US Air Force buys counter-drone tech to battle ISIS

The Pentagon is purchasing tech from Israeli defense firm that could jam or take down weaponized drones used by ISIS, according to Defense One. The $15.6 million contract was awarded for “man-portable aerial defense systems kits,” something that usually refers to shoulder-fired missiles. However, the USAF department that purchased it is in charge of communications and electronics devices, and the seller, Israeli Aeronautics Industries (IAI), just happens to manufacture a jamming device called “Drone Guard.”

Drone Guard can detect, identify and jam small USAVs using 3D radar and electro-optical sensors. “The jamming disrupts the drone’s flight and either cause it to return to its point-of-origin or to shut down and make a crash landing,” according to the AIA’s press release.

Nice shot of the improvised release mechanism ISIL is using to drop grenades from commercial off the shelf UAVs https://t.co/Lj8Ltx0arQ pic.twitter.com/KCuzhUbndb

— Alex Mello (@AlexMello02) January 11, 2017

Recent images out of Iraq show that ISIS has used off-the-shelf drones from DJI and others not just for surveillance, but also bombing and one-time “suicide” explosive missions. According to Kurdish media outlet Rudaw, drones have used explosives and bombs to kills civilians and damage equipment. Much worse, Iraqi forces reportedly discovered chemical weapons in an ISIS lab, and may have used them on a drone in Mosul, severely injuring up to a dozen civilians.

The Air Force wouldn’t confirm or deny the purchase, but did tell Defense One that current efforts to counter small drones “are primarily focused on non-kinetic options,” ie, jamming and electronics tech. However, it added that “kinetic options [like missiles and guns] to defeat small UAVs are also being explored.”

The Air Force wants to have an official UAV defense program in place by the end of 2018. As a sign of its importance, It awarded the IAI contract without a bid, calling it a “joint emergent operational need.” That means it’s a current battlefield problem that must be rushed through the system to avoid delays.

Source: Defense.gov, Defense One

Google Home Speaker Criticized For Spreading Fake News

Google’s search algorithms came under renewed fire on Sunday after the BBC highlighted examples in which the company’s Google Home smart speaker promotes “fake news” and conspiracy theories through its virtual assistant.

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones tweeted a video yesterday that appears to show the smart device responding to the question “Is Obama planning a coup?” with the reply: “Obama may in fact be planning a Communist coup d’etat at the end of his term in 2016.”

In another example, Search Editor Land editor Danny Sullivan asked his Google Home “Are Republicans fascists?”, to which it replied: “Yes. Republicans equals Nazis.”

As pointed out by Business Insider, the fault lies in Google’s Featured Snippets feature, which corrals data from the web to provide the user with a supposedly definitive answer to a query typed into the Google search bar.

A version of the feature powers Google Assistant, the company’s voice-activated virtual assistant, which is built into the Google Home smart speaker and some smartphones. The algorithms Google uses to verify online sources of information appear to be at fault, but the issue is arguably worse on smart devices because the answers they provide are plucked from the web without context, so users often remain unaware of their source.

A Google spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement that “Featured Snippets in Search provide an automatic and algorithmic match to a given search query, and the content comes from third-party sites. Unfortunately, there are instances when we feature a site with inappropriate or misleading content. When we are alerted to a Featured Snippet that violates our policies, we work quickly to remove them, which we have done in this instance. We apologise for any offense this may have caused.”

Google has come in for criticism before for its predictive search results, but the problem of “fake news” in particular was identified during last year’s U.S. Presidential election, and led companies like Facebook to make statements about the action they have taken to bring the quality of articles to users’ attention.

Apple is also said to be working on ways to ensure its content delivery services can identify and prevent conspiracy theories being peddled as legitimate news, according to Apple’s senior vice president of software and services, Eddy Cue. “We’re trying to do some things in Apple News, we’re learning from that and we need to share that together as an industry and improve it,” he said last month.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has called fake news “one of today’s chief problems” and that “we have to give the consumer tools” to deal with the challenge.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: Google, Google Assistant, Google Home
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NASA proposes guarding Mars’ atmosphere with a magnetic shield

Ask scientists why Mars is cold and dead and they’ll usually point to the death of its magnetic field some 4.2 billion years ago. Without that protection, solar winds gradually stripped it of most of its atmosphere. A NASA-led team, however, thinks there’s still a chance to protect what’s left — and human explorers in the process. The scientists have proposed a magnetic shield that would sit at the L1 Lagrange Point beyond the planet, creating an artificial magnetosphere that would deflect solar winds and incoming radiation. Simulations even suggest that the atmosphere would get thick enough to melt carbon dioxide ice at Mars’ northern pole, sparking a greenhouse gas effect that would melt water ice and restore some of Mars’ oceans. Needless to say, that would be much friendlier to any long-term visitors.

