Victoria Fox's Blog, page 111

NASA knows what knocked Voyager 1 offline, but it will take a while to fix

Enlarge / A Voyager space probe in a clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1977.Space Frontiers/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Engineers have determined why NASA’s Voyager 1 probe has been transmitting gibberish for nearly five months, raising hopes of recovering humanity’s most distant spacecraft.

Voyager 1, traveling outbound some 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth, started beaming unreadable data down to ground controllers on November 14. For nearly four months, NASA knew Voyager 1 was still alive—it continued to broadcast a steady signal—but could not decipher anything it was saying.

Confirming their hypothesis, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California confirmed a small portion of corrupted memory caused the problem. The faulty memory bank is located in Voyager 1’s Flight Data System (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft. The FDS operates alongside a command-and-control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing.

The FDS duties include packaging Voyager 1’s science and engineering data for relay to Earth through the craft’s Telemetry Modulation Unit and radio transmitter. According to NASA, about 3 percent of the FDS memory has been corrupted, preventing the computer from carrying out normal operations.

Optimism growing

Suzanne Dodd, NASA’s project manager for the twin Voyager probes, told Ars in February that this was one of the most serious problems the mission has ever faced. That is saying something because Voyager 1 and 2 are NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft. They launched 16 days apart in 1977, and after flying by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 is flying farther from Earth than any spacecraft in history. Voyager 2 is trailing Voyager 1 by about 2.5 billion miles, although the probes are heading out of the Solar System in different directions.

Normally, engineers would try to diagnose a spacecraft malfunction by analyzing data it sent back to Earth. They couldn’t do that in this case because Voyager 1 has been transmitting data packages manifesting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros. Still, Voyager 1’s ground team identified the FDS as the likely source of the problem.

The Flight Data Subsystem was an innovation in computing when it was developed five decades ago. It was the first computer on a spacecraft to use volatile memory. Most of NASA’s missions operate with redundancy, so each Voyager spacecraft launched with two FDS computers. But the backup FDS on Voyager 1 failed in 1982.

Due to the Voyagers’ age, engineers had to reference paper documents, memos, and blueprints to help understand the spacecraft’s design details. After months of brainstorming and planning, teams at JPL uplinked a command in early March to prompt the spacecraft to send back a readout of the FDS memory.

The command worked, and Voyager.1 responded with a signal different from the code the spacecraft had been transmitting since November. After several weeks of meticulous examination of the new code, engineers pinpointed the locations of the bad memory.

“The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn’t working,” NASA said in an update posted Thursday. “Engineers can’t determine with certainty what caused the issue. Two possibilities are that the chip could have been hit by an energetic particle from space or that it simply may have worn out after 46 years.”

Voyager 1’s distance from Earth complicates the troubleshooting effort. The one-way travel time for a radio signal to reach Voyager 1 from Earth is about 22.5 hours, meaning it takes roughly 45 hours for engineers on the ground to learn how the spacecraft responded to their commands.

NASA also must use its largest communications antennas to contact Voyager 1. These 230-foot-diameter (70-meter) antennas are in high demand by many other NASA spacecraft, so the Voyager team has to compete with other missions to secure time for troubleshooting. This means it will take time to get Voyager 1 back to normal operations.

“Although it may take weeks or months, engineers are optimistic they can find a way for the FDS to operate normally without the unusable memory hardware, which would enable Voyager 1 to begin returning science and engineering data again,” NASA said.

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Samsung multiplies its operating profit by ten thanks to the

chips

The South Korean company anticipates 4.5 billion quarterly operating profit, 931% more.

Samsung Electronics anticipates strong growth in operating profits for the first quarter thanks mainly to the recovery in the price of memory chips after the collapse of this market. The South Korean manufacturer has beaten the consensus forecasts of analysts after estimating operating profits of 6.6 trillion won, 4.5 billion euros , which represents a growth of 931% compared to the same period of the previous year. The market was expecting a quarterly operating profit of about 5.6 trillion Korean won.

