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In just a few hours, Luis Wenus, an engineer and entrepreneur, converted a $115 (£89.99) drone into the basis of a deadly weapon. Using AI facial recognition the drone was programmed to recognise individuals and race towards them at full speed. ... In a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, Mr Wenus and his engineer colleague, demonstrated how a commercial drone can be programmed to chase down targets. In the post, Mr Wenus writes: 'I thought it would be fun to build a drone that chases you around as a game.' The drone uses an AI 'object detection model' to...

In a public notice released late yesterday, the FCC officially said that April will be the last full month for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) due to insufficient funding. The commission also said it will let providers know later this month about the amount to expect per customer in May, leaving the providers with a choice to make. Should they end their participation in the program after April? Should they pass on a partial benefit to customers for May and require the customers to pay the extra portion? Or should they offer a full ACP benefit in May by contributing...

Google Gemini is just the latest iteration of the hottest trend in entertainment: white erasure from the culture.The future is here and it’s not only stupid, it’s racist.After playing around with Google’s powerful new “artificial intelligence” tool called “Gemini,” I can safely say two things: First, AI will never replace human artists.Second, AI will replace white people.Like other AI tools, Gemini also has a nifty image creation feature where you can ask it to create specific images. But within five minutes of Gemini’s release, everyone realized that the one thing Gemini could not do was create an image of a...

Omer Sharar had just received the first delivery of his new GPS anti-jamming technology when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7. Since then he and his team at InfiniDome, a start-up based in Caesarea, north of Tel Aviv, have been working around the clock to prevent the Israeli army's mini-drones from being intercepted by cheap and simple jamming in Gaza. Israel -- one of the world's main exporters of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- has for years waged a drone war along its borders, allowing it to monitor or target its enemies remotely with large, sophisticated airborne platforms. During...

Google has Usurped DemocracyWe hear a lot about “election integrity” or lack thereof, particularly around the issues of counting the vote and the ballot box. But the truth is that elections are more likely to be stolen via search engine manipulation effects (SEME).What is SEME?SEME is an abbreviation for the search engine manipulation effect. In a series of randomized controlled experiments, it has been shown that more than 20% of undecided voters can be manipulated into voting one way or the other, by simply manipulating the rankings of search engine results.These studies were published in an article titled “The search...

AT&T's network went down for many of its customers across the United States Thursday morning, leaving customers unable to place calls, text or access the internet. Although Verizon and T-Mobile customers reported some network outages, too, they appeared far less widespread. T-Mobile and Verizon said their networks were unaffected by AT&T's service outage and customers reporting outages may have been unable to reach customers who use AT&T. More than 73,000 AT&T customers reported outages on digital-service tracking site DownDetector. That's not a comprehensive number: It tracks only self-reported outages. Although outage reports fell a bit in the 5 am ET...

Beijing, now Moscow.… Who else is hiding in broadband gateways?The US government today said it disrupted a botnet that Russia's GRU military intelligence unit used for phishing expeditions, spying, credential harvesting, and data theft against American and foreign governments and other strategic targets. This latest court-authorized takedown happened in January, and involved neutralizing "well over a thousand" home and small business routers that had been infected with the Moobot malware, which is a Mirai variant, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the Munich Cyber Security Conference on Thursday. Moobot can be used to remote-control compromised devices and launch...

WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. — For several years, a problem has been brewing for Lockheed Martin’s F-35: future upgrades will make the jet run even hotter than it does now, more than its current cooling system is believed to be able to handle. In the near term, Pentagon officials expect that a high-profile upgrade to the plane’s F135 engine will avoid most of these cooling issues. But in the longer term, the military fears future aircraft upgrades needed to keep pace with threats decades down the line will push the heat factor even higher, and officials have recently suggested they’re casting...

Professor Holland:"According to the (ret) head of a pan European radio telescope project, an extraterrestrial signal was detected 11 light years away in 2019. He told me, we are in regular contact with the aliens. Is this true? How would we speak in real time to an ET, 11 light yers away? maybe with Quantum Tunneling Communication. Some of this story makes sense, other bits are pure science fiction. Is this the BIG reveal we have all bee waiting for, or is it just bollocks? you choose. It's an interesting quest."

Dr. Wyner is a professor, statistician, and, oh, chair of the undergraduate program in statistics and data science. His specialty is probability models. He has worked with ESPN (Money Ball anyone?) and has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the very same NSF of which we've heard so much about the two last weeks. Dr. Wyner knows numbers.

