A small asteroid is flying very close to Earth on Thursday night, less than a week after astronomers discovered the object. The New York Times reports: The asteroid, named 2023 BU, was scheduled to pass over the southern tip of South America at 7:27 p.m. Eastern time. The asteroid is fairly small — less than 30 feet across, about the size of a truck — and will be best visible in the skies to the west of southern Chile. For space watchers unable to view 2023 BU firsthand, the Virtual Telescope Project will be broadcasting the event on its website and YouTube channel. The asteroid will not hit Earth but will make one of the closest approaches ever by such an object, hurtling past Earth at just 2,200 miles above its surface, according to a news release from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This encounter puts the asteroid “well within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites,” the statement noted, but the asteroid is not on track to hit any.

2023 BU was unknown to NASA, or anyone, until last Saturday. Gennadiy Borisov, an amateur astronomer in Crimea, noticed the asteroid from the MARGO Observatory, a setup of telescopes that he has used to discover other interstellar objects. Astronomers then determined 2023 BU’s orbit around the sun and impending trip past Earth using data from the Minor Planet Center, a project sanctioned by the International Astronomical Union. It publishes positions of newly found space objects, including comets and satellites, from information of several observatories worldwide.

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Source: Slashdot – Newly Discovered Asteroid to Pass Close to Earth Tonight

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: New York City’s largest fossil-fuel plant, which powers 20% of the city, will be replaced with offshore wind power. Ravenswood Generating Station is the New York City fossil fuel plant that will become an offshore wind hub. It’s a 2,480-megawatt (MW) power plant in Long Island City, Queens, across from Roosevelt Island, and it’s the Big Apple’s largest power plant. Rise Light & Power, a New York based energy asset manager and developer that holds Ravenswood as its core asset, is submitting a proposal today, with support from community and state leaders, to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) in response to the state’s offshore wind solicitation.

In a nutshell, the 27-acre waterfront oil and gas industrial site is going to be converted into a clean energy hub that will power one-fifth of New York City with offshore wind power. The Ravenswood offshore wind project will reuse existing physical and electrical infrastructure, and that’s going to save New York ratepayers money. An HVDC conductor cable will be brought onshore at the existing power plant site. The cable will interconnect via underground HVAC cables to the NYISO bulk electric system at existing substations adjacent to the site. It will also become an offshore wind operations and maintenance hub that will support the just transition of the existing fossil fuel plant workforce, and drive economic investment into a historically underserved community. Rise Light & Power states that the project will, with training programs and job opportunities, justly transition and upskill Ravenswood’s current Local 1-2 UWUA union workers.

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Source: Slashdot – NYC Will Replace Its Largest Fossil Fuel Plant With Wind Power

The FBI revealed today that it had shut down the prolific ransomware gang called Hive, “a maneuver that allowed the bureau to thwart the group from collecting more than $130 million in ransomware demands from more than 300 victims,” reports Reuters. Slashdot readers wiredmikey and unimind shared the news. From the report: At a news conference, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said government hackers broke into Hive’s network and put the gang under surveillance, surreptitiously stealing the digital keys the group used to unlock victim organizations’ data. They were then able to alert victims in advance so they could take steps to protect their systems before Hive demanded the payments. “Using lawful means, we hacked the hackers,” Monaco told reporters. “We turned the tables on Hive.”

News of the takedown first leaked on Thursday morning when Hive’s website was replaced with a flashing message that said: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation seized this site as part of coordinated law enforcement action taken against Hive Ransomware.” Hive’s servers were also seized by the German Federal Criminal Police and the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit. The undercover infiltration, which started in July 2022, went undetected by the gang until now.

The Justice Department said that over the years, Hive has targeted more than 1,500 victims in 80 different countries, and has collected more than $100 million in ransomware payments. Although there were no arrests announced on Wednesday, Garland said the investigation was ongoing and one department official told reporters to “stay tuned.”

