ReHacked #176: Mysterious Holes on the Seafloor, What People Really Make (and Spend) Behind Bars, How To Uncover a Deepfake Video Call and more
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A New Jailbreak for John Deere Tractors Rides the Right-to-Repair Wave | WIRED #hardware #copyrights
FARMERS AROUND THE world have turned to tractor hacking so they can bypass the digital locks that manufacturers impose on their vehicles. Like insulin pump “looping” and iPhone jailbreaking, this allows farmers to modify and repair the expensive equipment that’s vital to their work, the way they could with analog tractors. At the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas on Saturday, the hacker known as Sick Codes is presenting a new jailbreak for John Deere & Co. tractors that allows him to take control of multiple models through their touchscreens.
Where the Streetcars Used to Go #history #urbanism
Ultimate list of Japanese Vegetable Cutting Techniques - The Chef Dojo #interesting
Rufus: Microsoft is blocking Windows ISO downloads - gHacks Tech News #software #copyrights
It appears that Microsoft has started to block Windows ISO downloads that originate from Rufus. Rufus is a popular open source tool to create bootable media.
What exactly is TTY? - SoByte #hardware #computer #history
The first thing to be clear is that TTY is a historical artifact. Just like Unix systems now have so many /bin directories. It’s because many programs exist by default, older programs need them to run, and newer programs will be compatible with them by default. If you write a completely redesigned Terminal or directory organization without regard to historical reasons and compatibility, you don’t need so many /bins and you don’t need TTYs.
Here’s a brief history of the time when TTY was needed and why it was indispensable in that case, along with the various subcomponents.
The full name of TTY is Teletype, what is Teletype?
It’s raining PFAS: even in Antarctica and on the Tibetan plateau rainwater is unsafe to drink - Stockholm University #health #nature
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made hazardous chemicals that are spread globally in the atmosphere and as a result they can be found in the rainwater and snow in even the most remote locations on Earth. During the last 20 years, guideline values for PFAS in drinking water, surface waters and soils have decreased dramatically due to new insights into their toxicity. As a result, the levels in environmental media are now ubiquitously above guideline levels.
New Intel chips won't play Blu-ray disks due to SGX deprecation #hardware #copyrights
Intel has removed support for SGX (software guard extension) in 12th Generation Intel Core 11000 and 12000 processors, rendering modern PCs unable to playback Blu-ray disks in 4K resolution.
This technical problem arises from the fact that Blu-ray disks require Digital Rights Management (DRM), which needs the presence of SGX to work.
This is a feature that Intel introduced in the Skylake generation back in 2016, enabling PCs to play protected Blu-ray disks for the first time.
As seen in Intel's current datasheets for the 11th and 12th generation of its Core desktop processors, the SGX is listed as a deprecated technology, so it's no longer available.
On May 12, 2022, the Korean Supreme Court held in Case No. 2021Do1533 that scraping publicly available data from a competitor’s website does not violate the asserted laws, including the Copyright Act and the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection (“Information Protection Act”). This Korean decision is comparable and in line with the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. on April 18, 2022 which reaffirmed its finding that hiQ Labs did not violate the asserted state and federal law, including the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by scraping data in bulk from public LinkedIn profiles.
The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun | WIRED #hardware
Today, Lennert Wouters, a security researcher at the Belgian university KU Leuven, will reveal one of the first security breakdowns of Starlink’s user terminals, the satellite dishes (dubbed Dishy McFlatface) that are positioned on people’s homes and buildings. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Wouters will detail how a series of hardware vulnerabilities allow attackers to access the Starlink system and run custom code on the devices.
Alternative source: Starlink Successfully Hacked Using $25 Modchip | Threatpost
‘Risks posed by AI are real’: EU moves to beat the algorithms that ruin lives | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian #privacy #futurism
It started with a single tweet in November 2019. David Heinemeier Hansson, a high-profile tech entrepreneur, lashed out at Apple’s newly launched credit card, calling it “sexist” for offering his wife a credit limit 20 times lower than his own.
The allegations spread like wildfire, with Hansson stressing that artificial intelligence – now widely used to make lending decisions – was to blame. “It does not matter what the intent of individual Apple reps are, it matters what THE ALGORITHM they’ve placed their complete faith in does. And what it does is discriminate. This is fucked up.”
Study Confirms Link Between 'Forever Chemicals' and Liver-Cancer Risk #health
Exposure to chemicals used in nonstick cookware and long-lasting makeup has been linked to elevated liver-cancer risk, researchers at the University of Southern California found.
