Author: Robin Edgar

Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft

23andMe tells victims it’s their fault that their data was breached. DNA data, it turns out, is extremely sensitive!

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Facing more than 30 lawsuits from victims of its massive data breach, 23andMe is now deflecting the blame to the victims themselves in an attempt to absolve itself from any responsibility, according to a letter sent to a group of victims seen by TechCrunch. “Rather than acknowledge its role in this data security disaster, 23andMe Read more about 23andMe tells victims it’s their fault that their data was breached. DNA data, it turns out, is extremely sensitive![…]

Twitch Is Being American Strange and Bans Implied Nakedness In Response To ‘Nudity Meta’

Posted on by Robin Edgar

As December 2023 was underway, some streamers cleverly thought to play around with Twitch’s restrictions around nudity, broadcasting in such a fashion that implied they were completely naked on camera. Twitch, in response, began banning folks before shifting gears to allow various forms of “artistic nudity” to proliferate on the platform. However, after immediately rescinding Read more about Twitch Is Being American Strange and Bans Implied Nakedness In Response To ‘Nudity Meta’[…]

two people holding hands watching a pc screen. On the screen is a robot painting a digitised Bob Ross painting

Generative AI Will Be A Huge Boon For The Public Domain, Unless Copyright Blocks It

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A year ago, I noted that many of Walled Culture’s illustrations were being produced using generative AI. During that time, AI has developed rapidly. For example, in the field of images, OpenAI has introduced DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT: When prompted with an idea, ChatGPT will automatically generate tailored, detailed prompts for DALL·E 3 that bring your idea to life. Read more about Generative AI Will Be A Huge Boon For The Public Domain, Unless Copyright Blocks It[…]

Developing An App For Reduced-Gravity Flying

Posted on by Robin Edgar

You’ve likely heard of the “vomit comet” — an rather graphic nickname for the aircraft used to provide short bursts of near-weightlessness by flying along a parabolic trajectory. They’re used to train astronauts, perform zero-g experiments, and famously let director Ron Howard create the realistic spaceflight scenes for Apollo 13. But you might be surprised Read more about Developing An App For Reduced-Gravity Flying[…]

The NY Times Lawsuit Against OpenAI Would Open Up The NY Times To All Sorts Of Lawsuits Should It Win, shows that if you feed it a URL it can regurgitate what’s on the first parts of that URL

Posted on by Robin Edgar

This week the NY Times somehow broke the story of… well, the NY Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft. I wonder who tipped them off. Anyhoo, the lawsuit in many ways is similar to some of the over a dozen lawsuits filed by copyright holders against AI companies. We’ve written about how silly many of these Read more about The NY Times Lawsuit Against OpenAI Would Open Up The NY Times To All Sorts Of Lawsuits Should It Win, shows that if you feed it a URL it can regurgitate what’s on the first parts of that URL[…]

Two EV models powered by sodium-ion batteries roll off line in China

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Two electric vehicle (EV) models powered by sodium-ion batteries have rolled off the production line in China, signaling that the new, lower-cost batteries are closer to being used on a large scale. A model powered by sodium-ion batteries built by Farasis Energy in partnership with JMEV, an EV brand owned by Jiangling Motors Group, rolled Read more about Two EV models powered by sodium-ion batteries roll off line in China[…]

Using Local AI On The Command Line To Rename Images (And More)

Posted on by Robin Edgar

We all have a folder full of images whose filenamees resemble line noise. How about renaming those images with the help of a local LLM (large language model) executable on the command line? All that and more is showcased on [Justine Tunney]’s bash one-liners for LLMs, a showcase aimed at giving folks ideas and guidance Read more about Using Local AI On The Command Line To Rename Images (And More)[…]

Novel helmet liner 30 times better at stopping concussions

Posted on by Robin Edgar

[…] Among sportspeople and military vets, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the major causes of permanent disability and death. Injury statistics show that the majority of TBIs, of which concussion is a subtype, are associated with oblique impacts, which subject the brain to a combination of linear and rotational kinetic energy forces and Read more about Novel helmet liner 30 times better at stopping concussions[…]

dollar bills going up in flame

Amazon Gives Giant Middle Finger To Prime Video Customers, Will Charge $3 Extra A Month To Avoid Ads Starting In January

