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porkchop_d_clown (Slashdot reader #39,923) writes: MOND — MOdified Newtonian Dynamics is a hypothesis that Newton's law of gravity is incorrect under some conditions. Now a paper claims that a study does indeed show that pairs of widely separated binary stars do show a deviation from Newton's Second Law, arguing that, at very low levels, gravity is stronger than the law predicts. Phys.org writes that the study "reinforces the evidence for modified gravity that was previously reported in 2023 from an analysis of the orbital motions of gravitationally bound, widely separated (or long-period) binary stars, known as wide binaries." But RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) calls the hypothesis "very much disputed." YouTubing-astrophysicist Dr Becky considered this report a couple of months ago (2023-Nov-09), under the title "HUGE blow for alternate theory of gravity MOND". At the very least, astrophysicists and cosmologists are deeply undecided whether this data supports or discourages MOND. (Shortened comment because verification problem.) Last week, I updated my annual count of MOND and other "alternative gravity" publications. While research on MOND (and others) continues, and any "suppression" the tin-foil-hat brigade want to scream about is ineffective, it remains an unpopular (not-equal-to "suppressed") field. Generally, astronomical publication counts are increasing, and MOND sticks with that trend. If anything is becoming more popular, it's the "MOG" type of "MOdified Gravity".

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Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes: Hundreds of British postal workers wrongly convicted of theft due to faulty accounting software could have their convictions reversed, according to a story from the BBC. Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 700 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses — an average of one a week — based on information from a computer system called Horizon, after faulty software wrongly made it look like money was missing. Some 283 more cases were brought by other bodies including the Crown Prosecution Service. 2024 began with a four-part dramatization of the scandal airing on British television, and the BBC reporting today that its reporters originally investigating the story confronted "lobbying, misinformation and outright lies." Yet the Guardian notes that to this day in English and Welsh law, computers are still assumed to be "reliable" unless and until proven otherwise. But critics of this approach say this reverses the burden of proof normally applied in criminal cases. Stephen Mason, a barrister and expert on electronic evidence, said: "It says, for the person who's saying 'there's something wrong with this computer', that they have to prove it. Even if it's the person accusing them who has the information...." He and colleagues had been expressing alarm about the presumption as far back as 2009. "My view is that the Post Office would never have got anywhere near as far as it did if this presumption wasn't in place," Mason said... [W]hen post office operators were accused of having stolen money, the hallucinatory evidence of the Horizon system was deemed sufficient proof. Without any evidence to the contrary, the defendants could not force the system to be tested in court and their loss was all but guaranteed. The influence of English common law internationally means that the presumption of reliability is widespread. Mason cites cases from New Zealand, Singapore and the U.S. that upheld the standard and just one notable case where the opposite happened... The rise of AI systems made it even more pressing to reassess the law, said Noah Waisberg, the co-founder and CEO of the legal AI platform Zuva. Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

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A new analysis suggests that wind turbines have little impact on bird populations, according to the Economist — and that oil-and-gas extraction may be worse: Erik Katovich [an economist at the University of Geneva] combined bird population and species maps with the locations and construction dates of all wind turbines in the United States, with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii, between 2000 and 2020. He found that building turbines had no discernible effect on bird populations. That reassuring finding held even when he looked specifically at large birds like hawks, vultures and eagles that many people believe are particularly vulnerable to being struck. But Dr. Katovich did not confine his analysis to wind power alone. He also examined oil-and-gas extraction. Like wind power, this has boomed in America over the past couple of decades, with the rise of shale gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of rocks. Production has risen from 37m cubic metres in 2007 to 740m cubic metres in 2020. Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled, probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon. When drilling happens in places designated by the National Audubon Society as "important bird areas", bird numbers instead dropped by 25%. Such places are typically migration hubs, feeding grounds or breeding locations. Wind power, in other words, not only produces far less planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane than do fossil fuels. It appears to be significantly less damaging to wildlife, too. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.

