A drone with a machine gun attached can hit targets with high precision, according to its makers. Turkey is set to become the first country to have the drone, when it gets a delivery this month. The 25-kilogram drone has eight rotating blades to get it in the air. Its machine gun carries 200 rounds of ammunition and can fire single shots or 15-round bursts. Many countries and groups already use small military drones that can drop grenades or fly into a target to detonate an explosive. The new drone, called Songar and made by Ankara-based electronics firm Asisguard, is the first drone to be equipped with a firearm and be ready for service. Turkey expects the drones to be delivered before the end of the year. AdvertisementIt is hard for a drone to shoot accurately, partly because of the difficulty of judging range and angle, and partly because the recoil from each shot significantly moves the drone, affecting the aim for the next round. Songar has two systems to overcome these challenges. One uses sensors, including cameras and a laser rangefinder, to calculate distance, angle and wind speed, and work out where to aim. The second is a set of robot arms that move the machine gun to compensate for the effects of recoil. Asisguard claims Songar has an accuracy that corresponds to hitting a 15-centimetre area from 200 metres. That is accurate enough for every bullet to hit a human-sized target at that range. A human drone pilot picks the target by putting cross hairs on it using a screen on a remote control. Asisguard says improvements to Songar’s accuracy mean it will soon be able to hit targets from more than 400 metres away. Songar has night sensors for operating in darkness and has a range of 10 kilometres. It may also operate in groups. Ayhan Sunar at Asisguard says a swarm of three Songar can be flown using a single remote control, with all three firing at a target simultaneously. Drones are extremely hard to stop. There is a concern that armed groups could copy the technology and produce their own improvised versions, says Robert Bunker at the US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute in Pennsylvania. Songar may also open up new uses for drones, says Bunker. For example, he says that machine-gun drones could lay down suppressive fire to keep defenders’ heads down while other drones carry out attacks on more substantial targets such as infrastructure or vehicles. The Turkish military is involved in patrolling the nation’s border with Syria. In October, Turkey launched air strikes on border towns, resulting in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, as well as reports of human rights violations. More on these topics: Powered by WPeMatico The post Turkey is getting military drones armed with machine guns – New Scientist News appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/2YMbGdy
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A Navy drone was damaged during takeoff in the Middle East late last month, U.S. 5th Fleet officials confirmed this week. The RQ-4A Global Hawk — officially known as the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Aircraft Demonstrator, or BAMS-D — struck foreign object debris at an undisclosed location on Nov. 26, according to 5th Fleet spokesman Lt. Pete Pagano. “The mishap resulted in damage to the port side of the aircraft,” Pagano said in an email. “No personnel were injured.” The Naval Safety Center categorized the incident as a “Class A” mishap, which involves damage totaling at least $2 million. Pagano declined to provide further details, citing an ongoing investigation into the incident. Iran Revolutionary Guard shoots down US drone amid tensionsThe Iran Revolutionary Guard said it shot down the drone over Iranian airspace, while two U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the downing happened over international airspace in the Strait of Hormuz. The different accounts could not be immediately reconciled.
By: Nassir Karimi, Jon Gambrell
It’s been a rough year for the Navy’s Global Hawk fleet, a reconnaissance robot with a 130-foot wingspan. Another Global Hawk was shot down by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in June over the Strait of Hormuz.
