Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Cartoon

vas pup • June 14, 2024 5:58 PM

https://nocamels.com/2024/06/ohio-hospitals-network-using-israeli-ai-platform-in-medical-centers/

“The Ohio-based University Hospitals (UH) network has announced a collaboration
with Israeli healthcare company Aidoc to introduce its AI-driven aiOS platform in 13 of its medical centers and dozens of outpatient locations.

Aidocs says it was chosen as UH searched for a standardized, hyper-accurate AI
platform that could be seamlessly integrated across its network of medical
facilities as it expanded its artificial intelligence capabilities.

UH serves more than one million patients every year at its 21 hospitals, over 50 health centers and outpatient facilities and more than 200 physicians offices in 16 counties in northern Ohio.

The platform will help clinicians with making faster diagnoses, treating acute
conditions, triaging cases and ensuring that all cases that raise concerns are
reviewed by the relevant care team.

“Aidoc’s AI technology assists our radiologists in evaluating various patient
images, allowing our clinicians to access precise, actionable data quickly. The AI technology enables our care teams to be more accurate and efficient leading to even more exceptional care for our patients,” she said.”

Clive Robinson • June 14, 2024 9:42 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

I hope this finds you all in a curious frame of mind.

It appears there are a couple of space events worthy of note

Firstly is the so called “lunar standstill” that only happens every 18.6 years which is also happening at a time of maximum Solar activity. This does not happen at all often.

“The 1st ‘major lunar standstill’ in more than 18 years is about to occur. Here’s how to see it.”

https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/the-1st-major-lunar-standstill-in-more-than-18-years-is-about-to-occur-heres-how-to-see-it

But also of interest with respect to solar activities and solar max, it looks like the Sun is going to flip it’s field of orientation.

“The sun’s magnetic field is about to flip. Here’s what to expect.”

https://www.space.com/sun-magnetic-field-flip-solar-maximum-2024

Bearing in mind all the fun we’ve been having with radio propagation this solar max and the fact we’ve had some near misses with major CME’s (think Carrington event level or higher). It could be an indicator of rather more to come with an increased probability we are going to get hit by a big one so major pretty lights much closer to the equator, amongst other things.

And good news for us “olduns” there is still life in another “old dog”,

“Voyager 1 is back online! NASA’s most distant spacecraft returns data from all 4 instruments”

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1’s design mission was to study Jupiter and Saturn. However it was realised that as a result of the orbit it would have to take it would eventually escape the solar system and go into deep space. Some 46years later it’s “still trecking” and is around 24billion Km away from us. Supprisingly when it was originally planed we would not have been able to communicate with it at that range. So yes it’s a mark up to technological advance in the past half century.

On a sad note, the man who was “Mr Voyager” for half a century Ed Stone died at the age of 88,

https://www.space.com/ed-stone-nasa-voyager-mission-project-scientist-obituary

Clive Robinson • June 15, 2024 8:26 AM

@ xyzzy, ALL,

Nice to see you back.

It’s nice to “be out” but they will get me back to “further experiment on in medieval ways” (and with instruments that look like they were designed for the dungeon or torture chamber). When my name gets back to the top of the list etc…

The scary thing is as they wheel you down the corridor you see these two large swing doors with across them in big red letters the words,

“No Way Out”

Which is not comforting… But it’s better than being wheeled naked into the car park… Yup they used to have a “Mobile Cath-Lab” in the car park and all there was between you and the weather was a thin blanket. Not fun when snow flakes are falling.

So I’m back at home but I did not come alone… I caught some nasty bug that is probably Norovirus the main characteristic being it makes you want to point both ends at the porcelain at the same time. Apparently we have the good people of Norwalk Ohio a half century ago to thank for this problematic virus that survives alcohol sanitisers and most normal cleaning products (it has to be real soap for the whole body and bleach for the environment..).

