Tag: technology

New York Rolls Out Digital IDs Following New Online Digital ID Law

It’s surely just a coincidence that New York has passed its online digital ID law, just as the state has joined the ranks of states adopting mobile ID technology, enabling residents to convert their traditional driver’s licenses or non-driver IDs into digital formats.

As of this week, New Yorkers can download the New Longyear Mobile ID app from both the Apple App Store and Google Play. This digital version allows users to verify their identity at airports and other locations requiring ID. To set up their mobile ID, users must initially scan both sides of their existing physical ID card using their smartphone.

The launch was unveiled at a media event at LaGuardia Airport, where Robert Duffy, the federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration, and other officials were present. During the briefing, it was stated that the introduction of mobile IDs is a significant step towards modernizing identity security and airport screening processes. Officials highlighted the optional nature of the digital IDs, noting they offer greater convenience without being mandatory.

Currently, there is no mandatory requirement for businesses or law enforcement to accept mobile IDs, and acceptance is entirely voluntary. Businesses, including bars, may begin accepting mobile IDs immediately, provided they install a state-sanctioned verifier application.

According to a press release from Governor Kathy Hochul’s office, the New York Mobile ID app is operational in nearly 30 airports nationwide, including all terminals at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports. New York is now among a growing list of states such as Arizona, Colorado, and Utah that have embraced mobile driver’s licenses.

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America’s Space Infrastructure: So Vulnerable It Destabilizes Geopolitics

No one would die directly from an attack on satellites, and no one cries over melted plastic and copper. Yet as American and Chinese reliance on their space-based satellite constellations increases, so will the incentive for either side to target and strike the other sides early in a conflict. This incentive to strike first—a “Pearl Harbor” in space—could be so destabilizing as to precipitate a war that neither state wants but cannot avoid. 

The United States needs a space infrastructure that is both resilient and redundant enough to survive a Chinese first strike. That is, the satellite constellation infrastructure that the United States uses for its military and commercial needs must still be functional even if the Chinese were to attack the system and attempt to destroy it. Currently, the brittleness of our satellite constellation is such that any concerted effort by an adversary would render the American satellite constellation useless for military purposes. The satellite infrastructure must be resilient to non-kinetic counterspace weapons like electronic jamming and laser blinding, but also to kinetic anti-satellite missiles or even the deployment of a nuclear weapon. 

The modern U.S. military is dependent on satellites for global positioning system (GPS); communications; sensing and targeting of enemy assets; and even the movement of American ships and planes across the planet. .  Put another way, the U.S. military would be hard pressed to conduct successful operations without access to it. Modern aircraft and navy vessels rely on GPS to traverse the world’s oceans and skies; the military relies on satellites for open and secure communications; and intelligence and surveillance satellites enable America’s precision-guided munitions to hit targets with accuracy. Increasingly, China and Russia are similarly reliant on satellite constellations for military purposes. 

Given the reliance of the United States, China, and Russia on their respective satellite infrastructure, there are first-mover advantages to an adversary who strikes first in space. That is, the more an actor is reliant upon satellite constellations in prosecuting a war, the more incentives their adversaries have to preemptively destroy or degrade said constellations. Indeed, the benefits of striking first are so great—and the consequences of being the target of such a strike are so grave—that brittleness in space incentivizes first strikes and is therefore destabilizing.

Strategic stability generally refers to a condition in which neither actor is incentivized to strike first—and both would pay significant costs for doing so. In the Cold War, neither side carried out a decapitation strike on the other, due in part because of the knowledge that such a strike would not provide meaningful benefit and would trigger a retaliation (a devastating nuclear second strike) the consequences of which would far outstrip any marginal benefit incurred in even a “successful” first strike.

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20-Year-Old Puzzle Solved: Physicists Reveal the “Three-Dimensional Vortex” of Zero-Dimensional Ferroelectrics

A KAIST-led research team has successfully demonstrated the internal three-dimensional polarization distribution in ferroelectric nanoparticles, paving the way for advanced memory devices capable of storing over 10,000 times more data than current technologies.

Materials that remain magnetized independently, without needing an external magnetic field, are known as ferromagnets. Similarly, ferroelectrics can maintain a polarized state on their own, without any external electric field, serving as the electrical equivalent to ferromagnets.

It is well-known that ferromagnets lose their magnetic properties when reduced to nano sizes below a certain threshold. What happens when ferroelectrics are similarly made extremely small in all directions (i.e., into a zero-dimensional structure such as nanoparticles) has been a topic of controversy for a long time.

The research team led by Dr. Yongsoo Yang from the Department of Physics at KAIST has, for the first time, experimentally clarified the three-dimensional, vortex-shaped polarization distribution inside ferroelectric nanoparticles through international collaborative research with POSTECH, SNU, KBSI, LBNL, and the University of Arkansas.

About 20 years ago, Prof. Laurent Bellaiche (currently at University of Arkansas) and his colleagues theoretically predicted that a unique form of polarization distribution, arranged in a toroidal vortex shape, could occur inside ferroelectric nanodots. They also suggested that if this vortex distribution could be properly controlled, it could be applied to ultra-high-density memory devices with capacities over 10,000 times greater than existing ones. However, experimental clarification had not been achieved due to the difficulty of measuring the three-dimensional polarization distribution within ferroelectric nanostructures.