Posted on by Robin Edgar

[…] Amazon customers already pay $15 per month, or $139 annually for Amazon Prime, which includes a subscription to Amazon’s streaming TV service. In a bid to make Wall Street happy, Amazon recently announced it would start hitting those users with entirely new streaming TV ads, something you can only avoid if you’re willing to Read more about Amazon Gives Giant Middle Finger To Prime Video Customers, Will Charge $3 Extra A Month To Avoid Ads Starting In January[…]

Google agrees to settle $5 billion lawsuit accusing it of tracking Incognito users

Posted on by Robin Edgar

In 2020, Google was hit with a lawsuit that accused it of tracking Chrome users’ activities even when they were using Incognito mode. Now, after a failed attempt to get it dismissed, the company has agreed to settle the complaint that originally sought $5 billion in damages. According to Reuters and The Washington Post, neither Read more about Google agrees to settle $5 billion lawsuit accusing it of tracking Incognito users[…]

firefly green fuels waste reactor and jet engine

UK startup makes human waste into low carbon jet fuel

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Firefly Green Fuels, a UK-based company, has developed a new form of jet fuel that is entirely fossil-free and made from human waste. The company worked with experts at Cranfield University to confirm that the fuel they developed had a 90 percent lower carbon footprint than what is used in aviation today, according to the Read more about UK startup makes human waste into low carbon jet fuel[…]

NASA Tests Out 3D-printed Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine!

Posted on by Robin Edgar

One promising technology is the Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE), which relies on one or more detonations that continuously travel around an annular channel. In a recent hot fire test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the agency achieved a new benchmark in developing RDE technology. On September 27th, engineers successfully tested a Read more about NASA Tests Out 3D-printed Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine![…]

mt gox logo

Mt. Gox Victims Report ‘Double Repayments’ From 2014 Bitcoin Hack

Posted on by Robin Edgar

[…] In 2014, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Mt. Gox, suffered a notorious hack that stole 850,000 Bitcoins from the platform. Victims are finally starting to get their money back on Tuesday, nearly 10 years later. However, some are reporting Mt. Gox accidentally sent “double payments” and the trustees are asking for some Read more about Mt. Gox Victims Report ‘Double Repayments’ From 2014 Bitcoin Hack[…]

Paramount Parent Was Hacked Christmas 2022, Told Customers a Year Later

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The parent company that owns a controlling stake in Paramount, CBS, and thousands of theaters across the U.S. got hacked late last year, but it took them a full trip around the sun to let any of the tens of thousands of impacted customers know that their data was potentially compromised. The massive entertainment conglomerate Read more about Paramount Parent Was Hacked Christmas 2022, Told Customers a Year Later[…]

New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Reading Publicly Available Information

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies. The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular Read more about New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Reading Publicly Available Information[…]

triangulation exploit chain

All Apples Wide open for 4 years, Kaspersky security company and many others in Moscow opened wide – photos, location, mic, etc – just by sending them an imessage. Shows how dangerous closed source is.

Posted on by Robin Edgar

[…] after about 12 months of intensive investigation. Besides how the attackers learned of the hardware feature, the researchers still don’t know what, precisely, its purpose is. Also unknown is if the feature is a native part of the iPhone or enabled by a third-party hardware component such as ARM’s CoreSight   Further Reading “Clickless” Read more about All Apples Wide open for 4 years, Kaspersky security company and many others in Moscow opened wide – photos, location, mic, etc – just by sending them an imessage. Shows how dangerous closed source is.[…]

monitor at 22o tilt angle

Linux is the only OS to support diagonal PC monitor mode — dev champions the case for 22-degree-rotation computing

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Here’s a fun tidbit — Linux is the only OS to support a diagonal monitor mode, which you can customize to any tilt of your liking. Latching onto this possibility, a Linux developer who grew dissatisfied with the extreme choices offered by the cultural norms of landscape or portrait monitor usage is championing diagonal mode Read more about Linux is the only OS to support diagonal PC monitor mode — dev champions the case for 22-degree-rotation computing[…]

a verizon technician giving away a large binder of documents to an ugly orc

Verizon Once Again Busted Handing Out Sensitive Wireless Subscriber Information To Any Nitwit Who Asks For It – because no US enforcement of any kind

