January 2021 – Page 74 – news.buyenne.com

Der Tod, ein Nischenprodukt

Krematorien stehen für eine Kulturtechnik, die ihre Unschuld verloren hat

A curious observer’s guide to quantum mechanics, pt. 2: The particle melting pot

In which lasers do things that make absolutely no sense but give us great clocks.

One of the quietest revolutions of our current century has been the entry of quantum mechanics into our everyday technology. It used to be that quantum effects were confined to physics laboratories and delicate experiments. But modern technology increasingly relies on quantum mechanics for its basic operation, and the importance of quantum effects will only grow in the decades to come. As such, physicist Miguel F. Morales has taken on the herculean task of explaining quantum mechanics to the rest of us laymen in this seven-part series (no math, we promise). Below is the second story in the series, but you can always find the starting story here.

Welcome back for our second guided walk into the quantum mechanical woods! Last week, we saw how particles move like waves and hit like particles and how a single particle takes multiple paths. While surprising, this is a well-explored area of quantum mechanics—it is on the paved nature path around the visitor’s center.

This week I’d like to get off the paved trail and go a bit deeper into the woods in order to talk about how particles meld and combine while in motion. This is a topic that is usually reserved for physics majors; it's rarely discussed in popular articles. But the payoff is understanding how precision lidar works and getting to see one of the great inventions making it out of the lab, the optical comb. So let's go get our (quantum) hiking boots a little dirty—it'll be worth it.

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Corona sorgt für Wahlverschiebungen

Spanien: Hohe Infektionszahlen führen zur Verschiebung der katalanischen Wahlen und stärken die Puigdemont-Kandidatur

Spitzenglättung: Zwangsabschaltung von Elektroauto-Wallboxen abgewendet

Eine zwangsweise Abschaltung von Wallboxen für Elektroautos durch Netzbetreiber soll es nun doch nicht geben. Die Meldung hatte erhebliche Unruhe verbreitet. (Elektroauto, Technologie)

TikTok Using DMCA to Take Down Reverse-Engineered Source Code

Video social networking service Tiktok is using the DMCA to prevent the spread of source code related to the Android variant of its software. The coder who placed the source online says that he reverse-engineered the APK to show that the company’s social media platform is a data collection engine and “legitimate spyware”.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

After being launched in the Chinese market in 2016 as “Douyin”, social networking service TikTok has become one of the world’s recognizable app brands.

New estimates published this month suggest that TikTok could have as many as a billion monthly users, with around 100 million of those coming from the United States. It’s safe to say the product is already a phenomenon and wildly popular, especially among younger people, but not everyone is happy with its status.

Accusations of Privacy Breaches

Labeled a threat by the Trump administration due to its Chinese connections, TikTok has constantly found itself accused of siphoning off user data for use overseas. According to analysts, however, the software is no more intrusive than Facebook and Instagram. Which, of course, is a pretty low bar by most standards.

Nevertheless, many people simply do not trust TikTok, something which led to a coder known as ‘augustgl‘ reverse-engineering the company’s Android app and publishing the resulting source code on developer platform Github.

Published to Github

“This project is a bit different from my other projects. TikTok is a data collection engine disguised as a social media platform. It’s legitimate spyware, so I thought I would reverse engineer the Android application,” wrote ‘augustgl’ on his now-removed Github repo.

The source reportedly published includes that dedicated to location tracking, phone calls, screenshots, WiFi networks, and facial recognition. None of these features appear to have sat particularly well with ‘augustgl’, who signed off with the message, “China, I’ll see you when you send the hitmen to my house.”

While that did not happen, at least as far as we know, TikTok did become aware that reverse-engineered source was being made available online. Unsurprisingly, the social media company then used copyright law to have it taken down.

DMCA Takedowns

“I am legal counsel to TikTok Inc., owner of the copyright that is the subject matter of this notification, and am authorized to act on the owner’s behalf,” the notice begins.

“The original copyrighted work is source code for the TikTok Android app. Github user augustgl appears to claim to have reverse engineered the app. He posted the code to the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/augustgl/tiktok_source.”

At the same time, TikTok asked Github to help clean up all the repositories that had forked the code. In total, 19 other repositories operated by other coders were handed DMCA takedown notices, with Github complying by taking each one down.

While TikTok may have believed it had cleaned up all instances of the reverse-engineered code, there was more work to be done. In a new notice filed this week, TikTok returned for a second sweep, targeting another five repositories that had forked the original, apparently after being notified by Github.

“The original copyrighted work is source code for the TikTok Android app. Github user [redacted, but almost certainly a reference to ‘augustgl’] appears to claim to have reverse engineered the app. We submitted a DMCA notification to GitHub previously, resulting in a takedown. GitHub subsequently notified us that the user still had forks posted,” the DMCA notice reads.

All of the offending repositories appear to have been removed following TikTok’s request but the big question is whether anything surprising or insightful came from the published code, particularly in respect of the privacy and security allegations that have followed the company around in recent times.

TorrentFreak contacted ‘augustgl’ to discover what he’d found, if anything, but at the time of publishing he was yet to respond.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Apples All-In-One: Neuer iMac soll im Design des XDR-Displays erscheinen

Künftig ohne schwarzen Rahmen und breite Alu-Wange: Der neue iMac soll Apples Pro Display XDR ähneln. (iMac, Apple)

AI-powered text from this program could fool the government

Volunteers couldn’t tell AI-generated comments from those penned by humans.

In October 2019, Idaho proposed changing its Medicaid program. The state needed approval from the federal government, which solicited public feedback via Medicaid.gov.

Roughly 1,000 comments arrived. But half came not from concerned citizens or even Internet trolls. They were generated by artificial intelligence. And a study found that people could not distinguish the real comments from the fake ones.

The project was the work of Max Weiss, a tech-savvy medical student at Harvard, but it received little attention at the time. Now, with AI language systems advancing rapidly, some say the government and Internet companies need to rethink how they solicit and screen feedback to guard against deepfake text manipulation and other AI-powered interference.

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