It feels like everyone on the internet is watching Netflix’s runaway hit Squid Game, and that includes a North Korean propaganda site, which praises the series for “exposing the reality of South Korean society, where weak meat and corruption has been on the rise and scoundrels are commonplace.”
“We’ve got to make this the most pressing issue for Americans.”
As privatization sweeps the debt-smothered territory, treasured shorelines face new threats.
When in a few years Facebook releases a new pair of glasses with cameras, microphones, and proximity sensors aboard, remember this article. Today we’re taking a peek at some research posted by Facebook AI called “Ego4D”. This research worked with “a consortium of 13 universities and labs across nine countries” that together collected “2,200 hours of first person video in … Continue reading
Boston Dynamics, the company most commonly associated with robot dogs, prohibits the weaponization of its Spot devices. That’s not the case for all robot dog manufacturers, however. One of them, Ghost Robotics, showed off a version of its Q-UGV device that many will have been dreading. It’s a robot dog with a gun attached to it.
Ghost Robotics has made robot dogs for the military, and it displayed this deadly model at the Association of the United States Army’s 2021 annual conference in Washington DC this week. A company called Sword International built the “special purpose unmanned rifle” (or SPUR) module. According to The Verge, it has a thermal camera for nighttime operation, an effective range of 1.2km (just under three quarters of a mile) and a 30x optical zoom.
Latest lethality 6.5 #creedmoor sniper payload from @SWORDINT. Check out the latest partner payloads @AUSAorg Wash DC. Keeping US and allied #sof#warfighter equipped with the latest innovations. @USSOCOM#defense#defence#NationalSecurity#drone#roboticspic.twitter.com/Dvk6OvL3Bu
— Ghost Robotics (@Ghost_Robotics) October 11, 2021
“Due to its highly capable sensors the SPUR can operate in a magnitude of conditions, both day and night,” a blurb on Sword’s website reads. “The Sword Defense Systems SPUR is the future of unmanned weapon systems, and that future is now.”
It’s unclear how autonomous a SPUR-equipped Q-UGV will be in the field, as Popular Science notes. It remains to be seen whether a human operator will guide the robot to an otherwise hard-to-reach position and manually aim and take shots (which seems more likely), or if the robot will handle entirely things by itself. Either way, it’s an unsettling prospect, and that’s before we get to the possibility of enemy hackers taking control of these machines.
As if a robot dog with a gun attached wasn’t dystopian enough, Ghost Robotics tweeted about a Q-UGV with a different kind of payload: a Lockheed Martin drone and a Digital Force Technologies recon sensor. Sniper robot dogs. Flying robot spy dogs. The future’s looking just peachy, isn’t it?
Check it out… robot dog w/ wings… New payload with @LockheedMartin Indago #drone and Digital Force Technologies recon sensor for a broad range of #warfighter capabilities @ausaorg#ausa2021. #defense#defence#qugv#specialforcespic.twitter.com/AxuNs3r8PI
— Ghost Robotics (@Ghost_Robotics) October 13, 2021
The wait is over. It’s now possible to encrypt your WhatsApp chat history on both Android and iOS, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday. The company plans to roll out the feature slowly to ensure it can deliver a consistent and reliable experience to all users.
However, once you can access the feature, it will allow you to secure your backups before they hit iCloud or Google Drive. At that point, neither WhatsApp nor your cloud service provider will be able to access the files. It’s also worth mentioning you won’t be able to recover your backups if you ever lose the 64-digit encryption key that secures your chat logs. That said, it’s also possible to secure your backups behind a password, in which case you can recover that if you ever lose it.
While WhatsApp has allowed users to securely message each other since 2016, it only started testing encrypted backups earlier this year. With today’s announcement, the company said it has taken the final step toward providing a full end-to-end encrypted messaging experience.
It’s worth pointing out that end-to-end encryption doesn’t guarantee your privacy will be fully protected. According to a report The Information published in August, Facebook was looking into an AI that could analyze encrypted data without having to decrypt it so that it could serve ads based on that information. The head of WhatsApp denied the report, but it’s a reminder that there’s more to privacy than merely the existence of end-to-end encryption.
Missouri Governor Mike Parson might want to read up on the differences between disclosing and exploiting security flaws. According to The Missouri Independent, Parson accused a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter of being a “hacker” for having the audacity to… report security holes. The journalist disclosed a Department of Elementary and Secondary Education web app flaw that let anyone see over 100,000 teachers’ Social Security numbers in site source code, and Parson interpreted this as a “political game” meant to “embarrass the state” — that is, a malicious hack.
The governor has already referred the case to the Cole County Prosecutor, and even has the Missouri Highway State Patrol investigating. An attorney for The Post-Dispatch maintained that the reporter “did the responsible thing” by sharing the flaw with the government to get it fixed. The lawyer also helpfully refreshed Parson on his internet lingo. A hacker is someone who “subverts” security with sinister intent, not a reporter trying to bolster security by sharing publicly available information.
This flaw wasn’t recent, either. University of Missouri-St. Louis professor Shaji Khan told The Post-Dispatch that this kind of vulnerability had been known for “at least” 10 years, and that it was “mind boggling” the Department would let these problems linger. Audits in 2015 and 2016 had highlighted data collection issues at both the Department and school districts.
No, prosecutors probably won’t file charges. It’s a bit difficult to convict someone whose ‘hack’ effectively amounted to clicking “view page source” in their browser. However, this highlights an all-too-familiar problem with politicians that don’t understand tech. It doesn’t just lead to embarrassments, such as letters to long-gone CEOs — it can discourage responsible security disclosures and put thousands of people at risk.
The Star Wars logo: it’s an iconic piece of pop culture. And now you can proudly display it in your home thanks to this Star Wars Logo Light available for pre-order from Entertainment Earth ($35, shipping later this month). Sure it’s no ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ piece of wall art, but I already own enough of those already.
The 11″ wide light can be hung on your wall or displayed standing, and requires three AA batteries for operation (not included). Obviously, it’s the perfect light for transporting any room to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Now all I need to do is buy this and stencil the opening crawl to Star Wars: A New Hope on one of the walls of my man cave and I’ll be the envy of all my Star Wars loving friends! Step one: convince my wife to let me turn the guest bedroom into a man cave.
On Thursday, a strange scene unfolded at the International Conference Centre in Edinburgh. Shell CEO Ben van Beurden took the stage with a prominent climate scientist and Christiana Figueres, the woman who negotiated the Paris Agreement, at a TED Countdown conference. Van Beurden was there to ostensibly talk up the…
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