Comments
vas pup •
Israeli private electric plane will soon be ready for take off
https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/israeli-private-electric-plane-will-soon-be-ready-for-take-off/
“The day when you will be able to enter your garage, hop into a personal aircraft and cruise above the congested traffic on the streets below is coming closer.
Air EV, based in Pardes Hana, Israel, expects to start delivering its two-seater, battery-operated electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft late next year, with hundreds of people already signed up to join the urban air mobility revolution.
Leveraging major advances in electric propulsion, eVTOL aircraft offer the average person the ability to “drive in the sky,” while providing an environmentally sustainable solution to a growing urban transportation problem. Simple to fly, and priced to compete with a high-end luxury car, Air EV’s AIR ONE aircraft is designed for private commuter and recreational use.
“We sell the aircraft for a base price of $150,000. It will probably come closer to $200,000 by the time we deliver,” says CEO and Co-Founder Rani Plaut. “We intend to deliver the first units at the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025.”
Plaut estimates that potential revenue could be in the billions of dollars.
The startup is on track to receive clearance from the US Federation Aviation Administration. The company plans to transfer most of its operations and research and development to the US for further flight testing and certification collaboration with the FAA.
AIR ONE recently reached a major milestone with its first unmanned flight over the skies of southern Israel, successfully transitioning from hover flight to cruise flight. Its next text phase will be with someone onboard, Plaut says.
==>The vehicle has a range of 100 miles on a single charge, and can fly up to 155 miles per hour at an altitude of 1,200 feet. The aircraft, powered by a battery much like an electric car battery, is zero-emission and designed to take off and land on any flat surface.
Measuring about 25 feet by 8 feet, it has collapsible wings to allow easy parking. It requires only about 15 to 30 hours of training. The company’s goal is that no pilot’s license will be necessary.”
modem phonemes •
represent the best human values
Right.
The best human values require the virtues of prudence and equity, whose decisions can’t be legislated/calculated in advance and are not available to a machine. Reality will always hack the machine.
MarkH •
Just a few weeks ago, there was some discussion here of an intelligence summary concerning the mysterious “Havana syndrome.”
Three days ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a detailed report (with heavy redactions) which perhaps contradicts that summary.
https://media.salon.com/pdf/22-cv-674%20Final%20Response%20Package.pdf
Some conclusions:
• the syndrome has no identifiable natural cause
• it is not consistent with mass psychogenic illness
• pulsed electromagnetic energy remains a plausible explanation for some of the cases
Nimmo •
@MarkH noone on earth believes ‘Havana Syndrome’ is real. It’s just CIA and State Department filth mad that they didn’t get stationed in Paris having a hissy fit.
ResearcherZero •
@MarkH
The term AHI is preferred as incidents began in other locations long before any reports came out of Havana. Where those exact locations are, what happened, – classified. How it works – classified.
synergistic and combined EM/thermal effects
‘https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/44B43B3E7CA335E5E1CD407BE2A1EA29/S1759078711000122a.pdf/millimeter-wave-interactions-with-the-human-body-state-of-knowledge-and-recent-advances.pdf
‘https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/FOIA-Reading-Room-Nuclear-Biological-and-Chemical/FileId/39946/
No one is allowed inside reactors either when they are operating. They put microwave screens inside the doors of microwave ovens for a good reason. The two are completely different technologies, but they will both cook your face if you play around with them.
However in the case of AHIs it is a slightly different property we are looking at in the transmission of energy and the induction over the surface of the skin. Pop a fork in a power socket (don’t do this) and what happens?
ResearcherZero •
On December 10th of 2013, CVE-2013-3900 was published pertaining to a vulnerability in WinVerifyTrust Signature Validation, which allows attackers to exploit the padding of a Windows Authenticode signature to gain control of a system. Microsoft’s solution was to offer a ‘opt-in’ solution that could be activated by adding a pair of registry keys.
‘https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/10-year-old-windows-bug-with-opt-in-fix-exploited-in-3cx-attack/
‘https://research.checkpoint.com/2022/can-you-trust-a-files-digital-signature-new-zloader-campaign-exploits-microsofts-signature-verification-putting-users-at-risk/
WinVerifyTrust Signature Validation Vulnerability
“This update causes the WinVerifyTrust function to perform strict Windows Authenticode signature verification for PE files. After applying the update, PE files will be considered “unsigned” if Windows identifies content in them that does not conform to the Authenticode specification. This may impact some installers. If you are using an installer that is impacted, Microsoft recommends using an installer that only extracts content from validated portions of the signed file.”
‘https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2013/ms13-098#winverifytrust-signature-validation-vulnerability—cve-2013-3900
Binaries most likely to be affected are PE installer files distributed via the Internet that are customized at time of download.
