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South Korea To Test AI-Powered Facial Recognition To Track COVID-19 Cases

South Korea will soon roll out a pilot project to use artificial intelligence, facial recognition and thousands of CCTV cameras to track the movement of people infected with the coronavirus, despite concerns about the invasion of privacy. Reuters reports: The nationally funded project in Bucheon, one of the country’s most densely populated cities on the outskirts of Seoul, is due to become operational in January, a city official told Reuters. The system uses an AI algorithms and facial recognition technology to analyze footage gathered by more than 10,820 CCTV cameras and track an infected person’s movements, anyone they had close contact with, and whether they were wearing a mask, according to a 110-page business plan from the city submitted to the Ministry of Science and ICT (Information and Communications Technology), and provided to Reuters by a parliamentary lawmaker critical of the project.

The Bucheon official said the system should reduce the strain on overworked tracing teams in a city with a population of more than 800,000 people, and help use the teams more efficiently and accurately. […] The Ministry of Science and ICT said it has no current plans to expand the project to the national level. It said the purpose of the system was to digitize some of the manual labour that contact tracers currently have to carry out. The Bucheon system can simultaneously track up to ten people in five to ten minutes, cutting the time spent on manual work that takes around half an hour to one hour to trace one person, the plan said.

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13 Dec

An Experimental Target-Recognition AI Mistakenly Thought It Was Succeeding 90% of the Time

The American military news site Defense One shares a cautionary tale from top U.S. Air Force Major General Daniel Simpson (assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance). Simpson describes their experience with an experimental AI-based target recognition program that had seemed to be performing well:

Initially, the AI was fed data from a sensor that looked for a single surface-to-surface missile at an oblique angle, Simpson said. Then it was fed data from another sensor that looked for multiple missiles at a near-vertical angle. “What a surprise: the algorithm did not perform well. It actually was accurate maybe about 25 percent of the time,” he said.

That’s an example of what’s sometimes called brittle AI, which “occurs when any algorithm cannot generalize or adapt to conditions outside a narrow set of assumptions,” according to a 2020 report by researcher and former Navy aviator Missy Cummings. When the data used to train the algorithm consists of too much of one type of image or sensor data from a unique vantage point, and not enough from other vantages, distances, or conditions, you get brittleness, Cummings said. In settings like driverless-car experiments, researchers will just collect more data for training. But that can be very difficult in military settings where there might be a whole lot of data of one type — say overhead satellite or drone imagery — but very little of any other type because it wasn’t useful on the battlefield…

Simpson said the low accuracy rate of the algorithm wasn’t the most worrying part of the exercise. While the algorithm was only right 25 percent of the time, he said, “It was confident that it was right 90 percent of the time, so it was confidently wrong. And that’s not the algorithm’s fault. It’s because we fed it the wrong training data.”

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13 Dec

Some Fans React Negatively to Disney’s Promos for Star Wars-Themed Hotel

SFGate pan’s Disney’s efforts at “hyping up its mega-expensive, hyper-immersive Star Wars hotel in Walt Disney World” — the Galactic Starcruiser — as its March 1st opening approaches:

Guests must book two nights — which will set you back nearly $5,000 for two people or $6,000 for a family of four — and will spend most of their time inside the spaceship resort, much like a cruise. There’s an “excursion” into the Galaxy’s Edge part of Disney World, while the remainder of the stay includes interactions with characters, lightsaber training (more on that later) and exclusive restaurants…

The look and feel of the hotel has been criticized as looking plastic and cheap, and reception to one sneak peek video was so bad, it has since disappeared from Disney’s YouTube channel.

The video showed actor Sean Giambrone of “The Goldbergs” being given a tour of some of the ship’s features, which look pretty bare and antiseptic for the Star Wars universe, and listening to a strange musical performance. (Another user uploaded the deleted video here.) The promo prompted one Twitter user to comment, “Bro this isn’t Star Wars, this is ‘Space Conflicts.'” Fans responded similarly to a demo of Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro testing out the vaunted lightsaber training. Instead of a flashy, super realistic adventure, the training consisted of a standard light-up lightsaber and some lasers…

Reservations booked up quickly when the hotel was announced but now, as the 90-day deadline to cancel approaches, people appear to be ducking out of their expensive commitments; a number of openings have begun popping up in March, April and June.

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13 Dec

Google Finally Killed Its Internet Explorer Plugin, ‘Google Toolbar’

Ars Technica’s reviews editor remembers how Google Toolbar launched back when Internet Explorer “had a rock-solid monopoly” on December 11, 2000, and marked Google’s first foray into browser ownership. “Rather than idly sit by and live under Internet Explorer’s rule, Google’s plan was to hijack Microsoft’s browser with various plugins.”

