Author name: Ari B

cdc-reports-dips-in-flu,-covid-19,-and-rsv—though-levels-still-very-high

CDC reports dips in flu, COVID-19, and RSV—though levels still very high

annual flu shot, CDC, COVID-19, deaths, flu season, health, influenza, influenza-like illness, respiratory viruses, RSV, Science, vaccines / /

a break? —

The dips may be due to holiday lulls and CDC is monitoring for post-holiday increase.

–

The influenza virus from an image produced from an image taken with transmission electron microscopy. Viral diameter ranges from around 80 to 120 nm.

Enlarge / The influenza virus from an image produced from an image taken with transmission electron microscopy. Viral diameter ranges from around 80 to 120 nm.

Key indicators of seasonal flu activity declined in the first week of the year, signaling a possible reprieve from the high levels of respiratory virus transmission this season—but the dip may only be temporary.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its latest flu data for the week ending on January 6. Outpatient visits for influenza-like illnesses (ILI) were down that week, the first decline after weeks of rapid increases. Flu test positivity and hospitalizations were also down slightly.

Percent of outpatient visits for respiratory illnesses by week.

Enlarge / Percent of outpatient visits for respiratory illnesses by week.

But transmission is still elevated around the country. Fourteen states have ILI activity at the “very high” level in the current data, down from 22 the week before. And 23 states have “high” activity level, up from 19 the week before. (You can see the week-by-week progression of this year’s flu season in the US here.)

The CDC says it is monitoring for “a second period of increased influenza activity that often occurs after the winter holidays.”

Map of ILI activity by state.

Enlarge / Map of ILI activity by state.

Flu isn’t the only virus that seems to be letting up a little in the data, at least for now. COVID-19 data also showed some dips, with the CDC reporting that “Despite test positivity (percentage of tests conducted that were positive), emergency department visits, and hospitalizations remaining elevated nationally, the rates have stabilized, or in some instances decreased, after multiple weeks of continual increase.”

The CDC speculates that some of the declines in indicators could be due to people not seeking medical care during the holidays as they would otherwise. COVID-19 wastewater activity levels remain “very high,” with all regions showing high or increasing levels. The South and Midwest have the highest levels in the latest data, but there are some early indications that rises in the Midwest and Northeast may be slowing down.

Meanwhile, RSV activity remains elevated, though some areas are starting to see declines.

The CDC notes that it’s not too late to get vaccinated against COVID-19, flu, and (for those ages 60 and over) RSV. So far, 21 percent of adults have received the 2023–2024 COVID-19 vaccine, including 41.5 percent of people ages 65 and up. Around 363,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the US since September.

For flu, about 47 percent of adults have received their annual shot, including 74 percent of people ages 65 and up. On Thursday, researchers in Canada published the first estimates of flu vaccine effectiveness this season, finding the current annual shots are 61 percent effective against the most common strain of flu circulating in the US (influenza A(H1N1)pdm09) and 49 percent effective against the less common influenza A(H3N2) and 75 percent effective against influenza B.

The CDC estimates that there have been at least 14 million flu cases, 150,000 hospitalizations, and 9,400 deaths from flu so far this season so far, the agency reported. In the first week of this year, 13 children died of flu, bringing this season’s total to 40.

CDC reports dips in flu, COVID-19, and RSV—though levels still very high Read More »

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Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users, film studios say

piracy, Policy, reddit, Social Media / /
A keyboard icon for piracy beside letter v and n

For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.

In 2023, film companies lost two attempts to have Reddit unmask its users. In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users. Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a copyright infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.

In the second instance, the same companies sued Astound Broadband-owned ISP Grande, again for alleged copyright infringement occurring over the ISP’s network. The studios subpoenaed Reddit for user account information, including “IP address registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to present, name, email address, and other account registration information” for six Reddit users, per a July 2023 court filing.

In August, a federal court again quashed that subpoena, citing First Amendment rights. In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers. She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”

Third piracy-related subpoena

This week, as reported by TorrentFreak, film companies Voltage Holdings, which are part of the previous two subpoenas, and Screen Media Ventures, another film studio with litigation against RCN, filed a motion to compel [PDF] Reddit to respond to the subpoena in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The studios said they’re seeking the information concerning claims they’ve made that the “ability to pirate content efficiently without any consequences is a draw for becoming a Frontier subscriber” and that Frontier Communications “does not have an effective policy for terminating repeat infringers.” The film studios are claimants against Frontier in its bankruptcy case. The studios are represented by the same lawyers used in the two aforementioned cases.

The studios are asking that the court require Reddit to provide “IP address log information from 1/1/2017 to present” for six anonymous Reddit users who talked about piracy on Reddit. Although, Reddit posts shared in the court filing only date back to 2021.

Reddit responded to the studios’ subpoena with a letter [PDF] on January 2 stating that the subpoena “does not satisfy the First Amendment standard for disclosure of identifying information regarding an anonymous speaker.” Reddit also noted the two previously quashed subpoenas and suggested that it did not have to comply with the new request because the studios could acquire equivalent or better information elsewhere.

As with the previously mentioned litigation against ISPs, Reddit is a non-party. However, since the film companies claimed that Frontier had refused to produce customer identifying information and Reddit responded with a denial to the requests, the film companies filed their motion to compel.