The concept isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. There’s already research into inflatable structures that would create the mini-magnetosphere you’d need for this to work. The biggest challenge, as with many things in space, is time. While a shield would have a relatively rapid effect on radiation, it’s not certain how long it would take to thicken the atmosphere and increase temperatures. A magnetic shield would amount to a kind of terraforming, after all, and even a relatively quick change could take decades. NASA and SpaceX would still have to visit a hostile planet in the years ahead.

Still, the very fact that this is even on the table is noteworthy. It suggests that it would be realistic to preserve and even improve Mars’ remaining atmosphere without the staggering effort that would be needed to directly alter the planet.

Via: Universe Today, Phys.org

Source: USRA Houston (PDF)

BT Sport wins Champions League TV rights again, no free-to-air TV coverage at all

BT has once again secured UK TV broadcasting rights for all Champions League and Europa League football matches, beating Sky in a bidding war. It has also ensured that the rights this time are exclusive to the paid TV service, so there will be no free-to-air highlights packages on terrestrial television channels.

The new deal runs through to 2021. BT Sport will show all Champions League and Europa League games on its channels, which are available through Virgin Media and Sky as well as its own BT TV platform. However, there will also be free-to-view clips and weekly highlights online.

Both finals will also be available to view on “social media platforms”. Last year that included YouTube.

Mobile platforms will get more coverage too.

BT Sport continues as the exclusive home of the @ChampionsLeague and @EuropaLeague until 2021.Read more here –> https://t.co/bJcHlw1ZpY.

— BT Sport (@btsport) March 6, 2017

BT reportedly paid £1.2billion for the three-year deal. It previously paid £897million for the rights to the end of the 2017/18 season. The new period picks up after then.

BT also states that some Champions league matches will be broadcast in 4K and with Dolby Atmos sound. It started to show domestic matches with the additional surround channels this Premier League season.

Brave’s ad-blocking browser now syncs between computers

Brave’s web browser may stand out through its emphasis on blocking and swapping ads, but its team still has a while to go before it nails some of the features you take for granted. Case in point: browser syncing. Brave has updated its software with a beta syncing feature that, much like in Chrome or Firefox, will share your browser data between computers. There’s no support for mobile yet (that’s due “soon”), but this could help a great deal if you were thinking of switching browsers and needed the reassurance of sync support to make the switch.

Via: Brave Software (Twitter)

Source: Brave

‘League of Legends’ creator wins $10 million in cheating lawsuit

If you’ve noticed fewer cheaters in your League of Legends matches in recent weeks, you now have a good idea as to why. Riot Games has won a settlement in its lawsuit against LeagueSharp, the subscription cheating service that offered automated play (that is, bots) to win in League games. The agreement has LeagueSharp paying $10 million, bans its software and gives Riot control over its websites. LeagueSharp technically shut down in January, but the terms of the settlement weren’t circulating until now.

Riot’s claims mostly revolved around the belief that LeagueSharp’s tools violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing League of Legends’ anti-cheating mechanisms. However, the cheat provider doesn’t appear to have done itself any favors through its behavior. It allegedly attacked Riot’s servers, and even doxxed one of the developer’s employees. LeagueSharp even formed a Peruvian shell company to hold its copyrights and (theoretically) avoid legal action.

This isn’t going to prevent cheating in League by any means. When LeagueSharp was one of the bigger outfits offering cheats, though, this is a clear shot across the bow to others that would try to make a business out of unfair gameplay. Whatever gains LeagueSharp made (it reportedly earned hundreds of thousands of dollars per month) were likely wiped out in a heartbeat.

