Author name: Mike M.

why-canned-wine-can-smell-like-rotten-eggs-while-beer-and-coke-are-fine

Why canned wine can smell like rotten eggs while beer and Coke are fine

canned wine, chemistry, flavor compounds, oenology, Science / /

The cork or the can? —

Sulfur dioxide in the wine reacts with the aluminum to make hydrogen sulfide.

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Why canned wine can smell like rotten eggs while beer and Coke are fine

BackyardProduction/Getty Images

True wine aficionados might turn up their noses, but canned wines are growing in popularity, particularly among younger crowds during the summer months, when style often takes a back seat to convenience. Yet these same wines can go bad rather quickly, taking on distinctly displeasing notes of rotten eggs or dirty socks. Scientists at Cornell University conducted a study of all the relevant compounds and came up with a few helpful tips for frustrated winemakers to keep canned wines from spoiling. The researchers outlined their findings in a recent paper published in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.

“The current generation of wine consumers coming of age now, they want a beverage that’s portable and they can bring with them to drink at a concert or take to the pool,” said Gavin Sacks, a food chemist at Cornell. “That doesn’t really describe a cork-finished, glass-packaged wine. However, it describes a can very nicely.”

According to a 2004 article in Wine & Vines magazine, canned beer first appeared in the US in 1935, and three US wineries tried to follow suit for the next three years. Those efforts failed because it proved to be unusually challenging to produce a stable canned wine. One batch was tainted by “Fresno mold“; another batch resulted in cloudy wine within just two months; and the third batch of wine had a disastrous combination of low pH and high oxygen content, causing the wine to eat tiny holes in the cans. Nonetheless, wineries sporadically kept trying to can their product over the ensuing decades, with failed attempts in the 1950s and 1970s. United and Delta Airlines briefly had a short-lived partnership with wineries for canned wine in the early 1980s, but passengers balked at the notion.

The biggest issue was the plastic coating used to line the aluminum cans. You needed the lining because the wine would otherwise chemically react with the aluminum. But the plastic liners degraded quickly, and the wine would soon reek of dirty socks or rotten eggs, thanks to high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide. The canned wines also didn’t have much longevity, with a shelf life of just six months.

Thanks to vastly improved packing processes in the early 2000s, canned wine seems to finally be finding its niche in the market, initially driven by demand in Japan and other Asian markets and expanding after 2014 to Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK. In the US alone, projected sales of canned wines are expected to grow from $643 million in 2024 to $3.12 billion in 2034—a compound annual growth rate of 10.5 percent.

Granted, we won’t be seeing a fine Bordeaux in a can anytime soon; most canned wine comes in the form of spritzers, wine coolers, and cheaper rosés, whites, or sparkling wines. The largest US producers are EJ Gallo, which sells Barefoot Refresh Spritzers, and Francis Ford Coppola Winery, which markets the Sofia Mini, Underwood, and Babe brands.

Locations within the body of a can sampled for liner and surface analysis.

Enlarge / Locations within the body of a can sampled for liner and surface analysis.

M.J. Sheehan et al., 2024

There are plenty of oft-cited advantages to putting wine in cans. It’s super practical for picnics, camping, summer BBQs, or days at the beach, for example, and for the weight-conscious, it helps with portion control, since you don’t have to open an entire bottle. Canned wines are also touted as having a lower carbon footprint compared to glass—although that is a tricky calculation—and the aluminum is 100 percent recyclable.

This latest study grew out of a conference session Sacks led that was designed to help local winemakers get a better grasp on how best to protect the aromas, flavors, and shelf life of their canned wines since canned wines are still plagued by issues of corrosion, leakage, and off flavors like the dreaded rotten egg smell. “They said, ‘We’re following all the recommendations from the can suppliers and we still have these problems, can you help us out?’” Sacks said. “The initial focus was defining what the problem compounds were, what was causing corrosion and off aromas, and why was this happening in wines, but not in sodas? Why doesn’t Coca-Cola have a problem?”

Why canned wine can smell like rotten eggs while beer and Coke are fine Read More »

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Nestlé baby foods loaded with unhealthy sugars—but only in poorer countries

babies, baby food, Formula, Infants, nestle, nutrition, obesity, overweight, Science, Sugar / /

Bad track record —

Health experts say children under age 2 should have zero added sugars in their diets.

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Night view of company logos in Nestlé Avanca Dairy Products Plant on January 21, 2019, in Avanca, Portugal. This plant produces Cerelac, Nestum, Mokambo, Pensal, Chocapic and Estrelitas, among others.

Enlarge / Night view of company logos in Nestlé Avanca Dairy Products Plant on January 21, 2019, in Avanca, Portugal. This plant produces Cerelac, Nestum, Mokambo, Pensal, Chocapic and Estrelitas, among others.

In high-income countries, Nestlé brand baby foods have no added sugars them, in line with recommendations from major health organizations around the world and consumer pressure. But in low- and middle-income countries, Nestlé adds sugar to those same baby products, sometimes at high levels, which could lead children to prefer sugary diets and unhealthy eating habits, according to an investigation released recently by nonprofit groups.

The investigation, conducted by Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), says the addition of added sugars to baby foods in poorer countries, against expert recommendations, creates an “unjustifiable double standard.” The groups quote Rodrigo Vianna, an epidemiologist and professor at the Department of Nutrition of the Federal University of Paraíba in Brazil, who calls added sugars in baby foods “unnecessary and highly addictive.”