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Powered by WPeMatico The post FOD damaged drone during Middle East ops – NavyTimes.com appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/38wN9hb My gloves for the last year have been Mujjo’s previous touchscreen glove offering, which we reviewed favorably. Recently I was contacted by Mujjo and told they had improved the ones I had, as well as releasing a triple-layered double-insulated very cold weather version of the gloves I liked. As I was pretty happy with the existing, I decided to try for the extreme cold weather gloves as opposed to the slightly improved 2019 version of mine. It helped that it was freezing outside when I made that choice. The gloves arrived a week after it was 17f in Nashville, meaning it was now 74f. Reasonably temperate is what the weather remained, and my attempts to test above 50 degrees generally just left me realizing I was wearing extreme cold gloves in an environment I could be in a t-shirt in. They’re warm…First off, these are like wearing a wetsuit and a coat. High velocity cold air doesn’t do much, if anything, that I can tell. If your hands are warm going in, they’re going to stay warm. If your hands are cold going in, then you’re at the mercy of whether your capillaries are letting enough blood to your fingers. Thicker…I found it a little bit difficult with these to text. The thicker insulation tended to make me a little less accurate at swipe-texting, but I had no issues answering and placing phone calls. I did have a bit of restricted motion due to the gloves being so thick, but I was able to grab keys from my pocket, answer the phone and text, and drive. Did I mention warm?Nashville and temperatures above 30f seem like I’m not really close to exploring the warming capabilities of these gloves. All the digitsWhile some gloves historically have limited touch screen use to a finger or two, everything works with these. If for some reason you need to use more than two fingers, you’re set. Paul complains about somethingThe only thing I have to complain about these is perhaps a personal preference. If it’s cold enough to warrant these, I want gloves that extend higher up along my arms. These cover the wrists, but it gets cold there if you don’t have adequate coverage behind. When it gets too cold behind the gloves your body shuts down warming your hands. But maybe that’s me… seems at the level of temperature for which this glove is designed you’d be served better if they had another two inches past the wrist. OverallReally good for extremely cold weather. Go for the lighter version for most uses however. These are for absurdly bitter cold. You can find the Mujjo double-insulated touchscreen gloves at the manufacturer’s website for about $67. Share this:Powered by WPeMatico The post Mujjo double insulated touchscreen gloves review appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/2Eb2vKu
Powered by WPeMatico The post Four short links: 13 December 2019 appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/2RLN82W Dronesense, a company that sells a platform to government, law enforcement, and private clients for flying drones, exposed a database of customer data, in some cases showing exactly where users programmed their drones to fly. The exposure not only presented a significant potential risk for the integrity of law enforcement investigations, but also gives new insight into how many police departments, safety services, and businesses are using drones across the United States. Motherboard obtained some of this data and was able to plot drone flights from a police department onto maps. One showed a drone meticulously scoping out an apartment complex and its car park near Atlanta, Georgia. Another nearby flight marked as “disaster assessment” shows a drone flying over a playground. A third named “Mapping Mission” has nearly two dozen so-called “capture points,” likely referring to spots for the drone to photograph, spread across a residential Washington D.C. neighborhood. “If Dronesense was breached, then it’s just another example of law enforcement putting too much faith in new surveillance technologies without fully accounting for the risks,” Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in an email. “In addition to potential harms to privacy, insufficient security of law enforcement systems can also undermine the integrity of criminal investigations and even the justice process.” The database is separated by different organizations, such as the Atlanta Police Department, Boise Fire Department, City of Coral Springs, Nassau County Police Department, and even U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The list included over 200 different entries, although some of those appear to be test or administration accounts. No drone camera footage was included, but as well as the flight path data, the data also contained what brand of drone each customer was using for the flight, the pilot’s name, email address, and other technical information about the drone. Dronesense’s platform has several components: “Airbase” for storing data, “Pilot” for controlling a drone via an app, and “OpsCenter” to provide visibility into what multiple drones are doing and seeing at once. Cities have used Dronesense’s