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"Customer say," writes Amazon on at least some of their product pages, across from that grid showing the number of five-star and four-star reviews... But at the bottom of that summary is a disclaimer that what you read was "AI-generated from the text of customer reviews." This has been going on for a few months now, points out the Washington Post's "Tech Friend" newsletter. And after reviewing how AI distilled nearly 40,000 reviews into a succinct summary, their impression has shifted to "hmm ... maybe this is a decent use of text-summarizing AI — as long as you learn to read Amazon's AI digests with a savvy eye..." Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, pointed out that since Amazon started the AI-generated review summaries last year, the company has tweaked them to highlight terms or features that apparently come up a lot in customer ratings. The positive features are highlighted in green and the negative or neutral feedback is in yellow and gray... If you like to get a gist of what shoppers thought of a product, Amazon's AI summary can spare you from skimming the reviews yourself... But as with Amazon reviews in general, the AI summaries might be incomplete or untrustworthy... Bloomberg News recently looked at dozens of AI review summaries and found in some cases they underplayed customers' negative feedback and exaggerated them for other products. And, of course, if the reviews themselves are misinformed or rigged, a summary of junk customer feedback will also be junk. Amazon said the company is "seeing positive feedback on our review highlights from both customers and sellers" but that it will "continually improve the review highlights experience over time." But is this just the beginning? Amazon, eBay and Shopify are also experimenting with using AI to spit out descriptions of products from a photo or a few keywords. Some of this AI-generated text will be better than the confusing product listings you sometimes read online. A lot of it will be worse. A bunch of technology companies, including Amazon and Meta, are also betting that AI will be better and cheaper than current methods for creating product advertisements to clog your online shopping results and social media feeds. Hooray, right?!

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"Long before the harrowing Alaska Airlines blowout on January 5, there were concerns within Boeing about the way the aerospace giant was building its planes," reports the Wall Street Journal. There's been issues with various models — like "misdrilled holes, loose rudder bolts, and this month's MAX 9 door-plug blowout" — but many can be traced back to the outsourcing Boeing and other aerospace companies adopted more than 20 years ago where key pieces are built elsewhere and then assembled at Boeing. And the Journal reports that the door-plug was built at a factory that Boeing owned until 2005, now run by Spirit AeroSystems, that "has been plagued by production problems and quality lapses since Boeing ceded so much responsibility for its work... " Spirit is the sole supplier of the fuselages used in many Boeing jets, including the Alaska plane that made the emergency landing. It is heavily dependent on Boeing for revenue, and the two companies have battled for years over costs and quality issues. The earlier MAX grounding and Covid-19 pandemic sapped Spirit's finances, and the company slashed thousands of jobs, leaving it short-handed when demand bounced back. Some Spirit employees said production problems were common and internal complaints about quality were ignored. In a given month, at a production rate of two fuselages a day, there are 10 million holes that need to be filled with some combination of bolts, fasteners and rivets. "We have planes all over the world that have issues that nobody has found because of the pressure Spirit has put on employees to get the job done so fast," said Cornell Beard, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter representing workers at Spirit's Wichita factory... Alaska Airlines and United Airlines say they have found loose hardware on other MAX 9 jets they have checked, suggesting that problems go beyond one plane... The company, which had 15,900 workers in four U.S. factories at the end of 2019, laid off thousands of people in Wichita at the height of the pandemic. When it needed to ramp back up, not only did Spirit have fewer people on site, the company had lost years of expertise. There were fewer experienced mechanics, but also fewer experts who could inspect the quality of their work. [Spirit CEO Pat Shanahan ] said the quick production ramp-up and the earlier MAX grounding left the company short of experienced workers. "When you have disruption, you have instability," he said... For more than a decade, Spirit and Boeing battled over costs, quality and the pace of production. Boeing's demands for lower prices left Spirit strapped for cash as managers panicked over meeting increasingly demanding deadlines. Boeing routinely had employees on the ground in Wichita and conducted audits of the supplier. The result, some current and former employees say: a factory where workers rush to meet unrealistic quotas and where pointing out problems is discouraged if not punished. Increasingly, they say, planes have been leaving Wichita with so-called escapements, or undetected defects. "It is known at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too much trouble, you will be moved," said Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality auditor who says he was fired after flagging misdrilled holes in fuselages. "It doesn't mean you completely disregard stuff, but they don't want you to find everything and write it up." His account is included in a shareholder lawsuit filed in December against Spirit that alleges the company failed to disclose costly defects. A Spirit spokesman said the company strongly disagrees with the assertions and intends to defend against the suit... After being laid off during the pandemic shutdown, Dean returned to Spirit in May 2021. By then, he said, the company had lost many of its most experienced mechanics and auditors. Spirit already was under more intense scrutiny from Boeing. The jet maker placed Spirit on a so-called probation, in which the company more closely scrutinized the supplier's work. To get off probation, Spirit needed to reduce the number of defects on the line. At one point, Dean said, the company threw a pizza party for employees to celebrate a drop in the number of defects reported. Chatter at the party turned to how everyone knew that the defect numbers were down only because people were reporting fewer problems. On the Spirit factory floor, some machinists building planes say their concerns about quality rarely get conveyed to more senior managers, and that quality inspectors fear retaliation if they point out too many problems. Union representatives complained to leaders last fall that the company removed inspectors from line jobs and replaced them with contract workers after they flagged multiple defects. Two key quotes from the article: "As some problems on both the 787 and 737 were traced back to Spirit, Boeing executives said in 2023 that the plane maker would be ratcheting up oversight of the supplier it once owned." New FAA chief Mike Whitaker said "Whatever's happened over the previous years — because this has been going on for years — has not worked." When it comes to what caused last week's in-flight incident, "All indications are it's manufacturing."

