schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure and are waiting "for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow," FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday. An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at Vanderbilt University.

China is developing the "ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing," Wray said at the 2024 Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats. "Its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic." Wray said it was difficult to determine the intent of this cyber pre-positioning which was aligned with China's broader intent to deter the U.S. from defending Taiwan. [...] Wray said China's hackers operated a series of botnets - constellations of compromised personal computers and servers around the globe - to conceal their malicious cyber activities. Private sector American technology and cybersecurity companies previously attributed Volt Typhoon to China, including reports by security researchers with Microsoft and Google. China's Embassy in Washington said in a statement: "Some in the US have been using origin-tracing of cyberattacks as a tool to hit and frame China, claiming the US to be the victim while it's the other way round, and politicizing cybersecurity issues."

Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from Reuters: Aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman is working with SpaceX [...] on a classified spy satellite project already capturing high-resolution imagery of the Earth, according to people familiar with the program. The program, details of which were first reported by Reuters last month, is meant to enhance the U.S. government's ability to track military and intelligence targets from low-Earth orbits, providing high-resolution imagery of a kind that had traditionally been captured mostly by drones and reconnaissance aircraft. The inclusion of Northrop Grumman, which has not been previously reported, reflects a desire among government officials to avoid putting too much control of a highly-sensitive intelligence program in the hands of one contractor, four people familiar with the project told Reuters. 'It is in the government's interest to not be totally invested in one company run by one person,' one of the people said.

It's unclear whether other contractors are involved at present or could join the project as it develops. Northrop Grumman is providing sensors for some of the SpaceX satellites, the people familiar with the project told Reuters. Northrop Grumman, two of the people added, will test those satellites at its own facilities before they are launched. At least 50 of the SpaceX satellites are expected at Northrop Grumman facilities for procedures including testing and the installation of sensors in coming years, one of the people said. In March, Reuters reported that the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, in 2021 awarded a $1.8 billion contract to SpaceX for the classified project, a planned network of hundreds of satellites. So far, the people familiar with the project said, SpaceX has launched roughly a dozen prototypes and is already providing test imagery to the NRO, an intelligence agency that oversees development of U.S. spy satellites.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: With the Framework 16 laptop one of the performance pieces I've been meaning to carry out has been seeing out Linux performs against Microsoft Windows 11 for this AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS powered modular/upgradeable laptop. Recently getting around to it in my benchmarking queue, I also compared the performance of Ubuntu 23.10 to the near final Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on this laptop up against a fully-updated Microsoft Windows 11 installation. The Framework 16 review unit as a reminder was configured with the 8-core / 16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS Zen 4 SoC with Radeon RX 7700S graphics, a 512GB SN810 NVMe SSD, MediaTek MT7922 WiFi, and a 2560 x 1600 display.

In the few months of testing out the Framework 16 predominantly under Linux it's been working out very well. With also having a Windows 11 partition as shipped by Framework, after updating that install it made for an interesting comparison against the Ubuntu 23.10 and Ubuntu 24.04 performance. The same Framework 16 AMD laptop was used throughout all of the testing for looking at the out-of-the-box performance across Microsoft Windows 11, Ubuntu 23.10, and the near-final state of Ubuntu 24.04. [...]

Out of 101 benchmarks carried out on all three operating systems with the Framework 16 laptop, Ubuntu 24.04 was the fastest in 67% of those tests, the prior Ubuntu 23.10 led in 22% (typically with slim margins to 24.04), and then Microsoft Windows 11 was the front-runner just 10% of the time... If taking the geomean of all 101 benchmark results, Ubuntu 23.10 was 16% faster than Microsoft Windows 11 while Ubuntu 24.04 enhanced the Ubuntu Linux performance by 3% to yield a 20% advantage over Windows 11 on this AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS laptop. Ubuntu 24.04 is looking very good in the performance department and will see its stable release next week.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination does not prohibit police officers from forcing a suspect to unlock a phone with a thumbprint scan, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling does not apply to all cases in which biometrics are used to unlock an electronic device but is a significant decision in an unsettled area of the law. The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had to grapple with the question of "whether the compelled use of Payne's thumb to unlock his phone was testimonial," the ruling (PDF) in United States v. Jeremy Travis Payne said. "To date, neither the Supreme Court nor any of our sister circuits have addressed whether the compelled use of a biometric to unlock an electronic device is testimonial."

