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Technical (News/Activism)

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  • China to launch 26,000 satellites, vying with U.S. for space power

    03/16/2024 2:18:48 AM PDT · by linMcHlp · 35 replies
    Nikkei Asia ^ | January 10, 2024 | Shunsuke Tabeta
    BEJING -- China will start building this year its own version of StarLink, a satellite internet constellation using low Earth orbit, with plans of launching some 26,000 satellites to cover the entire world led by state-run companies.Now that the military use of satellite-based communications systems for warfare in such places as Ukraine and Gaza is increasing, China will set up its own satellite network to compete with the U.S. as a "space power."
  • Roku hackers breach 15,000 accounts, used data to subscribe to streaming services

    03/15/2024 5:47:33 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 7 replies
    www.foxbusiness.com ^ | March 12, 2024 4:17pm EDT | By Aislinn Murphy
    The need for cybersecurity is 'nothing like we've ever seen before': Dan Ives Wedbush Managing Director of Equity Research Dan Ives reflects on the 'golden age for cybersecurity' on 'The Claman Countdown.' Bad actors may have illegally gotten into thousands of people’s Roku accounts, Roku told the offices of two state attorneys general. In a data breach notification to the Office of the Maine Attorney General, the video streaming company estimated the number of accounts affected by the breach at over 15,300. It let those customers know about the situation on Friday via a letter. The "unauthorized actors" changed the...
  • Spaceflight Now Launch Schedule - SpaceX 8:00AM EDT Mar. 14, 2024

    03/14/2024 12:02:29 AM PDT · by linMcHlp · 76 replies
    Spaceflight Now ^ | 03/14/2024 | Spaceflight Now
    March 14 Starship • Orbital Flight Test 3 (OFT-3)Launch time: 7:00 a.m. CDT (8:00 a.m. EDT, 1200 UTC) for 110-min. windowLaunch site: Starbase, Boca Chica Beach, Texas A SpaceX Super Heavy booster and Starship vehicle will make a third fully-integrated test flight during a 110-minute launch window.The plan is for the Starship to achieve near-orbital before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.The Super Heavy booster will target a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • 'Biden's DEI rules are worse than HAMAS': Top microchip makers are postponing US expansion and instead expanding in dangerous Israel and Russia because American grants come with so many 'equity' caveats

    03/09/2024 4:37:38 PM PST · by MinorityRepublican · 45 replies
    The Daily Mail ^ | Joe Hutchison | 09 Mar 2024
    Top microchip makers are postponing their expansion into the U.S. and setting up shop in Israel and Russia due to equity caveats that are required for them to receive grants from the U.S. government. The Biden administration promised earlier this year that they would be handing out $39 billion in grants to encourage semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. Shortly after the announcement however, Intel announced they would be holding off on their Columbus factory, while Samsung also delayed their facility in Texas. Despite the billions in subsidies, two experts believe the tech companies' decision to back out of building manufacturing...
  • US Patriot System May Have Been Vaporized in the Ukraine

    03/09/2024 9:17:07 AM PST · by Trumpisourlastchance · 71 replies
    Twitter/X ^ | 3/9/24 | squatsons
    Large convoy of Ukrainian air defense systems destroyed by what looks like an Iskander. Update: it looks to be multiple Patriot launchers and a possible radar.
  • Rise of the slaughterbots: AI drone designed to 'hunt and kill people' is built in just hours by scientists 'for a game'

    03/09/2024 6:42:51 AM PST · by BenLurkin · 81 replies
    dailymail.co.uk ^ | 03/08/2024 | By WILIAM HUNTER
    In just a few hours, Luis Wenus, an engineer and entrepreneur, converted a $115 (£89.99) drone into the basis of a deadly weapon. Using AI facial recognition the drone was programmed to recognise individuals and race towards them at full speed. ... In a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, Mr Wenus and his engineer colleague, demonstrated how a commercial drone can be programmed to chase down targets. In the post, Mr Wenus writes: 'I thought it would be fun to build a drone that chases you around as a game.' The drone uses an AI 'object detection model' to...
  • As FCC Formally Announces Last Full ACP Month, Providers Face Big Decisions

    03/08/2024 7:29:11 AM PST · by Red Badger · 15 replies
    www.telecompetitor.com ^ | March 5, 2024 10:14am | by Joan Engebretson
    In a public notice released late yesterday, the FCC officially said that April will be the last full month for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) due to insufficient funding. The commission also said it will let providers know later this month about the amount to expect per customer in May, leaving the providers with a choice to make. Should they end their participation in the program after April? Should they pass on a partial benefit to customers for May and require the customers to pay the extra portion? Or should they offer a full ACP benefit in May by contributing...
  • Google’s AI Is As Dumb And Racist As The People Who Designed It