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Source: Slashdot – US Says It ‘Hacked the Hackers’ To Bring Down Hive Ransomware Gang

U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss read a speech on the floor of the U.S. House that was generated by AI chatbot ChatGPT. “Auchincloss said he prompted the system in part to ‘write 100 words to deliver on the floor of the House of Representatives’ about the legislation,” reports the Associated Press. “Auchincloss said he had to refine the prompt several times to produce the text he ultimately read. His staff said they believe it’s the first time an AI-written speech was read in Congress.” From the report: The bill, which Auchincloss is refiling, would establish a joint U.S.-Israel AI Center in the United States to serve as a hub for AI research and development in the public, private and education sectors. Auchincloss said part of the decision to read a ChatGPT-generated text was to help spur debate on AI and the challenges and opportunities created by it. He said he doesn’t want to see a repeat of the advent of social media, which started small and ballooned faster than Congress could react. “I’m the youngest parent in the Democratic caucus, AI is going to be part of my life and it could be a general purpose technology for my children,” said Auchincloss, 34.

The text generated from Auchincloss’s prompt includes sentences like: “We must collaborate with international partners like the Israeli government to ensure that the United States maintains a leadership role in AI research and development and responsibly explores the many possibilities evolving technologies provide.” “There were probably about a dozen of my colleagues on the floor. I bet none of them knew it was written by a computer,” he said. Lawmakers and others shouldn’t be reflexively hostile to the new technology, but also shouldn’t wait too long before drafting policies or new laws to help regulate it, Auchincloss said. In particular, he argued that the country needs a “public counterweight” to the big tech firms that would help guarantee that smaller developers and universities have access to the same cloud computing, cutting edge algorithms and raw data as larger companies.

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Source: Slashdot – Member of Congress Reads AI-Generated Speech On House Floor

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: The Department of Motor Vehicles has never been an agency that screams innovation. The agency is better know for bureaucracy and endless lines than technological transformation. But this may be changing after a collaboration between California’s DMV and open-source blockchain Tezos and Oxhead Alpha, a crypto-focused software development firm. Together, the three partners are building a DMV-run blockchain that will not only digitize car titles for California drivers, but also seek to streamline title transfers between owners.

Ajay Gupta, the chief digital officer at the California DMV, said that the agency hopes to finalize its “shadow ledger,” or a full replication of the state’s title database on the blockchain, within the next three months before building consumer-facing applications, including digital wallets that hold car title NFTs. “The DMV’s perception of lagging behind should definitely change,” Gupta told Fortune in an exclusive interview. […] Andrew Smith, the president of Oxhead Alpha, said that he was pleasantly surprised by how quickly the Gupta-led DMV wanted to move with the initiative. He described the current system as using 18th-century paper-based technology to solve 21st-century transaction fraud, pointing to the common sense solutions presented by digitizing car titles and tracing their movement. For example, if someone buys a “lemon,” or faulty car, in California, it will have a special designation on their title. If they then move out of state and back into California with the car, they can shirk the “lemon” branding and sell the car without the new buyer knowing. “As far as the benefit for having a persistent digital title, this is a very obvious use case,” Smith said.

The DMV worked with Oxhead Alpha and Tezos to create a private instance of the Tezos blockchain, which would increase security compared to relying on a public blockchain. Smith said that the DMV chain is currently operational and running DMV validator nodes. For now, the blockchain will operate in the background, but Gupta hopes to create consumer-facing applications soon. An obvious application would be allowing people to transfer car ownership between digital wallets through an NFT version of their title, with the DMV acting as a middleman to ensure that all the sale obligations are completed. Gupta said that type of functionality is on the horizon. Another possible use case is transferring titles between states. Smith said that he’s seen a lot of appetite from municipal-level governments, with mayors such as Miami’s Francis Suarez advocating for crypto, and that generating interest from states would come next.

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Source: Slashdot – California Announces DMV-Run Blockchain Through Partnership With Tezos