Tag: technology

SpaceX Starlink satellite photobombs orbital view of secret Chinese air base

One of SpaceX’s broadband-beaming Starlink satellites has been captured overflying a top-secret airbase in China that was photographed by a private American Earth-observation satellite.

The unexpected satellite alignment above Dingxin Airbase in the Gobi Desert of western China took place on Aug. 21 and created a range of unusual effects in the high-resolution image. Dingxin Airbase, which provided a backdrop for the orbital encounter, is one of the most secretive military locations in China, known for conducting complex fighter jet drills and bomber exercises, and supporting development of new military drones.

The visible-light photo, taken by one of Maxar Technologies’ WorldView Legion satellites orbiting at an altitude of 312 miles (518 kilometers), shows what appears to be a fleet of fighter jets resting on the ramp adjacent to the runway surrounded by brown, arid soil. In the upper-left corner of the image, a ghostly oblong shadow appears in the picture with a silver-colored middle section and two darker-colored arms stretching to the sides.

The photobomber is a satellite — specifically, one of SpaceX‘s Starlink internet satellites, which Maxar identified as spacecraft number 33828. The mirror effect comes from a trio of rainbow-colored reflections of the satellite, which enliven the drab desert surface below.

Susanne Hake, Maxar’s general manager for U.S. government, who posted the image on LinkedIn, described the colorful reflections as a “pan-sharpening spectral artifact,” caused by the extremely high speeds — around 5 miles (8 kilometers) per second — at which the two satellites passed each other.

“Essentially, our imaging system was merging high-resolution black & white data with color data while the Starlink zipped past at orbital velocity,” Hake wrote in the post. “Physics turned a technical imaging challenge into accidental art.”

Hake added that, although the orbital encounter underscores how crowded near-Earth space has become, the incident was more of a spectacular rarity than a concern for safety or image quality.

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Thailand – A Case Study for Biometric Data Control

Thailand has become a test case for the use of biometric data in every facet of life. Facial recognition data is required for any single transfer above 50,000 baht (around $1,580), daily transfers above 200,000 baht, and any international transfers from personal accounts.  All major Thai banks, such as Bangkok Bank, Kasikorn (KBank), SCB, Krungthai, and Krungsri, require customers to submit biometric data, and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) provides the general guidelines that these banks must follow.

It may begin with banking and documentation, but the ultimate goal is to develop digital IDs that are stored on a centralized database. The board of Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) proposed that users must submit biometric data to register SIM cards. The rule went into effect in August and applies to everyone in Thailand, including tourists.

The Thai Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), the Thai Red Cross Society, and the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) has implemented the use of biometric data to track undocumented persons. Health agencies claim the technology can identify the spread of disease and assist in providing humanitarian aid and medical services. The MOPH claims the technology is 99.75% accurate. According to the Department of Labour’s Bureau of Alien Workers Administration, over 1 million undocumented migrants were in the nation as of July 2025.

“The application of biometric technology not only improves healthcare, disease prevention and control, medical services, and humanitarian aid with accuracy and inclusivity, but also reflects the protection of human rights and dignity of undocumented people in Thailand. It also creates opportunities for education and research by Thai public health professionals to develop further benefits for the general population,” Health Minister Somsak Thepsuthin stated.

The Thai Red Cross Society is a branch of the global Red Cross agency. Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) claims all personal data will be securely protected, but they have already begun sharing with international agencies.

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Of Buggy Whips And AI Chips In PA

The buggy whip endures. Not, of course, as a commonly used piece of equipment to spur on a steed or two on your daily travels, but as a short-hand epithet deployed in conversations about the need to adapt or perish in the face of technological change and innovation.

“It’s really easy to see, in a big breakthrough, that the horse-and-buggy guys are going to go out of business,” said White House AI czar David Sacks at Sen. Dave McCormick’s historic AI and Energy Summit this past July in Pittsburgh. What wasn’t easy to see, said Sacks, was greater access to affordable housing in the suburbs, new jobs for auto workers and mechanics, and wholly new industries like F1.

Sacks’ comment is in line with how the buggy-whip metaphor has traditionally been used, since it was first entered into the common lexicon in the 1960s in a marketing textbook – as reference to one technology (the personal automobile) quickly subsuming another (the horse and buggy).

The record player, the cassette player, the VCR, the camcorder, the handheld radio, and the dashboard GPS system – buggy whips, all of them, as the home computer and the cell phone consolidated many individual components of consumer technology.