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Half a decade ago we documented how the U.S. wireless industry was caught over-collecting sensitive user location and vast troves of behavioral data, then selling access to that data to pretty much anybody with a couple of nickels to rub together. It resulted in no limit of abuse from everybody from stalkers to law enforcement Read more about Verizon Once Again Busted Handing Out Sensitive Wireless Subscriber Information To Any Nitwit Who Asks For It – because no US enforcement of any kind[…]

police officer looking up data on a smartphone

UK Police to be able to run AI face recognition searches on all driving licence holders

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The police will be able to run facial recognition searches on a database containing images of Britain’s 50 million driving licence holders under a law change being quietly introduced by the government. Should the police wish to put a name to an image collected on CCTV, or shared on social media, the legislation would provide Read more about UK Police to be able to run AI face recognition searches on all driving licence holders[…]

Burned out rusted broken Tesla model 3 over taken bij Red Forrest. Foggy and dark

Tesla Systematically Lied To Customers, Blaming Them For Shoddy Parts The Company Knew Were Defective, has highest accident rate of any brand on the road

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Back in July, Reuters released a bombshell report showing that not only has Tesla aggressively lied about its EV ranges for the better part of the last decade, it created teams whose entire purpose was to lie to customers about it when they called up to complain. The story lasted all of two days in Read more about Tesla Systematically Lied To Customers, Blaming Them For Shoddy Parts The Company Knew Were Defective, has highest accident rate of any brand on the road[…]

a slovak flag with a pile of coins in front of it. The coins are dripping with green mucus

Slovakian PM wants to kill EU anti-corruption policing

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Prime Minister Robert Fico’s push dissolve the body that now oversees high-profile corruption cases poses a risk to the EU’s financial interests and would harm the work of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Juraj Novocký, Slovakia’s representative to the EU body, told Euractiv Slovakia. Fico’s government wants to pass a reform that would eliminate the Read more about Slovakian PM wants to kill EU anti-corruption policing[…]

AI cannot be patent ‘inventor’, UK Supreme Court rules in landmark case – but a company can

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A U.S. computer scientist on Wednesday lost his bid to register patents over inventions created by his artificial intelligence system in a landmark case in Britain about whether AI can own patent rights. Stephen Thaler wanted to be granted two patents in the UK for inventions he says were devised by his “creativity machine” called Read more about AI cannot be patent ‘inventor’, UK Supreme Court rules in landmark case – but a company can[…]

apple pay phone

Apple Pay, Apple Card and Wallet were down for some users this morning – again

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Apple’s financial services, including Apple Pay, Apple Cash, Apple Card and Wallet, experienced service disruptions for some users between 6:15 AM and 6:49 AM Eastern this morning, according to the company’s System Status page. As AppleInsider notes, it’s unclear how widespread the issues were, but the company has experienced intermittent Apple Pay issues earlier this Read more about Apple Pay, Apple Card and Wallet were down for some users this morning – again[…]

windows mixed reality

Microsoft is killing Windows mixed reality platform

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Windows Mixed Reality is heading to a farm upstate. Microsoft is shutting down the platform, according to an official list of deprecated Windows features. This includes the garden variety Windows Mixed Reality software, along with the Mixed Reality Portal app and the affiliated Steam VR app. The platform isn’t gone yet, but Microsoft says it’ll Read more about Microsoft is killing Windows mixed reality platform[…]

champagne gas and pressure simulations

Clarified at last: The physics of popping champagne

Posted on by Robin Edgar

It sounds like a simple, well-known everyday phenomenon: there is high pressure in a champagne bottle, the stopper is driven outwards by the compressed gas in the bottle and flies away with a powerful pop. But the physics behind this is complicated. […] Using complex computer simulations, it was possible to recalculate the behavior of Read more about Clarified at last: The physics of popping champagne[…]