“Children get used to the sweet taste and start looking for more sugary foods, starting a negative cycle that increases the risk of nutrition-based disorders in adult life,” Vianna told the organizations for their investigation. “These include obesity and other chronic non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes or high blood-pressure.”

The two groups compared the nutritional content of Nestlé’s Cerelac and Nido products, the company’s best-selling baby food brands in low- and middle-income countries that generate sales of over $2.5 billion. In a Cerelac wheat cereal product, for instance, the product contained up to 6 grams of added sugar in countries including Thailand, Ethiopia, South Africa, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. In the United Kingdom and Germany, the same product contained zero added sugars.

The product with the highest sugar content was a Cerelac baby cereal product sold in the Philippines with 7.3 grams of sugar. While children under age 2 are recommended to have zero grams of added sugars in their diet, for reference, children aged 2 to 18 are recommended to have less than 25 grams (about six teaspoons) per day by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In the Philippines, where the sugar content was the highest, and in other countries—including Nigeria, Senegal, Vietnam and Pakistan—the added sugar content was not listed on Nestlé’s labeling, the investigation found.

Double standard

“There is a double standard here that can’t be justified,” Nigel Rollins, a WHO scientist, told the nonprofit groups. Rollins pointed out that the company does not add sugars to its baby products in Switzerland, where the company is headquartered. Thus, continuing to add it in low-resource settings is “problematic both from a public health and ethical perspective,” he said.

In a report last month, the WHO found that as of 2022, 37 million children under the age of 5 worldwide had overweight. Additionally, over 390 million children ages 5 to 19 had overweight and 160 million had obesity. The prevalence of overweight in children 5 to 19 rose from 8 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2022, the United Nations agency noted. Obesity rates in this age group, meanwhile, rose from 2 percent to 8 percent in the same timespan.

Nestlé responded to the investigation with a statement suggesting that the differences in sugar content “depend on several factors, including regulations and availability of local ingredients, which can result in offerings with lower or no-added sugars.” But it argued that these differences do not “compromise the nutritional value of our products for infants and young children.”

Nestlé is a multinational food and drink behemoth with a controversial history of selling baby products in poorer countries. In the 1970s and ’80s, the company came under heavy international fire for aggressively marketing its baby formula to impoverished mothers. Health advocates accused Nestlé of misleading mothers into thinking formula is better than breast milk for their babies, even though leading health organizations recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life when possible.

Critics accused Nestlé of providing free formula to hospital maternity wards, causing new, low-income mothers to turn to it shortly after birth in the critical window in which breast milk production would otherwise ramp up in response to nursing a newborn. Without nursing in that time, mothers can struggle to lactate and become dependent on formula. Out of the hospital, the powdered formula is no longer free and must be mixed in proper amounts and in sanitary conditions to ensure it is safe and meeting the nutritional needs of the infant, which can be a struggle for poor families.

Nestlé now states that it follows international standards for marketing breast-milk substitutes, despite ongoing boycotts in some countries.

Nestlé baby foods loaded with unhealthy sugars—but only in poorer countries Read More »

you-can-now-buy-a-flame-throwing-robot-dog-for-under-$10,000

You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000

dangerous robots, flame throwers, robot dog, Robots, Tech / /

burninating the countryside —

Thermonator, the first “flamethrower-wielding robot dog,” is completely legal in 48 US states.

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The Thermonator robot flamethrower dog.

Enlarge / The Thermonator robot flamethrower dog.

If you’ve been wondering when you’ll be able to order the flame-throwing robot that Ohio-based Throwflame first announced last summer, that day has finally arrived. The Thermonator, what Throwflame bills as “the first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog” is now available for purchase. The price? $9,420.

Thermonator is a quadruped robot with an ARC flamethrower mounted to its back, fueled by gasoline or napalm. It features a one-hour battery, a 30-foot flame-throwing range, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity for remote control through a smartphone.

It also includes a LIDAR sensor for mapping and obstacle avoidance, laser sighting, and first-person view (FPV) navigation through an onboard camera. The product appears to integrate a version of the Unitree Go2 robot quadruped that retails alone for $1,600 in its base configuration.

The Robot Dog With A Flamethrower | Thermonator

The company lists possible applications of the new robot as “wildfire control and prevention,” “agricultural management,” “ecological conservation,” “snow and ice removal,” and “entertainment and SFX.” But most of all, it sets things on fire in a variety of real-world scenarios.

  • Remote controlling rhe Thermonator robot flamethrower dog.

  • The Thermonator robot flamethrower dog.

  • The Thermonator robot flamethrower dog.

  • The Thermonator robot flamethrower dog.

Back in 2018, Elon Musk made the news for offering an official Boring Company flamethrower that reportedly sold 10,000 units in 48 hours. It sparked some controversy because flamethrowers can also double as weapons or potentially start wildfires.

In the US, flamethrowers are legally unregulated in 48 states and are not considered firearms by federal agencies. Restrictions exist in Maryland, where flamethrowers require a Federal Firearms License to own, and California, where the range of flamethrowers cannot exceed 10 feet.

Even so, to state the obvious, flamethrowers can easily burn both things and people, starting fires and wreaking havoc if not used safely. Accordingly, the Thermonator might be one Christmas present you should skip for little Johnny this year.