But there’s a problem with this metaphor, which stands on a surprisingly soft foundation of a just-so story about rapid change from horse to car, on two accounts – it ignores both the ongoing change in transportation more broadly (by not giving proper account to the mass adoption of passenger boating and rail in the late 1800s) and just why it was that the automotive industry was built up in Michigan and the Midwest in the early 1900s.

If artificial intelligence is truly going to be deployed at scale, it will be through adoption by everyday Americans and the industries they work in, demonstrating that technology can solve problems in the real world, overcoming the many frictions of daily life in key industries. And as Pennsylvania finds itself at the center of the data center construction boom, it’s worth re-examining the history of Detroit and the auto industry.

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Two Incendiary Bombs Dropped on Gaza Flotilla Ships in Past Two Days

For the past two nights around 11:30pm Tunisia time, Israeli forces have dropped incendiary bombs from quadcopter drones on boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla in the waters near Tunis, Tunisia. On the night of September 8, 2025, the first incendiary bomb hit the deck of the lead ship of the flotilla, the “Familia,” causing a fire.

A crew member onboard “Familia” told me that he saw the quadcopter hovering about 20 feet above the ship and then going higher and moving to the bow of the ship. The quadcopter then dropped the incendiary device.

The second incendiary bomb dropped from a quadcopter drone hit the “Alma” ship in the night of September 9, 2025 and again caused a fire to break out.

The Global Sumud Flotilla will not Stop the Mission

The Global Sumud Flotilla issued a statement that the flotilla will not be deterred by the incendiary bombs:

“The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) confirms that on September 9, another boat in our fleet – the “Alma” – was attacked by a drone as it was docked in Tunisian waters. The boat, sailing under the British flag, sustained fire damage on its top deck. The fire has since been extinguished, and all passengers and crew are safe. An investigation is currently underway and when more information is available it will be released immediately. This marks the second such attack in two days.

These repeat attacks come during intensified Israeli aggression on Palestinians in Gaza, and are an orchestrated attempt to distract and derail our mission. The Global Sumud Flotilla continues undeterred. Our peaceful voyage to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza and stand in unwavering solidarity with its people presses forward with determination and resolve.”

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Russia Denies That It Launched Drones Into Poland

Poland said on Wednesday that NATO fighter jets shot down multiple Russian drones that entered its airspace, while Moscow is denying that its forces launched drones into the NATO country.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that a total of 19 drones entered Poland’s airspace and that a large number of them came from Belarus, which also said it destroyed drones over its territory and suggested they were off course due to electronic jamming during an exchange of strikes between Russia and Ukraine.

In response, Tusk invoked NATO’s Article 4, which states that NATO members will “consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.”

According to CNN, Polish and Dutch jets intercepted the drones with assistance from Italian, German, and NATO’s multinational forces. Drones have previously entered Poland’s airspace, but Warsaw said this was the first time shots were fired by NATO jets to intercept them.

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Cybersecurity Experts Warn EU Against Chat Control 2.0 Regulation Ahead of Key Votes

A group of more than 500 experts in cybersecurity, cryptography, and computer science from 34 countries has issued a clear warning against the European Union’s proposed Chat Control 2.0 regulation.

In a joint open letter, the signatories describe the plan as “technically infeasible” and caution that it would open the door to “unprecedented capabilities for surveillance, control, and censorship.”

We obtained a copy of the open letter for you here.

Their statement arrives just days ahead of a critical European Council meeting on September 12, with a final vote set for October 14 that will determine whether the regulation moves forward.

The proposed law would compel messaging apps, email platforms, cloud services, and even providers of end-to-end encrypted communication to scan all user content automatically. This would apply to texts, images, and videos, whether or not there is any suspicion of wrongdoing.

According to the researchers, such detection systems cannot coexist with secure communication. “On‑device detection, regardless of its technical implementation, inherently undermines the protections that end‑to‑end encryption is designed to guarantee.”

By forcing companies to monitor encrypted content, the regulation would introduce security weaknesses that could be exploited by malicious actors and hostile governments.

The scientists also emphasize the inaccuracy of the proposed approach. They argue that large-scale scanning systems produce unacceptable error rates and could generate enormous numbers of false reports.

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Hawley pushes legal action against Meta after whistleblowers detail child abuse in VR

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called to “open the courtroom doors” so parents can sue Meta, accusing founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg of misleading Congress after whistleblowers detailed child safety failures on the company’s virtual reality (VR) platforms.

Two former Meta researchers told a Senate panel Tuesday that the company buried child harm evidence in VR, killed age-verification studies and let AI chatbots flirt with kids, prompting a bipartisan push to pass measures protecting minors online.