A three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit ruled unanimously against Payne, affirming a US District Court's denial of Payne's motion to suppress evidence. Payne was a California parolee who was arrested by California Highway Patrol (CHP) after a 2021 traffic stop and charged with possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, fluorofentanyl, and cocaine. There was a dispute in District Court over whether a CHP officer "forcibly used Payne's thumb to unlock the phone." But for the purposes of Payne's appeal, the government "accepted the defendant's version of the facts, i.e., 'that defendant's thumbprint was compelled.'" Payne's Fifth Amendment claim "rests entirely on whether the use of his thumb implicitly related certain facts to officers such that he can avail himself of the privilege against self-incrimination," the ruling said. Judges rejected his claim, holding "that the compelled use of Payne's thumb to unlock his phone (which he had already identified for the officers) required no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking." "When Officer Coddington used Payne's thumb to unlock his phone -- which he could have accomplished even if Payne had been unconscious -- he did not intrude on the contents of Payne's mind," the court also said.

A software glitch in the "ticket in, cash out" (TICO) machines at Star Casino in Sydney, Australia, saw it inadvertently give away $2.05 million over several weeks. This glitch allowed gamblers to reuse a receipt for slot machine winnings, leading to unwarranted cash payouts which went undetected due to systematic failures in oversight and audit processes. The Register reports: News of the giveaway emerged on Monday at an independent inquiry into the casino, which has had years of compliance troubles that led to a finding that its operators were unsuitable to hold a license. In testimony [PDF] given on Monday to the inquiry, casino manager Nicholas Weeks explained that it is possible to insert two receipts into TICO machines. That was a feature, not a bug, and allowed gamblers to redeem two receipts and be paid the aggregate amount. But a software glitch meant that the machines would return one of those tickets and allow it to be re-used -- the barcode it bore was not recognized as having been paid.

"What occurred was small additional amounts of cash were being provided to customers in circumstances when they shouldn't have received it because of that defect," Weeks told the inquiry. Local media reported that news of the free cash got around and 43 people used the TICO machines to withdraw money to which they were not entitled -- at least one of them a recovering gambling addict who fell off the wagon as the "free" money allowed them to fund their activities. Known abusers of the TICO machines have been charged, and one of those set to face the courts is accused of association with a criminal group. (The first inquiry into The Star, two years ago, found it may have been targeted by organized crime groups.)

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has slapped coding boot camp BloomTech -- formerly known as Lambda School -- with several punishments for alleged deceptive business practices. From a report: The business, which claims on its site it will help students land their "dream job" in tech at companies like Amazon, Cisco, and Google, accepted the consent order without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. In an announcement yesterday, the CFPB said it had taken action against BloomTech and its CEO Austen Allred for allegedly not disclosing the true cost of its loans to students and allegedly claiming overoptimistic hiring rates for BloomTech graduates. BloomTech, formerly Lambda School, has operated since 2017 and offers six- to nine-month vocational programs in science and engineering, with a focus on computer technology.

"BloomTech and its CEO sought to drive students toward income share loans that were marketed as risk-free, but in fact carried significant finance charges and many of the same risks as other credit products," said Rohit Chopra, director of the CFPB. With income share loans or income share agreements, BloomTech allowed students to pay tuition later but in exchange had to pay a percentage of their future income, CFPB claimed. The agency alleged that BloomTech explicitly told students that its income share loans (which cost an average of $4k "finance charge" to use) weren't actually loans at all. The CFPB claimed in the settlement order a "significant majority" of students used these loans to finance their education, and alleged each student could end up paying up to $30k of their income to BloomTech to settle the loans. From the CFPB's press release: BloomTech advertised on its website that 71 to 86 percent of students were placed in jobs within six months of graduation, when its non-public reporting to investors consistently showed placement rates closer to 50 percent. Allred tweeted that the school achieved a 100 percent job-placement rate in one of its cohorts, and later acknowledged in a private message that the sample size was just one student.

