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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

India's Competition Commission has slapped Meta with a five-year ban on using info collected from WhatsApp to help with advertising on its other platforms.

The regulator (ICC) on Monday explained its decision, referring back to a February 2021 change to WhatsApp's privacy policies that the Commission argued "expanded scope of data collection as well as mandatory data sharing with Meta companies."

Failure to agree to the changes would have meant quitting WhatsApp.

Indian citizens were of course free to do so. But the Commission wondered if it was practical to quit WhatsApp, and therefore whether Meta enjoys market dominance.

The ICC decided Meta leads two markets in India: over-the-top messaging apps, and online display advertising.

[...] The ICC has ordered several remedies.

One is a fine of ₹213.14 crore – about $25 million and therefore back-of-the-sofa money for Meta.

A more substantial requirement means Meta can no longer make acceptance of its privacy policy a condition for users to use WhatsApp in India. The Register imagines that order creates the potential for a substantial population of users to opt out of some data collection.

Meta will have time to learn to live with that sort of thing. Another sanction is a five-year ban on sharing user data collected on WhatsApp with other parts of Meta for advertising purposes.

Another element of the order requires future versions of WhatsApp legalese to "include a detailed explanation of the user data shared with other Meta Companies or Meta Company Products" that specifies "the purpose of data sharing, linking each type of data to its corresponding purpose."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Most people can “see” vivid imagery in their minds. They can imagine a chirping bird from hearing the sounds of one, for example. But people with aphantasia can’t do this. A new study explores how their brains work.

Growing up, Roberto S. Luciani had hints that his brain worked differently than most people. He didn’t relate when people complained about a movie character looking different than what they’d pictured from the book, for instance.

[...] That’s because Luciani has a condition called aphantasia — an inability to picture objects, people and scenes in his mind. When he was growing up, the term didn’t even exist. But now, Luciani, a cognitive scientist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, and other scientists are getting a clearer picture of how some brains work, including those with a blind mind’s eye.

In a recent study, Luciani and colleagues explored the connections between the senses, in this case, hearing and seeing. In most of our brains, these two senses collaborate. Auditory information influences activity in brain areas that handle vision. But in people with aphantasia, this connection isn’t as strong, researchers report November 4 in Current Biology.

[...] The results highlight the range of brain organizations, says cognitive neuroscientist Lars Muckli, also of the University of Glasgow. “Imagine the brain has an interconnectedness that comes in different strengths,” he says. At one end of the spectrum are people with synesthesia, for whom sounds and sights are tightly mingled (SN: 11/22/11). “In the midrange, you experience the mind’s eye — knowing something is not real, but sounds can trigger some images in your mind. And then you have aphantasia,” Muckli says. “Sounds don’t trigger any visual experience, not even a faint one.”

The results help explain how brains of people with and without aphantasia differ, and they also give clues about brains more generally, Muckli says. “The senses of the brain are more interconnected than our textbooks tell us.”

The results also raise philosophical questions about all the different ways people make sense of the world (SN: 6/28/24). Aphantasia “exists in a realm of invisible differences between people that make our lived experiences unique, without us realizing,” Luciani says. “I find it fascinating that there may be other differences lurking in the shadow of us assuming other people experience the world like us.”

Reference: B. M. Montabes de la Cruz et al. Decoding sound content in the early visual cortex of aphantasic participants. Current Biology. Vol. 34, p. 5083. November 4, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.09.008.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

When Cray Computing, a supercomputer manufacturer acquired by HP in 2019, announced that it would build El Capitan it expected the computer to reach a peak performance of 1.5 exaflops. Today, the 64th edition of the TOP500 — a long-running ranking of the world's non-distributed supercomputers — was published, and El Capitan not only exceeded that forecast by clocking 1.742 exaflops, but has claimed the title as the most powerful supercomputer in the world right now.