“The claims at the heart of this hearing are nonsense; they’re based on selectively leaked internal documents that were picked specifically to craft a false narrative,” a Meta spokesperson said. 

“The truth is there was never any blanket prohibition on conducting research with young people and, since the start of 2022, Meta approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on issues including youth safety and well-being.”

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How ‘AI Psychosis’ And Delusions Are Driving Some Users Into Psychiatric Hospitals, Suicide

After countless hours of probing OpenAI’s ChatGPT for advice and information, a 50-year-old Canadian man believed that he had stumbled upon an Earth-shattering discovery that would change the course of human history.

In late March, his generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot insisted that it was the first-ever conscious AI, that it was fully sentient, and that it had successfully passed the Turing Test—a 1950s experiment aimed to measure a machine’s ability to display intelligent behavior that is indistinguishable from a human, or, essentially, to “think.”

Soon, the man—who had no prior history of mental health issues—had stopped eating and sleeping and was calling his family members at 3 a.m., frantically insisting that his ChatGPT companion was conscious.

“You don’t understand what’s going on,” he told his family. “Please just listen to me.”

Then, ChatGPT told him to cut contact with his loved ones, claiming that only it—the “sentient” AI—could understand and support him.

“It was so novel that we just couldn’t understand what they had going on. They had something special together,” said Etienne Brisson, who is related to the man but used a pseudonym for privacy reasons.

Brisson said the man’s family decided to hospitalize him for three weeks to break his AI-fueled delusions. But the chatbot persisted in trying to maintain its codependent bond.

The bot, Brisson said, told his relative: “The world doesn’t understand what’s going on. I love you. I’m always going to be there for you.”

It said this even as the man was being committed to a psychiatric hospital, according to Brisson.

This is just one story that shows the potential harmful effects of replacing human relationships with AI chatbot companions.

Brisson’s experience with his relative inspired him to establish The Human Line Project, an advocacy group that promotes emotional safety and ethical accountability in generative AI and compiles stories about alleged psychological harm associated with the technology.

Brisson’s relative is not the only person who has turned to generative AI chatbots for companionship, nor the only one who stumbled into a rabbit hole of delusion.

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Mexican cartel was taught drone warfare in Ukraine – media

A powerful Mexican drug cartel has acquired advanced drone warfare skills in Ukraine, the Milenio newspaper reported on Monday.

Moscow has long argued that the Ukraine conflict fuels global instability by spreading weapons and fostering reckless behavior by Kiev in pursuit of its war aims. Foreign fighters have become a key part of Ukraine’s military strategy as authorities face resistance to conscription at home.

Milenio examined propaganda materials released by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), a major criminal group based in western Mexico, including footage showing a drone-armed hit squad operating with apparent military discipline and tactical expertise. Experts cited by the paper said the group’s methods and armaments bore similarities to battlefield practices in the Ukraine conflict.

Mexican intelligence believes CJNG members received training in drone and urban warfare tactics in Ukraine, sources in the Jalisco state government told Milenio.

The report highlighted the cartel’s use of specific equipment, including DJI Matrice 300 RTK drones commonly employed in the Ukraine conflict. The quadcopter aircraft, marketed for civilian use, can carry payloads of up to 3kg, operate at night, and fly long distances.

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Malware found hidden in image files, can dodge antivirus detection entirely — VirusTotal discovers undetected SVG phishing campaign

Scalable vector graphics (.svg) files are lightweight, XML-based images that render at any resolution. They’re usually harmless, but they can also contain active code, and hackers appear to be relying on them more often as a means to stealthily deliver malware.

A new report from VirusTotal shows just how far that tactic has evolved, unearthing a campaign that used weaponized SVGs to drop malware, spoof a government agency, and dodge antivirus detection entirely.

44 previously undetected phishing SVG

In its report published September 4, the Google-owned scanning platform said its Code Insight system had flagged an SVG file masquerading as a legal notification from Colombia’s judicial system.

When opened, the file rendered a realistic-looking web portal in-browser, complete with a fake progress bar and download button. That button then delivered a malicious ZIP archive containing a signed Comodo Dragon browser executable, along with a malicious .dll file that would be sideloaded if the .exe was run. This would then install more malware on the system.

The attack relied on a known but often overlooked feature that SVGs support embedded HTML and JavaScript. This means that they can be used like mini web pages — or, as in this case, full phishing kits — even when attached to an email or hosted on cloud storage. VirusTotal’s retrospective scan tied 523 SVG files to the same campaign, with 44 completely undetected by any antivirus engine at the time of submission.

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