Slashdot Science-Technology News

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PetaPixel:A team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) have figured out how to capture super slow-motion footage using what’s called an “Event Camera.” That is: a camera that sees the world in a continuous stream of information, the way humans do. Regular cameras work by capturing discrete frames, recapturing the same scene 24 or more times per second and then stitching it together to create a video. Event cameras are different. They capture “pixel-level brightness changes” as they happen, basically recording each individual light “event” as it happens, without wasting time capturing all the stuff that remains the same frame by frame.

As ETH Zurich explains, some of the advantages of this type of image capture is “a very high dynamic range, no motion blur, and a latency in the order of microseconds.” The downside is that there’s no easy way to process the resulting “footage” into something you can display using current algorithms because they all expect to receive a set of discrete frames. Well, there was no easy way. This is what the folks at ETH Zurich just improved upon, developing a reconstruction model that can interpret the footage to the tune of 5,000+ frames per second. The results are astounding: a 20% increase in the reconstructed image quality over any model that existed before, and the ability to output “high frame rate videos (more than 5,000 frames per second) of high-speed phenomena (e.g. a bullet hitting an object),” even in high dynamic range “challenging lighting conditions.”Their findings have been published in a research paper titled High Speed and High Dynamic Range Video with an Event Camera.

John Steele, one of the attorneys behind the ‘copyright troll’ law firm Prenda, has been sentenced to five years in prison. The attorney was one of the masterminds behind the fraudulent scheme that extracted settlements from alleged pirates. Because of Steele’s cooperative stance, his sentence is significantly lower than that of co-conspirator Paul Hansmeier. TorrentFreak reports:During a hearing this morning, U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen convicted Steele to a five-year prison sentence. In addition, the disbarred attorney must pay his victims little over $1.5 million in restitution. Today’s sentencing ironically comes 11 years after Steele was first admitted to the bar. The lower sentence, compared to Hansmeier, comes as no surprise. It was specifically recommended by the prosecution, which stressed that Steele didn’t shy away from the ugly truth of his crimes and was very cooperative following the indictment.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Steele deserved a significant prison term. However, his cooperation and genuine remorse should be taken into account. Based on the sentencing guidelines Steele faced a potential prison sentence of more than 12 years, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Langner recommended five years in prison instead. Judge Ericksen went along with this recommendation. The Judge noted that courts “are not a tool in the box for anybody’s hustle,” adding that the five-year sentence was “imminently fair,” as the Star Tribune report. “I condemn the actions that you took in committing this crime. I congratulate you, however, on the actions you took” in responding to the charges, Judge Ericksen said.

Using a robotic sub, a team of investigators has detected traces of radiation leaking from Komsomolets — a Soviet nuclear submarine that sank 30 years ago in the Norwegian Sea. The recorded radiation levels are unusually high, but scientists say it’s not threatening humans or marine life. Gizmodo reports:On April 7, 1989, while cruising at a depth of 380 meters (1,250 feet), a fire broke out in the aft section of Komsomolets, a Soviet nuclear-powered attack submarine out on its first patrol. Its captain managed to bring the beleaguered sub to the surface, but it sank about five hours later. All 42 sailors were killed in the incident, known as the Komsomolets disaster. The 120-meter-long (400-foot) nuclear submarine still rests some 1,700 meters (5,575 feet) below the surface of the Norwegian Sea, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of the Norwegian mainland.

