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Pong in a Dish

Ever hear of the Turk —the 19th-century mechanism topped by a turbaned head that played chess against all comers? In fact, hidden inside was a diminutive chessmaster, one you might imagine deadpanning, “Eh, It’s a living.

Then there’s its namesake, the Mechanical Turk —a 21st-century service offered by Amazon to mark up images on the Web with the help of crowdsourced freelancers. They, too, might intone, glassy-eyed, “It’s a living.”

Now we have a kind of Biological Turk. A mass of neurons act as a computer that mimics a human being playing the classic computer game Pong. The neurons, some taken from mouse embryos, others grown from human precursor cells, spread out into a one-layer, 800,000-cell mesh called a biological neural network, which lives in a giant petri dish called the DishBrain. There it interfaces with arrays of electrodes that form an interface to silicon hardware. Software mounted on that hardware provides stimulation and feedback, and the minibrain learns how to control a paddle on a simulated ping-pong table.

A newly found loophole enables researchers to see through walls

The Wi-Peep uses many messages to communicate with a target device while it is in the air.

A research team from the University of Waterloo created a drone-powered tool that uses WiFi networks to penetrate barriers.

Called Wi-Peep, the device can fly close to buildings and then use the WiFi network of the occupants to identify and locate any WiFi-enabled devices quickly.

Researchers discover security loophole allowing attackers to use Wi-Fi to see through walls

A research team based out of the University of Waterloo has developed a drone-powered device that can use Wi-Fi networks to see through walls.

The , nicknamed Wi-Peep, can fly near a building and then use the inhabitants’ Wi-Fi network to identify and locate all Wi-Fi-enabled devices inside in a matter of seconds.

The Wi-Peep exploits a loophole the researchers call polite Wi-Fi. Even if a network is password protected, will automatically respond to contact attempts from any device within range. The Wi-Peep sends several messages to a device as it flies and then measures the response time on each, enabling it to identify the device’s location to within a meter.

AI Just Got More Creative, and Filmmakers Shouldn’t Be Afraid

Up until recently, artificial intelligence was unable to perform such creative-looking tasks.

But all of that is beginning to change thanks to AI Sketch software like DreamStudio, Dall-E 2, and Stable Diffusion, which take a few keywords via a text interface to generate an image in a process known as “generative AI.”

Generative AI is trained on sets of images, which are sourced from the internet. The machine can then learn the differences between people, places, and things and generate its own images from any text it receives.

The more data sets the AI can draw from, the more accurate and creative the results.

Corridor Digital experimented with Stable Diffusion a few weeks back and used AI to generate images to tell a story. And the results are downright inspiring.

The AI was able to create images with members of the Corridor Crew as the main characters, placing them in custom settings, complete with costumes, props, and backgrounds based on the input of a few main idea terms.

Alex Zhavoronkov, ARDD2022: Pharma.AI platform for discovery and development of aging therapeutics

The Aging and Drug Discovery Conference (ARDD) 2022 is pleased to present Alex Zhavoronkov from Insilico, with the talk A case study of the application of Pharma. AI platform for discovery and development of dual-purpose therapeutics targeting aging and disease.

Held in Copenhagen at the glorious Ceremonial Hall, this meeting gathers the most prominent figures of the aging and longevity research field, from scientists to clinicians, investors, developers, and everything in between. The fast growth of the conference is evidence of its great quality of it. In 2022 we had around 400 people on-site, and many others joined through the web.

To find out more check www.agingpharma.org #ARDD #ARDD2022 #Longevity

These Dropper Apps On Play Store Targeting Over 200 Banking and Cryptocurrency Wallets

Five malicious dropper Android apps with over 130,000 cumulative installations have been discovered on the Google Play Store distributing banking trojans like SharkBot and Vultur, which are capable of stealing financial data and performing on-device fraud.

“These droppers continue the unstopping evolution of malicious apps sneaking to the official store,” Dutch mobile security firm ThreatFabric told The Hacker News in a statement.

“This evolution includes following newly introduced policies and masquerading as file managers and overcoming limitations by side-loading the malicious payload through the web browser.”

Researchers Uncover Stealthy Techniques Used by Cranefly Espionage Hackers

A recently discovered hacking group known for targeting employees dealing with corporate transactions has been linked to a new backdoor called Danfuan.

This hitherto undocumented malware is delivered via another dropper called Geppei, researchers from Symantec, by Broadcom Software, said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

The dropper “is being used to install a new backdoor and other tools using the novel technique of reading commands from seemingly innocuous Internet Information Services (IIS) logs,” the researchers said.

A new laser-powered chip can transmit the entire internet (twice) each second

Well, consumer devices can’t run on lasers just yet. But in recent years, researchers have been working hard to make this dream a reality.

In the most recent breakthrough, a new chip can bend laser light to transmit 1.8 petabits, or over 1 million gigabits, per second. To put things in perspective, that’s nearly twice the world’s internet traffic per second.

This breaks the May 2022 record of 1.02 petabits per second, as reported by New Atlas.

Amazon may have to turn to SpaceX for help launching its Starlink rival service

“You’d be crazy not to, given their track record.”

Amazon is working toward the launch of two prototype satellites for its SpaceX Starlink-rivaling internet service, Project Kuiper. The delivery giant plans to launch these first two satellites at some point next year, and earlier this year, it penned what it calls “the largest commercial procurement of launch vehicles in history.”

Amazon signed that agreement, totaling 83 Kuiper launches, with United Launch Alliance (ULA), European firm Arianespace, and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

There’s one important caveat, though.


1, 2

The delivery giant plans to launch these first two satellites at some point next year, and earlier this year, it penned what it calls “the largest commercial procurement of launch vehicles in history.”