Microsoft recommends that executables authors consider conforming all signed binaries to the new verification standard by ensuring that they contain no extraneous information in the WIN_CERTIFICATE structure. Microsoft also recommends that customers appropriately test this change to evaluate how it will behave in their environments.
‘https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2013-3900
no
‘https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/199599/are-all-fields-of-the-pe-certificate-directory-hashed-during-authenticode-signin
ResearcherZero •
@MarkH
It’s for s-stirring, harassment. As soon as an incident takes place, you know that military intelligence was at the scene, the building may have been bugged. Then they usually p off for a while.
It’s just another example of the Russian military turning useful technology into a stupid piece of junk. Though, that is not an exclusively Russian trait, it is a human trait.
Civilians have nothing to worry about, they are not important enough to be of any interest, and incidents are rare. Unlike automobile accidents, bee stings and cows. That’s what people should really worry about, cows!
“Among them were the contentious American actor Steven Seagal, a grandson of Charles de Gaulle, and an Italian princess and scholar known for her Tolkien translations who fears European boys are being encouraged to marry their cows.”
‘https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/16/italian-princess-conspiracy-theorists-and-steven-seagal-meet-russias-friends-overseas
Am I being serious, cryptic, or just messing around?
ResearcherZero •
But on a serious note, just step away from the window. Glass allows a high percentage of energy in.
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(optics)
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opacity_(optics)
ResearcherZero •
“Kids are creative about everything from drawing to singing, but adults just stick to things tried and tested.”
‘https://www.scoopwhoop.com/inothernews/grown-ups-stupid/
–
If you run an industrial plant you should probably stick with some kind of plan that is tried and tested.
“The implication of this is that the increase in hacktivism activity targeting OT may not necessarily become consistent over time. However, it does illustrate that during political, military, or social events, OT defenders face a heightened risk.”
“Asset owners and operators should maintain situational awareness of trends in hacktivist threat activity targeting OT systems to anticipate potential risks. We also highlight that most often, hacktivist threat activity can be prevented following common best practices for remote access to critical and internet-accessible systems.”
‘https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/hacktivists-targeting-ot-systems
ResearcherZero •
“Overall, over 4.5 million internet-facing devices were identified as vulnerable to KEVs discovered between 2010 and 2020.”
Many organizations are still exposed and at risk from these vulnerabilities because they are not patching them.
‘https://www.rezilion.com/blog/new-research-reveals-millions-of-systems-remain-exposed-to-known-exploited-vulnerabilities/
Clive Robinson •
@ lurker, ALL
Re : It all comes down to power politics.
With regards,
“The Alignment Problem: how do we ensure machine learning systems represent the best human values rather than magnify the worst?”
You can not…
Firstly look at just about any religion, their fundamental doctrine is “domination” via, when you stand back and look, ‘cult form memory techniques’. Carried out on the very young, who mentally are defencless to defend themselves from the attacks. So before they even get to school age they have been cognatively biased[1].
Secondly, for some reason we almost always end up with hierarchical structures, which push power to the top of the hierarchy.
Thirdly as part of these hieratchical structures is generally a “self selection” process that encorages a “them and us” style thinking. Such inward thinking gives rise to “secrecy” through which control structures are organised.
I could point out many other points but the issue is not if they are inherantly “good or bad” but how you as an observer see how they are used.
I’ve found through repeated observation that irrespective of how they start unless kept very open, such power and control structures quickly spiral into behaviours that are bad.
That is because what “society” considers bad is attracted to hierarchical structures for the power and control they give.
So we enslave ourselves by our own failings. We willingly build systems that will be used to harm us because in the general case we do not as individuals want to actually take responsability for our future, we just want to “go with the flow”. Thus those who are the exception who desire or crave status, money, power and control get gifted an almost ideal structure to put their desires in action. All they have to do is follow a basic set of actions that are in effect,
1, Build a guilded cage, with a “one way” door.
2, For the majority to “sleep walk into”.
3, Build in an unopposable control structure.
4, Build in a defence / deniability system for self protection.
The first two are accomplished through the “hope” illusion of “their will be jam tommorow” or similar. The third is the “them and us” of heresy through unquestioning “faith”. The fourth is the arms length of “humble servant” acting as “a messenger of the deity” where they are the “Godhead” and get to use the power from the control the hierarchy gives them without them being held responsable via the “he told me to do it” principle. But these last two can be seen as part of the “might is right” justification of “charity”.
Charity is when you look at it exactly the process a drug dealer uses to get people on the dependency hook and keep them there. It’s a form of behavioral control via “food treats” and similar. All you need to do to abuse the process is get and maintain control of the resources people need to survive. Ultimately access to clean air, energy, water, materials, and the ground to stand/grow upon.
So understanding that, which can be quite a cognative shock for most to get to grips with (because of what they have been taught from birth). You need to consider what AI realy is and what it is going to bring certain people with respect to the four actions above.
