The U.S. government in recent months launched an operation to fight a pervasive Chinese hacking operation that successfully compromised thousands of internet-connected devices, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing two Western security officials and another person familiar with the matter. From the report: The Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation sought and received legal authorization to remotely disable aspects of the Chinese hacking campaign, the sources told Reuters. The Biden administration has increasingly focused on hacking, not only for fear nation states may try to disrupt the U.S. election in November, but because ransomware wreaked havoc on Corporate America in 2023. The hacking group at the center of recent activity, Volt Typhoon, has especially alarmed intelligence officials who say it is part of a larger effort to compromise Western critical infrastructure, including naval ports, internet service providers and utilities. While the Volt Typhoon campaign initially came to light in May 2023, the hackers expanded the scope of their operations late last year and changed some of their techniques, according to three people familiar with the matter. The widespread nature of the hacks led to a series of meetings between the White House and private technology industry, including several telecommunications and cloud commuting companies, where the U.S. government asked for assistance in tracking the activity.

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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has proposed creating a new top-level domain (TLD) and never allowing it to be delegated in the global domain name system (DNS) root. From a report: The proposed TLD is .INTERNAL and, as the name implies, it's intended for internal use only. The idea is that .INTERNAL could take on the same role as the 192.168.x.x IPv4 bloc -- available for internal use but never plumbed into DNS or other infrastructure that would enable it to be accessed from the open internet. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) advised the development of such a TLD in 2020. It noted at the time that "many enterprises and device vendors make ad hoc use of TLDs that are not present in the root zone when they intend the name for private use only. This usage is uncoordinated and can cause harm to Internet users" -- in part by forcing DNS servers to handle, and reject, queries for domains only used internally. DNS, however, can't prevent internal use of ad hoc TLDs. So the SSAC recommended creation of a TLD that would be explicitly reserved for internal use.

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New submitter betso.net shares a report: A German railway firm posted a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator just before the weekend. In addition to skills in wrangling Windows for Workgroups on the 30-year-old operating system, the recruiter would look upon a candidate more fondly for possessing MS-DOS experience. The admin would purportedly oversee systems with 166MHz processors and a whopping 8MB of RAM. It might seem slightly worrying that modern railways are still running on such ancient systems, but mission-critical systems often adhere to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Peering into the jungle of microbes that live within us, researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects. "It's insane," says University of North Carolina cell biologist Mark Peifer, who was not involved in the study, told Elizabeth Pennisi at Science Magazine. "The more we look, the more crazy things we see." These mysterious bits of genetic material have no detectable sequences or even structural similarities known to any other biological agents. So Stanford University biologist Ivan Zheludev and colleagues argue their strange discovery may not be viruses at all, but instead an entirely new group of entities that may help bridge the ancient gap between the simplest genetic molecules and more complex viruses. "Obelisks comprise a class of diverse RNAs that have colonized, and gone unnoticed in, human, and global microbiomes," the researchers write in a preprint paper. Named after the highly-symmetrical, rod-like structures formed by its twisted lengths of RNA, the Obelisks' genetic sequences are only around 1,000 characters (nucleotides) in size. In fact, this brevity is likely one of the reasons we've failed to notice them previously. In a study that has yet to be peer reviewed, Zheludev and team searched 5.4 million datasets of published genetic sequences and identified almost 30,000 different Obelisks. They appeared in about 10 percent of the human microbiomes the team examined. In one set of data, Obelisks turned up in 50 percent of the patients' oral samples. What's more, different types of Obelisks appear to be present in different areas of our bodies. "[This] supports the notion that Obelisks might include colonists of said human microbiomes," the researchers explain. They managed to isolate one type of host cell from our microbiome, the bacterium Streptococcus sanguinis -- a common human mouth microbe. The Obelisk in these microbes had a loop 1,137 nucleotides long. "While we don't know the 'hosts' of other Obelisks," write Zheludev and colleagues. "it is reasonable to assume that at least a fraction may be present in bacteria." The question of the Obelisks' source aside, all seem to include codes for a new class of protein the researchers have named Oblins. Zheludev and team couldn't identify any impact of the Obelisks on their bacterial hosts, or a means by which they could spread between cells. "These elements might not even be 'viral' in nature and might more closely resemble 'RNA plasmids,'" they conclude. This research appears in the preprint server bioRxiv.

