China Limits Gaming for minors to 3 hours / Week

Kids and teens under 18 years old in China will only be allowed up to three hours per week to play online video games, according to new rules published Monday by China’s National Press and Publication Administration. According to a translated notice about the new rules, people under 18 will be allowed to play video games one hour a day between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. weekends and legal holidays. The agency billed the rules as a way to safeguard children’s physical and mental health.

The rules will apply to companies providing online game services to minors, limiting their ability to serve those users outside of designated hours. The companies also will not be allowed to provide services to users who haven’t logged in with real-name registration, preventing them from simply remaining ignorant to their users’ backgrounds. The latest rules from the NPPA significantly reduce the amount of time minors can play online games. Under 2019 rules, people under 18 were allowed to play games for 1½ hours a day on most days. 

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Credits:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/368943

Toyoto Suspends eShuttle after a Low Speed Crash

For the Athletes’ Village at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, Toyota deployed a fleet of e-Palette all-electric and autonomous vehicles to shuttle participants to and from events. It was meant to show the future of the automaker's mobility services. However, all e-Palette operations have been suspended after one of the vehicles collided with a pedestrian on Thursday, according to an official statement. The e-Palette hit a visually impaired pedestrian who was "about to cross a pedestrian crossing," the statement read. While stopped at a T-intersection, the e-Palette's human operator apparently collided with the athlete when they went to make a turn while going "at around one or two kilometers an hour," and that the athlete was able to walk back to where they were staying after being taken into treatment, reports Reuters, citing a video statement from Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda. The athlete reportedly did not lose consciousness.

The Toyota e-Palette was announced at CES in 2018 and debuted at the 2019 Tokyo Motor Show. For the Olympics, it was used as a loop-line bus service to transport people around the Olympic compound during the games. It runs on fully electric power and has autonomous abilities. A December 2020 press release stated the vehicles allowed for "a single person to manage several vehicles, rather than one person continually monitoring one vehicle, which enables operation with fewer workers," though it appears as though the e-Palette, in this case, was manned by a human. A Toyota spokesperson said that, despite the e-Palette's current suspended operations, "we have not announced that we will be stopping our efforts in future mobility."



Credits:
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/42166/toyota-suspends-all-e-palette-autonomous-service-following-pedestrian-crash

12 Year Old Makes $400,000 Selling NFT Art

A 12-year-old boy from London has made about £290,000 during the school holidays, after creating a series of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs). With NFTs, artwork can be "tokenised" to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought and sold. They do not generally give the buyer the actual artwork or its copyright. Benyamin Ahmed is keeping his earnings in the form of Ethereum - the crypto-currency in which they were sold. This means they could go up or down in value and there is no back-up from the authorities if the digital wallet in which he is holding them is hacked or compromised. He has never had a traditional bank account.

"It was a little bit of a fun exercise - but I picked up on really early that they were really receptive to it and they were really good," Imran said. "So then we started getting a little bit more serious - and now it's every single day... but you can't cram this stuff, you can't say I'm going to learn coding in three months." The boys did 20 or 30 minutes of coding exercises a day - including on holiday, he said. Weird Whales is Benyamin's second digital-art collection, following an earlier Minecraft-inspired set that sold less well. This time, he drew inspiration from a well known pixelated whale meme image and a popular digital-art style but used his own program to create the set of 3,350 emoji-type whales. The art world is divided over the current trend for NFTs. Artists say they are a useful additional line of revenue. And there are many stories of eye-wateringly high sales. But there is also scepticism over whether they are a realistic long-term investment.



Credits:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58343062

Mars Rover Sends Back Stunning Photos

A new video rings in the rover’s ninth year on Mars, letting viewers tour Curiosity’s location on a Martian mountain. Images of knobbly rocks and rounded hills are delighting scientists as NASA’s Curiosity rover climbs Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) basin of Mars’ Gale Crater. The rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, highlights those features in a panorama captured on July 3, 2021 (the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission). Curiosity landed nine years ago, on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT), to study whether different Martian environments could have supported microbial life in the planet’s ancient past, when lakes and groundwater existed within Gale Crater.

This location is particularly exciting: Spacecraft orbiting Mars show that Curiosity is now somewhere between a region enriched with clay minerals and one dominated by salty minerals called sulfates. The mountain’s layers in this area may reveal how the ancient environment within Gale Crater dried up over time. Similar changes are seen across the planet, and studying this region up close has been a major long-term goal for the mission. “The rocks here will begin to tell us how this once-wet planet changed into the dry Mars of today, and how long habitable environments persisted even after that happened,” said Abigail Fraeman, Curiosity’s deputy project scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.



