Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Boston Dynamics: Handle Robot
March 29th, 2019Via: Boston Dynamics: Handle is a mobile manipulation robot designed for logistics. Handle autonomously performs mixed SKU pallet building and depalletizing after initialization and localizing against the pallets. The on-board vision system on Handle tracks the marked pallets for navigation and finds individual boxes for grasping and placing. When Handle places a boxes onto a […]
Renegade DEA Mass Surveillance Operations
March 29th, 2019“It’s just like laundering money – you work it backwards to make it clean.” Via: Nextgov: The Drug Enforcement Administration skirted numerous legal checks on a trio of bulk data collection programs dating back to the early 1990s, according to an internal watchdog. In a heavily redacted, 144-page report published Thursday, the Justice Department Inspector […]
How Android Phones Keep Tabs On Our Every Move
March 29th, 2019I wouldn’t encourage the use of Apple’s mobile devices as an alternative, but Android is essentially malware. Via: El País: As a consumer, you buy a new Android cellphone. It could be any brand, but it is likely to be an Android as they account for more than 80% of today’s cellphone market. You open […]
Logic Signal Analyzer on Intel Processors Would Allow Spyware Operations at Lowest Level Possible
March 29th, 2019Via: ZDNet: At the Black Hat Asia 2019 security conference, security researchers from Positive Technologies disclosed the existence of a previously unknown and undocumented feature in Intel chipsets. Called Intel Visualization of Internal Signals Architecture (Intel VISA), Positive Technologies researchers Maxim Goryachy and Mark Ermolov said this is a new utility included in modern Intel […]
Google Is Conducting a Secret “Performance Review” of Its Censored China Search Project
March 27th, 2019Via: The Intercept: Google executives are carrying out a secret internal assessment of work on a censored search engine for China, The Intercept has learned. A small group of top managers at the internet giant are conducting a “performance review” of the controversial effort to build the search platform, known as Dragonfly, which was designed […]
Microsoft and UW Demonstrate First Fully Automated DNA Data Storage
March 23rd, 2019Via: Microsoft: Researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington have demonstrated the first fully automated system to store and retrieve data in manufactured DNA — a key step in moving the technology out of the research lab and into commercial datacenters. In a simple proof-of-concept test, the team successfully encoded the word “hello” in […]
After Blocking Zero Hedge and Others, NZ Telcos Demand Big-Tech Censorship Surge to “Protect Consumers”
March 21st, 2019People are emailing me about these bans. I just now browsed (on a remote machine under my control) ZeroHedge, Gab and Dissenter without any problems on Spark, the largest ISP in NZ. Also, my small, regional ISP has not blocked any of these sites. Whatever is happening with regard to sites being blocked in NZ, […]
Forget Tesla, It’s China’s E-Buses That Are Denting Oil Demand
March 20th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: The oil industry needn’t be too concerned — for now — about how Tesla Inc.’s electric cars are denting demand. China and its bus fleet could be more of a worry. By the end of this year, a cumulative 270,000 barrels a day of diesel demand will have been displaced by electric buses, […]
Pentagon Wants to Test A Space-Based Weapon in 2023
March 16th, 2019Via: DefenseOne: Defense officials want to test a neutral particle-beam in orbit in fiscal 2023 as part of a ramped-up effort to explore various types of space-based weaponry. They’ve asked for $304 million in the 2020 budget to develop such beams, more powerful lasers, and other new tech for next-generation missile defense. Such weapons are […]
‘DARPA Is Building a $10 Million, Open Source, Secure Voting System’
March 14th, 2019Mmm hmm. If this system relies on elliptic curve cryptography, an attacker with a large quantum computer will be able to crack it. Via: Vice: For years security professionals and election integrity activists have been pushing voting machine vendors to build more secure and verifiable election systems, so voters and candidates can be assured election […]