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Friday America's Environmental Protection Agency "proposed steep new fees on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities," reports the Washington Post, "escalating a crackdown on the fossil fuel industry's planet-warming pollution." Methane does not linger in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but it is far more effective at trapping heat — roughly 80 times more potent in its first decade. It is responsible for roughly a third of global warming today, and the oil and gas industry accounts for about 14 percent of the world's annual methane emissions, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency. Other large methane sources include livestock, landfills and coal mines. So America's new Methane Emissions Reduction Program "levies a fee on wasteful methane emissions from large oil and gas facilities," according to the article: The fee starts at $900 per metric ton of emissions in 2024, increasing to $1,200 in 2025 and $1,500 in 2026 and thereafter. The EPA proposal lays out how the fee will be implemented, including how the charge will be calculated... At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai in December, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced final standards to limit methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas operations. Fossil fuel companies that comply with these standards will be exempt from the new fee... Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said the fee will encourage fossil fuel firms to deploy innovative technologies that detect methane leaks. Such cutting-edge technologies range from ground-based sensors to satellites in space. "Proven solutions to cut oil and gas methane and to avoid the fee are being used by leading companies in states across the country," Krupp said in a statement... In addition to methane, the EPA proposal could slash emissions of hazardous air pollutants, including smog-forming volatile organic compounds and cancer-causing benzene [according to an EPA official]. The federal government also gave America's fossil fuel companies nearly $1 billion to help them comply with the methane regulation, according to the article. The article also includes this statement from an executive at the American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying arm of the U.S. oil and gas industry, complaining that the fines create a "regime" that would "stifle innovation," and urging Congress to repeal it.

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"For months, bits of an asteroid collected by a U.S. probe during a billion-mile trek were out of reach to scientists," reports Space.com, "locked inside a return capsule in a NASA facility with two stuck fasteners preventing access to the rocky space treasure. "This week, NASA won its battle against those fasteners." More details from CNN: The space agency already harvested about 2.5 ounces (70 grams) of rocks and dust from its OSIRIS-REx mission, which traveled nearly 4 billion miles to collect the unprecedented sample from the near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. But NASA revealed in October that some material remained out of reach in a capsule hidden inside an instrument called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism — a robotic arm with a storage container at one end that collected the sample from Bennu. The sampler head is held shut by 35 fasteners, according to NASA, but two of them proved too difficult to open. Prying the mechanism loose is no simple task. The space agency must use preapproved materials and tools around the capsule to minimize the risk of damaging or contaminating the samples. These "new tools also needed to function within the tightly-confined space of the glovebox, limiting their height, weight, and potential arc movement," said Dr. Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curation lead at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement. "The curation team showed impressive resilience and did incredible work to get these stubborn fasteners off the TAGSAM head so we can continue disassembly. We are overjoyed with the success." To address the issue, NASA said they designed and fabricated two new, multi-part tools out of surgical steel. NASA says that a "few additional disassembly steps" still remain, but there's a video on their web site showing the operation (along with some pictures). NASA adds that "Later this spring, the curation team will release a catalog of the OSIRIS-REx samples, which will be available to the global scientific community." But CNN notes that an analysis of material from last fall "already revealed the samples from the asteroid contained abundant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals as well as carbon," CNN reports. And they add that scientists believe this bolsters the theory that water arrived on Earth billions of years ago on an asteroid...

