Tag: technology

The U.S. Government Is Dramatically Expanding The Use Of Facial Recognition Technology

Do you want to live in a society where you are required to have your face scanned wherever you go?  If not, you may want to speak up now while you still can.  As you will see below, the U.S. government is aggressively expanding the use of facial recognition technology for identification verification purposes.  For now, the use of facial recognition technology will be optional.  But as we have seen before, once a voluntary option is adopted by enough people our leaders have a way of making it mandatory.  Of course it isn’t just our government that is pushing facial recognition technology.  It is popping up throughout our society, and given enough time it would literally be everywhere.

Login.gov is billed as “a single sign-on solution for US government websites”, and now users of Login.gov will be given the option to use facial recognition technology to verify their identities…

An online hub for Americans to access benefits and services across the federal government is giving its users a new option to sign on.

The General Services Administration will begin offering facial recognition technology as an option for users of Login.gov, a one-stop for government-provided public services, to verify their identities.

GSA’s Technology Transformation Services announced Wednesday it will allow Login.gov users to verify their identity online through facial technology that meets standards set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s 800-63-3 Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) guidelines.

We are being told that this will help reduce identity theft and fraud, and I don’t know anyone that likes identity theft and fraud.

But do we really want to live in a dystopian world where our faces are constantly being scanned all the time?

I certainly don’t.

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Ancient Construction Technology Discovered Under a Neolithic House

A groundbreaking discovery in Denmark has revealed evidence of an advanced technological structure dating back 5,000 years. While excavating a Neolithic site on the island of Falster, archaeologists uncovered a stone-paved root cellar for storing produce beneath an ancient dwelling. This significant find has challenged existing understandings of Neolithic life in Scandinavia, where early agricultural communities were thought to have employed simpler preservation methods.

The excavation, led by researchers from the Museum Lolland-Falster and Aarhus University, has been documented in a detailed study published in Radiocarbon.

The site at Nygårdsvej 3, was uncovered during construction work for a railway. It has proven to be an archaeological gold mine, well, as regards ancient architecture is concerned. Archaeologists identified two phases of house construction, both attributed to the Funnel Beaker Culture (also known as TRB or Trichterbecherkultur). This culture, which emerged around 4000 BC, marked the region’s shift from a hunter-gatherer society to a more sedentary lifestyle centered on agriculture and animal husbandry.

The houses discovered at the site followed a common architectural design of the period, known as the Mossby-type, which featured large double-span roofs supported by posts. The first house phase, made between 3080 and 2780 BC, had 38 postholes, while the second phase contained 35.

The floors of the houses were made from compacted loam, a mixture of sand and clay that provided a durable and stable surface. This is a construction material still in use in various parts of the world today.

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Protective Nets To Shield F-22s Eyed For Airbase Swarmed By Mystery Drones

U.S. Air Force officials at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia are looking at installing anti-drone nets to help protect F-22 Raptor stealth fighters on the flightline. This comes nearly a year after the base was subjected to waves of still-mysterious drone incursions, which The War Zone was first to report. It also underscores the U.S. military’s continued lag when it comes to responding to the very real threats posed by uncrewed aerial systems, at home and aboard, and particular hurdles to doing so domestically.

Langley’s 633rd Contracting Squadron put out a notice on October 4 asking for information about potential counter-drone netting that could be installed around up to 42 existing open-ended sunshade-type shelters at the base. Langley, now technically part of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, is one of a select few bases to host F-22s and is a key component of the Air Force’s posture to defend the U.S. homeland.

The 633rd “is in the process of determining the acquisition strategy to obtain non-personal services for the Unmanned Ariel Services (UAS) Netting for East Ramp Metal Sunshades,” according to the contracting notice. “The intention of the netting is to deter and ultimately prevent the intrusion of UAS’s near airmen and aircraft. This initial sunshade netting installation on the metal sunshade (bay Alpha 1) shall serve as a proof of concept for the remaining sunshades.”