Scientists have theorized that man-made "forever chemicals," also known as PFAS, were harmful to the liver, based on extensive animal studies and a few analyses involving humans.
But studying cancer risk in humans has proved tricky. It comes with a unique set of challenges, as many factors can affect overall risk, and it would be unethical to expose people to potential carcinogens.
The Case of the Mysterious Holes on the Seafloor #nature
Scientists are not certain as to the origin of these holes, so we put it out to followers on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook , to see what hypotheses members of the public might have as to how these holes formed. We got a variety of responses, from aliens to an unknown crab species to gas rising up from below the seafloor…and more.
This was not, however, the first time that scientists had encountered these mysterious holes. In July 2004, while exploring at a depth of 2,082 meters (6,831 feet) during an expedition along the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, scientists discovered several sets of these holes. A paper by scientists Michael Vecchione and Odd Aksel Bergstad highlights how these unusual holes point to gaps that exist in our basic understanding of mid-ocean ridge ecosystems. In the paper, the scientists address some of the hypotheses shared on social media.
Prison Money Diaries: What People Really Make (and Spend) Behind Bars | The Marshall Project #society
People in prison get “three hots and a cot,” right? So, what do they need money for? A lot, it turns out.Prisons typically provide the bare minimum when it comes to food, clothes, shoes and hygiene supplies. Some states provide items such as toothpaste, soap and limited amounts of letter-writing supplies only to the “indigent,” or those who have little to no money. Other goods that many would consider necessities — deodorant, shampoo, sneakers, thermal clothes for winter — are often only available to people who can afford them.
But earning enough from a prison job is nearly impossible: The average prison wage maxes out at 52 cents per hour, according to a new ACLU analysis, and many people make pennies per hour. That means that basics, like a $3 tube of toothpaste, can take days of work to afford. If you get paid, that is. In at least six states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas — prisoners aren’t paid at all for their labor.
The MiG-29 hit the ground beside the runway, erupting in a tremendous fireball. Test pilot Anatoliy N. Kvochur landed a mere 30 m (98 ft) from the wreckage, the ejection seat impacting right next to him.
Taken on Jun. 8, 1989 the famous video in this post features MiG-29 ‘303 Blue’ (c/n 2960516767, f/n 3303) belonging to the Mikoyan OKB and flown by test pilot Anatoliy N. Kvochur crashing while performing a demo flight at 38th Paris Air Show.
As explained by Yefim Gordon and Dmitriy Komissarov in their book Mikoyan MiG-29 & MiG-35, during a high-alpha/low-speed pass at 160 m (525 ft) concluding the Fulcrum-A’s aerobatics display a sheet of flame belched from the starboard engine nozzle as the engine surged. Kvochur immediately selected full afterburner for the good engine, but at only 180 km/h (111 mph) he had insufficient rudder and aileron authority to counter the thrust asymmetry and the result was inevitably an irrecoverable departure.
Some Epson Printers Programmed to Eventually Self-Brick #copyrights #hardware
Printers remain one of the most frustrating pieces of consumer electronics, but it turns out a thirst for pricey ink and occasionally chewing up and choking on paper aren’t the biggest challenges of using an Epson printer. As some users have discovered, the hardware might be programmed to simply stop working one day, if used too frequently.
To Uncover a Deepfake Video Call, Ask the Caller to Turn Sideways - Metaphysic.ai #datascience #security
There is an interesting vulnerability in video deepfakes that, to date, has been generally overlooked by the security research community, perhaps because ‘live’, real-time deepfakes in video calls have not been a major cause for concern until very recently.
Our brain is a prediction machine that is always active | Max Planck Institute #health
Our brain works a bit like the autocomplete function on your phone – it is constantly trying to guess the next word when we are listening to a book, reading or conducting a conversation. Contrary to speech recognition computers, our brains are constantly making predictions at different levels, from meaning and grammar to specific speech sounds. This is what researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University’s Donders Institute discovered in a new study. Their findings are published in PNAS.
Almost every Ferrari sold since 2005 is being recalled | Ars Technica #automotive
Spare a thought for Ferrari. Not its F1 team, repeatedly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as rival Red Bull romps away with the championships, but the road car division, which is in the process of recalling nearly every car it has sold since 2005.
The problem is the cap of the brake fluid reservoir. It's designed to vent pressure if necessary, but evidently that design isn't so hot. Venting can fail to happen, causing a vacuum to build up, resulting in a possible leak of brake fluid. And if you don't have any brake fluid in your brake lines, you aren't going to be able to slow down or stop (without hitting something large and solid).
