ReHacked vol. 253: FAA Aviation Maps, The End of Physical Money, Vietnamese Typography and more

Physical cash is dying—and you don’t need to be a conspiracist to worry about the consequences #economy #society #longread

Physical cash, to the chagrin of Piers Corbyn, is in decline. It’s in such short supply that, in August, the Treasury moved to protect public demand for physical money by announcing that banks would be fined for failing to provide free access to cash withdrawals for consumers and businesses. “Whilst the growing choice and convenience of digital payments is great, cash has an important and continuing role to play,” said Andrew Griffith, economic secretary to the Treasury at the time. “People shouldn’t have to trek for hours to withdraw a tenner to put in someone’s birthday card—nor should businesses have to travel large distances to deposit cash takings.”

Make a donation - support Ukraine. My favourite: Support the Armed Forces of Ukraine | via National Bank of Ukraine. More options if you want alternatives. Also, very important Come Back Alive Foundation - Charity Organization.

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How nuclear power saved Armenia - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists #energy #politics #history

The world is currently in the process of reevaluating its past rejection of nuclear power and is increasingly starting to view it as a reliable source of power that allows for greater energy security. This is at least in part due to the energy crisis that befell Europe after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, vindicating past worries that over-reliance on fossil fuels from autocratic regimes has made the Western countries vulnerable to political blackmail.

It is now clear that Western use of natural gas and petroleum from aggressive dictatorships—which use cash flows from oil and gas sales to reinforce and expand their hold on power—has backfired badly. In this context, the experience of Armenia—a small country that draws 40 percent of its energy from nuclear power—is instructive, showing how nuclear power can be instrumental in building societal reliance and political stability.

ProofWiki #science

Pr∞fWiki is an online compendium of mathematical proofs!

Netflix: Piracy is Difficult to Compete Against and Growing Rapidly * TorrentFreak #copyrights

From the launch of its online streaming service fifteen years ago, Netflix positioned itself as a piracy competitor.

The idea was to take market share away from piracy sites, by offering a legal and more convenient streaming platform.

The First Amateur Radio Station on the Moon, JS1YMG, is Now Transmitting #space

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully landed their Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on January 19, 2024. Just before touchdown, SLIM released two small lunar surface probes, LEV-1 and LEV-2.

LEV-2 collects data while moving on the lunar surface, and LEV-1 receives the data.

The JAXA Ham Radio Club (JHRC), JQ1ZVI, secured amateur radio license JS1YMG for LEV-1, which has been transmitting Morse code on 437.41 MHz since January 19. The probe uses a 1 W UHF antenna with circular polarization and is transmitting "matters related to amateur business."

Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer’ | CNN #finance #crime #security

A finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to Hong Kong police.

The elaborate scam saw the worker duped into attending a video call with what he thought were several other members of staff, but all of whom were in fact deepfake recreations, Hong Kong police said at a briefing on Friday.

History | Vietnamese Typography #design #typography #longread

From 207 BC to 939 AD, the rule of several Chinese dynasties had a profound influence on the Vietnamese culture and literature. As a result, the official Vietnamese language was written in Classical Chinese (chữ Nho) before the development of native Vietnamese script (chữ Nôm) and the adoption of the Latin alphabet (Quốc ngữ).

How much bigger could Earth be, before rockets wouldn't work? - Space Exploration Stack Exchange #space #nature #engineering

[Folk Computer] #diy #hacking

FOSDEM 2024 - Live Streaming #software #news #opensource

Edge appears to import Chrome tabs without user permission • The Register #privacy #software

Windows users, take notice: Microsoft's Edge browser is said to be actively importing open Chrome tabs and slurping other data from Google's browser without permission and even if the "feature" that makes that happen is disabled.

Buried within Edge's browser settings on Windows PCs is code that goes well beyond a one-time import of favorites and stored passwords, and has been present in some form as far back as mid-2022 at least. It gives gives Edge the ability to import practically all browser data from Chrome each time Redmond's browser is launched.