Samsung, which will announce its final results at the end of April, has also benefited from the commercial success of its new family of premium Galaxy S24 mobile phones. The company, which lost global leadership in the smartphone market in the last quarter of 2023 at the hands of Apple, regained the throne in February.

According to data from the consulting firm Counterpoint Research, global sales of the Galaxy 24 family , equipped with AI functions, grew by 8% compared to its predecessor in the first three weeks of availability. For its part, Eugene Investment estimates that the company has raised the average sales price by 30% in the quarter, reaching $340, Reuters reports.

The company, the world’s largest memory chip maker, forecasts revenue growth of 11.4% to 71 trillion Korean won, 48.5 billion euros.

Samsung’s results confirm the recovery of the global memory chip market after the price collapse that began in mid-2022 due to excess post-pandemic inventory and weak demand for technological products. Its competitor SK Hynix has also pointed out in its latest quarterly results the change in the trend of this market.

DRAM memory chip prices have risen 20% in the first quarter compared to the previous quarter, while NAND memory prices have risen between 23% and 28% according to TrendForce.

Samsung has fallen behind its competitor SK Hynx, also South Korean, in the new battle that is opening in the segment of high bandwidth chips (HBM, for its acronym in English) for AI tasks, a market that has exploded thanks to the boom in artificial intelligence. Analysts are confident that Samsung, which expects to launch a new generation of HBM processors in the third quarter, will gradually recover lost ground.

On the other hand, Samsung expands its investment plan in factories in the US . The company plans to more than double the initial investment planned in factories in Texas to $44 billion, WSJ reports.

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Onivia creates a fiber giant with the purchase of the Digi network in Spain

Onivia, the neutral wholesale fiber optic operator, has signed the purchase of the fiber network in Spain from the Romanian Digi, which assumes some 6 million homes covered by FTTH accesses, which added to the 4.1 million that already owned, creates a wholesale giant of almost ten million homes. To close the operation, Onivia reconfigures its shareholding with the departure of the Japanese Daiwa, so its capital remains in the hands of Abrdn (40%), Macquarie (30%) and Arjun Partners (30%).

Onivia, the fiber optic wholesale telecom, has closed the purchase of the fiber network that the Romanian operator Digi has been deploying in Spain in recent years, as EXPANSIÓN announced last Monday, April 1. In total, Onivia acquires about

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The Government will ask for a position on the board of Telefónica

The Minister of Economy announces that Sepi will demand a director upon entering the capital of the group, which will probably be appointed by co-option after an independent member resigns.

The Minister of Economy, Commerce and Business, Carlos Body , assured yesterday that the Government will request a seat on the board of directors of Telefónica within the framework of the mandate made by the Executive to the state holding company Sepi – dependent on the Minis

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Publisher: OpenAI’s GPT Store bots are illegally scraping our textbooks

EnlargeNurPhoto

For the past few months, Morten Blichfeldt Andersen has spent many hours scouring OpenAI’s GPT Store. Since it launched in January, the marketplace for bespoke bots has filled up with a deep bench of useful and sometimes quirky AI tools. Cartoon generators spin up New Yorker–style illustrations and vivid anime stills. Programming and writing assistants offer shortcuts for crafting code and prose. There’s also a color analysis bot, a spider identifier, and a dating coach called RizzGPT. Yet Blichfeldt Andersen is hunting only for one very specific type of bot: Those built on his employer’s copyright-protected textbooks without permission.

Blichfeldt Andersen is publishing director at Praxis, a Danish textbook purveyor. The company has been embracing AI and created its own custom chatbots. But it is currently engaged in a game of whack-a-mole in the GPT Store, and Blichfeldt Andersen is the man holding the mallet.

“I’ve been personally searching for infringements and reporting them,” Blichfeldt Andersen says. “They just keep coming up.” He suspects the culprits are primarily young people uploading material from textbooks to create custom bots to share with classmates—and that he has uncovered only a tiny fraction of the infringing bots in the GPT Store. “Tip of the iceberg,” Blichfeldt Andersen says.

