientists don’t yet know how inhaling these particles on a daily basis affects our respiratory health.
The EPFL team’s findings have been published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.
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In one test, the researchers applied the products under typical conditions, while the air quality was carefully monitored. In another test, they did the same thing but also injected ozone, a reactive outdoor gas that occurs in European latitudes during the summer months.
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However, when ozone was introduced into the chamber, not only new VOCs but also new particles were generated, particularly from perfume and sprays, exceeding concentrations found in heavily polluted urban areas such as downtown Zurich.
“Some molecules ‘nucleate’—in other words, they form new particles that can coagulate into larger ultrafine particles that can effectively deposit into our lungs,” explains Licina. “In my opinion, we still don’t fully understand the health effects of these pollutants, but they may be more harmful than we think, especially because they are applied close to our breathing zone. This is an area where new toxicological studies are needed.”
Preventive measures
To limit the effect of personal care products on indoor air quality, we could consider several alternatives for how buildings are engineered: introducing more ventilation—especially during the products’ use—incorporating air-cleaning devices (e.g., activated carbon-based filters combined with media filters), and limiting the concentration of indoor ozone.
Another preventive measure is also recommended, according to Licina: “I know this is difficult to hear, but we’re going to have to reduce our reliance on these products, or if possible, replace them with more natural alternatives that contain fragrant compounds with low chemical reactivity. Another helpful measure would be to raise awareness of these issues among medical professionals and staff working with vulnerable groups, such as children and the elderly.”
More information: Tianren Wu et al, Indoor Emission, Oxidation, and New Particle Formation of Personal Care Product Related Volatile Organic Compounds, Environmental Science & Technology Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00353
Microsoft’s Outlook app is crashing for European users due to memory problems, Redmond has warned, and evidence suggests the problems are spreading to the US.
“We’re investigating an issue in which users in Europe may be experiencing crashing, not receiving emails or observing high memory usage when using the Outlook client,” Redmond warned.
“We’re analyzing data from customers experiencing crashes and high memory usage when using the New Outlook desktop app. We’re reviewing service telemetry and reproducing the issue internally to develop a mitigation plan.”
So far, there is no word on Microsoft’s plan, but social media reports suggest the US East Coast at least is suffering similar problems. Downdetector indicates the issue appears to be spreading.
“It’s been spreading across the country like the common cold now, and I can’t seem to figure out what is causing it,” reported one user. “There have been no changes to the environment and no updates to the Windows desktops that are having this issue.”
Microsoft’s engineers are working on the issue and trying to find out what the problem is. It’s not a good look for a software giant’s main email system.
The US government’s General Services Administration’s (GSA) facial matching login service is now generally available to the public and other federal agencies, despite its own recent report admitting the tech is far from perfect.
The GSA announced general availability of remote identity verification (RiDV) technology through login.gov, and the service’s availability to other federal government agencies yesterday. According to the agency, the technology behind the offering is “a new independently certified” solution that complies with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) 800-63 identity assurance level 2 (IAL2) standard.
IAL2 identity verification involves using either remote or in-person verification of a person’s identity via biometric data along with some physical element, like an ID photograph, access to a cellphone number, for example.
“This new IAL2-compliant offering adds proven one-to-one facial matching technology that allows Login.gov to confirm that a live selfie taken by a user matches the photo on a photo ID, such as a driver’s license, provided by the user,” the GSA said.
The Administration noted that the system doesn’t use “one-to-many” face matching technology to compare users to others in its database, and doesn’t use the images for any purpose other than verifying a user’s identity.
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In a report issued by the GSA’s Office of the Inspector General in early 2023, the Administration was called out for saying it implemented IAL2-level identity verification as early as 2018, but never actually supporting the requirements to meet the standard.
“GSA knowingly billed customer agencies over $10 million for services, including alleged IAL2 services that did not meet IAL2 standards,” the report claimed.
[…]
Fast forward to October of last year, and the GSA said it was embracing facial recognition tech on login.gov with plans to test it this year – a process it began in April. Since then, however, the GSA has published pre-press findings of a study it conducted of five RiDV technologies, finding that they’re still largely unreliable.
The study anonymized the results of the five products, making it unclear which were included in the final pool or how any particular one performed. Generally, however, the report found that the best-performing product still failed 10 percent of the time, and the worst had a false negative rate of 50 percent, meaning its ability to properly match a selfie to a government ID was no better than chance.
Higher rejection rates for people with darker skin tones were also noted in one product, while another was more accurate for people of AAPI descent, but less accurate for everyone else – hardly the equitability the GSA said it wanted in an RiDV product last year.
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It’s unclear what solution has been deployed for use on login.gov. The only firm we can confirm has been involved though the process is LexisNexis, which previously acknowledged to The Register that it has worked with the GSA on login.gov for some time.
That said, LexisNexis’ CEO for government risk solutions told us recently that he’s not convinced the GSA’s focus on adopting IAL2 RiDV solutions at the expense of other biometric verification methods is the best approach.
“Any time you rely on a single tool, especially in the modern era of generative AI and deep fakes … you are going to have this problem,” Haywood “Woody” Talcove told us during a phone interview last month. “I don’t think NIST has gone far enough with this workflow.”
Talcove told us that facial recognition is “pretty easy to game,” and said he wants a multi-layered approach – one that it looks like GSA has declined to pursue given how quickly it’s rolling out a solution.
“What this study shows is that there’s a level of risk being injected into government agencies completely relying on one tool,” Talcove said. “We’ve gotta go further.”
Along with asking the GSA for more details about its chosen RiDV solution, we also asked for some data about its performance. We didn’t get an answer to that question, either.
