New Hyundai division to develop walking cars and other extreme mobility vehicles

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/09/29/hyundai-new-horizons-studio-extreme-mobility-vehicles/


The Hyundai Elevate walking vehicle concept seemed pretty out-there when the brand introduced it at CES in 2019. The vehicle appeared to be closer kin to the All Terrain Armored Transport from Star Wars than to a conventional automobile. But the concept becomes slightly less outlandish with the announcement that Hyundai has established a new unit to develop what it calls Ultimate Mobility Vehicles, and that the Elevate will be the first among them.

Hyundai’s New Horizons Studio “furthers Hyundai Motor Group’s vision to shape the future of mobility,” the company said in an announcement. “Using a combination of robotics and wheeled locomotion technology, Elevate and other vehicles by New Horizons Studio are expected to redefine vehicular mobility.”

The battery-powered Elevate concept features moveable legs with wheels on the bottom, theoretically making it able to traverse extreme terrain. Hyundai posits that the Elevate or a similar vehicle could be sent into a natural disaster zone, for instance. Or that a car with similar capability could enhance mobility for the disabled.

Sounds cool, but here’s hoping the next Star Wars-inspired vehicle on their list is a real-life Landspeeder.

 

via Autoblog https://ift.tt/1afPJWx

September 29, 2020 at 01:33PM

The Cyber-Avengers Protecting Hospitals From Ransomware

https://www.wired.com/story/cyber-avengers-protecting-hospitals-ransomware


The Czech incident made it clear to Zaidenberg that his fears were justified. Israel was in the process of locking down, and he knew he would soon have a lot of time on his hands. He also knew his cybersecurity skills could help prevent attacks like the one in the Czech Republic. After all, he was already monitoring virus-related threats for work. What if there were a way to scale that up globally, a way to alert hospitals—any hospital, anywhere—that they might be vulnerable, before an attack happened?

That same day Zaidenberg noticed that Nate Warfield, a Microsoft security manager he’d recently met, was tweeting about the exact same thing. “We as infosec professionals have skills and tools our colleagues supporting the medical field may not,” Warfield wrote. “I encourage all of you to do what you can in your communities and regions to help defend them.” Zaidenberg messaged him right away. He floated the idea of recruiting a group of cyber threat researchers to work, pro bono, assessing threats related to the virus.

Warfield wrote back less than a minute later: “I would absolutely participate.”

Warfield, who has thick, tattooed forearms and an enormous red beard, had traveled to Tel Aviv from his home in Seattle in February. There, he’d given a talk about a recently discovered vulnerability in a piece of hardware called a Netscaler, which helps distribute web traffic across multiple servers. The vulnerability left tens of thousands of companies exposed to remote attackers. After seeing the news from the Czech Republic, he wondered whether any unpatched Netscalers were running on hospital networks. He opened Shodan, a search engine for internet-connected devices, and ran a query for Netscalers, paired with the keyword “health.” Six different health care network names popped up.

“Oh no,” he thought.

That night, he did a more focused search, looking for additional unpatched Netscalers, working through every health-care-related keyword he could think of: “medical,” “doctor,” “hospital.” He also hunted for other vulnerabilities, including one discovered just days before that could travel from machine to machine, letting attackers set their own code loose on computers running Windows 10. By the next day, he’d found 76 unpatched Netscalers and more than 100 other vulnerabilities in health care facilities all across the US. He recognized the names of some of the biggest hospitals in the country. One in particular seemed to jump off the screen —his own doctor’s network was running an exposed Netscaler. “When it’s your own doctor that’s at risk, that’s scary,” Warfield says. “That’s when it really hit home.”

Warfield spent almost 45 minutes trying to figure out how to contact his doctor’s network IT security team. Finally, he found his way to the LinkedIn page of someone who seemed to work there and sent a message, cramming who he was and the problem he’d found into the 1,900-character limit and hoping he didn’t sound like a scammer. As he expected, he never heard back.

“This is not an efficient way to do this,” Warfield realized. “I’m never going to be able to contact all these people.”