The “netting should be capable of disabling a Group 1/ “Small” Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), such as the DJI Matrice 300 RTK, while remaining attached,” the notice explains. Per the U.S. military’s definitions, drones in Group 1 can have weights of up to 20 pounds, fly up to 1,200 feet, and reach speeds of up to 100 knots.

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Lucid Dreaming Breakthrough: Startup Claims First-Ever Two-Way Dream Communication

In a development that sounds straight out of science fiction, REMspace, a California and Russia-based neurotech startup, claims to have achieved the first two-way communication between individuals during lucid dreaming.

Using specially designed equipment, participants reportedly exchanged a message while asleep—an extraordinary claim that has yet to be peer-reviewed.

This milestone, if validated, could mark a turning point in dream research, with REMspace suggesting applications from mental health therapies to skill training.

Communication While Dreaming

REMspace is a neurotechnology company specializing in sleep enhancement and lucid dreaming. Using specially designed equipment, REMspace claims that two individuals successfully induced lucid dreams and exchanged a simple message with each other.

In May 2023, REMspace founder Michael Raduga made headlines after reportedly drilling into his own skull to implant a microchip in an attempt to control his dreams. Raduga, who shared details and graphic images on social media, claims the chip was designed to stimulate his brain’s motor cortex during REM sleep. Despite nearly dying from blood loss, he remains optimistic about the experiment’s potential.

It is important to highlight that while Raduga describes his self-administered procedure as groundbreaking, Raduga is not a qualified neurosurgeon.

Lucid dreaming, according to WebMD, is the state of being aware that you are dreaming while asleep. While around 50 percent of people report experiencing at least one lucid dream, the idea of communication within such a state is still in its early stages of research.

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How the Army is using AI during Hurricane Helene relief

The Army’s 18th Airborne Corps is for the first time using a battlefield capability to map road closures, cellular outages, supply needs and other data in real time to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Northern Command help people whose homes and communities were battered by Hurricane Helene late last month.

The Army is using its Maven Smart System to provide responders with the information needed to make quick, on-the-ground decisions, such as where to send medical supplies or how many truckloads of water to take into certain storm-ravaged areas, defense officials told reporters Monday.

Weeks after the deadly hurricane tore a path from Florida’s Gulf Coast into the Appalachian Mountains, some residents in the southeast are still sifting through the wreckage caused by floods and landslides that destroyed entire towns.

More damage is feared as Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida this week as well.

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Vigilante Swiss teens use dating apps to lure paedophiles into violent ambushes – before being caught and charged over their retribution

A group of vigilante teenagers took the law into their own hands and used dating apps to lure paedophiles into violent ambushes after police ignored their complaints about a schoolgirl pal who was being groomed. 

The schoolchildren, aged between 13 and 18, from Lugano in Switzerland were themselves apprehended by police earlier this month.

They were held on charges including grievous bodily harm, assault, coercion, robbery, false imprisonment, and extortion.

The elaborate scheme was the brainchild of a 13-year-old boy who hatched a plan to use dating apps, such as Tinder, to track down adults who were trying to meet minors.

It was set up after local police allegedly ignored their complaints about the harassment of an underage girl by a man who was sending her nude pictures. 

Conversations between the two were even shared with no result, so the children came up with their own solution.

After chatting to the adults on dating apps, plans would be made over Whatsapp or Instagram to meet in-person at parks or even in flats across the Swiss city.

Once there, the unsuspecting targets walked straight into the group’s carefully laid trap.

The alleged paedophiles would first be greeted by an underage girl or boy, whose role was to persuade them to undress.

Once this was accomplished, the group of teens would converge on the scene, kicking and punching the individual while simultaneously urinating on them, spitting at them, or shaving off their hair.

The actions were reportedly recorded and sometimes shared with third parties. The group had even considered broadcasting the acts live on social media.

When interviewed by police, one of the teens said: ‘It all started when a 35-year-old man started harassing an underage friend of mine by sending her nude photos and asking her for sex.

‘We tried to file a complaint, but we were not taken seriously, we even showed the officials the chats.’