Once upon a time, Toolbar.google.com offered to guide any wayward Internet Explorer users across the web with the power of Google…. It also patched up long-neglected Internet Explorer with new features, like highlighted search terms in pages, pop-up blocking, spell check, autofill, and Google Translate. Phase 2 of the hijack plan was Google Gears, which augmented IE with new APIs for web developers. Eventually, Google stopped fixing other companies’ browsers and launched Google Chrome in 2008, which would make all of this obsolete.

But it ended as Google finally pulled the plug this week on “a dusty, forgotten server” that had spent nearly 21 years blurting out “Take the best of Google everywhere on the web!”

Now, it redirects to a support page saying “Google Toolbar is no longer available for installation. Instead, you can download and install Google Chrome.” The good news is that we wrote most of this post at the end of November, so this might be the Internet’s very last hands-on of the now-dead product….

To say the app had been neglected is an understatement. The about page read, “Copyright 2014 Google,” though Google definitely stopped performing maintenance on Toolbar before that. You could still do a Google Search, and you could still sign into Google Toolbar, but so much there was broken or a time capsule from a bygone era….

The “share” settings were a bloodbath, listing options for Google Reader (killed July 2013), Orkut (killed September 2014), Google+ (killed April 2019), and Google Bookmarks (killed September 2021). There were also search shortcuts for Google Blog Search (killed May 2011) and Picasa Web Albums (dead May 2016)….

The spell-check servers didn’t work anymore, and I couldn’t translate anything. The baked-in-by-default connections to Google+ and Google Bookmarks would also let you know that those products have been shut down. Even some of the “working” integrations, like Gmail, didn’t really work because Gmail no longer supports Internet Explorer….

One feature that really blew my mind was a button that said, “Turn off features that send information.” Google Toolbar apparently had a one-click privacy kill switch back in the day.

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12 Dec

Judges Read Capitol Riots’ Social Media Posts, Give Them Stricter Sentences

After sentencing one of the “Capitol Hill rioters” to 41 months in prison, a judge added that anyone with Facebook and Instagram posts like his would be “well advised” to just plead guilty right away. “You couldn’t have beat this if you went to trial on the evidence that I saw.”

And other rioters are now learning the same thing, reports the Associated Press:

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson read aloud some of Russell Peterson’s posts about the riot before she sentenced the Pennsylvania man to 30 days imprisonment. “Overall I had fun lol,” Peterson posted on Facebook. The judge told Peterson that his posts made it “extraordinarily difficult” for her to show him leniency….

Among the biggest takeaways so far from the Justice Department’s prosecution of the insurrection is how large a role social media has played, with much of the most damning evidence coming from rioters’ own words and videos. FBI agents have identified scores of rioters from public posts and records subpoenaed from social media platforms. Prosecutors use the posts to build cases. Judge now are citing defendants’ words and images as factors weighing in favor of tougher sentences.

As of Friday, more than 50 people have been sentenced for federal crimes related to the insurrection. In at least 28 of those cases, prosecutors factored a defendant’s social media posts into their requests for stricter sentences, according to an Associated Press review of court records….

Prosecutors also have accused a few defendants of trying to destroy evidence by deleting posts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

12 Dec

Data on Tens of Thousands of South Australian Government Employees Breached in Ransomware Attack

“Russian hackers have stolen and published the personal data of tens of thousands of employees…” reports the Australian Financial Review.

Government officials have confirmed the breach — part of a ransomware attack — and say the stolen data may even include info on the country’s premier, according to an Australian public broadcaster:
The government said the records of at least 38,000 employees, but potentially up to 80,000 workers, have been accessed in a cyber-attack on external payroll software provider Frontier Software. The data includes names, dates of birth, tax file numbers, home addresses, bank account details, remuneration and superannuation contributions… Treasurer Rob Lucas said politicians, including Premier Steven Marshall, could be among those affected.

The treasurer added the breach potentially impacted “The highest of the high to the lowest of the low and all of the rest of us in between.” Except for schoolteachers, and the Department of Education, who did not use Frontier’s software.

The website publishing the 3.75 gigabytes of data claimed it was just 10% of the total amount, according to the Australian Financial Review, which “understands Russian organised crime group Conti, which claimed credit for launching the cyberattack on Queensland’s energy network CS Energy, published the information.”
Australian Payroll Association chief executive Tracy Angwin said the hack was a wake-up call to employers using remotely accessed payroll systems to ensure they were secure…

Frontier Software said the hacker responsible for the incident was known to employ a “double extortion” strategy, which included encrypting systems and stealing the data.

In another report, Bleeping Computer describes Conti as “a long-lived Ransomware as a Service operation” that “still manages to evade prosecution even after high-profile incidents against vital national resources such as Ireland’s Department of Health.”

