The anomaly lets a hacker install a program into a service that is run by the “NT AUTHORITYSYSTEM,” – the admin account. When browser’s service, a program essential to run the browser, MxService, running with admin privileges starts, it searches for a non-existent file called program.exe before it moves to other executables to fire up the actual browser app. Using this bug, a hacker can place a dummy executable with that name, and the browser would think it’s harmless....

Moving closer to operational setups across the world, here is the latest update of the global Autonomous Driving Network, showcasing most of the disclosed partnerships, collaborations and investments on the path to autonomous vehicles. Increased investment and partnership activities If you have a look on the investment side, the autonomous driving space is seeing increased funding activities again after the first hype phase between 2016 and 2018. Since 2020, the investments in the self-driving ecosystem are seeing a steep upwards trend again according to a recent McKinsey study....

Each year, hundreds of the world’s fastest-growing startups and scaleups apply to join a network of companies, investors, and experts from across Europe. The winners are selected based on investment rounds, growth, media coverage, social impact, and more. This year’s finale will take place at TNW2020, where the top five companies from each country will celebrate Founders Day, along with Tech5 alumni, investors, VCs, and a special guest at a top-secret location....

Even after the UK came all too briefly out of lockdown in the summer, ticket sales were limited and profits down. Now, with a second lockdown in force and Christmas shows threatened, the future of British theater remains highly questionable. One source of hope has been live-streaming shows – and a number of theater companies, including National Theatre Live had had some success with this format. And, interestingly, the idea of streaming live theater into people’s homes goes back to the Victorian era....

I’ve been working at Orcas for the past four and a half years. Orcas is an Education Technology platform that gives tutors access to lesson plans and provides students with free assessments. Tutors can offer their 1-to-1 sessions and 1-to-many courses both online or in-person and Orcas provides them with discovery, booking, scheduling, in-app communication, and video-conferencing tools. Every year, our CEO would gather the whole team and tell us about the target for the coming period, and for us, it almost always seemed impossible to reach....

Previous headline: Microsoft reportedly wants to buy Siri’s AI partner firm Nuance for $16B New week, new Microsoft acquisition chatter. After reports of the tech giant acquiring gaming-focused communication platform Discord for more than $10 billion, rumors of it chasing speech AI company Nuance have emerged. According to a report from Bloomberg, Microsoft wants to buy the AI firm for $16 billion. The Seattle-based tech giant is ready to pay $56 per share — that’s more than 20% higher than Nuance’s last closing of $45....

To use the AI, the driver has to place a phone on a holder on the dashboard of the car. The software first checks the face of the driver and position of the camera, and then asks them to begin the test. Once the driving starts, the AI measures, the driver’s gaze, the vehicle’s trajectory, and its distance from objects using front and rear cameras. Microsoft partnered with the Institute of Driving and Traffic Research (IDTR) to develop this smartphone-based driving test system....

So, is this a breakthrough for the field or just an attempt to lean in to the marketing zeitgeist surrounding quantum computing? To sort out the answer, we’ll need to take a look at Microsoft’s quantum computing department, its history, and what it’s actually trying to accomplish. A full stack solution Microsoft’s probably not the first name that comes to mind when you think about the quantum computing industry. Google had its monumental time crystals breakthrough last year, IBM was the first big tech entity to develop consumer-facing quantum computing systems and it’s currently engaged in a tit-for-tat with Google, and D-Wave, a quantum company that recently went public, has been building quantum computers for over 20 years....

That’s because huge asteroid impacts, such as the one believed to have killed the dinosaurs, happen frequently and launch thousands of tons of the Earth’s material into space – bacteria, worms, and all. Some of this has ended up on the moon and may have survived intact in craters. Sadly, though, if we push ahead with current moon exploration plans, we may end up destroying them. On Earth, DNA rarely, if ever, survives much longer than a million years....

Let’s get to it. Facebook has removed a number of fake adverts that falsely claim Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates has set up a Bitcoin trading platform. Scammers tricked thousands into investing into the get-rich-quick scheme using imagery of the Crown Prince, local news reports. It’s unclear how much money scammers were able to generate. Redditors that use the Brave browser will reportedly be able to tip each other in cryptocurrency in the near future, according to Decrypt....

