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Spot was apparently being used for reconnaissance.

Pictures of the exercises were shared on Twitter by France’s foremost military school, the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr. It described the tests as “raising students’ awareness of the challenges of tomorrow,” which include the “robotization of the battlefield.”

A report by French newspaper Ouest-France offers more detail, saying that Spot was one of a number of robots being tested by students from France’s École Militaire Interarmes (Combined Arms School), with the intention of assessing the usefulness of robots on future battlefields.

Boston Dynamics’ vice president of business development Michael Perry told The Verge that the robot had been supplied by a European distributor, Shark Robotics, and that the US firm had not been notified about this particular use. “We’re learning about it as you are,” says Perry. “We’re not clear on the exact scope of this engagement.” The company says it was aware that its robots were being used with the French government, including the military.

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In a Universal-nutshell, Physix assists the World (People, Government, Corporations, Non-Profits, Climate, Nature, Technology) in Making it Better!

Quality Vote or Q-vote.

Is an anonymous feedback voting and posting metric, via the scale as shown. It will display wave length patterns in how people feel on various topics after a user has voted on it. Eventually the team plans to allow commenting, that will also enable you to take a color rating feedback (timestamps) based on your comment, and others as well. This will give weighted value to these timestamped ratings comments when in competition with many on one post. It is currently in working alpha prototype testing mode now.

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With full court approval.

In what’s believed to be an unprecedented move, the FBI is trying to protect hundreds of computers infected by the Hafnium hack by hacking them itself, using the original hackers’ own tools (via TechCrunch).

The hack, which affected tens of thousands of Microsoft Exchange Server customers around the world and triggered a “whole of government response” from the White House, reportedly left a number of backdoors that could let any number of hackers right into those systems again. Now, the FBI has taken advantage of this by using those same web shells / backdoors to remotely delete themselves, an operation that the agency is calling a success.

“The FBI conducted the removal by issuing a command through the web shell to the server, which was designed to cause the server to delete only the web shell (identified by its unique file path),” explains the US Justice Department.

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Imagine Apple, Bose or other consumer electronics companies making hearing aids more stylish and relatively affordable — with people having confidence that the devices had been vetted by the F.D.A. Bose told me that it’s working on over-the-counter hearing aid technology.

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.

On Tech is back from a spring break, and the magnolia trees are blooming outside On Tech headquarters (a.k.a., my New York apartment).

Today, let’s talk about relatively simple technology and a change in government policy that could unleash more innovation for Americans who have difficulty hearing.

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# Just 5 days left to upload an abstract to the SRIC3 Call for Papers! ## We need you to lead the Space Renaissance!

Choose among the following symposia tracks, all of them concurring to a coherent strategy for Space Settlement, kicking off the Civilian Space Development before 2025: * The immense social benefits of expanding Civilization into Outer Space * Civilization risk mitigation: space as the main Knight, defending humanity against the ‘Apocalypse’ multi-crisis * Global collaboration, working with Agencies, Companies, Space Advocacy Associations, United Nations and Governments of Planet Earth to promote Civilian Space Development and the 18th UN SDG * Space Safety: protecting human life and health in space, space debris recovering and reuse, space weather, defense from asteroids * Policies to Enable Communities Beyond Earth: technologies, financing, & Common Law * Earth orbit industrial development * The Moon and Cislunar development * Space Based Solar Power, feeding the Civilian Space Development * Greening the Solar System * Mars, the Asteroids Belt and beyond * A conceptual timetable for the founding steps of Space Settlement * Living, Sport, Art and Culture in Space, a Scifi futurologist–presentist narration * Congress Thesis 1 — Status of civilization and perspective of expansion into outer space * Congress Thesis 2 — A strategy to develop the Space Renaissance, towards 2025.

Web Space Renaissance

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I found your rocket … Kyle Foreman, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told GeekWire that the property owner left a message reporting the debris. “The sheriff’s office checked it out on Monday, and SpaceX staff came over on Tuesday and retrieved it,” Foreman said. SpaceX has yet to detail precisely what went wrong with the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage, such that it failed to de-orbit in a controlled manner over the ocean. Fortunately, no one on the ground was injured. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Brazilian launch site stirs controversy. The Brazilian government is committed to further developing the Alc ntara Launch Center on the country’s north Atlantic coast, near the equator. However, the region is also home to Afro-Brazilian residents of settlements first established by escaped slaves. These settlements are known as Quilombola communities. The Washington Post recently did a deep dive into the controversy, examining how eviction of these communities would affect local residents. The newspaper found that the spaceport expansion could displace nearly 2100 people from Quilombola communities.

Brazil’s polarizing dilemma … Marcos Pontes, head of the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, said there are no plans to relocate families “right now.” And if the time comes to remove people, he predicted, they will go willingly. “They are going to see development coming in, real development,” he said. “All of the resistance, that is going to be gradually disappearing.” This seems unlikely. The clash is the distillation of one of Brazil’s most urgent and polarizing dramas, the publication says. What is more important: developing a vast country with unrealized potential and a lagging economy? Or protecting some of its most vulnerable communities?

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HELSINKI — Guangzhou is developing a major space cluster in the city by hosting new projects including the new headquarters for the space business of Geely Technology Group.

Geely, a major automaker which owns Volvo Cars and part of Daimler AG, is to establish a space headquarters in Nansha district to oversee development of its satellite and communications technologies, local government said March 30.

Geely is developing a low Earth orbit constellation for navigation, connectivity and communications needed for self-driving cars. The group recently gained approval to begin manufacturing satellites.

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Here’s what you need to know:

The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority who live in what China refers to as the Xinjiang region, but what some Uyghurs call East Turkestan. There are an estimated 11 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, a large patch of land in western China that shares a border with Pakistan, Kazakhstan and. The Uyghurs speak a Turkic language and have a different cultural identity than the Han Chinese population, which speaks Mandarin and is generally not religious.

The Chinese Communist government views the Uyghurs as a threat in part because some have sought greater autonomy or even a separate state. Chinese government officials allege there are extremists within the Uyghur community and have said their campaign to “re-educate” the Uyghurs is justified by terrorism concerns.

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SATELLITE images show that China has built 260 fortified prison camps capable of holding hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims in the last three years.

The revelations come after months of growing international condemnation over China’s internment, indoctrination, and abuse of Uighur people across the Xinjiang province.

Up to 1.5million people are thought to have been detained in the province since 2017 as part of an attempt by the Chinese government to crack down on long-running separatist movements.

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