In essence AI Deep learning is a “mirroring system” in that “it learns from it’s input” thus “will become as it’s input”… Control the input, and you control what results.
Importantly though is the mystique of apparent “wisdom” or “magic” where the majority fool themselves into thinking the resulting “AI tool” is actually some kind of “AI master”. Thus AI systems will become the “techno deities” through which those who put faith in them will be controled by those who control the inputs… Thus they get the “computer says” excuse on steroids to pass the blaim for their actions…
All I can say is that if you or anyone else can not see this coming this way, then you are “sleep walking into a guilded trap” blinded by “faith and hope” into becoming subservient to the “charity” of the resource controlers, who’s only intent is to aquire status, power and thus control through the resources.
After all “sheep have to be led” so “they can be shorn” so they are easily controled[2]. So the become used to being led, thus eventually are “easy to lead to the slaughter”.
Any tool that aids that process is going to be seen as not just valuable to the few, but for control only by the few.
Pull back the curtain and the illusion thus mystique is destroyed, and with it the magic by which people are controled.
But by pulling back the curtain, remember you have to accept the responsability of what follows… Which is others having to take responsability for their lives.
Which is why we build societies to help spread that load to buffer the apparently random shocks of nature[3]. We make ourselves into flocks by choice as it gives us considerable power of concerted effort. But the method of control of the flock is our responsability to see that the conserted effort is used wisely. If we shirk taking on that responsability, then we get first shorn then slaughtered as a consequence by those who’s desire is to do so… They will use any “force multiplier” they can get their hands on, especially if by denying knowledge they can imbue that tool with false wisdom etc they can hide behind.
Thus AI of the likes of GPT and Co give them such a tool…
[1] When you analyze religions most have “pillars” which generally contain “faith”, “Hope”, and “Charity”. Which are always spun up in a way that establishes an “unquestioning hierarchy”(faith) that has a “self deluding reward structure”(hope) and encorages a form of “discrimination in the mind” (charity) that is often worse than casual racism by those who’s behaviours are based on “what they csn do with their fists”.
[2] Pre-lambing shearing is practiced as a wayvto get sheep to behave in a desired way, that is to come down off of the hills etc to fond shelter. Look at it this way, if I steal your warm coat in late autumn as winter sets in, you have little choice but to find shelter. If I control that shelter as the farm does the lambing sheds, then I control your freedom of action.
[3] Any regular event that occurs at long periods, will look random over shorter periods. Those occasional eclipses of the Sun and Moon are entirely predictable when you know how to predict them. But scary when you don’t. If you find out how to predict them but keep the method secret, then you can with care gain significant power over others with the knowledge they do not have… Which might account for why religions used to be ardent star watchers.
Beatrix Willius •
Anti-Piracy DNS Poisoning Blacks Out Media Group, ISP Refuses to Comment (https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-dns-poisoning-blacks-out-media-group-isp-refuses-to-comment-230322/)
For several days last week, visitors to the website of tech-focused media group Heise were diverted to Germany’s piracy-blocking portal instead. Users of ISP 1&1 were diverted to a page reserved for pirate site visitors, informing them that Heise had been rendered inaccessible for copyright reasons. Calls for an explanation are met with silence.
website not availableIn a world where clear and independent reporting struggles to get heard in a sea of sensationalized clickbait, the German Heise group is generally recognized as a reliable and accurate news source.
For several days last week, an unknown number of visitors to heise.de were denied access to the company’s reporting. Instead, they found themselves redirected to Germany’s anti-piracy website blocking portal and statements that had no basis in fact.
Privacy: In a fast-food restaurant on a routine small cash order, the cashier asked, “What would you like your name to be?” I gave my first name, then asked, how many give “other than their real name?” Apparently, more than half.
As a sociological contribution, this is accurate but not scientific, being limited to one event (last Wednesday) and one place (a White Castle in a New York City central business district). The particular restaurant is only a few months old and I come maybe once every couple of weeks, and this version of asking for a name is new. It seemed odd. I paused before answering and thought of saying “John Gotti Jr.“, but I didn’t want to go there. When I asked her the sociological question, her answer seemed to be that it was a lot. I suggested, “Half?” She definitely nodded.
Many websites, if we register, require that the information we give at registration be accurate; ditto for domain registration. Research to see how many use false names might be hard, especially for the harder to detect and especially if regionalized and time-limited, although I haven’t Googled.
Robin •
@Nick:
Yes I was a bit taken aback by that question; probably the same chain but in the UK on that occasion. Of course I gave a false name. But I later realised the server was only writing it on the cups to identify the client and order. When it was ready to collect, she shouted the (false) name I gave her and got my coffee and cookie. No databases involved. I guess a number would do the job just as well. In fact it’s not a bad system: I can remember my own name (or fake identifier), she doesn’t need a ticket machine or to record or remember anything other than scribbling on a paper cup. Only problem is if there are two “Miguel Ratón”s in the queue.
