Tag: technology

AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted, rules a US federal judge

United States District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled on Friday that AI-generated artwork can’t be copyrighted, as noted by The Hollywood Reporter. She was presiding over a lawsuit against the US Copyright Office after it refused a copyright to Stephen Thaler for an AI-generated image made with the Creativity Machine algorithm he’d created.

Thaler had tried multiple times to copyright the image “as a work-for-hire to the owner of the Creativity Machine,” which would have listed the author as the creator of the work and Thaler as the artwork’s owner, but he was repeatedly rejected.

After the Office’s final rejection last year, Thaler sued the Office, claiming its denial was “arbitrary, capricious … and not in accordance with the law,” but Judge Howell didn’t see it that way. In her decision, Judge Howell wrote that copyright has never been granted to work that was “absent any guiding human hand,” adding that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.”

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How a Well-Regarded Mac App Became a Trojan Horse

In the early days of macOS Mojave in 2018, Apple hadn’t offered users a way to automatically switch to dark and light mode at different times of the day. As usual, there were third-party developers eager to pick up the slack. One of the more well-regarded night mode apps to fix this issue was NightOwl, first released in the middle of 2018, a small app with a simple utility that could run in the background during day-to-day use.

With more official macOS features added in 2021 that enabled the “Night Shift” dark mode, the NightOwl app was left forlorn and forgotten on many older Macs. Few of those supposed tens of thousands of users likely noticed when the app they ran in the background of their older Macs was bought by another company, nor when earlier this year that company silently updated the dark mode app so that it hijacked their machines in order to send their IP data through a server network of affected computers, AKA a botnet.

After some users noted issues with the app after a June update, web developer Taylor Robinson discovered the problem ran deep, as the program redirected users’ computers’ connections without any notification. The real dark mode turned out to be the transformation of a respectable Mac app into a playground for data harvesters.

In an email with Gizmodo, Robinson broke down their own investigation into the app. They found that NightOwl installs a launcher that turns the users’ computer into a kind of botnet agent for data that’s sold to third parties. The updated 0.4.5.4 version of NightOwl, released June 13, runs a local HTTP proxy without users’ direct knowledge or consent, they said. The only hint NightOwl gives to users that something’s afoot is a consent notice after they hit the download button, saying the app uses Google Analytics for anonymized tracking and bugs. The botnet settings cannot be disabled through the app, and in order to remove the modifications made to a Mac, users need to run several commands in the Mac Terminal app to excise the vestiges of the code from their system, per Robinson.

It’s currently unclear how many users were affected by the seemingly malicious code, especially as NightOwl has since become unavailable on both the website and app store. The NightOwl site claims the app was downloaded more than 141,000 times, and that there were more than 27,000 active users on the app. Even if the app lost most of its users after Apple installed new Dark Mode software, there were potentially thousands of users running NightOwl on their old Macs.

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Researchers find deliberate backdoor in police radio encryption algorithm

For more than 25 years, a technology used for critical data and voice radio communications around the world has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent anyone from closely scrutinizing its security properties for vulnerabilities. But now it’s finally getting a public airing thanks to a small group of researchers in the Netherlands who got their hands on its viscera and found serious flaws, including a deliberate backdoor.

The backdoor, known for years by vendors that sold the technology but not necessarily by customers, exists in an encryption algorithm baked into radios sold for commercial use in critical infrastructure. It’s used to transmit encrypted data and commands in pipelines, railways, the electric grid, mass transit, and freight trains. It would allow someone to snoop on communications to learn how a system works, then potentially send commands to the radios that could trigger blackouts, halt gas pipeline flows, or reroute trains.

Researchers found a second vulnerability in a different part of the same radio technology that is used in more specialized systems sold exclusively to police forces, prison personnel, military, intelligence agencies, and emergency services, such as the C2000 communication system used by Dutch police, fire brigades, ambulance services, and Ministry of Defense for mission-critical voice and data communications. The flaw would let someone decrypt encrypted voice and data communications and send fraudulent messages to spread misinformation or redirect personnel and forces during critical times.

Three Dutch security analysts discovered the vulnerabilities—five in total—in a European radio standard called TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), which is used in radios made by Motorola, Damm, Hytera, and others. The standard has been used in radios since the ’90s, but the flaws remained unknown because encryption algorithms used in TETRA were kept secret until now.

The technology is not widely used in the US, where other radio standards are more commonly deployed. But Caleb Mathis, a consultant with Ampere Industrial Security, conducted open source research for WIRED and uncovered contracts, press releases, and other documentation showing TETRA-based radios are used in at least two dozen critical infrastructures in the US. Because TETRA is embedded in radios supplied through resellers and system integrators like PowerTrunk, it’s difficult to identify who might be using them and for what. But Mathis helped WIRED identify several electric utilities, a state border control agency, an oil refinery, chemical plants, a major mass transit system on the East Coast, three international airports that use them for communications among security and ground crew personnel, and a US Army training base.

