Internet Backbone Giant Lumen Cuts Service To Russia

Lumen Technologies, an American company that operates one of the largest Internet backbones and carries a significant percentage of the world’s Internet traffic, said today it will stop routing traffic for organizations based in Russia. KrebsOnSecurity reports: Lumen’s decision comes just days after a similar exit by backbone provider Cogent, and amid a news media crackdown in Russia that has already left millions of Russians in the dark about what is really going on with their president’s war in Ukraine. Monroe, La. based Lumen (formerly CenturyLink) initially said it would halt all new business with organizations based in Russia, leaving open the possibility of continuing to serve existing clients there. But on Tuesday the company said it could no longer justify that stance.

“Life has taken a turn in Russia and Lumen is unable to continue to operate in this market,” Lumen said in a published statement. “The business services we provide are extremely small and very limited as is our physical presence. However, we are taking steps to immediately stop business in the region.” “We decided to disconnect the network due to increased security risk inside Russia,” the statement continues. “We have not yet experienced network disruptions but given the increasingly uncertain environment and the heightened risk of state action, we took this move to ensure the security of our and our customers’ networks, as well as the ongoing integrity of the global Internet.” According to Internet infrastructure monitoring firm Kentik, Lumen is the top international transit provider to Russia, with customers including Russian telecom giants Rostelecom and TTK, as well as all three major mobile operators (MTS, Megafon and VEON).

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Amazon Nears ‘Tipping Point’ Where Rainforest Could Transform Into Savanna

If deforestation continues, the Amazon rainforest could reach a critical tipping point where most of it transforms into a dry savanna, a new study warns. Live Science reports: The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that more than 75% of the rainforest has steadily lost “resilience” since the 2000s, meaning those portions of the rainforest now can’t recover as easily from disturbances, such as droughts and wildfires. Regions of the rainforest that show the most profound losses in resilience are located near farms, urban areas and areas used for logging, Inside Climate News reported. Climate change, rampant deforestation and burnings conducted for agriculture and ranching have left the Amazon far warmer and drier than in decades past, and since 2000, the region has endured three major droughts, The New York Times reported.

By examining satellite images taken between 1991 and 2016, the researchers determined how long the rainforest took to bounce back after such events, The Guardian reported. The researchers determined that, since the turn of the 21st century, the rainforest has been taking longer and longer to recover biomass, meaning the mass of living trees and other vegetation, after droughts and fires. “That lack of resilience shows that, indeed, there is only so much of a beating that this forest can take,” Paulo Brando, a tropical ecologist at the University of California, Irvine who was not involved in the study, told The New York Times. If the rainforests surpasses this tipping point, the ecosystem could swiftly change into a vast savanna, unleashing tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide during the transformation, The Guardian reported.

At this point, can anything be done to prevent the Amazon rainforest from turning into the Amazon savanna? Experts say there is. “These systems are highly resilient, and the fact that we have reduced resilience doesn’t mean that it has lost all its resilience,” Brando told the Times. “If you leave them alone for a little bit, they come back super strongly.” But it requires key steps to be taken, experts said. “We have to get to zero deforestation, zero forest degradation,” Carlos Nobre, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil, who was not involved in the study, told the Times. “We still have a chance to save the forest.”

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Half of US Adults Exposed To Harmful Lead Levels As Kids

Over 170 million U.S.-born people who were adults in 2015 were exposed to harmful levels of lead as children, a new study estimates. The Associated Press reports: Researchers used blood-lead level, census and leaded gasoline consumption data to examine how widespread early childhood lead exposure was in the country between 1940 and 2015. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, they estimated that half the U.S. adult population in 2015 had been exposed to lead levels surpassing five micrograms per deciliter — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention threshold for harmful lead exposure at the time.

The scientists from Florida State University and Duke University also found that 90% of children born in the U.S. between 1950 and 1981 had blood-lead levels higher than the CDC threshold. And the researchers found significant impact on cognitive development: on average, early childhood exposure to lead resulted in a 2.6-point drop in IQ. The researchers only examined lead exposure caused by leaded gasoline, the dominant form of exposure from the 1940s to the late 1980s, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Leaded gasoline for on-road vehicles was phased out starting in the 1970s, then finally banned in 1996.