platform for monitoring large events like the Indy 500 race and NFL games. “Log flights automatically and view detailed playback,” the Airbase description reads on Dronesense’s website. Those flight logs are some of the data obtained by Motherboard. As well as the flight marked as “disaster assessment,” others are named “Mapping bug test” and “demo 1,” suggesting some relate to demos or troubleshooting. In a statement, Dronesense said the data was exposed for just over a month. One of the flight plans that Motherboard extracted from the data and plotted to a map. Image: Motherboard Carlos Campos, a spokesperson for the Atlanta Police Department, wrote in an email, “The Atlanta Police Department began using a drone this year to assist us in a number of ways—primarily with providing us a convenient vantage point from which to manage large-scale events such as major sporting events and parades. We contacted DroneSense after your inquiry; the company acknowledged the data exposure and assured us it has taken measures to correct the flaw. We have no reason to believe any law enforcement-sensitive data was compromised as a result of the exposure. Still, the Department values the importance of data security and are discussing the issue further with DroneSense.” Law enforcement and public and private search and rescue organizations have been using drones in the U.S. for several years. Drones have been used to arrest and surveil people and have also been used to locate missing persons and to assist in rescue operations during natural disasters. When drones were first being incorporated into American airspace, there was much controversy about law enforcement use, with groups like the ACLU and Electronic Privacy Information Center saying that new privacy laws were necessary before their widespread adoption. Several towns and cities put temporary moratoriums on drone use by government actors, but largely the controversy around their use has died down, and police drones have quietly proliferated around the country. According to the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, at least 599 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. had drones as of 2018. But little research has been done into how those drones are being used, what they are surveilling, and their use in police work. Do you work for a drone company? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on [email protected], or email [email protected]. Noam Rotem, an independent security researcher, discovered the exposed Dronesense data and flagged the issue to both Dronesense and Motherboard. Rotem explained that along with a friend he is scanning the web for leaky databases and came across the Dronesense data. “Surveillance vendors often provide sales pitches that emphasize everything that can go right when a technology is deployed, but rarely do they address what might happen when the technology fails. This latest incident indicates that law enforcement should exercise more skepticism when acquiring new surveillance systems,” Maass added. When asked a series of questions, Dronesense provided Motherboard with the statement it is sending to its own customers. “On December 3rd, DroneSense was notified by a security researcher of a potential vulnerability regarding a database located in our cloud-based infrastructure,” the statement reads. “Within minutes of this notification, DroneSense identified and corrected a security flaw which had exposed a list of organization names within the DroneSense platform and, for a limited number of organizations, account data. At no time were live video streams or customer uploaded images, videos, documents, or media of any kind exposed by this flaw.” Update: This piece has been updated to include a statement from the Atlanta Police Department. Subscribe to our cybersecurity podcast, CYBER. Powered by WPeMatico The post Exposed Data Shows Where Police Departments Fly Their Drones – Free appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/2LK8DxA It’s the mass consumerism season, and I’ve been looking for a couple of gifts for some people that fit them. There’s only so long I can go saying “I got you nothing because I was trying to get you the perfect gift and nothing’s good enough.” And then Wish invaded my Facebook feed and made me pretty darn sure that I’m going to be saying that again… meanwhile however, here are some things I found amusing. (Bonus, I’m not selling anything so for SEO purposes I don’t have to give you my entire life story on every single picture). Here are 19 pictures… Want any of the above? All were on Wish two days ago, many are on Amazon (other than the Nick Cage sweatpants, which you can find on Ebay as well if you don’t want to do Wish) Post your best in the comments, winner for most interesting gets… nothing… we have no budget… maybe they get a genuine imitation No Prize, but who knows. Share this:Powered by WPeMatico The post 19 things I found on Wish appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/2E8hULG Roughly a year ago, we wrote “What machine learning means for software development.” In that article, we talked about Andrej Karpathy’s concept of Software 2.0. Karpathy argues that we’re at the beginning of a profound change in the way software is developed. Up