GOOD NEWS: America’s Worst Phone -- the Moto Z Droid -- Just Got Worse

A huge Samsung Galaxy Note fan, my desire for acquiring an updated version last year was quashed by the fear of exploding batteries, FAA bans, and scorched kitschkes. Over at the local phone joint, an enterprising sales-dude convinced me that the Moto Z was a worthy replacement. Battery life, an exceptional camera, great screen resolution, and a hardiness bordering on total indestructability were his claims.

I surrendered to the sales pitch, albeit without my usual, paranoiac levels of due diligence.

This man was a liar. His lies were so obvious that Politifact and Snopes would have rated his statements "Mostly True".

After a year of usage -- and two replacement phones of the same ilk -- I can now definitively state that the Moto Z is the worst smartphone of all time. Congratulations! I've given this prestigious award not based upon one or two characteristics, but a whole litany of "attributes" (I'd call them product features, but they're almost certainly practical jokes introduced by engineers competing to see who could write the most production code while drunk and high).

Please consider:

Schumer Wants New Smartphone Gun Investigated

The loathsome gargoyle known as Chuck Schumer despises the idea of self-defense. Except, of course, when it comes to his own self-defense.

Capitalism, science and technology do not favor the statist.

The confluence of social networking, 3D scanning, 3D printing, nanotechnology, and advanced cryptography -- to name but a few -- mean that designing, building and sharing advanced weaponry will be as easy as buying a cheese-grater at Target.

The latest evidence? A firearm that bears an eerie resemblance to a smartphone:

Fun with Bitmoji

Bitmoji is a mobile app that lets you create your own cartoon-style avatar that oftentimes has an eerie resemblance to your real self. It happens to be blowing up at the moment -- a true viral success story. Rebecca Greenfield explains "Why Your Bitmoji Looks So Much Like Your Actual Face:"

The other day, I texted a friend my Bitmoji, a lookalike cartoon avatar I created using this app. "Wow," he said. "That actually looks strikingly like you." He isn't the first person to tell me the little brown-haired caricature looks eerily like my actual, human self—nor is mine the first Bitmoji to get that reaction. My friend Alex's Bitmoji looks like it ate him and stole his soul. When another friend texts me his emoji likeness, I get chills.

This phenomenon extends beyond my friend group. The app, launched in November, is "pretty amazingly popular," says Jacob "Ba" Blackstock, the CEO and creative director of Bitstrips (the maker of Bitmoji). Bitstrips would not provide specific download numbers, but said since launch people have shared tens of millions of Bitmoji...

The likeness is especially uncanny because making a personalized emoji using the app is such a subjective process. First, you pick a face shape, then skin tone, hair color, length, type, style, jaw shape, eyebrows, a mouth and so on. Before you know it, a cartoon version of you appears on your iPhone (or Android) screen...

Anyhow, here's my Bitmoji:

"The Only Way You Can Delete This NSA Malware Is to Smash Your Hard Drive to Bits"

A significant report by security vendor Kaspersky Labs reveals a range of highly sophisticated cyberwar tools likely deployed over the last decade by American intel agencies.

Most interesting of all is NLS_933W.DLL, which -- in my view -- represents the "Holy Grail" of malware.

The names called out like beacons from the screen: Samsung; Seagate; Western Digital; Hitachi; Maxtor. Hardware makers were in the crosshairs of the Equation APT group and it was perhaps the worst possible scenario imagined by researchers looking at the frightening and extensive storehouse of capabilities within the attack platform.

The only way to remove nls_933w.dll #TheSAS2015 #EquationAPT pic.twitter.com/zfVE1kKyha

— Fabio Assolini (@assolini) February 16, 2015

By extending its reach into hard drive firmware, for example, this espionage gang had perpetual persistence on compromised machines. No matter of clean-up efforts could scrub module nls_933w.dll from hardware. None.

“This is an ultimate persistence mechanism, and it has the ultimate resilience to removal. This is a next level of persistence never seen before,” said Vitaly Kamluk, principal security researcher with Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team...

Matthew Braga offers some additional detail:

GOT SKYNET? Legendary inventor Ray Kurweil's predictions for the next 25 years are a tad ominous

Ray Kurzweil is a legend in the scientific community, having pioneered the first text-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the CCD flatbed scanner, and the first large-scale voice recognition system. He's received 20 honorary doctorates and was appointed by Larry Page to lead artificial intelligence at Google.