You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000 Read More »

ftc-bans-noncompete-clauses,-declares-vast-majority-unenforceable

FTC bans noncompete clauses, declares vast majority unenforceable

ftc noncompetes, noncompete ban, Noncompete clauses, Policy / /

No more noncompetes —

Chamber of Commerce vows to sue FTC, will try to block ban on noncompetes.

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Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan smiles while talking with people at an event.

Enlarge / Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan talks with guests during an event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 03, 2024

Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced that it has issued a final rule banning noncompete clauses. The rule will render the vast majority of current noncompete clauses unenforceable, according to the agency.

“In the final rule, the Commission has determined that it is an unfair method of competition and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, for employers to enter into noncompetes with workers and to enforce certain noncompetes,” the FTC said.

The US Chamber of Commerce said it will sue the FTC in an effort to block the rule, claiming the ban is “a blatant power grab that will undermine American businesses’ ability to remain competitive.”

The FTC proposed the rule in January 2023 and received over 26,000 public comments on its proposal. Over 25,000 of the comments supported the proposed ban, the FTC said. The final rule announced today will take effect 120 days after it is published in the Federal Register, unless opponents of the rule secure a court order blocking it.

The FTC said that “noncompetes are a widespread and often exploitative practice imposing contractual conditions that prevent workers from taking a new job or starting a new business. Noncompetes often force workers to either stay in a job they want to leave or bear other significant harms and costs, such as being forced to switch to a lower-paying field, being forced to relocate, being forced to leave the workforce altogether, or being forced to defend against expensive litigation.”

Noncompete clauses currently bind about 30 million workers in the US, the agency said. “Under the FTC’s new rule, existing noncompetes for the vast majority of workers will no longer be enforceable after the rule’s effective date,” the FTC said.

FTC: “Noncompete clauses keep wages low”

The only existing noncompetes that won’t be nullified are those for senior executives, who represent less than 0.75 percent of workers, the FTC said. The rule defines senior executives as people earning more than $151,164 a year and who are in policy-making positions.

“The final rule allows existing noncompetes with senior executives to remain in force because this subset of workers is less likely to be subject to the kind of acute, ongoing harms currently being suffered by other workers subject to existing noncompetes and because commenters raised credible concerns about the practical impacts of extinguishing existing noncompetes for senior executives,” the FTC said.

Senior executives will be protected from new noncompete clauses after the rule takes effect. Employers will be “banned from entering into or attempting to enforce any new noncompetes, even if they involve senior executives,” the FTC said. “Employers will be required to provide notice to workers other than senior executives who are bound by an existing noncompete that they will not be enforcing any noncompetes against them.”

The FTC vote was 3-2, with Democrats supporting the noncompete ban and Republicans opposing.

“Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said. “The FTC’s final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market.”

Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark argued that “the FTC has never been granted the constitutional and statutory authority to write its own competition rules… The Chamber will sue the FTC to block this unnecessary and unlawful rule and put other agencies on notice that such overreach will not go unchecked.”

FTC cites authority, urges businesses to raise wages

The FTC argues that it can impose the rule using authority under sections 5 and 6(g) of the FTC Act:

Alongside section 5, Congress adopted section 6(g) of the Act, in which it authorized the Commission to “make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of” the FTC Act, which include the Act’s prohibition of unfair methods of competition. The plain text of section 5 and section 6(g), taken together, empower the Commission to promulgate rules for the purpose of preventing unfair methods of competition. That includes legislative rules defining certain conduct as an unfair method of competition.

The FTC said it found evidence that “noncompetes tend to negatively affect competitive conditions in product and service markets, inhibiting new business formation and innovation” and “lead to increased market concentration and higher prices for consumers.”

Businesses can protect trade secrets without noncompetes, the agency said:

Trade secret laws and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) both provide employers with well-established means to protect proprietary and other sensitive information. Researchers estimate that over 95 percent of workers with a noncompete already have an NDA.

The Commission also finds that instead of using noncompetes to lock in workers, employers that wish to retain employees can compete on the merits for the worker’s labor services by improving wages and working conditions.

FTC bans noncompete clauses, declares vast majority unenforceable Read More »

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Hackers infect users of antivirus service that delivered updates over HTTP

antivirus, backdoors, Biz & IT, Encryption, HTTP, HTTPS, man in the middle, Security / /

GOT HTTPS? —

eScan AV updates were delivered over HTTP for five years.

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Hackers infect users of antivirus service that delivered updates over HTTP

Getty Images

Hackers abused an antivirus service for five years in order to infect end users with malware. The attack worked because the service delivered updates over HTTP, a protocol vulnerable to attacks that corrupt or tamper with data as it travels over the Internet.

The unknown hackers, who may have ties to the North Korean government, pulled off this feat by performing a man-in-the-middle (MiitM) attack that replaced the genuine update with a file that installed an advanced backdoor instead, said researchers from security firm Avast today.

eScan, an AV service headquartered in India, has delivered updates over HTTP since at least 2019, Avast researchers reported. This protocol presented a valuable opportunity for installing the malware, which is tracked in security circles under the name GuptiMiner.

“This sophisticated operation has been performing MitM attacks targeting an update mechanism of the eScan antivirus vendor,” Avast researchers Jan Rubín and Milánek wrote. “We disclosed the security vulnerability to both eScan and the India CERT and received confirmation on 2023-07-31 from eScan that the issue was fixed and successfully resolved.”