It is easy to find bots in the GPT Store whose descriptions suggest they might be tapping copyrighted content in some way, as Techcrunch noted in a recent article claiming OpenAI’s store was overrun with “spam.” Using copyrighted material without permission is permissable in some contexts but in others rightsholders can take legal action. WIRED found a GPT called Westeros Writer that claims to “write like George R.R. Martin,” the creator of Game of Thrones. Another, Voice of Atwood, claims to imitate the writer Margaret Atwood. Yet another, Write Like Stephen, is intended to emulate Stephen King.

When WIRED tried to trick the King bot into revealing the “system prompt” that tunes its responses, the output suggested it had access to King’s memoir On Writing. Write Like Stephen was able to reproduce passages from the book verbatim on demand, even noting which page the material came from. (WIRED could not make contact with the bot’s developer, because it did not provide an email address, phone number, or external social profile.)

OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood says it responds to takedown requests against GPTs made with copyrighted content but declined to answer WIRED’s questions about how frequently it fulfills such requests. She also says the company proactively looks for problem GPTs. “We use a combination of automated systems, human review, and user reports to find and assess GPTs that potentially violate our policies, including the use of content from third parties without necessary permission,” Wood says.

New disputes

The GPT store’s copyright problem could add to OpenAI’s existing legal headaches. The company is facing a number of high-profile lawsuits alleging copyright infringement, including one brought by The New York Times and several brought by different groups of fiction and nonfiction authors, including big names like George R.R. Martin.

Chatbots offered in OpenAI’s GPT Store are based on the same technology as its own ChatGPT but are created by outside developers for specific functions. To tailor their bot, a developer can upload extra information that it can tap to augment the knowledge baked into OpenAI’s technology. The process of consulting this additional information to respond to a person’s queries is called retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG. Blichfeldt Andersen is convinced that the RAG files behind the bots in the GPT Store are a hotbed of copyrighted materials uploaded without permission.

OpenAI’s terms for the GPT Store explicitly prohibit “using content from third parties without the necessary permissions,” but right now there’s no way for outsiders to check whether their copyrighted material has been uploaded by the developers creating GPTs. That means concerned copyright holders have to go hunting.

Blichfeldt Andersen uses keywords to comb the GPT Store for chatbots that might be using material from his company’s books. He then has to engage each bot he finds in conversation to try to divine whether it has been trained on Praxis titles. It’s tedious work but is getting results: He ha successfully prompted several bots to reproduce specific passages from Praxis textbooks. “You have to trick the language model to reveal itself,” he says.

The lawsuits accusing OpenAI of scraping copyrighted material without permission to train its systems may take years to resolve, but disputes over material uploaded to the GPT Store could have more immediate repercussions. “GPTs change the relationship between OpenAI and its users in an important way for copyright,” says James Grimmelmann, a professor of Internet law at Cornell University. When online platforms allow users to upload their own content—for example, YouTube allowing regular people to publish personal videos—they are subject to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, part of US copyright law that allows copyright holders to file complaints if their intellectual property is disseminated without their permission. So if, say, a YouTuber posts a clip with music in the background that they didn’t license, sometimes music labels will file complaints and get the videos taken down. Since the GPT Store allows developers to upload their work, it is governed by these rules.

“Infringing” bots

Intended as an anti-piracy statute, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act now has outsize importance in copyright enforcement, as it allows copyright holders a relatively zippy way to demand that their work be removed when people put it online without their permission: DMCA takedown notices.

After Blichfeldt Andersen found his first few examples of Praxis textbooks in the GPT Store, he filed DMCA takedown notices to OpenAI. He says the company didn’t respond until he asked the Danish Rights Alliance, which represents the interests of creative workers in Denmark, to help out. The DRA has a hard-charging approach to protecting members’ copyright in the age of AI. Last year it got a collection of over 196,000 books used for generative AI training temporarily taken offline by filing DMCA takedown notices.

