New Mexico: National Solar Observatory Closed, Evacuated Due to “Security Issue”
September 10th, 2018Via: Alamogordo Daily News:
The Sunspot Observatory is temporarily closed due to a security issue at the facility that’s located 17 miles south of Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains Friday, an Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) spokeswoman Shari Lifson said.
“The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy who manages the facility is addressing a security issue at this time,” Lifson said. “We have decided to vacate the facility at this time as precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facility.”
She said she cannot comment on the specifics of the security issue.
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Otero County Sheriff Benny House said the Otero County Sheriff’s Office was asked to standby.
“The FBI is refusing to tell us what’s going on,” House said. “We’ve got people up there (at Sunspot) that requested us to standby while they evacuate it. Nobody would really elaborate on any of the circumstances as to why. The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say.”
He said he has a lot of unanswered question about what occurred at Sunspot.
“But for the FBI to get involved that quick and be so secretive about it, there was a lot of stuff going on up there,” House said. “There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers but nobody would tell us anything.”
The Daily News contacted the Albuquerque FBI spokesman seeking comment for this story, but telephone calls and messages were never returned.
House said he pulled his deputies from the facility after there was no identifiable threat.
“They wanted us up there to help evacuate but nobody would tell us anything,” he said. “We went up there and everything was good. There was no threat. Nobody would identify any specific threat. We hung out for a little while then we left. No reason for us to be there. Nobody would tell us what we’re supposed to be watching out for.”
Are New York’s Free LinkNYC Internet Kiosks Tracking Your Movements?
September 10th, 2018Via: The Intercept:
LinkNYC kiosks have become a familiar eyesore to New Yorkers. Over 1,600 of these towering, nine-and-a-half-foot monoliths — their double-sided screens festooned with ads and fun facts — have been installed across the city since early 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio has celebrated their ability to provide “the fastest and largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the world” as “a critical step toward a more equal, open, and connected city for every New Yorker, in every borough.” Anyone can use the kiosks’ Android tablets to search for directions and services; they are also equipped with charging stations, 911 buttons, and phones for free domestic calls.
But even as the kiosks have provided important services to connect New Yorkers, they may also represent a troubling expansion of the city’s surveillance network, potentially connecting every borough to a new level of invasive monitoring. Each kiosk has three cameras, 30 sensors, and heightened sight lines for viewing above crowds.
Since plans for LinkNYC were first unveiled, journalists, residents, and civil liberties experts have raised concerns that the internet kiosks might be storing sensitive data about its users and possibly tracking their movements. For the last two years, the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a small but vocal group of activists — including ReThink LinkNYC, a grassroots anti-surveillance group, and the anonymous Stop LinkNYC coalition — have highlighted the kiosk’s potential to track locations, collect personal information, and fuel mass surveillance.
Now an undergraduate researcher has discovered indications in LinkNYC code — accidentally made public on the internet — that LinkNYC may be actively planning to track users’ locations.
Decentralisation: The Next Big Step for the World Wide Web
September 9th, 2018Via: Guardian:
The decentralised web, or DWeb, could be a chance to take control of our data back from the big tech firms. So how does it work and when will it be here?
Pentagon Will Spend $2 Billion Developing Next-Generation AI
September 8th, 2018Via: Nextgov:
The Pentagon on Friday announced it would spend more than $2 billion over the next five years to advance the foundations of artificial intelligence technology.
Through the AI Next initiative, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency aims to bring about so-called “third wave” AI, tools capable of human-like communication and contextual reasoning that far surpass the abilities of today’s most advanced machine-learning and AI technology.
The massive investment comes as global powers like China pour significant resources into their own artificial intelligence R&D programs.
“I’m proud to tell you DARPA plans to continue and increase its support for AI research, with a significant focus on the technologies that underpin a third wave of AI,” said DARPA Director Steven Walker in the announcement at the agency’s 60th anniversary conference. “Let’s … double down and commit to ensuring our country continues to create technological surprise for many more years and continues to use that surprise for a better and more secure world.”
DARPA currently runs more than 20 programs to advance artificial intelligence and more than 60 others that explore ways the technology can bolster cybersecurity, share the electromagnetic spectrum and enable other breakthroughs. Under AI Next, the agency will spend the next year significantly expanding that portfolio.
Today, DARPA spends about $300 million annually on its AI endeavors, and AI Next would increase funding by another $100 million per year beginning in fiscal 2019, according to DARPA Chief of Communications Jared Adams.
The U.S. Army Wants to Transmit Power to Drones with Lasers
September 8th, 2018Via: Defense Systems:
Even as drone technology advances, power constraints limit the amount of equipment unmanned systems can carry as well as the time they can stay in the air.
Some drone systems, like the Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications drone from CyPhy Works, deliver power through a tether to keep a small drone aloft for an entire week. The Army, however, is developing a system to supply power through a laser, according to reporting from the New Scientist.
The drone would be outfitted with a photovoltaic cell that could take the light beam from the laser and turn it into electricity. The Army has still to determine how to get the benefits of photovoltaics without the extreme heat damaging the drone, according to Futurism.
