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Finaly people urge FTC to ban hardware tethering – downgrades, transferral costs, sudden bricking, unexpected subscriptions

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Consumer and digital rights activists are calling on the US Federal Trade Commission to stop device-makers using software to reduce product functionality, bricking unloved kit, or adding surprise fees post-purchase.

In an eight-page letter [PDF] to the Commission (FTC), the activists mentioned the Google/Levis collaboration on a denim jacket that contained sensors enabling it to control an Android device through a special app. When the app was discontinued in 2023, the jacket lost that functionality. The letter also mentions the “Car Thing,” an automotive infotainment device created by Spotify, which bricked the device fewer than two years after launch and didn’t offer a refund.

Another example highlighted is the $1,695 Snoo connected bassinet, manufactured by an outfit named Happiest Baby. Kids outgrow bassinets, yet Happiest Baby this year notified customers that if they ever sold or gave away their bassinets, the device’s next owner would have to pay a new $19.99 monthly subscription fee to keep certain features. Activists argue that reduces the resale value of the devices.

Signatories to the letter include individuals from Consumer Reports, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, teardown artists iFixit, and the Software Freedom Conservancy. Environmental groups and computer repair shops also signed the letter.

The signatories urged the FTC to create “clear guidance” that would prevent device manufacturers from using software that locks out features and functions in products that are already owned by customers.

The practice of using software to block features and functions is referred to by the signatories as “software tethering.”

“Consumers need a clear standard for what to expect when purchasing a connected device,” stated Justin Brookman, director of technology policy at Consumer Reports and a former policy director of the FTC’s Office of Technology, Research, and Investigation. “Too often, consumers are left with devices that stop functioning because companies decide to end support without little to no warning. This leaves people stranded with devices they once relied on, unable to access features or updates.”

“Consumers increasingly face a death by a thousand cuts as connected products they purchase lose their software support or advertised features that may have prompted the original purchase,” the letter states. “They may see the device turned into a brick or their favorite features locked behind a subscription. Such software tethers also prevent consumers from reselling their purchases, as some software features may not transfer, or manufacturers may shut down devices, causing a second-hand buyer harm.”

[…]

Source: Activists urge FTC to ban hardware downgrades • The Register

More recent examples are Anova suddenly charging for a subscription, Peloton suddenly asking for an extra fee for resold units. In the past the field is long and littered, with video games being orphaned being pretty huge, but many many gadget makers (Logitech is really good at this) abandoning products and bricking them.

AI helps find simple charging trick to boost li-ion battery lifespan

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A simple change in how new lithium-ion batteries are charged can boost their total lifespans by 50 per cent on average – and battery manufacturers everywhere can immediately put the discovery into action. Extended battery lifespans could prove especially crucial for improving electric vehicles and energy storage for electricity grids.

“The cool thing is that we didn’t change any chemistry of the battery,” says William Chueh at Stanford University in California. “We just changed that last step in manufacturing to form the battery a little differently.”

Factories usually charge new batteries for the first time using low electric currents over many hours. But Chueh and his colleagues found that charging a new battery using high currents can significantly increase the number of times it can be recharged.

They used AI machine learning to identify the most important factors impacting battery performance during the first charge, and charging current was one of the most crucial. The researchers confirmed this result by constructing and experimenting on 186 batteries, and those first charged using a high current had a 50 per cent longer lifespan on average. For example, using this method, an electric car battery could go from lasting just 1500 recharge cycles to more than 2200 cycles.

Their finding subverts conventional wisdom because charging at a high current instead of a low one inactivates more lithium ions in a new battery – and the supply of lithium ions flowing back and forth between negative and positive electrodes determines how much charge the battery can hold. But the initial loss of lithium ions creates extra space in the positive electrode that enables the battery to cycle more efficiently when charging and draining, says team member Xiao Cui, also at Stanford University.

During the initial charging process, the inactivated lithium ions also become part of a protective layer on the negative electrode that can slow down battery degradation.

Source: AI helps find simple charging trick to boost battery lifespan | New Scientist

WaveCore beams gigabit network bridge link through concrete wall

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Airvine Scientific has a product that could make life easier for IT staff. WaveCore is designed to beam a network signal through thick concrete walls, eliminating the need to drill holes or route your cabling via a circuitous course.

The Silicon Valley wireless company says its newly introduced kit is quick to deploy and can penetrate thick concrete walls and floors in commercial real estate structures.

Drilling a hole for a cabling might mean time-consuming and costly inspections to get permits, and having to to go around it might mean routing cables via the nearest elevator or riser shaft, it says.

WaveCore is basically a pair of devices that form a point-to-point Ethernet bridge using a wireless signal capable of penetrating up to 12 inches (30 cm) of concrete and brick at multi-gigabit data rates. An Ethernet bridge is simply a way of linking separate network segments, in this case through a thick wall that would otherwise pose an obstacle.

wc airvine

Concrete walls are an average thickness of 8 inches (20 cm) or more in commercial real estate buildings around the world, the firm says. These types of walls may form the building’s outer perimeter, serve as interior load bearing walls or create protection for spaces such as fire control or network server rooms.

Airvine claims that tests with select customers earlier this year delivered results such as a 3 Gbps connection through 8 inches of concrete in the middle of a 54-foot (16 meter) link, and a 4 Gbps connection through a 12 inch (30 cm) concrete wall in a garage that was in the middle of a 6-foot (1.8 meter) link.

In a blog post discussing WaveCore, VP of Marketing Dave Sumi explains how it had been developed off the back of an existing product, WaveTunnel, which operates as an indoor wireless backbone in factories, warehouses, conference centers and similar large sites.

This can penetrate most interior walls and bend around corners, but the company says the one obstacle that it just couldn’t avoid and get around is thick concrete walls.

[…]

Source: WaveCore beams gigabit network link through 1ft-thick wall

Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free

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What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn’t bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library? You’d probably think they were delusional. Yet that argument has now carried the day in putting a knife into the back of the extremely useful Open Library from the Internet Archive.

The Second Circuit has upheld the lower court ruling and found that the Internet Archive’s Open Library is not fair use and therefore infringes on the copyright of publishers (we had filed an amicus brief in support of the Archive asking them to remember the fundamental purpose of copyright law and the First Amendment, which the Court ignored).

Even though this outcome was always a strong possibility, the final ruling is just incredibly damaging, especially in that it suggests that all libraries are bad for authors and cause them to no longer want to write. I only wish I were joking. Towards the end of the ruling (as we’ll get to below) it says that while having freely lent out books may help the public in the “short-term” the “long-term” consequences would be that “there would be little motivation to produce new works.”

[…]

As you’ll recall, the Open Library is no different than a regular library. It obtains books legally (either through purchase or donation) and then lends out one-to-one copies of those books. It’s just that it lends out digital copies of them. To keep it identical to a regular library, it makes sure that only one digital copy can be lent out for every physical copy it holds. Courts have already determined that digitizing physical books is fair use, and the Open Library has been tremendously helpful to all sorts of people.

The only ones truly annoyed by this are the publishers, who have always hated libraries and have long seen the shift to digital as an open excuse to effectively harm libraries. With licensed ebooks, the publishers have jacked up the prices so that (unlike with regular books), the library can’t just buy a single copy from any supplier and lend it out. Rather, publishers have made it prohibitively expensive to get ebook licenses, which come with ridiculous restrictions on how frequently books can be lent and more.

