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Submission + - Bring On The Boring Robots (popsci.com)

Submitted by malachiorion
malachiorion writes: After a successful 6-month pilot, Savioke's "butler bots" are heading to hotels around the country. These are not sexy, scary, or even technically impressive machines. But they were useful enough, over the course of their 2000 or so deliveries, to warrant a redesign, and a larger deployment starting in April. Savioke's CEO had some interesting things to say about the pilot, including the fact that some 95 percent of guests gave the robot a 5-star review, and only the drunks seemed to take issue with it. Plus, as you might expect, everyone seemed to want to take a damn selfie with it. But as small as the stakes might appear, highly specialized bots like this one, which can only do one thing (in this case, bring up to 10 pounds of stuff from the lobby to someone's door) are a better glimpse of our future than any talk of hyper-competent humanoids or similarly versatile machines. This is my post for Popular Science about why the rise of the boring robot is good news for robotics.

Submission + - Philips creates fake checkout page to gauge product interest, leaks PII (philips.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Philips, the people who brought you the Hue lights, targeted me with an ad on Facebook. The product looked pretty neat, so I pulled my credit card out to buy one. After entering my name, address, and phone number into the checkout page, I was notified that the product was in beta, and could either press a button saying not to contact me, or another button to be notified if it is released. I feel as if they trick me into giving up my personal information. I then noticed that the web form used the GET method, so that all info I entered became part of the URL of the next page that loaded, which means that it is now in the web server logs, and was sent in clear text to the partners that they work with (Inspectlet, Eloqua, etc). Am I overreacting, or is tricking people in this way fair game?

Submission + - UK Government Admits Intelligence Services Allowed To Break Into Any System (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recently, Techdirt noted that the FBI may soon have permission to break into computers anywhere on the planet. It will come as no surprise to learn that the US's partner in crime, the UK, granted similar powers to its own intelligence services some time back. What's more unexpected is that it has now publicly said as much, as Privacy International explains:

        The British Government has admitted its intelligence services have the broad power to hack into personal phones, computers, and communications networks, and claims they are legally justifed to hack anyone, anywhere in the world, even if the target is not a threat to national security nor suspected of any crime.

That important admission was made in what the UK government calls its "Open Response" to court cases started last year against GCHQ.

Submission + - Chevy Malibu 'Teen Driver' Tech Will Snitch if You Speed (pcmag.com) 1

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: General Motors wants to help curb teen crashes with a new system that lets parents monitor their kids' driving habits—even when mom and dad aren't actually in the car.
Dubbed Teen Drive, the new system will debut in the 2016 Chevy Malibu, offering a bunch of features designed to encourage safe driving. It will, for instance, mute the radio or any device paired with the car when front seat occupants aren't wearing their seatbelts, and give audible and visual warnings when the vehicle is traveling faster than preset speeds.
It doesn't end there. Brace yourself, teens, because you might not like this next part too much. The new system also lets parents view a readout of how you drove the car, including how fast you went, how far you drove, and whether any active safety features (like over-speed warnings) were engaged.
Parents can also set the radio system's maximum volume to a lower level, and select a maximum speed between 40 and 75 miles per hour, which, if exceeded, will trigger warnings.

Submission + - Uber shut down in multiple countries following raids (bbc.com)

Submitted by wired_parrot
wired_parrot writes: Worldwide raids were carried out against Uber offices in Germany, France and South Korea. In Germany, the raids followed a court ruling banning Uber from operating without a license. In Paris, raids followed an investigation into deceptive practices. And in South Korea, 30 people, including Uber's CEO, were charged with running an illegal taxi service.

Submission + - The Dream of Delivery Drones Is Alive (And On A Truck) (popsci.com)

Submitted by malachiorion
malachiorion writes: Amazon's drone delivery service was never going to work. It was too autonomous, and simply too risky to be approved by the FAA in the timeframe that Jeff Bezos specified (as early as this year). And yet, the media is still hung up on Amazon, and much of the coverage of the FAA's newly released drone rules center around Prime Air, a program that was essentially a PR stunt. Meanwhile, a Cincinnati-based company that makes electric delivery trucks has an idea that's been largely ignored, but that's much more feasible. The Horsefly launches from and returns to a delivery truck once it reaches a given neighborhood, with a mix of autonomous flight to destination, driver-specified drop-off locations, and remote-piloted landings. The company will still need to secure exemptions from the FAA, but unlike Amazon, they at least have a chance. There's more detail about Amp's technically impressive (and seemingly damn tough) drone in my story for Popular Science.

Submission + - Verizon Makes It Very Clear Its 'Spectrum Crunch' Never Existed (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you recall, the wireless industry has spent much of the last decade proclaiming that a "spectrum crunch" was afoot, declaring that unless the government did exactly as requested, wireless growth and innovation would grind to a halt. AT&T was quick to claim that it needed to buy T-Mobile because of said spectrum crunch, though the company's own leaked documents highlighted that this simply wasn't true ..

