Lifeboat Foundation

Twelve new security flaws impacting various chipsets were disclosed in this month’s security advisory for Qualcomm’s devices, two of which have been given a critical severity rating. Two significant flaws in Qualcomm chipsets have been identified that might allow malicious payloads to installed remotely on the Android devices.

The first vulnerability, identified as CVE-2022–25748 (CVSS score 9.8), affects Qualcomm’s WLAN component and is described as a “Integer Overflow to Buffer Overflow during parsing GTK frames”. If exploited, this issue might result in memory corruption and remote code execution. This vulnerability impact all smart devices that use the Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ, CSRA, IPQ, MDM, MSM, QCA, WSA, WCN, WCD, SW, SM, SDX, SD, SA, QRB, QCS, QCN, and more series.

Continue reading “2 critical Remote code execution flaws in Qualcomm Chipsets affect billions of smartphones” »

Discarded electronic devices, such as cell phones, are a fast-growing source of waste. One way to mitigate the problem could be to use components that are made with renewable resources and that are easy to dispose of responsibly. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have created a prototype circuit board that is made of a sheet paper with fully integrated electrical components, and that can be burned or left to degrade.

Most small electronic devices contain circuit boards that are made from glass fibers, resins and metal wiring. These boards are not easy to recycle and are relatively bulky, making them undesirable for use in point-of-care medical devices, environmental monitors or personal wearable devices.

One alternative is to use paper-based circuit boards, which should be easier to dispose of, less expensive and more flexible. However, current options require specialized paper, or they simply have traditional metal circuitry components mounted onto a sheet of paper. Instead, Choi and colleagues wanted to develop circuitry that would be simple to manufacture and that had all the electronic components fully integrated into the sheet.

On Friday, Ars Technica reported that Bruce Willis had sold his likeness for use in deepfakes, according to The Telegraph. Dozens of news sites repeated the Telegraph’s claim. Over the weekend, the BBC discovered that Bruce Willis has “no partnership or agreement” with the firm Deepcake, which is based in Georgia, the Eurasian republic.

It’s unclear how the inaccurate claim originated at The Telegraph. While reporting last Friday, we attempted to verify some of the claims in the original Telegraph article (such as Willis being the first actor to sell his deepfake rights), but we could not do so, and we noted that in the report. We also noted that Deepcake is doing business in America under a corporation registered in Delaware. However, we failed to follow through with verifying the entire claim, and we apologize for the error and for repeating the erroneous information.

It’s unclear if Deepcake ever had the rights to use Bruce Willis’ likeness on its website or in its marketing materials. Deepcake told the BBC, “What he definitely did is that he gave us his consent (and a lot of materials) to make his Digital Twin.” Deepcake also claims, per The Hollywood Reporter, that the company’s involvement with Willis arrived through the Creative Artists Agency for use in a 2021 Russian cell phone commercial. However, Willis’ representatives still deny having any involvement with the company.

Microgrids are the right solution for rural and remote energy production and distribution because they are grids designed for smaller populations.

In the United States, there are at least 60,000 people who have no access to electricity. It is not a large number but poses for this population a barrier to participating in the modern world. You cannot find a job working from home without electricity and Internet access. You cannot visit your doctor virtually. You cannot use electricity to light and heat your home.

But with microgrids that can operate autonomously from the main power grid, rural and remote communities can do everything that people living in big cities can do leading to a better quality of life for those living there.

Continue reading “How Microgrids are an Ideal Energy Solution for Rural and Remote Communities” »

Let your cargo follow you while you travel comfortably with the gita plus cargo carrying robot. Double the size of the gita mini robot, this robot comes with pedestrian etiquette. In fact, this robot is perfect for families who need larger cargo space, business owners, or anyone who wants an extra set of hands. The sleek design looks unique and one of a kind. In fact, this robot also has a built-in speaker. It allows you to use the mygita app to stream music from your smartphone. With the help of cameras and radar technology, this robot can see its surroundings and pair with its user. In fact, it takes just one tap for the gita plus to pair to you. It stands and self-balances, braking automatically when needed and adjusting its speed to keep pace along the way.

Smart glasses from the likes of Amazon, Meta, and Snap will complement and then replace smartphones.

Microprocessors in smartphones, computers, and data centers process information by manipulating electrons through solid semiconductors, but our brains have a different system. They rely on the manipulation of ions in liquid to process information.

Inspired by the brain, researchers have long been seeking to develop “ionics” in an aqueous solution. While ions in water move slower than electrons in semiconductors, scientists think the diversity of ionic species with different physical and chemical properties could be harnessed for richer and more diverse information processing.

Ionic computing, however, is still in its early days. To date, labs have only developed individual ionic devices such as ionic diodes and transistors, but no one has put many such devices together into a more complex circuit for computing until now.

New light has been shed on the formation of increasingly precious rare earth elements (REEs) by researchers from Trinity College Dublin. They accomplished this by creating synthetic rocks and testing their responses to varying environmental conditions. REEs are used in many electronic devices and green energy technologies, including everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.

The findings, just published on September 19 in the journal Global Challenges, have implications for recycling REEs from electronic waste, designing materials with advanced functional properties, and even for finding new REE deposits hidden around the globe.

Dr. Juan Diego Rodriguez-Blanco, Associate Professor in Nanomineralogy at Trinity and an iCRAG (SFI Research Centre in Applied Geosciences) Funded Investigator, was the principal investigator of the work. He said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3S5sRKRIPc

The world has experienced a technological leap in the last decade. Innovations such as smartphones and tablets, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain are coming with us. As is well known, these technologies have become indispensable, not only causing hype in one or the other but also permanently changing our daily lives and ways of working. Will this development slow down? I do not think so, the exact opposite. In the next 10 years, you can expect even more breakthroughs than you can imagine today.