[…]

The key part of the case is whether or not the Internet Archive’s scanning and lending of books is fair use. The Second Circuit says that it fails the fair use four factors test. On the question of transformative use, the Internet Archive argued that because it was using technology to make lending of books more convenient and efficient, it was clearly transformative. Unfortunately, the court disagrees:

We conclude that IA’s use of the Works is not transformative. IA creates digital copies of the Works and distributes those copies to its users in full, for free. Its digital copies do not provide criticism, commentary, or information about the originals. Nor do they “add[] something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the [originals] with new expression, meaning or message.” Campbell, 510 U.S. at 579. Instead, IA’s digital books serve the same exact purpose as the originals: making authors’ works available to read. IA’s Free Digital Library is meant to―and does―substitute for the original Works

The panel is not convinced by the massive change in making physical books digitally lendable:

True, there is some “change” involved in the conversion of print books to digital copies. See Infinity Broadcast Corp. v. Kirkwood, 150 F.3d 104, 108 n.2 (2d Cir. 1998) (“[A] change in format . . . is not technically a transformation.”). But the degree of change does not “go beyond that required to qualify as derivative.” Warhol II, 598 U.S. at 529. Unlike transformative works, derivative works “ordinarily are those that re-present the protected aspects of the original work, i.e., its expressive content, converted into an altered form.” Google Books, 804 F.3d at 225. To be transformative, a use must do “something more than repackage or republish the original copyrighted work.” Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust, 755 F.3d 87, 96 (2d Cir. 2014); see also TVEyes, 883 F.3d at 177 (“[A] use of copyrighted material that merely repackages or republishes the original is unlikely to be deemed a fair use.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Changing the medium of a work is a derivative use rather than a transformative one.

But, that’s not what a derivative work is? A derivative work is not scanning a book. Scanning a book is making a copy. A derivative work is something like making a movie out of a book. So, this analysis is just fundamentally wrong in saying that this is a derivative work, and thus the rest of the analysis is kinda wonky based on that error.

Tragically, the Court then undermines the important ruling in the Betamax/VCR case that found “time shifting” (recording stuff off your TV) to be fair use, even as it absolutely was repackaging the same content for the same purpose. The Court says that doesn’t matter because it “predated our use of the word ‘transformative’ as a term of art.” But that doesn’t wipe out the case as a binding precedent, even though the Court here acts as though it does.

Sony was decided long before modern technology made it possible for one to view virtually any content at any time. Put in context, the “time-shifting” permitted by the defendant’s tape recorders in Sony was a unique efficiency not widely available at the time, and certainly not offered by the plaintiff-television producer.

So because content is more widely available, this kind of shifting is no longer fair use? How does that make any sense at all?

Then the Court says (incorrectly — as we’ll explain shortly) that there’s really nothing new or different about what the Open Library does:

Here, by contrast, IA’s Free Digital Library offers few efficiencies beyond those already offered by Publishers’ own eBooks.

The problem, though, is that this isn’t quite true. Getting licensed ebooks out from libraries is a difficult and cumbersome practice and requires each library to have a vast ebook collection that none can possibly afford. As this lawsuit went down, more and more authors came out of the woodwork, explaining how research they had done for their books was only possible because of the Open Library and would have been impossible via a traditional library given the lending restrictions and availability restrictions.

[…]

From there, the Court explores whether or not the Internet Archive’s use here was commercial. The lower court said it was because, ridiculously, the Internet Archive had donation links on library pages. Thankfully, the panel here sees how problematic that would be for every non-profit:

We likewise reject the proposition that IA’s solicitation of donations renders its use of the Works commercial. IA does not solicit donations specifically in connection with its digital book lending services―nearly every page on IA’s website contains a link to “Donate” to IA. App’x 6091. Thus, as with its partnership with BWB, any link between the funds IA receives from donations and its use of the Works is too attenuated to render the use commercial. Swatch, 756 F.3d at 83. To hold otherwise would greatly restrain the ability of nonprofits to seek donations while making fair use of copyrighted works. See ASTM I, 896 F.3d at 449 (rejecting the argument that because free distribution of copyrighted industry standards enhanced a nonprofit organization’s fundraising appeal, the use was commercial).

It also disagrees that this use is commercial because there’s a referral link for people to go and buy a copy of the book, saying that’s “too attenuated”:

Any link between the funds IA receives from its partnership with BWB and its use of the Works is too attenuated for us to characterize the use as commercial on that basis

Even so, the lack of commerciality isn’t enough to protect the project on the first factor analysis, and it goes to the publishers.

[…]

Source: Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free | Techdirt

There is a lot more, but it’s safe to say that the courts in the US and copyright laws have run amok and are only feeding the rich to the detriment of the poor. Denying people libraries is a step beyond.

Internet Archive loses appeal – 4 greedy publishers shut down major library in insane luddite US law system

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The Internet Archive’s appeal could spell further trouble for the non-profit, as it is in the middle of a another copyright lawsuit with music publishers that could cost more than $400m if it loses.

The Internet Archive has been dealt a serious blow in court, as it lost an appeal case to share scanned books without the approval of publishers.

The loss could lead to serious repercussions for the non-profit, as hundreds of thousands of digital books have been removed from its library. The Internet Archive is also in the middle of another copyright lawsuit from multiple music labels for digitising vintage records.

What is the Internet Archive?

Based in San Francisco, the Internet Archive is one of the world’s most well-known libraries for scanned copies of millions of physical books that it lends to people all over the globe for free.

The non-profit organisation claims its mission is to provide “universal access to all knowledge” and has been archiving digital content for years such as books, movies, music, software and more.

The archive claims to have more than 20m freely downloadable books and texts, along with a collection of 2.3m modern e-books that can be borrowed – similar to a library. But while supporters say the Internet Archive is a valuable source of easily accessible information, its critics claim it breaches copyright laws.

What caused the major publisher lawsuit?

The Internet Archive let users access its vast digital library for years before the lawsuit began, but a decision during the Covid-19 pandemic prompted the legal response.

Previously, only a limited number of individuals were allowed to borrow a digital book from the non-profit’s Open Library service, a principle that the archive referred to as controlled digital lending.

But this rule was relaxed during the pandemic and led to the creation of the archive’s National Emergency Library, which meant an unlimited number of people could access the same e-books. After this decision, the major publishers launched their lawsuit and the archive went back to its controlled lending practices.

The four publishers – Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins – said the Internet Archive was conducting copyright infringement through its practices. But the lawsuit went after both library services and had a major impact – in June 2024, the Internet Archive said more than 500,000 books had been removed from its library as a result of the lawsuit.

The non-profit’s founder Brewster Kahle previously said libraries are “under attack at an unprecedented scale”, with a mix of book bans, defunding and “overzealous lawsuits like the one brought against our library”.

From a loss to an appeal

Unfortunately for the digital library, a judge sided in favour of the publishers on 24 March 2023, agreeing with their claims that the Internet Archive’s practices constitutes “wilful digital piracy on an industrial scale” that hurts both writers and publishers.

The archive appealed this decision later that year, but the appeals court determined that it is not “fair use” for a non-profit to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety and distribute those digital copies online. The appeals court also said there is not enough of a change from a printed copy to a digital one to constitute fair use.

“We conclude that IA’s use of the works is not transformative,” the appeals court said. “IA creates digital copies of the works and distributes those copies to its users in full, for free. Its digital copies do not provide criticism, commentary, or information about the originals.”

The appeals court did disagree with the previous court’s verdict that the Internet Archive’s use of these copyrighted materials is “commercial in nature” and said it is “undisputed that IA is a nonprofit entity and that it distributes its digital books for free”.

What does this mean for the Internet Archive?