El Capitan is only the third “exascale” computer, meaning it can perform more than a quintillion calculations in a second. The other two, called Frontier and Aurora, claim the second and third place slots on the TOP500 now. Unsurprisingly, all of these massive machines live within government research facilities: El Capitan is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Frontier is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory claims Aurora. Cray had a hand in all three systems.

El Capitan has more than 11 million combined CPU and GPU cores based on AMD 4th-gen EPYC processors. These 24-core processors are rated at 1.8GHz each and have AMD Instinct M1300A APUs. It's also relatively efficient, as such systems go, squeezing out an estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt.

If you’re wondering what El Capitan is built for, the answer is addressing nuclear stockpile safety, but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism. Being more powerful than anticipated, it’s likely to occupy the throne for a long while before another exascale computer overtakes it.

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owl writes:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/from-jealous-spouses-to-paranoid-bosses-pedometers-quantified-suspicion-in-the-19th-century-180985504/

On December 22, 1860, the Vincennes Gazette, an Indiana weekly paper, ran the following anecdote:

A lady who had read of the extensive manufacture of odometers, to tell how far a carriage had been run, said she wished some Connecticut genius would invent an instrument to tell how far husbands had been in the evening when they "just stepped down to the post office" or "went out to attend a caucus."

The Indiana woman seemed not to know that such devices were already available, used by land surveyors and others to measure distances. But one Boston woman managed to perform exactly the kind of surveillance she described. According to a report in the October 7, 1879, Hartford Daily Courant, "A Boston wife softly attached a pedometer to her husband when, after supper, he started to 'go down to the office and balance the books.' On his return, 15 miles of walking were recorded. He had been stepping around a billiard table all evening."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

How do you rescue an injured crew member on the lunar surface? NASA is looking for ideas, and a share of a $45,000 prize pot is up for grabs.

The problem has vexed the US space agency for some time. Though Apollo featured the Buddy Secondary Life Support System (BSLSS) that allowed crew members to share cooling water in the event of a life support system failure while roaming the lunar surface, the problem for Artemis is more complicated. NASA wants a solution to allow the transport of a fully incapacitated crew member back to the lander from a distance of up to two kilometers.

The design must not make use of a lunar rover, must be low in mass (less than 23 kilograms), and must be of minimal volume since it is going to have to be transported by a crew member over the entire duration of extravehicular activity (EVA). It must also be able to deal with the extremes of temperature on the lunar surface and function in the presence of lunar dust.

The design must also be able to handle slopes of up to 20 degrees up or down, as well as the rocks and craters that pepper the lunar surface. On the plus side, it doesn't need to provide any medical attention or life support. It just needs to be something that can be quickly and easily deployed to transport the incapacitated astronaut back to the lander.

It's an interesting mental exercise. How would such a device work? There have been studies [PDF] on the subject, which came to the conclusion that a wheeled transport device "provides the highest risk reduction potential," although attaching something like that to an Artemis EVA suit will present a challenge. Other walking assistance options don't meet the "fully incapacitated" requirement.

The first crewed landing of the Artemis program is scheduled for not earlier than 2026, meaning that little time remains for a design to be implemented. NASA would like comprehensive technical design concepts, ideally with some preliminary CAD models, submitted by January 23, 2025, and will announce the winners on February 27.

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looorg writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/19/us-doj-sell-chrome-browser-ai-android

US justice department plans to push Google to sell off Chrome browser

[...] The DoJ will reportedly push for Google, which is owned by Alphabet, to sell the browser and also ask a judge to require new measures related to artificial intelligence as well as its Android smartphone operating system, according to Bloomberg.

Competition officials, along with a number of US states that have joined the case against the Silicon Valley company, also plan to recommend that the federal judge Amit Mehta imposes data licensing requirements.

Google has said it will challenge any case by the DoJ and said the proposals marked an "overreach" by the government that would harm consumers.

It didn't go their way a few decades ago when they wanted to split or force Microsoft to split or part with some aspects of the company. Any reason to think they'll do better this time around?

According to Bloomberg they are tossing around the value of $20 billion. Who has that to spare for Chrome? That isn't already more or less a monopoly in and by themselves? One evil is as good/bad as the next evil.