Apparently in “immunocompromised individuals” you can asymptomatically shed virus for upto three months after the visible symptoms are gone. So you get banned from even a Doctors waiting room just incase you break wind or some such ={

So I should get to see some of summer, that currently is “pouring rain with thunder and lightning” with the other side of the road having a power cut. So typical English summer weather “all tourists welcome just bring your Wellies and Brollies”…

echo • June 15, 2024 9:34 AM

In the UK we’re in the middle of a general election. My brain is disentangling itself from this. There are a few things which have caught my eye over the past week or so which I would like to report on but I also like the idea of starting the Friday session with something more lightweight which can be as deep or entertaining as you see fit. By chance this one just happened to land in my lap. I’m sure some people will complain this is not “SECURITY” but bear with me…

https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1801887356342960605

I don’t know who Milo is talking about here, but since he has expressed pride in British culture, here are the ways in which his outfit violates British traditions.

[THREAD]

Milo is a known far right aligned bad actor who saw his grift spectacularly implode after putting his foot in it. The far right have their schtick. Back in the 1930’s it was quite common for wild propaganda leaflets and snazzy uniforms. History has repeated itself to some degree with the far right embracing the internet and personal styles which reflect modernity and tradition. It’s all wrapped up in themes of authoritarian projection and claims of representing the masses which comes with its own set of contradictions which keeps historians and sociologists and occasionally national security busy.

Derek in his own way seems to be relishing his defenestration of Milo as he tears apart the incongruence between Milo’s narrative and presentation. He also rather adequately makes the point that immigrants like himself not only can be top drawer but make a health contribution to society which counters the kind of rhetoric the far right like to peddle.

Being a lady of a certain age and knowing my public policy well enough I’m not hugely impressed by modern politicians. The gravitas and vision are quite lacking. I’m also fed up seeing a wall of grey or the phony act of going jacket and tie free when they want to get down with the kids. Please for God’s sake develop some sartorial elegance. The classic Savile Row cut is so stuffy. Try the Neopolitan cut and add some colour and different fabrics. As for those £10 chop job schoolboys haircuts and curled shirt collars because you can’t iron them properly? Ugh. I’m not asking for men to look like a chancer winging it between bottles of spirits but please make an effort! And for God’s sake get rid of the dad jeans. I mean, really. C’mon.

Men complain that women can wear whatever we want and get away with it. Yes and no. Hierarchical organisations tend towards the sober and hideous demands although, yes, it is true women have more options in general. Another thing men are hideously bad at is not dressing for the weather. The number of men I see boiling during the summer and freezing during the winter? I wouldn’t give up light summer dresses or fur lined collar hooded quilted coats for the world.

To keep the “security” peeps happy there’s a whole lot in here if you want to make anything of it. It spans everything from authoritarianism to freedom of expression, to status versus blending in, to survival to cost effectiveness, to friend or foe signifiers, and threat and none threat signifiers. The modern suit itself is derived from the military jacket and the model of the corporation is based off military hierarchies. That’s enough to keep anyone busy and it’s really only scratching the surface.

xyzzy • June 15, 2024 3:57 PM

@Clive
Here my CPU is OK, however the outputs have malfunctioned occasioning prodding by doctors and students that look teenage. I think they order various scans to CYA or to keep the machines busy and justify their cost. Insights are not proportional to test costs nor discomfort, IMHO. Especially the poking ones.

Back when the hosts file was very short one of my students found a buffer overflow in login.c and tested it on every computer on the ARPANET. A number of UNIX systems had that flaw, and he wrote a banner of the console to alert the admins. I have looked at many source files for login.c that can be found today and none match my memory of the login name buffer being 80 characters and followed by the password buffer. I would love to find that old file if anyone has seen it. The buffer overflow is not as interesting as the logic flaw that causes (I think I remember) 80 some ‘x’ characters followed by one ‘y’ character to result in root login. The “matching” crypt.c would also be interesting.

Ferritecore • June 15, 2024 4:39 PM

@xyzzy
1) like the handle
2) I remember that login bug heard about it ca. 1978-1980 from a friend who heard on the grapevine. So it got around.
3) Probably about 5 years later I was providing tech support for a version 7 unix class. First exercise was to have everybody login and change their password. That version of the passwd command didn’t have any locking. Had to fix /etc/password in single user mode.