Carlo Meijer, Wouter Bokslag, and Jos Wetzels of Midnight Blue in the Netherlands discovered the TETRA vulnerabilities—which they’re calling TETRA:Burst—in 2021 but agreed not to disclose them publicly until radio manufacturers could create patches and mitigations. Not all of the issues can be fixed with a patch, however, and it’s not clear which manufacturers have prepared them for customers. Motorola—one of the largest radio vendors—didn’t respond to repeated inquiries from WIRED.

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CHINESE MILITARY SAYS IT’S FIGURED OUT HOW TO BUILD LASER WEAPONS THAT CAN FIRE INDEFINITELY

The Chinese military has announced what could be a major breakthrough in energy weapon tech — if it holds up.

As the South China Morning Post reports, representatives from the country’s National University of Defence Technology say they’ve developed a state-of-the-art cooling system that would allow high-energy lasers to remain powered up “infinitely” without getting too hot.

While laser technology has existed for decades, these high-energy beams generate so much excess heat that they often go haywire, hampering previous attempts at similar weapon systems around the world.

The new Chinese cooling system, according to the report, would use gas that blows through the weapon to remove excess heat and allow for weapons to shoot precise laser beams for an indefinite amount of time without losing power or getting distorted.

“High-quality beams can be produced not only in the first second, but also maintained indefinitely,” the team wrote in a new paper on the purported cooling tech, published in the Chinese-language journal Acta Optica Sinica.

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Russia heads back to the Moon with Luna 25

Russia’s space agency successfully launched a robotic spacecraft Thursday on a journey to the Moon, the country’s first lunar explorer since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976.

The Luna 25 mission lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in Russia’s Far East, at 7:10 pm ET (23:10 UTC). Heading east, a Soyuz-2.1b rocket propelled Luna 25 through an overcast cloud deck and into the stratosphere, then shed its four first-stage boosters about two minutes into the flight. A core stage engine fired a few minutes longer, and the Soyuz rocket jettisoned its payload shroud.

A third-stage engine fired next, then gave way to a Fregat upper-stage to place Luna 25 in orbit around Earth. The Fregat engine fired a second time to send the nearly 4,000-pound (1.8-metric ton) lunar probe on a roughly five-day trip toward the Moon. Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, declared the launch a success less than 90 minutes after liftoff, shortly after the Luna 25 spacecraft separated from the Fregat upper stage.

This is historic for Russia’s space program. Russia hasn’t launched a lunar mission in nearly 50 years and hasn’t had a mission successfully fly to any other planetary body since 1988, despite several attempts. Thursday’s launch was a major moment for Luna 25, but its departure from Earth on a reliable and proven Soyuz rocket was not the riskiest part of the mission. That will come in a couple of weeks when Luna 25 begins its powered descent toward the lunar surface.

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AI program can steal your password by listening to the sounds your keyboard makes when you type it

Research published by Cornell University showed that scientists programmed an artificial intelligence system that listened to people typing their passwords and was able to correctly identify the keys with 95% accuracy.

The group programmed an AI system to listen to a typed password on MacBook Pro keys over both a phone and a Zoom call, according to Daily Fetched.

The AI model was trained by pressing each of the MacBook Pro’s 36 keys 25 times each and recording the sounds. The sounds were fed into the AI so it could correctly identify each key.

Over the phone, the program correctly identified the keys with 95% accuracy, while over Zoom the number dropped slightly to 93%. The phone was placed about six and a half inches away from the keyboard, according to the Daily Mail.

“When trained on keystrokes recorded by a nearby phone, the classifier achieved an accuracy of 95 percent, the highest accuracy seen without the use of a language model,” the study reportedly said.

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Hopes Dashed: LK-99 Falls Short Of Room-Temperature Superconductor Glory

Less than a week after South Korean researchers claimed in two new papers that they had developed a superconductor that operates at room temperature under standard atmospheric pressure,which would have mind-blowing implications for transmitting electricity with zero resistance at normal temperatures, all hopes have been dashed by an already-skeptical scientific community.

In response to the alleged discovery, several labs got to work recreating the superconductor, known as LK-99. Alas, none of them were a success, IFLScience reports.

“When we are measuring superconductors, the most obvious property of a superconductor is zero resistance,” said Professor Susie Speller of the Oxford Centre for Applied Superconductivity, in comments to IFLScience in a previous deep-dive on LK-99. “What you look for is for the material to have some resistance. You cool it down, and suddenly it should lose that resistance, and it should be absolutely zero when it’s in the superconducting state. You should see a very clear change in resistance at the temperature where it starts to superconduct.”

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Scientist Suggests Feasibility of Faster-Than-Light Travel within the Boundaries of Einstein’s Physics

The idea of faster-than-light (FTL) travel has captivated human imagination for decades, fueled by science fiction’s portrayal of interstellar journeys that traverse the vast cosmos in the blink of an eye. While the concept has long been considered implausible due to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, recent claims by a daring scientist suggest that FTL travel might not be as far-fetched as previously thought. This potential breakthrough could revolutionize our understanding of the universe and reshape the boundaries of human exploration.