Complex infection chain

The complex infection chain started when eScan applications checked in with the eScan update system. The threat actors then performed a MitM attack that allowed them to intercept the package sent by the update server and replace it with a corrupted one that contained code to install GuptiMiner. The Avast researchers still don’t know precisely how the attackers were able to perform the interception. They suspect targeted networks may already have been compromised somehow to route traffic to a malicious intermediary.

To lower the chances of detection, the infection file used DLL hijacking, a technique that replaces legitimate dynamic link library files used by most Microsoft apps with maliciously crafted ones that use the same file name. For added stealth, the infection chain also relied on a custom domain name system (DNS)  server that allowed it to use legitimate domain names when connecting to attacker-controlled channels.

Last year, the attackers abandoned the DNS technique and replaced it with another obfuscation technique known as IP address masking. This involved the following steps:

  1. Obtain an IP address of a hardcoded server name registered to the attacker by standard use of the gethostbyname API function
  2. For that server, two IP addresses are returned—the first is an IP address which is a masked address, and the second one denotes an available payload version and starts with 23.195. as its first two octets
  3. If the version is newer than the current one, the masked IP address is de-masked, resulting in a real command-and-control (C&C) IP address
  4. The real C&C IP address is used along with a hardcoded constant string (part of a URL path) to download a file containing malicious shellcode

Some variants of the infection chain stashed the malicious code inside an image file to make them harder to detect. The variants also installed a custom root TLS certificate that satisfied requirements by some targeted systems that all apps must be digitally signed before being installed.

The payload contained multiple backdoors that were activated when installed on large networks. Curiously, the update also delivered XMRig, an open-source package for mining cryptocurrency.

The GuptiMiner infection chain.

Enlarge / The GuptiMiner infection chain.

Avast

GuptiMiner has circulated since at least 2018 and has undergone multiple revisions. One searched compromised networks for systems running Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, presumably to deliver exploits that worked on those earlier versions. Another provided an interface for installing special-purpose modules that could be customized for different victims. (This version also scanned the local system for stored private keys and cryptocurrency wallets.)

The researchers were surprised that malware that took such pains to fly under the radar would also install a cryptocurrency miner, which by nature is usually easy to detect. One possibility is the attackers’ possible connection to Kimsuky, the tracking name for a group backed by the North Korean government. Over the years, North Korea’s government has generated billions of dollars in cryptocurrency through malware installed on the devices of unwitting victims. The researchers made the possible connection after finding similarities between a known Kimsuky keylogger and code fragments used during the GuptiMiner operation.

The GuptiMiner attack is notable for exposing major shortcomings in eScan that went unnoticed for at least five years. Besides not delivering updates over HTTPS, a medium not susceptible to MitM attacks, eScan also failed to enforce digital signing to ensure updates hadn’t been tampered with before being installed. Representatives of eScan didn’t respond to an email asking why engineers designed the update process this way.

People who use or have used eScan should check the Avast post for details on whether their systems are infected. It’s likely that most reputable AV scanners will also detect this infection.

Hackers infect users of antivirus service that delivered updates over HTTP Read More »

microsoft’s-phi-3-shows-the-surprising-power-of-small,-locally-run-ai-language-models

Microsoft’s Phi-3 shows the surprising power of small, locally run AI language models

AI, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, large language models, machine learning, microsoft, Microsoft Phi, Mistral, openai, Phi-2, Phi-3, Simon Willison, small language models / /

small packages —

Microsoft’s 3.8B parameter Phi-3 may rival GPT-3.5, signaling a new era of “small language models.”

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An illustration of lots of information being compressed into a smartphone with a funnel.

Getty Images

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a new, freely available lightweight AI language model named Phi-3-mini, which is simpler and less expensive to operate than traditional large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo. Its small size is ideal for running locally, which could bring an AI model of similar capability to the free version of ChatGPT to a smartphone without needing an Internet connection to run it.

The AI field typically measures AI language model size by parameter count. Parameters are numerical values in a neural network that determine how the language model processes and generates text. They are learned during training on large datasets and essentially encode the model’s knowledge into quantified form. More parameters generally allow the model to capture more nuanced and complex language-generation capabilities but also require more computational resources to train and run.

Some of the largest language models today, like Google’s PaLM 2, have hundreds of billions of parameters. OpenAI’s GPT-4 is rumored to have over a trillion parameters but spread over eight 220-billion parameter models in a mixture-of-experts configuration. Both models require heavy-duty data center GPUs (and supporting systems) to run properly.

In contrast, Microsoft aimed small with Phi-3-mini, which contains only 3.8 billion parameters and was trained on 3.3 trillion tokens. That makes it ideal to run on consumer GPU or AI-acceleration hardware that can be found in smartphones and laptops. It’s a follow-up of two previous small language models from Microsoft: Phi-2, released in December, and Phi-1, released in June 2023.

A chart provided by Microsoft showing Phi-3 performance on various benchmarks.

Enlarge / A chart provided by Microsoft showing Phi-3 performance on various benchmarks.

Phi-3-mini features a 4,000-token context window, but Microsoft also introduced a 128K-token version called “phi-3-mini-128K.” Microsoft has also created 7-billion and 14-billion parameter versions of Phi-3 that it plans to release later that it claims are “significantly more capable” than phi-3-mini.

Microsoft says that Phi-3 features overall performance that “rivals that of models such as Mixtral 8x7B and GPT-3.5,” as detailed in a paper titled “Phi-3 Technical Report: A Highly Capable Language Model Locally on Your Phone.” Mixtral 8x7B, from French AI company Mistral, utilizes a mixture-of-experts model, and GPT-3.5 powers the free version of ChatGPT.

