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AI-Assisted Fake Porn Is Here and We’re All Screwed

New submitter samleecole shares a report from Motherboard: There’s a video of Gal Gadot having sex with her stepbrother on the internet. But it’s not really Gadot’s body, and it’s barely her own face. It’s an approximation, face-swapped to look like she’s performing in an existing incest-themed porn video. The video was created with a machine learning algorithm, using easily accessible materials and open-source code that anyone with a working knowledge of deep learning algorithms could put together. It’s not going to fool anyone who looks closely. Sometimes the face doesn’t track correctly and there’s an uncanny valley effect at play, but at a glance it seems believable. It’s especially striking considering that it’s allegedly the work of one person — a Redditor who goes by the name ‘deepfakes’ — not a big special effects studio that can digitally recreate a young Princess Leia in Rouge One using CGI. Instead, deepfakes uses open-source machine learning tools like TensorFlow, which Google makes freely available to researchers, graduate students, and anyone with an interest in machine learning. Anyone could do it, and that should make everyone nervous. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AI-Assisted Fake Porn Is Here and We’re All Screwed

Almost All Bronze Age Artifacts Were Made From Meteorite Iron

dryriver shares a report from Science Alert: According to a new study, it’s possible that all iron-based weapons and tools of the Bronze Age were forged using metal salvaged from meteorites. The finding has given experts a better insight into how these tools were created before humans worked out how to produce iron from its ore. While previous studies had found specific Bronze Age objects to be made from meteoric metal — like one of the daggers buried with King Tutankhamun — this latest research answers the question of just how widespread the practice was. Albert Jambon, from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, studied museum artifacts from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and China, analyzing them using an X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer to discover they all shared the same off-world origins. “The present results complementing high quality analyses from the literature suggest that most or all irons from the Bronze Age are derived from meteoritic iron, ” writes Jambon in his published paper. “The next step will be to determine where and when terrestrial iron smelting appeared for the first time.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Almost All Bronze Age Artifacts Were Made From Meteorite Iron

‘Watershed’ Medical Trial Proves Type 2 Diabetes Can Be Reversed

dryriver writes: For those suffering from type 2 diabetes, there is good news. Nearly half of the participants in a watershed trial of a new diabetes treatment were able to reverse their affliction. The method is quite simple — an all liquid diet that causes participants to lose a lot of weight, followed by a carefully controlled diet of real solid foods. Four times a day, a sachet of powder is stirred in water to make a soup or shake. They contain about 200 calories, but also the right balance of nutrients. If the patient can keep away from other foods long enough, there is a chance of reversing type 2 diabetes completely. Prof Roy Taylor, from Newcastle University, told the BBC: “It’s a real watershed moment. Before we started this line of work, doctors and specialists regarded type 2 as irreversible. But if we grasp the nettle and get people out of their dangerous state (being overweight), they can get remission of diabetes.” However, doctors are not calling this a cure. If the weight goes back on, then the diabetes will return. The trial only looked at people diagnosed with diabetes in the last six years. Doctors believe — but do not know with absolute certainty yet — that in people who have had the affliction much longer than that, there may be too much permanent damage to make remission possible. The trial results have been published in the Lancet medical journal. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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‘Watershed’ Medical Trial Proves Type 2 Diabetes Can Be Reversed

Man Hacks Jail Computer Network To Get Inmate Released Early

An anonymous reader writes: A Michigan man pleaded guilty last week to hacking the computer network of the Washtenaw County Jail, where he modified inmate records in an attempt to have an inmate released early. To breach the jail’s network, the attacker used only spear-phishing emails and telephone social engineering. The man called jail employees and posed as local IT staffers, tricking some into accessing a website, and downloading and installing malware under the guise of a jail system upgrade. Once the man (Konrads Voits) had access to this data, investigators said he accessed the XJail system, searched and accessed the records of several inmates, and modified at least one entry “in an effort to get that inmate released early.” Jail employees noticed the modification right away and alerted the FBI. The man as arrested a month later and is now awaiting sentencing (maximum 10 years and a fine of up to $250, 000). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Man Hacks Jail Computer Network To Get Inmate Released Early

Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years

If you tried to start a car that’s been sitting in a garage for decades, you might not expect the engine to respond. But a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft successfully fired up Wednesday after 37 years without use. NASA announces: Voyager 1, NASA’s farthest and fastest spacecraft, is the only human-made object in interstellar space, the environment between the stars. The spacecraft, which has been flying for 40 years, relies on small devices called thrusters to orient itself so it can communicate with Earth. These thrusters fire in tiny pulses, or “puffs, ” lasting mere milliseconds, to subtly rotate the spacecraft so that its antenna points at our planet. Now, the Voyager team is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980. “With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years, ” said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years

