Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘internet’ category

Mar 15, 2024

Clever Thieves Using WiFi Jammers to Shut Down Those Crappy Security Cameras You Bought on Amazon

Posted by in categories: habitats, internet, security, surveillance

The Los Angeles Police Department is warning residents that burglars are using WiFi jammers to easily disarm “connected” surveillance cameras and alarms that are available for cheap on marketplaces like Amazon.

As LA-based news station KTLA5 reports, tech-savvy burglars have been using WiFi jammers, which are small devices that can confuse and overload wireless devices with traffic, to enter homes without setting off alarms — a worrying demonstration of just how easily affordable home security devices from the likes of Ring and Eufy can be disarmed.

As Tom’s Hardware reported last month, instances of WiFi jammers being used by criminals go back several years. Jammers are not only easily available to purchase online, they’re also pretty cheap and can go for as little as $40.

Mar 14, 2024

Lumen Orbit emerges from stealth and raises $2.4M to put data centers in space

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering, internet, satellites

Bellevue, Wash.-based Lumen Orbit, a startup that’s only about three months old, says that it’s closed a $2.4 million pre-seed investment round to launch its plan to put hundreds of satellites in orbit, with the goal of processing data in space before it’s downlinked to customers on Earth.

The investors include Nebular, Caffeinated Capital, Plug & Play, Everywhere Ventures, Tiny.vc, Sterling Road, Pareto Holdings and Foreword Ventures. There are also more than 20 angel investors, including four Sequoia Scouts investing through the Sequoia Scout Fund. “The round was 3x oversubscribed,” Lumen CEO and co-founder Philip Johnston told GeekWire in an email.

Johnston is a former associate at McKinsey & Co. who also co-founded an e-commerce venture called Opontia. Lumen’s other co-founders are chief technology officer Ezra Feilden, whose resume includes engineering experience at Oxford Space Systems and Airbus Defense and Space; and chief engineer Adi Oltean, who worked as a principal software engineer at SpaceX’s Starlink facility in Redmond, Wash.

Mar 14, 2024

So You Want to Rewire Brains

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, cyborgs, internet, neuroscience

There’s a lot to like about brain-computer interfaces, those sci-fi-sounding devices that jack into your skull and turn neural signals into software commands. Experimental BCIs help paralyzed people communicate, use the internet, and move prosthetic limbs. In recent years, the devices have even gone wireless. If mind-reading computers become part of everyday life, we’ll need doctors to install the tiny electrodes and transmitters that make them work. So if you have steady hands and don’t mind a little blood, being a BCI surgeon might be a job for you.

Shahram Majidi, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, began operating in clinical trials for a BCI called the Stentrode in 2022. (That’s “stent” as in a tube that often sits inside a vein or artery.) Here he talks about a not-too-distant future where he’s performing hundreds of similar procedures a year.

Brain-computer interfaces have been around for a few decades, and there are different kinds of implants now. Some have electrodes attached to your brain with wires sticking out of your head and connecting to a computer. I think that’s great as a proof of concept, but it requires an engineer sitting there and a big computer next to you all the time. You can’t just use it in your bedroom. The beauty of a BCI like the Stentrode, which is what I’ve worked with, is that nothing is sticking out of your brain. The electrodes are in blood vessels next to the brain, and you get there by going through the patient’s jugular. The receiver is underneath the skin in their chest and connected to a device that decodes the brain signals via Bluetooth. I think that’s the future.

Mar 14, 2024

Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media

Posted by in categories: business, internet, robotics/AI

There is a lot we can learn about social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade that directly applies to AI companies and technologies. These lessons can help us avoid making the same mistakes with AI that we did with social media.

In particular, five fundamental attributes of social media have harmed society. AI also has those attributes. Note that they are not intrinsically evil. They are all double-edged swords, with the potential to do either good or ill. The danger comes from who wields the sword, and in what direction it is swung. This has been true for social media, and it will similarly hold true for AI. In both cases, the solution lies in limits on the technology’s use.