Just before Zaidenberg messaged him, Warfield sent his list of vulnerabilities to Chris Mills, a colleague of his at Microsoft. He hoped Mills would have a better idea of how to get in touch with the hospitals. As it happened, Mills knew people at the Healthcare Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or ISAC. An ISAC is an independent nonprofit that monitors and shares threats specific to particular sectors of the economy—the result of a push two decades ago by the federal government for major industries to better understand the risks they face. Today there are ISACs for everything from the entertainment world to the retail sector to the maritime industry.

Mills figured the ISAC would know how to contact the right people at the right hospitals. As he passed the list along, Zaidenberg set up a Slack group for what he’d decided to name the Cyber Threat Intelligence League. A few days later, Warfield sent a message to a group of trusted security researchers he belonged to called the Roadhouse Miscreant Punchers to see if anybody else wanted to join their effort. Mills and Zaidenberg were also spreading the word, and they quickly brought on Marc Rogers, a British expat who oversees cybersecurity at the cloud-based identity management company Okta. Rogers had run security operations at Defcon, one of the world’s biggest hacker conventions, for the past decade and seemed to know just about everyone in the cybersecurity world.

via Wired Top Stories https://ift.tt/2uc60ci

September 29, 2020 at 06:06AM

GM scores a bestseller in China with $4,200 electric micro car

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/09/26/gm-china-electric-micro-car-wuling-mini-ev/


BEIJING — When 32-year-old photographer Jaco Xu needed a run-around car for work in the eastern city of Hangzhou, the price tag on the latest micro EV from GM’s China joint venture overcame his qualms about electric vehicles.

Xu paid 38,800 yuan ($5,735) for his tiny two-door Wuling Hong Guang MINI EV, while the basic model retails for just 28,800 yuan ($4,200), making it China’s cheapest EV.

“It feels pretty good. The price is so low and the appearance is simple and beautiful,” said Xu. “Why would I hesitate at that price?”

Launched in July, the Wuling MINI is heading a trend towards a new segment of EVs in China following changes to government subsidies — smaller vehicles with less range between charges, but a super-cheap price tag.

Despite basic features — no safety airbags, optional air-conditioning and a driving range of less than 200 km (125 miles) due to a smaller battery — buyers have been enthusiastic.

SGMW, GM’s venture with partners SAIC Motor Corp and Guangxi Automobile Group, sold about 15,000 of the vehicles in August, making it China’s top-selling EV for the month, surpassing Tesla’s popular Model 3.

The venture plans to expand manufacturing capabilities of the new model, turning out cars at its plant in Liuzhou as well as its existing facilities in Qingdao, said Zhou Xing, SGMW’s branding and marketing director.

“We positioned this model as a ‘people’s commuting tool’,” he said, speaking ahead of the Beijing auto show which starts on Saturday. “Customers can drive their cars to work every day.”

The target market includes people like Xu who are looking for a city-run around as a second car, rural buyers who want a vehicle to move goods and young first-time buyers who are motivated by price.

 

New segment

Total sales of new energy vehicles — including electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles — are expected to reach 1.1 million vehicles in China this year, about 5% of total auto sales.

The micro car represents a shift in what typifies a mainstream electric vehicle, as policymakers push for increased EV production and sales have been bolstered by restrictions on petrol-fuelled cars.

In response to government requirements to win generous EV subsidies, automakers over the past decade have developed higher energy-density battery systems to allow cars to drive for longer with a single charge.

Tesla’s Model 3, which has a range of over 400 km, has been the market leader in China for most of 2020, retailing for about $43,000, about 10 times the cost of the Wuling MINI.

However, China cut subsidies heavily in 2019 and is now asking for higher EV power efficiency to save energy. Automakers, in turn, are planning more smaller EVs with a moderate driving range aimed at customers who can charge cars easily, industry executives said.

The economics are skinny. Wuling MINI will not get EV subsidies due to its short range. For SGMW, the cheap price tag means it makes very little money at best, according to insiders familiar with the matter.

