News Release: DHS S&T Announces Track 3 of the Remote Identity Validation Tech Demo Challenge
source: dhs.gov (contributed by FAN, Steve Jones) | image: wikipedia.com
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Author: esimantiras
It’s official: Apple’s Find My network
now lets you track twice as many devices
source: techradar.com (contributed by FAN, Steve Page) | image: pixabay.com
Apple has quietly confirmed that it has doubled the number of devices that you can track in its Find My app. While no official announcement was made by Apple itself, the change was first reported by Nicolas Alveraz (@nicolas09F9) and shared in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
In a support document published on January 11, Apple revealed that you can now add up to 32 items in Find My instead of the previous limit of 16 items. This includes AirTags, first-party headphones, selected Beats headphones, newer MagSafe wallets, and third-party accessories and gear such as e-bikes.
It was confirmed by MacRumors that Apple increased the Find My item limit when iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 was launched in September 2022, but Apple never mentioned the change publicly until now.
In the Apple document, it details that some AirPods will count as more than one item when paired to Find My. With the exception of the AirPods Max, regular AirPods and AirPods Pro (1st gen) count as two items, and the AirPods Pro (2nd gen) count as three items. With AirPods and the 1st gen AirPods Pros, users can track each AirPod individually, thus marking it as two items. When tracking 2nd gen AirPods Pros, you can use Find My to track the charging case, making it the third item.
Apple introduced AirTags in 2021, making it easier for you to track your personal belongings as well as other Find My-compatible devices. However, avid Apple users voiced their concerns as they found themselves reaching the original 16-item limit quickly. This meant users would have to strategically decide which items to pair, which became increasingly difficult when Apple opened Find My pairing to third-party products shortly after.
How to add an AirTag to your Find My network
This now-official increase to the Find My device limit means that Apple super-users can track more devices and products without the fear of quickly reaching the limit.
Not sure how to pair more products to your Find My network? Adding AirTags, for example, to the network is pretty easy.
Hold your AirTag near your iPhone, and from there a pop up will appear on your screen for you to tap ‘Connect’. You’ll then have to name your AirTag from the options that appear in the scrolling list and tap ‘Continue’.
Once you’ve tapped ‘Continue’ again, register your AirTag with your Apple ID by tapping ‘Done’.
How to Be More Anonymous Online
source: wired.com. |. image: pexels.com
Being fully anonymous is next to impossible—but you can significantly limit what the internet knows about you by sticking to a few basic rules.
On the internet, everyone wants to know who you are. Websites are constantly asking for your email address or trying to place tracking cookies on your devices. A murky slurry of advertisers and tech firms track which websites you visit, predicting what your interests are and what you may want to buy. Search engines, browsers, and apps can log each search or scroll you make.
At this stage of the internet, being totally anonymous across your entire online life is incredibly hard to achieve. Phones, SIM cards, browsers, Wi-Fi networks, and more use identifiers that can be linked to your activity. But there are steps you can take to obscure your identity for everyday browsing.
If you’re looking to be truly anonymous or to protect your identity for a specific purpose—such as whistleblowing or activism—you should consider your threat model and individual security situation. But many of the changes you can make, which are listed below, are straightforward switches that can stop you from being tracked as much and apply to most people.
The Hacking Threat Rises
source: CNN.com | image: pexels.com
At The New Yorker last month, Sam Knight detailed the devastating consequences of a ransomware attack on the British Library in London: “The outage became an incident. The National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of G.C.H.Q., the British equivalent of the National Security Agency, got involved. On November 20th, a hacking group called Rhysida—after a genus of centipedes—offered 490,191 files stolen from the British Library for sale on the dark Web. United States cybersecurity officials describe Rhysida as a ‘ransomware-as-a-service’ provider—a gun for hire—part of an increasingly professional array of cyber-extortion organizations.” Knight also noted the widely international array of apparent victims of this group: “Since Rhysida surfaced, in May, its victims have included the Chilean Army, a medical-research lab in Australia, and Prospect Medical Holdings, a health-care company with hospitals in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and California. There are reports that its code contains fragments of Russian, and it appears not to have struck inside Russia or its close allies.”
Continue reading “The Hacking Threat Rises”
Welcome to the generative AI election era
source: axios.com, contributed by FAN, Bill Amshey | image: pexels.com
Around one billion voters will head to polls all over the world this year, while wily campaigns and underfunded election officials will face pressure to use AI for efficiencies.
Why it matters: Conditions are ripe for bad actors to use generative AI to amplify efforts to suppress votes, libel candidates and incite violence.
- New companies providing powerful generative AI have untested and relatively small election integrity teams, while older companies have cut back those teams — at its peak in 2019, Meta’s integrity staff numbered over 500 globally..
- AI may end up disenfranchising voters as election officials use new tools for a variety of tasks, from identifying and removing ineligible citizens from voting registries to AI-powered signature matching.
- Chatbots and platform algorithms risk serving up inaccurate information to voters.
The big picture: This year, more people will vote than any other year between 2004 and 2048.
- It’s the first time in 60 years that the U.S. and U.K. are voting for new administrations in the same year and the first time since 2004 that the U.S. and EU are.
- AI is just one category in a growing list of problems for election officials from a poll worker shortage to violent threats and cybersecurity attacks.
Continue reading “Welcome to the generative AI election era”
What an astronaut, Molly Baz, and your mom
can teach you about creativity
source: fastcompany.com | image: pexels.com
As a journalist prone to nerding out on books about design and creativity, a fair number of them cross my desk. But within them, there’s often a preponderance of thought leadership presented at its thinnest—a veritable Ikea table of wisdom that, let’s admit, probably came from a ghostwriter to begin with.
