DragonFly
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Airbus tests pilot assist that can automatically divert flights
Airbus is testing autonomous tech that can divert a flight when pilots are in trouble.
HP's new PCs include its first Dragonfly Folio and a 34-inch all-in-one
HP is unveiling a pair of PCs built with remote work in mind, including its first Dragonfly Folio hybrid laptop.
ICYMI: More gadget highlights from CES 2021
Here are some devices from CES 2021 that you may have missed this week, including new HP laptops, a new Philips smart toothbrush and Otterbox gaming accessories.
NASA delays its Titan drone mission by another year
NASA is delaying the launch of its Dragonfly drone mission to Titan to 2027 due to the pandemic and other external setbacks.
White House: Google’s work in China is not a security risk
Earlier this month, Facebook board member and billionaire investor Peter Thiel accused Google of working with China's government. Today, The Wall Street Journal reports that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that he and President Trump have no national security concerns about Alphabet Inc.'s work in China.
NASA's Dragonfly mission is sending an eight-rotor drone to Titan
NASA announced today its next big mission to explore our Solar System. The agency has greenlit a mission called Dragonfly that will send a spacecraft to the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Dragonfly, the latest of NASA's New Frontiers program, was selected because of Titan's unique makeup, which makes its one of the more promising candidates for discovering signs of microbial life.
Google thwarts shareholder challenge to its China search plans
If investors and employees were hoping to prompt cultural change at Alphabet during the company's shareholder meeting, they were likely disappointed. Voters at the meeting rejected all shareholder proposals, including a resolution that would have required a human rights impact assessment before Google went forward with a censored Chinese search engine. Backers like Azzad Asset Management were concerned China could "weaponize" search data to expand mass surveillance and other human rights abuses.
How Google's scandals gave rise to the tech labor movement
2018 proved to be a momentous year for employee activism at some of the world's biggest tech companies. Google, Amazon and Microsoft all found themselves under fire from their staffs over a variety of social and policy issues. Silicon Valley's rank-and-file workers have made their voices heard and have started to bring about tangible changes within their firms, on everything from preventing sexual harassment and cooperation with law enforcement to surveillance technology and user data. 2019 looks to be more of the same.
Congress grills Google CEO over Chinese search engine plans
If you were hoping that Google chief Sundar Pichai would shed more light on his company's potential censored search engine for China... well, you'll mostly be disappointed. Rhode Island Representative David Cicilline grilled Pichai on the recently acknowledged Dragonfly project and mostly encountered attempts to downplay the significance of the engine. The Google exec stressed there were "no plans" to launch a search engine for China, and that Dragonfly was an "internal effort" and "limited" in scope.
Google confirms secret Dragonfly project, but won’t say what it is
Representatives from a number of major tech companies appeared before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Energy and Transportation today, discussing data privacy and concerns over consumer protection. Google sent its new chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, to the hearing, who was questioned multiple times over rumors that Google is working on a censored search engine for China. VentureBeat reports that Enright confirmed a project codenamed Dragonfly, though he stopped short of discussing what that project entailed. "I am not clear on the contours of what is in scope or out of scope for that project," Enright told Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Google's rumored 'Dragonfly' search prototype tied data to phone numbers
While Google employees push back against and lawmakers ask questions about a rumored version of its search engine for China -- with censorship and blacklists for terms like human rights, democracy or protest built-in -- The Intercept revealed more details about how it might actually work. According to its sources, a "Dragonfly" prototype was built that worked similar to many online services in China, with an Android app that linked search activity to a phone number. The Chinese government has pushed for services like WeChat and Weibo to tie ID cards or phone numbers to their accounts before, while also attempting to make sure the large mobile carriers only sell SIMs to customers under their real names. Still, a Human Rights Watch member points out that linking search activity could make it that much harder for anyone to avoid government surveillance. Also mentioned is the idea that it would operate as a joint venture with a company in China, and host its data on servers there that leads some to worry it could be accessed by the authorities. Finally, there's a rumored customization for the source of weather and air pollution data, which The Intercept said has been manipulated before by the government.