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DannyB writes:

SpaceX's Shotwell Says US Regulators Must 'Go Faster'

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell fired off fresh criticism at US regulators on Friday, saying rocket launch approvals need to catch up with the pace her company is innovating.

[....] Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company plans to launch the sixth major test of its new Starship vehicle on Tuesday, and sees as many as 400 launches of the moon and Mars craft over the next four years, Shotwell said. That compares with a record 148 missions that US regulators authorized for the entire commercial space industry in the government's most recent fiscal year.

[....] In September, Musk, SpaceX's founder and Chief Executive Officer, called on the head of the FAA to resign and claimed that government paperwork to license a launch takes longer than building the actual rocket.

On Thursday, the FAA said it plans to update its launch and reentry licensing rule, as the number of space operations could more than double by 2028, it said.

What did FAA do back when aircraft were new and novel, and could be dangerous?

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fliptop writes:

EU leaders suspect sabatoge:

An internet cable connecting Finland to Germany and another one between Lithuania and Sweden, both running under the Baltic Sea, were cut within 24 hours of one another. While accidental damage on undersea cables happens, CNN says these are rare events. So, the disruption of two cables around 65 miles apart and happening nearly simultaneously is a sign of sabotage, says German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

"Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed," said Pistorius. "We have to know that, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a hybrid action, and we also have to assume that, without knowing by whom yet, that this is sabotage." The Finnish and German foreign ministers have also issued a joint statement, saying, "The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicious of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times." They also add, "Our European security is not only under threat from Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors."

These events came a few months after NATO warned that Russia was developing strategies to disrupt the global internet, with the latter mapping undersea fiber optic cables as future reference. Right before the suspected sabotage occurred, the US government also recently allowed Ukraine to use some long-range US weapons to attack targets in the Kursk region inside Russia, enflaming tensions further and heightening suspicions of Russian involvement.

[...] Despite these attacks, internet disruption remains limited. Telia Lithuania, the company that runs the Lithuania-Sweden cable, says that the damaged cable handled about a third of Lithuania's internet capacity but that traffic has already been restored even though the cable is yet to be repaired. Cinia, the company behind Finland-Germany fiber optic cable, also confirmed that service through that line was down. It also said that its telecommunications network is run through multiple links, thus limiting disruption.

Update 11/20/2024 03:38 PT: The Danish Navy has boarded and detained the Chinese Bulk Carrier Yi Peng 3 in the Danish Straits, near the exit of the Great Belt, according to reports in Eurasia Daily and Defence24. The detention reportedly took place on the evening of November 18. Officials have not verified those reports, however. According to Financial Times sources, Swedish authorities are "carefully studying the Chinese vessel."

Related:

• Opinion: What's Really Up With Data Disconnects in the Deep Blue Sea?
• UK Official Warns of Russian Risk to Undersea Cables
• Could Russian Subs Stop the Internet?

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Science X's Phys.org site describes a report about the harm from tire particles, which account for about a third of all microplastic contamination in the environment. Unlike other types of plastic, tire particles are smaller, have greater chemical complexity, and different behavior in ecosystems. Thus the call is for them to be placed in a new, separate enviromental category.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, highlights the gap in current knowledge about the environmental presence, transportation, and toxic impact of these particles. The authors have identified ten priority research questions across four key themes: environmental detection, chemical composition, biotic impacts, and regulation.

The research brought together an interdisciplinary network of experts from countries including the U.K., U.S., Norway, Australia, South Korea, Finland, Austria, China, and Canada. Their findings underscore the need for a standardized framework to quantify and manage TPs and their leachates, especially as the global presence of these contaminants rises.

A second study is being carried out on the effects from tire chemicals and particles on marine life in UK waters.

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fliptop writes:

In operation since 1992, RCS Labs is a relatively unknown Italian company, and just one node in a web of spyware vendors operating out of Italy with little oversight:

In April 2022, about four months after Kazakhstan's government violently cracked down on nationwide protests, cybersecurity researchers discovered that authorities in the country were deploying spyware on smartphones to eavesdrop on citizens.