A jury found Avraham "Avi" Eisenberg guilty on all three counts of fraud and manipulation in a $110 million crypto trade scheme using the Mango Markets platform. Axios: The case was the first known test for a jury to decide whether existing U.S. laws governing fraud and market manipulation apply to the world of decentralized finance (DeFi). The 28-year-old Eisenberg will be held to account for his actions on Oct. 11, 2022, when a series of trades he made intentionally boosted the price of Mango Markets' native token, MNGO, as well as the price of futures contracts.

He used the inflated futures holdings as collateral to borrow other cryptocurrencies on the platform, then quickly withdrew those assets and walked away from his collateral. Eisenberg never disputed the facts of the strategy but contended that what he did was legal and permitted by the DeFi protocol, a principle in the industry known as "code is law." U.S. laws apply to DeFi: "Avraham Eisenberg ran a con," prosecutors said Wednesday, during closing arguments, continuing its momentum from last week. The word "con" was used at least six more times in those remarks.

U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing plans to enter the flying car business in Asia by 2030, looking to tap demand for the fast travel the vehicles could provide in the region's traffic-choked cities. Nikkei: Boeing Chief Technology Officer Todd Citron revealed the plans in an interview with Nikkei. The company is developing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) craft at subsidiary Wisk Aero. The aircraft will adopt autonomous technology, rare among eVTOL craft. The plan is to first obtain certification in the U.S. before expanding into Asia. Details of the Asia business will be finalized in the future, including whether Boeing will sell the aircraft to companies aiming to provide eVTOL transportation services or operate the services itself.

Boeing is currently considering which country in Asia to enter first, including Japan. In Japan, domestic startup SkyDrive and Germany's Volocopter are scheduled to operate air taxi services at the 2025 Osaka World Expo. Boeing opened a research and development base in Nagoya on Thursday. It first established R&D operations in Japan in 2022 but had been renting space from other companies until now.

Researchers in Canada got most of what they were hoping for in the country's 2024 federal budget, with a big boost in postgraduate pay and more funding for research and scientific infrastructure. From a report: "We are investing over $5 billion in Canadian brainpower," said finance minister Chrystia Freeland in her budget speech on 16 April. "More funding for research and scholarships will help Canada attract the next generation of game-changing thinkers."

Postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers have been advocating for higher pay for the past two years through a campaign called Support Our Science. They requested an increase in the value, and number, of federal government scholarships, and got more than they asked for. Stipends for master's students will rise from Can$17,500 (US$12,700) to $27,000 per year, PhDs stipends that ranged from $20,000 to $35,000 will be set to a uniform annual $40,000 and most postdoctoral-fellowship salaries will increase from $45,000 to $70,000 per annum. The number of scholarships and fellowships provided will also rise over time, building to around 1,720 more per year after five years.

"We're very thrilled with this significant new investment, the largest investment in graduate students and postdocs in over 21 years," says Kaitlin Kharas, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, Canada, and executive director of Support Our Science. "It will directly support the next generation of researchers." Although only a small proportion of students and postdoctoral fellows receive these federal scholarships, other funders tend to use them as a guide for their own stipends. Many postgraduates said that low pay was forcing them to consider leaving Canada to pursue their scientific career, says Kharas, so this funding should help to retain talent in the country.

U.S. lawmakers have moved closer to enacting a countrywide ban on TikTok. From a report: Last month, the House of Representatives passed a bill by a wide margin that would ban distribution of TikTok in U.S. unless TikTok's Chinese parent, ByteDance, sells its ownership in the app within 165 days of the law's enactment. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a new proposal that would extend the sale requirement deadline to nine months, with a potential for a 90-day extension -- addressing a key concern of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, that the divestiture timeline was too short.