Credits:
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9016/nasas-curiosity-mars-rover-explores-a-changing-landscape/?site=msl

Stanford University to be 100% Solar by 2022

Stanford will be powered entirely by solar energy by next summer, making it one of the most energy-efficient research universities in the world. Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI) has been working on Stanford’s transition to renewable energy for the past decade. Its original goal of going 100% solar by late 2021 was delayed by a year due to supply-chain shortages as well as a fire that destroyed a part of the first solar generating station. Currently, the University ranks within the top 10 colleges for using the most renewable energy. Stanford is also positioned “to become the first research university to use 100% renewable electricity, according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE),” Lincoln Bleveans, the executive director of Sustainability and Energy Management at Stanford, wrote.

The University’s early solar installations consisted of 5-megawatt rooftop solar panels in 2015 and its first solar generating station in 2016. Stanford Solar Generating Station #1, near Rosamond, Calif., produces 67 megawatts of solar-generated electricity, covering 65% of Stanford’s daytime electricity needs. Stanford signed a contract with Recurrent Energy — a company dedicated to providing clean electricity through solar panels — in 2018 to create its second solar generating station in Kings County. This addition will cover the rest of their electricity needs, according to Land, Buildings and Real Estate vice president Robert Reidy. The University’s power purchase agreement with Recurrent Energy will be in effect for the next 35 years.



Credits:
https://news.stanford.edu/2016/12/05/stanford-unveils-innovative-solar-generating-station/

Facebook Blocks "Friends" List for Afganistan Users

Facebook’s head of security policy said the company is putting into place security measures for users in Afghanistan, including hiding “friends” lists and adding a tool to quickly lock down accounts. Nathaniel Gleicher said in a thread on Twitter that Facebook made the changes based on feedback from activists, journalists, and civil society groups. As the Taliban have regained control of the country over the past week, the group has found ways to push its messages on social media, despite being banned by YouTube and Facebook. NBC News reported Friday that people in Afghanistan fearful of the Taliban were deleting from their social media accounts and phones any photos that could show a connection to Western countries, the former Afghan government, or the Afghan military.

People in Afghanistan will now have access to a one-click tool to lock down their Facebook accounts. “When their profile is locked, people who aren’t their friends can’t download or share their profile photo or see posts on their timeline,” Gleicher explained. It’s also removed the ability for users to view and search “Friends” lists for Facebook accounts in Afghanistan, to protect people from being targeted, he added. On Facebook-owned Instagram, Gleicher said, the company is adding pop-up alerts in Afghanistan that include steps for protecting accounts. He also urged people with friends and family in Afghanistan to tighten their own visibility settings.

Credits:
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/8/20/22634209/facebook-hides-friends-lists-instagram-safety-afghanistan-taliban-security?__twitter_impression=true

Arizona's Water Shortage Could Impact Intel and TSMC Manufacturing Plants

U.S. semiconductor giant Intel announced in March that it plans to spend $20 billion on two new chip plants in Arizona. Separately, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) said it was going to build a $12 billion factory in Arizona, and chief executive C.C. Wei said Wednesday that construction had already begun. The Grand Canyon State may not, however, seem like the most obvious place for a chip “foundry” or “fab” since the high-tech manufacturing plants guzzle millions of gallons of water every day. At present, in the face of climate change, Arizona is facing a deepening water crisis and some of the state’s all-important aquifers have an uncertain future. Arizona received just 13.6 inches of rainfall on average per year between 1970 and 2000, according to the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, making it the fourth driest state nationwide.

“Water is a key element in semi manufacturing, but the infrastructure has been put in place [in Arizona] to ensure adequate supply to meet the industry’s current needs,” Alan Priestley, vice president analyst at tech research firm Gartner. A factory or “fab” for making semiconductors needs a lot of water to operate. It’ll guzzle between 2 to 4 million gallons of water a day by some estimates, using the water to cool down equipment and clean silicon wafers. That’s about as much water as 13,698 to 27,397 Arizona residents might use in a day. Fabs are also pretty picky when it comes to water quality, they need to use “ultra-pure” water to prevent any impurities from damaging the chips.

Credits:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-water-dependent-chip-plants-in-arizona.html

T-Mobile Hit with Third Data Breach Attack in 3 years

T-Mobile said in an update on its latest data breach issued Wednesday that the personal data of more than 40 million customers was stolen by hackers. The data, which belonged to former and prospective customers, included names, dates of birth, driver's license details and social security numbers. In addition, the company said that the hackers had swiped data belonging to approximately 7.8 million current postpaid customers. It also confirmed that 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customer names, phone numbers and account PINs were exposed.