EVs, however, generate green credits for SGMW that can be used to offset negative credits of other companies like SGM, its sister venture which is expanding a lineup of bigger SUVs under Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac marques.

“Selling micro EVs in China makes more sense this year,” said a product planning official at a GM rival.

“Subsidies have become a less important factor of pricing as government has already cut a lot, while green credits are expected to become more expensive,” the official said.

 

Micro focus

Bidding to reverse a sales decline due to a slower economy and stiff competition, GM expects EVs to make up more than 40% of its new launches in China over the next five years.

The Detroit automaker is revamping plants in Shanghai, Wuhan and Liuzhou under its two Chinese JVs to enable production lines making gasoline cars to turn out EVs, public documents detailing its constructions plans show.

For now, the Wuling MINI is the cheapest EV, but it faces competition from the cheapest models from rivals BYD and BAIC BluePark.

Great Wall Motor and Toyota’s China partner GAC are also planning more electric models with a range below 400 km, company officials said this month.

And startup Kaiyun Motors is trying to radically lower the price of its new electric pickup truck Pixel to around 20,000 yuan for urban delivery services, although these EVs will be sold without batteries, allowing consumers to swap them.

“China is a huge market, any product with clear positioning can attract enough customers to survive,” said Kaiyun founder Wang Chao.

 

via Autoblog https://ift.tt/1afPJWx

September 26, 2020 at 07:47AM

Covid-19 Data Is Coming to Google Maps

https://gizmodo.com/covid-19-data-is-coming-to-google-maps-1845166077


While contact tracing flails in the U.S. thanks in part to government dysfunction, Google’s deploying a feature to at least help us avoid covid-19 hotspots. Sometime this week, Android and iOS users will be able to toggle on color-coded overlays in Google Maps, representing the concentration of positive cases on the country, state, city, and county level. You’ll be able to turn this feature on by clicking the “layers” icon (the one that looks like two small diamonds, stacked) and navigating to “COVID-19 Info.”

The numbers on each color-coded segment represent a seven-day average of new diagnoses per 100,000 people, with arrows indicating upward or downward trends. Google says it pulls data “where available” from Johns Hopkins, the New York Times, and Wikipedia (which itself pulls data from Johns Hopkins). News outlets have heavily relied on Johns Hopkins’s granular “near real time” global tracker with data gathered from a variety of governmental and non-governmental sources, which are listed on Github.

Google already has some covid-19 tools in Maps, like wait time trackers for testing centers based on users’ location data, alerts for covid-19-related transit restrictions and checkpoints, and previously-implemented crowd alerts.

Is it good to know where there are concentrations of new covid cases? Sure. Should you be traveling right now? Probably not. Our government fucked us, so get back inside. These feeds ain’t gonna doomscroll themselves.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

September 24, 2020 at 11:15AM

Soon You Can Ask Alexa to Forget Everything You Ever Said

https://gizmodo.com/soon-you-can-ask-alexa-to-forget-everything-you-ever-sa-1845170033


The newly announced Echo Show 10.
Image: Amazon

Privacy is the big thing that gives people the heebie-jeebies when it comes to digital assistants like Alexa. But at Amazon’s devices and services event today, the company announced it was expanding privacy settings with regard to voice recordings.

Later this year, you’ll be able to say, “Alexa, delete everything I’ve said.” According to Amazon, that command will then delete all previously saved voice recordings associated with your account. But, wait, didn’t Amazon already let you do that before? What gives?

Previously, you had to navigate through labyrinthian menu settings to find the page where you could review and delete any recordings. Then, in 2019, Amazon introduced the ability to say “Alexa, delete what I just said,” to erase your last request. You could say “Alexa, delete everything I said today.” While a nice improvement, it wasn’t completely foolproof. Gizmodo found that the feature was not only opt-in, it didn’t necessarily mean that all your recordings from a 24-hour time period would be deleted. Ostensibly, clarifying the prompt to, “Alexa, delete everything I’ve said,” leaves less wiggle room than trying to define what time period “today” refers to.