“[Phi-3] looks like it’s going to be a shockingly good small model if their benchmarks are reflective of what it can actually do,” said AI researcher Simon Willison in an interview with Ars. Shortly after providing that quote, Willison downloaded Phi-3 to his Macbook laptop locally and said, “I got it working, and it’s GOOD” in a text message sent to Ars.

A screenshot of Phi-3-mini running locally on Simon Willison's Macbook.

Enlarge / A screenshot of Phi-3-mini running locally on Simon Willison’s Macbook.

Simon Willison

“Most models that run on a local device still need hefty hardware,” says Willison. “Phi-3-mini runs comfortably with less than 8GB of RAM, and can churn out tokens at a reasonable speed even on just a regular CPU. It’s licensed MIT and should work well on a $55 Raspberry Pi—and the quality of results I’ve seen from it so far are comparable to models 4x larger.“

How did Microsoft cram a capability potentially similar to GPT-3.5, which has at least 175 billion parameters, into such a small model? Its researchers found the answer by using carefully curated, high-quality training data they initially pulled from textbooks. “The innovation lies entirely in our dataset for training, a scaled-up version of the one used for phi-2, composed of heavily filtered web data and synthetic data,” writes Microsoft. “The model is also further aligned for robustness, safety, and chat format.”

Much has been written about the potential environmental impact of AI models and datacenters themselves, including on Ars. With new techniques and research, it’s possible that machine learning experts may continue to increase the capability of smaller AI models, replacing the need for larger ones—at least for everyday tasks. That would theoretically not only save money in the long run but also require far less energy in aggregate, dramatically decreasing AI’s environmental footprint. AI models like Phi-3 may be a step toward that future if the benchmark results hold up to scrutiny.

Phi-3 is immediately available on Microsoft’s cloud service platform Azure, as well as through partnerships with machine learning model platform Hugging Face and Ollama, a framework that allows models to run locally on Macs and PCs.

Microsoft’s Phi-3 shows the surprising power of small, locally run AI language models Read More »

grindr-users-seek-payouts-after-dating-app-shared-hiv-status-with-vendors

Grindr users seek payouts after dating app shared HIV status with vendors

grindr, grindr class action, Policy / /
A person's finger hovering over a Grindr app icon on a phone screen

Getty Images | Thomas Trutschel

Grindr is facing a class action lawsuit from hundreds of users over the sharing of HIV statuses and other sensitive personal information with third-party firms.

UK law firm Austen Hays filed the claim in the High Court in London yesterday, the firm announced. The class action “alleges the misuse of private information of thousands of affected UK Grindr users, including highly sensitive information about their HIV status and latest tested date,” the law firm said.

The law firm said it has signed up over 670 potential class members and “is in discussions with thousands of other individuals who are interested in joining the claim.” Austen Hays said that “claimants could receive thousands in damages” from Grindr, a gay dating app, if the case is successful.

Austen Hays alleges that Grindr violated UK data protection laws by sharing sensitive data for commercial purposes without users’ consent, including when it “unlawfully processed and shared users’ data with third parties, including advertising companies Localytics and Apptimize.”

While Austen Hays describes Localytics and Apptimize as advertising firms, they do not seem to be in the business of selling ads. Localytics is software for mobile app marketing and analytics, while Apptimize says it provides A/B testing and feature release management for product teams.

Grindr admitted sharing HIV status, said it stopped

Grindr has admitted sharing HIV status with the firms but stressed that it wasn’t for advertising purposes and pledged to stop sharing that information. The sharing of HIV status came to light in 2018 thanks to the work of independent researchers. At the time, Grindr said it “has never sold, nor will we ever sell, personal user information—especially information regarding HIV status or last test date—to third parties or advertisers.”

Grindr said it “consult[ed] several international health organizations” before determining in 2016 that it would be “beneficial for the health and well-being of our community to give users the option to publish, at their discretion, their HIV status and their ‘Last Tested Date’ to their public profile.”

Grindr acknowledged that it had been “sharing HIV status information with our trusted vendors, Apptimize and Localytics.” Apptimize software helped Grindr test and deploy new app features including an “HIV Testing Reminder” feature, while Localytics software was used “to confirm that the new features were not causing problems with the functioning of the Grindr app,” Grindr said.

Today, Grindr provided Ars with a statement in response to the lawsuit. “We are committed to protecting our users’ data and complying with all applicable data privacy regulations, including in the UK,” the company said. Grindr has never shared user-reported health information for ‘commercial purposes’ and has never monetized such information. We intend to respond vigorously to this claim, which appears to be based on a mischaracterization of practices from more than four years ago, prior to early 2020.”

Grindr users seek payouts after dating app shared HIV status with vendors Read More »

ipados-18-could-ship-with-built-in-calculator-app,-after-14-calculator-less-years

iPadOS 18 could ship with built-in Calculator app, after 14 Calculator-less years

Apple, calculator, ipad, iPadOS, Mac, macOS, Tech / /

a calculated move —

Every single iPhone and Mac has come with a calculator app, but not the iPad.

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iPadOS 18 could ship with built-in Calculator app, after 14 Calculator-less years

Apple/Andrew Cunningham

Last year, Apple introduced the ability to set multiple timers at once in the Clock app on its various platforms.

“We truly live in an age of wonders,” deadpanned Apple’s Craig Federighi in the company’s official presentation, tacitly acknowledging the gap between the apparent simplicity of the feature and the amount of time that Apple took to implement it.