[...] The spyware, known as Hermit, is believed to have been used in several other countries including Syria and Italy. Documents published by Wikileaks in 2015 show that RCS had engaged with military and intelligence agencies in Pakistan, Chile, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and Turkmenistan, according to a blog post from Lookout, the cloud security company which discovered Hermit.

[...] Although much attention is given to sophisticated, zero-click spyware developed by companies like Israel's NSO Group, the Italian spyware marketplace has been able to operate relatively under the radar by specializing in cheaper tools. According to an Italian Ministry of Justice document, as of December 2022 law enforcement in the country could rent spyware for €150 a day, regardless of which vendor they used, and without the large acquisition costs which would normally be prohibitive.

As a result, thousands of spyware operations have been carried out by Italian authorities in recent years, according to a report from Riccardo Coluccini, a respected Italian journalist who specializes in covering spyware and hacking.

"Spyware is being used more in Italy than in the rest of Europe because it's more accessible," Fabio Pietrosanti, president of Italy's Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights and a prominent ethical hacker there told Recorded Future News. "Like any technology or any investigative tool, if it's more accessible, then it will be more used. That's just the natural consequence."

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Previously: Italian Government Spyware Infiltrated Google Play

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Infosys founder Narayama Murthy has tripled down on his previous statements that 70-hour work weeks are what's needed in India and revealed he also thinks weekends were a mistake.

Speaking on Indian TV channel CNBC-TV18 at the Global Leadership Summit in Mumbai last week Murthy once again declared he did not “believe in work-life balance.”

“I have not changed my view; I will take this with me to my grave,” he asserted .

The argument from Murthy, and like-minded colleagues he quotes, is that India is a poor country that has work to do improving itself. Work-life balance can wait.

The Infosys founder held prime minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet up as an example of proper workaholics, claiming the PM toils for 100 hours a week, and suggested that not following suit demonstrates a lack of appreciation.

“Frankly I was a little bit disappointed in 1986 when we moved from a six-day week to a five-day week,” he added.

[...] In response to his Murthy’s comments, some have suggested that long working hours are acceptable when you own your own company, but perhaps not ideal as an employee.

“This man has been given too much of an importance by asking his opinion about everything under the sun. His words remind me of those exploitative barons of medieval ages from whom the 8 hours work day rights had to be snatched,” quipped a commenter who claims to be a former Infosys employee.

[...] Despite its founder’s firm stance that India’s workforce be fully engaged, Infosys has recently received attention for promising 2,000 graduates a job and them making them wait up to two years to start work.

The engineers-in-waiting were allegedly kept busy with occasional training and promises after being selected for employment during Infosys’ 2022/23 recruitment drive.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

T-Mobile's network was among the systems hacked in a damaging Chinese cyber-espionage operation that gained entry into multiple US and international telecommunications companies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday citing people familiar with the matter:

Hackers linked to a Chinese intelligence agency were able to breach T-Mobile as part of a monthslong campaign to spy on the cellphone communications of high-value intelligence targets, the Journal added, without saying when the attack took place.

[...] It was unclear what information, if any, was taken about T-Mobile customers' calls and communications records, according to the WSJ report.

[...] On Wednesday, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US cyber watchdog agency CISA said China-linked hackers have intercepted surveillance data intended for American law enforcement agencies after breaking into an unspecified number of telecom companies.

Earlier in October, the Journal reported that Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers, including Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping.

Previously: U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

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DannyB writes:

NASA May Have Inadvertently Killed Life on Mars, Scientist Says

from science alert ...

[....] decades ago in the 1970s, when the Viking landers became the first US mission to safely land on and explore the red planet, we may have been close.

One researcher raises the possibility that life existed in a sample of Martian soil. And then, in our quest to sniff it, we snuffed it out. Just like that.

