Researcher Amanda D. Hanford at Pennsylvania State University has created a real cloaking device that can route sound waves around an object, making it invisible to some sensing techniques.
From the report:
Hanford and her team set out to engineer a metamaterial that can allow the sound waves to bend around the object as if it were not there. Metamaterials commonly exhibit extraordinary properties not found in nature, like negative density. To work, the unit cell — the smallest component of the metamaterial — must be smaller than the acoustic wavelength in the study.
Hanford created an acoustic metamaterial that deflected sound waves under water, a difficult feat. In testing she and the team were able to place the material in water and measure sound waves pointed at it. The resulting echoes in the water suggested that the sound waves did not bounce off or around the material. This means the new material would be invisible to sonar.
Obviously this technology is still in its early stages and the material does not make the objects invisible but just very hard to detect in underwater situations. However, the fact ship captains could soon yell “Activate the cloaking device” as evil, laser-toting dolphins appear on the horizon should give everyone a bit of cheer.
Source: TechCrunch
ScopeAR, a graduate of the Y Combinator Summer 2015 class, came to the augmented reality game very early, launching in 2011 when there was very little hardware and most people didn’t understand the technology. But it has managed to hang around long enough for the market and the hardware to finally catch with the founders’ vision of using AR as an advanced training tool in the enterprise.
Today, the company offers a pair of tools. First of all, there is RemoteAR, which CEO and company co-founder Scott Montgomerie describes as “Facetime with AR on top of it.” It allows a technician to virtually look over the shoulder at what a local person is seeing and provide directions and feedback in real time remotely. For example, the expert could circle the cover the technician needs to remove and point to the screws with two virtual arrows.
This could have great utility in any situation where you have an experienced person in the office, who doesn’t want to go on the road on anymore, but can still provide detailed instructions to a novice, acting as a trainer and helper. This is an actual problem in many industries with aging workforces.
Technician working with RemoteAR. Photo: ScopeAR
The second product, called WorkLink, lets you import a 3D CAD model, then associate that model with real equipment. When you put on hardware like Microsoft Hololens, you can see the 3D representation of the equipment and follow along with instructions on how to repair it. It also works with iOS, Android and Windows devices.
One big change since the company was established in 2011 is the variety of platforms you can use for augmented reality. “Last year was the thing where AR took off. Apple got into it with ARKit and Google with ARCore and awareness happened and people saw it was viable,” Montgomerie said.
By creating enterprise use cases like remote assistance and work instructions, the company has been gaining momentum over the last year, and reports tripling its revenue in 2017. Although they aren’t sharing a specific number, it’s fair to say they are growing quickly.
They developed an augmented reality training product early on that resonated with a mining company, and that along with consulting working with the likes of NASA, Boeing and Toyota, helped them stay afloat until things began to really click around AR in recent years, Montgomerie explained.
They also took some time to be part of the Y Combinator Summer 2015 class, and even scored a spot on TechCrunch’s list of favorite Demo Day 2 startups. During the YC experience, they developed the first version of RemoteAR. WorkLink followed a year later.
So far the company has taken on a fairly modest amount of investment with Montgomerie reporting three seed rounds including $2 million right after Y Combinator, $1.7 million last May and another $2 million this past December. If the company continues to grow at this rate, it’s a good bet they will be looking for a Series A at some point to help scale the company further.
Source: TechCrunch
Photographer Demian Barrios used a drone to capture the stunning image of Kilauea’s fissure.
Source: Wired
Opinion: The proposed merger of two wireless giants will reduce competition and should be blocked.
Source: Wired
In Caltech’s fancy new drone arena, the machines face terrifying atmospheric disturbances, all to help shape the future of flight.
Source: Wired
Can the trendy, expensive countertop air fryer outperform a simple sheet pan in an oven?
Source: Wired
A new exploit allows hackers to spoof two-factor authentication requests by sending a user to a fake login page and then stealing the username, password, and session cookie.
KnowBe4 Chief Hacking Officer Kevin Mitnick showed the hack in a public video. By convincing a victim to visit a typo-squatting domain liked “LunkedIn.com” and capturing the login, password, and authentication code, the hacker can pass the credentials to the actual site and capture the session cookie. Once this is done the hacker can login indefinitely. This essentially uses the one time 2FA code as a way to spoof a login and grab data.
“A white hat hacker friend of Kevin’s developed a tool to bypass two-factor authentication using social engineering tactics – and it can be weaponized for any site,” said Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 CEO. “Two-factor authentication is intended to be an extra layer of security, but in this instance, we clearly see that you can’t rely on it alone to protect your organization.”