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Embracer Group has canceled a Deus Ex game at its Eidos studio that's been in development since 2022. The company also announced that it's letting go of 97 game developers and support staff. "The global economic context, the challenges of our industry and the comprehensive restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio," wrote Eidos Montreal. Eidos doesn't mention the canceled game. The Verge reports: Embracer snapped up both Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics from Square Enix in May 2022, putting the studios behind Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Thief under one umbrella. That November, Schreier tweeted that a new Deus Ex was now "very very early" in development, and it appears that's the game now canceled. It's been eight years since Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ended on a largely unsatisfying cliffhanger, and it doesn't sound like we're going to get a resolution anytime soon. Sources told Schreier in 2017 that an earlier Mankind Divided sequel had been canceled, too. What's more, Embracer decided to erase the mobile game Deus Ex Go from existence, ripping it away from people who'd already paid, though I hear it may still be playable if you have it downloaded.

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According to Neuralink founder Elon Musk, the first human received an implant from the brain-chip startup on Sunday and is recovering well. "Initial results show promising neuron spike detection," Musk added. Reuters reports: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had given the company clearance last year to conduct its first trial to test its implant on humans. The startup's PRIME Study is a trial for its wireless brain-computer interface to evaluate the safety of the implant and surgical robot. The study will assess the functionality of the interface which enables people with quadriplegia, or paralysis of all four limbs, to control devices with their thoughts, according to the company's website.

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Efren's employer recently acquired a competitor. The competitor had been struggling for a number of years, and the acquisition was a last ditch attempt to preserve at least some of the business (a complete closure was the only other option).

Now, "struggling for a number of years" sounds fairly vague, but due to some bad database design, we actually have a clear indicator of exactly when the company gave up:

CASE YEAR(SomeDate) WHEN 2013 THEN SUM(Estimate2013) WHEN 2014 THEN SUM(Estimate2014) WHEN 2015 THEN SUM(Estimate2015) WHEN 2016 THEN SUM(Estimate2016) WHEN 2017 THEN SUM(Estimate2017) WHEN 2018 THEN SUM(Estimate2018) WHEN 2019 THEN SUM(Estimate2019) WHEN 2020 THEN SUM(Estimate2019) WHEN 2021 THEN SUM(Estimate2019) WHEN 2022 THEN SUM(Estimate2019) WHEN 2023 THEN SUM(Estimate2019) WHEN 2024 THEN SUM(Estimate2019) WHEN 2025 THEN SUM(Estimate2019) WHEN 2026 THEN SUM(Estimate2019) END

Here we have the classic "add a new column for every unit of time" design anti-pattern. A fun, traditional piece of difficult maintenance. But here we see exactly when maintenance stopped: sometime in late 2019 or 2020.

Now, I'm speculating a bit, but, I suspect this is pretty clear evidence of how the pandemic may have impacted some businesses. Someone was supposed to add the new column. They may have been laid off, or retasked. The maintenance task that had seemed so affordable to the business a year prior suddenly became untenable.

