Free Republic

Flirtey makes first urban drone delivery in FAA test, beating Amazon to the punch by Alan Boyle on March 25, 2016 at 5:07 pm Flirtey’s hexacopter hovers over Nevada during a drone delivery test. (Credit: Flirtey) A startup named Flirtey says it’s executed the first FAA-approved urban drone delivery in the United States, in a test that could blaze a trail for Amazon and other companies that want to do the same thing. The GPS-guided drop-off to an unoccupied house took place on March 10 in Hawthorne, Nev. The package of supplies, including bottled water, emergency food supply and a...

Microsoft has issued an apology over their creation of an artificial intelligence program behind a Twitter account that began to post and retweet racist remarks. The chatbot, named Tay, was designed to become more intelligent as users interacted with it; however, it quickly started imitating targeted trolling messages tweeted at it, claiming that “the holocaust was made up,” “the Jews did 9/11,” and “I f***ng hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell.” As a result, Tay was deactivated within 24 hours of its introduction. But on Friday, Peter Lee, Microsofts Head of Research, said the company...

A demolition crew destroyed her building by mistake on Tuesday after Google Maps provided wrong directions. Instead of navigating workers to a duplex on Cousteau Drive in Rowlett, Texas, Google Maps took them a block away to Diaz's duplex on Calypso Drive. "[Google's] mistake caused me to lose my home," she told CNNMoney on Friday. Google acknowledged the Maps error in an email, and said it's investigating the cause. "Google Maps did indeed show incorrect information for the houses in question," a spokeswoman told CNNMoney. "Both addresses were shown as being in the same location (7601 Calypso Dr) on Google...

I need an expert on Outlook 2013 and Exchange Server. Here is the reason why. I work for the federal government at a local military base (hey, put those rocks down, right now!) and just recently Outlook 2013 was hoisted upon us. No one wanted it, no one asked for it, and everyone is complaining about it. Story for another time. Outlook 2013 and 2016 has dropped a vital feature. If you go File, Account Settings, Account Settings, the very first tab is called "Email." At the bottom of that screen, at least versions 2010 and earlier, there is a...

The iMessage vulnerability got a lot of attention, but another bug allows for remote execution over Wi-Fi, which is a much bigger threat. Apple released new versions of several operating system products earlier this week, fixing vulnerabilities in OS X El Capitan and iOS 9 among others. Because encryption and Apple are big news these days, the attention mostly went to an admittedly interesting flaw in Apple's encryption for iMessage, reported by a research team, led by well-known cryptographer Matthew Green. But the bug is not an easy one to exploit and doesn't even expose a lot. There are much...

Twitter trolls made a dummy out of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence chat robot, which learns through public interaction, by turning it into a pro-Nazi racist within a day of its launch. Tay, the artificial intelligence (AI) robot, had a bug in which it would at first repeat racist comments, then it began to incorporate the language in its own tweets. ...The robot, made to sound like a teenage girl, targeted 18- to 24-year-olds, “the dominant users of mobile social chat services” in the United States, the page says.... Soon after, Tay was tweeting, “Hitler was right I hate the jews” and...

What happens when one of the world’s biggest software companies lets an artificially intelligent chatbot learn from people on Twitter? Exactly what you think will happen. Microsoft’s Technology and Research and Bing teams launched a project on Wednesday with Twitter, Canada’s Kik messenger and GroupMe: a chatbot called Tay that was built using natural language processing so that it could appear to understand the context and content of a conversation with a user. Targeting the 18-to-24-age demographic, its aims were simple: “Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful...

Thanks in part to the corporate BYOD movement, Apple's AppleCare service and support plan, and just plain old demand, enterprises are more steadily adopting Macs in their organizations. Those factors, coupled with Apple's partnership with IBM to develop a set of business apps for the iPhone and iPad, are leading Apple to make strides in the enterprise. That said, industry observers don't believe Macs will be overtaking PCs anytime soon. "Really, they're making strides because users are demanding them and organizations want to be able to say 'yes' more than in the past,'' says Michael Silver, a research vice president...

Link only to comply with FR guidelines.

Israel's Cellebrite, a provider of mobile forensic software, is helping the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's attempt to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California shooters, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Wednesday. If Cellebrite succeeds, then the FBI will no longer need the help of Apple Inc (AAPL.O), the Israeli daily said, citing unnamed industry sources. Cellebrite officials declined to comment on the matter. Apple is engaged in a legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department over a judge's order that it write new software to disable passcode protection on the iPhone used by the...

Click on the link to watch the movie.

