Month: November 2022

Steigende Mietpreise, zu wenig Neubauten: Jeder Zehnte in Deutschland hat zu wenig Wohnraum

Besonders Familien leben oft in beengten Verhältnissen, bestätigt nun das Statistische Bundesamt. Gleichzeitig wird zu wenig gebaut. Sozialverband fordert verantwortungsvollen Umgang mit Wohnraum.

Besonders Familien leben oft in beengten Verhältnissen, bestätigt nun das Statistische Bundesamt. Gleichzeitig wird zu wenig gebaut. Sozialverband fordert verantwortungsvollen Umgang mit Wohnraum.

Lost 8th century Japanese medical text by Buddhist monk has been found

The surviving 766 prescriptions include recipes for soups, powders, pills, and ointments

Priest in Meditation, 15th century. Possibly the blind Chinese priest Jianzhen (Ganjin in Japanese; 688-763).

Enlarge / Priest in Meditation, 15th century. Possibly the blind Chinese priest Jianzhen (Ganjin in Japanese; 688-763). (credit: Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The practice of herbal medicine in Japan is known as Kampo, and such treatments are often prescribed alongside Western medicines (and covered by the national health care system). The first person to teach traditional Chinese medicine in Japan was an 8th century Buddhist monk named Jianzhen (Ganjin in Japanese), who collected some 1,200 prescriptions in a book: Jianshangren (Holy Priest Jianzhen)'s Secret Prescription. The text was believed lost for centuries, but the authors of a recent paper published in the journal Compounds stumbled across a book published in 2009 that includes most of Jianzhen's original prescriptions.

"Before the book Jianshangren’s Secret Prescription was found, everyone thought it had disappeared in the world," Shihui Liu and his co-authors at Okayama University in Japan wrote. "Fortunately, we found it before it disappeared completely. It has not yet been included in the intangible cultural heritage. As we all know, intangible cultural heritage itself is very fragile. Everything has a process of generation, growth, continuation, and extinction, and the remains of intangible cultural heritage are also in such a dynamic process. We hope to draw more people’s attention to protect many intangible cultures that are about to disappear, including Jianshangren’s Secret Prescription."

Born in what is now Yangzhou, China, Jianzhen became a disciple of Dayun Temple at 14 years old, eventually becoming abbot of Daming Temple. He was also known to have medical expertise—passed down from monks to disciples for generations—and even opened a hospital within the temple. In the fall of 742, a Japanese emissary invited Jianzhen to lecture in Japan, and the monk agreed (although some of his disciples were displeased). But the crossing did not succeed. Nor did his next three attempts to travel to Japan.

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Trump und die wilden Republikaner: Wohin taumeln die USA?

Themen des Tages: Mediale Verirrungen nach dem Raketeneinschlag in Polen. Warum Deutschlands Energieverbrauch sinkt, aber nicht der fossile. Und warum die drohende Republikaner-Blockade in den USA für uns alle bedrohlich werden kann.

Themen des Tages: Mediale Verirrungen nach dem Raketeneinschlag in Polen. Warum Deutschlands Energieverbrauch sinkt, aber nicht der fossile. Und warum die drohende Republikaner-Blockade in den USA für uns alle bedrohlich werden kann.

Meta keeps booting small business owners for being hacked on Facebook

Sophisticated hack hits small business owners ahead of the holidays.

Meta keeps booting small business owners for being hacked on Facebook

Enlarge (credit: carterdayne | E+)

Sheela Lalani is one of many small business owners who depend on social platforms to generate extra holiday revenue. Her Instagram shop with unique, artisan-made children’s clothing—adorably modeled by smiling kids who joyfully twirl in her dresses—has attracted nearly 13,000 followers. She recently rolled out her holiday collection, when suddenly any hope of promoting her new clothing to followers was abruptly dashed when Meta deleted her Instagram account. They also disabled her personal Facebook account, her Facebook business page, and her newest Instagram boutique shop profile.

Lalani was dismayed, but then the situation got worse. Despite the disabled accounts, the PayPal account she linked to her social media pages to buy ads to promote her businesses got hit with a $900 charge. She immediately reached out to PayPal to dispute the charge—and is still waiting for a refund—but she also knew that getting PayPal to intervene wouldn’t fix the larger problem. Someone had bought Facebook or Instagram ads with her PayPal account, and she felt she had no way of reporting this behavior to Meta and stopping any future payments because Meta had disabled all of her accounts.