Goodbye Non-KISS Appliances #hardware

Based on this video, We are upgrading to simplicity. Top freezer refrigerator. I'll get an ice maker add-on (no dispenser) and a water pitcher for filtered water. After using ice trays for a few weeks, we decided it's actually not that bad and returned the ice maker.

We haven't decided on brand / model yet. I understand that the long-lasting refrigerator in my garage is probably a coincidence.

I'll admit engineering effort can tame complexity. For example, the combustion engine and hybrid cars are surprisingly reliable. And perhaps, for the right price, there are brands that have pulled it off with complex refrigerators. There's just not enough value added by any of the fancy features to warrant the potential headache.

Splice Cables Like an Astronaut #diy

French MPs vote to enshrine abortion right in constitution #society #health #humanrights

France's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly approved a measure to inscribe abortion as a "guaranteed freedom" in the constitution, a pledge made by President Emmanuel Macron last year.

How to Read Leaked Datasets Like a Journalist #journalism #audio #podcast

'Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations' is a how-to guide for everyone who's curious about secrets.

CEOs Are Using Return To Office Mandates To Mask Poor Management #career

According to a recent research paper published by University of Pittsburgh, compelling evidence suggests that organizations are leveraging Return-To-Office mandates not to enhance firm value, but rather to reassert control and shift blame for poor performance onto employees. Contrary to the belief that RTO boosts company value, the analysis revealed that RTO mandates are more likely in firms with poor recent stock performance and have had no significant impacts on firm profitability or stock-returns. Moreover, a notable drop in employee job satisfaction was observed, further questioning the efficacy of these mandates.

Spider webs capture environmental DNA from terrestrial vertebrates: iScience #nature

Environmental DNA holds significant promise as a non-invasive tool for tracking terrestrial biodiversity. However, in non-homogenous terrestrial environments, the continual exploration of new substrates is crucial. Here we test the hypothesis that spider webs can act as passive biofilters, capturing eDNA from vertebrates present in the local environment. Using a metabarcoding approach, we detected vertebrate eDNA from all analyzed spider webs (N = 49). Spider webs obtained from an Australian woodland locality yielded vertebrate eDNA from 32 different species, including native mammals and birds. In contrast, webs from Perth Zoo, less than 50 km away, yielded eDNA from 61 different vertebrates and produced a highly distinct species composition, largely reflecting exotic species hosted in the zoo. We show that higher animal biomass and proximity to animal enclosures increased eDNA detection probability in the zoo. Our results indicate a tremendous potential for using spider webs as a cost-effective means to monitor terrestrial vertebrates.

Google Search Drops Cache Link From Search Results #internet

FAA Aviation Maps #maps #datascience #interesting #longread

Among all of the visual information published by the U.S. government, there may be no product with a higher information density than the Federal Aviation Administration’s aviation maps.

PUB400.COM - Your public IBM i server #software #mainframe #learning

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How a mistakenly published password exposed Mercedes-Benz source code | TechCrunch #secutiry

Mercedes-Benz accidentally exposed a trove of internal data after leaving a private key online that gave “unrestricted access” to the company’s source code, according to the security research firm that discovered it.

Shubham Mittal, co-founder and chief technology officer of RedHunt Labs, alerted TechCrunch to the exposure and asked for help in disclosing to the car maker. The London-based cybersecurity company said it discovered a Mercedes employee’s authentication token in a public GitHub repository during a routine internet scan in January.

Pilot Believes He Found Amelia Earhart's Long-Lost Plane #history

The mystery surrounding Earhart's disappearance has long puzzled researchers and spurred conspiracy theories over the years, including the Japanese taking her prisoner and her being a government spy.

But Romeo, a former real-estate investor who sold commercial properties to raise the $11 million needed to begin funding the search, returned in December from a roughly 100-day voyage at sea with a sonar image that he believes shows the lost plane in the ocean's depths.