The revised TikTok ban proposal is tied to a broader bill providing emergency aid for Ukraine and Israel; the House is expected to vote on the measure Saturday, and if it passes would move to the Senate. President Biden has said he will sign the TikTok divest-or-ban legislation into law. On Wednesday evening, Cantwell said she supported the revised TikTok ban bill. "I'm very happy that Speaker Johnson and House leaders incorporated my recommendation to extend the ByteDance divestment period from six months to a year," she said in a statement. "As I've said, extending the divestment period is necessary to ensure there is enough time for a new buyer to get a deal done. I support this updated legislation."

The US Air Force is putting AI in the pilot's seat. In an update on Thursday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) revealed that an AI-controlled jet successfully faced a human pilot during an in-air dogfight test carried out last year. From a report: DARPA began experimenting with AI applications in December 2022 as part of its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program. It worked to develop an AI system capable of autonomously flying a fighter jet, while also adhering to the Air Force's safety protocols. After carrying out dogfighting simulations using the AI pilot, DARPA put its work to the test by installing the AI system inside its experimental X-62A aircraft. That allowed it to get the AI-controlled craft into the air at the Edwards Air Force Base in California, where it says it carried out its first successful dogfight test against a human in September 2023.

Sweden is the newest nation to sign onto NASA's Artemis Accords -- a series of non-binding bilateral arrangements for peaceful and responsible exploration. Space.com reports: During a signing event in Stockholm on Tuesday (April 16), Swedish Minister for Education Mats Persson penned the agreement alongside U.S. Ambassador Erik D. Ramanathan. "By joining the Artemis Accords, Sweden strengthens its strategic space partnership with the U.S. on space covering areas such as Swedish space research and the space industry, which in turn also strengthens Sweden's total defense capability," Persson said in a NASA statement. The event in Stockholm comes just on the heels of Switzerland's signing of the Artemis Accords the day before. Greece and Uruguay were also included in February. Sweden is now the 38th nation to join the accords, which were established in 2020, as the first Artemis moon launch inched closer to reality.

The Accords mirror principles set out in 1967, as part of the Outer Space Treaty to help govern international cooperation space. NASA is using the refreshed agreement as a guideline for the Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17, in 1972. In the agency's statement, NASA administrator Bill Nelson welcomed Sweden to the expanding space club. "Our nations have worked together to discover new secrets in our solar system, and now, we welcome you to a global coalition that is committed to exploring the heavens openly, transparently, responsibly, and in peace," Nelson said, adding, "the United States and Sweden share the same bedrock principles, and we're excited to expand these principles to the cosmos."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The House on Wednesday approved a bill that would limit how the government can purchase data from third parties — legislation that scored a vote after negotiations with a group of GOP colleagues who briefly tanked a vote on warrantless spy powers. Dubbed the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale, the legislation passed 219-199. It requires law enforcement and other government entities to get a warrant before buying information from third-party data brokers who purchase information gleaned from apps. [...] Senior administration officials said the measure would blind U.S. intelligence outfits from getting information easily purchased by foreign intelligence operations.

"In practice, these standards make it impossible for the [intelligence community], law enforcement to acquire a whole host of readily available information that they currently rely on," an administration official said. "Covered customer records as defined in the bill is very broad and includes records pertaining to any U.S. person or indeed any foreigner inside the United States. And as a practical matter, there's often no way to establish whether a particular individual was in the U.S. at a particular time a piece of data was created. Unless you did one thing, which is paradoxically to intrude further into their privacy just to figure out whether you could obtain some data." "It can be impossible to know what's in a data set before one actually obtains a data set," the official continued. "So you'd be barred from getting that which you don't even know."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US AI Safety Institute -- part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—has finally announced its leadership team after much speculation. Appointed as head of AI safety is Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI researcher who pioneered a foundational AI safety technique called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), but is also known for predicting that "there's a 50 percent chance AI development could end in 'doom.'" While Christiano's research background is impressive, some fear that by appointing a so-called "AI doomer," NIST may be risking encouraging non-scientific thinking that many critics view as sheer speculation.