And it’s leaking radiation, according to a press release issued by Norway’s Institute of Marine Research (IMR). The amount of cesium radiation leaking from the wreck is significant, at about 800,000 times the typical reading for the Norwegian Sea, but it “poses no risk to people or fish,” according to a collaborative research team involving IMR and the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA). A leaking radioactive sub certainly sounds scary, but this research suggests the wreck is not currently endangering the Norwegian Sea and outlying areas. Normally, radiation levels in the Norwegian Sea are at 0.001 Becquerel (Bq) per liter. Around the wreck, however, they are as high as 100 Bq per liter. For reference, the acceptable amount of radiation in food is 600 Bq per kilogram, as established by the Norwegian government in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Driven:Owning an electric car in Australia could become much more than just driving from A to B with a reduced carbon footprint, according to Nissan Australia which launched the new version of the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle in Melbourne on Wednesday. Nissan confirmed at the launch that the new Leaf, with a 40kWh battery, will be a V2H (vehicle-to-home) energy asset — meaning that, unlike other electric vehicles, it will have the capability to charge your home(subject to further testing with Australia’s network owners and operators). Called bidirectional charging, the 40kWh Leaf (and for that matter the 62kWh version which is not yet slated for an Australian release) essentially has the capability to become your personal, massive, mobile battery. This means it will be able to not only store energy by plugging into your home, workplace or other destinations such as shopping centers with free charging, or from DC fast-chargers — it will be able to serve that energy back to your home. And it could be available to use in Australia within six months.Nissan’s global head of electric vehicles, Nic Thomas, says that installations such as the grid connected Tesla big battery at Hornsdale in South Australia is a waste, despite the fact that its performance — both for the grid and financially — has been widely admired.

“It’s a complete waste of resources because what we can do is have cars that are also batteries and those cars are parked most of the time,” Thomas said.

NPR reports of the various parks and recreation centers in North America that are using sonic devices to repel teens from the premises. Philadelphia, for example, has 30 parks and recreation centers that are outfitted with a small speaker called the Mosquito. “It blares a constant, high-pitched ringing noise all night long — but one that only teenagers and young adults can hear,” reports NPR. “Anyone over age 25 is supposed to be immune because, basically, their ear cells have started to die off.” From the report:Philadelphia parks officials have been installing the device since 2014, reported WHYY’s Billy Penn, intending to shoo rowdy youths from the premises. And it’s not the only U.S. city to do so. Mosquito’s Vancouver-based manufacturer Moving Sound Technologies works with roughly 20 parks departments around the country to implement the youth-repellent devices, says president Michael Gibson. It’s intended to prevent loitering and vandalism by teens and young adults at public facilities. But some say this age-based targeting is a form of prejudice. Philadelphia City Council member Helen Gym refers to the devices as “sonic weapons” — and she’s working to get them removed.

[I]n Philadelphia, Parks & Recreation defends its use of the Mosquito, saying the devices are operational from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. only, and they’re just one part of an overall anti-vandalism strategy that includes fences and gates, security cameras and night watch staff. For now, the city is moving forward with installation. Despite the backlash, two new Mosquito devices are being installed at other city playgrounds as part of major renovation projects.

Samsung has been one of the only large smartphone manufacturers to insist on keeping the headphone jack in its flagship phones. But that is about to come to an end with the Galaxy Note 10. According to photos published by the FCC, showing both the bottom and top of the phone, there’s no headphone jack in sight. The Verge reports:The FCC seems to have briefly shared these images by mistake. Samsung followed the usual protocols in requesting confidentiality for external photos of the Note 10 test device, and yet here we are. Whoops. There are two different models at the FCC, but neither includes 5G. So as with the S10 series, Samsung will likely produce a standalone 5G model. Aside from the headphone jack being a goner — renders of the phone had already suggested this was coming — we get a look at the triple-camera system on the back. There’s another sensor positioned under the flash, which could be the same 3D time-of-flight depth sensor that Samsung included in the Galaxy S10 5G. The Note is usually where the company throws in everything it can, so it makes sense for it to carry over everything from the top-tier S10 model. The center-aligned front camera cutout is also faintly visible in one shot.Samsung is expected to formally announce the Note 7 at an August 7th Unpacked event in Brooklyn, New York.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet:As expected, Windows Update dropped off several packages of security and reliability fixes for Windows 7 earlier this week, part of the normal Patch Tuesday delivery cycle for every version of Windows. But some hawk-eyed observers noted a surprise in one of those Windows 7 packages. What was surprising about this month’s Security-only update, formally titled the “July 9, 2019 — KB4507456 (Security-only update),” is that it bundled the Compatibility Appraiser, KB2952664, which is designed to identify issues that could prevent a Windows 7 PC from updating to Windows 10.