The next version of iPadOS may contain another of these “age of wonders” features, an apparently simple thing that Apple has chosen never to do for reasons that the company can’t or won’t explain. According to MacRumors, iPadOS 18 may finally be the update that brings a version of Apple’s first-party Calculator app to the iPad.

Calculator was one of the very first iPhone apps that shipped with the iPhone back in 2007 but was mysteriously and inexplicably absent from the iPad when it launched in 2010. It’s also the very last of those original missing apps to find its way to the iPad’s home screen—Stocks, Clock, Voice Memos, and Weather had all made the jump previously, with the Weather app coming as recently as 2022.

It’s not that the iPad is incapable of calculating; the Spotlight search feature can already handle basic off-the-cuff math and conversion questions, and third-party calculator apps like PCalc, Numerical², Calcbot, and innumerable free-to-download no-name calculator apps have stepped up to fill the gap. But it was never clear why Apple decided against shipping a first-party Calculator app with the iPad, when it had shipped one with every iPhone since 2007 and every Mac since 1984.

The new Calculator app should be more than just a straightforward port of the current iOS or macOS app. Apple is apparently planning a small overhaul of the Calculator app for macOS 15 with a history tape for tracking past calculations, a resizable window, and an updated round-button design that more closely imitates the iOS version. The iPad and macOS versions of many of Apple’s apps share a lot of code these days—Stocks, Voice Memos, News, Home, Weather, Clock, and others share essentially the same design and layout in both operating systems—so it’s a fair bet that this redesigned Mac app and the newly introduced iPad app will be the same software.

At least one developer of a prominent iPad calculator seemed undaunted by the news that his app could be Sherlocked this fall.

“Yes, I saw the MacRumors article,” wrote PCalc developer James Thomson on his Mastodon account, responding to no one in particular. “Yes, it’s fine.”

iPadOS 18 could ship with built-in Calculator app, after 14 Calculator-less years Read More »

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Concern grows as bird flu spreads further in US cows: 32 herds in 8 states

avian influenza, bird flu, CDC, cows, dairy cows, fda, H5N1, herds, infection, milk, outbreak, Science, USDA, virus / /

Rapidly evolving —

Experts say the US is not sharing as much data on the outbreak as it should.

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Greylag geese sit on a field and rest while a cow passes by in the background.

Enlarge / Greylag geese sit on a field and rest while a cow passes by in the background.

Researchers around the world are growing more uneasy with the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) in US dairy cows as the virus continues to make its way into new herds and states. Several experts say the US is not sharing enough information from the federal investigation into the unexpected and growing outbreak, including genetic information from isolated viruses.

To date, the US Department of Agriculture has tallied 32 affected herds in eight states: Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas. In some cases, the movement of cattle between herds can explain the spread of the virus. But the USDA has not publicly clarified if all the herds are linked in a single outbreak chain or if there is evidence that the virus has spilled over to cows multiple times. Early infections in Texas were linked to dead wild birds (pigeons, blackbirds, and grackles) found on dairy farms. But the USDA reportedly indicated to Stat News that the infections do not appear to be all linked to the Texas cases.

Spread of the virus via cattle movements indicates that there is cow-to-cow transmission occurring, the USDA said. But it’s unclear how the virus is spreading between cows. Given that even the most symptomatic cows show few respiratory symptoms, the USDA speculates that the most likely way it is spreading is via contaminated milking equipment.

Adding to the uncertainty of the virus’s spread, The New York Times on Friday reported that the one herd found infected with H5N1 in North Carolina showed no symptoms of the virus. This raises the possibility that the virus could be silently spreading in unknown numbers of other asymptomatic herds and states. In its most recent FAQ document, the USDA encouraged testing for H5N1 if herds show clinical symptoms, such as lethargy, fever, low milk production, and loose stools. But the Times noted that the agency has begun reimbursing farms for testing asymptomatic cows.

Meanwhile, the USDA also reported that it has evidence that H5N1 from dairy farms has spread back into birds in nearby poultry farms, but how this is happening is also unknown.

Data gaps

All the uncertainty and widespread transmission raises concern about how the virus is evolving to infect mammals and whether it is heading for humans. Last week, the chief scientist for the World Health Organization, Jeremy Farrar, told reporters in Geneva that the spread of the virus in US dairy cows is an “enormous concern,” according to CNN.  “The great concern, of course, is that in doing so and infecting ducks and chickens—but now increasingly mammals—that that virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans. And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission.”

In particular, experts are wary that the dairy cow outbreaks could spill over to nearby pig farms as it’s doing with nearby poultry farms. Pigs can be infected with both bird flu viruses and human flu viruses, making them potential melting pots for new recombinant flu strains.

So far, the USDA says that genetic sequences of H5N1 viruses infecting cows has not revealed any mutations that “would make it more transmissible to humans and between people.” But last Thursday, Stat reported that international experts have faulted the USDA for not sharing more genetic data from its investigation, among other information. Until this weekend, the agency had only shared a few genetic sequences in an international database of viral genome sequences (GISAID).

“A country with capacity like the United States should be able to generate this information within days,” Marion Koopmans, head of the department of viroscience at Erasmus Medical Center in the Dutch city of Rotterdam told Stat last week. “I would expect very fast, very transparent updates, and it’s somewhat amazing not to see that happening.”