The breach, which was first reported Sunday, is one of at least four to hit the mobile carrier since 2015. On this occasion, Vice reported that a seller on an underground forum was offering to sell the customer data for 6 Bitcoin (approximately $277,000). T-Mobile later confirmed it had been the victim of a cyberattack, and has now been investigating how many customers were affected for several days. The company said in a press release that it was taking immediate steps to help protect affected customers and has been coordinating with law enforcement.



Credits:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/t-mobile-confirms-hackers-stole-details-of-48-million-people-in-data-breach/

All Girls Robotics Team in Afganistan in Jeopardy

Afghanistan’s all-girls robotics team, which made headlines in recent years for their inventions, is desperately trying to escape the country after the Taliban took control of the capital city of Kabul over the weekend. “They’re worried about what tomorrow brings. They want to continue to be educated. They want to continue to be the future of Afghanistan. But it’s an extremely tenuous and dangerous situation for them,” human rights lawyer Kimberley Motley told CBC on Sunday. Motley explained that Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had been an “amazing supporter” of the girls, and met with them in 2018. Motley would like Canada to get the girls out of Afghanistan safely and presumably give them refugee status, something the country has promised 20,000 other vulnerable Afghans.

The 20-member robotics team, which includes girls ranging in age from 12 to 18 years old, were hailed in western media as the future of Afghanistan and a shining example of how women’s rights in the country had improved after the U.S. invasion. But the U.S. withdrawal has thrown the future of Afghanistan into doubt, as the Taliban took control of Kabul on Sunday without firing a single shot. “Unfortunately, what’s been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has been literally going from door to door and literally taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides. And we are very, very concerned of that happening with this Afghan girls robotics team—these girls that want to be engineers, they want to be in the AI community and they dare to dream to succeed,” Motley said.

The team captured headlines in March of 2020 for building ventilators for COVID patients out of old car parts. 

Credits:
https://gizmodo.com/afghanistans-all-girls-robotics-team-desperate-to-escap-1847492243

3D printed Bridge

If you thought 3D-printing is cool, wait till you see where you can take them if you happen to be in Amsterdam. Earlier this month, engineers installed the world's first 3D-printed steel bridge, over the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal in Amsterdam. After being dedicated by Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, the bridge is now open to pedestrians and cyclists. Physical construction of the bridge took four giant, torch-wielding robots six months to complete, layer by painstaking layer, using a net total of 4.9 tons of steel. However, before that process began, scientists at Dutch company MX3D spent four years on preliminary research and development to make sure the finished product would be sound.

To ensure that soundness continues, the bridge is infused with a myriad of sensors detecting stress, movement, vibration and temperature. Data collected from all those sensors is relayed to a digital twin of the bridge -- a virtual bridge simulated on a computer -- which will help scientists monitor the structure. Once the territory of tech-savvy hobbyists, 3D-printing has found a wide variety of industrial applications in recent years. In 2020, a California company developed a process for 3D-printing 350-square-foot homes in less than 24 hours. And throughout the pandemic, 3D printing was investigated as a way to fill the gaps left from shortages of medical supplies.



Wanna see my car?

Credits:
https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/worlds-first-3d-printed-steel-bridge-opens-to-pedestrians-in-amsterdam/?__twitter_impression=true

Ford Drives Mustang Mach E Coast to Coast

Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn reports strong demand for the Mustang Mach-E, and 70 percent of customers who ordered the vehicle are new to Ford. To help drive sales, Ford is now taking the Mustang Mach-E across America to demonstrate the capability and technology of the all-electric SUV. The Ocean to Ocean Reimagined campaign showcases what the all-electric Mustang Mach-E can do with product experiences along the way to demonstrate its style and features. In total, the all-electric SUV will drive nearly 6,500 miles across 20 states in a span of 50 days.

On June 1, 1909, Henry Ford entered two factory Model T cars in the first U.S.-based transcontinental road race. Beginning in New York City, the race tested the endurance and capability of a relatively new technology — the automobile. Twenty-three days and 4,106 miles later, Ford Model T No. 2 crossed the finish line at the Seattle World’s Fair. A re-creation of that winning Model T will lead the two Mustang Mach-E SUVs out of New York and escort them to the finish line in Seattle. A Ford spokesman said, “Ocean to Ocean Reimagined is helping to amplify awareness around Mustang Mach-E and what it can do. We hope this coast-to-coast journey — much like the original Ocean to Ocean race commissioned by Henry Ford in 1909 — becomes a truly unique, exhilarating, and entertaining chapter in the Ford and Mustang story.”