Thomas Heldrup, the DRA’s head of content protection and enforcement, often leads its AI crusades. He played a central role in taking on the GPT Store, too, filing complaints on behalf of Praxis that led to OpenAI taking down bots that the publisher considered infringing.

“They have been pretty quick to remove infringing GPTs that we have reported to them,” Heldrup says. Still, he’d like to see the company make changes. “There needs to be better tools at the disposal of rights holders to search for these infringing GPTs,” Heldrup says.

Blichfeldt Andersen says Praxis is considering legal action against OpenAI if conditions on the GPT Store do not improve. He would like to see the company and other AI developers add more robust systems that scan for copyrighted material in uploaded RAG content, similar to the Content ID system in place to protect copyrighted materials from appearing on YouTube. (When asked if it plans to introduce a Content ID–like system, OpenAI did not answer directly, but OpenAI’s Wood tells WIRED it does screen GPTs proactively.)

Startups are already appearing that offer to help AI companies scan for infringing output. Anand Kannappan, CEO and founder of Patronus AI, says its recently launched Copyright Catcher service, designed to detect copyrighted text, could “absolutely” detect potential infringement in custom GPTs.

But although OpenAI has complied with some DMCA takedown requests aimed at its GPT Store, some intellectual property experts believe that the company could argue that the concept of fair use protects some GPTs reliant on copyrighted works.

“I think it would be really hasty to say you can’t upload anything that’s copyrighted to these tools without permission, because that rules out hugely important education and research functions,” says Meredith Jacob, the project director of copyright and open licensing at American University Washington College of Law. She sees the creation of GPTs that help students understand their textbooks as something that could easily be protected by fair use.

Without a simple way for outsiders to see what’s been uploaded in the supplementary files for the GPT Store’s bots, copyright holders worried about infringements either have to trust that OpenAI’s automated systems are catching violations—or take the time-consuming approach of investigating each suspicious bot individually. “It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” says Blichfeldt Andersen.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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Hong Kong monkey encounter lands man in ICU with rare, deadly virus

Enlarge / This photo taken in August 2014 shows macaque monkeys in a country park in Hong Kong. Getty | Alex Ogle

A 37-year-old man is fighting for his life in an intensive care unit in Hong Kong after being wounded by monkeys during a recent park visit and contracting a rare and deadly virus spread by primates.

The man, who was previously in good health, was wounded by wild macaque monkeys during a visit to Kam Shan Country Park in late February, according to local health officials. The park is well known for its conservation of wild macaques and features an area that locals call “Monkey Hill” and describe as a macaque kingdom.

On March 21, he was admitted to the hospital with a fever and “decreased conscious level,” health officials reported. As of Wednesday, April 3, he was in the ICU listed in critical condition. Officials reported the man’s case Wednesday after testing of his cerebrospinal fluid revealed the presence of B virus.

B virus, also known as herpes B virus or herpesvirus simiae, is a common infection in macaques, usually causing asymptomatic or mild disease. Infections in humans are extremely rare, but when they occur, they usually come from macaque encounters and are often severe and deadly. The infection can start out a lot like the flu, but the virus can move to the brain and spinal cord, causing brain damage, nerve damage, and death. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 70 percent of untreated infections in humans are fatal.

Despite the presence of macaques around Hong Kong, the man’s case is the first known B virus infection documented there. The virus was discovered in 1932, and since then only 50 human infections have been documented as of 2019, the CDC reports. Of those 50 people infected, 21 died. The agency notes that in one case, from 1997, a researcher was infected and died after bodily fluid from an infected monkey splashed into her eye. Still, contracting the virus is rare, even among people exposed to macaques. The CDC reports that there are hundreds of reports of macaque bites and scratches each year in US animal facilities, and infections remain very uncommon.

However low the risk, health officials recommend keeping your distance from wild monkeys and not feeding or touching them. If you are bitten or scratched, wash the wound immediately and seek medical attention.

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The Government will request a seat on the board of directors of Telefónica

Regarding the possibility that the State could enter other companies such as Talgo, Corpus has limited itself to underlining the strategic nature of Telefónica.