Walled Culture has been writing about Italy’s Piracy Shield system for a year now. It was clear from early on that its approach of blocking Internet addresses (IP addresses) to fight alleged copyright infringement – particularly the streaming of football matches – was flawed, and risked turning into another fiasco like France’s failed Hadopi law. The central issue with Piracy Shield is summed up in a recent post on the Disruptive Competition Blog:
The problem is that Italy’s Piracy Shield enables the blocking of content at the IP address and DNS level, which is particularly problematic in this time of shared IP addresses. It would be similar to arguing that if in a big shopping mall, in which dozens of shops share the same address, one shop owner is found to sell bootleg vinyl records with pirated music, the entire mall needs to be closed and all shops are forced to go out of business.
As that post points out, Italy’s IP blocking suffers from several underlying problems. One is overblocking, which has already happened, as Walled Culture noted back in March. Another issue is lack of transparency:
The Piracy Shield that has been implemented in Italy is fully automated, which prevents any transparency on the notified IP addresses and lacks checks and balances performed by third parties, who could verify whether the notified IP addresses are exclusively dedicated to piracy (and should be blocked) or not.
Piracy Shield isn’t working, and causes serious collateral damage, but instead of recognising this, its supporters have doubled down, and have just convinced the Italian parliament to pass amendments making it even worse, reported here by TorrentFreak:
VPN and DNS services anywhere on planet earth will be required to join Piracy Shield and start blocking pirate sites, most likely at their own expense, just like Italian ISPs are required to do already.
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Moving forward, if pirate sites share an IP address with entirely innocent sites, and the innocent sites are outnumbered, ISPs, VPNs and DNS services will be legally required to block them all.
A new offence has been created that is aimed at service providers, including network access providers, who fail to report promptly illegal conduct by their users to the judicial authorities in Italy or the police there. Maximum punishment is not just a fine, but imprisonment for up to one year. Just why this is absurd is made clear by this LinkedIn comment by Diego Ciulli, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google Italy (translation by DeepL):
Under the label of ‘combating piracy’, the Senate yesterday approved a regulation obliging digital platforms to notify the judicial authorities of all copyright infringements – present, past and future – of which they become aware. Do you know how many there are in Google’s case? Currently, 9,756,931,770.
In short, the Senate is asking us to flood the judiciary with almost 10 billion URLs – and foresees jail time if we miss a single notification.
If the rule is not corrected, the risk is to do the opposite of the spirit of the law: flooding the judiciary, and taking resources away from the fight against piracy.
The new law will make running an Internet access service so risky that many will probably just give up, reducing consumer choice. Freedom of speech will be curtailed, online security weakened, and Italy’s digital infrastructure will be degraded. The end result of this law will be an overall impoverishment of Italian Internet users, Italian business, and the Italian economy. And all because of one industry’s obsession with policing copyright at all costs
Orbital mechanics is a fun subject, as it involves a lot of seemingly empty space that’s nevertheless full of very real forces, all of which must be taken into account lest one’s spacecraft ends up performing a sudden lithobraking maneuver into a planet or other significant collection of matter in said mostly empty space. The primary concern here is that of gravitational pull, and the way it affects one’s trajectory and velocity. With a single planet providing said gravitational pull this is quite straightforward to determine, but add in another body (like the Moon) and things get trickier. Add another big planetary body (or a star like our Sun), and you suddenly got yourself the restricted three-body problem, which has vexed mathematicians and others for centuries.
The three-body problem concerns the initial positions and velocities of three point masses. As they orbit each other and one tries to calculate their trajectories using Newton’s laws of motion and law of universal gravitation (or their later equivalents), the finding is that of a chaotic system, without a closed-form solution. In the context of orbital mechanics involving the Earth, Moon and Sun this is rather annoying, but in 1772 Joseph-Louis Lagrange found a family of solutions in which the three masses form an equilateral triangle at each instant. Together with earlier work by Leonhard Euler led to the discovery of what today are known as Lagrangian (or Lagrange) points.
Having a few spots in an N-body configuration where you can be reasonably certain that your spacecraft won’t suddenly bugger off into weird directions that necessitate position corrections using wasteful thruster activations is definitely a plus. This is why especially space-based observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope love to hang around in these spots.
Stable and Unstable Stable
Although the definition of Lagrange points often makes it sound like you can put a spacecraft in that location and it’ll remain there forever, it’s essential to remember that ‘stationary’ only makes sense in particular observer’s reference frame. The Moon orbits the Earth, which orbits the Sun, which ultimately orbits the center of the Milky Way, which moves relative to other galaxies. Or it’s just the expansion of space-time which make it appear that the Milky Way moves, but that gets one quickly into the fun corners of theoretical physics.
A contour plot of the effective potential defined by gravitational and centripetal forces. (Credit: NASA)
Within the Earth-Sun system, there are five Lagrange points (L1 – L5), of which L2 is currently the home of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and was the home to previous observatories (like the NASA WMAP spacecraft) that benefit from always being in the shadow of the Earth. Similarly, L1 is ideal for any Sun observatory, as like L2 it is located within easy communication distance
Perhaps shockingly, the L3 point is not very useful to put any observatories or other spacecraft, as the Sun would always block communication with Earth. What L3 has in common with L1 and L2 is that all of these are unstable Lagrange points, requiring course and attitude adjustments approximately every 23 days. This contrasts with L4 and L5, which are the two ‘stable’ points. This can be observed in the above contour plot, where L4 and L5 are on top of ‘hills’ and L1 through L3 are on ‘saddles’ where the potential curves up in one direction and down another.
One way to look at it is that satellites placed in the unstable points have a tendency to ‘wander off’, as they don’t have such a wide region of relatively little variance (contour lines placed far from each other) as L4 and L5 do. While this makes these stable points look amazing, they are not as close to Earth as L1 and L2, and they have a minor complication in the fact that they are already occupied, much like the Earth-Moon L4 and L5 points.