    02/27/2024 9:22:46 AM PST · by SeekAndFind · 19 replies
    The Federalist ^ | 02/27/2024 | Peachy Keenan
    Google Gemini is just the latest iteration of the hottest trend in entertainment: white erasure from the culture.The future is here and it’s not only stupid, it’s racist.After playing around with Google’s powerful new “artificial intelligence” tool called “Gemini,” I can safely say two things: First, AI will never replace human artists.Second, AI will replace white people.Like other AI tools, Gemini also has a nifty image creation feature where you can ask it to create specific images. But within five minutes of Gemini’s release, everyone realized that the one thing Gemini could not do was create an image of a...
  • GPS war: Israel's battle to keep drones flying and enemies baffled

    02/27/2024 7:19:20 AM PST · by Salman · 7 replies
    AFP via Space Daily ^ | Feb 23, 2024 | Guillaume LAVALLE
    Omer Sharar had just received the first delivery of his new GPS anti-jamming technology when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7. Since then he and his team at InfiniDome, a start-up based in Caesarea, north of Tel Aviv, have been working around the clock to prevent the Israeli army's mini-drones from being intercepted by cheap and simple jamming in Gaza. Israel -- one of the world's main exporters of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- has for years waged a drone war along its borders, allowing it to monitor or target its enemies remotely with large, sophisticated airborne platforms. During...
  • Google has Usurped Democracy

    02/22/2024 1:27:03 PM PST · by Heartlander · 32 replies
    Brownstone Institute ^ | Feb 22, 2024 | Robert Malone
    Google has Usurped DemocracyWe hear a lot about “election integrity” or lack thereof, particularly around the issues of counting the vote and the ballot box. But the truth is that elections are more likely to be stolen via search engine manipulation effects (SEME).What is SEME?SEME is an abbreviation for the search engine manipulation effect. In a series of randomized controlled experiments, it has been shown that more than 20% of undecided voters can be manipulated into voting one way or the other, by simply manipulating the rankings of search engine results.These studies were published in an article titled “The search...
  • AT&T customers report massive outage, disrupting phone service across America | Here's what we know

    02/22/2024 6:56:05 AM PST · by silent majority rising · 81 replies
    CNN Wire ^ | February 22, 2024 | ByMelissa Alonso and Brian Fung, CNN, CNNWire
    AT&T's network went down for many of its customers across the United States Thursday morning, leaving customers unable to place calls, text or access the internet. Although Verizon and T-Mobile customers reported some network outages, too, they appeared far less widespread. T-Mobile and Verizon said their networks were unaffected by AT&T's service outage and customers reporting outages may have been unable to reach customers who use AT&T. More than 73,000 AT&T customers reported outages on digital-service tracking site DownDetector. That's not a comprehensive number: It tracks only self-reported outages. Although outage reports fell a bit in the 5 am ET...
  • Feds dismantle Russian GRU botnet built on 1,000-plus home, small biz routers

    02/16/2024 3:42:02 PM PST · by nickcarraway · 24 replies
    The Register ^ | Thu 15 Feb 2024 | Jessica Lyons
    Beijing, now Moscow.… Who else is hiding in broadband gateways?The US government today said it disrupted a botnet that Russia's GRU military intelligence unit used for phishing expeditions, spying, credential harvesting, and data theft against American and foreign governments and other strategic targets. This latest court-authorized takedown happened in January, and involved neutralizing "well over a thousand" home and small business routers that had been infected with the Moobot malware, which is a Mirai variant, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the Munich Cyber Security Conference on Thursday. Moobot can be used to remote-control compromised devices and launch...
  • As the heat rises with F-35 upgrades, inside Collins’s bet on a new cooling system

    02/05/2024 6:09:04 AM PST · by Fish Speaker · 24 replies
    Breaking Defense ^ | February 02, 2024 at 11:36 AM | Michael Marrow
    WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. — For several years, a problem has been brewing for Lockheed Martin’s F-35: future upgrades will make the jet run even hotter than it does now, more than its current cooling system is believed to be able to handle. In the near term, Pentagon officials expect that a high-profile upgrade to the plane’s F135 engine will avoid most of these cooling issues. But in the longer term, the military fears future aircraft upgrades needed to keep pace with threats decades down the line will push the heat factor even higher, and officials have recently suggested they’re casting...
  • ET detected in 2019?