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DARPA’s planned nuclear rocket would use enough fuel to build a bomb

High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) has been touted as the go-to fuel for powering next-gen nuclear reactors, which include the sodium-cooled TerraPower or the space-borne system powering Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO). That’s because it was supposed to offer higher efficiency while keeping uranium enrichment “well below the threshold needed for weapons-grade material,” according to the US Department of Energy.

This justified huge government investments in HALEU production in the US and UK, as well as relaxed security requirements for facilities using it as fuel. But now, a team of scientists has published an article in Science that argues that you can make a nuclear bomb using HALEU.

“I looked it up and DRACO space reactor will use around 300 kg of HALEU. This is marginal, but I would say you could make one a weapon with that much,” says Edwin Lyman, the director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author of the paper.

Forgotten threats

“When uranium is mined out of the ground, it’s mostly a mixture of two isotopes: uranium-238 and uranium-235. Uranium 235 concentrations are below one percent,” says Lyman. This is sent through an enrichment process, usually in gas centrifuges, where it is turned into gaseous form and centrifuged till the two isotopes are separated from each other due to their slight difference in their atomic weights. This can produce uranium with various levels of enrichment. Material that’s under 10 percent uranium-235 is called low-enriched uranium (LEU) and is used in power reactors working today. Moving the enrichment level up to between 10 and 20 percent, we get HALEU; above 20 percent, we start talking about highly enriched uranium, which can reach over 90 percent enrichment for uses like nuclear weapons.

“Historically, 20 percent has been considered a threshold between highly enriched uranium and low enriched uranium and, over time, that’s been associated with the limit of what is usable in nuclear weapons and what isn’t. But the truth is that threshold is not really a limit of weapons usability,” says Lyman. And we knew that since long time ago.

A study assessing the weaponization potential of uranium with different enrichment levels was done by the Los Alamos National Laboratory back in 1954. The findings were clear: Uranium enriched up to 10 percent was no good for weapons, regardless of how much of it you had. HALEU, though, was found to be of “weapons significance,” provided a sufficient amount was available. “My sense is that once they established 20 percent is somewhat acceptable, and given the material is weapons-usable only when you have enough of it, they just thought we’d need to limit the quantities and we’d be okay. That sort of got baked into the international security framework for uranium because there was not that much HALEU,” says Lyman. The Los Alamos study recommended releasing 100 kg of uranium enriched to up to 20 percent for research purposes in other countries, as they didn’t think 100 kg could lead to any nuclear threats.

The question that wasn’t answered at the time was how much was too much.

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Musk Declares War on Apple: Threatens to Ban Devices Over “Creepy Spyware” AI Integration

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter), has declared war on big tech Apple.

The tech mogul threatens to ban Apple devices across his companies unless Apple abandons its plans to integrate OpenAI’s woke ChatGPT technology into its operating system.

Apple announced on Monday that it would be integrating ChatGPT into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. This integration would allow users to access ChatGPT’s capabilities, including image and document understanding, without needing to switch between tools. Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, could also tap into ChatGPT’s intelligence when necessary.

“We’re excited to partner with Apple to bring ChatGPT to their users in a new way. Apple shares our commitment to safety and innovation, and this partnership aligns with OpenAI’s mission to make advanced AI accessible to everyone. Together with Apple, we’re making it easier for people to benefit from what AI can offer,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

“It’s personal, powerful, and private—and it’s integrated into the apps you rely on every day. Introducing Apple Intelligence—our next chapter in AI,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

In response to Tim Cook’s announcement, Musk stated, “Don’t want it. Either stop this creepy spyware or all Apple devices will be banned from the premises of my companies.”

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Lab-grown meats are bad for our health, can be weaponised and are a tool to phase out farmers

Lab-grown meat faces significant hurdles in the US as multiple states push for bans. Florida and Arizona recently prohibited its sale, and Iowa banned schools from purchasing it. Despite initial optimism after the US approved lab-grown meat in June 2023, federal lawmakers are also considering restrictions.

The industry is fighting back, with Upside Foods launching a petition and Good Meat exploring legal options. They argue their products are safe and that bans stifle innovation. Critics claim lab-grown meat is unhealthy, citing concerns about unnatural production processes and potential health effects.

International resistance is also growing, with Italy banning lab-grown meat and France considering similar measures. Proponents argue these products are crucial for global protein needs, while opponents stress the importance of natural foods. The future of lab-grown meat remains uncertain amid ongoing legal and political battles.

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Thermoelectric Effect Seen in Liquids for the First Time

Based on physics first observed over 200 years ago, thermoelectric devices can convert thermal energy into electrical energy and vice versa. But in all that time, thermoelectric phenomena had never been observed in an all-liquid system. That is, until researchers recently observed thermoelectricity at the interface between two liquid metals.

