June 2022 – Page 106 – news.buyenne.com

US can’t afford fall boosters for all—even after cuts to test and PPE spending

“These were incredibly painful decisions.”

A sign for a vaccine site stands in Staten Island on November 29, 2021, in New York City.

With pandemic funding running out, the Biden administration is repurposing $10 billion to buy next-generation COVID-19 booster doses for the fall, as well as treatments, including the anti-viral Paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies.

The funding will be pilfered from federal programs that support COVID-19 test availability and domestic production, as well as stockpiles of essential resources, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators. Funding for research on coronavirus vaccines and new treatments will also take a hit.

"These were incredibly painful decisions," White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said in a press briefing Thursday.

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ShaRPiKeebo kit turns a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W into a pocket computer with a keyboard and display (crowdfunding)

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is a tiny, versatile little computer board capable of running much of the same software that its slightly bigger siblings thanks to its quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor. But the $15 computer board isn’t much use witho…

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US expands probe of Tesla Autopilot crashes in step toward possible recall

NHTSA’s Tesla investigation moves to phase 2 as agency weighs need for recall.

The interior of a Tesla Model X seen at a car expo.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has upgraded an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system in a move that could lead to a recall.

The NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation opened the probe of Tesla Autopilot in August 2021 due to "eleven crashes in which Tesla models of various configurations have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes." Five other crashes have since been added to the analysis, which covers 830,000 Tesla Model Y, Model X, Model S, and Model 3 cars released from 2014 to 2022. The crashes being investigated resulted in 15 injuries and one death, the NHTSA said.

An NHTSA notice published Thursday said the investigation has been "upgraded to an Engineering Analysis (EA) to extend the existing crash analysis, evaluate additional data sets, perform vehicle evaluations, and to explore the degree to which Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver's supervision. In doing so, NHTSA plans to continue its assessment of vehicle control authority, driver engagement technologies, and related human factors considerations."

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AMD roadmap: Zen 4 in 2022 and Zen 5 in 2024

Chip maker AMD is outlining its product roadmap for the next few years as part of the company’s Financial Analyst Day, giving us a sneak peek at the what to expect from the Zen 4 chips that are set to launch later this year… and the Zen 5 …

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Report: Meta has stopped developing its Apple Watch rival

“No longer on track for production.”

Rumored meta smart watch on white background

Development of a Meta smartwatch is on pause, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing an anonymous "person with knowledge of the matter."

Facebook's parent company never confirmed it was making a smartwatch to rival the Apple Watch and Samsung's Galaxy Watch. It also declined to comment on Bloomberg's story. However, Bloomberg claimed that Meta has been working on a smartwatch, codenamed Milan, "for at least two years."

The publication said Meta was aiming to release its smartwatch next spring for about $350, but workers "were told this week that the device is no longer on track for production."

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NASA to figure out how to get data on unexplained objects in the sky

Agency is commissioning a report on how to get data on “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Is the truth out there? NASA's going to figure out what kind of data it would need to start asking the question scientifically.

On Thursday, NASA announced it's going to start working on a report about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), which are more commonly referred to as UFOs. The goal of the report isn't intended to draw any conclusions about their identity (or identities); instead, its goal is to figure out what data NASA either already has or could gather that would help us understand what they are and subject them to scientific study, if possible.

Although lots of the interest in UFOs is anything but scientific, NASA is putting this initiative in its Science Mission Directorate, and Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of that directorate, took part in a press call announcing it. The "UAP" nomenclature used in the announcement is important from NASA's perspective, in that there's currently no indication that any of the unidentified things we've observed are flying in any sense—they could easily be optical illusions or natural phenomena.

Zurbuchen made it clear that NASA doesn't expect to have any answers to the question of the identity of UAPs when the report is released in a year or so. Instead, the goal of the effort is to figure out how, in Zurbuchen's words, to "take a field that is data-poor and make it into something that's data-rich." He noted that NASA performs a lot of observations of Earth's atmosphere in a variety of wavelengths, so it may potentially already have data that can help determine what's going on if we could identify how to pick out the right data. Alternatively, if the report identifies that new sensors are needed, then NASA is well-positioned to build and operate them.