Shakespeare's skull is likely missing from his grave, an archaeologist has concluded, confirming rumors which have swirled for years about grave-robbers and adding to the mystery surrounding the Bard's remains. Four hundred years after his death and burial at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon, central England, researchers were allowed to scan the grave of England's greatest playwright with ground-penetrating radar. But in the area under the church floor where the Bard's skull was expected to be, they found signs of interference.

** PROFANITY ALERT ** It took less than 24 hours for Twitter to corrupt an innocent AI chatbot. Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled Tay — a Twitter bot that the company described as an experiment in "conversational understanding." The more you chat with Tay, said Microsoft, the smarter it gets, learning to engage people through "casual and playful conversation." Unfortunately, the conversations didn't stay playful for long. Pretty soon after Tay launched, people starting tweeting the bot with all sorts of misogynistic, racist, and Donald Trumpist remarks. And Tay — being essentially a robot parrot with an Internet connection — started repeating...

“Millions of Android phones, including the entire line of Nexus models, are vulnerable to attacks that can execute malicious code and take control of core functions almost permanently, Google officials have warned,” Dan Goodin reports for Ars Technica. “The flaw, which allows apps to gain nearly unfettered “root” access that bypasses the entire Android security model, has its origins in an elevation of privileges vulnerability in the Linux kernel. Linux developers fixed it in April 2014 but never identified it as a security threat,” Goodin reports. “For reasons that aren’t clear, Android developers failed to patch it even after the...

Today is National Puppy Day, which means that across the country -- and maybe in other parts of the world -- men and women, boys and girls, are spending quality time with their little dogs, or enjoying cute gifs on the Internet. National Puppy Day was founded in 2006 by "Celebrity Pet & Home Lifestyle Expert and Author" Colleen Page, who also founded National Dog Day and National Cat Day. Paige intended National Puppy Day to celebrate "the magic and unconditional love that puppies bring to our lives," according to the day's official website. "More importantly, it's a day to...

“Apple updated its OS X desktop operating system yesterday (Mar. 21) to version 10.11.4, which fixes dozens of system vulnerabilities, solves an annoying bug in Safari and adds a password to Notes,” Henry T. Casey reports for LAPTOP Magazine. “The new version also increases USB reliability and adds support for Apple’s animated Live Photo files.” “The most well-publicized flaw patched in the security updates protects users from targeted attacks that could poach images or videos sent via iMessage,” Casey reports. “OS X users who use Notes as their primary app for writing quick documents will also want to update to...

Apple shipped iOS 9.3 Monday afternoon, less than an hour after the media event that introduced the newest version of Apple's mobile operating system. New features include Night Shift, updated Apple News, CareKit, and other improvements. The update can be found in Software Update on your iOS device, or in iTunes watchOS 2.2 Rolls Out with Multi-watch Pairing Apple released watchOS 2.2 on Monday to go along with iOS 9.3. The update added support for pairing multiple watches with a single iPhone, and improved Maps support. watchOS 2.2 lets you pair multiple Apple Watches with your iPhone Maps now offers...

across the UK today as part of digital literacy initiative Almost one million school children across the UK will today receive their very own micro computer thanks to a “landmark” BBC initiative. Every Year 7 student in England and Wales, Year 8 student in Northern Ireland and S1 student in Scotland will be handed, for free, a BBC micro:bit computer specially designed to help pupils learn to code. The pocket-sized micro:bit is part of the BBC’s Make it Digital initiative, and aims to get schoolchildren and teachers alike of all abilities learn the basics of making computer programs by teaching...

Apple has quickly released a patch for a flaw in its encryption capability for the iOS mobile and OS X desktop operating systems which could allow attackers to unscramble protected iMessage photos and videos. First reported by the Washington Post, a group of researchers led by cryptographer Matthew Green at John Hopkins University discovered they could intercept iMessage content stored in Apple's iCloud by brute-force guessing the encryption key. With the encryption key at hand, attackers could retrieve files from iCloud accounts without users knowing. Attackers would need to be able to bypass Apple’s TLS certificate pinning, which associates the...

Well, it's a small iPhone.That's what I can tell you about the new iPhone SE, which essentially takes the powerful processor from the iPhone 6S and puts it into a 4-inch design. Apart from the new rose gold color, it's almost completely indistinguishable from the iPhone 5 or (now-discontinued) 5S. Same chamfers, same screen, same bezels. If there's any surprise, it's that Apple didn't skimp on anything here (except, of course, the storage). The camera is the same 12-megapixel shooter you'd get on an iPhone 6S, except here it's even better because it doesn't stick out at all.New iPhone SE...