There have been rumors that NIST staffers oppose the hiring. A controversial VentureBeat report last month cited two anonymous sources claiming that, seemingly because of Christiano's so-called "AI doomer" views, NIST staffers were "revolting." Some staff members and scientists allegedly threatened to resign, VentureBeat reported, fearing "that Christiano's association" with effective altruism and "longtermism could compromise the institute's objectivity and integrity." NIST's mission is rooted in advancing science by working to "promote US innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life." Effective altruists believe in "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible" and longtermists that "we should be doing much more to protect future generations," both of which are more subjective and opinion-based. On the Bankless podcast, Christiano shared his opinions last year that "there's something like a 10-20 percent chance of AI takeover" that results in humans dying, and "overall, maybe you're getting more up to a 50-50 chance of doom shortly after you have AI systems that are human level." "The most likely way we die involves -- not AI comes out of the blue and kills everyone -- but involves we have deployed a lot of AI everywhere... [And] if for some reason, God forbid, all these AI systems were trying to kill us, they would definitely kill us," Christiano said.

As head of AI safety, Christiano will seemingly have to monitor for current and potential risks. He will "design and conduct tests of frontier AI models, focusing on model evaluations for capabilities of national security concern," steer processes for evaluations, and implement "risk mitigations to enhance frontier model safety and security," the Department of Commerce's press release said. Christiano has experience mitigating AI risks. He left OpenAI to found the Alignment Research Center (ARC), which the Commerce Department described as "a nonprofit research organization that seeks to align future machine learning systems with human interests by furthering theoretical research." Part of ARC's mission is to test if AI systems are evolving to manipulate or deceive humans, ARC's website said. ARC also conducts research to help AI systems scale "gracefully." "In addition to Christiano, the safety institute's leadership team will include Mara Quintero Campbell, a Commerce Department official who led projects on COVID response and CHIPS Act implementation, as acting chief operating officer and chief of staff," reports Ars. "Adam Russell, an expert focused on human-AI teaming, forecasting, and collective intelligence, will serve as chief vision officer. Rob Reich, a human-centered AI expert on leave from Stanford University, will be a senior advisor. And Mark Latonero, a former White House global AI policy expert who helped draft Biden's AI executive order, will be head of international engagement."

Gina Raimondo, US Secretary of Commerce, said in the press release: "To safeguard our global leadership on responsible AI and ensure we're equipped to fulfill our mission to mitigate the risks of AI and harness its benefits, we need the top talent our nation has to offer. That is precisely why we've selected these individuals, who are the best in their fields, to join the US AI Safety Institute executive leadership team."

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which has been called the "mother of all meme stocks" after it made its stock market debut in late March, announced that its Truth Social platform is moving to launch a live TV streaming platform. Following the news, shares of DJT closed more than 14% lower Tuesday. They ended trading Monday down by more than 18%. CNBC reports: The stock's price has dropped by a whopping 67.7% since Trump Media began trading as a public company on March 26, erasing more than $5 billion in market capitalization. Trump Media's majority shareholder is former President Donald Trump, who holds nearly 60% of its stock.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump Media in a press release said it "has finished the research and development phase of its new live TV streaming platform and will begin scaling up its own content delivery network." The company said it will roll out streaming content in three phases, the first of which will introduce Truth Social's content delivery network for streaming live TV to the app for Android, iOS and web. Phase two will release stand-alone Truth Social streaming apps for phones, tablets and other devices, while phase three will release such apps for home television, Trump Media said. "The streaming content is expected to focus on live TV including news networks, religious channels, family-friendly content including films and documentaries; and other content that has been cancelled, is at risk of cancellation, or is being suppressed on other platforms and services," Trump Media said in its release.

"We're excited to move forward with the next big phase for Truth Social," added CEO Devin Nunes in a statement. "With our streaming content, we aim to provide a permanent home for high-quality news and entertainment that face discrimination by other channels and content delivery service. There is a lot of great content that simply can't find an audience for unjust reasons, and we want to let these creators know they'll soon have a guaranteed platform where they won't be cancelled."