Researchers have devised an attack that forces Apple’s Safari browser to divulge passwords, Gmail message content, and other secrets by exploiting a side channel vulnerability in the A- and M-series CPUs running modern iOS and macOS devices.

iLeakage, as the academic researchers have named the attack, is practical and requires minimal resources to carry out. It does, however, require extensive reverse-engineering of Apple hardware and significant expertise in exploiting a class of vulnerability known as a side channel, which leaks secrets based on clues left in electromagnetic emanations, data caches, or other manifestations of a targeted system. The side channel in this case is speculative execution, a performance enhancement feature found in modern CPUs that has formed the basis of a wide corpus of attacks in recent years. The nearly endless stream of exploit variants has left chip makers—primarily Intel and, to a lesser extent, AMD—scrambling to devise mitigations.

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A team of scientists has used multiple space- and ground-based telescopes, including the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, to observe an exceptionally bright gamma-ray burst, GRB 230307A, and identify the neutron star merger that generated the explosion that created the burst. Webb also helped scientists detect the chemical element tellurium in the aftermath of the explosion.

Other elements near tellurium on the periodic table – like iodine, which is needed for much of life on Earth – are also likely to be present among the kilonova’s ejected material. A kilonova is an explosion produced by a neutron star merging with either a black hole or with another neutron star.

“Just over 150 years since Dmitri Mendeleev wrote down the periodic table of elements, we are now finally in a position to start filling in those last blanks of understanding where everything was made, thanks to Webb,” said Andrew Levan of Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, lead author of the study.

While neutron star mergers have long been theorised as being the ideal 'pressure cookers' to create some of the rarer elements substantially heavier than iron, astronomers have previously encountered a few obstacles to obtaining solid evidence.

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Fascism is still on the rise:

Members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) gathered in the eastern German city of Magdeburg Friday to begin their annual party conference, which will last until Sunday.

The party is currently polling well nationally, between 18% and 22%, as establishment parties struggle with voter resentment. The party's numbers are roughly twice what they were during 2021 federal elections. In Magdeburg, leadership implored members not to let up.

Party Co-Chair Tino Chrupalla said the numbers reflect a new "harmony" among leadership. "We will carry this harmony into the next election," he said, as he greeted some 600 delegates in attendance.

Chrupalla referenced upcoming state elections in Bavaria and Hesse, and voiced confidence about the broader prospect of growing political popularity, saying, "Next year we can win Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg" — all states in the east of the country where AfD has tended to perform best.

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The limits of human adaptability

Scientists and other observers have become alarmed about the increasing frequency of extreme heat paired with high humidity.

In the Middle East, Asaluyeh, Iran, recorded an extremely dangerous maximum wet-bulb temperature of 92.7 F (33.7 C) on July 16, 2023 – above our measured upper limit of human adaptability to humid heat. India and Pakistan have both come close, as well.

People often point to a study published in 2010 that theorized that a wet-bulb temperature of 95 F (35 C) – equal to a temperature of 95 F at 100% humidity, or 115 F at 50% humidity – would be the upper limit of safety, beyond which the human body can no longer cool itself by evaporating sweat from the surface of the body to maintain a stable body core temperature.

It was not until recently that this limit was tested on humans in laboratory settings. The results of these tests show an even greater cause for concern.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.studio/post/283413

My wife works in a restaurant, and the power-tripping manager has instituted a new policy where all shift changes must be approved by management. I think that is reasonable enough, but they're also asking the originally-scheduled employee why they are switching shifts, then approving or denying based on the answer.

For example, her coworker (Tom) wanted Monday afternoon off, and Harry agreed to cover the shift. The manager asked Tom why he wanted Harry to work for him, and Tom said, "I have a softball game." Manager denied the shift change because it was "unnecessary".

Is this legal? I feel like if you're able to find someone to cover your shift, you don't owe management any explanation why you need the time off. How should my wife approach this situation? Colorado, USA BTW.

A little more than 15 years ago, astronaut Garrett Reisman was among a crew of seven who launched into orbit aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. The shuttle remained attached to the Space Station for nearly two weeks, but when the orbiter departed, it left Reisman behind for an extended stay.