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The Big Tech Think Tank Campaigning to Censor Satire

The Brookings Institution, seems to believe it has solved the problem faced by those who would like to censor memes. The problem is that memes are a form of satire, and censoring them while claiming to be a democracy is a difficult task.

But now, senior Brookings Institution fellow Nicol Turner Lee and Isabella Panico Hernandez, a project assistant, have revealed their thinking: AI memes should be treated as election disinformation “manifested” through satire.

One could use a similar form of mental gymnastics to say that this kind of argument represents a call for censorship manifested through supposed concern about disinformation.

The Brookings, meanwhile, is not just any foot soldier in the “war on memes”: it is a powerful think tank funded by the likes of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, but also massive financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase (via its philanthropic foundation) and that of Mastercard, Impact Fund.

Brookings speaks about memes, particularly those AI-generated (adding some AI panic into the mix can only help the cause), as an extremely dangerous phenomenon hidden behind humor, and perceived as humor by pretty much everyone.

But the think tank, and others going after memes, present themselves as smarter and able to understand the true nature of this clearly humorous and often satirical imagery, which they say only “seem harmless” and “appear innocuous.”

Instead, the authors of the article say memes can influence how voters perceive candidates and other election-related information, “could potentially lead to violence” – and are “globally perceived” as being capable to “fuel extremist behavior” – which is in contrast to the US, supposedly because of the lack of appropriate regulation.

And so, less than a month before the presidential election, these according to the authors insidious messages use humor merely as a vehicle to spread dangerous influence, but are not properly tackled in the US.

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Collider in the Sea: A Particle Accelerator Spanning the Gulf of Mexico Could Unlock New Physics

In 2012, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, proved the existence of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle that grants other particles their mass. The discovery confirmed a mathematical theory at the core of the Standard Model of physics, which tries to explains why the physical universe works the way it does. And it was only possible thanks to the Large Hadron Collider, a ring of superconducting magnets buried hundreds of feet below CERN’s laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland. The collider accelerates subatomic particles to extremely high speeds and smashes them together to find out what they’re made of.

Peter McIntyre, a physicist and particle accelerator expert at Texas A&M University, and his colleagues think there may be more particles and natural forces in the universe that, like the Higgs boson, can only be discovered through high energy collisions—bigger collisions than the Large Hadron Collider can create. Gizmodo interviewed him about his ambitious proposal for a machine that could make those discoveries: A particle accelerator 2,000 kilometers in circumference floating in the Gulf of Mexico, which McIntyre and his colleagues have dubbed Collider in the Sea.

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Germany Rushes to Expand Biometric Surveillance

Germany is a leader in privacy and data protection, with many Germans being particularly sensitive to the processing of their personal data – owing to the country’s totalitarian history and the role of surveillance in both Nazi Germany and East Germany.

So, it is disappointing that the German government is trying to push through Parliament, at record speed, a “security package” that would increase biometric surveillance at an unprecedented scale. The proposed measures contravene the government’s own coalition agreement, and undermine European law and the German constitution.

In response to a knife-stabbing in the West-German town of Solingen in late-August, the government has introduced a so-called “security package” consisting of a bouquet of measures to tighten asylum rules and introduce new powers for law enforcement authorities.

Among them, three stand out due to their possibly disastrous effect on fundamental rights online. 

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PimEyes Says Meta Glasses Integration Could Have ‘Irreversible Consequences’

Two Harvard students made headlines after converting Meta’s smart glasses into a device that automatically captures people’s faces with facial recognition and runs them through face search engines. One of the companies providing the face search function, PimEyes, is not too happy about it.

AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio released a video of themselves using the smart glasses to identify people on the street and look up their personal information through services such as PimEyes. The students used the integrated camera on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses to capture live video through Instagram and ran it through their software I-XRAY.

“We stream the video from the glasses straight to Instagram and have a computer program monitor the stream,” Nguyen says in the video. “We use AI to detect when we’re looking at someone’s face, then we scour the internet to find more pictures of that person. Finally, we use data sources like online articles and voter registration databases to figure out their name, phone number, home address and relatives names and it’s all fed back to an app we wrote on our phone.”

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