The feast and famine of Lego releases continues as, after last month’s Star Wars blowout, October is looking like a quieter month in terms of sheer volume of sets to tempt your wallet. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t heavy hitters among those to come!
The National Security Agency (NSA) is starting a dedicated artificial intelligence security center, as reported by AP. This move comes after the government has begun to increasingly rely on AI, integrating multiple algorithms into defense and intelligence systems. The security center will work to protect these systems from theft and sabotage, in addition to safeguarding the country from external AI-based threats.
The NSA’s recent move toward AI security was announced Thursday by outgoing director General Paul Nakasone. He says that the division will operate underneath the umbrella of the pre-existing Cybersecurity Collaboration Center. This entity works with private industry and international partners to protect the US from cyberattacks stemming from China, Russia and other countries with active malware and hacking campaigns.
For instance, the agency issued an advisory this week suggesting that Chinese hackers have been targeting government, industrial and telecommunications outfits via hacked router firmware. There’s also the specter of election interference, though Nakasone says he’s yet to see any evidence of Russia or China trying to influence the 2024 US presidential election. Still, this has been a big problem in the past, and that was before the rapid proliferation of AI algorithms like the CIA’s recently-announced chatbot.
As artificial intelligence threatens to boost the abilities of these bad actors, the US government will look to this new security division to keep up. The NSA decided on establishing the unit after conducting a study that suggested poorly-secured AI models pose a significant national security challenge. This has only been compounded by the increase of generative AI technologies that the NSA points out can be used for both good and bad purposes.
Nakasone says the organization will become “NSA’s focal point for leveraging foreign intelligence insights, contributing to the development of best practices guidelines, principles, evaluation, methodology and risk frameworks” for both AI security and for the goal of secure development and adoption of artificial intelligence within “our national security systems and our defense industrial base.” To that end, the group will work hand-in-hand with industry leaders, science labs, academic institutions, international partners and, of course, the Department of Defense.
Nakasone is on his way out of the NSA and the US Cyber Command and he’ll be succeeded by his current deputy, Air Force Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh. Nakasone has been at his post since 2018 and, by all accounts, has had quite a successful run of it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-nsa-has-a-new-security-center-specifically-for-guarding-against-ai-180354146.html?src=rss
Alabama authorities say they have ruled out the woman’s estranged spouse as a suspect in the “horrific” crime that claimed three lives.
The feast and famine of Lego releases continues as, after last month’s Star Wars blowout, October is looking like a quieter month in terms of sheer volume of sets to tempt your wallet. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t heavy hitters among those to come!
The kids are not all right and are being subject to a firehouse of pinging in the thick of the Information Age. A new report reveals that children are getting upwards of 4,500 notifications a day and have some predictable favorite (and least favorite) apps.
BeReal’s active users appear to be exiting the platform in droves, with the number of active users dropping by 18% since it peaked in November of last year. The app gained a substantial number of active users in 2022 but now has a shrinking userbase that’s far smaller than its social media counterparts, according to a…
The federal government will conduct a nationwide alert test on Wednesday, October 4. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will send notifications to cell phones (as well as radios and TVs) to test the National Wireless Emergency Alert System and ensure the system (including the public’s familiarity with it) is ready for a real crisis.
The cellphone portion of the test will assess Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) nationwide. If you live near a decent-sized metro area, there’s a solid chance you’ve received AMBER alerts through this system before; it can also broadcast signals for imminent threats, public safety and presidential notices in a national emergency. The test’s WEA portion will use FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), a centralized internet-based system that can broadcast emergency notifications through various communications networks.
If your cell phone is set to English, you’ll receive a message at around 2:20PM ET reading, “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.” Those with phones set to Spanish as their primary language will see, “ESTA ES UNA PRUEBA del Sistema Nacional de Alerta de Emergencia. No se necesita acción.”
Of course, the messages will be accompanied by a “unique tone and vibration.” Based on past tests we’ve received, that could easily be described as “a jarring and obnoxious alarm that will immediately make you stop what you’re doing, utter select obscenities and pick up your phone to make it stop.”
Using the Emergency Alert System (EAS), the television and radio portion of the assessment is scheduled to happen simultaneously. This will be the seventh nationwide EAS test.