The archive’s director of library services Chris Freeland said the non-profit is “disappointed” in the decision by the appeals court and that it is “reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend and preserve books”.

Freeland also shared a link to readers where they can sign an open letter asking publishers to restore access to the 500,000 books removed from the archive’s library.

The loss also presents a bad precedent for the archive’s Great 78 Project, which is focused on the discovery and preservation of 78rpm records. The Internet Archive has been working to digitise millions of these recordings to preserve them, adding that the disks they were recorded onto are made of brittle material and can be easily broken.

“We aim to bring to light the decisions by music collectors over the decades and a digital reference collection of underrepresented artists and genres,” the Internet Archive says on the project page.

“The digitisation will make this less commonly available music accessible to researchers in a format where it can be manipulated and studied without harming the physical artefacts.”

But multiple music labels are suing the Internet Archive for this project and claims it has “wilfully reproduced” thousands of protected sound recordings without copyright authorisation. The music labels are seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each protected sound recording infringed in the lawsuit, which could lead to payments of more than $412m if the court rules against the Internet Archive.

Source: What you need to know about the Internet Archive’s appeal loss

EU, UK, US and more sign world’s first International treaty on AI – but the US makes sure it’s pretty much useless

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The EU, UK, US, and Israel signed the world’s first treaty protection human rights in AI technology in a ceremony in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Thursday (5 September), but civil society groups say the text has been watered down.

The Framework Convention on artificial intelligence and human rights, democracy, and the rule of law was adopted in May by the Council of Europe, the bloc’s human rights body.

But after years of negotiations, and pressure from countries like the US who participated in the process, the private sector is largely excluded from the Treaty, leaving mostly the public sector and its contractors under its scope.

The request was “presented as a pre-condition for their signature of the Convention,” said Francesca Fanucci, Senior Legal Advisor at ECNL and representing the Conference of INGOs (CINGO), citing earlier reporting by Euractiv.

Andorra, Georgia, Iceland, Moldova, Norway, and San Marino also signed the treaty.

The treaty has been written so that it does not conflict with the AI Act, the EU’s landmark regulation on the technology, so its signature and ratification is not significant for EU member states, Fanucci said.

“It will not be significant for the other non-EU State Parties either, because its language was relentlessly watered down and turned into broad principles rather than prescriptive rights and obligations, with numerous loopholes and blanket exemptions,” she added.

“Given the vague language and the loopholes of the Convention, it is then also up to states to prove that they mean what they sign – by implementing it in a meaningful and ambitious way,” said Angela Müller, who heads AlgorithmWatch’s policy and advocacy group as executive director.

Ensuring that binding international mechanisms “don’t carve out national security interests” is the next important step, Siméon Campeos, founder and CEO of SaferAI, told Euractiv.

Carve-outs for national security interests were also discussed in the negotiations.

The signatories are also to discuss and agree on a non-binding methodology on how to conduct impact assessment of AI systems on human rights, the rule of law and democracy, which EU states will likely not participate in given they are implementing the AI Act, said Fanucci.

[….]

Source: EU, UK, US, Israel sign world’s first AI Treaty – Euractiv

YubiKeys are vulnerable to unpatchable cloning attacks thanks to newly discovered physical side channel

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The YubiKey 5, the most widely used hardware token for two-factor authentication based on the FIDO standard, contains a cryptographic flaw that makes the finger-size device vulnerable to cloning when an attacker gains temporary physical access to it, researchers said Tuesday.

The cryptographic flaw, known as a side channel, resides in a small microcontroller used in a large number of other authentication devices, including smartcards used in banking, electronic passports, and the accessing of secure areas. While the researchers have confirmed all YubiKey 5 series models can be cloned, they haven’t tested other devices using the microcontroller, such as the SLE78 made by Infineon and successor microcontrollers known as the Infineon Optiga Trust M and the Infineon Optiga TPM. The researchers suspect that any device using any of these three microcontrollers and the Infineon cryptographic library contains the same vulnerability.

Patching not possible

YubiKey-maker Yubico issued an advisory in coordination with a detailed disclosure report from NinjaLab, the security firm that reverse-engineered the YubiKey 5 series and devised the cloning attack. All YubiKeys running firmware prior to version 5.7—which was released in May and replaces the Infineon cryptolibrary with a custom one—are vulnerable. Updating key firmware on the YubiKey isn’t possible. That leaves all affected YubiKeys permanently vulnerable.

[…]

In this case, the side channel is the amount of time taken during a mathematical calculation known as a modular inversion. The Infineon cryptolibrary failed to implement a common side-channel defense known as constant time as it performs modular inversion operations involving the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. Constant time ensures the time sensitive cryptographic operations execute is uniform rather than variable depending on the specific keys.

More precisely, the side channel is located in the Infineon implementation of the Extended Euclidean Algorithm, a method for, among other things, computing the modular inverse. By using an oscilloscope to measure the electromagnetic radiation while the token is authenticating itself, the researchers can detect tiny execution time differences that reveal a token’s ephemeral ECDSA key, also known as a nonce. Further analysis allows the researchers to extract the secret ECDSA key that underpins the entire security of the token.

[…]

The attacks require about $11,000 worth of equipment and a sophisticated understanding of electrical and cryptographic engineering. The difficulty of the attack means it would likely be carried out only by nation-states or other entities with comparable resources and then only in highly targeted scenarios.

[…]

A key question that remains unanswered at the moment is what other security devices rely on the three vulnerable Infineon secure modules and use the Infineon cryptolibrary? Infineon has yet to issue an advisory and didn’t respond to an email asking for one. At the moment, there is no known CVE for tracking the vulnerability.

Source: YubiKeys are vulnerable to cloning attacks thanks to newly discovered side channel | Ars Technica

Balloon-Based Sensor That Pinpoints Location Of Drone Operators Emerges In Ukraine

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Ukraine has developed a balloon-carried electronic surveillance system designed to detect enemy drone operators, which can then be targeted, offering a more comprehensive solution than tackling individual drones. While the current status of the system, known as Aero Azimuth, is unclear, its unveiling points to a resurgence in interest in elevated sensors mounted on aerostats.

[…]

While the Azimuth system already existed in ground-based form, this seems to the the first airborne application, which makes use of an aerostat from another Ukrainian company, Aerobavovna. Also included in the Aero Azmiuth system are a trailer with a winch for launching and recovering the balloon, a gas cylinder system to inflate the envelope, plus tools for repair and maintenance.

The basic Azimuth uses passive signals intelligence (SIGINT) equipment to detect and then locate the radio-frequency signals emitted by enemy (Russian) drone operators. These signals include communication channels, telemetry, and data exchange. The information gathered by Azimuth is then related to troops, who can directly target the drone operators in question.

[…]

By elevating the Azimuth system on an aerostat, that detection range can reportedly be extended to 37 miles, while the same targets can be triangulated at a distance of 15-19 miles, according to Kvertus spokespeople. These figures are when the balloon is operating at “average flight altitude,” with the optimum altitude meanwhile reported as being around 1,000-2,300 feet.

[…]

Source: Balloon-Based Sensor That Pinpoints Location Of Drone Operators Emerges In Ukraine

China’s Connected Car Crashes Are a Warning

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[…] What happens when connected cars become disconnected cars? […]

The phenomenon was chronicled in Rest of World, which spoke to multiple owners of EVs produced by financially troubled Chinese automakers. China kickstarted its EV industry with aggressive subsidies that lured dozens, if not hundreds of companies to produce cars. When those subsidies ceased, an automotive extinction event unfolded, with a reported 20-plus brands calling it quits

[…]

The largest Chinese automaker to fail yet has been WM Motor, which reportedly sold around 100,000 cars between 2019 and 2022. It filed for bankruptcy in October 2023, and in doing so ceased offering software support for customers’ cars. With company servers offline, widespread failures were reported, affecting cars’ stereos, charging status indicators, odometers, and app-controlled remote functions such as air conditioning and locking.

