Tag Archive for: house

Tech world has changed dramatically since the White House last changed hands

Eight years is but a blink in the grand scheme, yet so much will have changed on the technology and social-media landscape between when Barack Obama took the oath on Jan. 20, 2009 and Donald Trump does so Friday.

Before he got started, Obama needed to plead and perhaps pull rank to keep his beloved BlackBerry, a gadget preference which at the time did not seem all that odd. Obama would remain loyal to the device, too, even as its popularity diminished, only relinquishing it last year in exchange for a customized smartphone that he mocked as more suitable for a toddler than a commander in chief.

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Network World Paul McNamara

Trump’s press secretary suggests Russian sanctions were political – as the White House did nothing when the Chinese … – Daily Mail


Daily Mail

Trump's press secretary suggests Russian sanctions were political – as the White House did nothing when the Chinese
Daily Mail
The incoming press secretary reminded the Morning Joe panel that when Chinese hackers accessed the files of millions of government employees in 2015 'the only response of the U.S. government was to send former and current employees a letter saying …

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China hackers – read more

White House fails to make case that Russian hackers tampered with election

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Talk about disappointments. The US government’s much-anticipated analysis of Russian-sponsored hacking operations provides almost none of the promised evidence linking them to breaches that the Obama administration claims were orchestrated in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

The 13-page report, which was jointly published Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, billed itself as an indictment of sorts that would finally lay out the intelligence community’s case that Russian government operatives carried out hacks on the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Clinton Campaign Chief John Podesta and leaked much of the resulting material. While security companies in the private sector have said for months the hacking campaign was the work of people working for the Russian government, anonymous people tied to the leaks have claimed they are lone wolves. Many independent security experts said there was little way to know the true origins of the attacks.

Sadly, the JAR, as the Joint Analysis Report is called, does little to end the debate. Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, it largely restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity. Even worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into Russian hackers’ “tradecraft and techniques” and instead delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups.

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Technology Lab – Ars Technica

The holographic anime “robot” that will keep house for lonely salarymen

Enlarge / She’ll keep a light on for you. (credit: vinclu)

The future is apparently here. And it’s creepier than we ever imagined—even when we were playing around with tethering Teddy Ruxpin to the Internet. A Japanese company called Vinclu (“a company that makes crazy things and supports crazy people”) is now taking pre-orders from Japan and the United States for a new interactive, artificial-intelligence driven home automation system. Called Gatebox, the new Internet-of-Things product takes Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, Spike Jonze’s film Her, and the “holographic” anime characters of Vocaloid concerts to their unified natural conclusion.

Gatebox's out-of-the-box girlfriend persona.

Gatebox’s out-of-the-box girlfriend persona.

Wait, what?

Gatebox, priced at ¥321,840 (about $ 2,700 US), is squarely targeted at young lonely salarymen and all brands of anime-obsessed otaku—promising the experience of “living with your favorite character.” The size of a home coffee-maker, with a footprint no larger than a sheet of A4 printer paper, the device’s main feature is a clear projection tube that displays a computer-animated avatar for the AI’s “character.” Vinclu apparently is planning multiple possible personalities for Gatebox—which, as part of the device’s backstory, is a gateway to the dimension the character lives in.

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Technology Lab – Ars Technica