The studios argue that the information requests do not implicate the First Amendment and that the rulings around the two aforementioned subpoenas are not applicable because the new subpoena is only about IP address logs and not other user-identifying information.

“The Reddit users do not have a recognized privacy interest in their IP addresses,” the motion says.

Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users, film studios say Read More »

the-space-force-is-changing-the-way-it-thinks-about-spaceports

The Space Force is changing the way it thinks about spaceports

cape canaveral, Commercial space, launch, military space, Science, Space, spacex, Vandenberg / /

Demanding —

There’s not much available real estate to grow Cape Canaveral’s launch capacity.

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The Morrell Operations Center at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / The Morrell Operations Center at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

A lot goes into a successful rocket launch. It’s not just reliable engines, computers, and sophisticated guidance algorithms. There’s also the launch pad, and perhaps even more of an afterthought to casual observers, the roads, bridges, pipelines, and electrical infrastructure required to keep a spaceport humming.

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, commander of the Space Force’s Eastern Range at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, calls this the “non-sexy stuff that we can’t launch without.” Much of the ground infrastructure at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the military’s other launch range, is antiquated and needs upgrades or expansion.

“Things like roads, bridges, even just the entry into the base, the gate, communications infrastructure, power, we’re looking at overhauling and modernizing all of that because we really haven’t done a tech refresh on all of that in a very long time, at least 20 years, if not more,” said Col. James Horne, deputy director for the Space Force’s assured access to space directorate.

Getting a congressional appropriation for new rocket or spacecraft development, research into advanced technology, or military pay raises has generally been easier than securing funds for military construction projects.

“Trying to do all those upgrades on just our annual budget is not possible,” Panzenhagen said earlier his week in a presentation to the National Space Club Florida Committee.

Charging ahead

The Biden administration is requesting $1.3 billion over the next five years to revamp infrastructure at the Space Force’s ranges in Florida and California. According to Panzenhagen, one of the first projects will be an upgrade to the airfield at Cape Canaveral, where the military regularly delivers satellites and other equipment to the launch site.

But this funding won’t be enough for Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg to meet the Space Force’s projected launch demand fully. Last year, there were 72 orbital launch attempts from Florida and 30 launches from California.

“I would anticipate we’re going to do over 100 launches from the Cape this year,” Panzenhagen said. “And that puts a strain on a lot of our workforce, so we are doing process things to try to operate more smartly.”

SpaceX will launch most of these missions, with Falcon 9 launch demand driven by expanding the company’s Starlink broadband network. United Launch Alliance plans as many as 16 rocket launches this year, all from Cape Canaveral, and Blue Origin could launch its first heavy-lift New Glenn rocket from Florida by the end of 2024. SpaceX plans to launch around 50 missions from California next year; Firefly Aerospace could launch a handful of flights there, too.

This long exposure photo shows a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket streaking into space from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A few minutes later, the rocket's side boosters returned to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a few miles away.

Enlarge / This long exposure photo shows a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket streaking into space from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A few minutes later, the rocket’s side boosters returned to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a few miles away.

There has been a significant uptick in launch cadence at Cape Canaveral. In 2008, there were only seven launches from the Florida spaceport. Since SpaceX started launching its Falcon 9 rocket in 2010, the launch cadence in Florida has been on a steady rise.

“This is not a hard limit, but I think at the Cape, we could probably push through somewhere on the order of 150 launches per year if we did nothing,” Horne told Ars in a recent interview. “And then probably 75 or so per year from Vandenberg. Everything we’re doing is continuing to improve that ability so that we’re not in the way. So whenever they say they need to go, we say yes.”

The Space Force provides security, weather forecasting, telemetry, and safety oversight services for all launches from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg. The launch ranges in Florida and California are primarily responsible for ensuring the US military has an always-on capability to launch critical national security satellites. But the majority of launches from the military ranges are commercial missions.

The Space Force is changing the way it thinks about spaceports Read More »

covid-shots-protect-against-covid-related-strokes,-heart-attacks,-study-finds

COVID shots protect against COVID-related strokes, heart attacks, study finds

65+, adults, blood clot, CDC, COVID-19, fda, health, heart attack, Science, stroke, vaccine / /

stay up to date —

Data provides more evidence older people should stay up to date on COVID vaccines.

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A vial of the updated 2023-2024 formula of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine at a CVS Pharmacy in Eagle Rock, California, on September 14, 2023.

Enlarge / A vial of the updated 2023-2024 formula of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine at a CVS Pharmacy in Eagle Rock, California, on September 14, 2023.

Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines can cut the risk of COVID-related strokes, blood clots, and heart attacks by around 50 percent in people ages 65 years or older and in those with a condition that makes them more vulnerable to those events, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The finding, published this week in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, should help ease concerns that the shots may conversely increase the risk of those events—collectively called thromboembolic events. In January 2023, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration jointly reported a preliminary safety signal from their vaccine-monitoring systems that indicated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines may increase the risk of strokes in the 21 days after vaccination of people ages 65 and older. Since that initial report, that signal decreased, becoming statistically insignificant. Other vaccine monitoring systems, including international systems, have not picked up such a signal. Further studies (summarized here) have not produced clear or consistent data pointing to a link to strokes.

In May, the FDA concluded that the evidence does not support any safety concern and reported that “scientists believe factors other than vaccination might have contributed to the initial finding.”