ResearcherZero •
“When a blocking decision is recommended, the matter is then referred to the German government’s Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) to confirm that a blockade will not violate net neutrality.”
As a mere conduit service, courts could require Quad9 to take action through a “no-fault” injunction, a process that’s already used in ISP blocking orders.
‘https://www.heise.de/news/Urheberrechtsverletzung-Sony-erwirkt-einstweilige-Verfuegung-gegen-DNS-Resolver-6111633.html
To put this into perspective, applying wrongdoer liability in this setting is akin to charging a pen manufacturer with fraud because a stranger forged documents while using the manufacturer’s writing utensil.
Quad9 believes this is an exceptionally dangerous precedent that could lead to future global-reaching commercialized and political censorship if DNS blocking is applied globally without geographic limitations to certain jurisdictions.
‘https://www.quad9.net/news/press/quad9-s-opinion-of-the-recent-court-ruling-in-leipzig/
–
“Section 230 of the Computer Decency Act (CDA) grants online service providers immunity from civil liability for all claims arising out of content generated or published by third parties on their systems.”
Areas Ripe For Section 230 Reform
‘https://www.justice.gov/archives/ag/department-justice-s-review-section-230-communications-decency-act-1996
upstarts and their encryption
‘https://www.fbi.gov/about/mission/lawful-access
protecting the kiddies
‘https://www.justice.gov/olp/lawful-access
–
weeeee!
‘https://news.mit.edu/2018/first-ionic-wind-plane-no-moving-parts-1121
Electromagnetic waves have crests and troughs similar to those of ocean waves. The distance between crests is the wavelength. Moving along the spectrum from long to short wavelengths, energy increases as the wavelength shortens. Consider a jump rope with its ends being pulled up and down. More energy is needed to make the rope have more waves.
Hertz found out how to make the electric and magnetic fields detach themselves from wires and go free as Maxwell’s waves — electromagnetic waves.
One of the physical properties of light is that it can be polarized. Polarization is a measurement of the electromagnetic field’s alignment. In the figure above, the electric field (in red) is vertically polarized. Think of a throwing a Frisbee at a picket fence. In one orientation it will pass through, in another it will be rejected.
An applied electric field will polarize air molecules, and if sufficient to force electrons off the molecules, those electrons can collide with other molecules and can start a discharge, or electric arc.
‘https://science.nasa.gov/ems/02_anatomy
A charged particle produces an electric field. This electric field exerts a force on other charged particles. Positive charges accelerate in the direction of the field and negative charges accelerate in a direction opposite to the direction of the field.
A moving charged particle produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field exerts a force on other moving charges. The force on these charges is always perpendicular to the direction of their velocity and therefore only changes the direction of the velocity, not the speed.
An accelerating charged particle produces an electromagnetic (EM) wave. Electromagnetic waves are electric and magnetic fields traveling through empty space with the speed of light c.
Electromagnetic waves can travel through transparent media, such as water and glass. When an EM wave travels from one medium with index of refraction n1 into another medium with a different index of refraction n2, then its frequency remains the same, but its speed changes, and therefore it wavelength changes. For air n is nearly equal to 1, for water n is 1.33, and for most glasses n is around 1.5.
‘http://labman.phys.utk.edu/phys222core/modules/m6/production_of_em_waves.html
Winter •
@Robin, Nick
But I later realised the server was only writing it on the cups to identify the client and order.
I heard from several side that people who have names that are very common (e.g., John) or are often mispronounced that they simply chose an easy to write&pronounce and not too common pseudonym to be able to actually collect their cups without problem.
Clive Robinson •
@ Nimmo, ALL,
Re : Havana Syndrome
“noone on earth believes ‘Havana Syndrome’ is real.”
I guess you were not paying attention at school when they explained the basics of the laws of nature with regards the transportation of energy and matter by forces.
What the sufferers appear to be suffering from is the same issue that effects sports with violent head contact…
The NFL certainly know what the legal costs are of ignoring those laws of nature (1 billion and rising). Look up “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”(CTE) and what it does to NFL players and why currently we have to wait for an autopsy to show the actual injury[1].
The fantastic cost of not just compensation but increased protection that is likely going to have to be paid, is “proof enough” according to some as to why the US agencies have been “dragging their heels” over Havana Syndrome.
My view is that those who talk about the heating effect of the use of microwave systems generally do not know sufficient to understand the issues.
Because they run into the inverse square law issue, which means that if it were just the heating issue the operators of the system would have their brains boild way way faster than someone a hundred or more meters away which those who have suffered from Havana Syndrome have been.
Thus you have to look at the problem differently with the use of multiple beams.
I’ve explained this before on these pages so you can go “look it up” but the physics behind it has been in use since WWII, so you can start by looking up “The battle of the beams” or read Prof R.V.Jones 1973 book “Most Secret War”.