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Russia Mulls Legalizing Software Piracy As It’s Cut Off From Western Tech

With sanctions against Russia starting to bite, the Kremlin is mulling ways to keep businesses and the government running. The latest is a creative twist on state asset seizures, only instead of the government taking over an oil refinery, for example, Russia is considering legalizing software piracy. Ars Technica reports: Russian law already allows for the government to authorize — “without consent of the patent holder” — the use of any intellectual property “in case of emergency related to ensuring the defense and security of the state.” The government hasn’t taken that step yet, but it may soon, according to a report from Russian business newspaper Kommersant, spotted and translated by Kyle Mitchell, an attorney who specializes in technology law. It’s yet another sign of a Cyber Curtain that’s increasingly separating Russia from the West.

The plan would create “a compulsory licensing mechanism for software, databases, and technology for integrated microcircuits,” the Kommersant said. It would only apply to companies from countries that have imposed sanctions. While the article doesn’t name names, many large Western firms — some of which would be likely targets — have drastically scaled back business in Russia. So far, Microsoft has suspended sales of new products and services in Russia, Apple has stopped selling devices, and Samsung has stopped selling both devices and chips. Presumably, any move by the Kremlin to “seize” IP would exempt Chinese companies, which are reportedly considering how to press their advantage. Smartphone-makers Xiaomi and Honor stand to gain, as do Chinese automakers. Still, any gains aren’t guaranteed since doing business in Russia has become riddled with problems, spanning everything from logistics to finance.

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‘God of War’ TV Series Adaptation Eyed By Prime Video

According to Deadline, Prime Video is turning PlayStation’s mythology-themed game franchise God of War into a live-action TV series. From the report: I hear the series adaptation comes from The Expanse creators/executive producers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and The Wheel of Time executive producer/showrunner Rafe Judkins as well as Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions, which collaborate on all TV series based on PlayStation games. This would mark the latest big deal for a TV series based on a popular video game title in a red-hot streaming marketplace for gaming IP. Peacock just landed another SPT/PlayStation property, Twisted Metal, with a series order and Anthony Mackie starring. HBO has coming up the high-profile PlayStation game-based series The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Netflix has a Resident Evil TV series in the works, while Paramount+ is about to debut Halo.
[…]
The God of War franchise from Sony’s Santa Monica Studio spans a total of seven games across four PlayStation consoles. The action game series launched in 2005 on the PlayStation 2, with the first God of War. At the center is ex-Spartan warrior Kratos and his perilous journey to exact revenge on the Ares, the Greek God of War, after killing his loved ones under the deity’s influence. After becoming the ruthless God of War himself, Kratos finds himself constantly looking for a chance to change his fate. Following several titles on various PlayStation consoles including the PS3 and the handheld PSP, Santa Monica Studio brought new life to the franchise with the 2018 game on the PlayStation 4. In it, Kratos comes to the Norse wilds where he gets a second chance at fatherhood with his son Atreus. The installment a slew of honors at the 2018 Game Awards, including Game of the Year. An eighth God of War installment, God of War: Ragnorok, is in the works for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 and is set to drop this year.

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Will Changing Opinions Boost America’s Nuclear Power Industry?

“The future of the nuclear power industry is being pushed on both by climate change and security fears stoked by Russia invading Ukraine and targeting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” reports CNBC, with the world’s nations “coming to realize they can’t meet their climate goals with renewables, like wind and solar, alone.” Kenneth Luongo, founder of the security/energy nonprofit Partnership for Global Security, even tells CNBC there was a “sea change” in sentiment toward nuclear power at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

There are about 440 nuclear power reactors operating in more than 30 countries that supply about 10% of the world’s electricity, according to the World Nuclear Association. Currently, 55 new reactors are being constructed in 19 countries, and 19 of those are in China. The U.S. only has two underway…. Currently, three new nuclear reactors are being built in Russia. But Russia is also the world’s top nuclear technology exporter….