    02/03/2024 9:07:34 PM PST · by JustaTech · 30 replies
    YouTube ^ | 02/02/2024 | Professor Simon Holland
    Professor Holland:"According to the (ret) head of a pan European radio telescope project, an extraterrestrial signal was detected 11 light years away in 2019. He told me, we are in regular contact with the aliens. Is this true? How would we speak in real time to an ET, 11 light yers away? maybe with Quantum Tunneling Communication. Some of this story makes sense, other bits are pure science fiction. Is this the BIG reveal we have all bee waiting for, or is it just bollocks? you choose. It's an interesting quest."
  • The Best Defense is a Good Offense: Mann vs Steyn Trial Day Eleven

    02/01/2024 9:36:54 PM PST · by dadfly · 23 replies
    Steyn Online ^ | February 1, 2024 | Amy K. Mitchell
    Dr. Wyner is a professor, statistician, and, oh, chair of the undergraduate program in statistics and data science. His specialty is probability models. He has worked with ESPN (Money Ball anyone?) and has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the very same NSF of which we've heard so much about the two last weeks. Dr. Wyner knows numbers.
  • Ford plans to hire Chinese military software supplier for EV factory in US: GOP investigators

    01/29/2024 5:02:14 PM PST · by Libloather · 30 replies
    Fox News via MSN ^ | 1/29/24 | Thomas Catenacci
    Ford Motor Company is planning to contract technology and software from at least four Chinese firms that supply similar services to the Chinese government and military, and the North Korean government, according to contracts obtained by Republican investigators. The revelations — which were released Monday by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. — are part of the GOP's ongoing joint investigation into Ford's partnership with Fujian, China-based electric vehicle (EV) battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL).
  • Study: Thousands of Companies Are Monitoring Every Facebook User

    01/21/2024 4:30:17 PM PST · by chickenlips · 61 replies
    Breitbart ^ | Jan. 20, 2024 | Lucas Nolan
    A recent study by Consumer Reports, in collaboration with The Markup, has unveiled the extensive scale of data tracking aimed at Facebook users. Some users in the study were tracked by as many as 7,000 companies. A recent study from Consumer Reports engaged 709 volunteers who provided archives of their Facebook user data. Astonishingly, Consumer Reports discovered that 186,892 different companies transmitted data about these users to Facebook. On average, data from each participant was shared by 2,230 companies, with some users’ data being shared by over 7,000 companies. This examination highlighted a lesser-known form of tracking known as server-to-server...
  • Inside Biden’s secret surveillance court

    01/21/2024 10:00:01 AM PST · by Twotone · 20 replies
    Politico ^ | January 17, 2024 | Alfred Ng & John Sakellariadis
    At an undetermined date, in an undisclosed location, the Biden administration began operating a secretive new court to protect Europeans’ privacy rights under U.S. law. Officially known as the Data Protection Review Court, it was authorized in an October 2022 executive order to fix a collision of European and American law that had been blocking the lucrative flow of consumer data between American and European companies for three years. The court’s eight judges were named last November, including former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Its existence has allowed companies to resume the lucrative transatlantic data trade with the blessing of...
  • How (not) to reorganize the Air Force

    01/19/2024 5:04:33 AM PST · by Fish Speaker · 24 replies
    Breaking Defense ^ | January 18, 2024 at 12:07 PM | Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin
    After months of study, the Air Force may (or may not) be on the verge of a major restructuring. While a shakeup has yet to be confirmed — much less the details of the plan — in this op-ed nuclear policy experts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin examine one road that they say Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall should definitely not follow. During the Space Force Association’s annual conference in mid-December, Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, the commander of Space Systems Command, raised eyebrows when he said, “The Air Force is going to get rid of the major command structure.” He...
  • Inside Boeing’s plans to fix its troubled KC-46A tanker

    01/19/2024 4:54:54 AM PST · by Fish Speaker · 10 replies
    Breaking Defense ^ | January 18, 2024 at 9:13 AM | Michael Marrow
    EVERETT, Wash. — In the wake of Boeing’s KC-46A Pegasus topping $7 billion in losses, company officials have been eager to stem the tide of the tanker’s long-running woes — and resolve several critical issues that pose risks to its operations. The Pegasus currently has six category 1 deficiencies, Air Force terminology for problems that could cause loss of an aircraft, injury, or death. Spending money to fix those issues has helped drive Boeing’s staggering losses on the program, and is a key reason why company officials have sworn off fixed-price development contracts like those that govern the KC-46A. Work...