@ Nimmo,
If you truely don’t believe Havana Syndrom exists, you can not possibly have any objection to your head and brain being used for experiments. After all what does not exist can not harm you can it?
Just leave your details and I’ll send some equipment and personnel around, so you don’t have to be inconvenienced by travel etc. You can just sit there sipping a beer and monday morning quarterbacking whilst we run the tests.
ResearcherZero •
“The City Council was clear in what they expected from the NYPD, and the Department simply isn’t following the law. Now they just are flat out lying when they say they fully comply with the POST Act. The POST Act is one of the weakest surveillance oversight laws in the country, but the NYPD still refuses to meet even these minimal transparency requirements.”
‘https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/31/ny
–
It seems odd to say, but at least in one sense, Europeans are now more likely to be able to substantively challenge American intelligence community collection practices than Americans themselves are.
‘https://www.lawfareblog.com/jurisdiction-new-data-protection-review-court
Biden’s executive order allows individuals to file complaints when they believe that the U.S. intelligence community has improperly accessed their personal data. This may not satisfy some European critics for whom only truly independent judicial review could be viewed as adequate. Of course, the criticism of a lack of independence is, at one level, trivially correct. This is because Europeans will have standing to bring their challenges and have them heard on the merits. Americans in American courts will not.
‘https://www.lawfareblog.com/jurisdiction-new-data-protection-review-court
Section 2 of the executive order describes the framework in which U.S. government officials can conduct signals intelligence (SIGINT) activities.
‘https://www.lawfareblog.com/whats-bidens-executive-order-signals-intelligence
The CLOUD Act has two comity provisions that provide potentially significant limits on U.S. government access.
‘https://www.alstonprivacy.com/cloud-act-impact-cross-border-access-contents-communications/
“Because this system of direct access differs from existing international data sharing regimes, the manner in which data requests are administered, the type of data that is collected, and the degree of potential for abuse of the system, if any, may become more apparent over time.”
‘https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45173.pdf
The extraterritorial impact of modern electronic surveillance can be dramatic, especially in the case of remote access to foreign servers and devices.
‘https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3917893
There is a book on the subject which examines “crucial developments in the field of privacy law, efforts by legal systems to impose their data protection standards beyond their borders and claims by states to assert sovereignty over data.”
The chapters explore recent legal and policy developments both in the private and law enforcement sectors, including recent rulings by the Court of Justice of the EU dealing with Google and Facebook, recent legislative initiatives in the EU and the US such as the CLOUD Act and the e-evidence proposal, as well as ongoing efforts to strike a transatlantic deal in the field of data sharing.
Data protection beyond borders : transatlantic perspectives on extraterritoriality and sovereignty
‘https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/data-protection-beyond-borders-9781509940684/
Clive Robinson •
@ MarkH, ALL,
Re : No obvious brain injury.
You might find this if interest,
“Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”(CTE) like “Functional Neurological Disorder”(FND) has in the past been put down as “all in the mind”.
Especially by those who believe to much in the electronic tools they use, without understanding the tools limitations (something that gets rather dull having to explain over and over to representatives of the medical proffession).
In my case nearly a quater of a century after having had a head injury that realy should have killed me, I still get the pass from piller to post issue of the medical practicioners saying we can not see anything on this grainy image we are holding so “it’s all in his mind” and those who deal with the brains actuall functioning say “No it’s real and it’s physiological not psychological”. To say it’s annoying is a bit of an understatment, especially when the side effects of the injury you’ve had flare up and get on top of you and all you want is for it to stop.
However imaging and image enhancing technology is improving fairly rapidly, so hopefully I won’t have to wait untill my autopsy to prove my case…
ResearcherZero •
‘https://andreas-mausch.de/whatsapp-viewer/
This is what all my chats say:
“For Manly Love, be here, March 25th at 2:15 AM SHARP”
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpQAhnmBO6s
ResearcherZero •
“Any person standing in an open area can similarly launch an upward connecting discharge from their head or shoulders and be injured by lightning even when not directly struck by it.”
‘https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/science/lightning-rod-video.html
“We don’t know how it propagates and grows. We don’t know how it connects to the ground.”
Initiation is just the first of many intricate steps that lightning takes on its way to the ground.
‘https://www.quantamagazine.org/radio-telescope-reveals-how-lightning-begins-20211220/
Basically, lightning happens when electrons hit oxygen molecules with enough energy to create high energy singlet delta oxygen molecules. After colliding with the molecules, the “detached” electrons form a highly conducting step—initially luminous—that redistributes the electric field, causing successive steps.
The conducting column connecting the step to the cloud remains dark when electrons attach to neutral oxygen molecules, followed by immediate detachment of the electrons by singlet delta molecules.
‘https://phys.org/news/2022-11-physicists-gold-year-lightning-mystery.html
“These sparks travel at speeds that are fast even for lightning—around 10 to 100 million meters per second—and produce very powerful radiofrequency (RF) radiation as high as a few megawatts, making them the strongest natural sources of RF radiation on Earth.”