Einstein’s Relativity and the Cosmic Speed Limit

Albert Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity are pillars of modern physics, setting forth the framework for understanding the fundamental behavior of space, time, and gravity. One of the most renowned consequences of these theories is the assertion that the speed of light is the ultimate cosmic speed limit – nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum. This assertion has not only been supported by countless experiments but has also been instrumental in shaping our understanding of the universe.

The Challenge of Faster-Than-Light Travel

The idea of FTL travel, while popular in science fiction, has been met with skepticism by the scientific community. The energy required to propel an object to or beyond the speed of light using conventional methods seems insurmountable, and the associated implications, including time dilation and causality violations, challenge the very fabric of reality as we know it.

However, recent developments in theoretical physics have sparked new discussions about the feasibility of FTL travel within the framework of Einstein’s theories. Dr. Amelia Rodriguez, a theoretical physicist at the forefront of this debate, claims that there might be loopholes in Einstein’s equations that could potentially allow for FTL travel without violating the laws of physics.

Warp Drives and Alcubierre’s Theory

Dr. Rodriguez’s work draws inspiration from Miguel Alcubierre’s “warp drive” concept proposed in the 1990s. Alcubierre’s theory involves the creation of a “warp bubble” around a spacecraft, effectively contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it. This manipulation of spacetime would allow the spacecraft to “ride” on the wave created by the bubble, potentially enabling speeds faster than light without the spacecraft itself exceeding the speed of light within its local frame of reference.

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Controversial Eyeball-Scanning Worldcoin To Allow Governments To Use Its Digital ID System

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Worldcoin is a good example of private companies doing their bit to push and introduce digital ID schemes to as many people as possible – although this effort is usually done by governments, and supported by various lobbies.

And now, Worldcoin has announced that it will be even more helpful to governments, by allowing them to use the system of biometric scanning it employs to sign users up. Other companies will be given the same privilege.

The intention is clearly to get as many people as possible on board, hence the “generosity” with sharing the iris scanning tech, as well as that designed to verify people’s identity.

And it’s no secret: “We are on this mission of building the biggest financial and identity community that we can,” is how Tools for Humanity (a company behind Worldcoin) executive Ricardo Macieira put it.

The mission marches on despite concerns not only from privacy focused non-profits and advocates, but also institutions in various countries that are tasked with protecting data privacy.

People – and the number mentioned in reports these days is 2.2 million so far – sign up to Worldcoin by giving up biometric data contained in their eyes, i.e., irises.

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From Covert To Overt: UK Govt & Businesses Unleash Facial Recognition Technologies Across Urban Landscape

The Home Office is encouraging police forces across the country to make use of live facial recognition technologies for routine law enforcement. Retailers are also embracing the technology to monitor their customers. 

It increasingly seems that the UK decoupled from the European Union, its rules and regulations, only for its government to take the country in a progressively more authoritarian direction. This is, of course, a generalised trend among ostensibly “liberal democracies” just about everywhere, including EU Member States, as they increasingly adopt the trappings and tactics of more authoritarian regimes, such as restricting free speech, cancelling people and weakening the rule of law. But the UK is most definitely at the leading edge of this trend. A case in point is the Home Office’s naked enthusiasm for biometric surveillance and control technologies.

This week, for example, The Guardian revealed that the Minister for Policing Chris Philip and other senior figures of the Home Office had held a closed-door meeting with Simon Gordon, the founder of Facewatch, a leading facial recognition retail security company, in March. The main outcome of the meeting was that the government would lobby the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on the benefits of using live facial recognition (LFR) technologies in retail settings. LFR involves hooking up facial recognition cameras to databases containing photos of people. Images from the cameras can then be screened against those photos to see if they match.

The lobbying effort was apparently successful. Just weeks after reaching out to the ICO, the ICO sent a letter to Facewatch affirming that the company “has a legitimate purpose for using people’s information for the detection and prevention of crime” and that its services broadly comply with UK Data Protection laws, which the Sunak government and UK intelligence agencies are trying to gut. As the Guardian report notes, “the UK’s data protection and information bill proposes to abolish the role of the government-appointed surveillance camera commissioner along with the requirement for a surveillance camera code of practice.”

The ICO’s approval gives legal cover to a practice that is already well established. Facewatch has been scanning the faces of British shoppers in thousands of retail stores across the UK for years. The cameras scan faces as people enter a store and screens them against a database of known offenders, alerting shop assistants if a “subject of interest” has entered. Shops using the technologies have placed notices in their windows (such as the one below) informing customers that facial recognition technologies are in operation, “to protect” the shop’s “employees, customers and stock.” But it is far from clear how many shoppers actually take notice of the notices.

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