Because of how stable the L4 and L5 points are, the Earth-Moon system ones have found themselves home to the Kordylewski clouds. These are effectively concentrations of dust which were first photographed by Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski in 1961 and confirmed multiple times since. Although a very faint phenomenon, there are numerous examples of objects caught at these points in e.g. the Sun-Neptune system (Neptune trojans) and the Sun-Mars system (Mars trojans). Even our Earth has picked up a couple over the years, many of them asteroids. Of note that is the Earth’s Moon is not in either of these Lagrange points, having become gravitationally bound as a satellite.
All of which is a long way to say that it’s okay to put spacecraft in L4 and L5 points as long as you don’t mind fragile technology sharing the same region of space as some very large rocks, with an occasional new rocky friend getting drawn into the Lagrange point.
Stuff in Lagrange Points
A quick look at the Wikipedia list of objects at Lagrange points provides a long list past and current natural and artificial objects at these locations, across a variety of system. Sticking to just the things that we humans have built and sent into the Final Frontier, we can see that only the Sun-Earth and Earth-Moon systems have so far seen their Lagrange points collect more than space rocks and dust.
These will be joined if things go well by IMAP in 2025 along with SWFO-L1, NEO Surveyor in 2027. These spacecraft mostly image the Sun, monitor solar wind, image the Earth and its weather patterns, for which this L1 point is rather excellent. Of note here is that strictly taken most of these do not simply linger at the L1 point, but rather follow a Lissajous orbit around said Lagrange point. This particular orbital trajectory was designed to compensate for the instability of the L1-3 points and minimize the need for course corrections.
Moving on, the Sun-Earth L2 point is also rather busy:
Many of the planned spacecraft that should be joining the L2 point are also observatories for a wide range of missions, ranging from general observations in a wide range of spectra to exoplanet and comet hunting.
Despite the distance and hazards of the Sun-Earth L4 and L5 points, these host the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) A and B solar observation spacecraft. The OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa 2 spacecraft have passed through or near one of these points during their missions. The only spacecraft planned to be positioned at one of these points is ESA’s Vigil, which is scheduled to launch by 2031 and will be at L5.
Contour plot of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. (Credit: NASA)
Only the Moon’s L2 point currently has a number of spacecraft crowding about, with NASA’s THEMIS satellites going through their extended mission observations, alongside the Chinese relay satellite Queqiao-2 which supported the Chang’e 6 sample retrieval mission.
In terms of upcoming spacecraft to join the sparse Moon Lagrange crowd, the Exploration Gateway Platform was a Boeing-proposed lunar space station, but it was discarded in favor of the Lunar Gateway which will be placed in a polar near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) with an orbital period of about 7 days. This means that this space station will cover more of the Moon’s orbit rather than remain stationary. It is intended to be launched in 2027, as part of the NASA Artemis program.
Orbital Mechanics Fun
The best part of orbits is that you have so many to pick from, allowing you to not only pick the ideal spot to idle at if that’s the mission profile, but also to transition between them such as when traveling from the Earth to the Moon with e.g. a trans-lunar injection (TLI) maneuver. This involves a low Earth orbit (LEO) which transitions into a powered, high eccentric orbit which approaches the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence.
Within this and low-energy transfer alternatives the restricted three-body problem continuously applies, meaning that the calculations for such a transfer have to account for as many variables as possible, while in the knowledge that there is no perfect solution. With our current knowledge level we can only bask in the predictable peace and quiet that are the Lagrange points, if moving away from all those nasty gravity wells like the Voyager spacecraft did is not an option.
U.S. money transfer giant MoneyGram has confirmed that hackers stole its customers’ personal information and transaction data during a cyberattack last month.
The company said in a statement Monday that an unauthorized third party “accessed and acquired” customer data during the cyberattack on September 20. The cyberattack — the nature of which remains unknown — sparked a week-long outage that resulted in the company’s website and app falling offline.
MoneyGram says it serves over 50 million people in more than 200 countries and territories each year.
In its statement Monday, MoneyGram said its investigation is in its “early stages” and is working to determine which consumers were affected by this issue. The company did not say how many customers might be affected. When reached, MoneyGram spokesperson Sydney Schoolfield did not comment beyond the company’s statement.
The stolen customer data includes names, phone numbers, postal and email addresses, dates of birth, and national identification numbers. The data also includes a “limited number” of Social Security numbers and government identification documents, such as driver’s licenses and other documents that contain personal information, like utility bills and bank account numbers. MoneyGram said the types of stolen data will vary by individual.
MoneyGram said that the stolen data also included transaction information, such as dates and amounts of transactions, and, “for a limited number of consumers, criminal investigation information (such as fraud).”
The Department of Justice has laid out its broad-strokes plan for ending Google’s monopoly over internet search after winning its antitrust case against the company in August. The sweeping changes could end Google’s position as the default search engine on billions of devices and require the company to share key information about its search algorithms with competitors.
The regulators’ proposals, laid out Tuesday in a filing with the D.C. federal court where the antitrust case was heard, are aimed not only at rectifying Google’s past anti-competitive practices but also at preventing it from unfairly dominating emerging technologies, particularly internet searches enabled by generative AI tools.
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The first step necessary to unwind Google’s illegal monopoly, according to the DOJ, will likely be to “limit or end” the company’s use of contracts and unfair revenue-sharing agreements that have enshrined Google as the pre-installed search engine on all Android devices and the Chrome browser. It could potentially also include forcing Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to split off the Android and Chrome divisions of its business.
Google’s search tools are powered by the huge amount of data its web crawlers have indexed and the ranking algorithms that prioritize which results users see first. To level the playing field for competitors, the DOJ said it might try to make the company share the indexes, search results, underlying ranking signals, and models used for Google search, including AI-powered search.
“Google’s ability to leverage its monopoly power to feed artificial intelligence features is an emerging barrier to competition and risks further entrenching Google’s dominance,” the DOJ wrote, adding that potential remedies could include prohibiting the company from signing contracts with web publishers that deny rival search engines access to their sites and forcing Google to allow publishers to opt out of having their content scraped and used to generate AI summaries at the top of search results.