Though WM Motor is said to have brought servers back online so that these vehicles can fully function again, it doesn’t seem to have delivered any software updates since its bankruptcy filing almost a year ago. Its app also remains unavailable on smartphone app stores, locking potential buyers of used WM Motors vehicles out of some features. It seemingly hasn’t flown afoul of China’s consumer protection laws, which mandate 10 years of parts and service support—but apparently not software. As many as 160,000 Chinese car owners are estimated to be in a similar boat, as an increasing number of automakers encounter financial trouble.

[…]

Source: China’s Connected Car Collapse Is a Warning for the American /Market

And what happens when a manufacturer just calls your car End of Life?

Dutch DPA fines Clearview €30.5 million for violating the GDPR

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Clearview AI is back in hot — and expensive — water, with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) fining the company €30.5 million ($33.6 million) for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The release explains that Clearview created “an illegal database with billions of photos of faces,” including Dutch individuals, and has failed to properly inform people that it’s using their data. In early 2023, Clearview’s CEO claimed the company had 30 billion images.

Clearview must immediately stop all violations or face up to €5.1 million ($5.6 million) in non-compliance penalties. “Facial recognition is a highly intrusive technology, that you cannot simply unleash on anyone in the world,” Dutch DPA chairman Aleid Wolfsen stated. “If there is a photo of you on the Internet — and doesn’t that apply to all of us? — then you can end up in the database of Clearview and be tracked.” He adds that facial recognition can help with safety but that “competent authorities” who are “subject to strict conditions” should handle it rather than a commercial company.

The Dutch DPA further states that since Clearview is breaking the law, using it is also illegal. Wolfsen warns that Dutch companies using Clearview could also be subject to “hefty fines.” Clearview didn’t issue an objection to the Dutch DPA’s fine, so it is unable to launch an appeal.

This fine is far from the first time an entity has stood up against Clearview. In 2020, the LAPD banned its use, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued Clearview, with the settlement ending sales of the biometric database to any private companies. Italy and the UK have previously fined Clearview €20 million ($22 million) and £7.55 million ($10 million), respectively, and instructed the company to delete any data of its residents. Earlier this year, the EU also barred Clearview from untargeted face scraping on the internet.

Source: Clearview faces a €30.5 million for violating the GDPR

Scientists Detect Invisible Electric Field Around Earth For First Time

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An invisible, weak energy field wrapped around our planet Earth has finally been detected and measured.

It’s called the ambipolar field, an electric field first hypothesized more than 60 years ago

[…]

“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” says astronomer Glyn Collinson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”

Earth isn’t just a blob of dirt sitting inert in space. It’s surrounded by all sorts of fields. There’s the gravity field.

[…]

There’s also the magnetic field, which is generated by the rotating, conducting material in Earth’s interior, converting kinetic energy into the magnetic field that spins out into space.

[…]

In 1968, scientists described a phenomenon that we couldn’t have noticed until the space age. Spacecraft flying over Earth’s poles detected a supersonic wind of particles escaping from Earth’s atmosphere. The best explanation for this was a third, electric energy field.

“It’s called the ambipolar field and it’s an agent of chaos. It counters gravity, and it strips particles off into space,” Collinson explains in a video.

“But we’ve never been able to measure this before because we haven’t had the technology. So, we built the Endurance rocket ship to go looking for this great invisible force.”

[…]

Here’s how the ambipolar field was expected to work. Starting at an altitude of around 250 kilometers (155 miles), in a layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere, extreme ultraviolet and solar radiation ionizes atmospheric atoms, breaking off negatively charged electrons and turning the atom into a positively charged ion.

The lighter electrons will try to fly off into space, while the heavier ions will try to sink towards the ground. But the plasma environment will try to maintain charge neutrality, which results in the emergence of an electric field between the electrons and the ions to tether them together.

This is called the ambipolar field because it works in both directions, with the ions supplying a downward pull and the electrons an upward one.

The result is that the atmosphere is puffed up; the increased altitude allows some ions to escape into space, which is what we see in the polar wind.

This ambipolar field would be incredibly weak, which is why Collinson and his team designed instrumentation to detect it. The Endurance mission, carrying this experiment, was launched in May 2022, reaching an altitude of 768.03 kilometers (477.23 miles) before falling back to Earth with its precious, hard-won data.

And it succeeded. It measured a change in electric potential of just 0.55 volts – but that was all that was needed.

“A half a volt is almost nothing – it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” Collinson says. “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”

That amount of charge is enough to tug on hydrogen ions with 10.6 times the strength of gravity, launching them into space at the supersonic speeds measured over Earth’s poles.

Oxygen ions, which are heavier than hydrogen ions, are also lofted higher, increasing the density of the ionosphere at high altitudes by 271 percent, compared to what its density would be without the ambipolar field.

[…]

The research has been published in Nature.

Source: Scientists Detect Invisible Electric Field Around Earth For First Time : ScienceAlert

Doughnut-shaped region found inside Earth’s core deepens understanding of planet’s magnetic field

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A doughnut-shaped region thousands of kilometers beneath our feet within Earth’s liquid core has been discovered by scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), providing new clues about the dynamics of our planet’s magnetic field.

The structure within Earth’s liquid core is found only at low latitudes and sits parallel to the equator. According to ANU seismologists, it has remained undetected until now.

The Earth has two core layers: the , a solid layer, and the outer core, a liquid layer. Surrounding the Earth’s core is the mantle. The newly discovered doughnut-shaped region is at the top of Earth’s outer core, where the liquid core meets the mantle.

Study co-author and ANU geophysicist, Professor Hrvoje Tkalčić, said the seismic waves detected are slower in the newly discovered region than in the rest of the liquid outer core.

[…]

“We don’t know the exact thickness of the doughnut, but we inferred that it reaches a few hundred kilometers beneath the core-mantle boundary.”

Rather than using traditional seismic wave observation techniques and observing signals generated by earthquakes within the first hour, the ANU scientists analyzed the similarities between waveforms many hours after the earthquake origin times, leading them to make the unique discovery.

“By understanding the geometry of the paths of the waves and how they traverse the outer core’s volume, we reconstructed their through the Earth, demonstrating that the newly discovered has low seismic speeds,” Professor Tkalčić said.

“The peculiar structure remained hidden until now as previous studies collected data with less volumetric coverage of the outer core by observing waves that were typically confined within one hour after the origin times of large earthquakes.

[…]

“Our findings are interesting because this low velocity within the liquid core implies that we have a high concentration of light chemical elements in these regions that would cause the seismic waves to slow down. These light elements, alongside temperature differences, help stir liquid in the ,” Professor Tkalčić said.

[…]

The research is published in Science Advances.

More information: Xiaolong Ma et al, Seismic low-velocity equatorial torus in the Earth’s outer core: Evidence from the late-coda correlation wavefield, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn5562

Source: Doughnut-shaped region found inside Earth’s core deepens understanding of planet’s magnetic field

Your brain ages at different paces according to social and physical environments – especially fast with greater inequality

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Countries with greater inequalities — whether economic, pollution or disease-based — exhibited older brain ages, according to a study published in Nature Medicine, involving the University of Surrey.