Among the fierce corps of Windows Update skeptics, the Compatibility Appraiser tool is to be shunned aggressively. The concern is that these components are being used to prepare for another round of forced updates or to spy on individual PCs. The word telemetry appears in at least one file, and for some observers it’s a short step from seemingly innocuous data collection to outright spyware. […] I strongly suspect that some part of the Appraiser component on Windows 7 SP1 had a security issue of its own. If that’s the case, then the updates indisputably belong in a Security-only update. And if they happen to get installed on systems where administrators had taken special precautions not to install those components, Microsoft’s reaction seems to be, “Well … tough.”“The Appraiser tool was offered via Windows Update, both separately and as part of a monthly rollup update two years ago; as a result, most of the declining population of Windows 7 PCs already has it installed,” the report notes.

Carnegie Mellon University and Facebook AI research scientists have developed an AI dubbed Pluribus that took on 15 professional human players in six-player no-limit Texas Hold ’em and won. The researchers describe how they achieved this feat in a new paper in Science. Ars Technica reports:Playing more than 5,000 hands each time, five copies of the AI took on two top professional players: Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, six-time winner of World Series of Poker events, and Darren Elias, who currently holds the record for most World Poker Tour titles. Pluribus defeated them both. It did the same in a second experiment, in which Pluribus played five pros at a time, from a pool of 13 human players, for 10,000 hands.

Co-author Tuomas Sandholm of Carnegie Mellon University has been grappling with the unique challenges poker poses for AI for the last 16 years. No-Limit Texas Hold ’em is a so-called “imperfect information” game, since there are hidden cards (held by one’s opponents in the hand) and no restrictions on the size of the bet one can make. By contrast, with chess and Go, the status of the playing board and all the pieces are known by all the players. Poker players can (and do) bluff on occasion, so it’s also a game of misleading information.

Guangzhi Cao, a former engineer at Tesla that is accused of stealing company trade secrets and sending them to a Chinese startup, admitted in a court filing this week that he uploaded zip files containing Autopilot source code to his personal iCloud account in late 2018 while still working for the company. “Cao denied stealing sensitive information from the automaker in the same filing,” reports The Verge. “His legal team argued he ‘made extensive efforts to delete and/or remove any such Tesla files prior to his separation from Tesla.’ Cao is now the ‘head of perception’ at XPeng, where he is ‘[d]eveloping and delivering autonomous driving technologies for production cars.'” From the report:According to a joint filing from the two parties that was also filed this week, Tesla has subpoenaed documents from Apple. While Apple is not involved in this case, a former employee who worked on the tech company’s secretive autonomous car project was charged by the FBI with stealing trade secrets last July. That employee allegedly Air Dropped sensitive data to his wife’s laptop and was also caught on CCTV leaving Apple’s campus with a box of equipment. He had left his job at Apple to take a position at XPeng before being arrested. Cao was also a senior image scientist for Apple for two years before he joined Tesla, according to his LinkedIn profile.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org:Malicious apps from a campaign called “Agent Smith” have been downloaded to 25 million Android devices, according to new research by cyber-security firm Check Point. The apps, most of them games, were distributed through third-party app stores by a Chinese group with a legitimate business helping Chinese developers promote their apps on outside platforms. Check Point is not identifying the company, because they are working with local law enforcement. About 300,000 devices were infected in the U.S.

The malware was able to copy popular apps on the phone, including WhatsApp and the web browser Opera, inject its own malicious code and replace the original app with the weaponized version, using a vulnerability in the way Google apps are updated. The hijacked apps would still work just fine, which hid the malware from users. Armed with all the permissions users had granted to the real apps, “Agent Smith” was able to hijack other apps on the phone to display unwanted ads to users. That might not seem like a significant problem, but the same security flaws could be used to hijack banking, shopping and other sensitive apps, according to Aviran Hazum, head of Check Point’s analysis and response team for mobile devices.There was also a “dormant” version of “Agent Smith” in 11 apps on the Play Store, which could have been triggered into action by a banner ad containing the keyword “infect.” The apps have since been removed from the Play Store, but had over 10 million downloads.

