Tech Today w/ Ken May

Here’s a full-length look at SpaceX’s spacesuit

Elon Musk dropped a carefully cropped look at the SpaceX suit for astronauts on his Instagram a couple of weeks ago, and came back with a more revealing picture today. Modeled in front of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft , it gives a better idea of what we might be able to expect. It’s far sleeker than what we’ve seen in use from NASA until now, and as Musk noted previously, it apparently actually works. The flexible, padded joint areas look like they’ll give wearers a good range of motion, while the boots are relatively lightweight. That’s not surprising since, as TechCrunch notes, these are for use while inside the Dragon capsule or transferring to other vehicles where the environment is pressurized, not a long walk in the cold vacuum of space. There’s no word on when we’ll get our next pre-Mars trip fashion show, so enjoy this pic for now. Astronaut spacesuit next to Crew Dragon A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Sep 8, 2017 at 1:04pm PDT Source: Elon Musk (Instagram)

Equifax tries to explain its response to a massive security breach

A day after announcing that hackers stole personal information tied to 143 million people in the US , Equifax’s response to the breach has come under scrutiny. Language on the website where people could find out if they were affected seemed to say that by signing up they would waive any right to join a class action suit against the company — something New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said is “unacceptable and unenforceable.” The company has since explained it does not apply to the data breach at all, but that hasn’t stopped misinformation from spreading. After conversations w my office, @Equifax has clarified its policy re: arbitration. We are continuing to closely review. pic.twitter.com/WcPZ9OqMcL — Eric Schneiderman (@AGSchneiderman) September 8, 2017 Equifax: In response to consumer inquiries, we have made it clear that the arbitration clause and class action waiver included in the Equifax and TrustedID Premier terms of use does not apply to this cybersecurity incident, Of course, considering the extent of what has leaked and the number of people affected, a hyperbolic reaction to anything surrounding this incident is understandable. Still, there are a few steps that people can and should take, now that we know someone has stolen more than enough information to perpetrate identity theft on a massive scale. Now that the language has been clarified, it appears legally clear to use Equifax’s website to check things out. Among Engadget staff, a few of us received notices that we aren’t among those impacted, but most weren’t so lucky. Still, there are questions about how secure the site itself is, since it requests the last six digits of each person’ social security number (and guessing first three isn’t as hard as you might think). Also, it doesn’t appear to work particularly well , responding to test and “gibberish” input with a claim that it’s part of the breach also. The best information on how to respond is available from the FTC . The government agency lays out solid next steps, like checking your credit report for any suspicious entries, as well as placing a freeze (there’s more advice on that here ) and/or fraud alert on your account with the major credit bureaus. This will make it harder for a thief to create a fake account for you and should force creditors to verify your identity. Finally, it’s important to file your taxes early, before a scammer potentially can. Source: Equifax , FTC

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Equifax tries to explain its response to a massive security breach

AI Can Detect Sexual Orientation Based On Person’s Photo

ugen shares a report from CNBC: Artificial Intelligence (AI) can now accurately identify a person’s sexual orientation by analyzing photos of their face, according to new research. The Stanford University study, which is set to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and was first reported in The Economist, found that machines had a far superior “gaydar” when compared to humans. Slashdot reader randomlygeneratename adds: Researchers built classifiers trained on photos from dating websites to predict the sexual orientation of users. The best classifier used logistic regression over features extracted from a VGG-Face conv-net. The latter was done to prevent overfitting to background, non-facial information. Classical facial feature extraction also worked with a slight drop in accuracy. From multiple photos, they achieved an accuracy of 91% for men and 83% for women (and 81% / 71% for a single photo). Humans were only able to get 61% and 54%, respectively. One caveat is the paper mentions it only used Caucasian faces. The paper went on to discuss how this capability can be an invasion of privacy, and conjectured that other types of personal information might be detectable from photos. The source paper can be found here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube HDR is available for a bunch of new phones

The Galaxy S8 will already play Netflix in high-dynamic range video, and now the handset (and its cousin, the Note 8 ) is the home for YouTube HDR. Reddit users have had access to the update since yesterday at resolutions up to 1140p60, while SamMobile reports that the publication can only access 1080p60. On our office S8, we’ve seen 1440p60. Google tells us that the Pixel , LG V30 , Sony Xperia XZ Premium have gotten the update as well. More than that, the search juggernaut is working to bring it to even more devices. Via: Reddit , SamMobile , The Verge

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YouTube HDR is available for a bunch of new phones