Trump Tells Apple to Make Products in U.S. to Avoid China Tariffs
September 8th, 2018Via: Reuters:
U.S. President Trump tweeted on Saturday that Apple Inc should make products inside the United States if it wants to avoid tariffs on Chinese imports.
The company told trade officials in a letter on Friday that the proposed tariffs would affect prices for a “wide range” of Apple products, including its Watch, but it did not mention the iPhone.
Trump, speaking on Friday aboard Air Force One, said the administration had tariffs planned for an additional $267 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Trump tweeted that “Apple prices may increase because of the massive Tariffs we may be imposing on China – but there is an easy solution where there would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive. Make your products in the United States instead of China. Start building new plants now.”
Apple declined to comment.
Why Your Next Job Interview Could be with a Machine
September 6th, 2018
Via: CBC:
Your next job interview may feel a lot like an audition tape.
On a screen, a manager pops up in a recorded video and asks a question like: “Why do you want a career in this field?”
You have 10 seconds to think, and just a minute and a half to record your response on webcam.
Everything you say, how you say it — even where your eyes wander — is being analyzed. And not by a human, but by an algorithm. It evaluates whether you have the necessary skills and rates you on how well you fit the job.
Cold and calculated, yes — but potentially fairer than how humans hire now.
Companies have thousands of applicants knocking on their door, says Jahanzaib Ansari, CEO of Knockri, a Toronto startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help companies like IBM shortlist new talent.
“It’s just not humanly possible for them to go through each and every one, [so] a lot of organizations resort to a lottery process. A process that actually misses out great talent.”
Through algorithms, Knockri claims to fill a job faster, more efficiently and with reduced unconscious bias.
IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage to Develop Technology That Lets Police Search by Skin Color
September 6th, 2018Via: The Intercept:
In the decade after the 9/11 attacks, the New York City Police Department moved to put millions of New Yorkers under constant watch. Warning of terrorism threats, the department created a plan to carpet Manhattan’s downtown streets with thousands of cameras and had, by 2008, centralized its video surveillance operations to a single command center. Two years later, the NYPD announced that the command center, known as the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, had integrated cutting-edge video analytics software into select cameras across the city.
The video analytics software captured stills of individuals caught on closed-circuit TV footage and automatically labeled the images with physical tags, such as clothing color, allowing police to quickly search through hours of video for images of individuals matching a description of interest. At the time, the software was also starting to generate alerts for unattended packages, cars speeding up a street in the wrong direction, or people entering restricted areas.
Over the years, the NYPD has shared only occasional, small updates on the program’s progress. In a 2011 interview with Scientific American, for example, Inspector Salvatore DiPace, then commanding officer of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, said the police department was testing whether the software could box out images of people’s faces as they passed by subway cameras and subsequently cull through the images for various unspecified “facial features.”
While facial recognition technology, which measures individual faces at over 16,000 points for fine-grained comparisons with other facial images, has attracted significant legal scrutiny and media attention, this object identification software has largely evaded attention. How exactly this technology came to be developed and which particular features the software was built to catalog have never been revealed publicly by the NYPD.
Now, thanks to confidential corporate documents and interviews with many of the technologists involved in developing the software, The Intercept and the Investigative Fund have learned that IBM began developing this object identification technology using secret access to NYPD camera footage. With access to images of thousands of unknowing New Yorkers offered up by NYPD officials, as early as 2012, IBM was creating new search features that allow other police departments to search camera footage for images of people by hair color, facial hair, and skin tone.
Book: IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black
Atomic Antenna
September 6th, 2018Via: MIT Technology Review:
Using a laser to detect the effect of radio waves on certain atoms is the basis for a new kind of antenna that resists interference and can receive a wider range of signals.
Jaguar Will Buy 5 GWh of Cylindrical Batteries Per Year from Samsung for Upcoming EVs
September 5th, 2018Via: Electrek:
Jaguar is planning to launch new electric vehicles and it could be in a much bigger way than with the new I-Pace.
The British automaker has reportedly signed an important 5 GWh cylindrical battery cell contract with Samsung for upcoming electric vehicles.
The Korea Times reported that Samsung SDI won the contract to sell 5 GWh of 21700 battery cells from its Hungary factory per year:
Samsung SDI fiercely competed with other battery makers including LG Chem and Panasonic to win a contract from the British carmaker since last year. The company declined to confirm, saying “we cannot offer information related with our customer companies.”
Samsung is reportedly going to start supplying the new cells for Jaguar Land Rover’s new electric vehicles in 2020.
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Based on a 90 kWh battery pack (the current I-Pace battery pack), it would be over 55,000 all-electric vehicles per year, which is about twice the expected production capacity for the I-Pace.
It is an encouraging sign for increased electric production capacity for the electric automakers.
That said, it is still a fraction of what Tesla and Panasonic are producing at Gigafactory 1 or what automakers like VW and BMW have contracted with battery cell manufacturers.