The final category of remedies the DOJ proposed would aim to spread the wealth generated by advertisements attached to internet searches by making it easier for smaller competitors to enter markets without being crushed by Google’s economy of scale and by requiring Google to be more transparent with advertisers in its ad auctions.
It was revealed this weekend that Chinese hackers managed to access systems run by three of the largest internet service providers (ISPs) in the US.
What’s notable about the attack is that it compromised security backdoors deliberately created to allow for wiretaps by US law enforcement …
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Apple famously refused the FBI’s request to create a backdoor into iPhones to help access devices used by shooters in San Bernardino and Pensacola. The FBI was subsequently successful in accessing all the iPhones concerned without the assistance it sought.
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You cannot have an encryption system which is only a little bit insecure any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. Encryption systems are either secure or they’re not – and if they’re not then it’s a question of when, rather than if, others are able to exploit the vulnerability.
This latest case perfectly illustrates the point. The law required ISPs to create backdoors that could be used for wiretaps by US law enforcement, and hackers have now found and accessed them.
And of course the arguments against backdoors predate this statement by decades. The hangup on Apple in the article is because it’s an Apple fanboy outlet.
[…] A pro-Palestenian hacktivist group called SN_BLACKMETA has taken responsibility for the hack on X and Telegram. “They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of ‘Israel,’” the group said on X when someone asked them why they’d gone after the Archive.
The group elaborated on its reasoning in a now-deleted post on X. Jason Scott, an archivist at the Archive, screenshotted it and shared it. “Everyone calls this organization ‘non-profit’, but if its roots are truly in the United States, as we believe, then every ‘free’ service they offer bleeds millions of lives. Foreign nations are not carrying their values beyond their borders. Many petty children are crying in the comments and most of those comments are from a group of Zionist bots and fake accounts,” the post said.
SN_BLACKMETA also claimed responsibility for a six-day DDoS attack on the Archive back in May. “Since the attacks began on Sunday, the DDoS intrusion has been launching tens of thousands of fake information requests per second. The source of the attack is unknown,” Chris Freeland, Director of Library Services at the Archive said in a post about the attacks back in May.
SN_BLACKMETA launched its Telegram channel on November 23 and has claimed responsibility for a number of other attacks including a six-day DDoS run at Arab financial institutions and various attacks on Israeli tech companies in the spring.
It’s been a hard year for the Internet Archive. In July, the site went down due to “environmental factors” during a major heat wave in the U.S. Last month it lost an appeal in the lawsuit Hachette and other major publishers launched against it.
“If our patrons around the globe think this latest situation is upsetting, then they should be very worried about what the publishing and recording industries have in mind,” Kahle said in a post about the DDoS attack in May. “I think they are trying to destroy this library entirely and hobble all libraries everywhere. But just as we’re resisting the DDoS attack, we appreciate all the support in pushing back on this unjust litigation against our library and others.”
Well done SN_BLACKMETA – you have just played into Israels hands. People who were on the fence about Palestine in the West well definitely now lean towards Israel and away from Palestine 🙁
Internet Archive’s “The Wayback Machine” has suffered a data breach after a threat actor compromised the website and stole a user authentication database containing 31 million unique records.
News of the breach began circulating Wednesday afternoon after visitors to archive.org began seeing a JavaScript alert created by the hacker, stating that the Internet Archive was breached.
“Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!,” reads a JavaScript alert shown on the compromised archive.org site.
JavaScript alert shown on Archive.org Source: BleepingComputer
The text “HIBP” refers to is the Have I Been Pwned data breach notification service created by Troy Hunt, with whom threat actors commonly share stolen data to be added to the service.
Hunt told BleepingComputer that the threat actor shared the Internet Archive’s authentication database nine days ago and it is a 6.4GB SQL file named “ia_users.sql.” The database contains authentication information for registered members, including their email addresses, screen names, password change timestamps, Bcrypt-hashed passwords, and other internal data.
The most recent timestamp on the stolen records is September 28th, 2024, likely when the database was stolen.
[…]
Update 10/10/24: Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle shared an update on X last night, confirming the data breach and stating that the threat actor used a JavaScript library to show the alerts to visitors.
“What we know: DDOS attacked-fended off for now; defacement of our website via JS library; breach of usernames/email/salted-encrypted passwords,” reads a first status update tweeted last night.
Scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School and the University of California, Santa Cruz, have discovered the secret to regulating our internal clock. They identified that this regulator sits right at the tail end of Casein Kinase 1 delta (CK1δ), a protein which acts as a pace setter for our internal biological clock or the natural 24-hour cycles that control sleep-wake patterns and other daily functions, known as circadian rhythm.
Published in the journal PNAS, their findings could pave the way for new approaches to treating disorders related to our body clock.
CK1δ regulates circadian rhythms by tagging other proteins involved in our biological clock to fine-tune the timing of these rhythms. In addition to modifying other proteins, CK1δ itself can be tagged, thereby altering its own ability to regulate the proteins involved in running the body’s internal clock.
[…]
“Our findings pinpoint to three specific sites on CK1δ’s tail where phosphate groups can attach, and these sites are crucial for controlling the protein’s activity. When these spots get tagged with a phosphate group, CK1δ becomes less active, which means it doesn’t influence our circadian rhythms as effectively. Using high-resolution analysis, we were able to pinpoint the exact sites involved — and that’s really exciting.”
[…]
We found that the δ1 tail interacts more extensively with the main part of the protein, leading to greater self-inhibition compared to δ2. This means that δ1 is more tightly regulated by its tail than δ2. When these sites are mutated or removed, δ1 becomes more active, which leads to changes in circadian rhythms. In contrast, δ2 does not have the same regulatory effect from its tail region.”
This discovery highlights how a small part of CK1δ can greatly influence its overall activity. This self-regulation is vital for keeping CK1δ activity balanced, which, in turn, helps regulate our circadian rhythms.
