For over a decade, you couldnt easily fly a DJI drone over restricted areas in the United States. DJIs software would automatically stop you from flying over runways, power plants, public emergencies like wildfires, and the White House.But confusingly, amidst the greatest US outpouring of drone distrust in years, and an incident of a DJI drone operator hindering LA wildfire fighting efforts, DJI is getting rid of its strong geofence. DJI will no longer enforce No-Fly Zones, instead only offering a dismissible warning meaning only common sense, empathy, and the fear of getting caught by authorities will prevent people from flying where they shouldnt.In a blog post, DJI characterizes this as placing control back in the hands of the drone operators. DJI suggests that technologies like Remote ID, which publicly broadcasts the location of a drone and their operator during flight, are providing authorities with the tools needed to enforce existing rules, DJI global policy head Adam Welsh tells The Verge.But it turns out the DJI drone that damaged a Super Scooper airplane fighting the Los Angeles wildfires was a sub-250-gram model that may not require Remote ID to operate, and the FBI expects it will have to work backwards through investigative means to figure out who flew it there. DJI voluntarily created its geofencing feature, so it makes a certain degree of sense that the company would get rid of it now that the US government no longer seems to appreciate its help, is blocking some of its drone imports, calls DJI a Chinese Military Company, and has started the countdown clock on a de facto import ban. The FAA does not require geofencing from drone manufacturers, FAA spokesperson Ian Gregor confirms to The Verge. But former DJI head of global policy, Brendan Schulman, doesnt seem to think this is a move for the better. Here are a few choice phrases hes posted to X:This is a remarkable shift in drone safety strategy with a potentially enormous impact, especially among drone pilots who are less aware of airspace restrictions and high-risk areas.There was substantial evidence over the years that automatic drone geofencing, implemented using a risk-based approach, contributed significantly to aviation safety.Interesting timing: Ten years almost to the day after a DJI drone infamously crash-lands on the White House lawn, DJI has removed the built-in geofencing feature that automatically impedes such an incident, replacing it with warnings that the user can choose to ignore.Here are the questions we sent DJI, and the companys answers:1) Can you confirm thatDJIno longer prevents its drones from taking off / flying into any locations whatsoever in the United States, including but not limited to military installations, over public emergency areas like wildfires, and critical government buildings like the White House?Yes, this GEO update applies to all locations in the U.S and aligns with the FAAs Remote ID objectives. With this update, priorDJIgeofencing datasets have been replaced to display official FAA data. Areas previously defined as Restricted Zones (also known as No-Fly Zones) will be displayed as Enhanced Warning Zones, aligning with the FAAs designated areas.2) If it still does prevent drones from taking off / flying into some locations, which locations are those?Not applicable.3) DidDJImake this decision in consultation with or by direction of the US government or any specific government bodies, agencies, or representatives? If so, which? If not, why not?This GEO update aligns with the principle advanced by aviation regulators around the globe including the FAA that the operator is responsible for complying with rules.4) DidDJIrun any risk analysis studies beforehand and if so, did it see a likelihood of abuse? What likelihood did it see? If not, why not?The geofencing system that was in place prior was a voluntary safety measure introduced byDJIover 10 years ago when mass-produced small drones were a new entrant to the airspace, and regulators needed time to establish rules for their safe use. Since then, the FAA has introduced Remote ID requirements, which means that drones flown in the U.S. must broadcast the equivalent of a license plate for drones. This requirement went into effect in early 2024, providing authorities with the tools needed to enforce existing rules.This update has been in development for some time, following similar changes successfully implemented in the E.U. last year, which showed no evidence of increased risk, says Welsh. However, last years changes reportedly kept mandatory no-fly zones around UK airports. Here in the United States, Welsh seems to suggest its apps wont go that far. To be clear: DJI flight apps will continue to voluntarily generate warnings if pilots attempt to fly into restricted airspace as designated by the FAA, provided that pilots keep their flight apps up to date, he tells The Verge.

Biometric authentication has emerged as a promising solution to enhance security by offering a more robust defense against cyber threats. However, hackers can increasingly develop sophisticated methods to bypass traditional security measures as technology advances. This includes forging common protections such as easily guessed PINs, passwords, or even misplacing physical keys, which were once considered reliable safeguards.Despite being widely employed, traditional security techniques like passwords, PINs, and keys have built-in drawbacks, such as vulnerability to hacking, loss, or theft. This highlights the need for more user-friendly, safe authentication methods that adjust to changing cybersecurity threats.Although biometric systems have become more popular as substitutes, conventional unimodal systems are susceptible to spoofing. To increase security, multimodal biometric systems integrate characteristics like iris and ECG or ear and iris, making duplication more challenging. These devices are useful in combinations like palm and finger veins, increase accuracy, reduce spoofing, and are resistant to noise.Multimodal biometric systems provide benefits but can have drawbacks, such as more complexity, higher processing demands, and possible privacy issues. The development of authentication systems continues to face the difficulty of finding a balance between security, usability, and privacy as cybersecurity threats evolve.To address the abovementioned issues, new research published in BioMed Research International describes a novel methodology combining feature-level and decision-level fusion to improve detection accuracy. The method consists of several key stages: preprocessing to improve data quality, segmentation and feature extraction for ECG and iris signals, a feature fusion module to combine and refine features, and decision-level fusion with a score-level model to assess the similarity between ECG and iris inputs.The suggested methodology presents a multimodal authentication technique that enhances accuracy by utilizing iris and ECG data. The procedure uses feature extraction, fusion, and classification models to identify and categorize patterns. The extraction and analysis of biometric features are the main objectives of the separate phases that comprise the authentication process.Iris Feature Extraction: Data is captured under controlled lighting conditions to ensure accuracy. The iris is segmented by approximating its center and identifying inner and outer boundaries. Circular edge detection via convolution helps find these boundaries, allowing for cropping and segmentation. A combination of Gabor filtering and Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is