Everyone knows that we’re residing in a surveillance state that will make Orwell himself shake his head, nevertheless it seems to be like at the very least one firm on this house has gone a bit rogue. In response to reviews, AI surveillance start-up Flock <<insert gratuitous “What the Flock?” joke right here>> has put in at the very least 200 of its car-tracking cameras on public roads in South Carolina alone. That’s a severe whoopsie, particularly because it’s unlawful to put in something on state infrastructure with out permission, which it seems Flock did not acquire. South Carolina authorities are making present of being outraged about this, nevertheless it form of rings hole to us, particularly since Flock now claims that 70% of the inhabitants (of the USA, we presume) is roofed by their know-how. Additionally, police departments throughout the nation are in love with Flock’s service, which lets them precisely monitor the actions of potential suspects, which after all is everybody. No phrase on whether or not Flock must take away the rogue cameras, however we’re not holding our breath.
It seems to be like we’ll quickly be writing the obituary we hoped would nonetheless be a few years away, as the prospect that NASA will have the ability to reestablish significant communications with Voyager 1 appears to be diminishing with every passing day. We reported on the most recent “flipped-bit glitch” again in February, however the issue dates again to November, when Voyager 1 began sending again gibberish as an alternative of its standard payload of scientific knowledge and spacecraft telemetry. The breakdown is considered attributable to a corrupt little bit of reminiscence within the Flight Knowledge System; NASA deliberate to resolve this by commanding the craft to change again to a mode final used when it did its planetary flybys all these a long time in the past, nevertheless it’s not clear whether or not they ever did this or what the outcomes had been. We’ll assume the silence speaks for itself. We all know that your complete Voyager program is long gone the purpose of diminishing returns, and that the cash NASA spends coaxing half-century-old {hardware} 24 billion kilometers away into producing outcomes may be put to higher use elsewhere. However then once more, having one thing that distant to speak with looks like a superb strategy to develop the talents we’ll want as we broaden humanity’s footprint additional into the galaxy, so perhaps it’s definitely worth the expense. Only a thought.
Additionally in house information however a bit bit nearer to dwelling, the mortally wounded Ingenuity helicopter could fly no extra, nevertheless it nonetheless has work to do. Not like one other latest lander spacecraft, Ingenuity managed to remain on its ft after crashing into the Martian regolith, leaving its photo voltaic panel uncovered to the Solar and protecting it powered up. That’s the excellent news; the dangerous information is that about the one factor it might do now’s use its downward-pointing navigational cameras to look at the grains of sand and dirt drift by within the wind. It’s worthwhile geological work, little doubt, however in comparison with hovering by the skinny Martian ambiance and breaking document after document, it appears a considerably ignominious retirement. Lemonade out of lemons, anybody?
No person ever mentioned being a Linux geek was going to be straightforward, however as these of us who’ve voluntarily defenestrated or depomified their computer systems can inform you, it’s not at all times a simple row to hoe. That’s very true with content material creation; whereas the Mac and Home windows crowd can (often) simply plug and play, getting a Linux machine to cooperate with audio and video modifying {hardware} and software program is usually a bit painful. Fortunately, we’ve got Venn Stone’s Interfacing Linux to assist us out. Venn has spent the final decade or so constructing a Linux-based AV manufacturing studio and is now sharing the information and tips realized alongside the best way, in addition to constructing a neighborhood of like-minded content material creators. For those who refuse to worship on the altar of Redmond or Cupertino, this may be the place for you.
And at last, final week (fifth merchandise) we famous the information that the US authorities is pushing programmers to eschew programming languages it deems to be “reminiscence unsafe.” This principally boiled all the way down to “C/C++ dangerous” as a result of they result in buffer overflow errors that may be exploited by malware. Now, the US Nationwide Safety Company — sure, that NSA — has come out with a useful record of different languages, which have higher memory-safety options and are completely not compromised in any method. Rust followers shall be happy, little doubt, as will Java programmers. We had been a bit stunned to see C# on the record, although, and we count on the inclusion of Ruby and Python will elevate some eyebrows, with the latter little doubt drawing the ire of a sure Hackaday editor.