The pace at which the brain ages can vary significantly among individuals, leading to a gap between the estimated biological age of the brain and the chronological age (the actual number of years a person has lived). This difference may be affected by several things, such as environmental factors like pollution and social factors like income or health inequalities, especially in older people and those with dementia. Until now, it was unclear how these combined factors could either accelerate or delay brain ageing across diverse geographical populations.

In the study, a team of international researchers developed ways to measure brain ageing using advanced brain clocks based on deep learning of brain networks. This study involved a diverse dataset of 5,306 participants from 15 countries, including Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations and non-LAC countries. By analysing data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), the researchers quantified brain age gaps in healthy individuals and those with neurodegenerative conditions such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease, and frontotemporal lobe degeneration (FTLD).

Dr Daniel Abasolo, co-author of the study and Head of the Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Surrey, said:

“Our research shows that in countries where inequality is higher, people’s brains tend to age faster, especially in areas of the brain most affected by ageing. We found that factors like socioeconomic inequality, air pollution, and the impact of diseases play a big role in this faster ageing process, particularly in poorer countries.”

Participants with a diagnosis of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease, exhibited the most critical brain age gaps. The research also highlighted sex differences in brain ageing, with women in LAC countries showing greater brain age gaps, particularly in those with Alzheimer’s disease

[…]

Story Source:

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

Journal Reference:

  1. Sebastian Moguilner, Sandra Baez, Hernan Hernandez, Joaquín Migeot, Agustina Legaz, Raul Gonzalez-Gomez, Francesca R. Farina, Pavel Prado, Jhosmary Cuadros, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Florencia Altschuler, Marcelo Adrián Maito, María E. Godoy, Josephine Cruzat, Pedro A. Valdes-Sosa, Francisco Lopera, John Fredy Ochoa-Gómez, Alfredis Gonzalez Hernandez, Jasmin Bonilla-Santos, Rodrigo A. Gonzalez-Montealegre, Renato Anghinah, Luís E. d’Almeida Manfrinati, Sol Fittipaldi, Vicente Medel, Daniela Olivares, Görsev G. Yener, Javier Escudero, Claudio Babiloni, Robert Whelan, Bahar Güntekin, Harun Yırıkoğulları, Hernando Santamaria-Garcia, Alberto Fernández Lucas, David Huepe, Gaetano Di Caterina, Marcio Soto-Añari, Agustina Birba, Agustin Sainz-Ballesteros, Carlos Coronel-Oliveros, Amanuel Yigezu, Eduar Herrera, Daniel Abasolo, Kerry Kilborn, Nicolás Rubido, Ruaridh A. Clark, Ruben Herzog, Deniz Yerlikaya, Kun Hu, Mario A. Parra, Pablo Reyes, Adolfo M. García, Diana L. Matallana, José Alberto Avila-Funes, Andrea Slachevsky, María I. Behrens, Nilton Custodio, Juan F. Cardona, Pablo Barttfeld, Ignacio L. Brusco, Martín A. Bruno, Ana L. Sosa Ortiz, Stefanie D. Pina-Escudero, Leonel T. Takada, Elisa Resende, Katherine L. Possin, Maira Okada de Oliveira, Alejandro Lopez-Valdes, Brain Lawlor, Ian H. Robertson, Kenneth S. Kosik, Claudia Duran-Aniotz, Victor Valcour, Jennifer S. Yokoyama, Bruce Miller, Agustin Ibanez. Brain clocks capture diversity and disparities in aging and dementia across geographically diverse populations. Nature Medicine, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03209-x

Source: Your brain ages at different paces according to social and physical environments

Proposal to spy on all chat messages back on European political agenda

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Europe is going to talk again about the possibility of checking all chat messages of citizens for child abuse. On September 4, a (secret) consultation will take place, says Patrick Breyer , former MEP for the Pirate Party.

A few years ago, the European Commission came up with the plan to monitor all chat messages of citizens. The European Parliament did not like the proposal of the European Commission and came up with its own proposal, which excludes monitoring of end-to-end encrypted services.

At the end of June, EU President Belgium came up with its own version of the proposal. Namely that only the uploading of photos, video and references to them would be checked. This proposal did not get enough votes.

Germany and Poland are the biggest opponents within the EU anyway. The Netherlands, Estonia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Austria would abstain from voting, according to Breyer.

A coalition of almost fifty civil society organisations, including the Dutch Offlimits, Bits of Freedom, Vrijschrift.org and ECNL, called on the European Commission in July to withdraw the chat control proposal and focus on measures that really protect children.

Source: Proposal to control chat messages back on European political agenda – Emerce

Guys, stop trying to be Big Brother in the EU – it changes how people behave and not for the better.

String Theorists Accidentally Find a New Formula for Pi

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[…] most recently in January 2024, when physicists Arnab Priya Saha and Aninda Sinha of the Indian Institute of Science presented a completely new formula for calculating it, which they later published in Physical Review Letters.

Saha and Sinha are not mathematicians. They were not even looking for a novel pi equation. Rather, these two string theorists were working on a unifying theory of fundamental forces, one that could reconcile electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces

[…]

For millennia, mankind has been trying to determine the exact value of pi. […]

One famous example is Archimedes, who estimated pi with the help of polygons: by drawing an n-sided polygon inside and one outside a circle and calculating the perimeter of each, he was able to narrow down the value of pi.

Three circles are bounded by polygons with an increasing number of sides.

A common method for determining pi geometrically involves drawing a bounding polygon inside and outside a circle and then comparing the two perimeters.

Fredrik/Leszek Krupinski/Wikimedia Commons

Teachers often present this method in school

[…]

In the 15th century experts found infinite series as a new way to express pi. […]

For example, the Indian scholar Madhava, who lived from 1350 to 1425, found that pi equals 4 multiplied by a series that begins with 1 and then alternately subtracts or adds fractions in which 1 is placed over successively higher odd numbers (so 1/3, 1/5, and so on). One way to express this would be:

A formula presents how pi can be calculated using a series developed by the Indian scholar Madhava.

This formula makes it possible to determine pi as precisely as you like in a very simple way.

[…]

As Saha and Sinha discovered more than 600 years later, Madhava’s formula is only a special case of a much more general equation for calculating pi. In their work, the string theorists discovered the following formula:

A formula presents a way of calculating pi that was identified by physicists Arnab Priya Saha and Aninda Sinha.

This formula produces an infinitely long sum. What is striking is that it depends on the factor λ , a freely selectable parameter. No matter what value λ has, the formula will always result in pi. And because there are infinitely many numbers that can correspond to λ, Saha and Sinha have found an infinite number of pi formulas.

If λ is infinitely large, the equation corresponds to Madhava’s formula. That is, because λ only ever appears in the denominator of fractions, the corresponding fractions for λ = ∞ become zero (because fractions with large denominators are very small). For λ = ∞, the equation of Saha and Sinha therefore takes the following form:

Saha and Sinha’s formula can be adapted based on the assumption of an infinitely large parameter.

The first part of the equation is already similar to Madhava’s formula: you sum fractions with odd denominators.

[…]

As the two string theorists report, however, pi can be calculated much faster for smaller values of λ. While Madhava’s result requires 100 terms to get within 0.01 of pi, Saha and Sinha’s formula for λ = 3 only requires the first four summands. “While [Madhava’s] series takes 5 billion terms to converge to 10 decimal places, the new representation with λ between 10 [and] 100 takes 30 terms,” the authors write in their paper. Saha and Sinha did not find the most efficient method for calculating pi, though. Other series have been known for several decades that provide an astonishingly accurate value much more quickly. What is truly surprising in this case is that the physicists came up with a new pi formula when their paper aimed to describe the interaction of strings.