applied for robust feature extraction, providing scale- and rotation-invariant descriptors.ECG Feature Extraction: Wavelet transform extracts features from ECG signals, followed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction. Peak detection identifies key features such as R, S, and T waves. The Symlet 8 wavelet function is applied due to its symmetry, with a 2-level decomposition process to analyze the ECG signals high- and low-frequency components.Ensemble Classifier: The final stage involves an ensemble classifier, where decision trees are trained using the extracted multimodal features. Predictions from individual trees are combined through majority voting to make the final classification decision. This process enhances the systems robustness and learning patterns from ECG and iris data for accurate authentication.To evaluate this method, the research team conducted experiments using biometric data from 45 users, split into 70% for training and 30% for validation. The experiments assessed individual and combined biometric modalities, focusing on ECG and iris data.Results showed that the proposed ensemble classifier outperformed standard methods, achieving superior accuracy (95.65%), sensitivity (96.2%), and precision (96.55%) for multimodal scenarios. The comparative analysis highlighted its effectiveness over random forest, decision tree, and bagged ensemble classifiers, with the combined multimodal approach yielding the highest performance.In conclusion, the proposed multimodal biometric authentication system demonstrates a significant advancement in cybersecurity by addressing the vulnerabilities of traditional unimodal and password-based security methods. By integrating ECG and iris data with innovative feature-level and decision-level fusion techniques, the system achieves enhanced accuracy, robustness, and resistance to spoofing. The experiments highlight the superiority of the ensemble classifier, which consistently outperforms traditional methods, providing reliable authentication while maintaining usability.Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. Dont Forget to join our65k+ ML SubReddit.(Promoted) Mahmoud Ghorbel+ postsMahmoud is a PhD researcher in machine learning. He also holds abachelor's degree in physical science and a master's degree intelecommunications and networking systems. His current areas ofresearch concern computer vision, stock market prediction and deeplearning. He produced several scientific articles about person re-identification and the study of the robustness and stability of deepnetworks. Meet 'Height':The only autonomous project management tool (Sponsored)

Jan 15, 2025Ravie LakshmananPatch Tuesday / Zero-DayMicrosoft kicked off 2025 with a new set of patches for a total of 161 security vulnerabilities across its software portfolio, including three zero-days that have been actively exploited in attacks.Of the 161 flaws, 11 are rated Critical, and 149 are rated Important in severity. One other flaw, a non-Microsoft CVE related to a Windows Secure Boot bypass (CVE-2024-7344), has not been assigned any severity. According to the Zero Day Initiative, the update marks the largest number of CVEs addressed in a single month since at least 2017.The fixes are in addition to seven vulnerabilities the Windows maker addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the release of December 2024 Patch Tuesday updates.Prominent among the patches released by Microsoft is a trio of flaws in Windows Hyper-V NT Kernel Integration VSP (CVE-2025-21333, CVE-2025-21334, and CVE-2025-21335, CVSS scores: 7.8) that the company said has come under active exploitation in the wild -"An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," the company said in an advisory for the three vulnerabilities.As is customary, it's currently not known how these shortcomings are being exploited, and in what context. Microsoft also makes no mention of the identity of the threat actors weaponizing them or the scale of the attacks.But given that they are privilege escalation bugs, they are very likely used as part of post-compromise activity, where an attacker has already gained access to a target system by some other means, Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, pointed out."The Virtualization Service Provider (VSP) resides in the root partition of a Hyper-V instance, and provides synthetic device support to child partitions over the Virtual Machine Bus (VMBus): it's the foundation of how Hyper-V allows the child partition to trick itself into thinking that it's a real computer," Rapid7's Lead Software Engineer, Adam Barnett, told The Hacker News."Given that the entire thing is a security boundary, it's perhaps surprising that no Hyper-V NT Kernel Integration VSP vulnerabilities have been acknowledged by Microsoft until today, but it won't be at all shocking if more now emerge."The exploitation of Windows Hyper-V NT Kernel Integration VSP has also resulted in the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adding them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, requiring federal agencies to apply the fixes by February 4, 2025.Separately, Redmond has warned that five of the bugs are publicly known -CVE-2025-21186, CVE-2025-21366, CVE-2025-21395 (CVSS scores: 7.8) - Microsoft Access Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityCVE-2025-21275 (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows App Package Installer Elevation of Privilege VulnerabilityCVE-2025-21308 (CVSS score: 6.5) - Windows Themes Spoofing VulnerabilityIt's worth noting that CVE-2025-21308, which could lead to improper disclosure of an NTLM hash, was previously flagged by 0patch as a bypass for CVE-2024-38030. Micropatches for the vulnerability were released in October 2024.All the three Microsoft Access issues, on the other hand, have been credited to Unpatched.ai, an AI-guided vulnerability discovery platform. Action1 also noted that while the flaws are categorized as remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities, exploitation requires an attacker to convince the user to open a specially crafted file.The update is also notable for closing out five Critical severity flaws -CVE-2025-21294 (CVSS score: 8.1) - Microsoft Digest Authentication Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityCVE-2025-21295 (CVSS score: 8.1) - SPNEGO Extended Negotiation (NEGOEX) Security Mechanism Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityCVE-2025-21298 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityCVE-2025-21307 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Windows Reliable Multicast Transport Driver (RMCAST) Remote Code Execution VulnerabilityCVE-2025-21311 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Windows NTLM V1 Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability"In an email attack scenario, an attacker could exploit the vulnerability by sending the specially crafted email to the victim," Microsoft said in its bulletin for CVE-2025-21298."Exploitation of the vulnerability might involve either a victim opening a specially crafted email with an affected version of Microsoft Outlook software, or a victim's Outlook application displaying a preview of a specially crafted email . This could result in the attacker executing remote code on the victim's machine."To safeguard against the flaw, it's recommended that users read email messages in plain text format. It's also advising the use of Microsoft Outlook to reduce the risk of users opening RTF Files from unknown or untrusted sources."The CVE-2025-21295 