The gang is believed to be behind the recent revival of the notorious Emotet botnet, which could lead to a massive new wave of ransomware infections. This week, Conti took responsibility for the attack against Nordic Choice Hotels, a Scandinavian hotel chain with 200 properties.

Thanks to Macfox (Slashdot reader #50,100) for tipping us off to the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

12 Dec

Magnus Carlsen Wins 8th World Chess Championship. What Makes Him So Great?

“On Friday, needing just one point against Ian Nepomniachtchi to defend his world champion status, Magnus Carlsen closed the match out with three games to spare, 7.5-3.5,” ESPN reports. “He’s been the No 1 chess player in the world for a decade now…

“In a technologically flat, AI-powered chess world where preparation among the best players can be almost equal, what really makes one guy stand out with his dominance and genius for this long…?

American Grandmaster and chess commentator Robert Hess describes Carlsen as the “hardest worker you’ll find” both at the board and in preparation. “He is second-to-none at evading common theoretical lines and prefers to outplay his opponents in positions where both players must rely on their understanding of the current dynamics,” Hess says…

At the start of this year, news emerged of Nepomniachtchi and his team having access to a supercomputer cluster, Zhores, from the Moscow-based Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. He was using it for his Candidates tournament preparation, a tournament he went on to win. He gained the challenger status for the World Championship and the Zhores supercomputer reportedly continued to be a mainstay in his team. Zhores was specifically designed to solve problems in machine learning and data-based modeling with a capacity of one Petaflop per second…. Players use computers and open-source AI engines to analyze openings, bolster preparation, scour for a bank of new ideas and to go down lines that the other is unlikely to have explored.

The tiny detail though is, that against Carlsen, it may not be enough. He has the notoriety of drawing opponents into obscure positions, hurling them out of preparation and into the deep end, often leading to a complex struggle. Whether you have the fastest supercomputer on your team then becomes almost irrelevant. It comes down to a battle of intuition, tactics and staying power, human to human. In such scenarios, almost always, Carlsen comes out on top. “[Nepomniachtchi] couldn’t show his best chess…it’s a pity for the excitement of the match,” he said later, “I think that’s what happens when you get into difficult situations…all the preparation doesn’t necessarily help you if you can’t cope in the moment….”

Soon after his win on Friday, Carlsen announced he’d be “celebrating” by playing the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in Warsaw, a fortnight from now. He presently holds both those titles…

The article also remembers what happened in 2018 when Carlsen was asked to name his favorite chess player from the past. Carlsen’s answer?

“Probably myself, like, three or four years ago.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 Dec

Android Games Are Coming To Windows PCs In 2022

Google is bringing Android games from Google Play to Windows laptops, PCs, and tablets, the company announced on Thursday. Gizmodo reports: Google announced a standalone Google Play Games launcher that lets gamers play mobile titles on Windows PCs at The Game Show Awards on Thursday. The upcoming app will allow players to close out of their game on one device and resume playing where they left off on another. This means you could switch between a Chromebook, Windows PC, and Android phone without losing saved data. The app, which is being built and distributed by Google, runs games locally on your system, no cloud streaming required. So far, Google has only teased the service in a brief video clip, so some important details haven’t been revealed. We do, however, know it is set to arrive sometime in 2022.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 Dec

Samsung Submits Patent Application On a Rollable Smartwatch With a Camera

According to recently-submitted patent application spotted by LetsGoDigital, Samsung may be working on a rollable smartwatch equipped with a camera and two separate displays. PhoneArena reports: The device looks like a regular Galaxy Watch with a display that features two parts on the top and bottom of the screen that can be expanded both independently or simultaneously. The watch also is equipped with a camera located in the middle portion between the two “rollable” portions of the display that can take photos and record videos.Besides optional sensors that could be built into the watch, a flash also could be part of the watch’s photography system.

A patent titled “Electronic device comprising rollable display and display method therefor” was submitted to the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) on June 2, 2021. To expand the watch display, the user presses the crown on the side of the watch. When fully opened the screen is 40% larger than the size when closed. The screen can also be expanded or reduced by making a swiping gesture across the display. When fully opened, the rollable Galaxy smartwatch has an oval shape allowing for additional content to appear. The user can decide whether he wants one side extended or both sides. This can also depend on a particular app being used. The large portion of the display (the part extended) could show the app while the part that is not extended can show the app controls.

As Lets Go Digital points out, the timepiece depicted in the patent is not the first to offer a flexible screen. That honor goes to the Nubia Alpha which was worn on the wrist but featured a long bendable display. The device featured a camera that could allow users to take part in a video chat, and also could make or take phone calls, get the time, set alarms, and more.