[…]

Source: String Theorists Accidentally Find a New Formula for Pi | Scientific American

These robots move through the magic of mushrooms

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Researchers at Cornell University tapped into fungal mycelia to power a pair of proof-of-concept robots. Mycelia, the underground fungal network that can sprout mushrooms as its above-ground fruit, can sense light and chemical reactions and communicate through electrical signals. This makes it a novel component in hybrid robotics that could someday detect crop conditions otherwise invisible to humans.

The Cornell researchers created two robots: a soft, spider-like one and a four-wheeled buggy. The researchers used mycelia’s light-sensing abilities to control the machines using ultraviolet light. The project required experts in mycology (the study of fungi), neurobiology, mechanical engineering, electronics and signal processing.

“If you think about a synthetic system — let’s say, any passive sensor — we just use it for one purpose,” lead author Anand Mishra said. “But living systems respond to touch, they respond to light, they respond to heat, they respond to even some unknowns, like signals. That’s why we think, OK, if you wanted to build future robots, how can they work in an unexpected environment? We can leverage these living systems, and any unknown input comes in, the robot will respond to that.”

The fungal robot uses an electrical interface that (after blocking out interference from vibrations and electromagnetic signals) records and processes the mycelia’s electrophysical activity in real time. A controller, mimicking a portion of animals’ central nervous systems, acted as “a kind of neural circuit.” The team designed the controller to read the fungi’s raw electrical signal, process it and translate it into digital controls. These were then sent to the machine’s actuators.

Diagram showing various parts of a complex fungus-robot hybrid
Cornell University / Science Robotics

The pair of shroom-bots successfully completed three experiments, including walking and rolling in response to the mycelia’s signals and changing their gaits in response to UV light. The researchers also successfully overrode the mycelia’s signals to control the robots manually, a crucial component if later versions were to be deployed in the wild.

[…]

You can read the team’s research paper at Science Robotics and find out more about the project from the Cornell Chronicle.

Source: These robots move through the magic of mushrooms

PLAUD NotePin: A Wearable AI Memory Capsule that just might work

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So this is a pin a bit larger than an AA battery which does one thing: it transcribes your musings and makes notes. Where does the AI come in? Speech and speaker recognition, audio trimming, summarisation and mind-maps.

You see a lot of doubtful reviews on this thing out there, mostly on the basis of how badly the Rabbit and the Humane did. The writers don’t seem to understand that generalistic AI is still a long way off from being perfect whereas task specific AI is incredibly useful and accurate.

Unfortunately it does offload the work to the cloud, which absolutely has very very many limits (not least of which being privacy = security – and notes tend to be extremely private, not to mention accessibility).

All in all a good idea, let’s see if they pull it off.

Source: PLAUD NotePin: Your Wearable AI Memory Capsule

Appliance and Tractor Companies Lobby Against Giving the Military the Right to Repair, which apparently you can’t do to stuff that sees combat – well done capitalsim

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Lobbying groups across most of the device manufacturing industry—from tractor manufacturers to companies that make fridges, consumer devices, motorcycles, and medical equipment—are lobbying against legislation that would require military contractors to make it easier for the U.S. military to fix the equipment they buy, according to a document obtained by 404 Media.

The anti-repair lobbying shows that manufacturers are still doing everything they can to retain lucrative service contracts and to kill any legislation that would threaten the repair monopolies many companies have been building for years.

In a May hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren explained that “contractors often place restrictions on these deals [with the military] that prevent service members from maintaining or repairing the equipment, or even let them write a training manual without going back to the contractor.”

“These right to repair restrictions usually translate into much higher costs for DOD [Department of Defense], which has no choice but to shovel money out to big contractors whenever DOD needs to have something fixed,” she added. Warren gave the example of the Littoral combat ship, a U.S. Navy vessel that costs hundreds of millions of dollars per ship.

“General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin consider much of the data on the ship to be proprietary, so the Navy had to delay missions and spend millions of dollars on travel costs just so that contractor-affiliated repairmen could fly in, rather than doing this ourselves,” she said.

To solve this problem, Warren and other lawmakers introduced something called Section 828 of the Defense Reauthorization Act, a must-pass bill that funds the military. Section 828 is called “Requirement for Contractors to Provide Reasonable Access to Repair Materials,” and seeks to solve an absurd situation in which the U.S. military cannot always get repair parts, tools, information, and software for everything from fighter jets to Navy battleships, because the companies want to make money by selling their customers repair contracts.

[…]

The fact that groups who represent companies that have nothing to do with the military have lined up to oppose this suggests that device manufacturers more broadly are worried about a national right to repair law, and that the entire sector is trying to kill repair legislation even if it would not affect them.

[…]

Source: Appliance and Tractor Companies Lobby Against Giving the Military the Right to Repair

US Lobbying logic defies reality and still gets passed through. Only money counts there.

Mozilla removes telemetry service Adjust from mobile Firefox versions – it was spying on you secretly it turns out

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Mozilla will soon remove its telemetry service Adjust from the Android and iOS versions of browsers Firefox and Firefox Focus. It appeared that the developer was collecting data on the effectiveness of Firefox ad campaigns without disclosing that.

Mozilla, the developers of Firefox, until recently used the telemetry service Adjust to collect data from its Firefox and Firefox Focus apps for both Android and iOS. Through this service, the company collected data on the number of installs of these specific apps following Mozilla’s ad campaigns.

[…]

The company’s actions may also result from previous complaints about the default enabling of ‘privacy-protecting ad metrics’ in Firefox. This option has been enabled by default since the July 9 release of Firefox 128.

The service collects data on how users respond to ads, which is shared aggregated with advertisers. Users can disable this option, however.

Mozilla says it regrets enabling such telemetry but defends the reason for turning it on by default. According to the browser provider, advertisers’ desire for information about the effectiveness of their campaigns is very difficult to escape.

[…]

Source: Mozilla removes telemetry service Adjust from mobile Firefox versions – Techzine Global

Oh dear. And I thought that Mozilla was the privacy friendly option. 2 strikes now.

Synology Release DSM 7.2.2 Removes a LOT of features. Think hard about upgrading.

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synology nas surrounded by flames with a nuclear explosion on top of it

It’s not an update, it’s a destroyer of functionality

  1. Removal of Video Station Support: The update no longer supports Video Station, which has upset users who rely on this feature for media management and playback.
  2. Incompatibility with Plex: The DSM 7.2.2 update has caused issues with Plex, requiring users to update to a new version of Plex specifically compatible with DSM 7.2.2.
  3. iDrive Package Incompatibility: Users have reported that the iDrive package is not compatible with DSM 7.2.2, causing it to stop working on some systems.
  4. Issues with HEIC and HEVC Media: Newly uploaded HEIC photos and HEVC (H.265) videos may not be processed correctly, which is a concern for users managing high-efficiency media formats.
  5. Problems with DDNS and Hyper Backup: External access via DDNS for Hyper Backup does not work properly, affecting remote backup capabilities.

[…]

Users have expressed concerns about the lack of a clear alternative, with some suggesting that Synology Photos or third-party options like Plex and Jellyfin could fill the gap. However, these alternatives may not provide the same seamless integration or specific functionalities, such as subtitle support and ease of use for non-technical family members, that Video Station offered. The discontinuation is seen as part of Synology’s broader move away from supporting certain media codecs due to licensing costs, which is viewed by many as a step back for consumer-focused features. This shift has led some long-time Synology users to reconsider their loyalty, as the company appears to be focusing more on business clients rather than home users.