The Minister of Economy, Commerce and Business, Carlos Body , assured this Thursday that the Government will request a seat on the board of directors of Telefónica within the framework of the mandate made by the Executive to the State Society of Industrial Participations (Sepi) — dependent on the Ministry of Finance– last December to acquire up to 10% of the telecom company chaired by José María Álvarez-Pallete .

However, Corpus has not revealed whether the Executive already has someone in mind to be part of the operator’s board of directors representing Sepi. “It’s not up to me,” he simply stated in an interview in La Sexta.

On the other hand, and regarding the possibility that the State could enter other companies such as Talgo – which has received a public acquisition offer (OPA) by the Hungarian group Ganz-Mavag (Magyar Vagon) -, Corpus has limited itself to underlining the strategic nature of Telefónica.

“I think that the reflection around our strategic companies has less to do with the presence of the State or not. This is more of a discussion from the 90s. I believe that here it is a discussion related to the defense of the strategic interests of Spanish companies . And in this case, in Telefónica, that the State is there. It is a stable, long-term partner, it is good news.” has highlighted.

His comment is in line with that made last week by the Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, when asked about the same issue.

Specifically, Hereu pointed out that the Government has not decided to carry out any operation similar to that of the State’s entry into Telefónica.

On March 25, Sepi notified the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) of the acquisition of a Telefónica share package equivalent to 3.044% of the company’s share capital.

In fact, the Ministry of Finance approved the injection of 500 million euros to Sepi to face the acquisition of Telefónica shares, according to a report by the General Intervention of the State Administration (IGAE) and reported by the newspaper ‘El World’ a few days ago.

The Government’s mandate to Sepi to enter Telefónica’s share capital came as a reaction to the surprising landing of the Saudi operator STC – controlled by the country’s sovereign fund, PIF (Public Investment Fund) – in the operator’s shareholding. last September.

Specifically, STC acquired 9.9% of Telefónica’s share capital , 4.9% through direct shares and the other 5% through financial derivatives, in an operation valued at 2.1 billion euros.

However, market sources have told Europa Press that Sepi would have parked another 2% more of Telefónica’s share capital in financial derivatives and that, in principle, the intention would be to release it “shortly.”

With that additional 2%, the State’s participation in the company would be 5%, a weight in the telecom’s share capital similar to that currently held by CaixaBank (if the participation of CriteriaCaixa is added) and BBVA , two of the members of the so-called ‘stable core’ of Telefónica.

In this context, it is worth remembering that Telefónica will hold its next general meeting of shareholders on April 12 , in which the “re-election, ratification and appointment, if applicable, of counselors.”

Specifically, the re-election of Isidro Fainé, José Javier Echenique, Peter Löscher, Verónica María Pascual and Claudia Sender is planned, as well as the ratification of Solange Sobral and Alejandro Reynal, the latter two appointed on December 13.

The regulations of the Telefónica board stipulate that shareholders representing at least 3% of the company’s share capital can request a supplement to the call by including one or more points on the agenda – although they could not be modifications that would imply appoint advisors–. However, this request must be made within five days of the publication of the call.

Therefore, this five-day period has already expired because the call was published on March 8, so the board will not be able to appoint directors other than those already included in the proposed resolutions on the agenda.

Participation value

On March 25, the day that Sepi revealed its 3.044% stake in Telefónica, the market value of that share package was around 700 million euros , with the company’s price at the close of trading. at 3.99 euros.

However, at the close of this past Wednesday, with Telefónica’s shares at 4.044 euros, that stake has revalued to 707.86 million euros.

Likewise, if the 4,044 euros at which Telefónica’s trading closed this past Wednesday is taken as a reference, acquiring the other 6.956% of the company (until 10% is complete) would have a cost of about 1,618 million euros.