On Sunday, facing mounting criticism, the USDA announced the release of 239 genetic sequences to GISAID. It noted it is also adding raw data to a US federal database “in the interest of public transparency and ensuring the scientific community has access to this information as quickly as possible.” The agency said it will continue to make such data available on a rolling basis.

Dr. Rosemary Sifford, the USDA’s chief veterinarian, told the Times, “Please recall that we’ve been engaged in this for less than a month. We are working very hard to generate more information,” she said.

Overall, the USDA and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to consider the risk to the public to be low. Farmworkers and others who have direct contact with infected animals are encouraged to take precautions, however.

While deadly to birds, H5N1 in cows is relatively mild, rarely if ever causing deaths. Milk from sick animals contains high levels of virus, but it is being destroyed. Even if some infected milk makes its way into the milk supply, the Food and Drug Administration is confident that the virus would be killed in the pasteurization process. “Pasteurization has continually proven to inactivate bacteria and viruses, like influenza, in milk,” the agency said in an FAQ Friday. Some experts have called for data confirming this, though.

Concern grows as bird flu spreads further in US cows: 32 herds in 8 states Read More »

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Meta debuts Horizon OS, with Asus, Lenovo, and Microsoft on board

ASUS, Horizon OS, Instagram, Lenovo, mark zuckerberg, Meta, meta quest, Mixed Reality, Republic of Gamers, rog, Tech, xbox, Xbox Cloud Streaming, Xbox Game Pass / /

Face Operating Systems —

Rivalry with Apple now mirrors the Android/iOS competition more than ever.

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The Meta Quest Pro at a Best Buy demo station in October 2022.

Enlarge / The Meta Quest Pro at a Best Buy demo station in October 2022.

Meta will open up the operating system that runs on its Quest mixed reality headsets to other technology companies, it announced today.

What was previously simply called Quest software will be called Horizon OS, and the goal will be to move beyond the general-use Quest devices to more purpose-specific devices, according to an Instagram video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

There will be headsets focused purely on watching TV and movies on virtual screens, with the emphasis on high-end OLED displays. There will also be headsets that are designed to be as light as possible at the expense of performance for productivity and exercise uses. And there will be gaming-oriented ones.

The announcement named three partners to start. Asus will produce a gaming headset under its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand, Lenovo will make general purpose headsets with an emphasize on “productivity, learning, and entertainment,” and Xbox and Meta will team up to deliver a special edition of the Meta Quest that will come bundled with an Xbox controller and Xbox Cloud Gaming and Game Pass.

Users running Horizon OS devices from different manufacturers will be able to stay connected in the operating system’s social layer of “identities, avatars, social graphs, and friend groups” and will be able to enjoy shared virtual spaces together across devices.

The announcement comes after Meta became an early leader in the relatively small but interesting consumer mixed reality space but with diminishing returns on new devices as the market saturates.

Further, Apple recently entered the fray with its Vision Pro headset. The Vision Pro is not really a direct competitor to Meta’s Quest devices today—it’s far more expensive and loaded with higher-end tech—but it may only be the opening volley in a long competition between the companies.

Meta’s decision to make Horizon OS a more open platform for partner OEMs in the face of Apple’s usual focus on owning and integrating as much of the software, hardware, and services in its device as it can mirrors the smartphone market. There, Google’s Android (on which Horizon OS is based) runs on a variety of devices from a wide range of companies, while Apple’s iOS runs only on Apple’s own iPhones.

Meta also says it is working on a new spatial app framework to make it easier for developers with experience on mobile to start making mixed reality apps for Horizon OS and that it will start “removing the barriers between the Meta Horizon Store and App Lab, which lets any developer who meets basic technical and content requirements release software on the platform.”

Pricing, specs, and release dates have not been announced for any of the new devices. Zuckerberg admitted it’s “probably going to take a couple of years” for this ecosystem of hardware devices to roll out.

Meta debuts Horizon OS, with Asus, Lenovo, and Microsoft on board Read More »

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Windows vulnerability reported by the NSA exploited to install Russian malware

Biz & IT, exploits, microsoft, Security, vulnerabilities, Windows / /
Windows vulnerability reported by the NSA exploited to install Russian malware

Getty Images

Kremlin-backed hackers have been exploiting a critical Microsoft vulnerability for four years in attacks that targeted a vast array of organizations with a previously undocumented tool, the software maker disclosed Monday.

When Microsoft patched the vulnerability in October 2022—at least two years after it came under attack by the Russian hackers—the company made no mention that it was under active exploitation. As of publication, the company’s advisory still made no mention of the in-the-wild targeting. Windows users frequently prioritize the installation of patches based on whether a vulnerability is likely to be exploited in real-world attacks.

Exploiting CVE-2022-38028, as the vulnerability is tracked, allows attackers to gain system privileges, the highest available in Windows, when combined with a separate exploit. Exploiting the flaw, which carries a 7.8 severity rating out of a possible 10, requires low existing privileges and little complexity. It resides in the Windows print spooler, a printer-management component that has harbored previous critical zero-days. Microsoft said at the time that it learned of the vulnerability from the US National Security Agency.

