Government spyware is another reason to use an ad blockerAd blockers might seem like an unlikely defense in the fight against spyware, but new reporting casts fresh light on how spyware makers are weaponizing online ads to allow governments to conduct surveillance.
Spyware makers are reportedly capable of locating and stealthily infecting specific targets with spyware using banner ads.
One of the startups that worked on an ad-based spyware infection system is Intellexa, a European company that develops the Predator spyware.
Ad blockers don’t just hide the ads, but rather block the underlying website from loading the ads to begin with.
In 2022, the FBI said in a public service announcement to use an ad blocker as an online safety precaution.
The driver of a Mustang Mach-E who crashed into a stationary car in Texas in February was using Ford’s hands-free driver assistance system, BlueCruise, according to data obtained by the National Transportation Safety Board.
It’s the first known fatality resulting from a crash involving the use of BlueCruise, which Ford first announced in 2021.
The NTSB’s announcement that BlueCruise was active during the Texas crash comes just one day after the safety board announced it’s probing a second fatal crash near Philadelphia where Ford’s driver assistance system may have been active.
The NTSB released on Thursday what’s known as a preliminary report, and is still investigating the crash.
NHTSA is also probing the Texas crash, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Humane today announced the availability of its first product, the Ai Pin.
Ai Pin is the first of what Humane hopes will be a long line of devices aimed at harness the power and popularity of generative AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Humane’s vision for the $699 device is one in which a new technology can free itself of its predecessors’ limitations.
It really started a conversation about the incredible tool we built, but also some of the side effects.”The Ai Pin is the first of what will almost certainly be a long line of products riding the generative AI boon.
Humane’s $699 entry point gets you the Ai Pin, an extra battery and an AI charging case.
Sanctuary AI announced that it will be delivering its humanoid robot to a Magna manufacturing facility.
As is often the nature of these deals, the parties have not disclosed how many of Sanctuary AI’s robots will be deployed.
The news follows similar deals announced by Figure and Apptronik, which are piloting their own humanoid systems with BMW and Mercedes, respectively.
For its part, Magna invested in Sanctuary AI back in 2021 — right around the time Elon Musk announced plans to build a humanoid robot to work in Tesla factories.
The company would later dub the system “Optimus.” Vancouver-based Sanctuary unveiled its own system, Phoenix, back in May of last year.
It is, after all, a lot easier to generate press for robots that look and move like humans.
For a while now, Collaborative Robotics founder Brad Porter has eschewed robots that look like people.
As the two-year-old startup’s name implies, Collaborative Robotics (Cobot for short) is interested in the ways in which humans and robots will collaborate, moving forward.
When his run with the company ended in summer 2020, he was leading the retail giant’s industrial robotics team.
AI will, naturally, be foundational to the company’s promise of “human problem solving,” while the move away from the humanoid form factor is a bid, in part, to reduce the cost of entry for deploying these systems.
If this had been announced exactly a week prior, it would have been easy to mistake for some corporate April Foolery.
Dyson, however, assures us that augmented reality vacuuming is real and coming in June — slightly belated for spring cleaning, sadly.
When it launches over the summer, CleanTrace will be available for the Dyson Gen5detect system.
It’s not going to tip over anyone who’s on the fence about a $700 ultra-premium vacuum, but this is hardly the most ridiculous thing Dyson has shown the world.
“We realized that we could all learn a thing or two from the methodical cleaning approach of our robot vacuums,” Dyson VP of engineering Charlie Park notes.
Just last year, Klaviyo went public, adding to the parade of startup success stories.
But they all showed what’s possible for the many people who dream of building a successful business in the Boston area.
When you put it all together, Lyman says, you get some of the primary building blocks for a successful startup ecosystem.
And what Boston may lack in nightlife, it surely makes up for in brain power and long history of startup success.
As Seseri says, success begets success.
Less than a week after The Wall St. Journal reported on how a Snapchat feature dubbed “solar system” was adding to teens’ anxiety, the company has responded by adjusting how the feature works.
The ranking system for paid subscribers today shows you how close you are to your Snapchat friends by displaying your position in their solar system.
However, instead of removing the feature, as it did with the dangerous and controversial speed filter, which it was sued over for “negligent design,” Snap is simply turning the Solar System feature off by default.
A more relevant stat would be how many Snapchat+ users have used Solar System or viewed the feature.
The Solar System feature was only one of Snapchat’s friend ranking systems.
Microsoft and Quantinuum today announced a major breakthrough in quantum error correction.
This new system also allowed the team to check the logical qubits and correct any errors it encountered without destroying the logical qubits.
This, the two companies say, has now moved the state-of-the-art of quantum computing out of what has typically been dubbed the era of Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers.
The physical qubits are entangled together so that it becomes possible to detect an error in a physical qubit and fix it.
Now, Microsoft and Quantinuum argue that their new hardware/software system demonstrates the largest gap between physical and logical error rates, improving on using only physical qubits by up to 800x.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a third investigation into EV startup Fisker’s Ocean SUV, this time centered on problems getting the doors to open.
The agency says the complaints point to a an “intermittent failure” of the door latch and handle system.
The Ocean SUV is already being investigated by ODI over problems with its braking system, and for complaints about the vehicle rolling away on uneven surfaces.
It paused production of the Ocean in March and reported just $121 million in the bank.
But the new safety probe suggests a deeper problem with the SUV’s doors.