"Debts that can't be paid won't be paid," as the saying goes. Here's technical debt that couldn't be paid. So it wasn't. And the result was a company going under.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Reeling from one of the most catastrophic recalls in decades, Philips Respironics said it will stop selling sleep apnea machines and other respiratory devices in the United States under a settlement with the federal government that will all but end the company's reign as one of the top makers of breathing machines in the country. The agreement, announced by Philips early Monday, comes more than two years after the company pulled millions of its popular breathing devices off the shelves after admitting that an industrial foam fitted in the machines to reduce noise could break apart and release potentially toxic particles and fumes into the masks worn by patients. It could be years before Philips can resume sales of the devices, made in two factories outside Pittsburgh. The company said all the conditions of the multiyear consent decree -- negotiated in the wake of the recall with the Department of Justice on behalf of the Food and Drug Administration -- must be met first. The move by a company that aggressively promoted its machines in ad campaigns and health conferences -- in one case with the help of an Elvis impersonator -- follows relentless criticism about the safety of the machines. A ProPublica and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigation found the company held back thousands of complaints about the crumbling foam for more than a decade before warning customers about the dangers. Those using the machines included some of the most fragile people in the country, including infants, the elderly, veterans and patients with chronic conditions. "It's about time," said Richard Callender, a former mayor in Pennsylvania who spent years using one of the recalled machines. "How many people have to suffer and get sick and die?" Philips said the agreement includes other requirements the company must meet before it can start selling the machines again, including the marquee DreamStation 2, a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, device heralded by Philips when it was unveiled in 2021 for the treatment of sleep apnea. The settlement, which is still being finalized, has to be approved by a court and has not yet been released by the government. It remains unclear how the halt in sales will impact patients and doctors. The company's U.S. market share for sleep apnea devices in 2020 was about 37% -- behind only one competitor, medical device maker ResMed, according to an analysis by iData Research. Philips has dominated the market in ventilator sales, the data shows.

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In an announcement earlier today, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said single-use vapes will be banned in Britain, with certain flavors restricted and regulations put in place around their packaging and displays. The New York Times reports: Mr. Sunak said that the ban, which is part of legislation that still has to be approved by Parliament, was intended to halt "one of the most worrying trends at the moment," before it becomes "endemic." "The long-term impacts of vaping are unknown and the nicotine within them can be highly addictive, so while vaping can be a useful tool to help smokers quit, marketing vapes to children is not acceptable," he said in a statement. Andrea Leadsom, Britain's health minister, said the measures were intended to make sure that vapes were aimed at adults who were quitting smoking, rather than children. "Nicotine is highly addictive -- and so it is completely unacceptable that children are getting their hands on these products, many of which are undeniably designed to appeal to young people," she said in a statement. [...] While it is not illegal for people under 18 to smoke or vape in Britain, it is illegal for those products to be sold to them. By banning disposable vapes, and restricting the flavors and packaging of refillable vapes, the government hopes to make it far less likely that young people will experiment with e-cigarettes.

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Benj Edwards reports via Ars Technica: In a move that marks the end of an era, New Mexico State University (NMSU) recently announced the impending closure of its Hobbes OS/2 Archive on April 15, 2024. For over three decades, the archive has been a key resource for users of the IBM OS/2 operating system and its successors, which once competed fiercely with Microsoft Windows. In a statement made to The Register, a representative of NMSU wrote, "We have made the difficult decision to no longer host these files on hobbes.nmsu.edu. Although I am unable to go into specifics, we had to evaluate our priorities and had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service." Hobbes is hosted by the Department of Information & Communication Technologies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In the official announcement, the site reads, "After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. As of April 15th, 2024, this site will no longer exist." The earliest record we've found of the Hobbes archive online is this 1992 Walnut Creek CD-ROM collection that gathered up the contents of the archive for offline distribution. At around 32 years old, minimum, that makes Hobbes one of the oldest software archives on the Internet, akin to the University of Michigan's archives and ibiblio at UNC.