The study also addressed the wider implications of these findings. CK1δ plays a role in several important processes beyond circadian rhythms, including cell division, cancer development, and certain neurodegenerative diseases. By better understanding how CK1δ’s activity is regulated, scientists could open new avenues for treating not just circadian rhythm disorders but also a range of conditions.
[…]
“Regulating our internal clock goes beyond curing jet lag — it’s about improving sleep-quality, metabolism and overall health. This important discovery could potentially open new doors for treatments that could transform how we manage these essential aspects of our daily lives.”
The researchers plan to further investigate how real-world factors, such as diet and environmental changes, affect the tagging sites on CK1δ.
Rachel L. Harold, Nikhil K. Tulsian, Rajesh Narasimamurthy, Noelle Yaitanes, Maria G. Ayala Hernandez, Hsiau-Wei Lee, Priya Crosby, Sarvind M. Tripathi, David M. Virshup, Carrie L. Partch. Isoform-specific C-terminal phosphorylation drives autoinhibition of Casein kinase 1. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024; 121 (41) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2415567121
Martin Shkreli has been fighting a $64.6 million fine he acquired in 2022 for blocking affordable alternatives to Daraprim, a lifesaving antiparasitic drug. Shockingly, it turns out nobody on the Supreme Court cares to hear about it.
No justices dissented on Monday when the court said it declined to hear an appeal by representatives of the former pharmaceutical executive. In a last-ditch effort, Shkreli’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to resolve conflicting rulings after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the $64.6 million order and a lifetime ban to block Shkreli from working in the drug business. Only, the conflicting rulings didn’t even exist, New York Attorney General Letitia James argued in an August brief. The Supreme Court had nothing to add when it snubbed Shkreli.
The so-called “pharma bro” rose to infamy as the chief of Turing Pharmaceuticals — later called Vyera. In 2015, the startup bought exclusive rights to Daraprim and jacked up its price from $13.50 to $750 a pill. At the time, there were no generic alternatives to the toxoplasmosis medication, which is used to treat a rare condition that affects pregnant people, babies, and people with HIV and cancer.
A US court has ordered Google to refrain from a wide variety of business practices the web giant uses to bolster its Play Store, as a consequence of its December 2023 antitrust defeat against Epic Games.
In that case, Epic argued that Google’s Play Store rules and contractual agreements with developers and partners violated the federal Sherman Act and California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL). And the jury agreed.
On Monday, US District Court judge James Donato issued a permanent injunction [PDF] that forbids Google from eight behaviors deemed unlawful as a result of the case.
“The jury found that Google’s conduct violated the antitrust laws and substantially harmed competition in the relevant markets, and directly injured Epic,” judge Donato wrote, explaining the injunction. “The jury rejected Google’s proffered procompetitive justifications for its conduct. Consequently, the Court concludes that Epic has prevailed on the UCL claim against Google under the unlawful and unfair prongs.”
Noting that Google had “fired a blunderbuss of comments and complaints that are underdeveloped and consequently unhelpful in deciding the issues,” judge Donato put an end to the extensive input afforded to both sides about the specifics of the injunction that follows from the verdict.
Google, in a blog post, unsurprisingly disagreed – it is appealing the verdict and will ask the courts to pause the injunction until its appeal is heard.
“These Epic-requested changes stem from a decision that is completely contrary to another court’s rejection of similar claims Epic made against Apple – even though, unlike iOS, Android is an open platform that has always allowed for choice and flexibility like multiple app stores and sideloading,” wrote Lee-Anne Mulholland, VP of regulatory affairs at Google.
Mulholland argues that the court-ordered changes would hinder Google’s – and the wider Android ecosystem’s – ability to compete with Apple’s ecosystem.
The injunction is set to take effect starting November 1, 2024, only in the US, for a period of three years. During this time:
Google may not share revenue generated by the Google Play Store with any person or entity that distributes Android apps, or has stated that it will launch or is considering launching an Android app distribution platform or store.
Google may not condition a payment, revenue share, or access to any Google product or service …
on an agreement by an app developer to launch an app first or exclusively in the Google Play Store;
on an agreement by an app developer not to launch on a third-party Android app distribution platform or store a version of an app that includes features not available in, or is otherwise different from, the version of the app offered on the Google Play Store;
on an agreement with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or carrier …
to preinstall the Google Play Store on any specific location on an Android device;
not to preinstall an Android app distribution platform or store other than the Google Play Store.
Google may not …
require the use of Google Play Billing in apps distributed on the Google Play Store, or prohibit the use of in-app payment methods other than Google Play Billing;
prohibit a developer from communicating with users about the availability of a payment method other than Google Play Billing;
require a developer to set a price based on whether Google Play Billing is used;
prohibit a developer from …
communicating with users about the availability or pricing of an app outside the Google Play Store;
providing a link to download the app outside the Google Play Store.
Google will permit third-party Android app stores to access the Google Play Store’s catalog of apps so that they may offer the Play Store apps to users. [Along with other distribution fairness requirements, Google has eight-months to implement this, at which point the three-year clock will begin for this provision.]
Google may not prohibit the distribution of third-party Android app distribution platforms or stores through the Google Play Store.
The injunction also gives Epic and Google a 30-day deadline to form a three-person Technical Committee, comprising one representative from each party and a mutually agreed upon third member, to resolve disputes over the implementation of the injunction’s provisions.
Epic Games did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ®
[…] The one-and-done nature of Wiles’ experience is indicative of a core business problem with the once high-flying biotech company that is now teetering on the brink of collapse. Wiles and many of 23andMe’s 15 million other customers never returned. They paid once for a saliva kit, then moved on.
Shares of 23andMe are now worth pennies. The company’s valuation has plummeted 99% from its $6 billion peak shortly after the company went public in 2021.
As 23andMe struggles for survival, customers like Wiles have one pressing question: What is the company’s plan for all the data it has collected since it was founded in 2006?