A Biochemist’s View of Life’s Origin Reframes Cancer and Aging | Quanta Magazine #health #nature
All living cells power themselves by coaxing energetic electrons from one side of a membrane to the other. Membrane-based mechanisms for accomplishing this are, in a sense, as universal a feature of life as the genetic code. But unlike the genetic code, these mechanisms are not the same everywhere: The two simplest categories of cells, bacteria and archaea, have membranes and protein complexes for producing energy that are chemically and structurally dissimilar. Those differences make it hard to guess how the very first cells met their energy needs.
This mystery led Nick Lane, a professor of evolutionary biochemistry at University College London, to an unorthodox hypothesis about the origin of life. What if life arose in a geological environment where electrochemical gradients across tiny barriers occurred naturally, supporting a primitive form of metabolism while cells as we know them evolved? A place where this might be possible suggested itself: alkaline hydrothermal vents on the deep seafloor, inside highly porous rock formations that are almost like mineralized sponges.
Should I tell my boss that I am doing a crazy amount of overtime? - The Workplace Stack Exchange #career
Write a Note to Your Spouse Every Day | Jordan O’Connor #psychology
A note a day keeps the divorce attorney away.
OnlyFans bribed Meta to put porn stars on terror watchlist: lawsuits #internet #socialnetworks
OnlyFans squashed competitors in the online porn industry with the help of a bizarre scheme that bribed Meta employees to throw thousands of porn stars onto a terrorist watchlist, according to a group of explosive lawsuits.
Adult performers who sold X-rated photos and videos on rival sites saw their Instagram accounts falsely tagged as containing terrorist content — crippling their ability to promote their business and devastating their incomes, according to the suits.
Sellers of smutty pictures were then “shadowbanned” across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other sites, the suits allege. Targeted accounts also included businesses, celebrities, influencers and others who “have nothing to do with terrorism,” according to the suits.
U.K.'s Online Censorship Bill Causes More Harm Than It Prevents #internet #freespeech
"If the Online Safety Bill passes, the U.K. government will be able to directly silence user speech, and even imprison those who publish messages that it doesn't like," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Joe Mullin cautioned last week. "The bill empowers the UK's Office of Communications (OFCOM) to levy heavy fines or even block access to sites that offend people. We said last year that those powers raise serious concerns about freedom of expression. Since then, the bill has been amended, and it's gotten worse."
/e/ OS Review on Murena Teracube 2e · The New Leaf Journal #software #longread
The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid #politics #history
TLDR; Poverty and inequality are sky high. The economy was performing terribly even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and unemployment sits somewhere between 34% and 47%(!), depending on how you measure it. Economic indicators related to social welfare are generally negative (there are still people and corporations making a killing). Some of this is due to the legacy of apartheid; but much of it is also due to a lack of accountable or competent leadership, and a massive program of organised corruption that has completely undermined the ability of the state to perform its basic functions, including keeping its citizens safe or encourage investment. Due to the peculiarities of the South African energy sector this extends to being unable to generate enough power to keep the lights on (literally). Much of the blame can be laid at the door of the political party that has been running the country since the end of apartheid - calling South Africa a kleptocracy would not be inappropriate (although the related term ‘State Capture’ is typically used instead). Factional battles within the party threaten to tear the country apart - I cautiously lay part of the blame at the door of the nature of revolutionary politics, and uncautiously and with great certainty at the door of the many corrupt members of the ruling party destroying the country, with the assistance of unscrupulous people in the private sector (thanks McKinsey, Bain, et al).
reb00ted | Is this the end of social networking? #internet #socialnetworks #society
Facebook is fundamentally an advertising machine. Like other Meta products are. There aren’t really about “technologies that bring the world closer together”, as the Meta homepage has it. At least not primarily.
This advertising machine has been amazingly successful, leading to a recent quarterly revenue of over $50 per user in North America (source). And Meta certainly has driven this hard, otherwise it would not have been in the news for overstepping the consent of its users year after year, scandal after scandal.
But now a better advertising machine is in town: TikTok. This new advertising machine is powered not by friends and family, but by an addiction algorithm. This addiction algorithm figures out your points of least resistance, and pours down one advertisement after another down your throat. And as soon as you have swalled one more, you scroll a bit more, and by doing so, you are asking for more advertisements, because of the addiction. This addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. An amazing work of art, as an engineer I have to admire it. (Of course that admiration quickly changes into some other emotion of the disgusting sort, if you have any kind of morals.)
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