Multiple German banks have announced plans to drop support for SMS-based one-time passcodes (OTP) as a login authentication and transaction verification method. From a report:Postbank plans to drop support in August, while Raiffeisen Bank and Volksbank plan to do so in the fall, Handelsblatt reports. Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank also plan to drop support for SMS OTP but have not announced a deadline, while Consorsbank plans to discontinue it by the end of the year. Other banks like DKB and N26 have never deployed the technology, while ING has not made any public statements on its plans. The reason why German banks are dropping support for SMS OTP is because of legislation that the EU passed in 2015, set to enter into effect on September 14, this year. In 2015, the EU revised the Payment Services Directive (PSD), a set of rules that govern online payments in the EU, and issued an updated version called the PSD2. This legislation also included a clause for strong customer authentication (SCA) mechanisms.

Security engineer Ivan writes:For some reason Apple allows “subscription scam” apps on the App Store. These are apps that are free to download and then ask you to subscribe right on launch. It’s called the freemium business model, except these apps ask you to subscribe for “X” feature(s) immediately when you launch them, and keep doing so, annoyingly, over and over until you finally subscribe. By subscribing you get a number of “free days” (trial) and then they charge you weekly/monthly/yearly for very basic features like scanning QR Codes.

I’ve been trying to monitor apps that have these characteristics: 1. They have In-App purchases for their subscriptions. 2. They have bad reviews, specially with words like “scam” or “fraud”. 3. Their “good” reviews are generic, potentially bot-generated. This weekend I focused on 5 apps from 2 different developers and to my surprise they are very similar, not only their UI/UX but also their code is shared and their patterns are absolutely the same. A side from being classic subscription scam apps, I wanted to examine how they work internally and how they communicate with their servers and what type of information are they sending.

Microsoft is finally revealing exactly how many people are using its Slack competitor Microsoft Teams. From a report:The software maker says that more than 13 million people are using Microsoft Teams daily, along with more than 19 million weekly active users. This is the first time Microsoft has revealed an active user count, and the company’s previous update was that 500,000 organizations were using the service back in March. This figure is above the more than 10 million people who use Slack daily. Slack revealed its 10 million daily active user count earlier this year, and it used the same figure back in April in a financial filing.Team communication service Slack, which has been around for much longer, was valued at north of $20 billion when it went public last month.

Further reading: Microsoft Might Crush Slack Like Facebook Crushed Snapchat.

Experts in workplace psychology overwhelmingly agree that burnout is a growing public health crisis. An excerpt from a long report:When the FT set out to investigate this issue, we asked readers to describe how their employers handle mental health issues, including stress, burnout, anxiety and depression. More than 450 people responded from 43 countries. Although they were a self-selecting group, their responses were significant: the majority felt unsupported, alienated or discriminated against on the basis of their mental health. Two-thirds believed their work had a somewhat to extremely negative effect on their health, and 44 per cent said they did not think mental health was taken seriously by their organisation. Half said they either didn’t know where at work to go, or had nowhere to go if they needed support.

Even as many companies strengthen their policies to close the gender pay gap and end sexual harassment, mental wellbeing often remains an afterthought. “This is not about buying Fitbits for employees and teaching them deep breathing so we can pile on more work,” says Donna Hardaker, a workplace mental health specialist at Sutter Health, a not-for-profit healthcare network. “You must address the micro and the macro. There is a deeply entrenched cultural idea that workplaces are fine; it’s the employees who are the problem. But employers have a social responsibility to not be harming the people who are working within their walls.”

A failure to support employees is also costing companies a fortune: an estimated 615 million people suffer from depression and anxiety and, according to a recent World Health Organisation study, this costs an estimated $1tn in lost productivity every year. Companies that do not have systems in place to support the wellbeing of their employees have higher turnover, lower productivity and higher healthcare costs, according to the American Psychological Association. They also face significant legal risks.