Super clever stuff coming out of Disney Research, in which they define balance points of 3D printed objects via internal channels and sliding mass.
The latest project from Disney Research, which is often busy with impressive projects involving 3D technologies, involves the creation of 3D printed objects capable of performing gravity-defying feats of balance.
Source: Disney Research Devises a Method of 3D Printing Models That Balance or Breakdance | 3DPrint.com
David Pogue REALLY likes the DJI Mavic. This might go a long way to explain why 3DR has stopped making drones…
I cannot tell you how radical a leap forward this drone is. Seeing it is like seeing the MacBook Air when laptops were thick and heavy, or seeing a Tesla drive up when “electric car” meant golf carts.
Source: DJI Mavic Pro: a folding drone that redefines the category
Black Mirror meets Real Life.
It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. She had struggled with whether she was doing the right thing by bringing him back this way. At times it had even given her nightmares. But ever since Mazurenko’s death, Kuyda had wanted one more chance to speak with him.
Source: Speak, Memory
Security is hard, and the bad guys are clever.
Security researcher and former NSA staffer Patrick Wardle is this afternoon demonstrating a way for Mac malware to tap into live feeds from the built-in webcam and microphone. His presentation is being delivered at the Virus Bulletin conference in Denver later today.
Although any unauthorized access to the webcam will light the green LED – a firmware-level protection that is exceedingly difficult to bypass – Wardle’s presentation shows how a malicious app can tap into the outgoing feed of an existing webca
Source: Former NSA staffer demonstrates Mac malware that can tap into live webcam and mic feeds | 9to5Mac
3DR has seen better days. Sad to see them pivot, I really wanted a US-based drone company to do well.
While it may prove fruitful, 3D Robotics’ pivot puts it in direct competition with a host of Silicon Valley startups, including Kespry, DroneDeploy and others that have raised millions of dollars on the original intent of developing software solutions for companies. 3D Robotics must play catch up and it may not have the resources to do so. In June, a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed that the company raised $26.7 million in debt and warrants.
“We’re not making anymore Solos and we’re not going to make another drone,” said Anderson, who suggested that 3D Robotics would start developing software for other drone makers. “I love the idea of other companies making hardware so we don’t have to and we can focus on the software and services side. We’re a Silicon Valley company and we’re supposed to be doing software and there are Chinese companies that are supposed to be doing hardware.”
Source: Behind The Crash Of 3D Robotics, North America’s Most Promising Drone Company
Here is the keynote I delivered last month in Cali, Colombia (link to original post with slides and more). The topic is trends and the future of technology, with a focus on how that future should concern libraries. This is the first time I’ve done a dual-language presentation…my wonderful wife gave me the assist on the slideshow, and the conference provided real-time English-to-Spanish translation over radio for participants, and Spanish-to-English for me where necessary. It was a fascinating and wonderful experience, although exhausting.
There is a tiny bit of technical difficulty in the middle of the thing…had to do some fast editing just before giving the talk due to my laptop audio getting fried by a bad cable (Protip: don’t plug an electrically live cable into your computer’s minijack). Please excuse a bit of fumbling on my part. Otherwise, I hope this is useful!
The source code that powers the “Internet of Things” (IoT) botnet responsible for launching the historically large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against KrebsOnSecurity last month has been publicly released, virtually guaranteeing that the Internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and other easily hackable devices.
Source: Source Code for IoT Botnet ‘Mirai’ Released — Krebs on Security
I cannot fully express how this video makes me feel. I want this to happen so, so badly.
This is a fantastic article that illustrates one reason I’ve been so fascinated by hardware over the last few years.
The cheap and easy gains of the last fifty years of Moore’s Law gave birth to a global technology industry. The next little while – somewhere between twenty and fifty years out – will be dominated by a transition from software into hardware, a confusion of the two so complete it will literally become impossible to know where the boundary between the two lies.
Source: Zombie Moore’s Law shows hardware is eating software • The Register
Get used to this, because here’s the future of computer security….
A giant botnet made up of hijacked internet-connected things like cameras, lightbulbs, and thermostats has launched the largest DDoS attack ever against a top security blogger, an attack so big Akamai had to cancel his account because defending it ate up too many resources.
Source: Largest DDoS attack ever delivered by botnet of hijacked IoT devices | Network World