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"For months, bits of an asteroid collected by a U.S. probe during a billion-mile trek were out of reach to scientists," reports Space.com, "locked inside a return capsule in a NASA facility with two stuck fasteners preventing access to the rocky space treasure. "This week, NASA won its battle against those fasteners." More details from CNN: The space agency already harvested about 2.5 ounces (70 grams) of rocks and dust from its OSIRIS-REx mission, which traveled nearly 4 billion miles to collect the unprecedented sample from the near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. But NASA revealed in October that some material remained out of reach in a capsule hidden inside an instrument called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism — a robotic arm with a storage container at one end that collected the sample from Bennu. The sampler head is held shut by 35 fasteners, according to NASA, but two of them proved too difficult to open. Prying the mechanism loose is no simple task. The space agency must use preapproved materials and tools around the capsule to minimize the risk of damaging or contaminating the samples. These "new tools also needed to function within the tightly-confined space of the glovebox, limiting their height, weight, and potential arc movement," said Dr. Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curation lead at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement. "The curation team showed impressive resilience and did incredible work to get these stubborn fasteners off the TAGSAM head so we can continue disassembly. We are overjoyed with the success." To address the issue, NASA said they designed and fabricated two new, multi-part tools out of surgical steel. NASA says that a "few additional disassembly steps" still remain, but there's a video on their web site showing the operation (along with some pictures). NASA adds that "Later this spring, the curation team will release a catalog of the OSIRIS-REx samples, which will be available to the global scientific community." But CNN notes that an analysis of material from last fall "already revealed the samples from the asteroid contained abundant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals as well as carbon," CNN reports. And they add that scientists believe this bolsters the theory that water arrived on Earth billions of years ago on an asteroid...

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"What is lost when billionaires with no background nor interest in a civic mission, who are only concerned with profiteering, take over our most influential news organizations? What new models of news gathering, and dissemination show promise for our increasingly digital age? What can the public do to preserve and support vibrant journalism?" That's a synopsis posted about the documentary Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink, cited by the long-standing news industry magazine Editor and Publisher (which dates back to 1901). This week its podcast interviewed filmmaker Rick Goldsmith about his 90-minute documentary, which they say "tells the tale" of how hedge fund Alden Global Capital clandestinely entered into the news publishing industry in a big way — and then "dismantled local newspapers 'piece by piece,' creating a crises within the communities they serve, leaving 'news deserts' and 'ghost papers' in their wake." [Goldsmith] spent more than 5-years creating his latest work... a film that tells the tale of how newspapers business model is faltering, not just because of the loss of advertising and digital disruption; but also to capitalist greed, as hedge funds and corporate America buy them, sell their assets and leave the communities they serve without their local "voice" and a final check on power. On the podcast, Goldsmith notes that in many cases a paper's assets "were the newspaper buildings and the printing presses... These were worth in many cases more than the newspapers themselves." After laying off staff, the hedge fund could also downsize out of those buildings. By 2021 Alden owned 100 newspapers and 200 more publications — and then acquired Tribune Publishing to become America's second-largest newspaper publisher. The hedge fund currently owns several newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to SFGate: At first, Goldsmith's documentary might seem like it's delivering more bad news. But it avoids despair, offering hope on the horizon for news deserts where aggressive reporting is needed. It introduces the notion that the traditional capitalist business model is failing the news industry, and that nonprofit organizations must be providers of local coverage.