The role advertising plays in the internet arose more by accident than anything else. When commercialization first came to the internet, there was no easy way for users to make micropayments to do things like viewing a web page. Moreover, users were accustomed to free access and wouldn’t accept subscription models for services. Advertising was the obvious business model, if never the best one. And it’s the model that social media also relies on, which leads it to prioritize engagement over anything else.

Mar 11, 2024

SpaceX launches Starlink mission, prepares to undock a Crew Dragon from ISS Monday

Posted by in categories: internet, satellites

SpaceX is closing out the weekend with a pair of planned Falcon 9 launches from Florida and California while also preparing for the undocking of Crew Dragon Endurance from the International Space Station.

The Falcon 9 rocket supporting the Starlink 6–43 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 UTC). It will add 23 Starlink satellites to the growing low Earth orbit constellation.

Continue reading “SpaceX launches Starlink mission, prepares to undock a Crew Dragon from ISS Monday” »

Mar 10, 2024

Amazon Is Selling Products With AI-Generated Names Like “I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against OpenAI Use Policy”

Posted by in categories: internet, policy, robotics/AI

Amazon is listing products in which even the title was generated using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Can the internet survive?

Mar 9, 2024

SpaceX targeting Sunday night for next Falcon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral

Posted by in categories: internet, satellites

In fact, the Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron predicts 95% odds of “go for launch” weather conditions.

SpaceX announced the Starlink 6–43 launch is targeted for 7:05 p.m. EDT Sunday from Launch Complex 40, with backup opportunities available if needed until 11:03 p.m.

The Falcon 9 rocket will deploy another payload of 23 Starlink broadband satellites into low-Earth orbit, adding to SpaceX’s growing constellation.

Mar 9, 2024

Scientists create 3D reflector chip to boost tiny tech with 6G speeds

Posted by in categories: computing, internet

A team of researchers at Cornell University has created a semiconductor chip that will allow ever-tinier devices to function at the higher frequencies required for the next generation of 6G communication technology.

In addition to requiring more bandwidth at higher frequencies, the next generation of wireless communication also demands more time. According to researchers, the new semiconductor provides the appropriate time delay to prevent signals from dissolving at a single point in space after being relayed over numerous arrays.

Mar 9, 2024

SBU Research Team Takes Major Step Toward a Functioning Quantum Internet

Posted by in categories: computing, internet, mathematics, quantum physics

A team of Stony Brook University physicists and their collaborators have taken a significant step toward the building of a quantum internet testbed by demonstrating a foundational quantum network measurement that employs room-temperature quantum memories. Their findings are described in a paper published in the Nature journal Quantum Information.

Research with quantum computing and quantum networks is taking place around the world in the hopes of developing a quantum internet, a network of quantum computers, sensors, and communication devices that will create, process, and transmit quantum states and entanglement. It is anticipated to enhance society’s internet system and provide certain services and securities that the current internet does not have.

The field of quantum information combines aspects of physics, mathematics, and classical computing to use quantum mechanics to solve complex problems much faster than classical computing and to transmit information in an unhackable manner. While the vision of a quantum internet system is growing and the field has seen a surge in interest from researchers and the public at large, accompanied by a steep increase in the capital invested, an actual quantum internet prototype has not been built.

Mar 9, 2024

3D reflectors help boost data rate in wireless communications

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering, internet

The next generation of wireless communication not only requires greater bandwidth at higher frequencies – it also needs a little extra time.

Cornell researchers have developed a semiconductor chip that adds a necessary time delay so signals sent across multiple arrays can align at a single point in space, and without disintegrating. The approach will enable ever-smaller devices to operate at the higher frequencies needed for future 6G communication technology.

Continue reading “3D reflectors help boost data rate in wireless communications” »

Page 1 of 29912345678Last