The cell phone part of the test is scheduled to last for about 30 minutes, but you should be able to dismiss the notification and shut up your phone as soon as you see and hear it. And in the (extremely unlikely) event of an actual emergency on Wednesday, the test will take place a week later on the backup date of October 11.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/your-phone-will-blare-a-national-emergency-alert-test-on-october-4-at-220pm-et-184322119.html?src=rss
A beetle protagonist emerges into a beautiful, lonely world. There’s no preamble, no text overlays; not even a hint of what you’re meant to do next. So, you walk. After finding your way to a small staircase, you descend, and the steps disappear into the ground — a silent cue that you’re on the right path. A few paces further, you discover a purple pad, and as you stand on it, your iridescent wings begin to quiver. Without thinking about it, you press a button on your controller, the pad turns green, and a nearby rock transforms into a new staircase. Progress!
After solving a couple of rudimentary puzzles, you’ll encounter an orb — these are the heart (and the body) of this game. You carry them on your beetle back, initially using them as keys to open doors and solve puzzles, before discovering that inside every orb is a new world of puzzles and challenges to overcome.
Cocoon is the first game from Geometric Interactive, a studio founded in 2016 by Jeppe Carlsen and Jakob Schmid. Both are alums of Playdead, the Danish studio behind Limbo and Inside, for which Carlsen worked as lead gameplay designer. If you’ve played either of those games, Cocoon’s quietly impressive intro may sound familiar. Both were side-scrolling puzzle-platformers that used their environments and challenges to simultaneously tell a story and guide their players. The story is much the same here, but Cocoon’s structure of layered, interconnected worlds showcases another level of maturity and artistry.
The game actually opens inside the orange orb, a gorgeous desert world, and expands out from there. Each world is protected by a guardian, which needs to be defeated in order to fully unlock the orb’s power outside of that world. Unlocking the orange orb, for example, allows you to walk on hidden paths while carrying it. Each orb grants its own powers, and all are critical to progression.
The guardians are the game’s “boss fights.” Though there is no traditional combat, each guardian is certainly combative, and there is a degree of skill and timing required to best them. One of the later encounters did actually trip me up a few times, which is as good a time as any to mention that Cocoon has absolutely no fail state. Getting tagged by a guardian doesn’t hurt, they merely throw you outside of their orb — hop back in and you’ll return to the encounter within a couple of seconds. Likewise, you can’t mess a puzzle up to the point that you need to reload.
In isolation, the guardians are probably the game’s weakest moments, but they do provide a nice break from the puzzle-solving alongside a bit of visual spectacle. This is broadly a beautiful game to see and hear, full of bright pastel hues and beds of synth pads, and in places it’s surprisingly gross. What starts as a tranquil walk through something approximating the American Southwest quickly devolves into goopy bio-horror, and I’m very here for it. I started playing the game on a little Ayaneo handheld PC, but about quarter-way through moved over to the Xbox — while it’s a fun thing to play on a portable, the art and sound design really does benefit from a big screen and some decent speakers or headphones.
I think the bigger screen actually helped me — though this is more a review of my eyesight than the game — solve puzzles faster. Toward the end of the game, you’ll find yourself truly disoriented as you jump in and out of worlds and portals, twisting the game’s logic on its head to progress. I feel like I would’ve missed some of the environmental cues — again, my old eyes — had I been playing on a 6-inch screen.
I only truly got stuck once, when I spent an hour wandering around, trying to figure out what exactly I had to do to solve a puzzle. (The answer, as you’d expect, was blindingly obvious.) Cocoon doesn’t hold your hand, but it is a helicopter parent — in a good way! — gently hovering over you and pushing you in the right direction. There are environmental cues scattered around, and you’ll notice throughout that gates shut behind you at key moments. This prevented me from trying to double-back to see if I’d missed something, an activity that represents half of my playtime in similar games. Subtly locking you in an environment is the game’s way of saying “you have everything needed to progress, so stop being so dense and figure it out.”
Cocoon is a game I can (and will) recommend to anyone that plays video games, and plenty who don’t. Perhaps my only complaint is that I want more. The game only actually introduces, to my count, six core mechanics, and each of those are mixed, matched and remixed in truly creative ways. I appreciate a game being as long as its developer wants it to be, but the bones here are so good, so satisfying, that I can’t help feeling it can hold up to more orbs, more puzzles.
That said, the seven hours or so I spent with Cocoon are among the most memorable of this decade, and I’ll definitely be returning to it in a couple of years, once my brain has purged all of the answers to its puzzles.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cocoon-is-a-near-perfect-puzzle-game-that-everyone-should-play-190051423.html?src=rss
These common questions and comments may seem innocent, but can actually do a lot of harm.
BeReal’s active users appear to be exiting the platform in droves, with the number of active users dropping by 18% since it peaked in November of last year. The app gained a substantial number of active users in 2022 but now has a shrinking userbase that’s far smaller than its social media counterparts, according to a…
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