“This is so unfair for business owners and seems criminal,” Lalani told Ars.

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Google and Amazon Helped the FBI Identify Z-Library’s Operators

Specializing in pirated books, Z-Library billed itself as “the world’s largest library”. The site excelled at making knowledge available to the public. However, based on details laid out in the criminal complaint against two alleged operators, security wasn’t high on the list of priorities. With search warrants directed at Google and Amazon, it wasn’t hard for the FBI to connect the dots.

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

zlibraryA few hours ago, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed the indictment and complaint against two alleged operators of Z-Library.

Following an FBI investigation, the authorities pinpointed Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova as prime suspects. The two were arrested in Argentina and now await potential extradition to the United States.

There’s little doubt that Z-Library helped to distribute millions of copyrighted books but tracking down and then identifying people behind pirate sites can be a challenge. In this case, however, the FBI didn’t have to look very far.

Details laid out in the complaint show that it was fairly straightforward to connect the dots, largely thanks to data provided by Google and Amazon, which led directly to the suspects.

The complaint includes various statements provided by FBI special agent Brett Dohnal, who links various personal email addresses, phone numbers, and other records of Napolsky and Ermakova to the Z-Library operation.

Anton N.

For the investigation, the FBI used search warrants directed at various companies such as Amazon and Google. This showed that the personal information of Anton Napolsky could be linked to Z-Library email addresses and domains in several instances.

For example, Napolsky’s personal mail.ru address was used to register zlibdoms@gmail.com, Napolsky7@gmail.com, and feedback.bookos@gmail.com. His personal phone number was also linked to Z-Library email addresses.

“Google records reflect that a Russian-based telephone number ending in – 2458 (‘Napolsky Phone-1’) was used to register the email Napolsky7@gmail.com as well as the emails donation.zlib@gmail.com, zlibdoms@gmail.com and feedback.bookos@gmail.com,” the complaint reads.

google records

Amazon data corroborate these findings. According to the FBI, Napolsky had two Amazon accounts in his name, using his personal phone number and overlapping street addresses, mostly located in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

With this account, several orders were placed and paid with Amazon gift cards, allegedly donated by Z-Library users.

“One of the accounts is registered with the email address ‘amazon@bookmail.org,’ and the other account, which is registered with Napolsky Personal Email-1, has a lengthy Amazon order history that includes at least 21 orders that were paid for using Amazon.com gift cards that originated as ‘donations’ by users to Z-Library.”

Amazon’s cloud hosting service AWS also linked Napolsky to Z-Library. According to the complaint, his name and email account is connected to the email service that was used by @bookmail.org.

This bookmail service was used by Z-Library to send ebooks to users over email. That was independently confirmed by undercover FBI agents.

“According to records obtained by law enforcement from Amazon, the Simple Email Service for @bookmail.org is connected to an AWS Account ending in 4421, which is registered to the customer ‘Anton Napolsky’ at the email address Napolsky Personal Email-1,” it reads.

Valeriia E.

The complaint also links Valeriia Ermakova to Z-Library, relying on data provided by Google and Amazon. Again, gift card donations from Z-Library users play an important role.

Special agent Dohnal specifically mentions a card that was donated around January 2021. Not much later, the person who made the donation received a message that the card had been received. That message was sent from Z-Library’s official email address zlibsupp@gmail.com.

With help from Amazon, the recipient of the donation was linked to Valeriia Ermakova, her email address, as well as her credit card records.

“According to records obtained by law enforcement from Amazon, the Donation was claimed by an Amazon customer account ending in -1502, registered to customer ‘Valeriia’ at email address kawaiihito22@gmail.com.”

“The account was registered on November 30, 2018, and has payment methods on file, including a Visa and a Mastercard in the name of Ermakova Valeriya with the billing address for each of Fontanka River Embankment 24 18, St. Petersburg, Russia.”

The donations weren’t all used to reinvest in the site, it seems. According to the complaint, Ermakova mostly used her Amazon account to buy clothes and beauty products.

“Since March 20, 2019, the 1502 Account has placed more than 110 orders totaling over $13,628.32, most of them for beauty and apparel products,” the complaint reads, without mentioning how much of this amount can be linked to donations.