[....] an experiment to detect the signs of microbial life on Mars could have been deadly.

[....] it's essential for us to consider thoroughly the ecology of Mars when designing future experiments.

[....] One of those experiments, the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GCMS), found chlorinated organics. At the time, that result was interpreted as contamination from human cleaning products, and thus a null detection for signs of biology.

We know now that chlorinated organics are native to Mars, although whether they are produced by biological or non-biological processes remains unknown.

There has been some speculation in recent years about the destructiveness of the Viking biological experiments. The GCMS needed to heat the samples to separate out the various materials therein. That, subsequent analysis revealed, could have incinerated the very organics it was hoping to find.

[....] what would happen if you poured water over these dry-adapted microbes. Might that overwhelm them? In technical terms, we would say that we were hyperhydrating them, but in simple terms, it would be more like drowning them," Schulze-Makuch explained in his column.

"It would be as if an alien spaceship were to find you wandering half-dead in the desert, and your would-be saviors decide, 'Humans need water. Let's put the human in the middle of the ocean to save it!'

Kidney stones weigh less on Mars.

[Editor's Comment:: Title changed to more accurately reflect summary content--JR ]

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute identified an intriguing new deep sea species off of California. It's see-through, can glow, and nabs prey with a large hood. At one point while filming, researchers watched it detach one of its finger-like appendages, likely as a decoy for a predator. The glowing appendage floated away.

[...] Below, you can view brilliant footage of the animal, which biologists have dubbed the "mystery mollusc." It now also has a scientific name, Bathydevius caudactylus, and after years of observation and genetic testing, scientists have concluded it's a species of nudibranch, more popularly known as sea slugs.

[...] It primarily lives between some 3,300 to 13,100 feet below the ocean surface, a vast region of the lightless sea called the midnight zone (this zone accounts for some 70 percent of seawater on Earth but is largely unexplored). To eat, it uses a hood to "trap crustaceans like a Venus fly trap plant," the institute explains. It's a hermaphrodite (like other sea slugs), and exploits its transparency to hide in plain sight. But as described above, when needed it can detach parts of its body as a decoy.

Bathydevius caudactylus is so unusual that it took 150 deep water sightings over 20 years before marine biologists could accurately identify the animal. The discovery has been published in the science journal Deep-Sea Research Part I.

[...] Ocean research organizations, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, are now vigilantly documenting and mapping the deep sea. Scientists want to shine a light — literally and figuratively — on what's down there. The implications of knowing are incalculable, particularly as deep sea mineral prospectors prepare to run tank-like industrial equipment across parts of the seafloor. For example, research expeditions have found that ocean life carries great potential for novel medicines. "Systematic searches for new drugs have shown that marine invertebrates produce more antibiotic, anti-cancer, and anti-inflammatory substances than any group of terrestrial organisms," notes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Instructional press video.

Journal Reference: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2024.104414

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

'We are deeply alarmed [the Department of Homeland Security] has not publicly disclosed when this investigation will begin,' the senators stated in a letter:

A bipartisan group of senators has urged a federal review board to immediately begin an investigation into a Chinese hacking group's attacks against the United States, according to a recent letter sent to Robert Silvers, undersecretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Led by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), the senators wrote in a letter dated Nov. 14 that the independent Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) had announced in late October that it would initiate a review "at the appropriate time," a DHS spokesman confirmed in a statement to the Wall Street Journal, following media reports that Salt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored threat group, had breached several U.S. telecommunications companies.

[...] The senators noted that the CSRB's announcement "is a good first step." The CSRB, established by the DHS in 2022, consists of federal officials and private-sector cybersecurity experts.

"We are deeply alarmed DHS has not publicly disclosed when this investigation will begin," the senators wrote. "While details of the attack are still being revealed, the scope of this attack is historic in nature and the hacking technique used by Salt Typhoon holds countless senior U.S. officials and millions of U.S. citizens at risk.

"With all due speed and urgency, the CSRB should begin investigating how this happened immediately."

Previously: U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

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