During his time at the station, Reisman would often pass through the Harmony module, which serves as a corridor connecting laboratory modules built by NASA and the European and Japanese space agencies. Sometimes, he would look up and see a small placard that said, “To CAM.” The arrow, however, pointed out into space.

“When I was up there on the space station, there was still the sign that says, ‘To CAM,’” Reisman said in an interview. “But there’s just a closed hatch. It was tragic. It was just kind of taunting me when I saw that because I think that could have been one of the most important scientific discoveries that we made.”

The “CAM” was the Centrifuge Accommodations Module, originally built by the Japanese space agency. It was intended to provide an environment for artificial gravity experiments, from just slightly above zero gravity all the way to 2 gs. However, NASA canceled the final development and launch of the centrifuge module in 2005 due to budgetary concerns.

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Gravitational wave astronomy is such a boon in detecting these types of events early. One of the few consistently positive things to be alive with right now.

Some abbreviations:

• TDE: tidal disruption event
• AGN: active galactic nucleas

Using NASA's Swift spacecraft, an international team of astronomers has discovered a luminous and slowly-evolving nuclear transient event. The origin of the newly detected transient, designated Swift J221951-484240, is yet to be determined. The finding was reported July 3 on the preprint server arXiv.

Nuclear astrophysics is key to understanding supernova explosions, and in particular the synthesis of the chemical elements that evolved after the Big Bang. Therefore, detecting and investigating nuclear transient events could be essential in order to advance our knowledge in this field.

Recently, a group of astronomers led by Sam Oates of the University of Birmingham, U.K., has conducted follow-up Swift observations of a gravitational wave alert known as S190930t in order to find its electromagnetic counterpart. In result, they identified Swift J221951-484240 (or J221951 for short) with Swift's Ultra-Violet/Optical Telescope (UVOT).

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cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/465531

This isn't so much a support request as a piece of advice. I just wanted to pass along a heads-up to save someone else some work.

The Bionic Reader Firefox extension breaks my ability to comment and reply on Lemmy.

This Image is With the Extension Enabled.

As you can see, the reply button has been clicked. It's grayed out. But the page stays stuck there. And when I refresh, my attempted comment is nowhere to be found.

The Firefox error codes are also different between having this extension enabled and not having it enabled. I'll post those in the comments.

The news about Meta is not the real reason I'm sharing this; rather the parenthetical question in the subject is. Does anybody know if this law affect Lemmy instances at all?

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So far, the most promising dark matter candidates are axions, neutrinos, and weakly interacting massive particles. Recently, however, some physicists also started investigating the possibility that another type of hypothetical particles, massive gravitons, could be viable dark matter candidates.

Theory suggests that massive gravitons were produced during collisions between ordinary particles in the hot and dense environment of the early Universe, in the few instants following the Big Bang. While theories predict their existence, these particles have so far never been directly detected.

Researchers at Korea University and University of Lyon have recently carried out a theoretical study exploring the possibility that massive gravitons could be good dark matter candidates. The results of their theoretical calculations were published in a paper in Physical Review Letters.

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The calculations performed by Cai, Lee and Cacciapaglia show that instead of being associated with unknown physics occurring shortly after the Big Bang, the production of massive gravitons is most effective below the energy scale in which Higgs bosons reside. Higgs bosons are elementary particles that carry the Higgs field, the field that gives mass to fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks.

"This draws a direct connection between the physics studied at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva and the early Universe physics of gravity and Dark Matter," Cacciapaglia said. "Our results imply that gravitational dark matter is produced 1 picosecond after the Big Bang, at a time when particle physics is well described by the current theories."

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Potentially this means that Fedora and CentOS stream do not get timely updates implemented in RHEL.

Canonical must be throwing a party, and I bet SUSE is not hating it either

A leaked document alleges a #Russian plan to annex #Belarus by #2030 with the ultimate objective being a 'union state'.

Another source here: Russia plans Belarus 'absorption' by 2030 — media reports | DW News