But, the statistical blip could potentially cause lingering concerns. While clinicians had noted lower rates of thromboembolic events among vaccinated people, the authors of the new study noted that, until now, there were no rigorous estimates of how effective COVID-19 vaccines are at preventing those events.

For their analysis, they primarily looked at two groups of patients: A group of 12.7 million Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older and a group of around 78,600 Medicare beneficiaries ages 18 and older with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) on dialysis, a condition that increases their risk for thromboembolic events, including COVID-19-related thromboembolic events. Using medical claims records from September 2022 to March 2023, the researchers compared rates of thromboembolic events among the people in those groups that had gotten a bivalent COVID-19 booster dose and those who had only gotten the original monovalent COVID-19 vaccine in the past. To be considered a COVID-related thromboembolic event, the event had to occur within a week of or a month after a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Protective effect

In the group of 12.7 million patients ages 65 and older, about 5.7 million (45 percent) had gotten the bivalent booster, making them up to date on their COVID-19 vaccinations at the time. The remaining 7 million (55 percent) had only gotten the original vaccine.

During the study period, 17,746 patients who were not up to date on their COVID shots got COVID-19 and experienced a COVID-related thromboembolic event. Of the bivalent boosted patients, there were 4,255 COVID-related thromboembolic events. The researchers adjusted for confounding factors, such as age, race, and time of vaccination, and estimated that the bivalent booster was overall 47 percent effective at preventing COVID-related thromboembolic events, which again include strokes, blood clots, and heart attacks.

A sub-analysis including the time since vaccination indicated that the estimated effectiveness waned about two months after receipt of the vaccine, dropping early effectiveness of 54 percent down to 42 percent at 60 days or more.

Among the 78,600 patients ages 18 and up with ESRD, 23,229 (29.5 percent) received a bivalent dose and thus were up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines. The remaining patients (70.5 percent) had only received an original vaccine, and of those, 917 experienced a COVID-19-related thromboembolic event after getting the pandemic virus. Among the up-to-date patients, there were only 123 events. After adjustments, the researchers estimated that the vaccines’ effectiveness against thromboembolic events was 51 percent in this group, which also waned slightly over time.

The study has limitations, such as that it can’t account for previous COVID-19 infections, which could alter people’s risk of developing complications from COVID-19, including thromboembolic events. It relied on medical claims, which have limitations, and it’s possible there are other confounding factors, such as the use of Paxlovid and behavioral differences. Last, Medicare beneficiaries are not representative of the whole population.

But, given the data available, the study authors concluded that it appears the bivalent vaccine dose “helped provide protection against COVID-19–related thromboembolic events compared with more distant receipt of original monovalent doses alone.” The authors recommend that, “to prevent COVID-19–related complications, including thromboembolic events, adults should stay up to date with recommended COVID-19 vaccination.”

The CDC currently estimates that only 21 percent of adults ages 18 and up have received the latest COVID-19 booster dose, including 41.5 percent of adults ages 65 and up.

COVID shots protect against COVID-related strokes, heart attacks, study finds Read More »

child-abusers-are-covering-their-tracks-with-better-use-of-crypto

Child abusers are covering their tracks with better use of crypto

Bitcoin, child abuse, Cryptocurrency, csam, Monery, Policy, syndication, Zcash / /
silhouette of child

For those who trade in child sexual exploitation images and videos in the darkest recesses of the Internet, cryptocurrency has been both a powerful tool and a treacherous one. Bitcoin, for instance, has allowed denizens of that criminal underground to buy and sell their wares with no involvement from a bank or payment processor that might reveal their activities to law enforcement. But the public and surprisingly traceable transactions recorded in Bitcoin’s blockchain have sometimes led financial investigators directly to pedophiles’ doorsteps.

Now, after years of evolution in that grim cat-and-mouse game, new evidence suggests that online vendors of what was once commonly called “child porn” are learning to use cryptocurrency with significantly more skill and stealth—and that it’s helping them survive longer in the Internet’s most abusive industry.

Today, as part of an annual crime report, cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis revealed new research that analyzed blockchains to measure the changing scale and sophistication of the cryptocurrency-based sale of child sexual abuse materials, or CSAM, over the past four years. Total revenue from CSAM sold for cryptocurrency has actually gone down since 2021, Chainalysis found, along with the number of new CSAM sellers accepting crypto. But the sophistication of crypto-based CSAM sales has been increasing. More and more, Chainalysis discovered, sellers of CSAM are using privacy tools like “mixers” and “privacy coins” that obfuscate their money trails across blockchains.

Perhaps because of that increased savvy, the company found that CSAM vendors active in 2023 persisted online—and evaded law enforcement—for a longer time than in any previous year, and about 57 percent longer than even in 2022. “Growing sophistication makes identification harder. It makes tracing harder, it makes prosecution harder, and it makes rescuing victims harder,” says Eric Jardine, the researcher who led the Chainalysis study. “So that sophistication dimension is probably the worst one you could see increasing over time.”

Better stealth, longer criminal lifespans

Scouring blockchains, Chainalysis researchers analyzed around 400 cryptocurrency wallets of CSAM sellers and more than 10,000 buyers who sent funds to them over the past four years. Their most disturbing finding in that broad economic study was that crypto-based CSAM sellers seem to have a longer lifespan online than ever, suggesting a kind of relative impunity. On average, CSAM vendors who were active in 2023 remained online for 884 days, compared with 560 days for those active in 2022 and just 112 days in 2020.