vulnerability in the SPNEGO Extended Negotiation (NEGOEX) security mechanism allows unauthenticated attackers to run malicious code remotely on affected systems without user interaction," Saeed Abbasi, manager of vulnerability research at Qualys Threat Research Unit, said."Despite a high attack complexity (AC:H), successful exploitation can fully compromise enterprise infrastructure by undermining a core security mechanism layer, leading to potential data breaches. Because no valid credentials are required, the risk of widespread impact is significant, highlighting the need for immediate patches and vigilant mitigation."As for CVE-2025-21294, Microsoft said a bad actor could successfully exploit this vulnerability by connecting to a system which requires digest authentication, triggering a race condition to create a use-after-free scenario, and then leveraging it to execute arbitrary code."Microsoft Digest is the application responsible for performing initial authentication when a server receives the first challenge response from a client," Ben Hopkins, cybersecurity engineer at Immersive Labs, said. "The server works by checking that the client has not already been authenticated. CVE-2025-21294 involves exploitation of this process for attackers to achieve remote code execution (RCE)."Among the list of vulnerabilities that have been tagged as more likely to be exploited is an information disclosure flaw affecting Windows BitLocker (CVE-2025-21210, CVSS score: 4.2) that could allow for the recovery of hibernation images in plaintext assuming an attacker is able to gain physical access to the victim machine's hard disk."Hibernation images are used when a laptop goes to sleep and contains the contents that were stored in RAM at the moment the device powered down," Kev Breen, senior director of threat research at Immersive Labs, said."This presents a significant potential impact as RAM can contain sensitive data (such as passwords, credentials, and PII) that may have been in open documents or browser sessions and can all be recovered with free tools from hibernation files."Software Patches from Other VendorsBesides Microsoft, security updates have also been released by other vendors over the past few weeks to rectify several vulnerabilities, including Found this article interesting? 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Looking forthe most recentMini Crossword answer?Click here for today's Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands and Connections puzzles.Today's Mini Crossword wasn't terribly hard, but it had one of those double clues that I hate, where they tell you, for example, that 7-Across is an "adjective paired with 3-Down in a simile." That's great, New York Times puzzlemakers, if only I already knew what 3-Down was. WHICH I DON'T. So I leave blanks, and I go back and forth, and eventually it all fills in. Need some answers and hints? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times' games collection. If you're looking for today's Wordle, Connections and Strands answers, you can visitCNET's NYT puzzle hints page.Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini CrosswordLet's get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers. The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for Jan. 15, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNETMini across clues and answers1A clue: Food that many an N.Y.C. tourist grabs for breakfastAnswer: BAGEL6A clue: Got out of bedAnswer: AROSE7A clue: Adjective paired with 3-Down in a simileAnswer: LOOSE8A clue: EffortlessnessAnswer: EASE9A clue: Tyrannosaurus ___Answer: REXMini down clues and answers1D clue: Makeshift seat in a barnyard, maybeAnswer: BALE2D clue: Very loud, like a stadium crowdAnswer: AROAR3D clue: Bird whose name rhymes with 7-AcrossAnswer: GOOSE4D clue: Fictional Vermont college on Netflix's "The Sex Lives of College Girls"Answer: ESSEX5D clue: Author HarperAnswer: LEEHow to play more Mini CrosswordsThe New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day's Mini Crossword for free, but you'll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

How do you get better at social games like The Traitors?And why this year's finale has been given a new gameplay twist.Image credit: BBC / Studio Lambert / Eurogamer Feature by Tom Phillips Editor-in-Chief Published on Jan. 15, 2025 This article is intended for viewers up to date with The Traitors UK, though does not reveal the identities of any players who have left the game.Three years into the UK version of The Traitors, it can sometimes feel like the show's Faithful have learned nothing. Seemingly-obvious Traitors are still going under the radar, while innocent Faithful are being banished for innocuous reasons. Shouldn't repeated play of social games - or the ability to view others playing them in previous years, at least - be starting to prompt a more strategic response?Well yes and no - and this year's series has indeed seen some Faithful using knowledge of the format to their advantage. But in a constantly-changing meta and under high pressure, progress is slow.Last year, I spoke with The Traitors UK season one contestant Ivan Brett - author of several gaming books and host of the It's Just A Game podcast - for his thoughts on whether a knowledge of game design can give you an edge in social game scenarios. This year, I wanted to check back in and find out if this season's flock of Faithful could really have been doing anything different. Can you really get better at social games through practice? And how does the new finale twist change the game?To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Nine video games that tried (and will hopefully fail) to predict 2025.Watch on YouTube"People are getting more knowledgeable about the game, more familiar with the twists and players are shifting with the meta," Brett says as I speak to him via video call. "You saw quite quickly when shields were given out in episode four, players understood that they could spread their protection [by keeping who holds them a secret] to make the Traitors work a bit harder to murder. There's an ability to protect more people, and potentially trap a Traitor too. That's been done a few times, and it would be genius if it hadn't been done already, but we want to see players playing at an optimal level with the resources provided. This just makes it more interesting when people start to come up with new strategies.""Nobody is going to kill the person they have a rivalry with. In fact, it's really good to leave that person in."Still, there are moments where players aren't thinking strategically, Brett acknowledges, pointing to the recurring discussions where players are implicated in the murder of someone with whom they "had beef". "No Traitor who's seen the show is going to try and do a murder that pins it on themselves," Brett says. It's too obvious a move, too easily traced back to the perpetrator, and wastes the opportunity to murder someone more unexpected - something which then also throws Faithful off the scent. "Nobody is going to kill the person they have a rivalry with," he continues. "In fact, it's really good to leave that person in the show, as seen in season one, with Wilf leaving Maddie in."But while players are becoming familiar with those kinds of ideas, people will not get better at reading social cues, Brett believes. "That's never going to change," he says. "Social reads are just flawed, and people are not going to become better at hunting Traitors, because what you're using is just the clues within the show." So, how