Credits:
https://www.dbusiness.com/daily-news/ford-takes-mustang-mach-e-across-america-in-recreation-of-model-t-race-in-1909/

FCC Chair Suggests Big Tech Should Pay for Broadband

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr says it's time that Big Tech companies, like Amazon, Facebook and Google, which have reaped huge fortunes from the internet, pay their fair share to help the federal government fund its efforts to close the digital divide. In an op-ed published in Newsweek last week, Carr outlined a new approach for funding the FCC's Universal Service Fund, which provides money the federal government uses to help subsidize the build-out of broadband in rural areas, phone and broadband service for low-income Americans, and internet access for schools and libraries.

In a follow-up interview with CNET on Friday, Carr said companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Netflix have been enjoying a free ride on the internet infrastructure, while millions of Americans have been paying what amounts to an additional tax on their telephone bills for broadband service. "It's time for Big Tech to pay its fair share," Carr said. Carr's proposal, which has its share of critics, upends the current funding model for the USF, which relies on contributions that telephone companies pay based upon revenue they generate from long-distance and international phone service. FCC rules allow these companies to pass on these costs to consumers on their monthly bills in the form of a tax.

As more consumers move away from traditional telephony for long-distance calling in favor of broadband-based services, the contribution has steadily ballooned to more than 30% of long-distance and international revenue in the first quarter of 2021. The problem is exacerbated as the need for the USF subsidy increases, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Joe Biden has proposed $100 billion in federal funding to get broadband to every American.

Credits:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/368943

Twitter Crowd-sources AI Bias Detection

In May, Twitter said that it would stop using an artificial intelligence algorithm found to favor white and female faces when auto-cropping images. Now, an unusual contest to scrutinize an AI program for misbehavior has found that the same algorithm, which identifies the most important areas of an image, also discriminates by age and weight, and favors text in English and other Western languages. The top entry, contributed by Bogdan Kulynych, a graduate student in computer security at EPFL in Switzerland, shows how Twitter's image-cropping algorithm favors thinner and younger-looking people. Kulynych used a deepfake technique to auto-generate different faces, and then tested the cropping algorithm to see how it responded. "Basically, the more thin, young, and female an image is, the more it's going to be favored," says Patrick Hall, principal scientist at BNH, a company that does AI consulting. He was one of four judges for the contest.

Bogdan Kulynyc won $3,500 in this contest to find biases in its cropping algorithm. Mr Kulynyc, a graduate student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne's Security and Privacy Engineering Laboratory, discovered the "saliency" of a face in an image could be increased - making it less likely to be hidden by the cropping algorithm - by "making the person's skin lighter or warmer and smoother; and quite often changing the appearance to that of a younger, more slim, and more stereotypically feminine person". Awarding him first prize, Twitter said his discovery showed beauty filters could be used to game the algorithm and "how algorithmic models amplify real-world biases and societal expectations of beauty".

Credits:
https://www.wired.com/story/twitters-photo-cropping-algorithm-favors-young-thin-females/

Casino Hacked ... Thru it's Fishtank Thermostat

Hackers are a resourceful bunch, and they'll look for any weakness that can be exploited to break in to a computer network. Once they're in, they'll use any available method to get the data they discover out. Here's one of the most unconventional: a fish tank. Not just an ordinary fish tank, mind you, but a fairly high-tech one that featured Internet connectivity. That connection allowed the tank to be remotely monitored, automatically adjust temperature and salinity, and automate feedings. It also allowed hackers to swipe 10 gigabytes of data from the North American casino that just installed it, according to a report from the threat intelligence experts at Darktrace.

The data had already been flowing by the time Darktrace was called in. Once the company's software was monitoring activity, the tank's unusual activity was spotted almost immediately. The tank's communications with the casino's network appeared normal enough. The data it was pumping through to the outside was highly suspect. It was the only casino system that ever sent data to the remote server in Finland that it was communicating with. It also did so using protocols that are normally used for streaming audio or video. Many of the connected devices for sale today are seriously lacking when it comes to security. They're under constant attack from the moment they're hooked up to the Internet and can fall under hacker control within minutes.



Credits:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2017/07/27/criminals-hacked-a-fish-tank-to-steal-data-from-a-casino/?sh=6fabb89e32b9