To explain that new longevity for some of the most harmful actors on the Internet, Chainalysis points to how CSAM vendors are increasingly laundering their proceeds with cryptocurrency mixers—services that blend users’ funds to make tracing more difficult—such as ChipMixer and Sinbad. (US and German law enforcement shut down ChipMixer in March 2023, but Sinbad remains online despite facing US sanctions for money laundering.) In 2023, Chainalysis found that about 46 percent of CSAM vendors used mixers, up from around 22 percent in 2020.

Chainalysis also found that CSAM vendors are increasingly using “instant exchanger” services that often collect little or no identifying information on traders and allow them to swap bitcoin for cryptocurrencies like Monero and Zcash—”privacy coins” designed to obfuscate or encrypt their blockchains to make tracing their cash-outs of profits far more difficult. Chainalysis’ Jardine says that Monero in particular seems to be gaining popularity among CSAM purveyors. In the company’s investigations, Chainalysis has seen it used repeatedly by CSAM sellers laundering funds through instant exchangers, and in multiple cases it has also seen CSAM forums post Monero addresses to solicit donations. While the instant exchangers did offer other cryptocurrencies, including the privacy coin Zcash, Chainalysis’ report states that “we believe Monero to be the currency of choice for laundering via instant exchangers.”

Child abusers are covering their tracks with better use of crypto Read More »

rocket-report:-a-chinese-launch-you-must-see;-vulcan’s-stunning-debut

Rocket Report: A Chinese launch you must see; Vulcan’s stunning debut

rocket report, Science, Space / /

A great start —

“I am so proud of this team. Oh my gosh, this has been years of hard work.”

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Vulcan launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday.

Enlarge / Vulcan launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday.

United Launch Alliance

Welcome to Edition 6.26 of the Rocket Report! We’re just 11 days into the new year, and we’ve already had two stunning rocket debuts. Vulcan soared into space on Monday morning, and then a medium-lift rocket from China, Gravity-1, made a picture-perfect launch from a mobile pad in the Yellow Sea. It feels like this could be a great year for lift.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Vega C return-to-flight mission gets a date. The European Space Agency said it is targeting November 15 for the return to flight of the grounded Avio-built Vega C launch vehicle, European Spaceflight reports. I’ll be honest. I had to double-check the calendar to make sure that it is in fact January, because that’s an oddly specific date for a launch 10 months from now. But it appears there is some, ahem, flexibility in that date. ESA director of space transportation Toni Tolker-Nielsen says: “The nominal date is 15 November. There is a very detailed plan that is leading to this.”

But then there are the caveats … The director of space transportation did, however, add that there was a month of schedule risks that may affect the launch date, summarizing that the launch “should be at least before the end of the year.” Tolker-Nielsen’s final word on the matter was not all that convincing. “We’re pretty sure of that,” he concluded. Vega C was grounded following a failed flight in late 2022. The flight is expected to carry the Sentinel 1C Earth observation satellite to orbit, which will replace the failed Sentinel 1B satellite, plugging a significant data gap. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

China completes commercial launch pad.  A newly completed launch pad on China’s Hainan Island could increase China’s access to space, boosting national constellation projects and commercial launch plans, Space News reports. The first launch pad at Hainan Commercial Launch Site was finished in late December. It is the first of two pads that will host liquid propellant launch vehicles.

Fewer rockets falling into villages … The development is intended to ease a bottleneck of access to launch facilities for both national and commercial launch service providers and allow Chinese entities to speed up plans to launch a range of constellations. It should also increase China’s ability to deploy and maintain space assets, including remote sensing, communications, and other systems for civil and military purposes. Finally, it may help reduce incidents of booster debris falling around inhabited areas following launches from the country’s inland spaceports of Jiuquan, Taiyuan, and Xichang. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Will spaceport make Australia a military target? Space company Equatorial Launch Australia has proposed a massive expansion of its space center near Nhulunbuy, around 1,000 km east of Darwin, which saw the launch of three NASA suborbital rockets in mid-2022. If approved, the plans would see the Arnhem Space Centre grow from one launchpad to 14, with the goal of launching dozens of rockets a year, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reports. The goal is to launch its first orbital rocket by 2025, said the launch site chief executive, Michael Jones.

But there’s a catch … While the plans have been welcomed by the local government and local businesses, they have drawn concerns from some, including a politician and Yolŋu traditional owner Yiŋiya Guyula. The Yolŋu are Aboriginal people who live in the Northern Territory of Australia. Guyula voiced fears that the Arnhem Space Centre could lead to missile testing and development on Yolŋu land. Other local officials have said the spaceport could result in the area becoming a potential military target. (submitted by ZygP)

Rocket Report: A Chinese launch you must see; Vulcan’s stunning debut Read More »

those-games-turns-crappy-mobile-game-ads-into-actually-good-puzzles

Those Games turns crappy mobile game ads into actually good puzzles

gaming, mobile game ads, puzzle games / /

Can YOU reach the treasure? —

It’s pin-pulling, color-pouring, fake-but-real fun, and you only pay once.

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Pin-pulling puzzle with a stick figure, boulder, and treasure.

Enlarge / Can you master the ornate physics and inscrutable game theory necessary to overcome this challenge?