It’s an important observation: Liquid thermoelectrics could be used to create new devices for scavenging energy from waste heat, and insights from the research could help improve the design of liquid-metal batteries. The researchers, based at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris, published their results today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Studying the thermoelectric effect at an interface between two liquid metals is one of those ideas that’s so intuitive and elegant that it seems obvious in retrospect,” says Douglas Kelley, a mechanical engineer at the University of Rochester. “But to my knowledge, nobody has done it before,” adds Kelley, who was not involved with the research.

Christophe Gissinger, a physicist at ENS, studies the basic physics of liquid metals and their applications in batteries. He says scientists know almost nothing about how temperature gradients affect the flow of electrical currents in conductive liquids. Gissinger says it occurred to him that the conductive layers in liquid-metal batteries were similar to thermoelectric devices. So he decided to look for thermoelectricity in liquid metals.

Gissinger and his colleagues chose two metals that are liquid at room temperature: gallium and mercury. The experiments were done in a cylinder with refrigerated walls. In the center of the cylinder, the researchers placed a smaller cylindrical heater. The researchers poured dense liquid mercury into the outer cylinder, then topped it with a layer of lighter liquid gallium. They heated the liquids from the interior, and cooled the cylinder’s outer walls, creating a temperature gradient along the interface between the two metals. Wires dipping into the liquid metals measured the resulting electric fields.

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Lime Scooter Unveils Dystopian Solution After Three Teens Arrested For Allegedly Vandalizing Pride Mural

Last week three teens were arrested after they left scooter marks on a pride mural.

Authorities arrested two minors and one adult for allegedly using the scooters to deface the mural, just one day after Lime Scooters were reintroduced to Spokane, Washington.

The popular electric scooter and bike rental service has since unveiled a new plan to prevent this from happening again in the future.

The 19-year-old used a Lime Scooter to leave tire marks on the mural and shouted “f**k you f****t” at a passerby, court documents said according to KHQ.

The Spokane Police Department (SPD) used surveillance footage from the intersection of Washington and Spokane Falls Boulevard to identify all the three suspects.

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Colorado Will Replace Cops With Drones for Some 911 Calls

Instead of dispatching an officer each time, several Colorado police departments may soon dispatch a drone to respond to certain 911 calls. While the proposal has promise, it also raises uncomfortable questions about privacy.

As Shelly Bradbury reported this week in The Denver Post, “A handful of local law enforcement agencies are considering using drones as first responders—that is, sending them in response to 911 calls—as police departments across Colorado continue to widely embrace the use of the remote-controlled flying machines.”

Bradbury quotes Arapahoe County Sheriff Jeremiah Gates saying, “This really is the future of law enforcement at some point, whether we like it or not.” She notes that while there are currently no official plans in place, “Gates envisions a world where a drone is dispatched to a call about a broken traffic light or a suspicious vehicle instead of a sheriff’s deputy, allowing actual deputies to prioritize more pressing calls for help.”

The Denver Police Department—whose then-chief in 2013 called the use of drones by police “controversial” and said that “constitutionally there are a lot of unanswered questions about how they can be used”—is also starting a program, buying several drones over the next year that can eventually function as first responders.

In addition to Denver and Arapahoe County, Bradbury lists numerous Colorado law enforcement agencies that also have drone programs, including the Colorado State Patrol, which has 24 drones, and the Commerce City Police Department, which has eight drones and 12 pilots for a city of around 62,000 people and plans to begin using them for 911 response within a year.

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Rights Groups Join Fight Against Racially Biased Facial Recognition Tech

There is a small but growing lobby made up of people who have been wrongly arrested as a result of facial recognition technology. Among them is Robert Williams, an American who was handcuffed in front of his family in 2020 after police facial recognition misidentified him as a suspect in a federal larceny case.

Williams is now calling for police forces in Ireland to scrap their plans to deploy the biometric tech. In comments made at an event in Dublin hosted by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) and issued in a release, Williams points to the risk that comes with using tools that are prone to misidentify people of color.

“Federal studies have shown that facial recognition systems misidentify Asian and Black people up to 100 times more often than white people,” Williams says. “In America, we’re trying to undo the harms that FRT has already done. Here in Ireland, you have an opportunity not to introduce it in the first place. I hope your government will listen to experiences like mine and think twice before bringing FRT into policing.”

Williams refers to a 2019 report from NIST, which has since been updated, showing that some algorithms were 10 to 100 times more likely to misidentify a Black or East Asian than a white face. Not all of the algorithms evaluated are in commercial production, however, and others were found to have imperceptible differences in performance between demographics, prompting NIST Biometric Standards and Testing Lead Patrick Grother to urge those implementing facial recognition to be specific in evaluating bias.

Williams’ statement on the U.S. could also be debated, given the uptake of facial recognition technology by law enforcement agencies across the country. And while it is true that Irish police could still decide to pass on facial recognition, it is unlikely. The government is in the process of drafting legislation that would give Gardaí access to FRT. And police in the neighboring UK have embraced facial recognition with aplomb.

Nor is it merely an island thing. Police in Sweden are currently pushing against the limits of the still-fresh AI Act with plans to deploy 1:N facial recognition in public spaces. And Canadian police recently contracted Idemia to provide facial recognition services.

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