Things have changed for the better, right?

Plugh.

vas pup • June 15, 2024 6:30 PM

https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-us-socom-to-equip-with-uvision-loitering-munitions-1001481004

“Israeli company UVision Air, based in Tzur Yigal, and US company Mistral, have signed a $73.5 million contract for the supply of loitering munitions to the United States Special Operations Command (US SOCOM).

The contract, which will be spread up until 2029, covers the Hero-120SF loitering munition system, spare parts, engineering change proposals, and training. The choice of this loitering munition could be an indication of US military targets and the perception of threats in Washington, since it is designed to hit tanks and other armored vehicles at medium range.

Not a great deal of information is available about the 120SF, but is it based on UVision’s Hero 120, and carries a 4.5 kilogram warhead. It has a range of 60 kilometers, and can stay airborne for up to 60 minutes.
According to the company, the Hero 120 can operate independently, that is, it can identify a target and attack it by itself.”

Clive Robinson • June 15, 2024 9:09 PM

@ xyzzy, Ferritecore, ALL,

Re : Dr’s and their students…

Yup they do look younger every day I see them… And I do see a lot of them and call some friends.

My health is a mix-up of quite a few conditions, many of which pull in opposite directions so I end up trying to walk several medical “tight-ropes blindfold” and do fall off quite regularly. Sometimes there is a safety net I can climb out of by myself, other times it’s a “blues&twos” to “resuscitation”. Which is that bit of Accident and Emergancy which is oft regarded as “The last bus stop before journeys end” down in the mortuary.

It’s got to the point where I know many of the consultants by name, but the nurses and porters I know not just by name but often their children and in one or two cases grand children as well. Because we chat, not just in hospital but when we meet in town and I encourage the children to study hard in STEM especially the girls (I used to be an “Engineering STEM Advocate” visiting Schools etc so still fly the flag when I can).

But for my sins my own Dr considers me an “expert patient” as do quite a few of the consultants. The reason is actually much of medicine is actually mechanics, instrumentation and other engineering. That is if you have knowledge of quite a chunk of fundamental engineering you can end up knowing things even consultants wish they knew more about.

So I get “picked” by consultants as the patient to talk to the students and be the “test subject”. Also I’ve “shy and granular veins” which means getting blood out of me is not for the nervous or fainthearted. I’ve got so used to it I can tell without looking just by the type of pain if they’ve got the needle tip in and the cannula likely to go up the vein. So guess who gets used as the practice dummy…

But onto more important things “login.c” was a real problem back in the 1980’s when I was what you might call an “ethical hacker” or “White Hat” before Maggie Thatcher tried to have me falsely arrested and charged (a fate I warned Robert Schifreen and Steve Gold about before Maggie succeeded in doing it to them).

The problem was that there were several sources of login.c some came down the AT&T tree, others BSD, whilst others were “we can do it better our way” that actually did it worse (hence later the “Don’t roll your own” meme).

The big problem as such was not login.c but the library code and the code for the TTY devices and people not reading documentation properly.

There was a rather nice work station made for ICL by Three Rivers and called the PERQ that used an engine not to dissimilar to the UCSD P-System Byte-Code Interpreter. Written to run on it in the UK was PNX which was kind of AT&T Sys7 Unix with differences.

It took me all of about a half hour to find out that I could “login” without a “login” even when the SysAdmin (Steve Crook) had tried his best to “lock us out”. The reason we wanted in was that it was the first “Standalone Graphical Workstation” and it had a really good game of Pac-Man. It was either the fifth or sixth major computer system I’d worked out how to “bust the login” including some VAX systems, Prime systems including BT-Gold and a really badly designed system used by British Telecom for something called “Prestel” which was based on the European “ViewData standard”…