Which is why Mike Schnaidt’s Creative Endurance is such a delightful anomaly.
Now, disclaimer up front: Schnaidt is the creative director of Fast Company—but we’d cover this book even if he wasn’t because it’s such an anomaly in the “creative inspo” genre. Crack its covers, and there’s a wonderland of editorial design inside. Concept-driven type treatments dance across colorful pages. Illustrations. Activities. But above all, insights on pushing through obstacles and remaining engaged in your process and practice from not only designers (though you’ll indeed find such minds as Sagi Haviv, Jennifer Kinon, and Bobby C. Martin Jr. here), but also from athletes, an astronaut, architect, wardrobe stylist, chefs, a sommelier, and . . . a third grader.
If the book feels unorthodox, that’s by design. When teaching at Kean University in 2022, Schnaidt, a marathoner, eschewed the typical portfolio presentation and instead gave a talk titled, “The Runner’s Guide to Design.”
This new cement could become America’s next big bumper crop and help save the world as we know it
source: archdaily.com | image: pexels.com
Colorado-based Prometheus Materials and other emerging companies are developing new biocements that could help meet the world’s growing concrete demands and avert climate catastrophe.
Innovation thrives when we pause to observe, question, and reimagine the world around us, turning challenges into opportunities for progress. Nature, in particular, serves as a rich source of inspiration. By observing it, studying its daily challenges, and contemplating its processes, we can discover valuable insights that inspire innovative solutions.
One of these current challenges is the production of concrete, an ancient and extremely popular material that is now accountable for a significant portion of global CO₂ emissions, due to the energy-intensive process of cement production and the chemical reactions involved. It is estimated to be responsible for approximately 8% of the world’s annual CO₂ emissions, pumping 11 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere every day and consuming 9% of the world’s annual industrial water usage. In addition, the world’s building stock is expected to double by 2060—the equivalent of building an entire New York City every month for the next 36 years, which means an incredible increase in demand for cement and concrete. Faced with this daunting situation, is there anything we can do? In this article, we speak with Loren Burnett, CEO of Prometheus Materials, which has developed a material that mimics nature’s processes to recreate concrete as we know it.
The new, sci-fi ways AI will radically redesign airports
source: fastcompany.com | Image: pexels.com
Someday you might be able to check into your flight from your car.
Airports today are shaped like dumbbells. One end of the dumbbell is for ticketing and checked bags. The opposite end is where the gates are located along with restaurants and shops. The thin middle between the two ends is for security screening, which separates the “landside” of the airport from its “airside.”
This airport shape has become more pronounced in the past two decades, mainly because of security screening apparatuses. But artificial intelligence is poised to subvert that shape, first by creating new ways for people to interact with existing airport infrastructure, then by challenging the traditional landside-airside barrier, and, finally, enabling all-new design approaches to the physical and digital footprints of airports. Here’s how those changes will unfold in the next five, 10, and 20 years.
FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: EARLY NEGOTIATIONS WITH INFRASTRUCTURE
Airports have historically told you what they are doing: a giant flight information display system or series of gate announcements is the airport broadcasting its operations. What you are doing as a passenger is extracting relevant information and maneuvering those operations. This power dynamic between what an airport is doing and what a passenger is doing is changing, though, and becoming far more collaborative. At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), passengers can make “spot saver” appointments for security screenings, skipping the lines and avoiding any anxiety about getting through checkpoints ahead of flight times. Also at SEA, passengers parking their vehicles can use anautomated parking guidance system to find open spots faster. In each instance, the airport is improving its efficiency by allowing passengers to interact with infrastructure more directly.
Continue reading “The new, sci-fi ways AI will radically redesign airports”
Humanoid robot factory
source: Axios.com | image: pexels.com
A factory planning to pump out 10,000 two-legged robots a year is taking shape in Salem, Oregon — the better to help Amazon and other giant companies with dangerous hauling, lifting and moving. Jennifer reports.
Why it matters: Agility Robotics says that its RoboFab manufacturing facility will be the first to mass-produce humanoid robots, which could be nimbler and more versatile than their existing industrial counterparts.
Driving the news: Agility Robotics, which makes a bot named Digit that’s being tested by Amazon, plans to open RoboFab early next year, inaugurating what CEO Damion Shelton calls “the world’s first purpose-built humanoid robot factory.”
- “We’ve placed a very high priority on just getting robots out there as fast as possible,” Shelton, who’s also a co-founder, tells Axios.
- “Our big plan is that we want to get to general-purpose humanoids as soon as we can.”
- There’s a growing backlog of orders for Digit, which the company says is the first commercially available human-shaped robot designed for warehouse work.
Behind the Curtain: U.S. not ready for robotic, AI world wars
source: Axios.com (contributed by Bill Amshey) | image: Pexels.com
America’s ability to remain the world’s most lethal military hinges on two interrelated — and vexing — mysteries, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write.
- Can soon-to-retire four-star generals truly foresee the awesome power of artificial intelligence in time to break generation-old habits and shift warfare theories?
- If they do, can they convince the brightest coding minds to chuck lucrative gigs at Google to build AI-powered systems for America faster or better than their rivals in China?
Why it matters: Future wars will be won with Stanford nerds, faster chips, superior computing power and precision robotics on land, sea and air. Experts tell us that because of a lethal combination of congressional myopia and constipated Pentagon buying rules, America isn’t mobilizing fast enough to prevail on future battlefields. Continue reading “Behind the Curtain: U.S. not ready for robotic, AI world wars”