Via: PC Gamer, Law360, Gamasutra

Source: Dot eSports

BT beats Sky to Champions League and Europa League TV rights

BT has secured another three-year deal for Champions League and Europa League football, extending its lucrative TV rights until 2021 in the UK. The contract is worth £1.2 billion, up from £897 million in 2013, and includes both the group stages and knockout rounds of each competition. As BBC News notes, the latest auction — which takes effect from the 2018/19 season — gives BT true exclusivity. That means no matches or highlights will be shown through the free-to-air broadcaster ITV. In return, BT has promised to “enhance its social media coverage” with shareable clips and weekly roundups. It will also continue showing the finals on YouTube.

The new deal is an expensive show of strength for BT. Since the launch of BT Sport in 2013, the broadcaster has made a bold, high-cost assault on Sky and its Sky Sports empire. BT has spent big to earn new subscribers, snapping up a chunk of Premier League matches and a sizeable buffet of European football, including Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1. More importantly, however, it has the rights to Champions League, Europa League and FA Cup coverage, as well as the Scottish Professional Football League — all important competitions for British viewers. Now, the company has to make sure that people keep paying for them.

Source: BT (Press Release)

IBM plans to build the first commercially available universal quantum computer

Why it matters to you

If it meets its goals, IBM Q will open quantum computing to numerous researchers and businesses, bringing the technology into mass adoption.

IBM has announced a major new initiative to make universal quantum computers available commercially. IBM Q will offer up the power of quantum computation via the IBM Cloud platform, a first for the industry, and potentially a major step forward for the field.

Quantum hardware has already been made available by the likes of D-Wave, but its hardware is limited in the kinds of computation it can achieve. IBM Q marks the first time that a universal quantum computer is being offered up. A universal quantum computer is capable of tackling problems that are too large for a conventional system, so IBM Q would have many applications beyond what’s possible with current technology.

IBM is pledging that universal quantum computing systems will be made available to select industry partners over the coming years. The company expects to increase the capabilities of the hardware as time goes on.

More: D-Wave sold its first 2,000-qubit quantum annealer to a cybersecurity firm

The goal is to produce a system with around fifty qubits, which should be able to demonstrate the benefits of quantum computing over traditional methods. IBM will collaborate with other companies and organizations to develop applications that harness the power of the new hardware.

“Classical computers are extraordinarily powerful and will continue to advance and underpin everything we do in business and society,” said senior vice president of IBM Systems, Tom Rosamilia. “But there are many problems that will never be penetrated by a classical computer. To create knowledge from much greater depths of complexity, we need a quantum computer.”

IBM is also making improvements to other areas of its quantum ecosystem. In May 2016, the company launched the IBM Quantum Experience, which offers online access to a five-qubit quantum computer, and has since been used for hundreds of thousands of experiments carried out by thousands of users.

Today, a new API is being released that simplifies the process of building an interface between the five-qubit quantum computer that’s at the heart of the IBM Quantum Experience, and classical computers. The online platform is also being outfitted with a new simulator that can model circuits with up to 20 qubits. In the first half of 2017, IBM will also release an SDK to help users build simple applications and software programs for use with the Quantum Experience.

More: Quantum computing will make your PC look like a graphing calculator

It’s clear than IBM is eager to make quantum computers available to all, from enthusiasts to industry clients. IBM Q seems to be a long-term, far-reaching project, but it’s poised to help foster the next wave of advances in this field.

Lots of work has already been done to make quantum computing technologically possible, and now it seems that the focus is starting to shift toward applications. Over the next few years, it seems that we’ll see IBM create commercially available systems with steadily increasing qubit counts — but alongside that process, the company will work with others to hash out how this hardware can be put to good use.

If IBM Q is a success, it could help determine how quantum computers are utilized by ordinary people, as well as researchers and enterprise users. It’s one thing to design hardware that’s a step beyond classical computers; harnessing that power is a different challenge altogether.

IBM plans to build the first commercially available universal quantum computer

Why it matters to you

If it meets its goals, IBM Q will open quantum computing to numerous researchers and businesses, bringing the technology into mass adoption.

IBM has announced a major new initiative to make universal quantum computers available commercially. IBM Q will offer up the power of quantum computation via the IBM Cloud platform, a first for the industry, and potentially a major step forward for the field.