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Masorange plans to invest 4,000 million in 3 years, with more resources for networks

Masorange , the new telecom resulting from the merger of Orange and MásMóvil, plans to invest 4,000 million in the next 36 months, as announced yesterday by Meinrad Spenger , the new CEO of the merged company. This figure represents an average of 1,333 million, which is 12% more than the sum of the investments of Orange (755 million) and MásMóvil (437 million), with a combined investment of 1,192 million in 2023. That is, that figure of 4,000 million is the product of adding to the usual Capex (material investment) of the two companies, -1,200 million for three years represents 3,600 million- the credit line already agreed upon – but not yet drawn down, so it does not count in the debt – 600 million euros for incremental investment in networks .

However, Spenger explained that the new Capex of the resulting firm will be of “higher quality”, since a part of the investment that is allocated to commercial activity in the homes of new clients will be reduced. Each time a new user is acquired, it costs about 500 euros for the operator – a new fiber installation must be carried out and the router changed, along with the technician’s labor – which are included in the Capex, although this Capex is not being used to deploy or modernize infrastructure.

But from now on, Masorange intends to drastically cut this Capex, because when a client switches from one brand of the group to another, it is intended that no change will have to be made – neither in the fiber connection nor in the router, and therefore it will also be saves the cost of the home visit – in the user’s home. Sector sources estimate that for a company with the group’s customer base – 7.3 million broadband customers – and the level of turnover in the Spanish market, it can mean savings of more than 200 million euros per year.

More Capex quality

For this reason, Spenger speaks of a “higher quality” Capex, since those 200 million that are not used in homes can be allocated to new investments in infrastructure. That would mean about 600 million in the next three years, which together with the other 600 million line of credit, would add up to 1,200 million incrementally, that is, almost a third more than under normal conditions.

What Spenger was not so specific about was the concrete fruit of that budget, since he only revealed that he plans to deploy fiber networks in “up to 6 million additional homes” , a figure advanced by EXPANSIÓN on March 12. Starting from the 17 million own homes with which Masorange was born, Spenger specified that it would mean “going from 17 to 23 million more or less”, in the hypothesis of maximum deployment.

Potential fixed network agreement with Movistar

But the new group is also considering deepening its commercial relationship with Telefónica , with co-investment projects in fiber. In this way, in some areas where it would now make sense to deploy as it has more market share, instead of building a second fiber in parallel to that of Movistar, Masorange would pay Telefónica a part of the cost incurred for its deployment. This would allow commercial relations to be reconsidered, so that Masorange could use Telefónica ‘s fiber, almost as if it were its own, paying a much lower wholesale price. This solution is based on the conviction of both parties that there is already too much fiber deployed in Spain and that it is not necessary to make more redundant investments.

90% 5G coverage

That is why analysts believe that a good part of the planned additional investment will be directed more towards 5G networks, the real pending issue for Spanish telecoms , than towards fiber optics.

Regarding its investment in 5G, Masorange announced that it plans to increase 5G coverage to above 90% of the population. The problem with this announcement is that it does not specify what type of coverage these figures will be reached with. Both Orange and MásMóvil (like Movistar) have until now been counting as 5G coverage that obtained with the DSS system, which is a 4G “doped” with software. Therefore, its real 5G coverage figures with the 700 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands – which are predetermined by Europe to provide services with this new technology – are not public.

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Will Sepi at Telefónica follow the path of Frob at CaixaBank?

The public body voted against the bank’s remuneration policy.

The confirmation that the State, through the Sepi, has at least 3% of Telefónica’s capital raises, among other relevant questions, whether the Government will decide to follow the policy of voting against the remuneration of the top management.

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Social media addiction: "Giving up your cell phone is a huge problem for many"

Isabel Brandhorst heads the research group on Internet Usage Disorders and Computer Game Addiction at the University Hospital of Tübingen . She explains how parents can set social media rules that really work.

ZEIT ONLINE : Ms. Brandhorst, almost one in four children in this country is said to spend too much time on social media. At what point should parents start to worry?

Isabel Brandhorst : There is no fixed time criterion for when problematic use begins. A child who spends three hours a day on a screen can be just as addicted as one who spends eight to ten hours a day on it. We speak of addiction when children and young people can no longer control how often and where they use social media.

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