In the new book BOLD by Peter Diamandis, Kurzweil reveals his predictions for the next 25 years. It's worth noting that an equivalent set of predictions, offered 25 years ago in 1990, turned out to be startlingly accurate (a computer would defeat the human chess champion by 1998, PC's would routinely operate over wireless networks by 2010, etc.).

By the late 2010s, glasses will beam images directly onto the retina. Ten terabytes of computing power (roughly the same as the human brain) will cost about $1,000.

By the 2020s, most diseases will go away as nanobots become smarter than current medical technology. Normal human eating can be replaced by nanosystems. The Turing test begins to be passable. Self-driving cars begin to take over the roads, and people won’t be allowed to drive on highways.

By the 2030s, virtual reality will begin to feel 100% real. We will be able to upload our mind / consciousness by the end of the decade.

By the 2040s, non-biological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than biological intelligence (a.k.a. us). Nanotech foglets will be able to make food out of thin air and create any object in physical world at a whim.

By 2045, we will multiply our intelligence a billionfold by linking wirelessly from our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud.

The meta-theme of Kurzweil's predictions is that of exponentiality, extremely rapid growth (e.g., in semiconductor density, computing power, ...) in the overarching capabilities of man's inventions.

Which makes me think of Skynet.

As the wise man said, "May you live in interesting times."


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

China Tests Ballistic Missile That Uses Guidance Technology Traded by Bill Clinton for Campaign Donations

By Investor's Business Daily

Defense: China has just tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver up to 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads, using technology given to them on President Clinton's watch to launch communications satellites.

The Dec. 13 test of the DF-41 was the third for the new weapon. But it marked the first test of a multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle, or MIRV, technology and raises by an order of magnitude the nuclear threat to the U.S. as China continues its massive arms buildup. And disturbingly, the threat is in large part of our own making.

"The DF-4, which could be deployed as early as 2015, may carry up to 10 MIRVs, and have a range as far as 7,456 miles, allowing it to target the entire continental United States," according to the latest report produced for Congress by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

"China could use MIRVs to deliver nuclear warheads on major U.S. cities and military facilities as a means of overwhelming (existing) U.S. ballistic missile defenses," the report added.

NET NEUTRALITY: Which set of crony capitalists do YOU prefer?

Net neutrality is not the simple "government intervention versus laissez-faire" debate so depicted by both Republicans and Democrats. Net neutrality, once you peel the onion, is really a dog-eat-dog battle between the incumbent cable/telephone monopolies (often referred to as "the duopoly") and Internet application providers, ranging from Google to the smallest start-ups.

Put simply, net neutrality pits one set of crony capitalists against another.

The question Americans need to ask is: which crony capitalists benefit consumers more: a second-generation Ma Bell monopoly or the entire ecosystem of Internet start-ups, the list of which would require an Access database to track.

In fact, net neutrality really involves a couple of fairly simple questions that require a deeper analysis than the 12-second soundbite that today's consumers often demand.

Should the cable-telephone duopoly be permitted to speed up and slow down the Internet traffic of different application providers in order to extract more revenue? Or should they instead be required to ask consumers to pay for faster bandwidth in an application-agnostic way?

The crony capitalists on the cable-telephone side insist that the government let them do what they want to application providers. This would allow Comcast, for instance, to slow down Netflix delivery to consumers so that either the video provider pays extra fees... or else. Further, Comcast could launch its own competitive video service while degrading Netflix.

Conversely, the crony capitalists among the Internet application providers -- from Google to Lyft -- want the government to ensure a level playing field. They believe that the likes of Comcast should not be allowed to pick-and-choose winners and losers; consumers should.

This begs the question:

Is Internet service a utility, like energy, water or sewer lines?

Given heavy lobbying by the duopoly at the local level, most American consumers have only one choice when it comes to high-speed Internet access. A relatively small percentage of households, even those in heavily populated areas, have only two distinct choices for Internet access.

The duopoly asserts that cable and telephone companies are simple, private entities and should not be regulated in regards to Internet traffic.

Alternatively, the Internet application community contends that Internet pipes are indeed a utility and deserve similar treatment.

What is the duopoly really after?

THE MOST SOPHISTICATED CYBER-WEAPON EVER DEVELOPED: New Stuxnet Details Revealed

Stuxnet is the name of the most sophisticated cyber-weapon ever developed. A software package designed to target Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, Stuxnet took control of centrifuges and surreptitiously slowed them down and sped them up to ruin both the centrifuges and the nuclear fuel.