‘https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10721
“Lightning Studies Based on Measurements Spanning the Ranges from Radio Frequency to Optical (including Infrared and Ultraviolet) to Gamma-Rays.”
‘https://news.ece.ufl.edu/2021/08/03/rakov-nsf/
The D-region ionosphere is responsible for the vast majority of radio wave attenuation. Understanding the physical processes that determine the level of attenuation is key to predicting radio wave signal intensities in space (for ground-based transmissions).
‘http://www.vlf.ece.ufl.edu/TransionosphericWavePropagation/
By far the No. 1 piece of advice for avoiding injury by lightning is not to be outside in a thunderstorm.
Clive Robinson •
@ ResearcherZero,
Re : Lightning up stroke…
“By far the No. 1 piece of advice for avoiding injury by lightning is not to be outside in a thunderstorm.”
Yup… But sometimes you’ve little choice, such as the place you are working at is a long walk even from the nearest bus stop, and you’re already running late.
It happened to me back at the end of the 1970’s… I took a short cut across a public park / playing field to try to save time as it was realy throwing it down. I heard someone call me I started to turn… The next thing I remember was a friend shaking me fairly violently, feeling numb all over and my umbrella being some distance away. According to my friend who witnessed it happen to me I,
“Lit up like a Christmas tree”
And threw my umbrella violently away from me, on retrieving it I found the metal ferrul on the end had got melted. Which as it was an old style umbrella with a solid point, it was quite impressive.
I’ve told the story here before, and how at hospital they got me to take off all my cloths then wired me up like some strange Dr Frankenstein lab test subject… Eventually having confirmed my nervous system was scrambled I was told by an old Indian Dr that I could go home. On mentioning I felt like Frankenstein’s Monster I asked if there was anything I should do or not do? He advised staying out of the rain in future and as a parting shot said that if I dropped down dead I should come back and let them know (apparently re-animated corpses are rare so leave my body to science etc…)
Back then they called that up-stroke of lightening a “pilot stroke” and apparently thought back then to be “all volts” and what opened the ionized channel for the main bolt to drop a few million amps or so to cook you from the inside out…
I gather science has moved on in nearly fifty years, and has not needed my corpse re animated or not to progress ?
vas pup •
US tech giant Cisco to buy Tel Aviv cybersecurity startup Lightspin
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-tech-giant-cisco-to-buy-tel-aviv-cybersecurity-startup-lightspin/
“Cisco Systems Inc., a US maker of networking software and hardware, said in a blog post late on Wednesday that it intends to acquire Israel’s Lightspin Technologies Ltd., a developer of cloud security software.
No financial details were provided, but Hebrew media reports estimated the deal to be worth between $200 million and $250 million.
!!!!!Founded in 2020 by Vladi Sandler and Or Azarzar, Lightspin has built a cloud security management platform using graph-based proprietary algorithms to protect from the risks of potential cybersecurity attacks in cloud environments by mapping the potential attack paths and remediating the most critical security issues from build to runtime. Through graph-based visualization, the system identifies attack paths hackers could take to steal critical data stored in the cloud.
Vijoy Pandey, senior vice president of Engineering at Cisco’s Emerging Technologies and Incubation, said Lightspin’s platform will help meet the growing needs of its customers to secure their increasingly complex multi-cloud environments.
By 2025, over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, up from 30% in 2021, according to estimates by research firm Gartner. With the ongoing growth of cloud applications comes an increase in cyberthreats, including sophisticated ransomware. Cloud-based breaches account for almost half of all data breaches, according to the IBM cost of data breach 2022 report. Public cloud-based breaches cost businesses an average $5.02 million per year.
The deal marks Cisco’s fourth acquisition in Israel over the past two years, said Oren Sagi, the managing director of Cisco Israel. Cisco bought Israeli application monitoring startup Epsagon and Israel’s Sedona Systems, a maker of communication technologies, in 2021, and Tel Aviv-based startup Portshift, a maker of application security solutions, in 2020.”
leeloo •
i like to put tassels on my nipples and swing them around and around in circles until i pass out!
i enjoy filming myself doing this and showing it to all my friends. they enjoy it too and now i have seven friends who are doing the same thing! it’s good for exercise and sexual arousal.
Clive Robinson •
@ ALL,
Russian TORid affair cleans out crypto wallets
I must admit this has slowly raised a smile on my face…
You may remember Putin tried to get rid of Tor Browsers so his “federated surveillance plans” would enable him to grab control.