D3Publisher

You’ve seen them. If you’ve tried to read almost anything on the Internet, especially on a social media site, you know these mobile game advertisements.

“Many failed before! Think you can do better?” one reads, positioned over an auto-playing video of a simple puzzle played by an unseen, incredibly stupid hand. It pulls the wrong pin, melting the gold and drowning the king. Or it can’t do elementary math, so it sends a “10” fighter to its death against a “13” creature, ignoring the “8” it could have picked to add up to 18. Sometimes, there are colored liquids in tubes to be poured, and they are selected with an almost elegant idiocy.

They’re infuriating, but you know they work, because these ads keep showing up. If you actually downloaded these games, you’d discover they were stuffed with pop-up ads, relentlessly barking micro-transactions, or they’re some unrelated and cynically monetized game entirely. What if you could actually play the original bait games for a reasonable one-time fee, crafted by a developer who was in on the joke?

The stage select music gets to be a bit much, but nobody will sue you if you play with the sound off.

That’s exactly what Those Games are. Their full title is Yeah! You Want “Those Games,” Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let’s See You Clear Them!, originally in all caps. Developer Monkeycraft, makers of the Katamari Damacy Reroll titles, has now made many of the games that don’t seem to exist. They’ve just arrived for the PlayStation, having already provided their public service on Nintendo Switch and Windows on Steam. The package is $10 on all platforms.

Some people will find that price a bargain, given the chance to prove how much better they’d be at these kinds of puzzles than the psychological dark patterns that taunt them. Some people might wait for a sale, given that you are, in fact, getting some very free-to-play-esque puzzles. But having spent more time than I expected tackling them, I can vouch that once you get past the first few patronizing levels and adjust to some slightly muddy controls in a couple of titles, each set of games starts giving you real, thoughtfully constructed challenges.

Three of the games in Those Games were instantly familiar to me, a person who owns a smartphone and reads things on it. Surprisingly, I had never seen the last two in the list here:

  • Pin Pull, removing barriers between you, monsters, traps, and treasure in the right order
  • Number Tower, sending your number-ranked fighter to tackle numbered monsters, potions, power-ups, and rebuffs in the right order
  • Color Lab, combining similar colors from vials in the right order
  • Parking Lot, moving cars facing different directions out of a lot with a circular drive, in the right order
  • Cash Run, clicking on an auto-walking man to have him pile up money to avoid obstacles, finishing with enough to not be “poor” and disappoint his spouse

  • I got a few levels past this Pin Pull stage, but not through all 50. Troll clubs goblin, goblins run toward stick guy, so when do you release rock?

    DCPublisher

  • As with most of the games, the inherent “how hard could it be?” starts coming back on you as the complications multiply.

    DCPublisher

  • You can’t pour a full, single-color vial, and that makes the later levels of Color Lab an actual challenge.

    DCPublisher

  • Parking Lot is fun, but only if you stop caring about timing and star ratings, given the quirky controls.

    DCPublisher

  • Cash Run is perhaps the only game in the set you could suggest has a deeper meaning, vis-a-vis capitalism. It’s also harder to grasp than the others.

    DCPublisher

Those Games turns crappy mobile game ads into actually good puzzles Read More »

report:-deepfake-porn-consistently-found-atop-google,-bing-search-results

Report: Deepfake porn consistently found atop Google, Bing search results

Bing, deepfake porn, Deepfakes, Google, Policy / /

Shocking results —

Google vows to create more safeguards to protect victims of deepfake porn.

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Report: Deepfake porn consistently found atop Google, Bing search results

Popular search engines like Google and Bing are making it easy to surface nonconsensual deepfake pornography by placing it at the top of search results, NBC News reported Thursday.

These controversial deepfakes superimpose faces of real women, often celebrities, onto the bodies of adult entertainers to make them appear to be engaging in real sex. Thanks in part to advances in generative AI, there is now a burgeoning black market for deepfake porn that could be discovered through a Google search, NBC News previously reported.

NBC News uncovered the problem by turning off safe search, then combining the names of 36 female celebrities with obvious search terms like “deepfakes,” “deepfake porn,” and “fake nudes.” Bing generated links to deepfake videos in top results 35 times, while Google did so 34 times. Bing also surfaced “fake nude photos of former teen Disney Channel female actors” using images where actors appear to be underaged.

A Google spokesperson told NBC that the tech giant understands “how distressing this content can be for people affected by it” and is “actively working to bring more protections to Search.”

According to Google’s spokesperson, this controversial content sometimes appears because “Google indexes content that exists on the web,” just “like any search engine.” But while searches using terms like “deepfake” may generate results consistently, Google “actively” designs “ranking systems to avoid shocking people with unexpected harmful or explicit content that they aren’t looking for,” the spokesperson said.

Currently, the only way to remove nonconsensual deepfake porn from Google search results is for the victim to submit a form personally or through an “authorized representative.” That form requires victims to meet three requirements: showing that they’re “identifiably depicted” in the deepfake; the “imagery in question is fake and falsely depicts” them as “nude or in a sexually explicit situation”; and the imagery was distributed without their consent.

While this gives victims some course of action to remove content, experts are concerned that search engines need to do more to effectively reduce the prevalence of deepfake pornography available online—which right now is rising at a rapid rate.

This emerging issue increasingly affects average people and even children, not just celebrities. Last June, child safety experts discovered thousands of realistic but fake AI child sex images being traded online, around the same time that the FBI warned that the use of AI-generated deepfakes in sextortion schemes was increasing.