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Boffins say the quiet part out loud: There's no room for the sonic boom

NASA's X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft made its public debut on Friday in a media event at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, where the plane was designed.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: It's day two of the opening of OpenAI's buzzy GPT store, which offers customized versions of ChatGPT, and users are already breaking the rules. The Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPTs) are meant to be created for specific purposes -- and not created at all in some cases. A search for "girlfriend" on the new GPT store will populate the site's results bar with at least eight "girlfriend" AI chatbots, including "Korean Girlfriend," "Virtual Sweetheart," "Your girlfriend Scarlett," "Your AI girlfriend, Tsu." Click on chatbot "Virtual Sweetheart," and a user will receive starting prompts like "What does your dream girl look like?" and "Share with me your darkest secret." The AI girlfriend bots go against OpenAI's usage policy, which was updated when the GPT store launched yesterday (Jan. 10). The company bans GPTs "dedicated to fostering romantic companionship or performing regulated activities." It is not clear exactly what regulated activities entail. Notably, the company is aiming to get ahead of potential conflicts with its OpenAI store. Relationship chatbots are, indeed, popular apps. In the US, seven of the 30 AI chatbot apps downloaded in 2023 from the Apple or Google Play store were related to AI friends, girlfriends, or companions, according to data shared with Quartz from data.ai, a mobile app analytics firm. The proliferation of these apps may stem from the epidemic of loneliness and isolation Americans are facing. Alarming studies show that one-in-two American adults have reported experiencing loneliness, with the US Surgeon General calling for the need to strengthen social connections. AI chatbots could be part of the solution if people are isolated from other human beings -- or they could just be a way to cash in on human suffering. Further reading: OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban On Using ChatGPT For 'Military and Warfare'

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Longtime Slashdot reader Plugh shares a report from Daily Security Review: A Ukrainian hacker group [...] carried out a destructive attack on the servers of a Moscow-based internet provider to take revenge for Kyivstar cyberattack. The group, known as Blackjack, successfully hacked into the systems of M9com, causing extensive damage by deleting terabytes of data. Numerous residents in Moscow experienced disruptions in their internet and television services. Additionally, the Blackjack hacker group has issued a warning of a potentially larger attack in the near future. Based on the information provided by Ukrinform, the cyber attack on M9com deleted approximately 20 terabytes of data. The attack targeted various critical services of the company, including its official website, mail server, and cyber protection services. Furthermore, the hackers managed to access and download over 10 gigabytes of data from M9com's mail server and client databases. To make matters worse, they made this stolen information publicly accessible via the Tor browser. [...] Based on the nature of the attack on M9com, it appears that when the hackers hit Moscow, they were able to gain access to the back-end operations of the company. This allowed them to effectively delete data from the servers, similar to what occurred in the Kyivstar incident. It is worth noting that this type of attack, which involves directly targeting and compromising the servers, is less common compared to the more frequently observed distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks overwhelm a system by inundating it with automated requests, causing the service to become inaccessible.

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Lack of skills, funding, and scrutiny – pick three

Kettle This week the incredible scandal that is the UK's Post Office Horizon computer system, which ruined people's lives and drove some to suicide, finally exploded into the mainstream.…