[…]
Andy Kill, a spokesperson for 23andMe, would not comment on what the company might do with its trove of genetic data beyond general pronouncements about its commitment to privacy.
[…]
When signing up for the service, about 80% of 23andMe’s customers have opted in to having their genetic data analyzed for medical research.
[…]
The company has an agreement with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK, that allows the drugmaker to tap the tech company’s customer data to develop new treatments for disease.
Anya Prince, a law professor at the University of Iowa’s College of Law who focuses on genetic privacy, said those worried about their sensitive DNA information may not realize just how few federal protections exist.
For instance, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, does not apply to 23andMe since it is a company outside of the health care realm.
[…]
According to the company, all of its genetic data is anonymized, meaning there is no way for GSK, or any other third party, to connect the sample to a real person. That, however, could make it nearly impossible for a customer to renege on their decision to allow researchers to access their DNA data.
“I couldn’t go to GSK and say, ‘Hey, my sample was given to you — I want that taken out — if it was anonymized, right? Because they’re not going to re-identify it just to pull it out of the database,” Prince said.
[…]
the patchwork of state laws governing DNA data makes the generic data of millions potentially vulnerable to being sold off, or even mined by law enforcement.
“Having to rely on a private company’s terms of service or bottom line to protect that kind of information is troubling — particularly given the level of interest we’ve seen from government actors in accessing such information during criminal investigations,” Eidelman said.
She points to how investigators used a genealogy website to identify the man known as the Golden State Killer, and how police homed in on an Idaho murder suspect by turning to similar databases of genetic profiles.
“This has happened without people’s knowledge, much less their express consent,” Eidelman said.
[…]
Last year, the company was hit with a major data breach that it said affected 6.9 million customer accounts, including about 14,000 who had their passwords stolen.
[…]
Some analysts predict that 23andMe could go out of business by next year, barring a bankruptcy proceeding that could potentially restructure the company.
Google is rolling out ads in AI Overviews, which means you’ll now start seeing products in some of the search engine’s AI-generated summaries.
Let’s say you’re searching for ways to get a grass stain out of your pants. If you ask Google, its AI-generated response will offer some tips, along with suggestions for products to purchase that could help you remove the stain. […]
At 8:22 am on December 4 last year, a car traveling down a small residential road in Alabama used its license-plate-reading cameras to take photos of vehicles it passed. One image, which does not contain a vehicle or a license plate, shows a bright red “Trump” campaign sign placed in front of someone’s garage. In the background is a banner referencing Israel, a holly wreath, and a festive inflatable snowman.
Another image taken on a different day by a different vehicle shows a “Steelworkers for Harris-Walz” sign stuck in the lawn in front of someone’s home. A construction worker, with his face unblurred, is pictured near another Harris sign. Other photos show Trump and Biden (including “Fuck Biden”) bumper stickers on the back of trucks and cars across America.
[…]
These images were generated by AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers—all while recording the precise locations of these observations.
[…]
The detailed photographs all surfaced in search results produced by the systems of DRN Data, a license-plate-recognition (LPR) company owned by Motorola Solutions. The LPR system can be used by private investigators, repossession agents, and insurance companies; a related Motorola business, called Vigilant, gives cops access to the same LPR data.
[…]
those with access to the LPR system can search for common phrases or names, such as those of politicians, and be served with photographs where the search term is present, even if it is not displayed on license plates.
[…]
“I searched for the word ‘believe,’ and that is all lawn signs. There’s things just painted on planters on the side of the road, and then someone wearing a sweatshirt that says ‘Believe.’” Weist says. “I did a search for the word ‘lost,’ and it found the flyers that people put up for lost dogs and cats.”
Beyond highlighting the far-reaching nature of LPR technology, which has collected billions of images of license plates, the research also shows how people’s personal political views and their homes can be recorded into vast databases that can be queried.
[…]
Over more than a decade, DRN has amassed more than 15 billion “vehicle sightings” across the United States, and it claims in its marketing materials that it amasses more than 250 million sightings per month.
[…]
The system is partly fueled by DRN “affiliates” who install cameras in their vehicles, such as repossession trucks, and capture license plates as they drive around. Each vehicle can have up to four cameras attached to it, capturing images in all angles. These affiliates earn monthly bonuses and can also receive free cameras and search credits.
In 2022, Weist became a certified private investigator in New York State. In doing so, she unlocked the ability to access the vast array of surveillance software accessible to PIs. Weist could access DRN’s analytics system, DRNsights, as part of a package through investigations company IRBsearch. (After Weist published an op-ed detailing her work, IRBsearch conducted an audit of her account and discontinued it.
[…]
While not linked to license plate data, one law enforcement official in Ohio recently said people should “write down” the addresses of people who display yard signs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, exemplifying how a searchable database of citizens’ political affiliations could be abused.
[…]
In 2022, WIRED revealed that hundreds of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and contractors were investigated for abusing similar databases, including LPR systems. The alleged misconduct in both reports ranged from stalking and harassment to sharing information with criminals.
Ecovacs robot vacuums, which have been found to suffer from critical cybersecurity flaws, are collecting photos, videos and voice recordings — taken inside customers’ houses — to train the company’s AI models.
The Chinese home robotics company, which sells a range of popular Deebot models in Australia, said its users are “willingly participating” in a product improvement program.
When users opt into this program through the Ecovacs smartphone app, they are not told what data will be collected, only that it will “help us strengthen the improvement of product functions and attached quality”. Users are instructed to click “above” to read the specifics, however there is no link available on that page.
Ecovacs’s privacy policy — available elsewhere in the app — allows for blanket collection of user data for research purposes, including:
– The 2D or 3D map of the user’s house generated by the device – Voice recordings from the device’s microphone — Photos or videos recorded by the device’s camera
“It also states that voice recordings, videos and photos that are deleted via the app may continue to be held and used by Ecovacs…”
Microsoft has removed Windows Mixed Reality from Windows 11.