As Russia and China have risen to prominence, the United States has lost “the muscle memory” to build conventional nuclear reactors, Luongo said. Nuclear power got a poor reputation in the United States after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 in Pennsylvania, and more globally after the accidents at Chornobyl in the Ukrainian Soviet Union in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan in 2011. But the tide is starting to turn. The Biden administration’s solution was included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which was signed into law November, and was effectively a big subsidy. The law includes a $6 billion program intended to preserve the existing U.S. fleet of nuclear power reactors…. At the same time, the Russia-Ukraine war gives the United States leverage to pry open more of a footprint in the global market. While the war is tragic, “it’s going to result in more opportunity for U.S. nuclear firms as Russia really disqualifies itself,” said John Kotek of the Nuclear Energy Institute [a U.S. nuclear industry trade association]. Russia’s dangerous attack at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine and China’s decision to not vote in favor of the IAEA’s resolution to prevent the kind of attack “will blowback on both countries’ nuclear export reputation,” Luongo told CNBC….

Nuclear plants are expensive to build and have, in many places, become more expensive than other baseload energy alternatives like natural gas. However, the U.S. is pushing hard into what could become the next generation of nuclear. “The United States has made a decision that they don’t want to allow Russia and China to dominate that next phase of the nuclear market. And so the U.S. is pouring billions of dollars — shockingly — billions of dollars into the development of what are called small modular reactors,” Luongo said. Specifically, the government is using the Idaho National Lab as a testing ground for these reactors.
Without specifically mentioning nuclear energy, former Gawker editor Alex Pareene recently argued a program of “mass electrification and renewable energy” could diminish the power of “oligarchic petrostates.”

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Tech Workers at New York Times Vote to Certify Union

“Tech workers at The New York Times on Thursday voted in favor of certifying their union in a National Labor Relations Board election, making it one of the biggest tech unions in America,” reports the New York Times:

The workers voted in favor, 404 to 88, easily reaching the needed majority of the ballots that were cast. A win means the union, the Times Tech Guild, can begin negotiations for a contract with management. “We’re just elated and really soaking in what this means, not only for us as tech workers at The Times and for The New York Times but also for the tech industry as a whole,” said Nozlee Samadzadeh, a senior software engineer.

“I think this is going to be the start of a wave of organizing in the tech industry….”

The Times Tech Guild, which represents about 600 software engineers, product managers, designers, data analysts and other workers, asked The Times for voluntary recognition in April. The Times declined, so the matter went to a formal election through the labor board….

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Researchers Release ‘PolyCoder’, the First Open-Source Code-Generating AI Model

“Code generation AI — AI systems that can write in different programming languages given a prompt — promise to cut development costs while allowing coders to focus on creative, less repetitive tasks,” writes VentureBeat.

“But while research labs like OpenAI and Alphabet-backed DeepMind have developed powerful code-generating AI, many of the most capable systems aren’t available in open source.”

For example, the training data for OpenAI’s Codex, which powers GitHub’s Copilot feature, hasn’t been made publicly available, preventing researchers from fine-tuning the AI model or studying aspects of it such as interpretability.

To remedy this, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University — Frank Xu, Uri Alon, Graham Neubig, and Vincent Hellendoorn — developed PolyCoder, a model based on OpenAI’s GPT-2 language model that was trained on a database of 249 gigabytes of code across 12 programming languages. While PolyCoder doesn’t match the performance of top code generators in every task, the researchers claim that PolyCoder is able to write in C with greater accuracy than all known models, including Codex….

“Large tech companies aren’t publicly releasing their models, which is really holding back scientific research and democratization of such large language models of code,” the researchers said. “To some extent, we hope that our open-sourcing efforts will convince others to do the same. But the bigger picture is that the community should be able to train these models themselves. Our model pushed the limit of what you can train on a single server — anything bigger requires a cluster of servers, which dramatically increases the cost.”

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Is a New Iron Curtain Descending Across Russia’s internet?

Cogent Communications, one of the world’s largest internet intercontinental backbone providers, has cut ties with Russian customers over its invasion of Ukraine. The Verge reports:

In a letter to Russian customers obtained by The Washington Post, Cogent cited “economic sanctions” and “the increasingly uncertain security situation” as the motives behind its total shutdown in the country. Cogent similarly told The Verge that it “terminated its contracts” with Russian customers in compliance with the European Union’s move to ban Russian state-backed media outlets.