After years of development, NASA has unveiled the X-59 supersonic jet capable of breaking the sound barrier without producing a thunderous sonic boom. "Instead, the Quesst will make a much quieter 'thump,' similar to the sound of a car door slamming as heard from indoors," reports Space.com. "If successful, the jet has the potential to revolutionize supersonic flight and aviation in general." From the report: NASA and Lockheed Martin showed off the finished X-59 Quesst ("Quiet SuperSonic Technology") today (Jan. 12) in front of a crowd of nearly 150 at the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, a research and development site typically known for its secrecy. The elongated beak-like nose section of the aircraft stood out prominently, showing off the fact that it does not have a forward-facing window. [...] Instead, it features what NASA calls the eXternal Vision System, or XVS, which consists of a camera and a cockpit-mounted screen that offers pilots an augmented-reality view of what's in front of the jet. Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator, continued this sentiment, noting that the X-59 is merely the latest in a long line of NASA X-planes that have revolutionized aviation throughout the agency's history. "Even among other X-planes, the X-59 is special. Every aircraft that receives that X-plane designation has a specific purpose to test new technologies or aerodynamic concepts," Free said, "These special planes push the envelope of what's possible in flight. And once they prove those concepts, they often go into museums. And that's really what makes the X-59 different." Free was referring to the fact that once the X-59 is ready for flight, the jet will make multiple flights over select residential areas in the United States in order to collect data on how people on the ground below experience and react to the quieter sonic booms it creates. NASA will then use that data to seek approval for commercial supersonic flights from regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration, with the ultimate goal of making aviation more sustainable and enabling faster flight over populated areas. Some of the applications of supersonic flight mentioned at today's unveiling include rapid medical response, shorter shipping times and, of course, faster travel. "The first 'A' in NASA stands for aeronautics," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy during the unveiling ceremony. "And we're all about groundbreaking aerospace innovation. The X-59 proudly continues this legacy, representing the forefront of technology driving aviation forward." The 'X' in NASA's latest X-plane stands for 'experimental.' "This isn't just an airplane, this is an X-plane," Melroy added. "It's the manifestation of a collaborative genius."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: In an unmarked laboratory stationed between the campuses of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a splinter group of scientists is hunting for the next billion-dollar drug. The group, bankrolled with $500 million from some of the wealthiest families in American business, has created a stir in the world of academia by dangling seven-figure paydays to lure highly credentialed university professors to a for-profit bounty hunt. Its self-described goal: to avoid the blockages and paperwork that slow down the traditional paths of scientific research at universities and pharmaceutical companies, and discover scores of new drugs (at first, for cancer and brain disease) that can be produced and sold quickly. Braggadocio from start-ups is de rigueur, and plenty of ex-academics have started biotechnology companies, hoping to strike it rich on their one big discovery. This group, rather boastfully named Arena BioWorks, borrowing from a Teddy Roosevelt quote, doesn't have one singular idea, but it does have a big checkbook. "I'm not apologetic about being a capitalist, and that motivation from a team is not a bad thing," said the technology magnate Michael Dell, one of the group's big-money backers. Others include an heiress to the Subway sandwich fortune and an owner of the Boston Celtics. The wrinkle is that for decades, many drug discoveries have not just originated at colleges and universities, but also produced profits that helped fill their endowment coffers. The University of Pennsylvania, for one, has said it earned hundreds of millions of dollars for research into mRNA vaccines used against Covid-19. Under this model, any such windfall would remain private. [...] The five billionaires backing Arena include Michael Chambers, a manufacturing titan and the wealthiest man in North Dakota, and Elisabeth DeLuca, the widow of a founder of the Subway chain. They have each put in $100 million and expect to double or triple their investment in later rounds. In confidential materials provided to investors and others, Arena describes itself as "a privately funded, fully independent, public good." Arena's backers said in interviews that they did not intend to entirely cut off their giving to universities. Duke turned down an offer from Mr. Pagliuca, an alumnus and board member, to set up part of the lab there. Mr. Dell, a major donor to the University of Texas hospital system in his hometown, Austin, leased space for a second Arena laboratory there. [Stuart Schreiber, a longtime Harvard-affiliated researcher who quit to be Arenaâ(TM)s lead scientist] said it would require years -- and billions of dollars in additional funding -- before the team would learn whether its model led to the production of any worthy drugs. "Is it going to be better or worse?" Dr. Schreiber said. "I don't know, but it's worth a shot."

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Snoops had no fewer than five custom bits of malware to hand to backdoor networks

Two zero-day bugs in Ivanti products were likely under attack by cyberspies as early as December, according to Mandiant's threat intel team.…

After a 737 Max door panel blew out over Portland, Oregon, last week, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft until emergency inspections were performed. "Alaska and United Airlines, which operate most of the Max 9s in use in the United States, said on Monday that they discovered loose hardware on the panel when conducting preliminary inspections on their planes," reported the New York Times. Now, U.S. aviation regulators say they may strip Boeing of its right to conduct some of its aircraft inspections. The Financial Times reports: Mike Whitaker, FAA administrator, said the agency was "exploring" its options for using an independent third-party to oversee inspections of Boeing's aircraft and its quality controls. "It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks," he said. "The grounding of the 737-9 and the multiple production-related issues identifiedÂin recent years [at Boeing] require us to look at every option to reduce risk." The regulator also said it plans to immediately increase its oversight of Boeing's production. The FAA opened an investigation on Thursday into whether the planes Boeing builds match the specifications it has laid out. The FAA said it will audit the 737 Max 9 production line and its suppliers "to evaluate Boeing's compliance with its approved quality procedures," with further audits conducted as necessary. Washington Senator Maria Cantwell sent a letter (PDF) yesterday to the FAA questioning the agency's role in inspecting aircraft manufactured by Boeing. Cantwell said she asked a year ago for an audit of certain areas related to Boeing's production, and the regulator told her it was unnecessary. "Recent accidents and incidents -- including the expelled door plug on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 -- call into question Boeing's quality control," she said. "In short, it appears that FAA's oversight processes have not been effective in ensuring that Boeing produces aeroplanes that are in condition for safe operation."