With Windows 11 24H2, the latest major version of Microsoft’s PC operating system, you can no longer use a Windows MR headset in any way – not even on Steam.
This includes all the Windows MR headsets from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, including HP’s Reverb G2, released in 2020.
Screenshot taken by UploadVR.
UploadVR tested Windows 11 24H2 with a Reverb G2 and found the above notice. Microsoft confirmed to UploadVR that this is an intentional removal when it originally announced the move back in December.
In August 3.49% of SteamVR users were using a Windows MR headset, which we estimate to be around 80,000 people. If they install Windows 11 24H2, their VR headset will effectively become a paperweight.
“Existing Windows Mixed Reality devices will continue to work with Steam through November 2026, if users remain on their current released version of Windows 11 (version 23H2) and do not upgrade to this year’s annual feature update for Windows 11 (version 24H2).”
The death of Windows MR headsets comes on the same week Microsoft revealed that HoloLens 2 production has ended, and that software support for the AR headset will end after 2027.
Despite the name, all Windows MR headsets were actually VR-only, and are compatible with most SteamVR content via Microsoft’s SteamVR driver.
The first Windows MR headsets arrived in late 2017 from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, aiming to compete with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that had launched a year earlier. They were the first consumer VR products to deliver inside-out positional tracking, for both the headset and controllers.
[…]
In recent years Microsoft has shifted its XR focus to a software-based long term strategic partnership with Meta.
Soon, it will also bring automatic extension of Windows 11 laptops by just looking at them, including spawning entirely virtual extra monitors.
And earlier this year Microsoft announced Windows Volumetric Apps, a new API for extending 3D elements of PC applications being streamed to Meta Quest into 3D space.
A real crying shame. So another reason people will hang on to their Windows 10 installations even more. Hopefully (but doubtfully) they will release the source code and allow people to chug on under their own steam. Bricking these headsets in under four years should be illegal.
The Netherlands’ government and opposition are both against the latest version of the controversial EU regulation aimed at detecting online child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to an official position and an open letter published on Tuesday (1 October).
The regulation, aimed at detecting online CSAM, has been criticised for potentially allowing the scanning of private messages on platforms such as WhatsApp or Gmail.
However, the latest compromise text, dated 9 September, limits detection to known material, among other changes. ‘Known’ material refers to content that has already been circulating and detected, in contrast to ‘new’ material that has not yet been identified.
The Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU shared a partial general approach dated 24 September and seen by Euractiv, that mirrors the 9 September text but reduces the reevaluation period from five years to three for grooming and new CSAM.
Limiting detection to known material could hinder authorities’ ability to surveil massive amounts of communications, suggesting the change is likely an attempt to reconcile privacy concerns.
The Netherlands initially supported the proposal to limit detection to ‘known’ material but withdrew its support in early September, Euractiv reported.
On Tuesday (1 October), Amsterdam officially took a stance against the general approach, despite speculation last week suggesting the country might shift its position in favour of the regulation.
This is also despite the Dutch mostly maintaining that their primary concern lies with combating known CSAM – a focus that aligns with the scope of the latest proposal.
According to various statistics, the Netherlands hosts a significant amount of CSAM.
The Dutch had been considering supporting the proposal, or at least a “silent abstention” that might have weakened the blocking minority, signalling a shift since Friday (27 September), a source close to the matter told Euractiv.
While a change in the Netherlands’ stance could have affected the blocking minority in the EU Council, their current position now strengthens it.
If the draft law were to pass in the EU Council, the next stage would be interinstitutional negotiations, called trilogues, between the European Parliament, the Council of the EU, and the Commission to finalise the legislation.
Both the Dutch government and the opposition are against supporting the new partial general approach.
Opposition party GroenLinks-PvdA (Greens/EFA) published an open letter, also on Tuesday, backed by a coalition of national and EU-based private and non-profit organisations, urging the government to vote against the proposal.
According to the letter, the regulation will be discussed at the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 11 October, with positions coordinated among member states on 2 October.
Currently, an interim regulation allows companies to detect and report online CSAM voluntarily. Originally set to expire in 2024, this measure has been extended to 2026 to avoid a legislative gap, as the draft for a permanent law has yet to be agreed.
The Dutch Secret Service opposed the draft regulation because “introducing a scan application on every mobile phone” with infrastructure to manage the scans would be a complex and extensive system that would introduce risks to digital resilience, according to a decision note.
Mazda recently surprised customers by requiring them to sign up for a subscription in order to keep certain services. Now, notable right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossmann is calling out the brand. He points to several moves by Mazda as reasons for his anger toward them. However, it turns out that customers might still have a workaround.
Previously, the Japanese carmaker offered connected services, that included several features such as remote start, without the need for a subscription. At the time, the company informed customers that these services would eventually transition to a paid model.
It’s important to clarify that there are two very different types of remote start we’re talking about here. The first type is the one many people are familiar with where you use the key fob to start the vehicle. The second method involves using another device like a smartphone to start the car. In the latter, connected services do the heavy lifting.
Transition to paid services
What is wild is that Mazda used to offer the first option on the fob. Now, it only offers the second kind, where one starts the car via phone through its connected services for a $10 monthly subscription, which comes to $120 a year. Rossmann points out that one individual, Brandon Rorthweiler, developed a workaround in 2023 to enable remote start without Mazda’s subscription fees.
However, according to Ars Technica, Mazda filed a DMCA takedown notice to kill that open-source project. The company claimed it contained code that violated “[Mazda’s] copyright ownership” and used “certain Mazda information, including proprietary API information.” Additionally, Mazda argued that the project included code providing functionality identical to that found in its official apps available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
That doesn’t mean an aftermarket remote starter kit won’t work though. In fact, with Mazda’s subscription model now in place, it’s not hard to imagine customers flocking to aftermarket solutions to avoid the extra fees. However, by not opting to pay for Mazda Connected Services, owners will also miss out on things like vehicle health reports, remote keyless entry, and vehicle status reports.