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With the increasing adoption of e-bikes and drones for efficient, eco-friendly delivery services, New York is proposing the Department of Sustainable Delivery to regulate these services, focusing on safety, data sharing, and operational permits to ease congested lanes. Fast Company reports: The first step of the new department will be a task force made up of tech, transportation, labor, and government representatives. There are currently some city regulations around delivery operations, but they're fragmented; the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, for example, has addressed delivery worker rights (and recently announced a new minimum pay rate for app-based food delivery workers), while the Department of Transportation focuses on commercial delivery, and has taken steps to address delivery cargo bikes. "We don't have a place where every company that wants to dispatch in volume and move freight [and goods] around in the city on a micro level comes through and has to show that they're going to meet certain requirements," [New York City Deputy Mayor of Operations Meera Joshi] says. Managers of truck delivery fleets often track their driver's performance and behavior with tools like GPS; through the new department, micromobility app companies may be required to share their GPS delivery data with the city. That data might reveal more about how long delivery riders are working, or how heavy cargo bikes' loads are, which could lead to new regulations. Joshi also points to e-bike fires and rising e-bike rider deaths as red flags that signal the need for more oversight and legislation, which could prevent future tragedies. More information about where and when these deliveries are happening could also help the city adapt its infrastructure to this growing market. "As more and more of the city is feeling the effects of the commercialization of bike lanes, we certainly do have to rethink how wide our bike lanes are, what they are there to accommodate, does there need to be some separation between motorized and nonmotorized [bikes]?" Joshi says. "But these things need to be informed." The city is already making some such updates. Last summer, it upgraded a stretch of 10th Avenue to include a 10-foot-wide bike lane, to better allow regular cyclists and delivery e-bikes to coexist Tech advancements often move faster than the government, resulting in a game of legislative catch up for cities. Joshi says New York City is thinking about micromobility in this way because "we've seen this movie before," referring to tech disruption, "and we'd like a different ending." While Joshi knows that companies may bristle at the increased oversight, she says being proactive about these issues and taking steps to address them will likely help the firms and their public perception long-term. And not addressing micromobility challenges now could also impede larger climate progress. "If we are not able to show that we have a comprehensive framework, show that we're able to manage what we have today and prepare for the unknown, we could have people, saying 'it was better when [delivery] was in trucks,'" Joshi says, "and that would actually be probably the worst thing for the environment."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Europe's aviation safety body is working with the airline industry to counter a danger posed by interference with GPS signals -- now seen as a growing threat to the safety of air travel. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) held a recent workshop on incidents where people spoofed and jammed satellite navigation systems, and concluded these pose a "significant challenge" to safety. Mitigating the risks posed by such actions will require measures to be enacted in the short term as well as medium and long term timescales, the two bodies said. They want to start by sharing information about the incidents and any potential remedies. In Europe, this information sharing will occur through the European Occurrence Reporting scheme and EASA's Data4Safety program. Given the global nature of the problem, a broader solution would be better, but this would have to be pursued at a later date, EASA said. Inevitably, another of the measures involves retaining traditional navigation aids to ensure there is a conventional backup for GNSS navigation, while a third calls for guidance from aircraft manufacturers to airlines and other aircraft operators to ensure they know how to manage jamming and spoofing situations. As a further measure, EASA said it will inform all relevant stakeholders, which includes airlines, air navigation service providers, airports and the air industry, about recorded incidents. Interference with global navigation systems can take one of two forms: jamming requires nothing more than transmitting a radio signal strong enough to drown out those from GPS satellites, while spoofing is more insidious and involves transmitting fake signals that fool the receiver into calculating its position incorrectly. According to EASA, jamming and spoofing incidents have increasingly threatened the integrity of location services across Eastern Europe and the Middle East in recent years. [...] The IATA said that coordinated action is needed, including sharing of safety data and a commitment from nations to retain traditional navigation systems as backup.

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David Pierce reports via The Verge: A few minutes ago, I opened the new Arc Search app and typed, "What happened in the Chiefs game?" That game, the AFC Championship, had just wrapped up. Normally, I'd Google it, click on a few links, and read about the game that way. But in Arc Search, I typed the query and tapped the "Browse for me" button instead. Arc Search, the new iOS app from The Browser Company, which has been working on a browser called Arc for the last few years, went to work. It scoured the web -- reading six pages, it told me, from Twitter to The Guardian to USA Today -- and returned a bunch of information a few seconds later. I got the headline: Chiefs win. I got the final score, the key play, a "notable event" that also just said the Chiefs won, a note about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, a bunch of related links, and some more bullet points about the game. Basically, instead of returning a bunch of search queries about the Chiefs game, Arc Search built me a webpage about it. And somewhere in there is The Browser Company's big idea about the future of web browsers -- that a browser, a search engine, an AI chatbot, and a website aren't different things. They're all just parts of an internet information finder, and they might as well exist inside the same app. [...] But from a pure product perspective, this feels closer to the way AI search should work than anything I've tried. Products like Copilot and Perplexity AI are cool, but they're fundamentally just chatbots with web access. Arc Search imagines something else entirely: AI that explores websites by building you a new one every time you ask.

