Month: November 2024

In This Polish Village, All 5,600 Residents Live on the Same Street

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In This Polish Village, All 5,600 Residents Live on the Same Street

source: nicenews.com  |  image: pexels.com

 

take a look at this street!

 

When a drone captured a bird’s-eye view photo of a sleepy Polish town, one feature stood out, taking the village from a relatively unknown dot on a map to a social media phenomenon. 

That wow-worthy feature? Everyone in Suloszowa — with a population of 5,672 in 2023 — lives on one single street. What impresses in the aerial picture is not only the 5.6-mile road with homes dotted on either side of it, but the billowing ribbons of yellow, green, and gold fields stretching out from behind them, forming living art in the surrounding countryside. 

“Until I saw the pictures from above, I didn’t really appreciate how nice it is here,” Marian Gęgotek, a resident and tractor driver, told the Daily Mail. Local shopkeeper Edyta was similarly struck by the photo of her town making the rounds on social media, adding: “I saw the aerial picture on the internet and I know that people are talking about us, and I am not that surprised, it is a lovely view.”  Continue reading “In This Polish Village, All 5,600 Residents Live on the Same Street” →

Rising Threat of China’s Volt Typhoon

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Rising Threat of China’s Volt Typhoon

image - china tech

source: axios.com (contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey)  |  Image: pexels.com

 

Notorious China-linked hackers known for burrowing deep into U.S. infrastructure are back, according to a report out today.

Why it matters: The resurgence shows that the Chinese government isn’t backing down from its quest to infiltrate American utilities in preparation for a potential destructive cyberattack.

Zoom in: The research team at SecurityScorecard, a cyber risk assessment company, says it has noticed Volt Typhoon moving traffic through a set of compromised routers in New Caledonia, an island nation off the coast of Australia, as recently as September.

  • Global law enforcement disrupted a significant portion of Volt Typhoon’s botnet in January, but the group quickly set up new servers.
  • However, actual movement across these servers hadn’t been seen until September, according to the report.
  • Routing through New Caledonia gives the hackers a “silent bridge” to hide traffic moving between the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas, the report says. Continue reading “Rising Threat of China’s Volt Typhoon” →

Say Goodbye to Passwords

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Say Goodbye to Passwords

source: fastcompany.com  |  image: pixabay.com

 

Passkey adoption is up, and problems are being fixed.

It’s been a couple of years since Apple, Google, and Microsoft started trying to kill the password, and its demise seems more likely than ever.

In 2022, all three companies embraced an alternative called passkeys, which sync securely between your devices and are protected by face recognition, a fingerprint, or a PIN. The thinking goes that if you don’t have to remember a password—or even create one in a password manager—you’re less likely to fall prey to phishing scams. And if websites don’t have to store their customers’ passwords anymore, security breaches won’t be as disastrous. Continue reading “Say Goodbye to Passwords” →

Hyper-Smelling AI

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This Hyper-Smelling AI Can Sniff Out Counterfeit Sneakers—and That’s Only the Beginning

source: fastcompany.com  |  image: pexels.com

 

Osmo, an AI startup focused on mapping scent, has an ambitious plan to use its sensor tech to find everything from fake shoes to tumors growing inside your body.

I want a tricorder,” Alex Wiltschko tells me on a Zoom call. Wiltschko, the founder of the AI company Osmo, is referring to the handheld device used by the Enterprise’s crew in its exploration across the universe. In Stark Trek, the tricorder can tell crew members everything they need to know about an object simply by holding it nearby.

One could say that Wiltschko and his team have created an alpha version of the fantasy device. His team has developed a backpack-sized machine equipped with a smelling sensor that uses artificial intelligence to identify counterfeit products by analyzing their chemical composition. Osmo has recently partnered with sneaker resale platforms to show that the high-tech sniff test is capable of identifying fakes with a high degree of accuracy. 

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MOLECULES

Everything in the world has a smell, from clothes to cars to your body. Those scents are volatile molecules, or chemistry that “flies” off those objects and reaches our nostrils to tell us things. You experience this consciously and clearly when something is new to your nose, like smelling a new car or a pair of sneakers. Continue reading “Hyper-Smelling AI” →

Winning the AI Race

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Winning the AI Race

source: axios.com (contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey)  |  image: unsplash.com

 

The Biden administration’s AI directive is a green light to the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and their eager suppliers.

  • The documents enshrine the technology as a defense imperative. Expect greater investment, including in energy and workforce, with check-ins along the way.
  • It also validates the high-risk, high-reward work of early movers.

Why it matters: This signals a more a hands-off approach, which should help allay private-sector worries about cumbersome guardrails.

What they’re saying: If the U.S. fails to deploy AI more extensively and at a quicker pace than its adversaries, advantages earned over decades in land, air, sea, space and cyber could be erased, national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Thursday.

  • “Even if we have the best AI models, but our competitors are faster to deploy, we could see them seize the advantage in using AI capabilities against our people, our forces and our partners and allies,” he said at the National Defense University.
  • “We could have the best team but lose because we didn’t put it on the field.”

What we’re hearing: Defense industrial base players are generally pleased.

  • Contractors already embrace a software first, hardware second approach.
  • The White House messaging clarifies what’s fair game — and what’s out of bounds. Guidance should boost experimentation and adoption.

The bottom line: There are few “precedents for a document such as this one, which seeks to comprehensively state U.S. national security interests and strategy toward a transformative technology,” Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at CSIS, told me.

  • “NSC-68, which defined U.S. early nuclear strategy, comes to mind.”

A “City Within a City” Is Coming to Phoenix

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A “City Within a City” Is Coming to Phoenix

source: nicenews.com  |  image: unsplash.com

 

Things are getting meta in Phoenix: Plans are in the works to build a $7 billion “city within a city” and drive value in the local economy.
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Called “Halo Vista,” the project in the Arizona capital would span 2,300 acres, with 28 million square feet dedicated to residential, retail, office, and industrial spaces. All of that will surround a semiconductor chip manufacturing complex, Newsweek reports, citing The Arizona Republic.
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“As historic as this is, it’s maybe just the beginning,” Richard Mack, one of the developers of the project, said at a launch event. Three other plants are planned for the site and are projected to create 10,000 total permanent jobs, not to mention another 80,000 jobs for the surrounding development.
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The team behind Halo Vista reiterated that it’s more than structures they’re seeking to build: “I really hope people understand this is a community we are trying to develop, and not any one thing,” Mack added.

The Era of Flying Cars…

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The Era of Flying Cars May (Actually) Be on the Horizon

source: nicenews.com  |  image: unsplash.com

 

You might soon hear your cab driver say: “Clear skies ahead and ready for takeoff.” Air taxis, along with other electric-powered aircrafts, are closer than ever to getting permission to fly.
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Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration published a much-anticipated 880-page document on the final regulations for pilot training and operating requirements for “powered-lift” vehicles. That means an aircraft designed to take off and land vertically like a helicopter (or the DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future), but with fixed wings like a plane, per The Verge.
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“Powered lift aircraft are the first new category of aircraft in nearly 80 years,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement, calling the new ruling “historic.” According to the agency, the vehicles can be used for cargo delivery, emergency rescue efforts, and simply taxiing people from point A to point B. While the rules aim to maintain safety and rigor, they also seek to address the realities of this nascent industry without setting overly strict standards.
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No air taxi company is currently certified for commercial operations, but some startups, like Joby Aviation and Archer, are in the process of making our sci-fi dreams a reality. Watch Joby’s aircraft fly over New York City last year.​