[…]

Key Changes in DSM 7.2.2

  1. No More Video Station: One of the most notable changes is the removal of Video Station from DSM 7.2.2. Synology users have long relied on Video Station for managing and streaming their media libraries. With this update, Video Station is no longer available, forcing users to find alternative ways to stream their videos. Synology suggests using third-party apps like Jellyfin or Plex for media streaming, but this means users will need separate apps for different functionalities—one for backing up photos and videos, and another for streaming.
  2. Shift of Media Processing to End Devices: Starting with DSM 7.2.2, processing of media files using popular codecs such as HEVC (H.265), AVC (H.264), and VC-1 will now be handled by end devices like smartphones, tablets, computers, and smart TVs. This shift aims to reduce the workload on the NAS system and improve overall efficiency. However, it also means that devices must support these codecs, or users will face limitations in media playback. This could be problematic for those with older devices or those trying to stream high-quality 4K content.
  3. Transcoding Limited to Specific Models: Transcoding capabilities, which allow media files to be converted on the fly for compatibility with various devices, are now restricted. Only VA series NAS models and the Surveillance Station application will continue to support server-side transcoding of AVC (H.264) streams. For all other models, transcoding must be handled on the receiving device. This change might hinder the experience for users who need to stream high-resolution media remotely, as it requires sufficient processing power and bandwidth.
  4. No Downgrading After Update: An important note with this update is that once you install DSM 7.2.2, you cannot downgrade to a previous DSM version. Users need to carefully consider if the new features and changes align with their needs, especially those who heavily rely on multimedia capabilities.

[…]

In the conversation about DSM 7.2.2, specific details were discussed regarding SSD volumes (or SSD pools) and their behavior after the update:

  1. Compatibility Issues with SSD Volumes:
    • After updating to DSM 7.2.2, one user, kaj, reported that their NAS began beeping continuously and displayed a message indicating that the drives in Volume 2 (an SSD volume) were incompatible. This issue prevented access to Volume 2.
    • The NAS system flagged the SSDs as incompatible post-update, which is a common issue when using non-Synology or third-party SSDs in certain NAS models, especially after major DSM updates that might change how the system handles hardware compatibility.

[…]

The following third-party packages are currently incompatible with DSM 7.2.2. Compatible package versions will be released in the future, and this list will be updated accordingly:

  • BRAVIA Signage
  • TeamViewer

[…]

Source: Synology Release DSM 7.2.2 – Should You Upgrade? – NAS Compares

Considering a lot of people buy into Synology due to the software ecosystem that comes with it, this is a huge disappointment.

Australian Regulators Decide To Write A Strongly Worded Letter About Clearview’s Privacy Law Violations, leave it at that

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Clearview’s status as an international pariah really hasn’t changed much over the past few years. It may be generating fewer headlines, but nothing’s really changed about the way it does business.

Clearview has spent years scraping the web, compiling as much personal info as possible to couple with the billions of photos it has collected. It sells all of this to whoever wants to buy it. In the US, this means lots and lots of cop shops. Also, in the US, Clearview has mostly avoided running into a lot of legal trouble, other than a couple of lawsuits stemming from violations of certain states’ privacy laws.

Elsewhere in the world, it’s a different story. It has amassed millions in fines and plenty of orders to exit multiple countries immediately. These orders also mandate the removal of photos and other info gathered from accounts of these countries’ residents.

It doesn’t appear Clearview has complied with many of these orders, much less paid any of the fines. Clearview’s argument has always been that it’s a US company and, therefore, isn’t subject to rulings from foreign courts or mandates from foreign governments. It also appears Clearview might not be able to pay these fines if forced to, considering it’s now offering lawsuit plaintiffs shares in the company, rather than actual cash, to fulfill its settlement obligations.

Australia is one of several countries that claimed Clearview routinely violated privacy laws. Australia is also one of several that told Clearview to get out. Clearview’s response to the allegations and mandates delivered by Australian privacy regulators was the standard boilerplate: we don’t have offices in the Australia so we’re not going to comply with your demands.

Perhaps it’s this international stalemate that has prompted the latest bit of unfortunate news on the Clearview-Australia front. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has issued a statement that basically says it’s not going to waste any more time and money trying to get Clearview to respect Australia’s privacy laws. (h/t The Conversation)

Before giving up, the OAIC has this to say about its findings:

That determination found that Clearview AI, through its collection of facial images and biometric templates from individuals in Australia using a facial recognition technology, contravened the Privacy Act, and breached several Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) in Schedule 1 of the Act, including by collecting the sensitive information of individuals without consent in breach of APP 3.3 and failing to take reasonable steps to implement practices, procedures and systems to comply with the APPs.

Notably, the determination found that Clearview AI indiscriminately collected images of individuals’ faces from publicly available sources across the internet (including social media) to store in a database on the organisation’s servers. 

This was followed by the directive ordering Clearview to stop doing business in the country and delete any data it held pertaining to Australian residents. The statement notes Clearview’s only responses were a.) challenging the order in court in 2021 and b.) withdrawing entirely from the proceedings two years later. The OAIC notes that nothing appears to have changed in terms of how Clearview handles its collections. It also says it has no reason to believe Clearview has stopped collecting Australian persons’ data.

Despite all of that, it has decided to do absolutely nothing going forward:

Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind said, “I have given extensive consideration to the question of whether the OAIC should invest further resources in scrutinising the actions of Clearview AI, a company that has already been investigated by the OAIC and which has found itself the subject of regulatory investigations in at least three jurisdictions around the world as well as a class action in the United States. Considering all the relevant factors, I am not satisfied that further action is warranted in the particular case of Clearview AI at this time.

That’s disappointing. It makes it clear the company can avoid being held accountable for its legal violations by simply refusing to honor mandates issued by foreign countries or pay any fines levied. It can just continue to be the awful, ethically-horrendous company it has always been because, sooner or later, regulators are just going to give up and move on to softer targets.

[…]

Source: Australian Regulators Decide To Do Absolutely Nothing About Clearview’s Privacy Law Violations | Techdirt

Revolutionary Quantum Compass Could Soon Make GPS-Free Navigation a Reality

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[…]

researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have used silicon photonic microchip components to perform a quantum sensing technique called atom interferometry, an ultra-precise way of measuring acceleration. It is the latest milestone toward developing a kind of quantum compass for navigation when GPS signals are unavailable.

Jongmin Lee, Ashok Kodigala, and Michael Gehl in Photonics Lab
Sandia National Laboratories scientist Jongmin Lee, left, prepares a rubidium cold-atom cell for an atom interferometry experiment while scientists Ashok Kodigala, right, and Michael Gehl initialize the controls for a packaged single-sideband modulator chip. Credit: Craig Fritz, Sandia National Laboratories

The team published its findings and introduced a new high-performance silicon photonic modulator — a device that controls light on a microchip — as the cover story in the journal Science Advances.

[…]

Typically, an atom interferometer is a sensor system that fills a small room. A complete quantum compass — more precisely called a quantum inertial measurement unit — would require six atom interferometers.

But Lee and his team have been finding ways to reduce its size, weight, and power needs. They already have replaced a large, power-hungry vacuum pump with an avocado-sized vacuum chamber and consolidated several components usually delicately arranged across an optical table into a single, rigid apparatus.

The new modulator is the centerpiece of a laser system on a microchip. Rugged enough to handle heavy vibrations, it would replace a conventional laser system typically the size of a refrigerator.