Sjouwerman notes that anti-phishing education is deeply important and that a hack like this is impossible to complete if the victim is savvy about security and the dangers of clicking links that come into your email box. To demonstrate this, Sjouwerman sent me an email seemingly addressed to me from Matt Burns (matt@techcrunch.com) talking about a typo in a post. When I clicked on it I was transferred to a SendGrid redirect site and dumped into TechCrunch – but the payload could have been more nefarious.
“This highlights the need for new-school security awareness training and simulated phishing because people are truly your last line of defense,” said Sjouwerman. He estimates that hackers will begin trying this technique in the next few weeks and urges users and IT managers to harden their security protocols.
Source: TechCrunch
Dark clouds have gathered and broken over Apple’s plans to build a data center in Ireland. Three years ago, Apple announced that it would invest $2 billion into building a pair of new, green data centers in Ireland and Denmark. But today, the iPhone giant confirmed that it was cancelling the first of those two projects, after too many delays in the approval process, which today appeared to be extending in a way that could go on for a long time to come.
“We’ve been operating in Ireland since 1980 and we’re proud of the many contributions we make to the economy and job creation. In the last two years we’ve spent over €550 million with local companies and, all told, our investment and innovation supports more than 25,000 jobs up and down the country. We’re deeply committed to our employees and customers in Ireland and are expanding our operations in Cork, with a new facility for our talented team there,” the company said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “Several years ago we applied to build a data centre at Athenry. Despite our best efforts, delays in the approval process have forced us to make other plans and we will not be able to move forward with the data centre. While disappointing, this setback will not dampen our enthusiasm for future projects in Ireland as our business continues to grow.”
Apple had planned for the data center — which would cover 166,000 square metres — to go online in 2017.
(The first phase of the Danish center announced at the same time, incidentally, is nearly completed and Apple is now working on a second center in the country. We’ve confirmed with sources that this second center is not the “other plan” that Apple refers to in its statement above, meaning another data center announcement from Apple in the region may be coming.)
As originally conceived, the facility in Ireland was planned to be built on land previously used for growing and harvesting non-native trees. As part of its CSR in building the facility on that land, Apple also pledged to “restore native trees to Derrydonnell Forest,” as well as build an outdoor education space an a walking trail.
But within months of Apple announcing the project, issues started to arise around the potential environmental impact and what effect the building of the data center would have on the national electric grid. Initially, the Galway County Council asked for more details from Apple about how the data center would work.
Then, when Apple provided it and the council granted permission to build the center six months later, individual objections started to surface, including from a local environmental engineer called Allan Daly, who has become something of the public face of the opposition to the plans.
Daly’s main argument was that Apple’s data center, particularly at its fullest-possible size, would put too much strain on Ireland’s power grid, including in the building of them. Apple has maintained that its data centers are powered on renewables, that it gives back over time, and that it wouldn’t over-build.
Last October, Apple won a case in the Irish High Court that appeared to give the company the green light it needed to proceed with its plans. But from what we understand, there was still some uncertainty that lingered, because opposition could have still taken the case to the Supreme Court to appeal once again.
That continued uncertainty was the final straw for Apple. With no guaranteed end in sight, Apple finally made the choice to “move on”, as one source close to the situation told TechCrunch.
The whole case underscores some of the ongoing issues that apparently exist in Ireland over how data centers are planned and approved by local authorities.
“There is no disputing that Apple’s decision is very disappointing, particularly for Athenry and the West of Ireland,” Ireland’s Minister for Business and Enterprise Heather Humphreys said in a statement provided to Reuters.
There is talk of reforming that whole process, but that is not something Apple will get involved with at this point.
The company has had a rather complex relationship with the country.
Like many tech companies, Apple has made a lot of investment into operations based out of Ireland, including housing its European headquarters in Cork. But the country has also been the subject of a large tax debate, which has seen Apple just weeks ago finally settle on paying some €13 billion ($15.4 billion) in back taxes to Ireland starting this month, after the EU ruled that the existing tax scheme was illegal.
Ironically, Ireland was on Apple’s side in trying to resist the payment — perhaps in part because it all too well understands its relationship to the companies that subsequently pump hundreds of millions of euros in investment and jobs into their economies.
It’s odd timing, therefore, that we’d hear about Apple pulling out of the data center in Ireland now, although from what I’ve been told the two are very distinct, unrelated issues.
Source: TechCrunch
Start saving those simoleons — the Cullinan starts at $325,000.
Source: CNET
Rolls-Royce has joined the luxury SUV game with Cullinan, the British Manufacturers first ever all-wheel-drive vehicle
Source: CNET