The Joint Statement Initiative on E-Commerce would codify online trade rules. #privacy

But while the participants basically agree about the nuts and bolts of copyright and licensing, broader questions of data protection have taken center stage. The group brings together free-market diehards like Singapore with more protectionist countries like Brazil, so it’s no surprise that there are different ideas of privacy in play. But this kind of international bargaining can play a surprising role in shaping what’s possible. Countries can still set tougher privacy rules at a national level, but with the offending parties almost always based overseas, a contravening agreement might make those rules difficult to enforce.

The CEO trying to democratize cybersecurity - Rest of World #security

Felix Kan is the chief executive officer of Cyberbay, a platform connecting institutions that want to test their cybersecurity with freelance coders skilled in hunting for bugs and exploits that a hacker could use. The platform effectively turns cybersecurity into gig work, using freelancers to search for weaknesses and test a company’s defenses, with rewards paid out if vulnerabilities are identified. Launched in June 2023, Cyberbay’s goal is to help smaller companies and institutions afford robust cybersecurity checks without having to hire an in-house team.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. A survey found that nearly three-quarters of Hong Kong businesses faced cyberattacks last year.

Pakistan’s engineering talent gap is hindering its EV goals - Rest of World #economy #engineering

“We have a shortage of embedded software experts [in Pakistan], and it’s difficult to find good programmers,” Khan said. So far, most companies have been assembling bikes, importing “CKD” (completely knocked down) components, such as drive-trains from China, and assembling locally. “[But] if you want to do this from scratch yourself, companies will run into trouble with finding the right talent,” said Khan.

Why You’ve Never Been In A Plane Crash—Asterisk #aviation #safety #longread

The efficacy of just culture and the blameless postmortem is hardly in doubt. The United States has achieved the safest airline industry in the world through rigorous root cause analysis made possible only by a commitment to transparency, justice, and truth. While nothing humanity builds is invincible, the safeguards that we have erected against human error are so formidable that in the 33 years since the crash at LAX, there hasn’t been another fatal runway collision at any U.S. airport with a control tower, even as the media breathlessly reports every near miss. Globally, airline accidents of all causes have been almost eliminated, even as global air traffic increases year-on-year. In 1972, by most measurements the nadir of global aviation safety, approximately one in 200,000 airline passengers worldwide did not reach their destination alive. Half a century later in 2022, this number was one in 17 million. In the U.S., where airline safety has always led the global average, no scheduled passenger airline has had a fatal crash in 15 years.

Dr Strangelove at 60: The mystery behind Kubrick's Cold War masterpiece - BBC Culture #movie #history #art #culture

In 1999, a reporter from Scientific American asked the 91-year-old physicist Edward Teller whether it was true that he had been the real-life template for Dr Strangelove, the chilling scientific adviser played by Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's movie Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Rumours had been circulating ever since the movie's release on 29 January 1964. After all, Teller had worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the atomic bomb (he is played by Benny Safdie in Christopher Nolan's film) and went on to spearhead the far more powerful hydrogen bomb. He had a terrifying reputation and a Hungarian accent as pronounced as Strangelove's German one. When Teller made headlines again in the 1980s as the brains behind President Reagan's so-called "Star Wars" defence initiative, several newspapers called him "the real Dr Strangelove".

Boardzilla #fun

Boardzilla is a place for playing and developing board games all within your browser. Boardzilla makes it easy to express the game rules and provides players with a simple interface to the choices available to them.

First-ever transmitted Alzheimer’s cases reported in new study #health

There was something odd about these Alzheimer’s cases.

Part of it was the patients’ presentations: Some didn’t have the classic symptoms of the condition. But it was also that the patients were in their 40s and 50s, even their 30s, far younger than people who normally develop the disease. They didn’t even have the known genetic mutations that can set people on the course for such early-onset Alzheimer’s.

But this small handful of patients did share a particular history. As children, they had received growth hormone taken from the brains of human cadavers, which used to be a treatment for a number of conditions that caused short stature. Now, decades later, they were showing signs of Alzheimer’s. In the interim, scientists had discovered that that type of hormone treatment they got could unwittingly transfer bits of protein into recipients’ brains. In some cases, it had induced a fatal brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD — a finding that led to the banning of the procedure 40 years ago.

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