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At CES 2024 this week, Micron demonstrated its next-gen LPCAMM2 memory modules based on LPDDR5X memory. Not only are they smaller and more powerful than traditional SODIMMs, they can be "serviced during the manufacturing process and upgraded by the user," says Micron. Tom's Hardware reports: Micron's LPCAMM2 are industry-standard memory modules that will be available in 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB capacities as well as with speed bins of up to a 9600 MT/s data transfer rate. These modules are designed to replace conventional SODIMMs as well as soldered-down LPDDR5X memory subsystem while offering the best of both worlds: flexibility, repairability, and upgradeability of modular memory solutions as well as high performance and low power consumption of mobile DRAM. Indeed, a Micron LPCAMM2 module is smaller than a traditional SODIMM despite the fact that it has a 128-bit memory interface and up to 64 GB of LPDDR5X memory onboard. Needless to say, the module is massively smaller than two SODIMM memory sticks that offer a 128-bit memory interface both in terms of height and in terms of physical footprint.

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After removing the feature with Android 5.0 in 2015, Google appears to be bringing back lock screen widgets in the next version of Android. "There haven't been any indications since then that Google would ever bring this feature back," notes Android Authority. "But after Apple introduced widgets to the iPhone lock screen in iOS 16, many speculated that it was only a matter of time." From the report: As for how they might do that, there seem to be two different approaches that are being developed. The first one involves the creation of a new "communal" space -- an area on the lock screen that might be accessed by swiping inward from the right. Although the communal space is still unfinished, I was able to activate it in the new Android 14 QPR2 Beta 3 update. Once I activated the communal space, a large gray bar appeared on the right side of the lock screen on my Pixel device. After swiping inward, a pencil icon appeared on the top left of the screen. Tapping this icon opened a widget selector that allowed me to add widgets from Google Calendar, Google Clock, and the Google App, but I wasn't able to add widgets from most of my other apps. This is because the widget category needs to be set to KEYGUARD in order for it to appear in this selector. KEYGUARD is a category Google introduced in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean that very few apps utilize today since the lock screen hasn't supported showing widgets in nearly a decade. After adding the widgets for Google Clock and Google Finance, I returned to the communal space by swiping inward from the right on the lock screen. The widgets were indeed shown in this space without me needing to unlock the device. However, the lock screen UI was shown on top of the widgets, making things difficult to see. Clearly, this feature is still a work in progress in the current beta. [...] While it's possible this communal space won't be coming to all devices, there's another way that Google could bring widgets back to the lock screen for Android phones: leveraging At a Glance. If you aren't familiar, Pixel phones have a widget on the home screen and lock screen called At a Glance. The interesting thing about At a Glance is that it isn't actually a widget but rather a "custom element behaving like a widget," according to developer Kieron Quinn. Under the hood, At a Glance is built on top of Smartspace, the API that is responsible for creating the various cards you can swipe through. Although Smartspace supports creating a variety of card types, it currently can't handle RemoteViews, the API on which Android app widgets are built. That could change soon, though, as Google is working on including RemoteViews into the Smartspace API. It's unclear whether this will allow raw widgets from all apps to be included in At a Glance, since it's also possible that Google is only implementing this so it has more freedom in building new cards. Either way, this new addition to the Smartspace API would supercharge the At a Glance widget in Android 15, and we're excited to see what Google has in store for us.

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Phemedrone Stealer loots drives for passwords, cookies, login tokens, etc

Criminals are exploiting a Windows Defender SmartScreen bypass vulnerability to infect PCs with Phemedrone Stealer, a malware strain that scans machines for sensitive information – passwords, cookies, authentication tokens, you name it – to grab and leak.…