In Huntsville, Alabama, there is a room with green walls and a green ceiling. Dangling down the center is a fishing line attached to a motor mounted to the ceiling, which moves a procession of guns tied to the translucent line. From a report: The staff at Arcarithm bought each of the 10 best-selling firearm models in the U.S.: Rugers, Glocks, Sig Sauers. Pistols and long guns are dangled from the line. The motor rotates them around the room, helping a camera mounted to a mobile platform photograph them from multiple angles. "It's just like a movie set," said Arcarithm president and CEO Randy E. Riley. This process creates about 5,000 images of each gun floating ethereally. Arcarithm's computer programmers then replace the green backdrop with different environments, like fields, forests, and city streets. They add rain or snow or fog or sun. A program then randomly distorts the images. The result is 30,000 to 50,000 images of the same gun, from multiple angles, in different synthetic settings and of varying degrees of visibility.

The point of creating this vast portfolio of digital gun art is to feed an algorithm made to detect a firearm as soon as a security camera catches it being drawn by synthetically creating tens of thousands of ways each gun may appear. Arcarithm is one of several companies developing automated active shooter detection technology in the hopes of selling it to schools, hotels, entertainment venues and the owners of any location that could be the site of one of America's 15,000 annual gun murders and 29,000 gun injuries. Among the other sellers are Omnilert, a longtime vendor of safety notification software, and newcomers ZeroEyes, Defendry, and Athena Securities. Some cities employ a surveillance system of acoustic sensors to instantly detect gunshots. These companies promise to do one better and save precious minutes by alerting police or security personnel before the first shot is fired.

Alphabet's Google waived a 1.1 billion-pound loan ($1.5 billion) to DeepMind in 2019 after the U.K.-based artificial intelligence lab continued to ramp up the scale of its research and development. From a report: Revenue jumped 158% in 2019, DeepMind said in a financial filing this week. Sales were 265.5 million pounds, up from 102.8 million pounds a year earlier. Its losses also widened, increasing 1.4% to 476.6 million pounds. DeepMind's parent has agreed to continue funding the company for at least a year after the report's approval. Alphabet's Google Ireland unit waived repayments and interest from the loan to help cover DeepMind's losses. Google acquired DeepMind in 2014 in a 400 million-pound acquisition that gave the Silicon Valley search giant access to cutting edge AI research. DeepMind Chief Executive Officer Demis Hassabis's goal is to produce general-purpose intelligence that can solve an array of problems. It develops products used by its parent company -- like its system for making data centers more energy efficient and a program to improve the accuracy of travel times on Google Maps -- as well as AI with broader applications.

Facebook is stepping up its campaign against Apple's privacy changes with a second full-page newspaper ad today. This new ad claims Apple's iOS 14 privacy changes "will change the internet as we know it," and force websites and blogs "to start charging you subscription fees" or add in-app purchases due to a lack of personalized ads. From a report: It follows a similar full-page newspaper ad in the The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post yesterday. Apple is planning to make changes to iOS 14 early next year that will require developers to ask for permission to gather data and track users across mobile apps and websites on an iPhone or iPad. Apple revealed how iOS 14 users will be prompted to opt into tracking in apps this week, noting that developers like Facebook can explain to users why they should allow tracking within the prompt. These changes will impact Facebook's lucrative ad business, but the social networking giant is framing them as something far larger that could impact small businesses. Unsurprisingly, Apple doesn't agree. "We believe that this is a simple matter of standing up for our users," said an Apple spokesperson in response to Facebook's first full-page newspaper ad yesterday. "Users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites -- and they should have the choice to allow that or not."

Connecticut-based company LiquidPiston is developing a portable generator for the US Army that uses its X-Engine, a fresh and extremely powerful take on the rotary engine that'll deliver as much power as the Army's current-gen-set at one-fifth the size. New Atlas reports: We've written a few times before about the fascinating LiquidPiston rotary engine. It's not a Wankel -- indeed, it's closer to an inside-out Wankel -- and with only two moving parts, it's able to deliver extraordinary power density at up to 1.5 horsepower per pound (0.45 kg). According to co-founder and CEO Alec Schkolnik, the X Engine design combines the high compression ratio and direct injection of a diesel engine with the constant volume combustion process of an Otto cycle engine and the over-expansion abilities of an Atkinson cycle engine, while solving the lubrication and sealing issues of the Wankel rotary engine and delivering huge power and efficiency. Check out the design being used in a go-kart and an unmanned aircraft in the video below.

LiquidPiston demonstrated the technology for the US Army by building a Compact Artillery Power System (CAPS) generator unit designed to power the digital fire control system on an M777 Howitzer artillery piece. It replaced a generator that needed a truck to move it around with something 20 percent the size: a 41-lb (18.6-kg), 1.5-cubic foot (28.3-L) box about the size of a gaming PC that can easily be carried by two men. Smartly designed to work in conjunction with a battery in a hybrid system, the 2-kW CAPS generator impressed the Army enough that LiquidPiston has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research contract to develop it further as a 2-5 kW Small Tactical Generator for a range of military use cases, running on diesel with compression ignition.

On December 15, the United States Air Force successfully flew an AI copilot on a U-2 spy plane in California, marking the first time AI has controlled a U.S. military system. Dr. Will Roper, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, reveals how he and his team made history: With call sign ARTUu, we trained uZero -- a world-leading computer program that dominates chess, Go, and even video games without prior knowledge of their rules -- to operate a U-2 spy plane. Though lacking those lively beeps and squeaks, ARTUu surpassed its motion picture namesake in one distinctive feature: it was the mission commander, the final decision authority on the human-machine team. And given the high stakes of global AI, surpassing science fiction must become our military norm. Our demo flew a reconnaissance mission during a simulated missile strike at Beale Air Force Base on Tuesday. ARTUu searched for enemy launchers while our pilot searched for threatening aircraft, both sharing the U-2's radar. With no pilot override, ARTUu made final calls on devoting the radar to missile hunting versus self-protection. Luke Skywalker certainly never took such orders from his X-Wing sidekick!

The fact ARTUu was in command was less about any particular mission than how completely our military must embrace AI to maintain the battlefield decision advantage. Unlike Han Solo's "never-tell-me-the-odds" snub of C-3PO's asteroid field survival rate (approximately 3,720 to 1), our warfighters need to know the odds in dizzyingly-complex combat scenarios. Teaming with trusted AI across all facets of conflict -- even occasionally putting it in charge -- could tip those odds in our favor. But to trust AI, software design is key. Like a breaker box for code, the U-2 gave ARTUu complete radar control while "switching off" access to other subsystems. Had the scenario been navigating an asteroid field -- or more likely field of enemy radars -- those "on-off" switches could adjust. The design allows operators to choose what AI won't do to accept the operational risk of what it will. Creating this software breaker box -- instead of Pandora's -- has been an Air Force journey of more than a few parsecs...

Elon Musk's tunneling venture, The Boring Company, is planning a massive citywide expansion of the currently modest underground transportation system it's building in Las Vegas. The Verge reports: The startup now wants to build a 10-mile sub-surface "loop" that serves the famous Las Vegas Strip of casino hotels and reaches the city's downtown area as well as McCarran International Airport, all with Tesla vehicles. The Boring Company also wants to build an additional loop that connects properties owned by Caesars Entertainment. The proposed new tunnels would make it possible to go from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Mandalay Bay in just three minutes, as opposed to 30 minutes by surface roads during peak traffic hours, the company claims.

The plans, first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, were detailed in proposals submitted to Clark County officials on Monday. The Boring Company's expansion push comes just days after the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) finished buying the Las Vegas Monorail, which filed for bankruptcy in September after shutting down in March. Following the acquisition, the LVCVA killed a noncompete agreement that had previously kept The Boring Company from digging any tunnels that served the same areas reached by the monorail. The monorail is not expected to reopen until at least May 2021.

As many as 3 million people have been infected by Chrome and Edge browser extensions that steal personal data and redirect users to ad or phishing sites, a security firm said on Wednesday. Ars Technica reports: In all, researchers from Prague-based Avast said they found 28 extensions for the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers that contained malware. The add-ons billed themselves as a way to download pictures, videos, or other content from sites including Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo, and Spotify. At the time this post went live, some, but not all, of the malicious extensions remained available for download from Google and Microsoft. Avast researchers found malicious code in the JavaScript-based extensions that allows them to download malware onto an infected computer.

In a post, the researchers wrote: "Users have also reported that these extensions are manipulating their internet experience and redirecting them to other websites. Anytime a user clicks on a link, the extensions send information about the click to the attacker's control server, which can optionally send a command to redirect the victim from the real link target to a new hijacked URL before later redirecting them to the actual website they wanted to visit. User's privacy is compromised by this procedure since a log of all clicks is being sent to these third party intermediary websites. The actors also exfiltrate and collect the user's birth dates, email addresses, and device information, including first sign in time, last login time, name of the device, operating system, used browser and its version, even IP addresses (which could be used to find the approximate geographical location history of the user)."

The researchers don't yet know if the extensions came with the malicious code preinstalled or if the developers waited for the extensions to gain a critical mass of users and only then pushed a malicious update. It's also possible that legitimate developers created the add-ons and then unknowingly sold them to someone who intended to use them maliciously. [...] The list Avast provides in its blog post includes links to download locations for both Chrome and Edge. Anyone who has downloaded one of these add-ons should remove it immediately and run a virus scan.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police: Today, Google and Qualcomm announced what seemed like a big improvement to updates for Android smartphones. The headlines (ours included! We were confused, too) largely read as though Android phones with Qualcomm chipsets would now receive "four years" of Android updates, an additional year on top of what manufacturers like Google and now Samsung have offered on their top-tier smartphones. Except, that's not actually what it said. After confirming with both Google and Qualcomm (and chatting with AP alumnus Ron Amadeo), I received confirmation of what I suspected was the point of confusion about today's news, and that, in fact, very little is changing if you have a Google Pixel or high-end Samsung smartphone. Currently, Google and Samsung both offer three major OS updates on their well-known smartphones. Today's announcement from Google and Qualcomm does not add to that figure. Instead, the announcement merely makes policy what has long been an optional extra for smartphone OEMs who work with Qualcomm, and does not actually "extend" the lifespan of Qualcomm's highest-end chipsets in a meaningful way.

If you're confused, I empathize. But Qualcomm and Google kind of hid the ball on this one in a way that was really, really easy to miss, and which most people (including me) didn't spot at first glance. Here's what's actually changing:

— Qualcomm will support three major Android OS updates for its entire portfolio of smartphone chips going forward, starting with the Snapdragon 888
— Smartphone OEMs will likely be able to now offer four full years of Android security updates going forward (based on our reading of the announcement)

That's it! So, where does all that "four years" and "four Android OS versions" business come from? It's really just a very generous marketing explanation of what was already the policy for Google's Pixel phones (and, again, now many of Samsung's), and it's a tad misleading. Right now, Google's Pixel phones get three years of Android OS and security updates from the time they are released. That means around 36 months of security patches and three major platform updates. Under the new system from Qualcomm, that could be extended to 48 months of security patches, but it would still be just three major platform updates. Neither Google nor Qualcomm is promising more major platform updates for high-end Android smartphones, they're only saying that all Android smartphones with Qualcomm's chips from the newly-announced Snapdragon 888 forward will be eligible for three major platform updates and, as far as we can tell, four years of security updates. As for the four versions business, Google's own slide from today's announcement makes clear that this includes the version of Android the phone shipped with. As in, your phone will, over its lifetime, run four versions of Android: the one it came with, and three subsequent platform updates.

This week, Google acquired a company called Neverware that allows users to turn their old PCs and Macs into a Chromebook with its CloudReady software. Now, Google is planning to make CloudReady into an official Chrome OS release. Engadget reports: When that happens, Neverware says its existing users will be able to seamlessly upgrade to the updated software. Moreover, once that transition is complete, Google will support CloudReady in the same way that it currently does Chrome OS. In the immediate future, Neverware says it's business as usual. The Home Edition of CloudReady isn't changing, and the company says it's committed to supporting its existing education and enterprise customers. Moreover, there's no plan to change pricing at the moment, and Google will honor any current multi-year licenses.

Not only does this acquisition make a lot of sense from Google's perspective, but it's hard to see a downside for CloudReady users. The fact the operating system wasn't officially supported by Google was one of the few downsides to the software. It meant you couldn't install Android apps on CloudReady devices, even though it's based on Chromium OS. With this acquisition, support for Android apps becomes much more likely. Direct support from Google will also make the software more appealing to schools and businesses since they can get help directly from the company if they have any technical issues.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday that he will soon file a multistate antitrust lawsuit against Google and its advertising business, alleging that the company has stifled competition and enjoys "monopolistic power." From a report: In a tweet, Paxton said the lawsuit will be filed on Wednesday. "This goliath of a company is using its power to manipulate the market, destroy competition and harm you, the consumer," Paxton said in a video accompanying the tweet. The text of the complaint was not immediately available. But a court record shows that nine other states are participating in the suit, including Kentucky, South Dakota, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Utah. The lawsuit marks the second antitrust suit by government officials to hit Google in the US this year. The Justice Department took the search giant to court over similar allegations in October. Eleven states joined the suit at the time. It also follows a lawsuit by more than 40 attorneys general against Facebook alleging it has abused a monopoly in social media.

Facebook told employees this week that it's developing a tool to summarize news articles so users won't have to read them. It also laid out early plans for a neural sensor to detect people's thoughts and translate them into action. From a report: [...] He [Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer] also detailed a neural sensor to read commandments from people's brains. Having acquired neural interface startup CTRL-labs in 2019, Facebook demonstrated its progress in the field with a sensor that takes "neural signals coming from my brain, down my spinal cord along my arm, to my wrist" and allows a user to make a physical action. Schroepfer noted that it could be used for typing, holding a virtual object, or controlling a character in a video game. "We all get the privilege of seeing the future because we are making it," he said. Still, Facebook's chief technology officer seemed to anticipate any criticisms of the products -- or past failures -- by touting safety measures. "We have to build responsibly to earn trust and the right to continue to grow," he said. "It's imperative that we get this right so that people around the world get all these amazing technologies ... without experiencing the downsides."

Facebook said it would assist the company behind popular videogame "Fortnite" in its high-profile legal battle with Apple, as the social-media giant ramps up its own counterattack against what it says are the iPhone maker's self-serving measures cloaked in the interest of privacy. From a report: Facebook has been feuding with Apple for months on issues ranging from prices for paid apps to privacy rule changes. As part of a pledge to assist challenges to what it called Apple's anticompetitive behavior, Facebook plans to provide supporting materials and documents to Epic Games Inc. The "Fortnite" parent sued Apple earlier this year, claiming the tech giant's App Store operates like a monopoly. Facebook said it isn't joining the lawsuit but helping with discovery as the case heads to trial next year.

Dutch prosecutors have found a hacker did successfully log in to Donald Trump's Twitter account by guessing his password -- "MAGA2020!" From a report: But they will not be punishing Victor Gevers, who was acting "ethically." Mr Gevers shared what he said were screenshots of the inside of Mr Trump's account on 22 October, during the final stages of the US presidential election. But at the time, the White House denied it had been hacked and Twitter said it had no evidence of it. Mr Gevers said he was very happy with the outcome. "This is not just about my work but all volunteers who look for vulnerabilities in the internet," he said. The well respected cyber-security researcher said he had been conducting a semi-regular sweep of the Twitter accounts of high-profile US election candidates, on 16 October, when he had guessed President Trump's password.

Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is suing Facebook over its use, in 2016 and 2017, of the Onavo VPN app to spy on users for commercial purposes. From a report: The ACCC's case accuses Facebook of false, misleading or deceptive conduct toward thousands of Australian consumers, after it had promoted the Onavo Protect app -- saying it would keep users personal activity data private, protected and secret and not use it for any other purpose, when it was being used to gather data to help Facebook's business. "Through Onavo Protect, Facebook was collecting and using the very detailed and valuable personal activity data of thousands of Australian consumers for its own commercial purposes, which we believe is completely contrary to the promise of protection, secrecy and privacy that was central to Facebook's promotion of this app," said ACCC chair Rod Sims in a statement. "Consumers often use VPN services because they care about their online privacy, and that is what this Facebook product claimed to offer. In fact, Onavo Protect channelled significant volumes of their personal activity data straight back to Facebook."

Facebook attacked Apple in a series of full-page newspaper ads Wednesday, claiming the iPhone maker's anticipated mobile software changes around data gathering and targeted advertising are bad for small businesses. From a report: The ads, slated to run in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, carry the headline "We're standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere." They home in on upcoming changes to Apple's iOS 14 operating system that will curb the ability of companies like Facebook to gather data about mobile users and ply them with advertising. Facebook previously told investors that Apple's changes, scheduled to go live early next year, will lead to significant headwinds because most of its advertisers are small businesses. Apple has pushed back, accusing Facebook in November of showing a "disregard for user privacy." "While limiting how personalized ads can be used does impact larger companies like us, these changes will be devastating to small businesses," Facebook claims. The social giant, citing its own data, says ads that disregard personalized targeting generate 60% fewer sales than ads that do target consumers. The newspaper ads are the latest in what has become a vicious and public battle between two of the world's most valuable companies.

TikTok routes the personal data of job applicants through servers in China, and only discloses this to candidates in certain countries, Business Insider has discovered. From a report: US job candidates, notably, are not told their data will be routed through China. Some of the personal information TikTok says it collects about applicants is potentially highly sensitive, with the firm's own policies stating that it collects medical data; sex and race data; marital status; geolocation data, among many other categories. The revelation is an embarrassment for TikTok, which has spent much of 2020 maintaining that it is separate to its Chinese owner ByteDance, and fending off unproven insinuations by President Trump that it funnels user data to China. After being approached by Business Insider, TikTok said it would no longer store job applicant data in China.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: While it doesn't appear to be completely down like it was yesterday morning, we're hearing many reports from Gmail users that the email service is having major issues right now. Some users are reporting that Gmail is particularly slow, while others are reporting constant error messages. One TechCrunch writer, meanwhile, noticed that emails he was sending to Gmail accounts appeared to immediately bounce, with Gmail's server responding with an error reading "550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist."

Google confirms the issues on its services dashboard, writing at 1:30 PM Pacific that they're impacting a "significant" number of users: "We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior." In a second update at 2:30 PM, Google says its teams are "continuing to investigate this issue"; as of 3:30 PM, the company says it expects the issues to be fixed by 4:00 PM while noting that time may change. Google says the problems have been resolved, although encrypted email service ProtonMail tweets that the email bouncing issue is widespread, with many emails sent to Gmail users bouncing permanently.

Intel became the latest tech company to report diversity statistics Tuesday, sharing a mixed bag of annual numbers that included small gains in some areas, relatively flat numbers of Black employees and a decline in female representation in the U.S. Axios reports: Women made up a bit more than a quarter of Intel's employee headcount, seeing a tiny drop in the U.S. compared to last year and a similarly minuscule increase over the same period for Intel's total global workforce. The percentage of underrepresented minorities in the U.S. workforce ticked up by a fraction of a percentage point, coming in at just over 16%. African American representation was flat at 4.9%.

"It may be slower than we would like but at least the conversation is on the table," Intel's interim chief diversity and inclusion officer Dawn Jones told Axios. Intel's inability to significantly boost the diversity of its workforce is far from unique in the industry. Intel wants to set up an industry-wide effort that would work to help standardize ways of measuring different diversity statistics from one company to another.

Twitter has announced that it'll be shutting down Periscope as a service, with the company set to discontinue the Periscope applications by March 2021. The Verge reports: Twitter will, however, continue to offer live video streaming through its integrated Twitter Live feature within the main Twitter app. "The Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while," the company explained in a blog post. "Over the past couple of years, we've seen declining usage and know that the cost to support the app will only continue to go up over time."

While Periscope won't be fully shut down until March, the company is already blocking any new account signups starting in the latest update to the apps, which is rolling out today. Users will have the chance to download an archive of both their Periscope videos and their data before the app is shuttered next year. Additionally, the Periscope website will remain active to serve as a "read-only archive of public broadcasts." Periscope will also be "relaxing our requirements" for users to apply to become "Super Broadcasters," the company's term for select users who are given the opportunity to cash out tips given to them by followers. Broadcasters will have until April 30th, 2021, to finish cashing out their tips.

Rival French and Russian disinformation campaigns have sought to deceive and influence Internet users in the Central African Republic ahead of an election later this month, Facebook said on Tuesday. Reuters reports: Facebook said it was the first time it had seen foreign influence operations directly engage on its platforms, with fake accounts denouncing each other as "fake news." The company said it had suspended three networks totaling almost 500 accounts and pages for so-called "coordinated inauthentic behavior." One network was linked to "individuals associated with French military," it said, while the other two had connections to "individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency" as well as Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin.

France and Russia are both keen to assert influence in Africa. Paris has ties with many French-speaking African countries, which it sees as vital to preventing the spread of violent Islamisation, and Moscow is jockeying for position in a lucrative market. Facebook said the two campaigns largely focused on the Central African Republic (CAR), which votes on Dec. 27, but also targeted users in 13 other African countries including Algeria, Cameroon, Libya and Sudan. Ben Nimmo, head of investigations at social media analytics firm Graphika, said both campaigns used fake accounts to pose as local people, sometimes sharing doctored photos. [...] But neither side built a significant audience in CAR, he added. "They looked like two troll teams arm wrestling, with nobody else really paying attention."