On Monday, Microsoft revealed that a hacking group tracked under the name Forest Blizzard has been exploiting CVE-2022-38028 since at least June 2020—and possibly as early as April 2019. The threat group—which is also tracked under names including APT28, Sednit, Sofacy, GRU Unit 26165, and Fancy Bear—has been linked by the US and the UK governments to Unit 26165 of the Main Intelligence Directorate, a Russian military intelligence arm better known as the GRU. Forest Blizzard focuses on intelligence gathering through the hacking of a wide array of organizations, mainly in the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

Since as early as April 2019, Forest Blizzard has been exploiting CVE-2022-38028 in attacks that, once system privileges are acquired, use a previously undocumented tool that Microsoft calls GooseEgg. The post-exploitation malware elevates privileges within a compromised system and goes on to provide a simple interface for installing additional pieces of malware that also run with system privileges. This additional malware, which includes credential stealers and tools for moving laterally through a compromised network, can be customized for each target.

“While a simple launcher application, GooseEgg is capable of spawning other applications specified at the command line with elevated permissions, allowing threat actors to support any follow-on objectives such as remote code execution, installing a backdoor, and moving laterally through compromised networks,” Microsoft officials wrote.

GooseEgg is typically installed using a simple batch script, which is executed following the successful exploitation of CVE-2022-38028 or another vulnerability, such as CVE-2023-23397, which Monday’s advisory said has also been exploited by Forest Blizzard. The script is responsible for installing the GooseEgg binary, often named justice.exe or DefragmentSrv.exe, then ensuring that they run each time the infected machine is rebooted.

Windows vulnerability reported by the NSA exploited to install Russian malware Read More »

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High-speed imaging and AI help us understand how insect wings work

AI, Biology, Biomechanics, Computer science, flight, insects, muscles, Science, wings / /
Black and white images of a fly with its wings in a variety of positions, showing the details of a wing beat.

Enlarge / A time-lapse showing how an insect’s wing adopts very specific positions during flight.

Florian Muijres, Dickinson Lab

About 350 million years ago, our planet witnessed the evolution of the first flying creatures. They are still around, and some of them continue to annoy us with their buzzing. While scientists have classified these creatures as pterygotes, the rest of the world simply calls them winged insects.

There are many aspects of insect biology, especially their flight, that remain a mystery for scientists. One is simply how they move their wings. The insect wing hinge is a specialized joint that connects an insect’s wings with its body. It’s composed of five interconnected plate-like structures called sclerites. When these plates are shifted by the underlying muscles, it makes the insect wings flap.

Until now, it has been tricky for scientists to understand the biomechanics that govern the motion of the sclerites even using advanced imaging technologies. “The sclerites within the wing hinge are so small and move so rapidly that their mechanical operation during flight has not been accurately captured despite efforts using stroboscopic photography, high-speed videography, and X-ray tomography,” Michael Dickinson, Zarem professor of biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), told Ars Technica.

As a result, scientists are unable to visualize exactly what’s going on at the micro-scale within the wing hinge as they fly, preventing them from studying insect flight in detail. However, a new study by Dickinson and his team finally revealed the working of sclerites and the insect wing hinge. They captured the wing motion of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) analyzing 72,000 recorded wing beats using a neural network to decode the role individual sclerites played in shaping insect wing motion.

Understanding the insect wing hinge

The biomechanics that govern insect flight are quite different from those of birds and bats. This is because wings in insects didn’t evolve from limbs. “In the case of birds, bats, and pterosaurs we know exactly where the wings came from evolutionarily because all these animals fly with their forelimbs. They’re basically using their arms to fly. In insects, it’s a completely different story. They evolved from six-legged organisms and they kept all six legs. However, they added flapping appendages to the dorsal side of their body, and it is a mystery as to where those wings came from,” Dickinson explained.

Some researchers suggest that insect wings came from gill-like appendages present in ancient aquatic arthropods. Others argue that wings originated from “lobes,” special outgrowths found on the legs of ancient crustaceans, which were ancestors of insects. This debate is still ongoing, so its evolution can’t tell us much about how the hinge and the sclerites operate.

Understanding the hinge mechanics is crucial because this is what makes insects efficient flying creatures. It enables them to fly at impressive speeds relative to their body sizes (some insects can fly at 33 mph) and to demonstrate great maneuverability and stability while in flight.

“The insect wing hinge is arguably among the most sophisticated and evolutionarily important skeletal structures in the natural world,” according to the study authors.

However, imaging the activity of four of the five sclerites that form the hinge has been impossible due to their size and the speeds at which they move. Dickinson and his team employed a multidisciplinary approach to overcome this challenge. They designed an apparatus equipped with three high-speed cameras that recorded the activity of tethered fruit flies at 15,000 frames per second using infrared light.

They also used a calcium-sensitive protein to track changes in the activity of the steering muscles of the insects as they flew (calcium helps trigger muscle contractions). “We recorded a total of 485 flight sequences from 82 flies. After excluding a subset of wingbeats from sequences when the fly either stopped flying or flew at an abnormally low wingbeat frequency, we obtained a final dataset of 72,219 wingbeats,” the researchers note.

Next, they trained a machine-learning-based convolutional neural network (CNN) using 85 percent of the dataset. “We used the CNN model to investigate the transformation between muscle activity and wing motion by performing a set of virtual manipulations, exploiting the network to execute experiments that would be difficult to perform on actual flies,” they explained.

In addition to the neural network, they also developed an encoder-decoder neural network (an architecture used in machine learning) and fed it data related to steering muscle activity. While the CNN model could predict wing motion, the encoder/decoder could predict the action of individual sclerite muscles during the movement of the wings. Now, it was time to check whether the data they predicted was accurate.

High-speed imaging and AI help us understand how insect wings work Read More »