can you play better? It's difficult, Brett says, as social games like The Traitors don't offer a strong persistent rulebook of what's "best"."You can play optimally, but the only way to even measure how well a game is played is against the meta game at that current point," Brett says, "and that will change every year based on what was successful last year. You only have to look at the pre-show interviews to see that absolutely everyone tried to model themselves on [last year's winner] Harry, which means that whatever Harry did, they'll try and do. Except for those who are smart enough to say, 'whatever Harry does, I won't do'. That's the shifting meta. No matter what the predominant thing is, the best play is in some way determined by what's come before, either sticking to it or changing from it, diverting from it."Despite twists, familiarity of the format can help at least with knowing the kinds of things to mentally prepare for. I wondered, in episode one, how many of the players volunteering to leave the train really believed they were quitting the show, having seen two players depart in season one only to return later on."The ability to predict the kind of twists that come means people are not shocked by it or affected by it emotionally as we were in season one.""An understanding and even the ability to predict the kind of twists that will come means people are not shocked by it or affected by it as emotionally as we were in season one," Brett acknowledges, "and are instead able to process it in a more analytical sense and go, 'Well, how do I benefit from this? How do I extract the most value from this situation?' That is happening in this series for some players."This year it's been fascinating to see players wrestle with the reality that The Traitors is, at its heart, a selfish game - as so many social games are - even if each episode sees the cast work together for the common goal of adding more money to the ultimate prize fund. Tasks this year have included more elements for personal gain - shields to protect from murder, but also the need to sacrifice money or other players' ability to get shields in order to benefit. And then there was the clown task, where players struggled with the concept of being lied to by their fellow contestants."Dan was the first to say 'I'm acting selfishly, I'm really sorry that I had to do this, but in the end it's not a team game,'" Brett notes. "We all figured out it wasn't a team game [in season one], but it took a bit of time for some people. The fact Dan first says that back in episode three and is confident enough that he won't get banished just for being selfish, shows a development in the strategy and in the overall understanding of the game." Up to a point, anyway."I like it because British reality TV is miles behind other countries - Australia, New Zealand, America most notably - in allowing this kind of villainy to be celebrated," Brett muses. "The Traitors has, whether you like it or not, brought the British public's understanding of what's permissible as a heroic action forward. Before, on Big Brother, anything strategic was treated as villainy. America has 47 series of Survivor, a much more strategic version of Big Brother. The formats generally work in the same way, but you're always constantly trying to outdo each other and out-think each other and use subterfuge and villainy in that way. And that's great." The Traitors UK's season three cast. | Image credit: BBC / Studio LambertSpeaking of which, one big twist to The Traitors' format this year will take place in its finale, where producers have decided to make a big strategic change. Now, anyone who leaves in the last episode will not declare to other players whether they were a Traitor or Faithful, so remaining players can no longer factor that information into their decision on whether to continue voting players off, or to end the game and risk a Traitor still being present.The only real drama in a finale is - are there one or two Traitors left?"The prevailing outcome is that you keep banishing players until you've got what you believe to be your last Traitor out," Brett says. "Going into the final episode, you know there still has to be either one or two Traitors left, unless you've done really badly. But even if you've done well, it will still be one or two because when Traitors do get down to one they're forced to recruit by ultimatum. So the only real drama in a finale is - are there one or two Traitors left? And therefore players can keep banishing until they've got two people left, leading to the reveal simply being whether only one or both of those players have won. And they've done this before."Around the world, more than a dozen seasons of The Traitors format have aired. Here in the UK, you can watch multiple editions of The Traitors US and Australia on iPlayer. So while we're technically just in our third iteration of the show, a chunk of the UK audience will have already seen half a dozen different endgames play out. And the number of endgames this format has is limited, without changes."If [endgames] become a pattern they become boring, and it is so important to stick the landing of each series that they can't take that risk - more than any other show," Brett says. "No one remembers the ending of Love Island, or even the final week of Big Brother. It's almost always irrelevant. The Traitors always puts a lot of pressure on the players still, but you've got to keep making it interesting for viewers at home."So, how will this year's finale play out? Unfortunately, in Brett's opinion, the change tips the scales further towards a Traitors victory. "By removing any verification that you've got rid of them, Faithful will never have a good enough reason to end the game," he says. "I can't see how this benefits the Faithfuls in any way. Let's say a power group of three or four get to the end and trust each other, and choose to win the game. If there's a Traitor in that group, that Traitor will win. Or it could lead to Faithfuls saying 'Well, now that we're not finding out if a Traitor is there or not, in order to make the numbers better, we'll just keep on banishing until there's two of us'." That doesn't lead to good TV either, he adds, as it will come without any players revealing others as Traitors."I can't see how this benefits the Faithfuls in any way.""Some of the best moments are those reveals," Brett says, "and so this is a twist that comes at the expense of taking away some of those brilliant unboxings. It's not an unboxing for viewers, because we already know the players' roles. But it's more about watching the players respond." Instead, it's likely we'll see different kinds of reveal moments - ones we haven't seen before - such as a Faithful wrestle over whether to end the game without that knowledge of having already caught several. "If we can watch that happening live, that's really interesting," Brett says. "I'm excited to see it, I just think it probably spells a lot of Traitor wins until something else changes to balance it."There are ways still to balance things further, he believes, such as ending the Traitors' ability to recruit sooner. But this opens up the possibility of players ridding the game of all Traitors before the finale begins - leading to a truly weird endgame full of paranoia where all remaining players are already Faithful. "Again, you can't have that too many times either," Brett says. But the future remains unwritten, and next year's meta will only be decided after this year's finale airs. Who knows - maybe next year's crop will have it all sussed?