Canada’s new radio telescope starts mapping the universe

On September 7th, an extraordinarily powerful radio telescope in Canada has begun listening to the sounds of the universe. The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment or CHIME will help scientists learn more about the history of the cosmos, radio bursts from pulsars and gravitational waves, the ripples in spacetime whose existence were finally confirmed by scientists in 2016. CHIME looks like a collection of four 100-meter-long skateboarding halfpipes, but they weren’t made for anybody to skate on. They were built over the past seven years to hear very weak signals from the universe and to gather one terabyte of information per second all day, every day. That means it’s constantly creating and updating a massive 3D map of space. When the 50 Canadian scientists from the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, McGill University and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) started conceptualizing the project, there was no system that could handle that amount of information. Thanks to advances in video game hardware, the system now exists. Since 1 TB per second is pretty insane, CHIME compresses the info it gathers by a factor of 100, 000 first before saving files on disks. Now that it’s up and working, CHIME is ready to work towards achieving its primary goal: measuring the acceleration of the universe’s expansion. An accurate measurement of the expansion will help scientists figure out what causes it, whether it’s actually the mysterious form of energy that’s believed to be permeating space called ” dark energy ” or something else. By extension, the telescope’s data could one day confirm if dark energy truly exists. University of British Columbia’s Dr. Mark Halpern explains: “With the CHIME telescope we will measure the expansion history of the universe and we expect to further our understanding of the mysterious dark energy that drives that expansion ever faster. This is a fundamental part of physics that we don’t understand and it’s a deep mystery. This is about better understanding how the universe began and what lies ahead.” Source: CHIME

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Canada’s new radio telescope starts mapping the universe

Equifax waited 5 weeks to admit it had doxed 44% of America, did nothing to help us while its execs sold stock

From mid-May to July 2017, Equifax exposed the financial and personal identifying information of 143 million Americans — 44% of the country — to hackers, who made off with credit-card details, Social Security Numbers, sensitive credit history data, driver’s license numbers, birth dates, addresses, and then, in the five weeks between discovering the breach and disclosing it, the company allowed its top execs to sell millions of dollars’ worth of stock in the company , while preparing a risibly defective and ineffective website that provides no useful information to the people whom Equifax has put in grave financial and personal danger through their recklessness. (more…)

Google Drive Faces Outage, Users Report [Update]

Numerous Slashdot readers are reporting that they are facing issues access Google Drive, the productivity suite from the Mountain View-based company. Google’s dashboard confirms that Drive is facing outage. Third-party web monitoring tool DownDetector also reports thousands of similar complaints from users. The company said, “Google Drive service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. Google Drive is not loading files and results in a failures for a subset of users.” Update: 09/07 17:13 GMT: Google says it has resolved the issue. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Drive Faces Outage, Users Report [Update]

Squid ink could make your dentist visits much less painful

Your dentist visits could become a pleasant pain-free experience, and it’s all thanks to squids . A team of engineers from the University of California San Diego have developed an imaging method using squid ink and ultrasound to check for gum disease. If you’ve ever had to get your mouth checked for gum issues, you know what I’m talking about: the current method to assess gum health involves inserting a periodontal probe’s metal hook in between your gums and teeth. Sometimes, depending on the dentist’s technique your pain tolerance, it hurts. The team’s method eliminates the need for probing — you simply need to gargle some food-grade squid ink mixed with water and cornstarch. Squid ink is rich in melanin nanoparticles, and those get trapped in the pockets between your teeth and gums. When a dentist shines a laser onto your mouth, the nanoparticles swell and create pressure differences in the gum pockets. That’s where the ultrasound part of the imaging method comes in. Ultrasound can detect those pockets, so dentists can create a full map of your mouth, like this: [Image credit: Jokerst Bioimaging Lab at UC San Diego. Ultrasound image of the teeth is in black and white. The photoacoustic signal from the squid ink contrast agent in the pocket depth is in red and signals from stains on the teeth are in blue. ] The result shows how deep those pockets are, which indicate gum health. That’s why dentists stick a probe in those pockets to begin with — if they’re only one to two millimeters in depth, it means your gums are healthy. Anything deeper than that is a sign of gum disease, and the deeper those pockets are, the worse the issue is. Problem is, the results of periodontal probing depend on the amount of pressure a dentist uses and the area he’s probing. He could be probing the wrong location or putting too little or too much pressure. Jesse Jokerst, the study’s senior author likened the periodontal probe to “examining a dark room with just a flashlight” wherein “you can only see one area at a time.” He said that their method is more like “flipping on all the light switches so you can see the entire room all at once, ” leading to more accurate findings. The engineers have big plans for their creation, starting with replacing the lasers in the method with more affordable LED lights. Their ultimate goal, however, is to create a mouthpiece that can instantly assess your gum health. They also want to get rid of the the squid ink concoction’s salty and bitter taste, though I’ll take than any day over painful probing. Source: UC San Diego

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Squid ink could make your dentist visits much less painful

Judge won’t release man jailed 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives

Enlarge Francis Rawls A man jailed for two years for refusing to decrypt his hard drives must remain confined while he appeals his contempt-of-court order to the US Supreme Court, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Francis Rawls, a fired Philadelphia cop, has been behind bars since September 30, 2015 for declining a judicial order to unlock two hard drives that authorities found at his residence as part of a child-porn investigation. After a two-year failed effort to convince the lower courts that his confinement amounted to a Fifth Amendment violation of his constitutional right against compelled self-incrimination, his lawyers asked a Pennsylvania federal judge if Rawls could be released pending the outcome of a forthcoming appeal to the US Supreme Court. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Judge won’t release man jailed 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives

Juno’s breathtaking images of Jupiter

The Juno probe is recording incredible image data of Jupiter . Not least are the new aurora studies that are shaking up what we know of the planet’s extreme weather systems . But it’s the sheer painterly beauty of the world, up-close, that is most breathtaking . And then there’s actual paintings, too …

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Juno’s breathtaking images of Jupiter