Lifeboat Foundation

A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.

A new variant of the notorious Mirai botnet has been found leveraging several security vulnerabilities to propagate itself to Linux and IoT devices.

Observed during the second half of 2022, the new version has been dubbed V3G4 by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, which identified three different campaigns likely conducted by the same threat actor.

“Once the vulnerable devices are compromised, they will be fully controlled by attackers and become a part of the botnet,” Unit 42 researchers said. “The threat actor has the capability to utilize those devices to conduct further attacks, such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.”

The most popular class in the history of Yale is now available online, joining 20 other Coursera classes taught by Yale faculty.

The class, Psyc 157, “Psychology and the Good Life,” is taught by psychology professor Laurie Santos. Nearly a quarter of all Yale undergraduates have enrolled in the class in its inaugural year — a fact that attracted media attention around the globe.

Continue reading “Yale’s most popular class ever to be available via Coursera” »

We are only a month and a half into 2023 and it’s already proving to be a breakout year for artificial intelligence. Following the early success of AI art generators like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, we are now seeing big tech get behind AI-powered chatbots.

NASA, meanwhile, has been using AI to help it design bespoke hardware for a while now.

Ryan McClelland, a research engineer with NASA, helped pioneer the agency’s use of one-off parts using commercially available AI. The resulting hardware, which McClelland has dubbed “evolved structures,” looks a bit alien even by his own admission. “But once you see them in function, it really makes sense,” he added.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United States launched an initiative Thursday promoting international cooperation on the responsible use of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons by militaries, seeking to impose order on an emerging technology that has the potential to change the way war is waged.

“As a rapidly changing technology, we have an obligation to create strong norms of responsible behavior concerning military uses of AI and in a way that keeps in mind that applications of AI by militaries will undoubtedly change in the coming years,” Bonnie Jenkins, the State Department’s under secretary for arms control and international security, said.

She said the U.S. political declaration, which contains non-legally binding guidelines outlining best practices for responsible military use of AI, “can be a focal point for international cooperation.”

To create is human. For the past 300,000 years we’ve been unique in our ability to make art, cuisine, manifestos, societies: to envision and craft something new where there was nothing before.

Now we have company. While you’re reading this sentence, artificial intelligence (AI) programs are painting cosmic portraits, responding to emails, preparing tax returns, and recording metal songs. They’re writing pitch decks, debugging code, sketching architectural blueprints, and providing health advice.

Artificial intelligence has already had a pervasive impact on our lives. AIs are used to price medicine and houses, assemble cars, determine what ads we see on social media. But generative AI, a category of system that can be prompted to create wholly novel content, is much newer.

Over the past year or so, CleanTechnica has published several stories about Sakuu, the innovative battery company located in Silicon Valley (where else?) that is working to bring 3D-printed solid-state batteries to market.

Last June, Robert Bagheri, founder and CEO of Sakuu, said in a press release, “As far as our solid state battery development, we are preparing to unveil a new category of rapid printed batteries manufactured at scale using our additive manufacturing platform. The sustainability and supply chain implications of this pioneering development will be transformational.” Based on the company’s Kavian platform, the rapid 3D-printed batteries will enable customizable, mass scale, and cost effective manufacturing of solid-state batteries while solving fundamental challenges confronting battery manufacturers today, the company said at that time.

Windows 11 runs best on a PC designed for Windows. When such an option is not available, here are two different ways to use Windows with Mac.

This video describes the Immune System and explains how it detects and attacks any foreign organism that enters the body.

We learn how the team in the MRC Centre for Transplantation at King’s College London have developed a way to harness the power of the Immune System after a transplant, whilst maintaining the body’s capacity to resist infectious diseases.

Continue reading “The Immune System” »