until now, we’ve built systems by carefully and painstakingly telling systems exactly what to do, instruction by instruction. The process is slow, tedious, and error-prone; most of us have spent days staring at a program that should work, but doesn’t. And most of us have been surprised when some program that has been reliable for some time suddenly screws up at some slightly unexpected input. The last bug is always the one you find next; if someone hasn’t already said that, someone should have. Karpathy suggests something radically different: with machine learning, we can stop thinking of programming as writing a step of instructions in a programming language like C or Java or Python. Instead, we can program by example. We can collect many examples of what we want the program to do and what not to do (examples of correct and incorrect behavior), label them appropriately, and train a model to perform correctly on new inputs. In short, we can use machine learning to automate software development itself. It’s time to evaluate what has happened in the year since we wrote that article. Are we seeing the first steps toward the adoption of Software 2.0? Yes, but so far, they’re only small steps. Most companies don’t have the AI expertise to implement Karpathy’s vision. Traditional programming is well understood. Training models isn’t well understood yet, at least not within companies that haven’t already invested significantly in technology (in general) or AI (in particular). Nor are building data pipelines and deploying ML systems well understood. The companies that are systematizing how they develop ML and AI applications are companies that already have advanced AI practices. That doesn’t mean we aren’t seeing tools to automate various aspects of software engineering and data science. Those tools are starting to appear, particularly for building deep learning models. We’re seeing continued adoption of tools like AWS’ Sagemaker and Google’s AutoML. AutoML Vision allows you to build models without having to code; we’re also seeing code-free model building from startups like MLJAR and Lobe, and tools focused on computer vision, such as Platform.ai and Matroid. A sign that companies are scaling up their usage of ML and AI is that we are seeing the rise of data platforms aimed at accelerating the development and deployment of ML within companies that are growing teams focused on machine learning and AI. Several leaders in AI have described platforms they’ve built internally (such as Uber’s Michelangelo, Facebook’s FBLearner, Twitter’s Cortex, and Apple’s Overton); these companies are having an influence on other companies that are starting to build their own tools. Companies like Databricks are building Software as a Service (SaaS) or on-premises tools for companies that aren’t ready to build their own platform. We’ve also seen (and featured at O’Reilly’s AI Conference) Snorkel, an ML-driven tool for automated data labeling and synthetic data generation. HoloClean, another tool developed by researchers from Stanford, Waterloo, and Wisconsin, undertakes automatic error detection and repair. As Chris Ré said at our conference, we’ve made a lot of progress in automating data collection and model generation; but labeling and cleaning data have stubbornly resisted automation. At O’Reilly’s AI Conference in Beijing, Tim Kraska of MIT discussed how machine learning models have out-performed standard, well-known algorithms for database optimization, disk storage optimization, basic data structures, and even process scheduling. The hand-crafted algorithms you learned in school may cease to be relevant, because AI can do better. Rather than learning about sorting and indexing, the next generation of programmers may learn how to apply machine learning to these problems. One of the most suggestive projects we’ve seen has been RISE Lab’s AutoPandas. Given a set of inputs, and the outputs those inputs should produce, AutoPandas generates a program based on those inputs and outputs. This “programming by example” is an exciting step toward Software 2.0. What are the biggest obstacles to adoption? The same set of problems that AI and ML are facing everywhere else (and that, honestly, every new technology faces): lack of skilled people, trouble finding the right use cases, and the difficulty of finding data. That’s one reason Software 2.0 is having the greatest influence on data science: that’s where the skilled people are. Those are the same people who know how to collect and preprocess data, and who know how to define problems that can realistically be solved by ML systems. With AutoPandas, and automated tools for optimizing database queries, we’re just starting to see AI tools that are aimed at software developers. Machine learning also comes with certain risks, and many businesses may not be willing to accept those risks. Traditional programming is by no means risk-free, but at least those risks are familiar. Machine learning raises the question of explainability. You may not be able to explain why your software does what it does, and there are many application domains (for example, medicine and law) where explainability is essential. Reliability is also a problem: it’s not possible to build a machine learning system that is 