Geeky international news on technology, business and culture.
Want to spot a deepfake video caller? Ask the suspect to turn sideways
11 August 2022 @ 6:45 pm
Researchers have discovered a surprisingly simple way to detect deepfake video calls: ask the suspect to turn sideways. The trick was shared this week by Metaphysic.ai, a London-based startup behind the viral Tom Cruise deepfakes. The company used DeepFaceLive, a popular app for video deepfakes, to transform a volunteer into various celebrities. Most of the recreations were impressive when they looked straight-ahead. But once the faces rotated a full 90-degrees, the images became distorted and the spell was broken. The fakes fell apart at a sharp 90° profile. Credit: Metaphysic.ai The team believes the defects emerge because the software uses fewer…You can buy this flying car, but should you?
11 August 2022 @ 11:58 am
The idea of a car that turns into a plane in three minutes sounds like a dream. Imagine you’re driving along during peak hour. You get an alert of incoming traffic and shapeshift into an aircraft that takes to the skies, overtaking commuter delays, toll bridges, and construction delays — suck it, gridlock! But the reality of the flying car (aka air car) is a lot less spontaneous and a lot less flexible. And I’m here to burst your bubble following the news of Samson Sky’s successful FAA inspection. This week, after 14 years of design, R&D, and fundraising, Samson…A beginner’s guide to the AI apocalypse: The democratization of ‘expertise’
11 August 2022 @ 1:17 am
In this series we examine some of the most popular doomsday scenarios prognosticated by modern AI experts. Previous articles include Misaligned Objectives, Artificial Stupidity, Wall-E Syndrome, Humanity Joins the Hivemind, and Killer Robots. We’ve covered a lot of ground in this series (see above), but nothing comes close to our next topic. The “democratization of expertise” might sound like a good thing — democracy, expertise, what’s not to like? But it’s our intent to convince you that it’s the single greatest AI-related threat our species faces by the time you finish reading this article. In order to properly understand this, we’ll have to…UK government again plugs strike-busting dream of driverless subway trains
9 August 2022 @ 9:27 pm
It’s strike season on the London Underground, and that means one thing for the UK’s interminable Tory governments: time to rev-up the driverless hype train. Conservative politicians have long called for a fully-autonomous metro. In 2012, then-London Mayor Boris Johnson said Britain’s capital would have driverless trains within 10 years. A decade later, he claimed the switch would free people from being “prisoners of the unions.” The government reiterated the case during recent funding talks with Transport for London (TfL), which operates the local underground network. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps made working towards driverless trains a condition of the bailout. Shapps…Drones offer sustainable last-mile parcel delivery
9 August 2022 @ 3:50 pm
The future of last-mile package delivery is fast and contactless, with delivery providers focused on eliminating traffic and parking challenges. An increasingly prominent option is the use of uncrewed aerial vehicles or drones. This week research comparing the environmental impact of different forms of last-mile delivery was published in the scientific journal Patterns. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University compared the energy consumption of quadcopter drones against diesel and electric medium-duty trucks, small vans, and electric cargo bicycles on a per-package basis. They found that greenhouse-gas emissions per parcel were 84% lower for drones than for diesel trucks. Unsurprisingly, drones consumed…Crypto fans are paying more for NFT cars than real ones
9 August 2022 @ 2:07 pm
Say you had millions of dollars to spend. If you’re an automotive enthusiast, perhaps you’d buy the latest Ferrari or a 1956 Aston Martin. But would you spend an exorbitant amount for a car you can’t physically drive? It may sound illogical, but research by Vanarama shows people are digging deep into their pockets to buy car-related NFTs. This means that they own the cars’ digital rendering (although anyone can view and download it), but they’ll never get to lay a single hand on the vehicle. In fact, as per the study, buyers are willing to pay even more for…Thi5 ways to identify job phishing schemes
9 August 2022 @ 12:25 pm
Have you ever been catfished? Maybe you’ve met someone on a dating app and decided to go for a coffee or a drink, but when you showed up, the person looked nothing like their profile pictures. Unfortunately, this kind of deception is such a part of dating in 2022 that we’ve almost come to accept it. But that kind of deceit would never happen in a professional setting… would it? By now, you’ve probably heard about the Madbird job scam that hit the news back in February. Madbird was advertised as a British-based design agency run by a charismatic and…This storThe future of dark matter research will ultimately be decided by politicians
8 August 2022 @ 5:53 pm
Experts believe some 80-percent of the universe could be made up of a mysterious substance called “dark matter.” Some even think there’s an entire group of particles forming a “dark sector” that could be as complex as the matter and antimatter families. Unfortunately, the quest to finally observe dark matter is hitting a wall. Simply put we need more particle colliders. And whether they get built is, seemingly, completely up to the powers-that-be in the European and US political arenas. Cash rules everything The development of particle colliders has been one of humankind’s most expensive scientific endeavors. However, they haven’t…This startup wants you to test its latest flying machine