In addition to the Amazon data, information provided by Google reveals that Ermakova’s personal email was accessed by an IP-address that also accessed Z-Library Gmail accounts.

“Based on subscription records obtained by law enforcement from Google, the Google account associated with Ermakova Personal Email-1 logged on numerous times from IP addresses that were also used to log into the accounts associated with the email addresses zlibsupp@gmail.com and feedback.bookos@gmail.com, indicating that a single internet access point was used to log in to all three accounts.”

ip-addresses

Collaborating on and Controlling Z-Library

The complaint ends with an overview of evidence that aims to show that Napolsky and Ermakova controlled the Z-Library website and collaborated on this criminal endeavor.

Information obtained through search warrants link Napolsky to the Google Adwords account of Bookos.org and he also received an invoice for the domain registration of Booksc.org, among other things.

Z-Library used project management software Atlassian to manage tasks and projects. Atlassian’s software sent updates and tasks the team assigned, which purportedly shows that the defendants were collaborating on the Z-Library software.

All-in-all, the information suggests that Napolsky and Ermakova didn’t spend much effort concealing their alleged involvement with Z-Library. That said, all of these allegations have yet to be proven in court.

What we can say is that people with the same names as the defendants are surprisingly easy to find online, on social media, and elsewhere.

The criminal investigation of Z-Library also sheds new light on a Sci-Hub issue we reported earlier. At the time, Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan said that the FBI obtained access to her Google account, suggesting that she may have been investigated too, perhaps in a separate case.

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A copy of the complaint, which includes much more information than what we summarized in this article, is available here (pdf)

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

Lilbits: Fedora 37, Qualcomm’s next-gen chip for AR glasses, and Amazon layoffs

Qualcomm’s new solution for AR smart glasses is said to bring big performance improvements while reducing power consumption. It’s also a multi-chip solution rather than a single chip, which allows different bits of silicon to be placed in …

Qualcomm’s new solution for AR smart glasses is said to bring big performance improvements while reducing power consumption. It’s also a multi-chip solution rather than a single chip, which allows different bits of silicon to be placed in different parts of a pair of glasses. So you can expect glasses powered by the chips to […]

The post Lilbits: Fedora 37, Qualcomm’s next-gen chip for AR glasses, and Amazon layoffs appeared first on Liliputing.

Strange black hole merger may have been a rare random encounter

Instead of an orbiting binary, two black holes may have met by chance.

A field of stars with distortion and two black objects at the center.

Enlarge / Simulation of two black holes poised on the verge of a collision. (credit: Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) project)

The advent of gravitational wave detectors—there are now four of them—has produced a steady flow of black hole mergers. As far as we can tell, almost all of them have behaved exactly as we would expect for the sorts of events that we had predicted would produce them: a pair of orbiting black holes that gradually spiral inward until they meet at their mutual center of gravity.

But there was one event that apparently didn't quite match the sorts of signals we would expect. And researchers are now suggesting it was the product of something that should be incredibly rare: two black holes finding each other in the vastness of space. After a single close pass, the two bodies curved around and immediately swung into a collision.

Templates and chirps

Black hole collisions require that the two black holes be close enough to each other to gravitationally interact. Since space is so vast, this would typically mean that they are the products of two massive stars that formed as a binary system. After the stars died and left black holes behind, the two bodies would slowly spiral in toward each other, radiating away energy in the form of gravitational waves as they do.

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Pokémon Scarlet and Violet deliver a fully open world beset by technical problems

Choppy frame rates and animations distract from an entertaining entry.

Winding up to catch a ninth (!) generation of Pokémon.

Enlarge / Winding up to catch a ninth (!) generation of Pokémon. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The Pokémon franchise has been nudging closer and closer to a fully open world since Sword and Shield appeared on the Switch in 2019. Those games and their DLC packs introduced a few dedicated free-range areas where you could roam around mostly at your leisure, but towns and caves and other areas were still strictly linear.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus came even closer. Nearly all of its world map was a free-roaming open area, but the sections were still cordoned off from one another by way of a central hub town. More importantly, progression was still largely linear—the game still introduced you to each area in a set order based on the story quests you had accomplished.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, both coming to the Switch on November 18, finally make the transition to a fully open world. After accomplishing a handful of introductory quests, the vast majority of the world map opens up to you, and you can accomplish most of the game's quests in whatever order you want.

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