Ford Motor Company is planning to contract technology and software from at least four Chinese firms that supply similar services to the Chinese government and military, and the North Korean government, according to contracts obtained by Republican investigators. The revelations — which were released Monday by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. — are part of the GOP's ongoing joint investigation into Ford's partnership with Fujian, China-based electric vehicle (EV) battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL).

A recent study by Consumer Reports, in collaboration with The Markup, has unveiled the extensive scale of data tracking aimed at Facebook users. Some users in the study were tracked by as many as 7,000 companies. A recent study from Consumer Reports engaged 709 volunteers who provided archives of their Facebook user data. Astonishingly, Consumer Reports discovered that 186,892 different companies transmitted data about these users to Facebook. On average, data from each participant was shared by 2,230 companies, with some users’ data being shared by over 7,000 companies. This examination highlighted a lesser-known form of tracking known as server-to-server...

At an undetermined date, in an undisclosed location, the Biden administration began operating a secretive new court to protect Europeans’ privacy rights under U.S. law. Officially known as the Data Protection Review Court, it was authorized in an October 2022 executive order to fix a collision of European and American law that had been blocking the lucrative flow of consumer data between American and European companies for three years. The court’s eight judges were named last November, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Its existence has allowed companies to resume the lucrative transatlantic data trade with the blessing of...

After months of study, the Air Force may (or may not) be on the verge of a major restructuring. While a shakeup has yet to be confirmed — much less the details of the plan — in this op-ed nuclear policy experts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin examine one road that they say Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall should definitely not follow. During the Space Force Association’s annual conference in mid-December, Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, the commander of Space Systems Command, raised eyebrows when he said, “The Air Force is going to get rid of the major command structure.” He...

EVERETT, Wash. — In the wake of Boeing’s KC-46A Pegasus topping $7 billion in losses, company officials have been eager to stem the tide of the tanker’s long-running woes — and resolve several critical issues that pose risks to its operations. The Pegasus currently has six category 1 deficiencies, Air Force terminology for problems that could cause loss of an aircraft, injury, or death. Spending money to fix those issues has helped drive Boeing’s staggering losses on the program, and is a key reason why company officials have sworn off fixed-price development contracts like those that govern the KC-46A. Work...

Investigators say a door plug on Alaska Airlines 1282 came loose from fittings meant to hold it to the plane ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ United Airlines and Alaska Airlines have discovered loose parts on Boeing BA -1.41%decrease; red down pointing triangle 737 MAX 9 jets that they have inspected after a near-catastrophe on a flight Friday, signaling Boeing’s issues go beyond the aircraft that made an emergency landing. The disclosures came shortly before investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board said that dangerous episode on an Alaska Airlines jet occurred because an emergency exit-sized door plug blew out at around 16,000 feet after...

Commercial air crews are reporting something “unthinkable” in the skies above the Middle East: novel “spoofing” attacks have caused navigation systems to fail in dozens of incidents since September. In late September, multiple commercial flights near Iran went astray after navigation systems went blind. The planes first received spoofed GPS signals, meaning signals designed to fool planes’ systems into thinking they are flying miles away from their real location. One of the aircraft almost flew into Iranian airspace without permission. Since then, air crews discussing the problem online have said it’s only gotten worse, and experts are racing to establish...

Carbon dioxide does not cause climate change No gas causes warming COMMENTARY By James T. Moodey Wednesday, July 12, 2023 OPINION: The green movement’s climate-change scheme is based upon the false notion that carbon dioxide and other gases cause global warming. They do not. We don’t have to guess about this. We have empirical and scientific proof. I owned a Weights and Measures gas-physics test-and-repair facility and conducted tests. We learned gas physics from engineers at factories that manufacture gas-physics instruments. A card so good, our experts signed up personally A card so good, our experts signed up personally Paid...

False claims that President Joe Biden fell asleep during a moment of silence for victims of the Maui wildfire. A conspiracy theory that the latest surge in Covid-19 cases is being orchestrated by the Democratic Party ahead of the election. An obituary for a late NBA player that described him as “useless.” These false and bizarre stories aren’t showing up on some far-flung corner of the internet — they’re being published by Microsoft. The company’s homepage, also known as MSN.com and Microsoft Start, remains one of the world’s most trafficked websites and a place where millions of Americans get their...

researchers at MIT and Harvard University have developed an efficient process that can convert carbon dioxide into formate, a liquid or solid material that can be used like hydrogen or methanol to power a fuel cell and generate electricity. ...However, the researchers expect it to be scalable so that it could provide emissions-free heat and power to individual homes and even be used in industrial or grid-scale applications. These crystals have an indefinite shelf life, remaining so stable that they could be stored for years, or even decades, with little or no loss. By comparison, even the best available practical...