A growing trend
Bear in mind that this is just one case of an automaker trying to milk their customers with subscription-based features, which could net them millions in extra income. BMW, for example, installs adaptive suspension hardware in some vehicles but charges $27.50 per month (or $505 for a one-time purchase) to unlock the software that makes the suspension actually work.
And then there’s Ferrari’s plan to offer a battery subscription for extended warranty coverage on its hybrid models for a measly $7,500 per year!
[…]
sure, you might have paid a considerable amount of money to buy your car, and it might legally be yours, but that does not ensure that you really own all of the features it comes with, unless you’re prepared to pay extra.
It’s a well-known secret that inkjet ink is being kept at artificially high prices, which is why many opt to forego ‘genuine’ manufacturer cartridges and get third-party ones instead. Many of these third-party ones are so-called re-manufactured ones, where a third-party refills an empty OEM cartridge. This is increasingly being done due to digital rights management (DRM) reasons, with tracking chips added to each cartridge. These chip prohibit e.g. the manual refilling of empty cartridges with a syringe, but with the right tweak or attack can be bypassed, with [Jay Summet] showing off an interesting HP cartridge DRM bypass using a physical man-in-the-middle-attack.
This bypass takes the form of a flex PCB with contacts on both sides which align with those on the cartridge and those of the printer. What looks like a single IC in a QFN package is located on the cartridge side, with space for it created inside an apparently milled indentation in the cartridge’s plastic. This allows is to fit flush between the cartridge and HP inkjet printer, intercepting traffic and presumably telling the printer some sweet lies so that you can go on with that print job rather than dash out to the store to get some more overpriced Genuine HP-approved cartridges.
Not that HP isn’t aware or not ticked off about this, mind. Recently they threatened to brick HP printers that use third-party cartridges if detected, amidst vague handwaving about ‘hackers’ and ‘viruses’ and ‘protecting the users’ with their Dynamic Security DRM system. As the many lawsuits regarding this DRM system trickle their way through the legal system, it might be worth it to keep a monochrome laser printer standing by just in case the (HP) inkjet throws another vague error when all you want is to just print a text document.
One of the many interesting aspects of the current enthusiasm for generative AI is the way that it has electrified the formerly rather sleepy world of copyright. Where before publishers thought they had successfully locked down more or less everything digital with copyright, they now find themselves confronted with deep-pocketed companies – both established ones like Google and Microsoft, and newer ones like OpenAI – that want to overturn the previous norms of using copyright material. In particular, the latter group want to train their AI systems on huge quantities of text, images, videos and sounds.
As Walled Culture has reported, this has led to a spate of lawsuits from the copyright world, desperate to retain their control over digital material. They have framed this as an act of solidarity with the poor exploited creators. It’s a shrewd move, and one that seems to be gaining traction. Lots of writers and artists think they are being robbed of something by Big AI, even though that view is based on a misunderstanding of how generative AI works. However, in the light of stories like one in The Bookseller, they might want to reconsider their views about who exactly is being evil here:
Academic publisher Wiley has revealed it is set to make $44 million (£33 million) from Artificial Intelligence (AI) partnerships that it is not giving authors the opportunity to opt-out from.
As to whether authors would share in that bounty:
A spokesperson confirmed that Wiley authors are set to receive remuneration for the licensing of their work based on their “contractual terms”.
That might mean they get nothing, if there is no explicit clause in their contract about sharing AI licensing income. For example, here’s what is happening with the publisher Taylor & Francis:
In July, authors hit out another academic publisher, Taylor & Francis, the parent company of Routledge, over an AI deal with Microsoft worth $10 million, claiming they were not given the opportunity to opt out and are receiving no extra payment for the use of their research by the tech company. T&F later confirmed it was set to make $75 million from two AI partnership deals.
It’s not just in the world of academic publishing that deals are being struck. Back in July, Forbes reported on a “flurry of AI licensing activity”:
The most active area for individual deals right now by far—judging from publicly known deals—is news and journalism. Over the past year, organizations including Vox Media (parent of New York magazine, The Verge, and Eater), News Corp (Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Times (London)), Dotdash Meredith (People, Entertainment Weekly, InStyle), Time, The Atlantic, Financial Times, and European giants such as Le Monde of France, Axel Springer of Germany, and Prisa Media of Spain have each made licensing deals with OpenAI.
In the absence of any public promises to pass on some of the money these licensing deals will bring, it is not unreasonable to assume that journalists won’t be seeing much if any of it, just as they aren’t seeing much from the link tax.
The increasing number of such licensing deals between publishers and AI companies shows that the former aren’t really too worried about the latter ingesting huge quantities of material for training their AI systems, provided they get paid. And the fact that there is no sign of this money being passed on in its entirety to the people who actually created that material, also confirms that publishers don’t really care about creators. In other words, it’s pretty much what was the status quo before generative AI came along. For doing nothing, the intermediaries are extracting money from the digital giants by invoking the creators and their copyrights. Those creators do all the work, but once again see little to no benefit from the deals that are being signed behind closed doors.
The Bigscreen Beyond is a small and lightweight VR headset that in part achieves its small size and weight by requiring custom fitting based on a facial scan. [Val’s Virtuals] managed to improve fitment even more by redesigning a facial interface and using a 3D scan of one’s own head to fine-tune the result even further. The new designs distribute weight more evenly while also providing an optional flip-up connection.
It may be true that only a minority of people own a Bigscreen Beyond headset, and even fewer of them are willing to DIY their own custom facial interface. But [Val]’s workflow and directions for using Blender to combine a 3D scan of one’s face with his redesigned parts to create a custom-fitted, foam-lined facial interface is good reading, and worth keeping in mind for anyone who designs wearables that could benefit from custom fitting. It’s all spelled out in the project’s documentation — look for the .txt file among the 3D models.