Two Technologists Create Black Metal Album Using An AI

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Outline: Coditany of Timeness” is a convincing lo-fi black metal album, complete with atmospheric interludes, tremolo guitar, frantic blast beats and screeching vocals. But the record, which you can listen to on Bandcamp, wasn’t created by musicians. Instead, it was generated by two musical technologists using a deep learning software that ingests a musical album, processes it, and spits out an imitation of its style. To create Coditany, the software broke “Diotima, ” a 2011 album by a New York black metal band called Krallice, into small segments of audio. Then they fed each segment through a neural network — a type of artificial intelligence modeled loosely on a biological brain — and asked it to guess what the waveform of the next individual sample of audio would be. If the guess was right, the network would strengthen the paths of the neural network that led to the correct answer, similar to the way electrical connections between neurons in our brain strengthen as we learn new skills. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Two Technologists Create Black Metal Album Using An AI

The Underground Uber Networks Driven by Russian Hackers

Joseph Cox, reporting for DailyBeat: Uber’s ride-sharing service has given birth to some of the most creative criminal scams to date, including using a GPS-spoofing app to rip off riders in Nigeria, and even ginning up fake drivers by using stolen identities. Add to those this nefariously genius operation: Cybercriminals, many working in Russia, have created their own illegitimate taxi services for other crooks by piggybacking off Uber’s ride-sharing platform, sometimes working in collaboration with corrupt drivers. Based on several Russian-language posts across a number of criminal-world sites, this is how the scam works: The scammer needs an emulator, a piece of software which allows them to run a virtual Android phone on their laptop with the Uber app, as well as a virtual private network (VPN), which routes their computer’s traffic through a server in the same city as the rider. The scammer acts, in essence, as a middleman between an Uber driver and the passenger — ordering trips through the Uber app, but relaying messages outside of it. Typically, this fraudulent dispatcher uses the messaging app Telegram to chat with the passenger, who provides pickup and destination addresses. The scammer orders the trip, and then provides the car brand, driver name, and license plate details back to the passenger through Telegram. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Underground Uber Networks Driven by Russian Hackers

DNA Analysis Finds That Yetis Are Actually Bears

schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: University of Buffalo biologist Charlotte Lindqvist and her international team in Pakistan and Singapore provided the first strong evidence that presumed yetis are actually bears. They published their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Tuesday. Icon Film secured nine samples that purported to be genuine yeti artifacts, and Lindqvist gathered 15 samples from known bear populations. By sequencing mitochondria from all these sources, she and her fellow researchers were able to determine that all but one of the yeti artifacts actually came from local bears. That last sample was from a dog. They also figured out that Himalayan brown bears split off from the rest of the regional bear population several thousand years ago, which is why they’re so genetically distinct from most other brown bears. Living in geographic isolation for so long has separated them from other Asian brown bears, and even from their relatives on the nearby Tibetan plateau. They even look different. But prior to Lindqvist’s work, it wasn’t clear just how long Himalayan bears had been on their own. Researchers will need higher-quality samples to figure out the whole picture, but even this small step is major for a species that’s hardly been studied. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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DNA Analysis Finds That Yetis Are Actually Bears

Sensitive Personal Information of 246,000 DHS Employees Found on Home Computer

The sensitive personal information of 246, 000 Department of Homeland Security employees was found on the home computer server of a DHS employee in May, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY. From the report: Also discovered on the server was a copy of 159, 000 case files from the inspector general’s investigative case management system, which suspects in an ongoing criminal investigation intended to market and sell, according to a report sent by DHS Inspector General John Roth on Nov. 24 to key members of Congress. The information included names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth, the report said. The inspector general’s acting chief information security officer reported the breach to DHS officials on May 11, while IG agents reviewed the details. Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke decided on Aug. 21 to notify affected employees who were employed at the department through the end of 2014 about the breach. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sensitive Personal Information of 246,000 DHS Employees Found on Home Computer

Tom Baker Returns To Finish Shelved Doctor Who Episodes Penned By Douglas Adams

Zorro shares a report from The Register: The fourth and finest Doctor, Tom Baker, has reprised the role to finish a Who serial scuppered in 1979 by strike action at the BBC. Shada, penned by Hitchhiker’s Guide author Douglas Adams, was supposed to close Doctor Who’s 17th season. Location filming in Cambridge and a studio session were completed but the strike nixed further work and the project was later shelved entirely for fear it might affect the Beeb’s Christmas-time productions. The remaining parts have been filled in with animation and the voice of 83-year-old Baker, although he also filmed a scene. BBC Worldwide has now released the episodes, which interweave the 1979 footage with the new material to complete the story. “I loved doing Doctor Who, it was life to me, ” Baker told the BBC of his tenure as the much-loved Time Lord. “I used to dread the end of rehearsal because then real life would impinge on me. Doctor Who… when I was in full flight, then I was happy.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tom Baker Returns To Finish Shelved Doctor Who Episodes Penned By Douglas Adams