I was still “busting logins” in the 1990’s when virtual TTY’s on personal systems became popular. In more than one, you could login pullup say the sixth virtual terminal and type in a shell script or command, but not hit the enter key to run it. You then switched back to the first virtual screen and logged out. Your shell script got left in limbo, not erased. So when the next person logged in the virtual terminal software sent a carriage return to all the TTYs so the script got executed. You would be surprised how many “set user” shell progs ended up in my hidden directory thus enabling me to become a specific user but not have it logged in the normal way…

Whilst @nix buffer overflow in library code became well known, less well known long after that was that Fortran also had character / line length issues due to assumptions about “punched cards” see Hollerith data type pre Fortran 77 and through 90

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/805-4940/6j4m1u7pv/index.html

All of the failings I found had one very basic root cause “the price of memory”. At one point when people were earning well less than $100/week the price of RAM was over $5/word. So any trick that would reduce a memory foot print was used and why Y2K happened and all sorts of other “time” and “date” related issues as well as buffer overflow and the fact that “free” did not clear out malloced memory so you could pass data at a lower layer than most high level programmers understood or would even realise so would sail through a code review or even security code audit. Thus you could pass say a Crypto-key out of a sub without it going via the stack frame or via dangling pointers that auto-tools pick up.

The thing is very nearly nobody ever went back to fix theses “known issues” and they became forgotten or not even known a few years after. Which is why Y2K was a “blood bath” of consultants fees. One or two organisations like the UK British Gas fixed their potential Y2K issues a half decade before hand and at minimal cist and disruption. Others “B cough cough T” got well and truly nadgered in places you would not expect. The worst issues were with “embedded systems” especially some “ICS” and “RTU” used in SCADA and many many petrochem sites including Oil Rigs. As for the Hotel and Entertainment Industry with the likes of electronic locks, room environment systems, mini-bars and similar well finding one that did not have time and date issues was about as close to impossible as you can imagine. The reason “battery life” they needed very low power microcontrolers which were in some cases still 4bit but they all had very small amounts of CMOS RAM or even just a hundred bytes in the MCU chip.

Sadly all of these ‘issues’ still turn up in modern software and systems some of which control the power in your home and others to keep your heart beating safely etc.

But over a half century ago NASA put the Voyeger probes into space and they are still working today because the engineers of the time “thought things through”…

ResearcherZero • June 15, 2024 9:18 PM

Machine Learning helped identify abandoned farmland.

‘https://energy.wisc.edu/news/abandoned-farmlands-could-play-role-fighting-climate-change-new-study-shows-exactly-where-they

–

‘https://spectrum.ieee.org/magnetic-fields-in-electric-cars-wont-kill-you

(or turn your children into rabbits)

Clive Robinson • June 15, 2024 9:48 PM

@ vas pup, ALL,

With regards,

Electronic skin could give robots a sense of touch

I gave robots “touch” via preasure back in the 1980’s while doing stuff at what was North London Polytechnic (now Uni) based on earlier work I did at Kingston Polytechnic (now uni). We even developed a product that was a “robot arm” for the BBC model B computer.

Unfortunately back then nobody wanted to pay the money.

The original version used the “Hundred Ohm Foam” that DIL IC’s were often shipped on. It was deliberately conductive to take static away from the pins (which aluminium foil did not always do).

Basically it was loaded with “carbon granules” and just like the “carbon granule microphone’ in telephones it’s impedance changed with pressure. So you could use it as part of what to an A2D converter would look like a potentiometer.

Whilst it was good enough as a prototype and demonstrator it had issues of short life and reliability.

Some may remember the “Poke the dead flesh” rubber keyboards that were a standard feature on low cost “Home Computers” in the 1980’s like the Sinclair ZX80/81 and Spectrum.

Well they worked by using a carbon dust loaded synthetic rubber pad ontop of a couple of interleaved finger contacts. Again they were pressure sensitive and you could make quite small preasure sensor areas of around 4mm square fairly easily. You could also using Kapton based flexible PCB material make small arrays of sensors that were flexible.

I’ve mentioned some of this before on this blog.

However humans actually do not really use touch by pressure as it’s highly unreliable as far as the way more important grip is concerned.