Submission + - 1,600 digital beating human hearts stored for Big Data research (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Doctors in London are now able to access digital copies of thousands of human hearts, helping medical professionals across the industry develop new treatments and preventative care plans for chronic heart disease. 3D video recordings of the beating hearts of 1,600 patients were collected by researchers and scientists at the Medical Research Council’s Clinical Sciences Centre at Hammersmith Hospital, London. Referring to traditional clinical trials, which only produce small amounts of health information over several years, the researchers hope that the new project will provide an important tool for the medical sector, having collected genetic information at such a comparatively large scale. Big data has made a huge impact in the business world for many years, but with storage prices falling and improved analytics tools; the field has more recently enjoyed smooth crossovers into many other sectors such as healthcare. However, according to IBM, 80% of healthcare data that is relevant to clinical research remains unstructured.

Submission + - Lenovo caught installing adware on new computers (thenextweb.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: t looks like Lenovo has been installing adware onto new consumer computers from the company that activates when taken out of the box for the first time.

The adware, named Superfish, is reportedly installed on a number of Lenovo’s consumer laptops out of the box. The software injects third-party ads on Google searches and websites without the user’s permission.

Submission + - Strong Encryption Will Not Protect You from The NSA (alternet.org) 2

Submitted by Nicola Hahn
Nicola Hahn writes: This past October FBI director James Comey proposed that hi-tech companies implement key escrow encryption as a way for online service providers to give law enforcement officials access to user data. However in a recent interview President Obama reassured viewers that "There's no scenario in which we don’t want really strong encryption." To an extent this echoes Ed Snowden’s assertion that “Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.”

Unfortunately a report released by Moscow-based anti-virus vendor Kaspersky reveals that even strong cryptograph might not be enough. It would appear that the NSA was has poured its vast resources into hacking hardware platforms across the board, creating firmware exploits that allow U.S. spies to “capture a machine’s encryption password, store it in ‘an invisible area inside the computer’s hard drive’ and unscramble a machine’s contents.”

While these sophisticated subversion programs afford the intelligence community with an impressive array of collection tools, no doubt with more than a little help from the private sector, there are people who view this as sacrificing society’s collective security on behalf of murky clandestine objectives. In other words: it’s no accident that cyber security sucks, it’s a matter of official policy. Perhaps we should be surprised that more banks don’t get hacked?

Submission + - Meet Babar, a New Malware Almost Certainly Created by France (vice.com)

Submitted by sarahnaomi
sarahnaomi writes: The NSA, GCHQ, and their allies in the Five Eyes are not the only government agencies using malware for surveillance. French intelligence is almost certainly hacking its targets too—and now security researchers believe they have proof.

On Wednesday, the researchers will reveal new details about a powerful piece of malware known as “Babar,” which is capable of eavesdropping on online conversations held via Skype, MSN and Yahoo messenger, as well as logging keystrokes and monitoring which websites an infected user has visited.

Babar is “a fully blown espionage tool, built to excessively spy” on its victims, according to the research, and which Motherboard reviewed in advance. The researchers are publishing two separate but complementary reports that analyze samples of the malware, and all but confirm that France’s spying agency the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) was responsible for its creation.

Submission + - Researchers Block HIV Infection In Monkeys With Artificial Protein (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Immunologists have developed a synthetic molecule that's able to attach to HIV and prevent it from interacting with healthy cells. "HIV infects white blood cells by sequentially attaching to two receptors on their surfaces. First, HIV’s own surface protein, gp120, docks on the cell’s CD4 receptor. This attachment twists gp120 such that it exposes a region on the virus that can attach to the second cellular receptor, CCR5. The new construct combines a piece of CD4 with a smidgen of CCR5 and attaches both receptors to a piece of an antibody. In essence, the AIDS virus locks onto the construct, dubbed eCD4-Ig, as though it were attaching to a cell and thus is neutralized." The new compound was tested in monkeys. After successively higher injections of HIV, all four monkeys who received the compound beforehand stayed from free infection. Any potential treatment is still a ways off — the researchers plan more trials in monkeys before bringing humans into the test.

Comment So many level heads (Score 1) 227

by malachiorion (#48839339) Attached to: An Open Letter To Everyone Tricked Into Fearing AI
I was expecting way, way more "but Skynet" comments here. The fact that so many commenters have a clear-headed perspective on AI, and what AI safety actual means, is fantastic. Good to know the reporters I'm attacking are being read with the proper amount of skepticism. I really think the stubbornly fearful need to come to terms with their SF consumption, and how Hollywood has every reason to present more apocalyptic AI scenarios than beneficial, or even neutral ones. And apart from SF, where are you getting your facts? What are your theories based on? If it's from stories and journalists who aren't putting in the work, and are clearly just focusing on the wacky end-times outcomes, then you're just plagiarizing from the long history of evil robot fiction. Also, remember that Musk is not a computer scientist, and does not work with AI. I'll post about this soon, but his claims that Vicarious is actively safeguarding against bootstrapped AI are false, based on statements from Vicarious' own founders. Even brilliant minds can be embarrassingly wrong.

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