RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Monday 22 April 2024 Volume 34 : Issue 19

ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, founder and still moderator

***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/34.19>
The current issue can also be found at
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Contents:
Influential women's tech network shuts down unexpectedly (BBC)
Re: Women Who Code shut down today (Rebecca Mercuri)
Re: Women Who Code shut down today (Wendy Grossman)
‘We’re a dead ship’: Hundreds of cargo ships lost propulsion in
U.S. waters in recent years (WashPost)
Tesla Cybertruck turns into world's most expensive brick after
car wash (The Register)
Software upgrade error grounds all Alaska Airlines flights for 1 hour
(Seattle Times)
San Francisco’s Train System Still Uses Floppy Disks -- and Will for Years
(WiReD)
GPT-4 and CVE = exploit (Rik Farrow)
The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the Internet afloat (The Verge)
Microsoft’s VASA-1 can deepfake a person with one photo and one audio track
(Ars Technica)
Hospital prices for the same emergency care vary up to 16-fold,
a study finds (ArsTechnica)
Chirp mandates open-door policy -- in a bad way (Krebs)
Netflix doc accused of using AI to manipulate true crime story (ArsTechnica)
China orders Apple to remove Meta apps after “inflammatory” posts about
president (ArsTechnica)
Roku forcing 2-factor authentication after 2 breaches of 600K accounts
(ArsTechnica)
The GMO tooth microbe that is supposed to prevent cavities (Undark)
Virginia to become first state to allow online-only local nesw sites to
publish legal notices (ARLnow)
Amazon is filled with garbage ebooks. Here’s how they get made. (Esquire)\\
Re: Palo Alto Zero Exploit (Martin Ward)
Re: AI chatbots spread falsehoods about the EU elections (Martin Ward)
Re: U.S. Air Force confirms first successful AI dogfight
(Turgut Kalfaoglu)
Re: Wrong button clicked, wrong divorce cannot be undone (Henry Baker)
Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

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Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2024 15:38:32 -0600
From: Matthew Kruk <mkrukg@gmail.com>
Subject: Influential women's tech network shuts down unexpectedly (BBC)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw0769446nyo

Women Who Code (WWC), a charity that supports women who work in the
technology sector, has announced it is shutting down because of a lack of
funding.

The U.S.-based organisation says it had 360,000 people in its community,
across 145 countries.

[The risks to many women who code around the world could be considerable.
Are there any former members who are also RISKS readers who can share the
back stories? To me this seems like a terrible loss -- even if there was
management malpractice. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in today's
article by Mirtha Donastorg suggests that WWC had millions of dollars.

However, this is the WWC statement quoted in the AJ-C on 19 Apr 202, the
day of the shut down:

``This decision has not been made lightly. It only comes after careful
consideration of all options and is due to factors that have materially
impacted our funding sources -- funds that were critical to continuing
our programming and delivering on our mission,'' the organization said
in a statement. It did not detail what factors impacted its finances.

PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 18:58:13 -0400
From: "DrM: Rebecca Mercuri" <notable@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: Women Who Code shut down today (RISKS-34.19)

I am not a member or supporter of either Women Who Code or Girls Who Code
(separate non-profits that both started in 2011), but have been aware of the
existence of these two groups. Certainly, it is important for women and
girls to feel comfortable learning how to code, and to be able to find work
and equal pay in coding-related fields. Unfortunately, I feel that neither
group has/had successfully addressed the problems of bias and harassment
against girls and women who code.

What has long been needed for all in the computing fields, is to learn how
to work side-by-side with people of all genders, where mutual respect and
acknowledgment of everyone's contributions are encouraged and
nurtured. Splitting into same-sex support groups has not and does not create
healthy, safe, and fair workplaces. It is possible that these same-sex
non-profits may have inadvertently reinforced the stereotype of "lesser than
or different" while not appropriately addressing the very real biases and
affronts that women and girls and others continue to battle in schools and
the workplace.

While belated and often posthumous recognitions of female coders
occasionally occurs, such as for the Women of the ENIAC and Grace Murray
Hopper, extreme bias in prizes continues to be blatant and overlooked. A
very visible example of gender bias is exemplified by the Association of
Computing Machinery's Turing Award. Over the 58 years of its issuance, there
have only been 3 women, as compared to 74 men, given this esteemed prize. 
The last woman received her Turing in 2012. Since Google endowed it in 2014
with $1,000,000.00 for each award, precisely ZERO women have been selected
for the honor. It is utterly appalling that Turing himself (wrongly
convicted by the British government of sexual indecency, submitted to
chemical castration, and possibly murdered) continues to be exploited with
this highly biased award being presented annually, often to coders, in his
name, without his permission. THIS NEEDS TO STOP.

In conclusion, we must see that new and better support groups are created
that will expose and expunge wrongs and biases in workplaces, schools,
governments, professional organizations, non-profits, and other entities
that make decisions and set policies based on antiquated ideas of genders
and sexualities. Those who code should help to create a level playing field,
where all people can find ways to work together with egalitarianism and
mutual respect.

Rebecca Mercuri, PhD

[Rebecca should be well-known to long-time RISKS readers. It was her
thesis at Penn a quarter-century ago that broke open how to overcome
voting machines with no audit trails and no possible remediation of
questionable results:
<http://www.notablesoftware.com/Papers/mercuri-thesis.pdf>
PGN]

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Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 16:36:03 +0100
From: "Wendy M. Grossman" <wendyg@pelicancrossing.net>
Subject: Re: Women Who Code shut down today (RISKS-34.19)

I remember in 1998 attending an event in 1998 at which ACM had a session on
the incredible(?) "shrinking pipeline", which had studied the reasons women
were leaving computing.

The choices included image (geeks), the hours (medicine was seen as
eventually getting better, but computing not), etc. Not included, but widely
written in: "sexual harassment".

Soon after I had dinner with a woman who sold large computer systems. I told
her about the survey. She immediately said: "Did they mention sexual
harassment?"

I know I wrote about it somewhere, but can't locate where.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 02:07:23 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: ‘We’re a dead ship’: Hundreds of cargo ships lost propulsion in
U.S. waters in recent years (WashPost)

A *WashPost* examination found that losses of engine power, part of what the
Dali experienced when it crashed into the Key Bridge in Baltimore, are not
uncommon.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/04/16/dead-ships-propulsion-loss/

[Preventive maintenance seems to be less frequent here, in aviation, and
perhaps even in driverless cars -- although that has other problems, such
as a lack of trustworthiness in design and implementation. PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2024 14:18:56 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Tesla Cybertruck turns into world's most expensive brick after
car wash (The Register)

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/20/cybertruck_car_wash_mode/

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:12:01 -0700
From: Rob Wilcox <robwilcoxjr@gmail.com>
Subject: Software upgrade error grounds all Alaska Airlines flights for 1
hour (Seattle Times)

Alaska Airlines briefly grounded all flights after an error was found in a
software upgrade calculating the plane mass and balance. "Alaska said it had
experienced an issue 'while performing an upgrade to the system that
calculates our weight and balance.'"

The airline had a similar problem in February 2023. In that case:

"To determine the thrust and speed settings for takeoff, Alaska’s pilots
and others use a performance calculation tool supplied by a Swedish
company called DynamicSource.

It delivers a message to the cockpit with crucial weight and balance data,
including how many people are on board, the jet’s empty and gross weight
and the position of its center of gravity.