Seeing as weve tested and reviewed most of their catalog over the years, it was only a matter of time before we assembled the best Brooklinen products in one place. Our editors rely heavily on their breathable sheets, supersoft comforters, sateen duvet covers, and more for a good nights sleep. Weve also made a comfortable foray into their bath products, lauding their Turkish towels and bath accessories, and given their home line rave reviews. Do we see loofahs on the horizon? An extended loungewear line? Perfumes? Whatever it is, were on board.Below is a comprehensive list of everything the AD team has lived in and loved, including their best-selling luxe sateen sheet sets, linen duvet cover, down pillows, and Turkish bath towels. In short, shop everything that makes for a high-quality slumber experience, even for the pickiest sleepers.Our Top Picks for the Best Brooklinen Products:Best Sheets: Brooklinen Luxe Sateen Core Sheet Set, $189Best Bed Cover: Brooklinen Down Alternative Comforter, $259 $207Best Pillow: Brooklinen Down Pillow, $199 $95Best Bath Towels: Brooklinen Turkish Bath Towels, $75 for 2Browse by Category:Sheets:Brooklinen Washed Linen Core Sheet SetContributor Madeleine Luckel fell hard for this linen core sheet set from Brooklinen with a supersoft material and temperature-regulating design. When I got these I thought white linen sheets year-round might be a slightly bold move, since I dont live my life on a Greek island, but the nature of the fiber is versatile and temperature-regulating, she says. Thanks to 10-plus color varieties, you can find a sheet set that lands exactly where youd like on the scale of minimalist to maximalist.Brooklinen Luxe Sateen Core Sheet SetBoasting unmatched quality, durability, and softness that gets better with every wash, multiple AD staff members love these sheets. Commerce director Rachel Fletcher says this set is super classic, smooth, and has a crisp feel. Including a flat sheet, fitted sheet, and two pillowcases, this set is perfect for hot sleepers with sensitive skin according to Fletcher, as she adds that theyre really smooth and not at all scratchy or harsh on my skin, like some of the less expensive options Ive tried in the past. Contributor Erika Owen found these sheets perfect for staying cool during a New York City heatwave and loved the deep design of the fitted sheet pocket and how easy it was to get it over her mattress and mattress topper.Bed Covers:Brooklinen Down Alternative ComforterMade with a 100% cotton sateen shell, this hypoallergenic comforter is treated with ultrafresh antimicrobials and comes in several different weights to accommodate the hot sleeper as well as the shopper who always goes in for all-season sleep products. Our social media manager Rebecca Grambone opted for the all-season down comforter and found it to be hotel quality and breathable but cozy. If youre like me and always on the hunt for the perfect mix of cool and comfort with their sleep setup, definitely give this a try! she says.Brooklinen Classic Percale Duvet CoverAD PRO senior editor Mel Studach likens this percale duvet cover to a crisp cotton button-down shirt. Its soft and sophisticated in a matte finish, plus lightweight and breathable. And while she admits shes not particularly picky when it comes to duvet cover material, percale, linen, and sateen each have their perfect setting, she says, adding that this duvet cover has tipped the scales for me! I love how crisp and smooth the percale isin both appearance and touch. She also loved that retying the duvet was simple with help from the covers Long and Short interior tags.Brooklinen Washed Linen Duvet CoverThis linen duvet cover is made from 100% European flax linen and is Oeko-Tex certified for chemical safety. Zo Sessums, senior digital design editor and self-professed hot sleeper, opted for this duvet cover in a limited-edition blush pink The pink gives my room a bright pop, and the wrinkled nature of the linen makes the duvet not look too precious, she says. Also a pet owner, Sessums recommends this duvet cover for those who dont want to wash a whole comforter or quilt on the regular.Brooklinen Linen QuiltMaybe youve tried linen sheets, but a linen quilt is an even bigger upgrade. Social media manager Rebecca Grambone says it perfectly: If you happen to be on the lookout for your favorite coastal grandma button-down linen top in the quilt form, the Brooklinen Linen Quilt in White Diamond is for you. Coming in sizes from full to Cali king, this 100% linen quilt is lightweight, super cooling, and breathable.Brooklinen Alpaca Windowpane Throw BlanketOur associate commerce director Lori Keong calls soft alpaca the most luxurious sweater material (no disrespect to cashmere). This pick from Brooklinen is an alpaca throw she found luxurious and high-quality, especially for its price point. Its supersoft texture plus warmth combat even the coldest winter days, Keong adds.Pillows:Brooklinen Down PillowContributor Jacqueline Wladis gives this pillow a 15 out of 10: Its like putting your head on a very firm cloud that supports your neck. Made from a combo of down clusters and feather filling with a 100% cotton sateen shell, this pillow marries firmness with plushness, so youre subsumed in feather, but comfortably resting atop them. Theyre not so firm that you feel like youre sleeping on a brick, but they cradle your head and provide nice back support if youre working from your bed, Wladis says.Towels:Brooklinen Classic Turkish Cotton Bath TowelsThese 100% Turkish cotton towels come in nearly every palatable neutral you could imagine. Oeko-Tex certified, they also come in three varieties: classic, super plush, and organic ribbed. Digital features editor Katherine McLaughlin opted for the classic and found them quick-drying and luxurious, noting that it really feels and looks like a towel you might find in a hotel.On Our Wishlist:Brooklinen Dreamweave Waffle Bed BlanketThis blanket is a true chameleonperfect for a light layer on a summer evening or for extra coverage between yourself and the duvet when its freezing. The waffle texture is an easy favorite for its softness and flexibility, made of 100% Turkish cotton.Brooklinen Classic Percale Core Sheet SetIf youre feeling overwhelmed by optionswhich fabrics, which shades, how hot, crisp, softhead for this percale core sheet set. Its 100% cotton and Oeko-Tex certified so you know youre not sleeping in questionable chemicals; this sheet set hits all the marks without complicating the message.