Well his little misadventures ment the courts ment he had to walk back those Anti-Tor plans…
The result some unknown “Evil types” made up a special set of Tor Browser installers with a little something extra to change crypto wallet addresses…
And liberated atlrast $400k in cryptocash from those who installed Tor Browser not from the official site…
With a big chunk of it being pulled out of Ruski-bears doing cryptocash transactions due to Russian currency becoming the “Rubble” and sinking faster than a lead kipper, due to Putin’s other mis adventures at the Eastern edge of Europe. So to avoid Putin’s failing they fell to another “Evil types” machianations,
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/30/kaspersky_clipboard_tor_malware/
The important point though is at the end about the difficulty of detecting what is effectively malware that does not communicate.
AI.Is.Not.Skynet •
There’s been a big push this past week trying to stop or slow down AI. Part of it is luddites thinking AI is SkyNet. (There’s no self-awareness. AI doesn’t initiate action or seek goals to fulfill.) Seems more like competitors trying to slow down the leaders so they can catch up. Lots of nonsense and fearmongering. But amongst all the noise, some of the points are worth considering. Specifically how existing AI can benefit crime: https://slashdot.org/story/23/03/27/1824233/europol-sounds-alarm-about-criminal-use-of-chatgpt-sees-grim-outlook
And yeah, that’s scary. Bruce talked about using ChatGPT to artificially lobby senators. But imagine what it can do for phishing… The potential for scams here is staggering. To say nothing of social engineering. And it can be massively scaled up to vast numbers of people, while still being individually tailored for each & every one.
@AI.Is.Not.Skynet:
AI: It may matter very little that AI strictly “doesn’t initiate action or seek goals to fulfill” if AI can be packaged, seamlessly from a user’s standpoint, with a loop that checks for certain conditions and, upon discovering that the conditions are present in the real world, does something, which would look like initiating action; or with a way to search the Internet for potentially relevant and reasonable goals to suggest to a user, perhaps even preselecting one to be the default for a context.
Whether competitive interests or legal concerns are at stake, you may be right about the former but both may be true.
ResearcherZero •
“Mr. Wasserman’s claims regarding our organization are completely false. ExxonMobil has no knowledge of Azari, had no involvement in any hacking activities and has not been accused of any wrongdoing. To be clear, ExxonMobil has done nothing wrong.”
In the midst of perpetrating what federal prosecutors say was a massive corporate hacking campaign, Israeli private detective Aviram Azari in 2017 received welcome news. A group of hackers in India wrote him to say they had successfully infiltrated the email and social-media accounts of a group of environmental activists campaigning against Exxon. “On a happy note I would like to report some success below: Project Name Rainbow.”
‘https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/prosecutors-say-massive-hacking-operation-infiltrated-exxon-climate-foes/ar-AA19eekd
A little-known Indian IT firm offered its hacking services to help clients spy on more than 10,000 email accounts over a period of seven years.
Operating from a small room above a shuttered tea stall in a west-Delhi retail complex, BellTroX bombarded its targets with tens of thousands of malicious emails, according to the data reviewed by Reuters. Some messages would imitate colleagues or relatives; others posed as Facebook login requests or graphic notifications to unsubscribe from pornography websites.
A cache of data reviewed by Reuters provides insight into the operation, detailing tens of thousands of malicious messages designed to trick victims into giving up their passwords that were sent by BellTroX between 2013 and 2020. On the list: judges in South Africa, politicians in Mexico, lawyers in France and environmental groups in the United States. These dozens of people, among the thousands targeted by BellTroX, did not respond to messages or declined comment.
‘https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-cyber-mercenaries-exclusive-idUSKBN23G1GQ
Tight clusters of verticals in the phishing attacks suggest motives of financial, industrial as well as political espionage. The target list assembled during our investigation indicates campaigns against environmental advocacy groups, investment businesses and financial journalists, law firms, and political consulting, as well as dozens of individual targets that do not bunch into one of the categories.
‘https://www.nortonlifelock.com/blogs/security-response/mercenary-amanda-professional-hackers-for-hire
Some of the domains had previously shared servers with domains used in these attacks, increasing our confidence that all of these domains are owned by the same actor.
‘https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/phish-future
The organizations that consented to be named in the report include the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Climate Investigations Center, Greenpeace, the Center for International Environmental Law, Oil Change International, Public Citizen, the Conservation Law Foundation, the Union of Concerned Scientists and 350.org. The attacks spanned from 2016 through 2017. Similar operations have previously been hired via intermediaries like law firms and private investigators, which distances their work from their clients.
‘https://citizenlab.ca/2020/06/dark-basin-uncovering-a-massive-hack-for-hire-operation/
Aviram Azari, organized a series of hacking missions on behalf of unnamed third parties against American companies based in New York, using fake websites and phishing messages to steal email account passwords.