The attack was so sophisticated that experts likened it to an F-35 fighter showing up over a World War I battlefield. Later leaks presumably orchestrated by the Obama administration revealed that Stuxnet was the product of a joint U.S.-Israeli operation initiated under the direction of President George W. Bush.

A new book reveals details about how the Stuxnet application penetrated Iranian enrichment facilities.

WICKED PICS: Navy Deploys First Laser Weapon

I must say: this looks like something out of Battlestar Galactica.

It's official: the US Navy has entered the future. Vice Admiral John Miller tells Bloomberg that the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport, has been using the Navy's Laser Weapon System (LaWS) in the Persian Gulf since late August.

EH, I THINK I'LL TAKE A RAIN CHECK: The solid gold Apple Watch could cost $5,000

Pass the Kleen-Ex, Tito: Ryan Whitwam has the bad news for the Apple fan-bois (and gurlz).

Apple pre-announced the much anticipated Apple Watch a few months ago, but neglected to discuss a price or exact launch date. Rumors are now pointing to a Valentine’s Day (February 14th) release in the US and a higher price than expected. The mid-tier stainless steel watch will sell for a somewhat high $500, but Apple will reportedly also offer the 18-karat gold “Apple Watch Edition” version for a whopping $5,000.

Any watch priced at $5,000 is a serious luxury item, and this device doesn’t even have all the intricate clockwork that watch enthusiasts love to geek out over. The rumored price is much higher than previous estimates based on similarly sized gold accessories. Jewelers estimated the gold watch could cost about $1,200. This version of the watch will also come with sapphire crystal and exclusive strap options. Still, that’s a lot to spend on a device that will be replaced with a new version in a year.

The entry-level Apple watch ("The Sport") is said to cost "only" $350.

Thanks, but I think I'll stick with my mechanical timepiece, which hasn't required a battery in -- oh -- about 25 years of continuous use.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech.

Okay, which one of you losers broke Twitter?

My world has just come crashing down.

Update: These guys are good. It's back up.

FireEye introduces Global Cyber Threat Map

Security firm FireEye recently introduced a threat map that, if nothing else, looks cool:

The ThreatMap data is a sample of real data collected from our two-way sharing customers for the past 30 days. The data represented in the map is malware communication to command and control (C2) servers, where the “Attackers” represent the location of the C2 servers and “Targets” represent customers.

To mask customer identity, locations are represented as the center of the country in which they reside. There is nothing in the data that can be used to identify a customer or their origin city. The “attacks today” counter is not a real time. Rather, we take a real, observed attack rate and then calculate attacks for the day based on local time.

Click here to check it out.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

A COMPACT FUSION REACTOR THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD FOREVER: Lockheed Martin Claims Breakthrough

William Pentland at Forbes relays word from Lockheed Martin that might truly be historic.

In the simplest terms, nuclear fission breaks a single atom into two whereas nuclear fusion combines two atoms into one.

Fusion, the holy grail of nuclear power, creates three to four times as much energy as fission. More importantly, fusion’s key advantage over fission is that it does not produce cancer-causing radioactive waste...

...Tom McGuire, who heads the project, told Reuters that his team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed’s Skunk Works program for the past four years, but decided to go public with the news now to recruit additional partners in industry and government to support their work.

Last year, while speaking at Google’s Solve for X program, Charles Chase , a research scientist at Skunk Works, described Lockheed’s effort to build a trailer-sized fusion power plant that turns cheap and plentiful hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) into helium plus enough energy to power a small city.

TECH QUOTE O' THE DAY: Was Windows 8 the Worst Operating System of All Time?

As a new user of Windows 8.1, I find myself nodding in agreement with this missive by Preston Gralla.

Is Windows 8 the worst operating system Microsoft has ever released? There are some bombs it has to compete against. Windows ME was laughably bad, and lasted only a little more than a year before Windows XP was released. But Windows ME's badness was nothing compared to the awfulness that was Windows Vista, a bug-ridden, hardware-unfriendly operating system with high-end system requirements and annoying features such as overly intrusive User Account Control.

Being worse than Windows Vista takes some work, but Windows 8 has proved to be up to the task. It forces users of traditional computers to wrangle with an operating system built for touchscreen tablets, and it bolts together two entirely different operating systems. Even Rube Goldberg would have been embarassed to sketch out something like this.