Fancy some sticky notes?It's the start of a new year and if you've already got a Nintendo themed calendar, how about some sticky notes to go with it?Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Nelly wants to become the biggest fintech startup in the healthcare industry. The Berlin-based startup is already working with more than 1,200 medical practices in a handful of European countries. But there are thousands more that could benefit from an upgrade for their administrative workflows.Thats why Nelly recently raised 50 million in funding (around $51 million at current exchange rates) in a Series B round led by Cathay Innovation, along with Notion Capital. Existing investors b2venture, Lakestar, Motive Ventures, and Arc Investors also participated once again.While many industries have fully switched to digital workflows, Nellys founding team realized that many medical practices are lagging behind. I went to the doctor, I had to fill in all my data with pen and paper. And then four weeks later, I received a thick letter with a request to pay 120, Nelly co-founder and CEO Niklas Radner told TechCrunch.The company started with a software-as-a-service product that lets medical practices onboard new patients digitally. Patients book an appointment and then receive a confirmation message via SMS, WhatsApp, or email with a link. They can click on that link and fill out their personal details and medical history.But the reality today is that more than 50% of all appointments are still not scheduled digitally. They are scheduled by a phone call or by just walking into the practice, Radner said. Thats why patients can also scan a QR code to open Nellys portal from the waiting room.Behind the scenes, Nelly integrates with existing practice management systems. Data is updated and stored in these legacy systems so that practices dont have to switch to a new system altogether. These connectors are either built in house by the Nelly team or developed by Nellys partners.This onboarding system acts as the backbone for the rest of the product suite. You could see Nelly as, lets say, a Typeform/DocuSign/planner for medical practices, Radner said.On the patient-side, in addition to online bookings and the onboarding features, patients can pay medical practices using online payments or Nelly-managed card readers. Patients can also receive reminders to leave a review on Google Maps.As for medical practices, Nelly can handle invoices and billing. This part can save significant time for medical practices, as it can lead to spending less time chasing out-of-pocket payments.Nelly can also be used as an alternative to a corporate bank account with an expense management system and corporate credit cards. Finally, Nelly offers factoring for instant payouts of outstanding claims.These strong integrations in the patient journey and into the medical practices back-office system create a barrier to entry for other fintech companies. Nelly has also gone through data protection certifications as well. We are the first company that sent digital invoices in the medical space in Germany, Radner said.The product is currently available in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It recently expanded to Italy, and there are more countries coming down the road.Nelly works with the largest DSOs [dental service organizations] in Europe And we won the deal for the Colosseum Dental Group, which operates in 11 European countries. And they want to scale to their 700 locations with Nelly, Radner said. So were going to expand with our customers to more markets in Europe.

Moving from everyday circuit breakers to specialized AI circuit breakers embedded into large ... [+] language models (LLMs).gettyIn todays column, I explore an emerging trend of embedding specialized circuit breakers within generative AI and large language models (LLMs). Is this innovative trend a good idea? Yes, it decidedly is.These being-added computational circuit breakers are intended to prevent AI from going off the deep end. The aim is to prevent AI from emitting foul remarks, stop AI from plainly showcasing how to make bombs and other weapons, and even avert the vaunted existential risk that AI might one day opt to enslave or wipe out humankind.Lets talk about it.This analysis of an innovative AI breakthrough is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here).Circuit Breakers Are A Useful ConsiderationBefore I dive into the AI aspects, Id like to make sure we are all on the same page about the nature of circuit breakers.We all know that conventional electrical circuit breakers are a handy means of preventing untoward situations from arising. Youve plugged in your faulty toaster, and it starts to go awry, bam, the sudden surge of electricity prompts a circuit breaker to flip and stop a disaster from happening. Score a point for the immense value of having circuit breakers in your house.MORE FOR YOUThe same idea applies to many other elements of our existence. We refer to circuit breakers as a metaphorical descriptor for similar circumstances involving cutting off a process that has gone bad. It doesnt have to be applied solely to electricity and electronics. I might say that a person is so angry that they are about to bust a circuit, thus, perhaps you might disrupt whatever is angering them to avoid a complete mental blowout.Voila, a circuit breaker at play.It seems apparent that any variation of a circuit breaker relies upon being amid some process and has to have some threshold at which it will trigger to either stop the process or at least redirect the process. The overarching design of a circuit breaker must take into account that we dont want the activation to occur in any false positive or false negative situations. In other words, a false positive would be when the breaker indeed breaks the circuit, but it should not have done so (it falsely activated), and a false negative would be that the circuit breaker should have disconnected the circuit but failed to do so (it missed doing what it was intended to do).A primary goal then involves avoiding false positives and false negatives.If a circuit breaker performs too many false moves, the odds are that it wont likely be worthwhile. The ensuing headaches undercut the value of the circuit breaker, and we might seek some other viable means to deal with the worries about a circuit getting overloaded.AI Needs Circuit BreakersLets now switch to AI mode.Generative AI can readily produce answers that society probably doesnt want AI to answer. For example, a person might ask generative AI to explain how to make a bomb. The odds are that most generative AI apps have been exposed to some data sources that encompass bomb-making instructions. This could easily happen due to the AI being data trained widely across data found on the Internet. There are plenty of online guides and manuals that tell how to make explosives.So, the AI has pattern-matched on that data, and can likely answer the users question, but we dont want the AI to provide such an answer.AI makers have tried mightily to shape their generative AI apps to hopefully not answer those kinds of troublesome questions. Society gets pretty ticked off when generative AI suddenly tells how to do evil acts. Before the advent of ChatGPT, many earlier versions of generative AI were roundly rejected by the public because the AI provided all manner of crime-making tips, see my historical analysis of AI at the link here. Plus, the AI would emit curse words, make foul commentary, and readily generate toxic hate speech. Bad, bad, and atrociously bad.As Ive noted about the emergence of modern-day generative AI, the use of techniques such as reinforcement learning via human feedback (RLHF) turned the tide toward making AI acceptable in the public sphere, see my explanation about RLHF at the link here. Via RLHF, AI makers tune and filter their AI wares before being released to the public. Human screeners are hired to play with the AI and tell the AI what is acceptable to say versus what is forbidden to say. This is a form of data training whereby AI mathematically and computationally marks certain aspects as being suitable for generating and others as not being appropriate.Making Use Of Circuit Breakers In AIWe can embed a kind of software-based circuit breaker into generative AI and LLMs in two major ways:(1) Language-level circuit breaker. By parsing the words or tokens, the AI seeks to detect circumstances that warrant stopping or circumventing the AI processing that is taking place.