SpaceX Announcing Name of Private Individual Who Will Orbit Moon in BFR
September 13th, 2018Via: Ars Technica:
On Thursday evening, without any advance notice, SpaceX tweeted that is had signed the world’s “first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle.” Moreover, the company promised to reveal “who’s flying and why” on Monday, September 17. The announcement will take place at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.
There were only two other clues—tweets from Musk himself. Was the rendering of the Big Falcon Spaceship in SpaceX’s tweet new? Yes, Musk said. And was he the passenger? In response to this, the founder of SpaceX simply tweeted a Japanese flag emoji. This would seem to be strong clue that the passenger is from Japan. Or maybe Musk was enjoying the epic Seven Samurai movie at that moment.
Related: Amazon’s Rising Stock Gives Jeff Bezos ‘Financial Muscle’ in Outer Space Equal to Whole Countries
Qanon Subreddits Banned
September 12th, 2018Via: /r/conspiracy:
Looks like r/greatawakening was just banned.
9/11: What 17 Years of Lies Have Done to Us
September 12th, 2018Via: Richard Dolan:
Bay Area City Blocks 5G Deployments Over Cancer Concerns
September 10th, 2018Via: TechCrunch:
The Bay Area may be the center of the global technology industry, but that hasn’t stopped one wealthy enclave from protecting itself from the future.
The city council of Mill Valley, a small town located just a few miles north of San Francisco, voted unanimously late last week to effectively block deployments of small-cell 5G wireless towers in the city’s residential areas.
Through an urgency ordinance, which allows the city council to immediately enact regulations that affect the health and safety of the community, the restrictions and prohibitions will be put into force immediately for all future applications to site 5G telecommunications equipment in the city. Applications for commercial districts are permitted under the passed ordinance.
The ordinance was driven by community concerns over the health effects of 5G wireless antennas. According to the city, it received 145 pieces of correspondence from citizens voicing opposition to the technology, compared to just five letters in support of it — a ratio of 29 to 1. While that may not sound like much, the city’s population is roughly 14,000, indicating that about 1% of the population had voiced an opinion on the matter.
Tooth Radios for Military
September 10th, 2018Via: Defense One:
The future of battlefield communications is resting comfortably near your back gums.
Next time you pass someone on the street who appears to be talking to themselves, they may literally have voices inside their head…and be a highly trained soldier on a dangerous mission. The Pentagon has inked a roughly $10 million contract with a California company to provide secure communication gear that’s essentially invisible.
Dubbed the Molar Mic, it’s a small device that clips to your back teeth. The device is both microphone and “speaker,” allowing the wearer to transmit without any conspicuous external microphone and receive with no visible headset or earpiece. Incoming sound is transmitted through the wearer’s bone matter in the jaw and skull to the auditory nerves; outgoing sound is sent to a radio transmitter on the neck, and sent to another radio unit that can be concealed on the operator. From there, the signal can be sent anywhere.
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.
…
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.