Humans use “slip”. Think about picking up a wet glass with vertical sides a common enough task to be considered “every day activity” likewise plates and other “washing up” / “doing the dishes”.

Preasure is not going to tell you if you have sufficient grip to hold but not to crush.

Measuring “slip” does.

Making “slip sensors” is a very different game and the sensors shown in that video won’t do it.

I wrote a paper on how to make slip sensors for this back in the 1980’s but we could not find a journal that was interested enough to publish it. We assumed at the time because the industry was not into “touch sensors” of any kind, and the very few who even considered them were all hooked up on using pressure sensors and grab style lifts that effectively “en-caged” objects like eggs and fruit. So there was nobody around who could properly “peer review”.

And by the looks of it there still is not…

Clive Robinson • June 15, 2024 10:27 PM

@ ResearcherZero

That IEEE article on EV Magnetic fields can not have been peer-reviewed and the author apparently knows nothing about what they were writing.

Not unexpected in an MSM article but in the journal of “The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers”(IEEE) it’s embarrassing.

But lets get something understood yes given sufficient energy both electric and magnetic fields can harm and kill you. But the energies involved you are very unlikely to ever come into contact with, especially magnetic fields.

However static magnetic fields can harm if not kill you through objects being used kinetically. Spin a DC motor or generator up without load and they have been known to produce shrapnel that goes quite some distance.

Likewise those warnings about metal objects inside you and NMRI machines that put you inside a massive magnetic field made by superconductors then hit you with high levels of Electromagnetic energy to make all the OH parts of molecules in water and lipids jump and oscillate. Can cause metal objects inside you to move and accelerate if not properly restrained.

But EV’s don’t actually generate magnetic fields outside their motors to any great extent. The reason is “efficiency” such a field is as a result of a badly inefficient design.

You would be in more danger from the inefficient motors in older electric trains, milk floats and golf carts. And I’ve never heard of any injuries or deaths that way.

Oh and normal electric motors are incapable of producing “ionising radiation” ask a physicist if you want all the gory details and equations so you can check yourself.

But put simply they don’t run at speeds above that of visible light, and even when they occasionally “arc” they generally don’t get electrons to move fast enough to smash into things with the required energy.

As for turning children into rabbits “feed them carrots” 😉 Or what’s the old movie memes about Dr Frankenstein tickling dead things with lightning in drafty old castle dungeons.

ResearcherZero • June 16, 2024 1:38 AM

Who invents all these ridiculous stories?

‘https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2024/06/11/new-report-refutes-33-false-claims-about-solar-wind-and-electric-vehicles/

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is an American conservative think tank.
A pay-to-play service that churns out misinformation:
Founded by the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, Geo Group, Altria and wealthy businessmen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/climate/texas-public-policy-foundation-climate-change.html

“deliberately misleading sources …funded by fossil-fuel producers”

‘https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/sabin_climate_change/217/

–

Somewhere in the offices of nuclear and fossil fuel firms:

“Quick, get me some hippies!”

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-15/illawarra-declared-as-australias-fourth-offshore-wind-zone/103979732

Offshore wind farms do not kill whales.

“That’s brought down the ire of many people opposed to offshore wind on small animal welfare organizations”
https://time.com/6254785/whale-deaths-offshore-wind-power/

“We know what’s killing right whales: collisions with ships and boats and entanglements in fishing gear.”

‘https://www.clf.org/blog/offshore-wind-and-right-whales-can-coexist-heres-how/

The paper does not exist. It is deliberate misinformation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-07/editor-blasts-fake-study-linking-whale-deaths-to-wind-farms/103069922

ResearcherZero • June 16, 2024 2:00 AM

@Clive Robinson

Death by electric cars is a popular talking point amongst the coastal surfer culture.
They can’t really explain the concept, but they do try to explain it. They need a little help with what they are trying to say, but is generally the fear of electromagnetic waves.

–

Microsoft is pivoting to make security a top priority.

