Kalakshar US

Late last year, Nikkei Asia reported that Japan was planning to add thousands of personnel to its military cyber defense unit. Now, we might know why — according to a report from the Washington Post, hackers in China had “deep, persistent access” to Japanese defense networks. When the National Security Agency is said to have first discovered the breach in late 2020, NSA Chief and Commander of US Cyber Command General Paul Nakasone flew to Japan with White House deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger to report the breach to officials.

Despite briefings that reached as high as Japan’s prime minister, the Washington Post reports that hacking from China remained an issue for several months, persisting through the end of the Trump administration and well into early 2021.

US Cyber Command initially offered Japan assistance in purging its systems of malware but were reportedly rebuffed because the country was not comfortable with another nation’s military accessing their systems. Instead, Japan elected to use domestic commercial security firms to find vulnerabilities, relying on the US only for guidance on what those firms found. Japan would eventually adopt a more active national security strategy, which is said to include a new cyber command to monitor networks around the clock, and as many as 4,000 active cybersecurity personnel.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/china-reportedly-had-deep-persistent-access-to-japanese-networks-for-months-233516478.html?src=rss 

Boeing has rediscovered just how hard space can be in recent months, as its ambitious Starliner program has been repeatedly sidelined by lingering technical issues. However, the company announced at a press conference Monday that it is confident that it will have those issues ironed out by next March and will be ready to test its reusable crew capsule with live NASA astronauts aboard.

“Based on the current plans, we’re anticipating that we’re going to be ready with the spacecraft in early March. That does not mean we have a launch date in early March,” Boeing VP and Starliner manager Mark Nappi stressed during the event, per CNBC. “We’re now working with NASA – Commercial Crew program and [International Space Station] – and ULA on potential launch dates based on our readiness … we’ll work throughout the next several weeks and see where we can get fit in and then then we’ll set a launch date.”

The Starliner has been in development for nearly fifteen years now, first being unveiled in 2010. It’s Boeing’s entry into the reusable crew capsule race, which is currently being dominated by SpaceX with its Dragon 2. 

The two companies were actually awarded grants at the same time in 2014 to develop systems capable of transporting astronauts to the ISS with a contract deadline of 2017. By 2016, Boeing’s first scheduled launch had already been pushed from 2017 to late 2018. By April 2018, NASA was tempering its launch expectations to between 2019 and 2020.

The first uncrewed orbital test flight in late 2019 failed to reach orbit, which further delayed the project. NASA, however, did agree to pay for a second uncrewed test in August of 2021. That test never made it off the launch pad due to a “valve issue.” Fixing that problem took until the following May when the follow-up test flight completed successfully.

The two subsequent preparatory attempts for a crewed flight, did not. The scheduled July 21 flight was scrubbed after faults were discovered in both the parachute system and wiring harnesses. Which brings us to March, which is when Boeing is confident its Starliner will successfully shuttle a pair of NASA astronauts to the ISS for a weeklong stay. To date, Boeing is estimated to have incurred around $1.5 billion in project cost overruns.   

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/boeings-starliner-could-be-ready-for-crewed-flights-by-next-march-210222245.html?src=rss 

Zoom has made changes to its terms of service after online blowback over recent updates to the company’s fine print allowing AI training on customer data. A report from StackDiary over the weekend highlighted how the changes, which rolled out in March without fanfare, appeared to grant the company sweeping control over customer data for AI training purposes. In response, Zoom published a blog post today claiming it wouldn’t do what its terms said it could do; the company then updated its terms in response to the continued blowback. It now says it doesn’t train AI models on consumer video, audio or chats “without customer consent.”

At least part of the issue stemmed from Zoom’s experimental AI tools, including IQ Meeting Summary (ML-powered summarizations) and IQ Team Chat Compose (AI-powered message drafting). Although account owners have to provide consent before starting a meeting using these tools, additional participants are only presented with two options: accept the terms and join the meeting, or reject them and leave the meeting.

“What raises alarm is the explicit mention of the company’s right to use this data for machine learning and artificial intelligence, including training and tuning of algorithms and models,” Alex Ivanovs wrote for Stack Diary. “This effectively allows Zoom to train its AI on customer content without providing an opt-out option, a decision that is likely to spark significant debate about user privacy and consent.” Ivanovs highlighted how the terms give it the right to “redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process Customer Content and to perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content.”

In the company blog post published today, Zoom’s Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim stressed that account owners and administrators indeed have to provide consent before choosing to share their data for AI training, insisting it’s “used solely to improve the performance and accuracy of these AI services.” Hashim added that “even if you chose to share your data, it will not be used for training of any third-party models.” Continuing, she wrote, “We have permission to use this customer content to provide value-added services based on this content, but our customers continue to own and control their content. For example, a customer may have a webinar that they ask us to livestream on YouTube. Even if we use the customer video and audio content to livestream, they own the underlying content.”

“We will not use customer content, including education records or protected health information, to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent,” the blog post reads. A new section added to Zoom’s terms today makes it clearer: “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.”

“Our goal is to enable Zoom account owners and administrators to have control over these features and decisions, and we’re here to shed light on how we do that and how that affects certain customer groups,” Hashim wrote.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/zoom-reverses-policy-that-allowed-it-to-train-ai-on-customer-data-212230598.html?src=rss 

Scientists at a federally funded research center in the US have successfully conducted a second nuclear fusion reaction experiment that resulted in a net energy gain. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) said scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) generated a higher energy yield than in their December breakthrough, as Reuters reports.

The nuclear fusion approach is very similar to the process that results in stars being able to emit light and heat. The scientists used a laser aimed at fuel to combine two light atoms into a denser one. This releases a great deal of energy. The process is said to have a lot of potential as a source of sustainable, low-carbon energy that could help combat climate change.

In the initial experiment in December, the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target. The scientists achieved fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output. That’s a net yield of around 1.1 megajoules, which is equivalent to 0.31kWh — enough energy to power a 50-watt LED TV for six hours.

It’s not yet clear exactly how much of a net energy yield was obtained from the latest successful experiment, which was carried out on July 30th. An LLNL spokesperson told Reuters that researchers are still analyzing the final results.

There’s quite some way to go until fusion ignition becomes a viable option for mainstream energy production with the capability of powering homes. For one thing, scientists will have to scale up the system substantially. In any case, showing that it was possible to repeat the experiment and surpass the previous results is a positive step forward for clean energy.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/scientists-have-reproduced-last-years-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-200611282.html?src=rss