The consequences of Windows 8's problems will haunt Microsoft for far longer than Vista did. Windows 7 largely fixed what was wrong with Vista, and as a result Microsoft suffered no serious long-term losses because of it. Not so with Windows 8. Windows 8 came out at a time when Microsoft needed to make a splash with tablets. But because its tablets were forced to run an operating system built for both tablets and traditional computers, Windows 8 has never been a great tablet operating system. As a result, Microsoft fell behind even further in mobile.

DUDE: One Possible Replacement for the Hummer Makes the Batmobile Look as Tame as a Kia

Not that there's anything wrong with a Kia, mind you. Just that they're relatively... tame.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency last week posted a video of an advanced concept ground vehicle under development in its Ground X-Vehicle Technologies (GXV-T) program... It's not clear whether the vehicle in question is a light armored car or a tank, but DARPA wants to give it improved survivability through the use of advanced technologies.

The technologies might include visualization systems to provide high-definition, wide-angle views of external conditions for a closed cockpit; path planning, which would display optimal routes to take; terrain classification, which would evaluate the surroundings for optimal travel surfaces; sensors using various technologies to visualize the surroundings and identify and track friends and foes; and autopilot capabilities that would let the driver focus on more-strategic activities.

THE MYSTERY DEEPENS: Who is Erecting "Interceptor" Cell Towers Across the United States?

Mysterious "interceptor" cell towers have been discovered scattered throughout the United States and it's unclear who is behind them.

Mysterious “interceptor” cell towers in the USA are grabbing phone calls — but they’re not part of the phone networks... The towers were revealed by Les Goldsmith to Popular Science last week. He’s CEO of ESD America, which builds the super-secure Cryptophone 500 for clients that need the military-grade security and can handle the phone’s estimated $3,500 price tag.

In the course of testing the phone, Goldsmith’s team discovered the existence of phone cell towers that intercept a call and hand it off to the real network — allowing the tower to listen in or load spyware to the mobile device... In July, ESD America identified 17 of the towers, but now it has increased that outed inventory to 19...

...Who is installing and managing these interceptors? ... Not the NSA, cloud security firm SilverSky CTO/SVP Andrew Jaquith told us. “The NSA doesn’t need a fake tower,” he said. “They can just go to the carrier” to tap your line.

...They could be from perhaps law enforcement agencies or the military, he suggested. A number of these towers are around military bases, although they’re also found in other locations, including the vicinity of the South Point Casino in Las Vegas...

...The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced last month that it is launching an investigation into the use of cell network interceptors by criminal gangs and foreign intelligence...

Andrew Rosenblum, writing at Popular Science, offers additional detail.

Some dude flew a drone into the middle of a bunch of detonating fireworks and this is what it looked like

I seldom have time to sit through entire videos, but this one is really cool.

What does it look like if you fly a drone into the middle of a bunch of detonating fireworks?http://t.co/XYxKaXYfXx pic.twitter.com/qU0g4vfFZs

— Doug Ross (@directorblue) July 5, 2014

Hat tip: BadBlue News.

PREPARE TO LOSE YOUR MIND: 5 Baddest Cars for Father's Day 2015

Daddy like.

SUPRA...

"...In case you were wondering, yes, this is the new Toyota Supra."

"...There's a Formula-1 style steering wheel, while a colour head-up display allows the driver to keep their eyes on the road at all times..."

A Wearable Submarine

Daddy like:

Developed and built by Nuytco Research, this exosuit is made from hard metal and allows divers to operate safely down to a depth of 1000 feet. The suit has four 1.6 horsepower propulsion thrusters, fiber optic gigabit ethernet, and a host of telemetry devices.

The "Exosuit atmospheric diving system" (ADS) will allow wearers to work in deep water without facing problems with decompression. While still in testing right now, diver Michael Lombardi will be taking it out for its first full exploration mission later this summer, at a location called Canyons, approximately 100 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.

Ironman.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News

On the Road to Tyranny in my Driverless Car

Google -- and perhaps others -- have been making great progress in perfecting a "driverless" car.

This development gives me great pause, but not for the rather esoteric hypotheticals described in Wired's "The Robot Car of Tomorrow May Just Be Programmed to Hit You."

The conundrum is rather simple: should a robot driving your car sacrifice your life to save two others?