It also appears that Amazon is trying to somewhat simplify the whole process. You can now ask, “Alexa, how do I review my privacy settings?”, which will send you to a direct link in the Alexa app to the relevant page. Hopefully, this means you’ll never have to cry while looking at Amazon’s horribly crowded page menus again. You can also now “choose whether or not to save your voice recordings.” Amazon said in its event liveblog that if you opt for the latter, recordings will automatically be deleted once Alexa processes your request. It also says that “all previously saved recordings will also be deleted.”

G/O Media may get a commission

But it’s possible there’s a catch. Last July, Amazon confirmed that it kept text transcripts of Alexa requests—even if a user had asked for those recordings to be deleted. Specifically, Amazon said at the time it kept text transcripts of Alexa requests to subscribe to things like Amazon’s music or delivery services, as well as other requests like ordering pizza, setting alarms, and scheduling calendar events. Gizmodo has reached out to Amazon to clarify whether this applies to the updated “delete everything” command. We’ll update if and when we hear back.

Why does Amazon need voice recordings at all? The sad truth is voice assistants still cock things up on the regular when it comes to understanding human voices. Just ask Siri.

But regardless of whether you believe Alexa actually will delete everything you’ve ever said to it, making it easier for people to review their settings is always a good thing. If you really, really, really don’t want Big Tech to have your voice data, your best bet is not buying into digital assistants at all.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

September 24, 2020 at 01:27PM

Amazon is making a Ring flying camera drone and they made a really weird video to promote it

https://geekologie.com/2020/09/amazon-is-making-a-ring-flying-camera-dr.php

ring-flying-drone-camera.jpg
Because filling your home with cameras controlled by one of the largest companies in the world wasn’t enough, Amazon announced today they’re making a flying Ring camera drone that will actually be able to fly to where the action is. The video shows the camera flying to the world’s worst burglar, but I imagine the real use is so Amazon can spy on people having sex and maybe pooping. What, you thought you could just point your camera away from your bedroom and bathroom? No, no, no, my friend. There’s no escaping Mr. Bezos’ tiny flying camera and he prefers his videos both private and embarrassing.
Keep going for the full, weird, announcement video.

via Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome https://geekologie.com/

September 24, 2020 at 03:38PM

Amazon Announces Luna, Another Cloud-Based Streaming Game Service

https://kotaku.com/amazon-announces-luna-another-cloud-based-streaming-ga-1845170977


With two new physical gaming consoles less than a month and a half away from release, Amazon announces Luna, a new paid game streaming service aimed at allowing subscribers to play PC games remotely on computers, phones, and tablets. It’s sort of like Stadia with a slightly better controller.

By subscribing to Amazon Luna, now accepting sign-ups for early access at the introductory price of $5.99 per month, players gain access to a curated library of PC games called the Luna+ game channel. Games will be playable across a broad range of devices, including Fire TV, PC and Mac, and iOS devices (via a web-based app that bypasses Apple’s app store, via Engadget), with Android support available in the coming weeks.

Titles expected to be playable during early access on the Luna+ game channel include Resident Evil 7, Control, Panzer Dragoon, A Plague Tale: Innocence, The Surge 2, Yooka-Laylee and The Impossible Lair, Iconoclasts, GRID, ABZU, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and more.

Amazon also announced the first of many additional channels, the Ubisoft channel, which will include a selection of older Ubisoft games as well as day one access to new games like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. No word yet on how much subscriptions to additional channels, including Ubisoft’s, will cost.

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The coolest aspect of the service is the Luna controller. Instead of connecting to the device the player is playing on, it connects directly to Amazon’s cloud, lowering latency and allowing for fancy tricks like instantly swapping games between screens without losing control. That’s a cool innovation.

The rest sounds very Stadia: Unlimited play, some games will eventually be able to run in 4K, instant play via remote servers … we know this drill. If you’re interested in giving it a go, early access sign-ups for Luna are live now on Amazon’s landing page.

via Kotaku https://kotaku.com

September 24, 2020 at 01:53PM