Lasers perform several jobs in an atom interferometer, and the Sandia team uses four modulators to shift the frequency of a single laser to perform different functions.

However, modulators often create unwanted echoes called sidebands that need to be mitigated.

Sandia’s suppressed-carrier, single-sideband modulator reduces these sidebands by an unprecedented 47.8 decibels — a measure often used to describe sound intensity but also applicable to light intensity — resulting in a nearly 100,000-fold drop.

[…]

“Just one full-size single-sideband modulator, a commercially available one, is more than $10,000,” Lee said.

Miniaturizing bulky, expensive components into silicon photonic chips helps drive down these costs.

“We can make hundreds of modulators on a single 8-inch wafer and even more on a 12-inch wafer,” Kodigala said.

And since they can be manufactured using the same process as virtually all computer chips, “This sophisticated four-channel component, including additional custom features, can be mass-produced at a much lower cost compared to today’s commercial alternatives, enabling the production of quantum inertial measurement units at a reduced cost,” Lee said.

As the technology gets closer to field deployment, the team is exploring other uses beyond navigation. Researchers are investigating whether it could help locate underground cavities and resources by detecting the tiny changes these make to Earth’s gravitational force. They also see potential for the optical components they invented, including the modulator, in LIDAR, quantum computing, and optical communications.

[…]

Source: Revolutionary Quantum Compass Could Soon Make GPS-Free Navigation a Reality

Dutch officials fine Uber €290M for GDPR violations

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Privacy authorities in the Netherlands have imposed a €290 million ($324 million) fine on ride-share giant Uber for sending driver data to servers in the United States – “a serious violation” of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

According to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA), Uber spent years sending sensitive driver information from Europe to the US. Among the data that was transmitted were taxi licenses, location data, payment details, identity documents, and medical and criminal records. The data was sent abroad without the use of “transfer tools,” which the DPA said means the data wasn’t sufficiently protected.

“Businesses are usually obliged to take additional measures if they store personal data of Europeans outside the European Union,” Dutch DPA chairman Aleid Wolfsen said of the decision. “Uber did not meet the requirements of the GDPR to ensure the level of protection to the data with regard to transfers to the US. That is very serious.”

The Dutch DPA said that the investigation that led to the fine began after complaints from a group of more than 170 French Uber drivers who alleged their data was being sent to the US without adequate protection. Because Uber’s European operations are based in the Netherlands, enforcement for GDPR violations fell to the Dutch DPA.

Unfortunately for Uber, it already has an extensive history with the Dutch DPA, which has fined the outfit twice before.

The first came in 2018 when the authority fined Uber €600,000 for failing to report a data breach (a slugfest that several EU countries joined in on). The latter €10 million fine came earlier this year after Dutch officials determined Uber had failed to disclose data retention practices surrounding the data of EU drivers, refusing to name which countries data was sent to, and had obstructed its drivers’ right to privacy.

[…]

The uncertainty Uber refers to stems from the EU’s striking down of the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement and the years of efforts to replace it with a new rule that defines the safe transfer of personal data between the two regions.

Uber claims it’s done its job under the GDPR to safeguard data belonging to European citizens – it didn’t even need to make any data transfer process changes to comply the latest rules.

[…]

Source: Dutch officials fine Uber €290M for GDPR violations • The Register

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s Arrest Upends Kremlin Military Communications

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Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested Saturday night by French authorities on allegations that his social media platform was being used for child pornography, drug trafficking and organized crime. The move sparked debate over free speech worldwide from prominent anti-censorship figures including Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy. Jr. and Edward Snowden. However, “the immediate freakout came from Russia,” reports Politico. “That’s because Telegram is widely used by the Russian military for battlefield communications thanks to problems with rolling out its own secure comms system. It’s also the primary vehicle for pro-war military bloggers and media — as well as millions of ordinary Russians.” From the report: “They practically detained the head of communication of the Russian army,” Russian military blogger channel Povernutie na Z Voine said in a Telegram statement. The blog site Dva Mayora said that Russian specialists are working on an alternative to Telegram, but that the Russian army’s Main Communications Directorate has “not shown any real interest” in getting such a system to Russian troops. The site said Durov’s arrest may actually speed up the development of an independent comms system. Alarmed Russian policymakers are calling for Durov’s release.

“[Durov’s] arrest may have political grounds and be a tool for gaining access to the personal information of Telegram users,” the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Duma Vladislav Davankov said in a Telegram statement. “This cannot be allowed. If the French authorities refuse to release Pavel Durov from custody, I propose making every effort to move him to the UAE or the Russian Federation. With his consent, of course.” Their worry is that Durov may hand over encryption keys to the French authorities, allowing access to the platform and any communications that users thought was encrypted.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the arrest of Durov was “in no way a political decision.” The Russian embassy has demanded that it get access to Durov, but the Kremlin has so far not issued a statement on the arrest. “Before saying anything, we should wait for the situation to become clearer,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. However, officials and law enforcement agencies were instructed to clear all their communication from Telegram, the pro-Kremlin channel Baza reported. “Everyone who is used to using the platform for sensitive conversations/conversations should delete those conversations right now and not do it again,” Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan said in a Telegram post. “Durov has been shut down to get the keys. And he’s going to give them.”

Source: Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s Arrest Upends Kremlin Military Communications

Spike mutations make it even easier for SARS-CoV-2 infect the brain

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Scientists have discovered a mutation in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, that plays a key role in its ability to infect the central nervous system. The findings may help scientists understand its neurological symptoms and the mystery of “long COVID,” and they could one day even lead to specific treatments to protect and clear the virus from the brain.

The new collaborative study between scientists at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois-Chicago uncovered a series of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (the outer part of the virus that helps it penetrate cells) that enhanced the virus’ ability to infect the brains of mice.

“Looking at the genomes of viruses found in the brain compared to the lung, we found that viruses with a specific deletion in spike were much better at infecting the brains of these animals,” said co-corresponding author Judd Hultquist, assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) and microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “This was completely unexpected, but very exciting.”

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In this study, researchers infected mice with SARS-CoV-2 and sequenced the genomes of viruses that replicated in the brain versus the lung. In the lung, the spike protein looked very similar to the virus used to infect the mice. In the brain, however, most viruses had a deletion or mutation in a critical region of spike that dictates how it enters a cell. When viruses with this deletion were used to directly infect the brains of mice, it was largely repaired when it traveled to the lungs.

“In order for the virus to traffic from the lung to the brain, it required changes in the spike protein that are already known to dictate how the virus gets into different types of cells,” Hultquist said. “We think this region of spike is a critical regulator of whether or not the virus gets into the brain, and it could have large implications for the treatment and management of neurological symptoms reported by COVID-19 patients.”

SARS-CoV-2 has long been associated with various neurological symptoms, such as the loss of smell and taste, “brain fog” and “long COVID.”

“It’s still not known if long COVID is caused by direct infection of cells in the brain or due to some adverse immune response that persists beyond the infection,” Hultquist said. “If it is caused by infection of cells in the central nervous system, our study suggests there may be specific treatments that could work better than others in clearing the virus from this compartment.”

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

Journal Reference:

  1. Jacob Class, Lacy M. Simons, Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, Jazmin Galván Achi, Laura Cooper, Tanushree Dangi, Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, Egon A. Ozer, Sarah E. Lutz, Lijun Rong, Judd F. Hultquist, Justin M. Richner. Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the murine central nervous system drives viral diversification. Nature Microbiology, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01786-8

Source: Spike mutations help SARS-CoV-2 infect the brain | ScienceDaily