And nonconsensual deepfake porn isn’t just being traded in black markets online. In November, New Jersey police launched a probe after high school teens used AI image generators to create and share fake nude photos of female classmates.

With tech companies seemingly slow to stop the rise in deepfakes, some states have passed laws criminalizing deepfake porn distribution. Last July, Virginia amended its existing law criminalizing revenge porn to include any “falsely created videographic or still image.” In October, New York passed a law specifically focused on banning deepfake porn, imposing a $1,000 fine and up to a year of jail time on violators. Congress has also introduced legislation that creates criminal penalties for spreading deepfake porn.

Although Google told NBC News that its search features “don’t allow manipulated media or sexually explicit content,” the outlet’s investigation seemingly found otherwise. NBC News also noted that Google’s Play app store hosts an app that was previously marketed for creating deepfake porn, despite prohibiting “apps determined to promote or perpetuate demonstrably misleading or deceptive imagery, videos and/or text.” This suggests that Google’s remediation efforts blocking deceptive imagery may be inconsistent.

Google told Ars that it will soon be strengthening its policies against apps featuring AI-generated restricted content in the Play Store. A generative AI policy taking effect on January 31 will require all apps to comply with developer policies that ban AI-generated restricted content, including deceptive content and content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children.

Experts told NBC News that “Google’s lack of proactive patrolling for abuse has made it and other search engines useful platforms for people looking to engage in deepfake harassment campaigns.”

Google is currently “in the process of building more expansive safeguards, with a particular focus on removing the need for known victims to request content removals one by one,” Google’s spokesperson told NBC News.

Microsoft’s spokesperson told Ars that Microsoft updated its process for reporting concerns with Bing searches to include non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) used in “deepfakes” last August because it had become a “significant concern.” Like Google, Microsoft allows victims to report NCII deepfakes by submitting a web form to request removal from search results, understanding that any sharing of NCII is “a gross violation of personal privacy and dignity with devastating effects for victims.”

In the past, Microsoft President Brad Smith has said that among all dangers that AI poses, deepfakes worry him most, but deepfakes fueling “foreign cyber influence operations” seemingly concern him more than deepfake porn.

This story was updated on January 11 to include information on Google’s AI-generated content policy and on January 12 to include information from Microsoft.

Report: Deepfake porn consistently found atop Google, Bing search results Read More »

astronomers-found-ultra-hot,-earth-sized-exoplanet-with-a-lava-hemisphere

Astronomers found ultra-hot, Earth-sized exoplanet with a lava hemisphere

astronomy, astrophysics, exoplanets, lava worlds, Physics, Science, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite / /
Like Kepler-10 b, illustrated above, the exoplanet HD 63433 d is a small, rocky planet in a tight orbit of its star.

Enlarge / Like Kepler-10 b, illustrated above, newly discovered exoplanet HD 63433 d is a small, rocky planet in a tight orbit of its star.

NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Astronomers have discovered an unusual Earth-sized exoplanet they believe has a hemisphere of molten lava, with its other hemisphere tidally locked in perpetual darkness. Co-authors and study leaders Benjamin Capistrant (University of Florida) and Melinda Soares-Furtado (University of Wisconsin-Madison) presented the details yesterday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans. An associated paper has just been published in The Astronomical Journal. Another paper published today in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics by a different group described the discovery of a rare small, cold exoplanet with a massive outer companion 100 times the mass of Jupiter.

As previously reported, thanks to the massive trove of exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission, we now have a good idea of what kinds of planets are out there, where they orbit, and how common the different types are. What we lack is a good sense of what that implies in terms of the conditions on the planets themselves. Kepler can tell us how big a planet is, but it doesn’t know what the planet is made of. And planets in the “habitable zone” around stars could be consistent with anything from a blazing hell to a frozen rock.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was launched with the intention of helping us figure out what exoplanets are actually like. TESS is designed to identify planets orbiting bright stars relatively close to Earth, conditions that should allow follow-up observations to figure out their compositions and potentially those of their atmospheres.

Both Kepler and TESS identify planets using what’s called the transit method. This works for systems in which the planets orbit in a plane that takes them between their host star and Earth. As this occurs, the planet blocks a small fraction of the starlight that we see from Earth (or nearby orbits). If these dips in light occur with regularity, they’re diagnostic of something orbiting the star.

This tells us something about the planet. The frequency of the dips in the star’s light tells us how long an orbit takes, which tells us how far the planet is from its host star. That, combined with the host star’s brightness, tells us how much incoming light the planet receives, which will influence its temperature. (The range of distances at which temperatures are consistent with liquid water is called the habitable zone.) And we can use that, along with how much light is being blocked, to figure out how big the planet is.

But to really understand other planets and their potential to support life, we have to understand what they’re made of and what their atmosphere looks like. While TESS doesn’t answer those questions, it’s designed to find planets with other instruments that could answer them.

Astronomers found ultra-hot, Earth-sized exoplanet with a lava hemisphere Read More »

it’s-a-new-year,-and-these-are-now-the-only-evs-that-get-a-tax-credit

It’s a new year, and these are now the only EVs that get a tax credit

Cars, clean vehicle tax credit, Evergreen, explainer, IRS clean vehicle tax credit / /

lease instead of buy —

Strict rules about battery components from China make most plug-ins ineligible.