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Pirate Streaming Lawsuit Plaintiffs Want Cloudflare Held in Contempt of Court

Successful lawsuits filed by several Israel-based media companies against three pirate streaming sites are proving tricky to wrap up. A US court previously issued orders for all ISPs to block the sites and instructed third-party service providers to cease doing business with them. The plaintiffs say that since Cloudflare is refusing to comply, the company should be held in contempt of court.

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

Late April, three copyright lawsuits filed by United King Film Distribution, DBS Satellite Services, and Hot Communication ended in victory for the plaintiffs, all members of Israel-based anti-piracy group Zira.

After failing to appear, default judgments were entered against pirate streaming sites Israel-tv.com, Israel.tv and Sdarot.tv, with each held liable for $7,650,000 in damages. United States District Judge Katherine Polk Failla also signed an extraordinary permanent injunction that in part required every ISP in the country to block subscriber access to the sites, including any new domains that might be deployed.

While that element was later suspended following a surprise request from the plaintiffs, third-party service providers including Google, Facebook, Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Namecheap, Apple, Amazon and Cloudflare were ordered to stop doing business with the sites, hand over documentation and, where applicable, freeze the defendants’ assets.

Domain Seizures and Third Party Action

We can confirm that several domains previously owned by the sites have been seized, including some that have never been used in connection with the infringing sites and others that were only used as information resources. Many display a message referencing the blocking injunctions while driving traffic to Screen IL, the official streaming portal connected to the plaintiffs.

The extent to which all third-party service operators are complying with the injunction is unknown but in new filings at a New York court this week, the plaintiffs single out Cloudflare as especially problematic.

Cloudflare is “Facilitating The Pirating Activities” of Israel.tv

The plaintiffs say that in response to a subpoena dated February 1, 2022, Cloudflare provided information on March 28, 2022, revealing that a user related to the domain Israel.tv had opened an account on August 24, 2016. After the injunction was handed down, a copy was served on Cloudflare instructing it to stop providing services to the site.

Follow-up emails on May 11 and 19 advised Cloudflare of its alleged non-compliance with the order but according to the plaintiffs, no responses were received. Then the situation began to escalate. On or around May 22, the plaintiffs say that five additional domains “associated with the infringing Website” were created and new accounts were opened with Cloudflare.

“Thus, despite being served with the Order over a month ago, Cloudflare failed to comply therewith. Cloudflare is still providing services that enable Defendants’ infringing Website to operate, and permitted a user (or users) to establish at least five new accounts that configured the Website to use CloudFlare’s services through new domains,” the plaintiffs inform the court.

“Connecting internet users to Israel.tv in this manner benefits Defendants and quite fundamentally assists them in violating the injunction because, without it, users would not be able to connect to Defendants’ site unless they knew the specific IP address for the site.”

“Cloudflare Should Be Held in Contempt of Court”

Describing their motion against Cloudflare as an emergency, the plaintiffs accuse the CDN company of facilitating Israel.tv’s streaming of pirated movies, TV shows, and sports programming, by turning a blind eye to illegal conduct.

In summary they request an order holding Cloudflare in contempt of court for failing to comply with the injunction, an order compelling Cloudflare to comply, plus an award of attorneys’ fees and costs to cover the costs of the motion which, including declarations and other information, runs to dozens of pages.

Cloudflare is yet to appear in the matter to present its case but information and documents obtained by TorrentFreak show that the situation is less than straightforward.

Israel.tv, Cloudflare, and Domain Seizures

Early May, Cloudflare advised the account associated with Israel.tv that in response to a subpoena, it had provided the data requested by the plaintiffs. That correspondence came with a note indicating that Cloudflare would not be shutting down the site. Before that, however, another event may have muddied the waters.