‘https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-charged-global-hacker-for-hire-scheme-pleads-guilty-2022-04-20/
‘https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3871143-Jay-Solomon-Documents.html
(paywalled)
‘https://www.wsj.com/articles/massive-hacking-for-hire-operation-infiltrated-exxons-climate-opponents-prosecutors-say-8ccfdba
Winter •
@Nick
if AI can be packaged, seamlessly from a user’s standpoint, with a loop that checks for certain conditions
The crucial word here is loop. Current LLM and other AI are strictly feed-forward without loops (recurrence). That is to make them trainable. Large recurrent networks, with feedback, are almost untrainable.
Winter •
@Moderator
comment-420099
Inappropriate content intended to discredit this blog.
SpaceLifeForm •
@ Clive, ALL
‘https://www.npr.org/2023/03/31/1167375710/virginia-norwood-satellite-land-imaging-nasa-died
Clive Robinson •
@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,
Re : “Mother of Landsat”
I would call getting to 96, an achievement in of it’s self, especially as she retained her curiosity through out[1].
A little over a decade ago NASA did a highlights biography of Virginia Norwood based on an interview carried out by Virginia’s daughter Naomi,
https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/article/virginia-t-norwood-the-mother-of-landsat/
[1] Which is possibly going to be seen as more evidence of “the forever young” / “it’s the brain that keeps the body alive” hypothesis that keeps comming up in one way or another.
Clive Robinson •
@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,
Re : How long before this gets hacked?
There is a “fetish” for “Bluetooth in everything” where someone thinks a bi-directional data/control link is a good idea[1]… And it’s realy not a good idea as at the very least “Bluetooth pollutes by design”.
So the qurstion then becomes just what fun could a malicious actor have with this potential “barbeque bricket”,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W7F-Ha6OH_c
[1] It’s not for a whole list of reasons not just security. So if you are a designer and the “Bluetooth in everything” fetish comes near, sharpen your stick and prod it away. Oh note from the video it’s actual capacity is about 1kWh which is a lot of energy, which begs the question of just how fast that energy can be released and “just how Toasty” things will get.
Clive Robinson •
@ Winter,
Re : A rose by anyother name.
“The crucial word here is loop. Current LLM and other AI are strictly feed-forward without loops (recurrence).”
I don’t think that @Nick Levinson is tallking about the sort of feedback system you are.
However all these LLM’s are effectively “generators” followed by “adaptive matched filters”. Where the generator is assumed to be “stochastic” and the “matched filter” the probablistic model of the “parrot”.
In reality the “parrot” matched filter has to be “adaptive” from a cohort of continuous “training data” that will include it’s own output at some point.
But also the “generator” realy is not “stochastic” as it is based on the user requirments.
Which brings us to Searl’s Chinese Room issues.
Searl’s argument was “the rules were fixed” however implicitly by the fact that “actor” was human it was also an intelligent agent. Searl however did not preclude the “actor” from “learning the system” and thus being able to apply it’s own rules to modulate the fixed rules to the “actors” advantage…
So… A “parrot” does repeat “spoken phrases” other birds –in corvid family– can “mimic” all sorts of noises including those of mobile phones fake camera shutter noises.
For some reason “we assume” the parrot is “not intelligent”… However “it mimics” and it does not do it randomly. Even the mimicary of the “shutter noises” is not random.
I won’t go through a long list of “from A to B” reasoning, just note that,
1, The parrot learns from it’s environment.
2, The parrots vocalizations are also input into the environment.
3, Which changes the environment.
4, Which changes how the environment responds to the parrot.
You have a closed feed back loop… Which importantly is modulated by the parrot as well as the environment. We call it “training by food treats” or similar where the actions of the parrot involve both risk and reward as the reward can be “good” (food) or “bad” (harm) which is determined by the “environment”.
The same “good/bad” response from the “environment” is one of the dirty little secrets of GPT and friends. That is “behind the curtain” are humans continuously looking at what is being put into the “environment” by GPT etc and applying feed back to limit “travel” in any undesirable direction.
The reason this is necessary is two fold,
1, GPT etc are inherently unstable due to the consequence of feed forward in the design.
2, GPT etc have no inherant limiting and have no ability to “read the environment” to detect “good/bad”.
People in general appear to have not learned the lessons of Microsoft’s Tay.
Nor for that matter the likes of “Social Media” and “echo chambers” that got ignored in the quest of “engagment”.
The reason I would like a spoke to be shoved in GPT and similars wheel is not the “parrot” but the “environment”. That is the “environment” needs to be “regulated” as that is where the harm will originate that the unstable “parrot” will “magnify by design”.
Winter •
@Clive
In reality the “parrot” matched filter has to be “adaptive” from a cohort of continuous “training data” that will include it’s own output at some point.
That is a certain receipt for disaster. The model will either collapse or explode.
1, GPT etc are inherently unstable due to the consequence of feed forward in the design.
Feedforward transformers are inherently stable. That is the whole point of using feedforward networks.
2, GPT etc have no inherant limiting and have no ability to “read the environment” to detect “good/bad”.
LLMs have no real time input, at all. The text is everything.
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