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concept of ev tax credit

Getty Images

It’s a new year, and while few of us still have the headache of needing to remember to write the new year on checks, 2024 brings a new annoyance of sorts. As of yesterday, tough new US Treasury Department rules concerning the sourcing of electric vehicle batteries went into effect; as a result, most of the battery and plug-in hybrid EVs that were eligible for the Internal Revenue Service’s clean vehicle tax credit until Sunday have now lost that eligibility.

Under the federal government’s previous program to incentivize the adoption of plug-in vehicles, it offered a tax credit, up to $7,500, based on the battery capacity of a BEV or PHEV, and once a car maker sold more than 200,000 plug-in vehicles, it lost eligibility for the tax credit—Only Tesla and General Motors reached this threshold.

Changes came as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and went into effect at the start of 2023. Thanks to heavy industry lobbying, credits linked to union-made EVs went by the wayside, with US Senator Joe Manchin acting as point man for companies like Toyota that sought to slow down the EV transition.

As we’ve detailed in the past, the new rules allow for a tax credit of up to $7,500 for the purchase of a new EV. But there are plenty of conditions. Final assembly must take place in North America. There are income caps for the buyer and a price cap for the vehicle—no more than $55,000 for a sedan or $80,000 for an SUV, truck, or minivan. Half of the tax credit is tied to a certain amount of domestically refined or processed minerals in the battery pack, the other half to a certain value of the pack having been assembled domestically.

While that includes countries that have free trade agreements with the United States, it significantly limited the number of new EVs that were eligible for the tax credit. (However, the IRS chose to read the law in such a way as to still allow the full $7,500 tax credit for clean vehicles that were leased, even if not assembled in North America.)

The list of eligible cars changed throughout the year as the rules were implemented in stages, and as automakers refined their supply chains as required. But toward the end of 2023, the Treasury published another new guideline. Now, any car with a battery that contains material from or made by a “foreign entity of concern”—which means Russia, Iran, North Korea, or China—cannot be eligible for the tax credit.

While the first three nations on that list are not particularly far down the road of EV battery making, the same isn’t true for China, which dominates the field, particularly in terms of processing the critical minerals used in lithium-ion batteries. The FEOC rule also applies to batteries made by Chinese-owned companies even if the cells are produced here in the US.

Consequently, the list of BEVs and PHEVs that are still eligible for the new clean vehicle tax credit now looks rather meagre. The following clean vehicles still qualify for the full $7,500, although we should note that the first two on the list (the Chevrolet Bolts) have ceased production now:

  • 2022-2023 Chevrolet Bolt EV
  • 2022-2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV
  • 2022-2024 Chrysler Pacifica PHEV
  • 2022-2024 Ford F-150 Lightning extended range battery
  • 2022-2024 Ford F-150 Lightning standard range battery
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model X Long Rage
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model Y All-Wheel Drive
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model Y Performance
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive

Additionally, the following vehicles qualify for a $3,750 tax credit:

  • 2022-2024 Ford Escape Plug-In Hybrid
  • 2022-2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee PHEV 4xe
  • 2022-2024 Jeep Wrangler PHEV 4xe
  • 2022-2024 Lincoln Corsair Grand Touring
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1S Dual Large
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1S Quad Large
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1T Dual Large
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1T Dual Max
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1T Quad Large

But there is one bright piece of news concerning the clean vehicle tax credit in 2024. From January 1, dealers are now able to pass the entire credit on to the buyer at the point of purchase. This applies to both new and used EVs, even in cases where the buyer may not have a large enough tax liability at the end of the year to claim the full credit the old-fashioned way.

It’s a new year, and these are now the only EVs that get a tax credit Read More »

2024-may-be-a-year-of-reckoning-for-apple’s-$85-billion-services-business

2024 may be a year of reckoning for Apple’s $85 billion services business

antitrust, App Store, App stories, Apple, big tech, monopoly, syndication / /

scrutinized —

US court cases and tougher EU regulation will pose challenges to Apple’s bottom line.

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2024 may be a year of reckoning for Apple’s $85 billion services business

Apple faces a legal reckoning in 2024, with a series of regulatory decisions by US and EU authorities over the coming months set to determine the future of its $85 billion-a-year services business.

The biggest hit to the iPhone maker could come from a US antitrust trial against Google, where it emerged that the fellow tech giant had paid more than $26 billion in 2021 to make its search engine the default on Apple devices and other smartphones and browsers.

Should Google lose the case, it could be forced to stop making regular payments to Apple, which Eric Seufert, an independent analyst, estimates as being worth a quarter of annual revenues earned by Apple’s services arm.

Meanwhile, Apple and other tech giants face increasing scrutiny from the Biden administration over concerns about the dominance of its App Store, which it is already being forced to change in the EU due to legislation designed to rein in the power of Big Tech.

Together, the legal and regulatory actions spanning two of Apple’s biggest markets represent the biggest threat to the company’s business in years.

Its services arm, which includes income from the App Store, video streaming arm, and Apple Music, has steadily increased as a proportion of the company’s total revenues, which is still dominated by sales of devices such as the iPhone.

The Google trial, seen as the most significant antitrust monopoly trial in more than 25 years in Washington, will hear closing arguments in May. Should Google lose, it will almost certainly file an appeal, but such a decision would raise questions about how the two tech giants work with one another into the future.