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Japan is aiming to phase out floppy disks and CD-ROMs, which until now were forms of physical media required for submitting some official documents to the government. Engadget reports: Back in 2022, Minister of Digital Affairs Taro Kono urged various branches of the government to stop requiring businesses to submit information on outdated forms of physical media. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is one of the first to make the switch. "Under the current law, there are many provisions stipulating the use of specific recording media such as floppy disks regarding application and notification methods," METI said last week, according to The Register. After this calendar year, METI will no longer require businesses to submit data on floppy disks under 34 ordinances. The same goes for CD-ROMs when it comes to an unspecified number of procedures. There's still quite some way to go before businesses can stop using either format entirely, however. Kono's staff identified some 1,900 protocols across several government departments that still require the likes of floppy disks, CD-ROMs and even MiniDiscs. The physical media requirements even applied to key industries such as utility suppliers, mining operations and aircraft and weapons manufacturers. There are a couple of main reasons why there's a push to stop using floppy disks, as SoraNews24 points out. One major factor is that floppy disks can be hard to come by. Sony, the last major manufacturer, stopped selling them in 2011. Another is that some data types just won't fit on a floppy disk. A single photo can easily be larger than the format's 1.4MB storage capacity.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Mercedes-Benz accidentally exposed a trove of internal data after leaving a private key online that gave "unrestricted access" to the company's source code, according to the security research firm that discovered it. Shubham Mittal, co-founder and chief technology officer of RedHunt Labs, alerted TechCrunch to the exposure and asked for help in disclosing to the car maker. The London-based cybersecurity company said it discovered a Mercedes employee's authentication token in a public GitHub repository during a routine internet scan in January. According to Mittal, this token -- an alternative to using a password for authenticating to GitHub -- could grant anyone full access to Mercedes's GitHub Enterprise Server, thus allowing the download of the company's private source code repositories. "The GitHub token gave 'unrestricted' and 'unmonitored' access to the entire source code hosted at the internal GitHub Enterprise Server," Mittal explained in a report shared by TechCrunch. "The repositories include a large amount of intellectual property connection strings, cloud access keys, blueprints, design documents, [single sign-on] passwords, API Keys, and other critical internal information." Mittal provided TechCrunch with evidence that the exposed repositories contained Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) keys, a Postgres database, and Mercedes source code. It's not known if any customer data was contained within the repositories. It's not known if anyone else besides Mittal discovered the exposed key, which was published in late-September 2023. A Mercedes spokesperson confirmed that the company "revoked the respective API token and removed the public repository immediately." "We can confirm that internal source code was published on a public GitHub repository by human error. The security of our organization, products, and services is one of our top priorities. We will continue to analyze this case according to our normal processes. Depending on this, we implement remedial measures."

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Andrew Joseph, writing for STAT News: There was something odd about these Alzheimer's cases. Part of it was the patients' presentations: Some didn't have the classic symptoms of the condition. But it was also that the patients were in their 40s and 50s, even their 30s, far younger than people who normally develop the disease. They didn't even have the known genetic mutations that can set people on the course for such early-onset Alzheimer's. But this small handful of patients did share a particular history. As children, they had received growth hormone taken from the brains of human cadavers, which used to be a treatment for a number of conditions that caused short stature. Now, decades later, they were showing signs of Alzheimer's. In the interim, scientists had discovered that that type of hormone treatment they got could unwittingly transfer bits of protein into recipients' brains. In some cases, it had induced a fatal brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD -- a finding that led to the banning of the procedure 40 years ago. It seemed that it wasn't just the proteins behind CJD that could get transferred. As the scientific team treating the patients reported Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, the hormone transplant seeded the beta-amyloid protein that's a hallmark of Alzheimer's in some recipients' brains, which, decades later, propagated into disease-causing plaques. They are the first known cases of transmitted Alzheimer's disease, likely a scientific anomaly yet a finding that adds another wrinkle to ongoing arguments about what truly causes Alzheimer's. "It looks real that some of these people developed early-onset Alzheimer's because of that [hormone treatment]," said Ben Wolozin, an expert on neurodegenerative diseases at Boston University's medical school, who was not involved in the study.