On May 26, the domain registrar of Israel.tv advised that a Court order had been served on domain registry Verisign with instructions to move the domain to GoDaddy. Verisign complied with the order and shortly after a new website with the title ** Zira – This site is monitored by the FBI ** greeted visitors.

Given that the legal processes against Israel.tv and the other sites are being conducted under civil law, the appearance of the official FBI seal on the plaintiffs’ landing page was surprising. Announcing the existence of an FBI investigation seems a little odd and the injunction made no mention of including the FBI seal on Zira’s landing page either.

In any event, Israel.tv was transferred away from its former owner to GoDaddy on May 26 and later displayed the same ‘seized’ banner highlighted previously, i.e one without the FBI seal present. (Side note: Falsely representing FBI endorsement/authorization is a crime carrying up to a year in prison)

This presumably means that the Israel.tv domain at the center of the complaint has been under the plaintiffs’ control since May 26, exactly one month after the April 26 order was issued and several weeks before this week’s motion to hold Cloudflare in contempt of court.

Cloudflare’s position on the new domains that weren’t specifically mentioned in the injunction (but appear to be covered by it) is currently unknown.

Documents in support of the plaintiffs’ contempt motion can be found here (1,2,3,4,5)

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

Last trailer for Jordan Peele’s Nope finally yields details on the plot

“Ain’t nobody gonna get what we gonna get—the money shot.”

Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer star in Jordan Peele's latest film, Nope.

Universal Pictures dropped the final trailer for Jordan Peele's latest film, Nope. We finally learn something about the plot, and yep, it looks like aliens. Maybe. Probably.

As we've reported previously, trailers for Peele's films never reveal too much since much of the pleasure of his movies comes from their frequently bizarre twists. We wouldn't have it any other way. All we knew thus far about Nope is that Daniel Kaluuya (who was nominated for an Oscar for Get Out), Keke Palmer (Hustlers, Black Panther), and Steven Yeun (Minari, Okja) play "residents in a lonely gulch of inland California who bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery."

The first trailer dropped in February—very moody and atmospheric but offering few details. In April, Universal Pictures marked the start of the NBA Playoffs by dropping a brief teaser featuring eight-time NBA All-Star Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors. There were no new details, and the highly photogenic Curry won't be winning an Oscar any time soon, but it was a cute meme-worthy marketing move by the studio.

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Motorola’s latest mid-range phones bring premium display features

The Moto G62 is a smartphone with a 6.5 inch, FHD+ display featuring a 120 Hz refresh rate, while the new Moto G42 is a 4G LTE model with a slightly smaller display that tops out at 60 Hz, but which is an OLED screen. Both are budget or mid-range devi…

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Quantum computer succeeds where a classical algorithm fails

Quantum computers coupled with traditional machine learning show clear benefits.

Image of a chip above iridescent wiring.

People have performed many mathematical proofs to show that a quantum computer will vastly outperform traditional computers on a number of algorithms. But the quantum computers we have now are error-prone and don't have enough qubits to allow for error correction. The only demonstrations we've had involve quantum computing hardware evolving out of a random configuration and traditional computers failing to simulate their normal behavior. Useful calculations are an exercise for the future.

But a new paper from Google's quantum computing group has now moved beyond these sorts of demonstrations and used a quantum computer as part of a system that can help us understand quantum systems in general, rather than the quantum computer. And they show that, even on today's error-prone hardware, the system can outperform classical computers on the same problem.

Probing quantum systems

To understand what the new work involves, it helps to step back and think about how we typically understand quantum systems. Since the behavior of these systems is probabilistic, we typically need to measure them repeatedly. The results of these measurements are then imported into a classical computer, which processes them to generate a statistical understanding of the system's behavior. With a quantum computer, by contrast, it can be possible to mirror a quantum state using the qubits themselves, reproduce it as often as needed, and manipulate it as necessary. This method has the potential to provide a route to a more direct understanding of the quantum system at issue.

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