Lifeboat Foundation

In 1903, the Wright brothers invented the first successful airplane. By 1914, just over a decade after its successful test, aircraft would be used in combat in World War I, with capabilities including reconnaissance, bombing and aerial combat. This has been categorized by most historians as a revolution in military affairs. The battlefield, which previously included land and sea, now included the sky, permanently altering the way wars are fought. With the new technology came new strategy, policy, tactics, procedures and formations.

Twenty years ago, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) were much less prevalent and capable. Today, their threat potential and risk profile have increased significantly. UASs are becoming increasingly more affordable and capable, with improved optics, greater speed, longer range and increased lethality.

The U.S. has long been a proponent of utilizing unmanned aircraft systems, with the MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1 Predator excelling in combat operations, and smaller squad-based UASs being fielded, such as the RQ-11 Raven and the Switchblade. While the optimization of friendly UAS capability can yield great results on the battlefield, adversarial use of unmanned aircraft systems can be devastating.

Boston Dynamics gets into AI.

SEOUL/CAMBRIDGE, MA, August 12, 2022 – Hyundai Motor Group (the Group) today announced the launch of Boston Dynamics AI Institute (the Institute), with the goal of making fundamental advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and intelligent machines. The Group and Boston Dynamics will make an initial investment of more than $400 million in the new Institute, which will be led by Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics.

As a research-first organization, the Institute will work on solving the most important and difficult challenges facing the creation of advanced robots. Elite talent across AI, robotics, computing, machine learning and engineering will develop technology for robots and use it to advance their capabilities and usefulness. The Institute’s culture is designed to combine the best features of university research labs with those of corporate development labs while working in four core technical areas: cognitive AI, athletic AI, organic hardware design as well as ethics and policy.

Continue reading “Hyundai Motor Group Launches Boston Dynamics AI Institute to Spearhead Advancements in Artificial Intelligence & Robotics” »

Over its 23-year lifetime, the station has been an important example of how Russia and the United States can work together despite being former adversaries. This cooperation has been especially significant as the countries’ relationship has deteriorated in recent years. While it remains unclear whether the Russians will follow through with this announcement, it does add significant stress to the operation of the most successful international cooperation in space ever. As a scholar who studies space policy, I think the question now is whether the political relationship has gotten so bad that working together in space has become impossible.

Russia operates six of the 17 modules of the ISS — including Zvezda, which houses the main engine system. This engine is vital to the station’s ability to remain in orbit and also to how it moves out of the way of dangerous space debris. Under the ISS agreements, Russia retains full control and legal authority over its modules.

It is currently unclear how Russia’s withdrawal will play out. Russia’s announcement speaks only to “after 2024.” Additionally, Russia did not say whether it would allow the ISS partners to take control of the Russian modules and continue to operate the station or whether it would require that the modules be shut down completely.

The sad truth is that our electricity markets currently lack the ability to accept the vast amounts of renewable energy capacity to meet state targets and corporate commitments to procure clean energy. A study by Princeton University found that high-voltage transmission capacity would need to expand by 60% to meet clean energy targets, representing billions of dollars in needed utility upgrades.

However, we can avoid much of this need by siting renewable resources closer to where they are needed – at the distribution level of the grid. In order to do so, we will need to take several key steps to solve major system barriers to expanding renewable energy on the grid. The good news is that with some policy improvements – some major and some minor – renewable energy capacity at the distribution level can meet needs without the long lead time required for larger, utility-scale resources.

In recent years, more vehicles include partially autonomous driving features, such as blind spot detectors, automatic braking and lane sensing, which are said to increase safety. However, a recent study by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin finds that some of that safety benefit may be offset by people driving more, thereby clogging up roads and exposing themselves to more potential crashes.

The study, published recently in Transportation Research Part A—Policy and Practice, found that drivers with one or more of these autonomous features reported higher miles traveled than those of similar profiles who didn’t have them. This is important, because miles traveled is one of the most—if not the most—significant predictor of crashes. The more you drive, the more likely you are to crash.

“What we showed, without any ambiguity in our results, is that after embracing autonomous features, people tend to drive more,” said Chandra Bhat, one of the authors on the project and professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. “There are certainly engineering benefits to these safety features, but they are offset to a good extent because people are driving more and exposed more.”

- IMAGINARY
ANTHEM: “Anthem of the Human empire“
same tune as “The Flag Parade” by John Williams from Star Wars Episode I

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While the University of Hawai’i has until 2028 to officially hand off its management duties to the group, locals like native activist Noe Noe Wong-Wilson are optimistic about the change. She and others note that it feels like policy makers are finally listening to Native Hawaiians’ voices regarding the stewardship and care of their own community.

“This is the first time with the new authority that cultural practitioners and community members will actually have seats in the governing organization,” says Wong-Wilson, who is the executive director of the Lālākea Foundation, a nonprofit Native Hawaiian cultural organization. Wong-Wilson, who is a member of the working group that helped develop the bill proposal, says that the choice to bring in people and ideas from all over the community is what helped make the new law a reality.

She adds that the law’s mutual stewardship model takes into account all human activities on the mountain, and is designed to help “protect Mauna Kea for future generations,” as Native Hawaiians believe the mountain is a sacred place—a part of their spirituality as well as their culture. But years of mismanagement has created a mistrust in the state’s stakeholders, which included the University and Hawaiian government officials, and deepened a rift between Indigenous culture and western science.

Microsoft has chosen to add specific security measures against brute force attacks against RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). These security improvements have been introduced in the most recent builds of Windows 11. Given the evolution of this type of attack abusing RDP, Microsoft decided to add the security measure in the latest Insider Preview22528.1000. This system automatically locks accounts for 10 minutes after 10 invalid login attempts. The news was broken by David Weston (VP of OS & Enterprise Security) on Twitter last week.

These kinds of attacks against RDP are quite common in human operated ransomware. With this relatively simple measure, it is possible to complicate brute force attacks, being quite effective in discouraging them. However, it was already possible to activate this measure in Windows 10, so the novelty is really enabling it by default.

Continue reading “Windows enables default account lockout policy for RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) to reduce ransomware attacks based on brute forcing RDP” »

Microsoft is now taking steps to prevent Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) brute-force attacks as part of the latest builds for the Windows 11 operating system in an attempt to raise the security baseline to meet the evolving threat landscape.

To that end, the default policy for Windows 11 builds – particularly, Insider Preview builds 22528.1000 and newer – will automatically lock accounts for 10 minutes after 10 invalid sign-in attempts.

“Win11 builds now have a DEFAULT account lockout policy to mitigate RDP and other brute-force password vectors,” David Weston, Microsoft’s vice president for OS security and enterprise, said in a series of tweets last week. “This technique is very commonly used in Human Operated Ransomware and other attacks — this control will make brute forcing much harder which is awesome!”