As Doug Madory, an internet analyst at network tracking company Kentik points out… unplugging Russia from Cogent’s global network will likely result in slower connectivity, but won’t completely disconnect Russians from the internet… Traffic from Cogent’s former customers will instead fall back on other backbone providers in the country, potentially resulting in network congestion. There isn’t any indication as to whether other internet backbone providers will also suspend services in Russia.
Digital rights activists have criticized Cogent’s decision to disconnect itself from Russia, arguing that it could prevent Russian civilians from accessing credible information about the invasion. “Cutting Russians off from internet access cuts them off from sources of independent news and the ability to organize anti-war protests,” Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said on Twitter….

Cogent’s goal is to prevent the Russian government from using the company’s networks for cyberattacks and propaganda, The Post reports.

The Post argues that on a larger scale,”these moves bring Russia closer to the day when its online networks face largely inward, their global connections weakened, if not cut off entirely.”
“I am very afraid of this,” said Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Protection Society, which advocates for digital freedoms in Russia. “I would like to convey to people all over the world that if you turn off the Internet in Russia, then this means cutting off 140 million people from at least some truthful information. As long as the Internet exists, people can find out the truth. There will be no Internet — all people in Russia will only listen to propaganda….”

[E]ven two weeks ago, Russia’s Internet was comparatively free and integrated into the larger online world, allowing civil society to organize, opposition figures to deliver their messages and ordinary Russians to gain ready access to alternative sources of news in an era when Putin was strangling his nation’s free newspapers and broadcast stations…. Patrick Boehler, head of digital strategy at Radio Free Europe, said CrowdTangle data showed that independent news stories in the Russian language worldwide were getting shared many more times on social media than stories from state-run media. He said that once the Kremlin lost control of the narrative, it would have been hard to regain.

Now the last independent journalistic outposts are gone, and the Internet options are increasingly constricted through a combination of forces — all spurred by war in Ukraine but coming from both within and outside Russia…. Government censors also blocked access to the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Deutsche Welle, as well as major Ukrainian websites. The BBC, CNN and other international news organizations said they were suspending reporting in Russia because of a new law that could result in 15 years of prison for publishing what government officials deem false news on the war.

Meanwhile, Politico reminds us that even Oracle has shut down its Russian cloud service operations.
Laura Manley, the executive director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said Russia is creating a perfect situation to control its narrative and limit outside coverage of its Ukrainian invasion by Western social media sources. “You have the lack of eyewitness information because you have critical infrastructure being shut off,” she said. “So it’s sort of a worst case scenario in terms of getting real-time accurate information.”

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1 Million Fitbit Ionic Smartwatches Recalled Over Reports of Overheating Batteries and More than 100 Burn Injuries

“Fitbit has announced a voluntary recall of its Ionic Smartwatch,” reports Newsweek, “amid more than 170 reports that the battery has overheated, causing more than 100 reports of burn injuries….”

The Ionic smartwatch was first introduced in 2017 and the company stopped producing it in 2020. When worn, the smartwatch tracks activity, heart rate, and sleep. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), one million of the watches were sold in the U.S. while a further 693,000 were sold internationally.

The company has received 115 reports in the U.S. and 59 reports internationally of the watch’s lithium-ion battery overheating, leading to 78 reports of burn injuries in the U.S. and 40 reports of burn injuries internationally, the CPSC added. Some burns were particularly severe, with four reports of second-degree burns and two reports of third-degree burns. Third-degree burns, in which multiple layers of skin are destroyed, are the most harmful of the two….

In a statement published on its website yesterday, the company said it would offer a $299 refund to Fitbit Ionic customers and “the health and safety of Fitbit users is our highest priority.”

“If you own a Fitbit Ionic, please stop using your device,” the company added.

Fitbit said the Ionic can be identified via the model number FB503 on the back of the watch under the “CE” mark, while those with a Fitbit account can check if an Ionic is connected to their account by clicking on the Today tab, then their profile picture, and then the Account page.

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