‘https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/microsoft-in-damage-control-mode-says-it-will-prioritize-security-over-ai/

Winter • June 16, 2024 4:04 AM

@Clive

That IEEE article on EV Magnetic fields can not have been peer-reviewed and the author apparently knows nothing about what they were writing.

Research news articles are never peer reviewed. So I think you are right and this news article was not peer reviewed.

I don’t see any errors. The author just relates the consensus that field strengths below the safety norms are for all we know, uh, safe. A conclusion that does not surprise me.

echo • June 16, 2024 6:24 AM

Some people were floating on a sea of privilege in the 1970’s and with the right connections floated along the golden path and ended their days feted and celebrated. Plenty of women couldn’t even get a foot on the first rung. As for the kids graduating today the thinning end of the demographic is busy pulling the ladder up. The situation is so bad the UK cannot even get enough teachers to teach in every subject for the next generation of children.

The current hopefully soon to be thrown out government is behaving like before the Sex Discrimination Act and Race relations Act let alone the Human Rights and Equality Act. Women were those the most impacted by austerity and the government more recently strung women along with public policy consultations only to drop them at the last moment wasting three years of effort. Brand new buildings are being built without regard to the Public Sector Equality duty at the planning stage so they have no access for disabled people, and they’re trying to force transgender children into debunked healthcare provision which is an internationally recognised form of torture.

I’ll let people read between the lines what I’m thinking. Knock yourself out on these…

https://osf.io/preprints/osf/uhndk
Preprint
Critically Appraising the Cass Report: Methodological Flaws and Unsupported Claims

https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2024/05/lgbtiq-communities-and-the-anti-rights-pushback-5-things-to-know
UN Women
LGBTIQ+ communities and the anti-rights pushback: 5 things to know

SpaceLifeForm • June 16, 2024 7:54 AM

GoFaster stripes

The fix is to slow down, but Intel does not want to say that.

‘https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/14/24178751/intel-raptor-lake-crash-fix-etvb-not-yet

JonKnowsNothing • June 16, 2024 9:45 AM

@Clive, All

re: USA Standard Summer COVID Wave 2024

USA California

We are now seeing the “normalized standard” COVID wave for summer. People are getting sick, they are going to hospital, they are sometimes getting treatments and sometimes not. Death rate in Los Angeles California is ~1 per day.

This has all been normalized by [fill in the blank]. Masks are getting to be slightly more popular but the majority are NoMask. Something happens though after they’ve had the current variants (1): they get more MaskOn.

An interesting aspect in the reporting has to do with the way “graphs” are used in the MSM reports. These graphs are produced by the CDC but it is the MSM that decides how to display them. All graphs are intended to hide something and it’s looking for the something that is interesting.

In this case it is 2 versions of the same graph, printed in the same MSM and created by the CDC. (2)

Graph1 with the longer date range is the interesting graph. What the CDC wants you to focus on are the 2 peaks in the graph and the hopefully you won’t notice the uptick for June 2024.

What is of greater interest though are the troughs in the graph; the low points of infection, the points of least-likelihood of getting COVID.

Low Point 2: May 2024

At no time between LP1: June 2023 and LP2: May 2024 does the infection rate decline below LP1. COVID remains high throughout the year and does not decline for 12 months.

The next bit of interest is the time between swales.

Nov 2023 – May 2024 = 6 months

For 10 months out of 12, COVID is very near you. There are only 1-2 months where infection is less likely.

I will leave it to those interested to compare this to Graph2.

===

1) Current Variants in USA

LB.1

2)

CDC Waste Water COVID Virus Level

Graph1:

ht tps://ww w.lat imes.com/calif rnia/story/2024-06-12/covid-rising-in-california-as-new-subvariants-make-mark

Graph2:

htt ps://w ww.la times.com/california/story/2024-06-15/l-a-county-covid-cases-hospitalizations-rise-amid-summer-uptick

sevastopol • June 16, 2024 10:14 AM

Moderation sucks here big time!

Move your ass, “moderator”, if you want that people come here to share the latest security/privacy news!