Quantum hardware has already been made available by the likes of D-Wave, but its hardware is limited in the kinds of computation it can achieve. IBM Q marks the first time that a universal quantum computer is being offered up. A universal quantum computer is capable of tackling problems that are too large for a conventional system, so IBM Q would have many applications beyond what’s possible with current technology.

IBM is pledging that universal quantum computing systems will be made available to select industry partners over the coming years. The company expects to increase the capabilities of the hardware as time goes on.

More: D-Wave sold its first 2,000-qubit quantum annealer to a cybersecurity firm

The goal is to produce a system with around fifty qubits, which should be able to demonstrate the benefits of quantum computing over traditional methods. IBM will collaborate with other companies and organizations to develop applications that harness the power of the new hardware.

“Classical computers are extraordinarily powerful and will continue to advance and underpin everything we do in business and society,” said senior vice president of IBM Systems, Tom Rosamilia. “But there are many problems that will never be penetrated by a classical computer. To create knowledge from much greater depths of complexity, we need a quantum computer.”

IBM is also making improvements to other areas of its quantum ecosystem. In May 2016, the company launched the IBM Quantum Experience, which offers online access to a five-qubit quantum computer, and has since been used for hundreds of thousands of experiments carried out by thousands of users.

Today, a new API is being released that simplifies the process of building an interface between the five-qubit quantum computer that’s at the heart of the IBM Quantum Experience, and classical computers. The online platform is also being outfitted with a new simulator that can model circuits with up to 20 qubits. In the first half of 2017, IBM will also release an SDK to help users build simple applications and software programs for use with the Quantum Experience.

More: Quantum computing will make your PC look like a graphing calculator

It’s clear than IBM is eager to make quantum computers available to all, from enthusiasts to industry clients. IBM Q seems to be a long-term, far-reaching project, but it’s poised to help foster the next wave of advances in this field.

Lots of work has already been done to make quantum computing technologically possible, and now it seems that the focus is starting to shift toward applications. Over the next few years, it seems that we’ll see IBM create commercially available systems with steadily increasing qubit counts — but alongside that process, the company will work with others to hash out how this hardware can be put to good use.

If IBM Q is a success, it could help determine how quantum computers are utilized by ordinary people, as well as researchers and enterprise users. It’s one thing to design hardware that’s a step beyond classical computers; harnessing that power is a different challenge altogether.

Robot enters record books for lightning quick Rubik’s Cube moves

Why it matters to you

The robot’s achievement is kinda fun but the advanced sensor technology that it uses could end up in kit such as self-driving vehicles.

A robot recently completed the Rubik’s Cube in about the time it takes a human to make even one turn of the popular puzzle.

The lightning-quick Sub1 Reloaded robot, which was built by engineer Albert Beer using technology from German chipmaker Infineon, completed the Cube in a mere 0.637 seconds at an event toward the end of last year. Guinness World Records has now reviewed all the available evidence and over the weekend officially recognized it as a new record.

The previous record of 0.887 seconds was actually set by an older version of the same robot, suggesting that, despite the efforts of others, the Sub1 has the solving-the-Rubik’s-Cube game utterly sewn up.

In the video above, you can watch the robot complete the Cube in just 21 turns. The clip also shows the feat in slow-motion so you can actually see the robot at work.

What makes the achievement all the more remarkable is that the record includes the time it took Sub1 Reloaded to analyze the position of the stickers at the very start. So the attempt begins when the assistant presses the button, which activates the sensors.

It’s worth noting that the Rubik’s Cube isn’t the precise version we’re all familiar with, because if that were the case we just know it’d jam every couple of rotations. So the team built a so-called “speed cube” that’s able to turn without any issues.

Infineon hopes the achievement of its robot will help highlight the ability and speed of its technology, which it says is ideal for self-driving vehicles.

“The microcontroller can react to events in a very short and deterministic timeframe, which is extremely important in the automotive area,” Infineon’s Peter Schäfer told the FT last year.

More: Giant Rubik’s Cube needs brains as well as brawn to solve

And yes, humans do have a bit of work to do to catch Sub1 Reloaded. Guinness World Records currently lists Australian student Feliks Zemdegs as the human record holder for solving the Cube in 4.73 seconds. Zemdegs set the record in December, 2016, shaving one hundredth of a second off the previous record, which had been set just five weeks earlier.