hubie writes:Blockchain technology, investor sentiment, and economic stress are useful for forecasting, while bitcoin's detachment from economic fundamentals make it a poor safe-haven asset:
JoeMerchant writes:Elliptic Curves Yield Their Secrets in a New Number Systemhttps://www.quantamagazine.org/elliptic-curves-yield-their-secrets-in-a-new-number-system-20230706/
owl writes:WSJ link https://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-and-advertisers-push-back-at-ftcs-click-to-cancel-proposal-de96960bArchive link https://archive.is/Lv2wG
canopic jug writes:Multiple sites are reporting on The Netherlands' recent decision on the need to ban mobile and "smart" devices from Dutch classrooms.
An anonymous user writes:Motor Trend is running this story, https://www.motortrend.com/features/tesla-full-self-driving-ban-attempt-elon-musk-dan-odowd While it starts out about Tesla self-driving software, it seems that the Dawn Project is also taking on security for safety critical software in general -- a topic near and dear to many at SN.
So, I know its been a bit quiet here, but we're working through getting through the last few items relating to cutting over to newer infrastructure. As such, its been working through the bug list, and there's one issue I want to get some feedback on.Back in November when the infrastructure was upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04, a few users with older devices stopped being able to connect to SoylentNews. This confused me, since we've been using the same NGINX SSL termination setup that has been in use since at least 2016. Well, I finally found the root cause, and as it turns out, Canonical bumped up the minimum OpenSSL security level, which disabled several ciphers, and broke devices not supporting TLS 1.2 or later.By testing the site with the SSL Labs site checker, it appears anything older than Android 4.0, or iOS 5 is broken. This mostly seems to be devices that are over a decade old at this point, and won't be able to browse the vast majority of sites on the Internet as is. We discussed this internally a bit, and I'm of the opinion that its not worth re-enabling the older ciphers to allow these devices to reconnect, especially since we're working to modernize the stack, and get it as up to date as we can get it. I also believe we had very few users who were actually affected by this, however, as the editors did get a few emails about SN breaking after the site upgrade, I wanted to poll the community, and make sure this is not a more widespread issue than initially believed.Ultimately, this is going to be part of a broader discussion on what we will and won't support on SoylentNews going forward, and this seems as good of place as any to get the ball rolling.~ NCommanderRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
JoeMerchant writes:https://earthsky.org/space/interstellar-meteor-papua-new-guinea-2014-u-s-space-command/In 2019, two researchers from Harvard University - Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb, both of whom had published on 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov earlier - also wrote a study of this meteor, suggesting its interstellar origins. If true, then this meteor - which predates both 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov by a few years - would be the first known interstellar object.https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/harvard-scientist-avi-loeb-claims-collected-remains-of-extraterrestrial-technology-from-bottom-of-the-pacific-101688188241635.htmlDeep-sea explorers found 50 spherules-molten droplets, about half a millimetre in diameter.Loeb's team collected 35 milligrams of this promising material by dragging a large magnetic sled across the surface of the ocean. The astrophysicist believes that the spherules are most likely made from a steel-titanium alloy"The spherules were found primarily along the most likely path of IM1 and not in control regions far from it," read his blog. "In the coming weeks, we will analyze their elemental and isotopic composition and report our data in a paper submitted to a peer-reviewed journal."https://avi-loeb.medium.com/summary-of-the-successful-interstellar-expedition-61ff4467070dThese sub-millimeter-sized spheres, which appear under a microscope as beautiful metallic marbles, were concentrated along the expected path of IM1 - about 85 kilometers off the coast of Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.-------It's just un-spectacular enough to be believable.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
upstart writes:Rocky Strikes Back At Red Hat:The world of Linux has seen some disquiet over recent weeks following the decision of Red Hat to restrict source code distribution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to only their paying customers. We're sure that there will be plenty of fall-out to come from this news, but what can be done if your project relies upon access to those Red Hat sources?The Red-Hat-derived Rocky Linux distro relies on access to RHEL source, so the news could have been something of a disaster. Fortunately for Rocky users though, they appear to have found a reliable way to bypass the restriction and retain access to those RHEL sources. Red Hat would like anyone wanting source access to pay them handsomely for the privilege, but the Rocky folks have spotted a way to bypass this. Using readily available cloud images they can spin up a RHEL system and use it to download their sources, and they can do this as an automated process.We covered this story as it unfolded last week, and it seemed inevitable then that something of this nature would be found, as for all Red Hat's wishes a GPL-licensed piece of code can't be prevented from being shared. So Rocky users and the wider community will for now retain access to the code, but will Red Hat strike back? It's inevitable that there will be a further backlash from the community against any such moves, but will Red Hat be foolhardy enough to further damage their standing in this regard?Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
upstart writes:The first lithography tools were fairly simple, but the technologies that produce today's chips are among humankind's most complex inventions:
upstart writes:A user submitted a recent Daring Fireball Post discussing Masnick's Impossibility Theorum: Content Moderation at Scale is Impossible to do Well: