Comment Good Enough (Score 1) 1
If it's good enough for the people in Snowpiercer, it's good enough for us.
Submission + - Uber Self-Driving Car Struck and Killed Arizona Woman While in Autonomous Mode (gizmodo.com)
Joe_Dragon writes: Last night a woman was struck by an autonomous Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. She later died of her injuries in the hospital.
The deadly collision—reported by ABC15 and later confirmed to Gizmodo by Uber and Tempe police—took place around 10PM at the intersection Mill Avenue and Curry Road. Autonomous vehicle developers often test drive at night, during storms, and other challenging conditions to help their vehicles learn to navigate in a variety of environments.
According to Tempe PD, the car was in autonomous mode at the time of the incident, with a vehicle operator sitting behind the wheel.
A police spokesperson added in a statement that the woman’s “next of kin has not been notified yet so her name is not being released at this time. Uber is assisting and this is still an active investigation.” The woman was crossing the street outside a crosswalk when she was hit, the spokesperson said.
We’ve reached out to Uber and will update when we receive comment. So far the company’s only public statement comes from Twitter.
The deadly collision—reported by ABC15 and later confirmed to Gizmodo by Uber and Tempe police—took place around 10PM at the intersection Mill Avenue and Curry Road. Autonomous vehicle developers often test drive at night, during storms, and other challenging conditions to help their vehicles learn to navigate in a variety of environments.
According to Tempe PD, the car was in autonomous mode at the time of the incident, with a vehicle operator sitting behind the wheel.
A police spokesperson added in a statement that the woman’s “next of kin has not been notified yet so her name is not being released at this time. Uber is assisting and this is still an active investigation.” The woman was crossing the street outside a crosswalk when she was hit, the spokesperson said.
We’ve reached out to Uber and will update when we receive comment. So far the company’s only public statement comes from Twitter.
Submission + - SPAM: The Next Falcon Heavy Will Carry the Most Powerful Atomic Clock Ever Launched
schwit1 writes: This isnt your average timekeeper. The so-called Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) is far smaller than Earth-bound atomic clocks, far more precise than the handful of other space-bound atomic clocks, and more resilient against the stresses of space travel than any clock ever made. According to a NASA statement, its expected to lose no more than 2 nanoseconds (2 billionths of a second) over the course of a day. That comes to about 7 millionths of a second over the course of a decade.
Every deep-space mission that makes course corrections needs to send signals to ground stations on Earth. Those ground stations rely on atomic clocks to measure just how long those signals took to arrive, which allows them to locate the spacecrafts position down to the meter in the vast vacuum. They then send signals back, telling the craft where they are and where to go next.
Thats a cumbersome process, and it means any given ground station can support only one spacecraft at a time. The goal of DSAC, according to a NASA fact sheet, is to allow spacecraft to make precise timing measurements onboard a spacecraft, without waiting for information from Earth.
A DSAC-equipped spacecraft, according to NASAs statement, could calculate time without waiting for measurements from Earth — allowing it to make course adjustments or perform precision science experiments without pausing to turn its antennas earthward and waiting for a reply.
Link to Original Source
Every deep-space mission that makes course corrections needs to send signals to ground stations on Earth. Those ground stations rely on atomic clocks to measure just how long those signals took to arrive, which allows them to locate the spacecrafts position down to the meter in the vast vacuum. They then send signals back, telling the craft where they are and where to go next.
Thats a cumbersome process, and it means any given ground station can support only one spacecraft at a time. The goal of DSAC, according to a NASA fact sheet, is to allow spacecraft to make precise timing measurements onboard a spacecraft, without waiting for information from Earth.
A DSAC-equipped spacecraft, according to NASAs statement, could calculate time without waiting for measurements from Earth — allowing it to make course adjustments or perform precision science experiments without pausing to turn its antennas earthward and waiting for a reply.
Link to Original Source
Submission + - SPAM: Uber's Secret Tool for Keeping the Cops in the Dark
schwit1 writes: In May 2015 about 10 investigators for the Quebec tax authority burst into Uber Technologies Inc.’s office in Montreal. The authorities believed Uber had violated tax laws and had a warrant to collect evidence. Managers on-site knew what to do, say people with knowledge of the event.
Like managers at Uber’s hundreds of offices abroad, they’d been trained to page a number that alerted specially trained staff at company headquarters in San Francisco. When the call came in, staffers quickly remotely logged off every computer in the Montreal office, making it practically impossible for the authorities to retrieve the company records they’d obtained a warrant to collect. The investigators left without any evidence.
Most tech companies don’t expect police to regularly raid their offices, but Uber isn’t most companies. The ride-hailing startup’s reputation for flouting local labor laws and taxi rules has made it a favorite target for law enforcement agencies around the world. That’s where this remote system, called Ripley, comes in. From spring 2015 until late 2016, Uber routinely used Ripley to thwart police raids in foreign countries, say three people with knowledge of the system. Allusions to its nature can be found in a smattering of court filings, but its details, scope, and origin haven’t been previously reported.
The Uber HQ team overseeing Ripley could remotely change passwords and otherwise lock up data on company-owned smartphones, laptops, and desktops as well as shut down the devices. This routine was initially called the unexpected visitor protocol. Employees aware of its existence eventually took to calling it Ripley, after Sigourney Weaver’s flamethrower-wielding hero in the Alien movies. The nickname was inspired by a Ripley line in Aliens, after the acid-blooded extraterrestrials easily best a squad of ground troops. “Nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Link to Original Source
Like managers at Uber’s hundreds of offices abroad, they’d been trained to page a number that alerted specially trained staff at company headquarters in San Francisco. When the call came in, staffers quickly remotely logged off every computer in the Montreal office, making it practically impossible for the authorities to retrieve the company records they’d obtained a warrant to collect. The investigators left without any evidence.
Most tech companies don’t expect police to regularly raid their offices, but Uber isn’t most companies. The ride-hailing startup’s reputation for flouting local labor laws and taxi rules has made it a favorite target for law enforcement agencies around the world. That’s where this remote system, called Ripley, comes in. From spring 2015 until late 2016, Uber routinely used Ripley to thwart police raids in foreign countries, say three people with knowledge of the system. Allusions to its nature can be found in a smattering of court filings, but its details, scope, and origin haven’t been previously reported.
The Uber HQ team overseeing Ripley could remotely change passwords and otherwise lock up data on company-owned smartphones, laptops, and desktops as well as shut down the devices. This routine was initially called the unexpected visitor protocol. Employees aware of its existence eventually took to calling it Ripley, after Sigourney Weaver’s flamethrower-wielding hero in the Alien movies. The nickname was inspired by a Ripley line in Aliens, after the acid-blooded extraterrestrials easily best a squad of ground troops. “Nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Link to Original Source
Submission + - Web Trackers Exploit Flaw in Browser Login Managers to Steal Usernames (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Princeton privacy experts are warning that advertising and analytics firms can secretly extract site usernames from browsers using hidden login fields and tie non-authenticated users visiting a site with their profiles or emails on that domain. This type of abusive behavior is possible because of a design flaw in the login managers included with all browsers. Experts say that web trackers can embed hidden login forms on sites where the tracking scripts are loaded. Because of the way the login managers work, the browser will fill these fields with the user's login information, such as username and passwords.
The trick is an old one, known for more than a decade but until now it's only been used by hackers trying to collect login information during XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks. Princeton researchers say they recently found two web tracking services that utilize hidden login forms to collect login information. The two services are Adthink (audienceinsights.net) and OnAudience (behavioralengine.com), and Princeton researchers said they identified scripts from these two that collected login info on 1,110 sites found on the Alexa Top 1 Million sites list. A demo page has been created to show how the tracking works.
The trick is an old one, known for more than a decade but until now it's only been used by hackers trying to collect login information during XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks. Princeton researchers say they recently found two web tracking services that utilize hidden login forms to collect login information. The two services are Adthink (audienceinsights.net) and OnAudience (behavioralengine.com), and Princeton researchers said they identified scripts from these two that collected login info on 1,110 sites found on the Alexa Top 1 Million sites list. A demo page has been created to show how the tracking works.
Submission + - Google's AI Built Its Own AI That Outperforms Any Made by Humans (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 writes: In May 2017, researchers at Google Brain announced the creation of AutoML, an artificial intelligence (AI) that's capable of generating its own AIs.
For this particular child AI, which the researchers called NASNet, the task was recognising objects — people, cars, traffic lights, handbags, backpacks, etc. — in a video in real-time.
AutoML would evaluate NASNet's performance and use that information to improve its child AI, repeating the process thousands of times.
When tested on the ImageNet image classification and COCO object detection data sets NASNet was 82.7 percent accurate at predicting images on ImageNet's validation set. This is 1.2 percent better than any previously published results, and the system is also 4 percent more efficient, with a 43.1 percent mean Average Precision (mAP).
For this particular child AI, which the researchers called NASNet, the task was recognising objects — people, cars, traffic lights, handbags, backpacks, etc. — in a video in real-time.
AutoML would evaluate NASNet's performance and use that information to improve its child AI, repeating the process thousands of times.
When tested on the ImageNet image classification and COCO object detection data sets NASNet was 82.7 percent accurate at predicting images on ImageNet's validation set. This is 1.2 percent better than any previously published results, and the system is also 4 percent more efficient, with a 43.1 percent mean Average Precision (mAP).
Google Will Block Third-Party Software From Injecting Code Into Chrome (bleepingcomputer.com) 40
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Google has laid out a plan for blocking third-party applications from injecting code into the Chrome browser. The most impacted by this change are antivirus and other security products that often inject code into the user's local browser process to intercept and scan for malware, phishing pages, and other threats. Google says these changes will take place in three main phases over the next 14 months. Phase 1: In April 2018, Chrome 66 will begin showing affected users a warning after a crash, alerting them that other software is injecting code into Chrome and guiding them to update or remove that software. Phase 2: In July 2018, Chrome 68 will begin blocking third-party software from injecting into Chrome processes. If this blocking prevents Chrome from starting, Chrome will restart and allow the injection, but also show a warning that guides the user to remove the software. Phase 3: In January 2019, Chrome 72 will remove this accommodation and always block code injection.
Submission + - This Guy Built an Anonymous DIY Cell Phone Network. It's Free and Easy to USe (vice.com) 3
dmoberhaus writes: Motherboard's Daniel Oberhaus spoke to Denver Gingerich, the programmer behind Sopranica, a DIY, community oriented cell phone network.
As Gingerich described it, "Sopranica is a project intended to replace all aspects of the existing cell phone network with their freedom-respecting equivalents. Taking out all the basement firmware on the cellphone, the towers that track your location, the payment methods that track who you are and who owns the number, and replacing it so we can have the same functionality without having to give up all the privacy that we have to give up right now. At a high level, it’s about running community networks instead of having companies control the cell towers that we connect to."
Motherboard interviews Gingerich and shows you how to use the network to avoid cell surveillance.
As Gingerich described it, "Sopranica is a project intended to replace all aspects of the existing cell phone network with their freedom-respecting equivalents. Taking out all the basement firmware on the cellphone, the towers that track your location, the payment methods that track who you are and who owns the number, and replacing it so we can have the same functionality without having to give up all the privacy that we have to give up right now. At a high level, it’s about running community networks instead of having companies control the cell towers that we connect to."
Motherboard interviews Gingerich and shows you how to use the network to avoid cell surveillance.
Comment Incopatiblity issues (Score 2, Funny) 139
I tried using this once with the opposite sex. Who would have known she incorporated the Slap interface. Ouch.
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