After months of speculation about national security risks and users’ data being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party, US President Donald Trump has announced plans to ban TikTok in the United States any day now. In response, a deal is being negotiated between TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and US software giant Microsoft. If successful, Microsoft will take over the app’s operations in the US and potentially also in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand....

Before 2020, I would only see it a few hours a day. The rest of the time, I’d work in co-working spaces and coffee shops, which I walk to. It kept me active. The pandemic changed that — my chair became part of my body. I coded there, I had meetings there, I ate my meals there, I happy hour’d with friends there, and I watched Netflix there. I rocked my whiny kids there....

What? Seriously. A university press release highlighting the team’s work had this to say: How’s it work? It’s actually pretty simple. The researchers use the dead locust’s ear in the exact same way they’d typically use a microphone. Instead of wiring up a human-made electronic device, the team just wires up Mother Nature’s work in a similar fashion. According to team lead Ben Maoz: Quick take: This is pretty rad....

Neumann’s known for two things: making kick ass microphones, and making kick ass microphones. I know that’s the same thing twice — that’s how good the company’s microphones are. But headphones? Let’s just say that, untested, it’s a tough sell at $500 for a product that’s pretty close to being a set of Sennheiser HD 650s in a closed-back design. Credit: Nicole Gray I won’t play coy here though. I’ve used the NDH20s in my studio for a few months now and I’m head-over-heels in love....

So where does that leave us, ultimately, when it comes to the future of AI? That depends on your outlook. Media hype and big tech’s advertising machine has set us up for heartbreak when we compare the reality in 2020 to our 2016-era dreams of fully autonomous flying cars and hyper-personalized digital assistants capable of managing the workload of our lives. But, if you’re gauging the future of AI from a strictly financial, marketplace point of view, there’s an entirely different outlook to consider....

A new AI tool developed at the London School of Economics has shed some light on how recruitment prejudices influence these outcomes. The system uses supervised machine learning algorithms to analyze the search behavior of recruiters on employment websites. The researchers applied the algorithms to the online recruitment platform of the Swiss public employment service. [Read: How Netflix shapes mainstream culture, explained by data] The tool used data from 452,729 searches by 43,352 recruiters, 17....

The avatars draw memories of the holographic girlfriend in Blade Runner 2049, but trapped inside a smartphone screen instead of an apartment. Hybri could also launch much sooner than 2049, if the company’s crowdfunding campaign is successful. Hybri describes the virtual companion as “a fully customizable virtual replica of a humanoid.” Users first pick a basic model avatar and then customize it to fulfill their fantasies. According to Hybri’s website, they can change its face, hairstyle, physique, voice — and even personality: You can then bring the avatar to your home via AR, or whisk it away to a VR location for a virtual date....

A new AI system aims to make biometric authentication more secure by analyzing facial movements. The tech requires users to record a short video of them making a unique facial motion. An integrated neural network framework then inspects the footage to learn their features and movements concurrently. When the user later attempts to access their phone, the system checks that their face matches with the recorded data. The tech, called Concurrent Two-Factor Identity Verification (C2FIV), was developed by Brigham Young University professor D....

TrendMicro’s latest blog also reveals that Skidmap attempts to mask its cryptocurrency mining by faking network traffic and CPU-related statistics. High CPU usage is considered the primary red flag of illicit cryptocurrency mining, which makes this functionality particularly dangerous. According to TrendMicro’s researchers, Skidmap demonstrates the “increasing complexity” of recent cryptocurrency-mining threats. Cryptocurrency mining malware is still a very real threat Initial infection occurs in a Linux process called crontab, a standard process that periodically schedules timed jobs in Unix-like systems....

At this year’s TNW Conference, Ro shared an insider perspective of where we are with NFTs and where we’re going. She presented some good business opportunities, but offered less compelling solutions to solving the pain points. From NFT art to digital injections Ro described an explosion in popularity in ownership NFT collectives, where “any social or physical thing can now have a unique identifier and proof of ownership that is verifiable on the blockchain....