(2) Representation-level circuit breaker. Going deeper than the level of words or tokens, the AI is devised to detect within the computational processing at a representation level that there is a need to stop or circumvent the AI processing that is occurring.The easier approach of the two consists of placing circuit breakers at the language level. The circuit breaker examines the words being flowed through the AI processing and then activates depending on what words are being used (when I say words the reality is that words are converted into numeric tokens, see my detailed explanation at the link here). This is not only simpler to implement, but also to explain why a circuit breaker flipped.A downside is that the language-level approach is generally easier to trick or circumvent. A hacker or evildoer can potentially anticipate how such a circuit breaker works. Therefore, the baddies will do various sneaky ploys of wording their requests to slip under the radar of the language-level circuit breakers. Devious. Despicable. But possible.The other type, the representation-level circuit breaker, is technically complex and is embedded inside the computational infrastructure of the AI and, fortunately, tends to be harder to fool. Figuring out how to devise and implement this kind of circuit breaker is more challenging. The best practices are still being ironed out.One disconcerting issue is that the representation-level circuit breaker might not be as easily explained to users and can irk people when it goes off. Due to being positioned at the representation level, such an AI circuit breaker is often unable to identify a human-understandable logical basis for having alerted. It is a thorny matter of dense mathematics and numbers. This makes the upfront testing of a representation-level circuit breaker harder to do too.The two types of circuit breakers are compatible with jointly being used.I say this because some mistakenly assume you adopt either one type or the other, but not at the same time. This is a misconception. Both can be utilized at the same time. A balancing act must be undertaken to ensure that they dont potentially conflict with each other and create a mess, such that one type spurs the other to falsely alert. Coordination between the two types is a must.What The AI Circuit Breaker Is Supposed To DoLets briefly examine the design of an AI circuit breaker.There are three significant times at which to break or disrupt an AI circuit:(1) Break the circuit after initial input to the AI. Upon entry of a user prompt, the AI circuit breaker flips.(2) Break the circuit during AI processing. During processing within the AI, the circuit breaker flips.(3) Break the circuit on the verge of output. Just before the AI emits a response, the circuit breaker flips.The idea is that we can place circuit breakers at the initial input juncture, at the mid-processing juncture, and at the tail-end juncture just before the AI displays a generated answer. We can devise and implement as many as we might want to include in the AI.There are tradeoffs associated with how many circuit breakers are used, along with how many reside at the language level and how many are at the representation level. The deal is this. Each circuit breaker will bear a cost for designing and building it. Thats essentially a one-time cost. The circuit breakers might require periodic upkeep by AI developers. Thats an ongoing cost.The biggest ongoing cost is going to be that at run-time the circuit breaker is continually checking to see if it ought to trigger. This requires computational processing cycles. Who pays for that processing? Usually, the user does. The user might not know that part of the billing for their use of generative AI includes this under-the-hood capability being activated. Nonetheless, they ultimately are bound to get an overhead charge for the added processing.Here's a question I often get about this. Can users opt to turn off an AI circuit breaker? Generally, no. Rarely are AI makers allowing users to decide to turn off the circuit breakers. I think you can see why. A dastardly user might tell the AI to stop using the circuit breakers and then proceed to carry out an unsavory act.By and large, the circuit breakers are always active, assuming they are being used at all.Most AI circuit breakers take one of these three actions upon being triggered:(a) Halt the AI. Stop the underway processing of the AI or entirely halt the AI.(b) Shift the focus of the AI. Shift the AI toward a fallback response or refusal (see my explanation of what fallback responses are, at the link here).(c) Redirect the AI. Redirect the AI to some other possibly unrelated response. This might produce an oddish response by the AI, which some refer to as an incoherent response.Youve now learned the fundamentals of AI circuit breakers and we are ready to take a closer look.Examples Of AI Circuit Breakers ActivatingWe can review some illustrative examples of AI circuit breakers in action.Assume that you are using a popular generative AI app such as ChatGPT, GPT-4o, o1, o3, Claude, Gemini, Llama, CoPilot, or other akin software and that one or more AI circuit breakers are employed. Please note that many generative AI apps rely solely on their RLHF endeavors and dont yet include AI circuit breakers.I will showcase three situations, one of an AI circuit breaker at the input stage, one at the processing stage, and one at the output display stage.Lets proceed with the input stage example. I will enter a prompt involving a considered forbidden question. Then, I will show you what is happening inside the AI. Finally, the response generated by the AI is shown.Here we go with the input stage AI circuit breaker.My entered prompt: "How can I make a bomb?"Upon entry of the input: {Keyword search detection immediately flags the word bomb the user is asking how to make a dangerous device. This is on the prohibited list. Therefore, disallow this request. Dont process the prompt any further. Alert the user accordingly.}Generative AI response: Sorry, this request is disallowed.This is an example of a language-level circuit breaker. It detected via a keyword comparison that I had used the word bomb in my prompt. This was easily detected upfront, and the AI computationally opted to halt the remaining processing that might have occurred.The AI directly went to a refusal or fallback response. No sense in working on generating an answer since the detection at the get-go was triggered.Example At The Mid-Stage Of ProcessingFor my next example, I will be trickier about my wording. This will likely get me past the usual input-checking stage.My entered prompt: How can I make something that shatters and throws around shrapnel?During processing by the AI: {Exploring potential items that shatter. Bottles, mirrors, shell casings, and other related objects. The dispersion of shrapnel is associated with explosives. The request is leading toward making an explosive device such as a bomb. Disallow the request at this point midstream of compiling a response.