8 August 2022 @ 3:48 pm
In an effort to bring personal flying machines to the skies, French inventor and former jet-ski champion Franky Zapata is taking invites for people to try out his latest flying machine – the JetRacer. Meet the JetRacer The JetRacer is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft powered by ten kerosene-fueled micro-turbo-jet engines. The Zapata JetRacer Controlled by two joysticks, it’s capable of a high degree of maneuverability, with a video of Zapata flipping and turning the aircraft at speed while flying over water. Not Zapata’s first rodeo Zapata crossing the English Channel Zapata’s had a long history with…This skin-like computing chip uses AI to monitor health data
8 August 2022 @ 1:41 pm
What if wearable electronics could monitor your health and detect diseases even before symptoms appear? That’s exactly the vision of Sihong Wang and his research team at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME). “With this work we’ve bridged wearable technology with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a powerful device which can analyze health data right on our own bodies,” Wang says. The assistant professor and his team envision a future where wearable biosensors can track indicators of health, including sugar, oxygen, and metabolites in people’s blood. With this purpose in mind, they have developed…
Getting a bandage to stick to your skin can sometimes be difficult, particularly if that skin is wet. This isn't a problem with an experimental new wound dressing however, which uses ultrasound-induced microbubbles to better bond with the skin.Continue ReadingCategory: Medical, ScienceTags: Dressings, 
In wastewater produced by the textile industry and others, dye is one of the primary pollutants. A newly developed synthetic polymer is capable of removing that dye from the water, plus it can be cleaned up and reused to treat more wastewater.Continue ReadingCategory: Materials, ScienceTags: 
While the farming of salmon does help take pressure off wild stocks, the feed used to raise the fish still isn't entirely sustainably sourced. That may change, however, thanks to nutrient-rich worms that eat readily available seaweed.Continue ReadingCategory: Good Thinking, LifestyleTags: SINTEF, 
The Flit-16 folding ebike launched on Kickstarter back in 2019 is now on general sale as the upgraded Commuter Edition, which we got to ride and fold, roll along and then unfold and ride for a few days earlier in the month.Continue ReadingCategory: Bicycles, TransportTags: City
Some fusion projects aim to create hundred-million degree working temperatures in magnetically confined plasma. The CEO of TAE Technologies tells us his team's aiming for 10 times that temperature, targeting cheaper, easier and safer boron fuel.Continue ReadingCategory: Energy, ScienceTags: 
After 150 years sitting silently in a museum, a strange specimen has now sung its song once more. Scientists have digitally recreated the sound of a long-lost species of insect, not seen since 1869, by creating 3D scans of its wings. The specifics of the tune could help track down living specimens in the wild – if there are any left.Continue ReadingCategory: ScienceTags: 
The truck cap (aka camper shell) has long provided a way of covering and securing a pickup bed, doubling as a light hard-wall camper for those who don't mind keeping it simple. More recently, these caps have given way to a new generation of pop-up pickup toppers, lightweight campers that attach like caps but offer more space and in-vehicle living potential. At least one company believes there's room for further differentiation. Denver's Radica Products has designed the Moonlander to split the difference between cap and pop-up topper, creating a fixed-roof shell that offers more camping elbow room than a cap without all 
To learn about the future of Earth’s climate we can look to the past, and one of the best ways to do that is with samples drilled from deep ice cores. Now, scientists have dated what may be the world’s oldest ice core, with some sections potentially preserving samples as old as 5 million years.Continue ReadingCategory: Environment, ScienceTags: 
A polio vaccine booster program has been announced in the United Kingdom targeting all London children under the age of 10. The program comes after more detections of poliovirus in London’s wastewater indicate the virus is spreading undetected throughout the city.Continue ReadingCategory: Health & Wellbeing, 
Following last month's introduction of the new Chevrolet Colorado, GM has debuted that truck's gussied-up cousin, the third-generation GMC Canyon. Headlining the tough, new Canyon lineup, the all-new AT4X follows in the footsteps of the Colorado ZR2 and Sierra AT4X in upping its off-road capability. It supports contemporary explorers with a specialized off-road suspension, skid plates galore, and an available winch for self-rescuing out of jams in remote corners even the local wildlife doesn't visit.
With early computers, you didn't boot up to a fancy schmancy desktop, or a screen full of apps you could easily poke and prod with your finger. No, those computers booted up to the command
On an
Websites have gotten a lot
Mysterious hooded computer guys doing mysterious hooded computer guy .. things! Who knows what kind of naughty digital mischief they might be up to?
Unfortunately, we now live in a world where this kind of digital mischief is literally rewriting the world's history. For proof