Google employees push back on censored China search engine (update)
Employees at Google are protesting the company's work on a censored search engine for China, the New York Times reports, signing a letter that calls for more transparency and questions the move's ethics. Reports of the search engine surfaced earlier this month, leaving many to wonder how the company could justify it after publicly pulling its Chinese search engine in 2010 due to the country's censorship practices. The letter, which is circulating on Google's internal communications system, has been signed by approximately 1,000 employees, according to the New York Times' sources.
Senators grill Google over rumored China search engine
Google refused to confirm if it's truly been developing a censored search engine for China after reports about the project's existence came out, but it might soon have no choice but to come clean. A group of six Democratic and Republican Senators led by Marco Rubio has penned a letter addressed to Google chief Sundar Pichai demanding concrete answers. They want to know once and for all whether the tech giant is conjuring up a version of its search engine that'll work behind the Great Firewall. The Senators called the move "deeply troubling" if true, pointing out that that it "risks making Google complicit in human rights abuses related to China's rigorous censorship regime."
Google is reportedly working on a censored search engine for China
China's relationship with Google is fractious at best, but it's no secret that the search giant wants to make inroads in what is a largely untapped market. However, its latest alleged plan could send tech's political sphere into a tailspin. According to The Intercept, Google is working on a censored version of its search engine for the country -- one which will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and protest.
Russian hackers are inside US utility networks
Russian hackers infiltrated the control rooms of US utility companies last year, reaching a point where they "could have thrown switches," The Wall Street Journal reports. The paper cites officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirming that the hackers -- from a state-sponsored group previously known as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear -- gained access to allegedly secure networks, where they could have caused blackouts.
Hackers are actively targeting US and European power grids
We've been talking about the potential of hacker strikes on electric grids for years, and now it looks like the threat is imminent. Symantec reports that a group it calls Dragonfly is targeting energy and power sectors in the US and Europe, with the intention of both learning how these facilities operate as well as eventually gaining control over the systems.
A quadrocopter could be used to explore Saturn's largest moon
Back in 2014, NASA proposed using drones to explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Well, three years later, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab has a pitch for the aeronautics agency. Like NASA suggested a few years ago, Hopkins' craft is a quadrocopter. The school said that its Dragonfly drone is ideal for exploring the moon given its dense atmosphere and weak gravity, making it "perfect" for heavier-than-air flight. "A human could actually strap on wings, flap their arms and fly," Peter Bedini says in the video below.
Scientists are making genetically modified cyborg dragonflies
A biomedical solutions company called Draper is developing a technology that can turn a dragonfly into a living drone. They call it the DragonflEye project, and the technology's main component is a tiny backpack equipped with solar panels to harvest energy. It also has integrated guidance and navigation system composed of optogenetic tools that Draper made with the help of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at Janelia Farm. The idea is to use those tools to send commands from the backpack to the "steering" neurons that control the insect's flight inside the dragonfly's nerve cord. It's a totally different approach to hijacking an insect's muscles.
Spying malware leaves countries' energy grids open to attack
Cyberwarfare campaigns against Western energy grids aren't just the stuff of action movies these days -- they're very, very real. Symantec has discovered a likely state-sponsored hacking group, nicknamed Dragonfly, that has been using phishing sites and trojans to compromise energy suppliers in the US and several other countries. Unlike targeted, destruction-focused malware like Stuxnet, this appears to be a broader spying effort bent on collecting information about national infrastructure. However, it still creates a back door that leaves companies vulnerable to full-fledged attacks if they don't spot the intrusions; it wouldn't take much to create real problems.
Small winged bot flies autonomously for nine minutes, still can't find a mate
Many robots can fly, but only a few forsake rotors for more natural, if inefficient means of propulsion. These flapping bots have interested folks at the Delft University of Technology for many years, and their latest dragonfly-like effort has achieved what they're calling a first among winged machines: Autonomy. The DelFly Explorer is larger than creations past, but still weighs only 20g (0.7 oz), or the equivalent of roughly four paper airplanes. To flutter freely without human aid, the Explorer marries a barometer and gyroscope with two cameras for eyes, and a microcontroller for a brain. Mix that with some clever coding, and the automaton can take off and navigate its surroundings unassisted until its nine minutes of battery life are up. The DelFly crew imagine their bots could have both fun and functional uses in the future, but for now are busy adding multi-room navigation. At which point, DelFlies will be the perfect scouts for Google's terrifying robot army.