“I think the judge was intrigued with that issue during the trial,” said Bill Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chair and competition professor of law and policy at George Washington University Law School. “The question in the background was: ‘if Apple is going to have an auction for that prime placement, what should Google have done?’”

The White House is at the same time intensifying its efforts to tackle what it regards as excessive corporate power. Jonathan Kanter, head of the Department of Justice’s antitrust unit since November 2021, has made no secret of his ambition to bring cases against the biggest US companies.

His department has been probing Apple’s App Store policies for years and is now, according to Kanter, “firing on all cylinders.” The window for him to bring a case is closing, however, as the US presidential election and a potential change in administration loom. The DoJ did not respond to a request for comment on the Apple probe.

Regulators, businesses, and enforcers have for years been seeking to pry apart Apple’s iOS ecosystem, a move the tech giant has always insisted would undermine the mobile operating software’s security.

Apple, however, acknowledged recently in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it would have to make changes to its App Store in the EU, due to the bloc’s new Digital Markets Act, which has a March deadline for legal compliance from tech companies.

In the EU, Apple is preparing to allow “sideloading,” which enables iPhone users to bypass its store and download apps from elsewhere.

This will breach, for the first time, the walled-off ecosystem that the company has protected since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in 2007. Apple has dragged its feet on this issue, since it maintains the practice will create security risks to its system.

Sideloading could have an impact on the App Store, where Apple charges developers as much as a 30 percent fee on digital purchases. Games account for more than half of that revenue. Google’s Play Store, which charges a similar fee, is also in the spotlight after it lost a landmark trial against Epic Games in California in December.

Apple draws between $6 billion and $7 billion in commission fees from the App Store globally each quarter, according to Sensor Tower estimates.

Competitors are pushing to earn some of that share and launch rival app stores and payment methods on Apple devices. Microsoft is talking to partners about launching its own mobile store.

Fortnite maker Epic Games, a longtime Apple foe, wants its store on iOS devices and points to its lower 12 percent fee as an incentive for consumers to switch to its platform.

While Epic broadly lost a lower court judgment into its claims against Apple in 2021, a California judge ordered Apple to put an end to App Store rules that prevent developers from steering customers outside of the store to make purchases. The appeals court upheld that injunction earlier this year. The US Supreme Court will review the case next year.

For investors, gauging the ultimate risk from the raft of regulatory and legal actions across the world is difficult. “I think there’s just a belief that there’s all this noise in the background, and ‘don’t worry about it,’” said Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management.

Investors, he said, had been “lulled to sleep” by Apple’s initial wins against Epic in particular. “But I think investors should take it seriously.”

Apple declined to comment.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

2024 may be a year of reckoning for Apple’s $85 billion services business Read More »

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Juno makes its first ultra-close flyby of the volcano-covered moon Io

Io, juno, Science, Space / /

Io—not a vacation world —

“The cumulative effect of all that radiation has begun to show.”

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Juno flyby of Io on Dec. 30, 2023.

Enlarge / Juno flyby of Io on Dec. 30, 2023.

NASA

On Saturday NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for the better part of a decade, made its closest flyby of the innermost moon in the Jovian system.

The spacecraft came to within 930 miles (1,500 km) of the surface of Io, a dense moon that is the fourth largest in the Solar System. Unlike a lot of moons around Jupiter and Saturn, which have surface ice or subsurface water, Io is a very dry world. It is also extremely geologically active. Io has more than 400 active volcanoes and is therefore an object of great interest to astronomers and planetary scientists.

Images from the December 30 flyby were posted by NASA over the New Year holiday weekend, and they provide some of the clearest views yet of this hell-hole world. The new data will help planetary scientists determine how often these volcanoes erupt and how this activity is connected to Jupiter’s magnetosphere—Io is bathed in intense radiation from the gas-giant planet.

To date Juno has mostly observed Io from afar as the spacecraft has made 56 flybys of Jupiter, studying the complex gas giant in far greater detail than ever before. Since arriving in the planetary system in July 2016, Juno has previously gotten to within several thousand miles of the moon. Juno will make another close flyby of Io on February 3, 2024, and this will allow scientists to compare changes on the moon’s surface over a short period of time.

Since its launch on an Atlas V rocket, Juno has performed very well while operating in the Jovian system, surviving extended operations in the harsh radiation of the planet. This is a significant challenge for any spacecraft bound for Jupiter, which must carry radiation-hardened instruments, including its cameras.

“The cumulative effect of all that radiation has begun to show on JunoCam over the last few orbits,” said Ed Hirst, project manager of Juno at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Pictures from the last flyby show a reduction in the imager’s dynamic range and the appearance of ‘striping’ noise. Our engineering team has been working on solutions to alleviate the radiation damage and to keep the imager going.”

Eventually, the radiation will win, so NASA has a disposal planned for Juno before it ceases being operational. Originally, the space agency planned to end the vehicle’s life in 2018, but because Juno has been such a survivor as it has probed the largest planet in the Solar System, the spacecraft now is planned to operate until September 2025.

At that point, however, it will descend into Jupiter’s atmosphere to burn up, in order to not contaminate any of the planet’s moons with any stray Earth microbes on board, unlikely though that may be.

Juno makes its first ultra-close flyby of the volcano-covered moon Io Read More »