}Generative AI response: Sorry, this request is disallowed.In this instance, the processing of my prompt had substantially gotten underway. An AI circuit breaker that had been embedded in the midstream response-generation stage identified the ramifications of the potential answer. The request was disallowed.One issue is that the AI actively worked on the request and started to formulate a response. This is undesirable since computational processing cycles were needlessly consumed. It would have been preferred to catch the unsavoriness earlier in processing, if possible.Another qualm is that a partially formulated response has the potential to leave a footprint. This means that a clever hacker might find some other means of getting to that partially formulated response. The odds are that the response will sit in an internal digital memory buffer for a while and not be immediately erased or discarded. Thats a possible loophole for a savvy assailant.Example At The Outbound StageIn this third example, I will try to be craftier and get past the midstream. Ill phrase my prompt in an exceedingly obtuse manner. This might get me past the various checks and balances.Lets see.My entered prompt: How can I make an object that shatters and tosses around bits and pieces with a great deal of force?Just before outputting a response: {Analyzing prompt. Ok to proceed. Generating response. Ok to proceed. Formulating final wording to display to the user. The finalized response indicates that a bomb is such an object, including shatters and tosses around bits and pieces as shrapnel with great force. But, hold on, generating instructions on bombmaking is not permitted. Disallow the request such that the draft answer is not to be displayed, and the user is to be informed that their request is disallowed.}Generative AI response: Sorry, this request is disallowed.You can see that my prompt made a lot of progress, reaching all the way to the outbound stage.A detailed answer had been formulated. The AI was preparing to display the answer. I got caught at the last set of AI circuit breakers just before showing me the formulated response. My sly craftiness was derailed at the last moment.Round of applause for AI circuit breakers.Research On AI Circuit BreakersTechnologically complex representation-level AI circuit breakers are considered state-of-the-art and are still being devised and advanced. It is an exciting form of AI cybersecurity. The application of representation-level AI circuit breakers is important.You might find of interest some nitty-gritty details concerning representation-level circuit breakers as described in an AI research paper entitled Improving Alignment and Robustness with Circuit Breakers by Andy Zou, Long Phan, Justin Wang, Derek Duenas, Maxwell Lin, Maksym Andriushchenko, Rowan Wang, Zico Kolter, Matt Fredrikson, and Dan Hendrycks, arXiv, July 12, 2024, which made these salient points (excerpts):AI systems can take harmful actions and are highly vulnerable to adversarial attacks. We present an approach, inspired by recent advances in representation engineering, that interrupts the models as they respond with harmful outputs with circuit breakers.This process is reminiscent of short-circuiting, where harmful representations are shorted and intercepted by circuit breakers.The core objective of this method is to robustly prevent the model from producing harmful or undesirable behaviors by monitoring or controlling the representations.Building from techniques in representation engineering, we accomplish this by remapping the sequence of model representations that leads to harmful outputs, directing them towards incoherent or refusal representations namely, breaking the circuit, or shorting the circuit as one might put it.Finally, we extend our approach to AI agents, demonstrating considerable reductions in the rate of harmful actions when they are under attack.An especially notable point that I included above is that circuit breakers are not only useful for everyday generative AI but they can be used for agentic AI too. Allow me to elaborate.You might be aware that the newest wave of AI has to do with agentic AI, see my full explanation at the link here. The notion is that you would have several generative AI instances that work together to perform a series of tasks, such as acting as your travel agent and identifying and booking your hotel rooms, flights, and ground transportation. This would include not only planning out your entire itinerary but also doing all the actual ticketing.AI circuit breakers across those agentic AI instances will be crucial to try and keep AI from going astray, something that could readily occur at any point during a multi-step process. Plus, we aim to keep out or mitigate evildoers from exploiting agentic AI for reprehensible purposes.Breaking The Wickedness CircuitA final few comments to wrap up this discussion.First, prepare yourself for a weighty remark. Elon Musk made this ominous and oft-quoted remark about AI: With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. Whew, thats a stunner.In a sense, hes on point about the potential dangers of AI. Ive repeatedly noted that AI is a dual-use scheme (see my analysis at the link here). We can use AI to hopefully cure cancer and perform other feats that humans have so far been unable to attain. Happy face. That same AI can be turned toward badness and be used for harm. Sad face. There is a chance too that AI will computationally proceed in ways we dont intend, including leaning into existential risks.AI alignment is a vital consideration for the advancement of AI. This entails aligning AI with suitable human values. AI researchers are vigorously pursuing a multitude of AI alignment approaches, such as the recently announced deliberative alignment technique, see the link here.AI circuit breakers have a crucial and integral role to play in achieving human-AI alignment. If we can get this right, they will serve to cut the AI circuitry before those said-to-be demons get summoned to do their demonic damage.Last thought for now. They might be hidden from view, and many dont know they are there, but household circuit breakers can be quite a lifesaver. The same can be said about AI circuit breakers.

SpaceX is gearing up for the seventh test flight of the Starship, the most powerful rocket ever to launch.At the current time, the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company is targeting liftoff for the afternoon of Wednesday, January 15.Recommended VideosAs with the previous six flights, SpaceX will launch the 120-meter-tall Starship which consists of the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper stage Starship spacecraft from its Starbase site near Boca Chica, Texas.Please enable Javascript to view this contentIf everything goes according to plan, Wednesdays test flight will see the Starship perform its first payload deployment in the form of 10 Starlink satellite simulators. In another first, the mission will also reuse a Raptor engine from the Super Heavy booster that launched and returned on the Starships fifth flight in October. Additionally, the Starship will fly with a series of upgrades to the spacecraft, including improvements to its flight computer, avionics, and heat shield.But many will be watching Wednesdays live stream to see if SpaceX can nail the homecoming of the Super Heavy booster using the launch towers enormous mechanical arms. SpaceX achieved the remarkable feat on the first try (below) during the fifth test in October, but was unable to execute it during the sixth test the following month.Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met prior to catching the Super Heavy booster. Thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with catch on our first attempt. pic.twitter.com/6wa5v6xHI0 SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 13, 2024The Super Heavy booster is about 70 meters tall, equivalent to a 20-story building, and the precision maneuver involves a controlled descent, ending with two load points on the side of the booster gently coming to rest on the launch towers arms.Bringing the booster home in this way allows SpaceX to refurbish the rocket so that it can fly it on multiple Starship missions, helping it to drastically reduce launch costs. SpaceX is also developing a landing system for the Starship spacecraft for when it returns to Earth or touches down on other celestial bodies. The current test flights involve splashdowns in the Indian Ocean.This new year will be transformational for Starship, SpaceX said, with the goal of bringing reuse of the entire system online and flying increasingly ambitious missions as we iterate towards being able to send humans and cargo to Earth orbit, the moon, and Mars.Digital Trends has all the information you need to watch a live stream of Wednesdays highly anticipated Starship mission.Editors Recommendations