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IBM delivered a companywide ultimatum to managers who are still working remotely: move near an office or leave the company. From a report: All US managers must immediately report to an office or client location at least three days a week "regardless of current work location status," according to a memo sent on Jan. 16 viewed by Bloomberg. Badge-in data will be used to "assess individual presence" and shared with managers and human resources, Senior Vice President John Granger wrote in the note. Those working remotely, other than employees with exceptions such as medical issues or military service, who don't live close enough to commute to a facility must relocate near an IBM office by the start of August, according to the memo. Managers who don't agree to relocate and are unable to secure a role that's approved to be remote must "separate from IBM," Granger wrote.

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Regulators put limits on Boeing 737 MAX production; grounded MAX 9 jets have resumed flying after required inspections. From a report: Bolts needed to secure part of an Alaska Airlines jet that blew off in midair appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing's factory. Boeing and other industry officials increasingly believe the plane maker's employees failed to put back the bolts when they reinstalled a 737 MAX 9 plug door after opening or removing it during production, according to people familiar with the matter. The increasingly likely scenario, according to some of these people, is based partly on an apparent absence of markings on the Alaska door plug itself that would suggest bolts were in place when it blew off the jet around 16,000 feet over Oregon on Jan. 5. They also pointed to paperwork and process lapses at Boeing's Renton, Wash., factory related to the company's work on the plug door. The National Transportation Safety Board has been conducting metallurgical analysis of the plug door but hasn't released the results of the testing. Laboratory tests might show whether the bolts were in place or not there at all. An update in the NTSB probe is expected as soon as this week. New evidence could later emerge before accident investigators reach final conclusions. It couldn't be determined how many people were involved with work on the plug door at Boeing's 737 factory. Supplier Spirit AeroSystems delivered the 737 fuselage to Boeing's factory with the door plug installed. The plug door itself was constructed in Spirit's Malaysian factory, while the fuselage was assembled in Wichita, Kan. Boeing opened or removed the door plug after the 737 MAX 9 jet's fuselage arrived at the plane maker's Renton, Wash., factory for final assembly, The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets have reported.

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UnknowingFool writes: Jurors on Friday, January 26, 2024 ruled in favor of celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D (real name Katherine von Drachenberg) in a copyright lawsuit regarding a photo of Miles Davis in that her use of the photo was not copyright infringement. The photographer of the photo, Jeffrey Sedlik, sued Von D in February 2021 after she used the photo as the basis for a tattoo she inked on a friend. Kat Von D, who gained fame in the reality shows about tattoo artists "LA Ink" and "Miami Ink", put the tattoo on her friend's arm in 2017 as a gift. The jury found that the tattoo was not "substantially similar" to the photo and were also persuaded that the non-commercial nature of the work meant her use of the photo would be fair use. The plaintiff Sedilk said he is planning to appeal the ruling arguing it contradicts the Supreme Court ruling in Warhol Foundation vs Goldsmith (PDF) where the artist Andy Warhol made a silkscreen print of Lynn Goldsmith's photo of Prince. The main difference pointed out by Von D's lawyers is that Warhol charged $10,000 for his print whereas Von D did not charge her friend for the tattoo and that is was closer to "fan art".

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T-Mobile has tweaked its terms of service for its home broadband users to add a new clause: If you are a heavy internet user that passes 1.2TB of data in a monthly billing cycle, you may have your speeds slowed in "times of congestion" or when there is a lot of pressure on the network. CNET: As spotted by The Mobile Report, the change went into effect on Jan. 18. In its updated terms, the carrier says that these users "will be prioritized last on the network" in congestion situations, which could mean painfully slow speeds for however long the congestion persists. T-Mobile does note that since its Home Internet service is available only in "limited areas" and intended to be used in a "stationary" setting, as opposed to a phone that could be in a busy place like a packed stadium, "these customers should be less likely to notice congestion in general."

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