100% accurate. If you train a system to manage inventory, how many of that system’s decisions will be incorrect? It might make fewer errors than a human, but we’re more comfortable with the kinds of errors humans make. We’re only starting to understand the security implications of machine learning, and wherever data is involved, privacy questions are almost certain to follow. Understanding and addressing the risks of ML and AI will require cross-functional teams; these teams need to encompass not only people with different kinds of expertise (security, privacy, compliance, ethics, design, and domain expertise), but also people from different social and cultural backgrounds. Risks that one socio-cultural group accepts without thinking twice are often completely unacceptable to those with different backgrounds; think, for example, what the use of face identification means to people in Hong Kong. These problems, though, are solvable. Model governance, model operations, data provenance, and data lineage are becoming hot topics for people and organizations that are implementing AI solutions. Understanding where your data comes from and how it has been modified, along with understanding how your models are evolving over time, is a critical step in addressing safety. Governance and provenance will become even more important as data use becomes subject to regulation; and we’re starting to see data-driven businesses follow the lead of companies in highly regulated industries, such as banking and health care. We are at the edge of a revolution in how we build software. How far will that revolution extend? We don’t know; it’s hard to imagine AI systems designing good user interfaces for humans–though once designed, it’s easy to imagine AI building those interfaces. Nor is it easy to imagine AI systems designing good APIs for programmatic access to applications. But it’s clear that AI can and will have a big influence on how we develop software. Perhaps the biggest change won’t be a reduction in the need for programmers, but in freeing programmers to think more about what we’re doing, and why. What are the right problems to solve? How do we create software that’s useful to everyone? That’s ultimately a more important problem than building yet another online shopping app. And if Software 2.0 lets us pay more attention to those questions, it will be a revolution that’s truly worthwhile. Get the O’Reilly Artificial Intelligence NewsletterReceive weekly insight from industry insiders—plus exclusive content, offers, and more on the topic of AI.
Get the O’Reilly Artificial Intelligence NewsletterReceive weekly insight from industry insiders—plus exclusive content, offers, and more on the topic of AI. Powered by WPeMatico The post The road to Software 2.0 appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/2PBlhzR Download the O’Reilly AppTake O’Reilly online learning with you and learn anywhere, anytime on your phone or tablet. Download the app today and:
Powered by WPeMatico The post Four short links: 10 December 2019 appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/34cLTN1 The U.K. and America, Churchill once noted, were two countries divided by a common language. The same might be said of the relations between Europe more generally and the United States when it comes to aviation safety. We all speak the same language, but sometimes the FAA and EASA – the Europe Union’s common aviation safety organisation – move in different ways. In part that is inevitable given the multinational makeup of EASA. It is the EU’s peak aviation safety organisation, but it does not replace the civil aviation authorities of its member states. Nevertheless, slowly, its remit grows. Take drones as an example. Before the rapid uptake of drones a few years ago, EASA’s jurisdiction started at aircraft weighing more than 150 kilograms (330 pounds). Now, EASA has expanded its range to all aircraft. It is also now looking at airport and aerodrome issues. Over time, there will be a one-to-one overlap with the FAA’s role. However, regulating drones is an issue on both sides of the Atlantic (and elsewhere, of course). The players involved in drones are not The Usual Suspects at all. They work to their own – expedited – timetable and they expect results now. In aviation safety, we tend to go deliberatively, cautiously, regulation-forward. That is not how it works for most other sectors. In the electronics area, for example, manufacturers put their products on the market and the standard is ultimately set by the market winner. That is exactly what happened in the videotape wars between BETA and VHS. That is not the aviation way. There is an argument that drones are not really aircraft at all and that we should not be using aviation standards and aviation regulations at all, but where drones meet aviation is once we start looking at what is known as urban aerial mobility (UAM), or ‘flying taxis’ to you and I. They will carry people, they are aircraft. On both sides of the pond, manufacturers, including now Airbus and Boeing, are in a race to get to market. But under which rules? Behind the scenes the U.S. and Europe are on a collision course in the battle to write the standards and rules for UAM and for UTM, the air traffic control system being developed for drones. At the moment, the U.S. is in the driving seat. The winner will be first into the market with the target level of safety for UAM. NASA wants ‘in between road and air’; EASA suggests ‘the same as airlines.’ Important operational rules on how safety-critical data will be shared among stakeholders and how competition for services might be organised depend on the definition. These are vital enablers for any organisation wanting to build a business in these sectors. Both the FAA and EASA have found it impossible to meet the deadlines they set for proposed rule-making on the first step towards UAM – the remote identification of drones. Once this is in place, drone operators will be able to move into second gear and start making substantial revenues from flying their drones safely and cheaply over distances beyond visual line of sight delivering packages and, eventually, people. The U.S. Department of Transportation announced in September that the long-awaited Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on remote drone ID had been delayed again, for the third time, to December 2019. EASA, meanwhile, wanted to publish its draft Opinion on U-Space (European for UTM) regulations in early December. This has now been pushed back to the end of February 2020, at the earliest. The FAA has a draft remote drone ID rule, but importantly, has also enlisted standards body ASTM International, which is proposing standards on how this data will be shared among drone operators, UTM suppliers, law enforcement agencies, air traffic control agencies and the public. Will the ASTM standards be adopted by European standards organisations? At a meeting last week in Amsterdam, the Europeans showed little willingness to move from its path and its timetable. So, will the next EASA draft U-Space regulation allow air navigation service providers to provide both technology platforms and services? Or will the Global UTM Association – which has just signed a cooperative agreement with ASTM – step in and be allowed to develop the U-Space platform? These are the first skirmishes in a battle to determine whether European or U.S. regulatory regimes will ultimately define the safety roadmaps for UAM. Powered by WPeMatico The post Drone (Regulation) Wars: U.S. And E.U. Face Off – Forbes appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/2LC43B7
[NOAA Coyote drone in Avon Park, FL. From NOAA]
[NCAR] Scientists for years have speculated about the powerful hurricane winds that blast just above the surface of the ocean near the eyewall of the storm. These winds, often the most intense in the storm, play a critical role in lifting energy and moisture from the warm ocean waters into the atmosphere, influencing the intensity and path of the hurricane. But they are too dangerous for research aircraft to fly through. Now a new type of disposable drone will enable scientists to collect detailed observations of these winds. Scientists in 2017 and 2018 flew the Coyote unmanned aircraft into hurricanes Maria and Michael, two of the most powerful Atlantic basin hurricanes on record. The unmanned aerial system (UAS) measured atmospheric conditions as low as 360 feet above the water and winds of up to 194 miles per hour. A new paper by a team of scientists, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), demonstrates that such observations can improve the performance of hurricane models used by forecasters. [NOAA scientist Joe Cione, lead author of a new paper on using disposable drones for hurricane observations, holds a Coyote drone in front of a NOAA P-3 “hurricane hunter” research aircraft at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. Image courtesy of NOAA.]“We have an instrument to collect data that we’ve never been able to collect before,” said NCAR scientist George Bryan, a co-author of the new paper. “This is a new frontier in measuring the atmosphere.” The observations will enable scientists to determine the extent to which the gusts shift and fluctuate, which can have significant implications for hurricane behavior as well as the potential for damage once the storm moves onshore. Bryan said the drone’s measurements may also help answer a longstanding question about the interplay of hurricane winds and the ocean surface. Strong winds typically whip up ocean waves, which then exert a drag on the winds that can slow them down. Some evidence, however, indicates that hurricane-force winds cause waves to break in a way that would not exert such a drag, as well as stirring up so much froth that the water surface essentially has a lubricating effect. [Joe Cione holds the Coyote, a small UAS that has flown in three hurricanes. Credit: Joe Cione/NOAA AOML]“With the drone, we can get direct measurements of these processes for the first time,” Bryan said. “These data are crucial to help us configure our models to produce better simulations and forecasts.” The new paper, “Eye of the Storm: Observing Hurricanes with a Small Unmanned Aircraft System,” has been accepted for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and is available online. Powered by WPeMatico The post Drones Provide a New Frontier in Hurricane Observations – WeatherNation appeared first on PCStoreNearMe. via PCStoreNearMe https://ift.tt/2P419qX |