How to Deflect an Asteroid
February 23rd, 2020Via: MIT News:
Now MIT researchers have devised a framework for deciding which type of mission would be most successful in deflecting an incoming asteroid. Their decision method takes into account an asteroid’s mass and momentum, its proximity to a gravitational keyhole, and the amount of warning time that scientists have of an impending collision — all of which have degrees of uncertainty, which the researchers also factor in to identify the most successful mission for a given asteroid.
Costa Mesa Granted Temporary Restraining Order to Stop Feds from Using Local Facility to Quarantine People with Coronavirus
February 23rd, 2020Why would the government want to move people infected with this thing into a densely populated area?
Hmm.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
A federal judge Friday night granted the city of Costa Mesa’s request for a temporary restraining order to stop a possible plan by state and federal agencies to use the Fairview Developmental Center to house and quarantine people with the coronavirus.
The city filed for the order Friday afternoon against several defendants, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, Air Force, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state of California and its Office of Emergency Services and Department of General Services, and the Fairview Developmental Center.
DHS Whistleblower Found Dead on a Road Side with a ‘Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound’
February 23rd, 2020Via: Daily Mail:
Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Philip Haney, who spoke out against his own agency during the Obama administration, was found shot dead in California.
The Amador County Sheriff’s Office said that authorities responded to reports of a man lying on the ground with an apparent gunshot injury near Highway 124 and Highway 16 in Plymouth.
Red State and Heavy said Haney had been missing since Wednesday, and that the gunshot wound was found in his chest.
‘Upon their arrival, they located and identified 66-year-old Philip Haney, who was deceased and appeared to have suffered a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound,’ said authorities, according to the Washington Examiner.
…
Sources said Haney, who formally retired in 2015, was recently in contact with top government officials about return to work with DHS. He was also engaged to be married.
Haney gained national attention after he called out the DHS under the Obama administration, of which he criticized for its handling of radical Jihadists and Islamic extremists, in 2016.
He would testify that DHS ordered him to delete hundreds of files pertaining to people with ties to Islamist terrorist groups and argued that several terrorist attacks in the U.S. could have been prevented if certain files were maintained.
Counter Drone SWAT Team
February 22nd, 2020Via: Breaking Defense:
Sometimes, when lives are at stake, even Silicon Valley can’t innovate fast enough. That’s why the director of the Defense Digital Service, Brett Goldstein, has started forming rapid-response “SWAT teams” drawing on the Defense Department’s in-house talent.
The first such team that DDS director Brett Goldstein has created – pulling together both existing DDS personnel and a Defense Innovation Unit project called Rogue Squadron – is aimed at countering small drones. Easy to build and hard to detect, these pint-sized planes have become an outsize threat, both as flying IEDs for terrorists and target-spotters for Russian rocket artillery.
“Jeffrey And I Had Everyone On Videotape” Ghislaine Maxwell Reportedly Told Friend
February 22nd, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
If true, we wonder who exactly was taped?
Twitter Preparing Red Banners to Appear Below Potential Thoughtcrimes
February 21st, 2020Via: NBC:
Twitter is experimenting with adding brightly colored labels directly beneath lies and misinformation posted by politicians and other public figures, according to a leaked demo of new features sent to NBC News.
Twitter confirmed that the leaked demo, which was accessible on a publicly available site, is one possible iteration of a new policy to target misinformation. The company does not have a date to roll out any new misinformation features.
Coronavirus: The Pandemic Is Accelerating Worldwide
February 21st, 2020Via: Peak Prosperity:
CORONAVIRUS: 10 ITALIAN TOWNS IN LOCKDOWN
February 21st, 2020Via: AFP:
Authorities in northern Italy on Friday ordered the closure of schools, bars and other public spaces in 10 towns following a flurry of new coronavirus cases.
Five doctors and 10 other people tested positive for the virus in Lombardy, after apparently frequenting the same bar and group of friends, with two other cases in Veneto, authorities said at a press conference.
Over 50,000 people have been asked to stay at home in the areas concerned, while all public activities such as carnival celebrations, church masses and sporting events have been banned for up to a week.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said “everything is under control”, and stressed the government was maintaining “an extremely high level of precaution”.
Sweden Is Now Testing Digital Version of Cash, the e-Krona
February 21st, 2020Via: MIT Technology Review:
The Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, has announced the launch of a year-long pilot project of its proposed e-krona. The project will use distributed ledger technology inspired by the blockchains that run cryptocurrencies.
Cashless in Sweden: Physical cash is headed toward obsolescence in Sweden. Nearly everyone uses a mobile payment application called Swish, and it’s been estimated that retailers could stop accepting cash by 2023. This concerns the country’s central bankers, for two reasons. First, they fear that if the payment infrastructure is left completely to the private sector, certain groups might be excluded. Second, if people lose the ability to convert what’s in their commercial bank accounts into a form of “cash” backed by the government, it might undermine their faith in the money system.
That’s why, a few years ago, the Riksbank began investigating the possibility of a state-backed digital currency that might play a similar role to the one physical cash plays today.
Tesla Autopilot Tricked Into Accelerating from 35 to 85 MPH by Speed Limit Sign Modified with Two Inches of Tape
February 21st, 2020Via: MIT Technology Review:
Hackers have manipulated multiple Tesla cars into speeding up by 50 miles per hour. The researchers fooled the car’s Mobileye EyeQ3 camera system by subtly altering a speed limit sign on the side of a road in a way that a person driving by would almost never notice.
This demonstration from the cybersecurity firm McAfee is the latest indication that adversarial machine learning can potentially wreck autonomous driving systems, presenting a security challenge to those hoping to commercialize the technology.
Mobileye EyeQ3 camera systems read speed limit signs and feed that information into autonomous driving features like Tesla’s automatic cruise control, said Steve Povolny and Shivangee Trivedi from McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research team.
The researchers stuck a tiny and nearly imperceptible sticker on a speed limit sign. The camera read the sign as 85 instead of 35, and in testing, both the 2016 Tesla Model X and that year’s Model S sped up 50 miles per hour.
