Simulating medically related vision problems with VR
This is a great use of VR – demonstrating what people with different kinds of eye-related medical issues experience so they can recognize it themselves or to train doctors.
Anti night vision hoodie
This hacker decided to make a hoodie that can blind night vision cameras. It does this by having 12 embedded ultraviolet leds (light that is invisible to the naked eye) that strobe and blow out night vision cameras.
Obviously, this can equally be used for either anonymity or criminal activities. One thing is for sure, if you’re running away from cops or helicopters using night vision – you’re going to stand out like like a Christmas tree.
This is a more active approach to similar anti-paparazzi clothes that came out a few years back. Though those are a little expensive. A trendy anti-paparazzi scarf is $249.
Near-ultrasonic attacks on any device
Just because you can’t hear it doesn’t mean your smart device can’t.
Researchers have developed a novel attack called “Near-Ultrasound Inaudible Trojan” (NUIT) that can launch silent attacks against devices powered by voice assistants. The main principle that makes NUIT effective and dangerous is that microphones in smart devices can respond to near-ultrasound that the human ear cannot, thus performing the attack with minimal risk of exposure while still using conventional speaker technology.
The team demonstrated NUIT attacks against modern voice assistants found inside millions of devices, including Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa, showing the ability to send malicious commands to those devices.
Inaudible attacks
NUIT could be incorporated into websites that play media or YouTube videos and tricking targets into visiting sites or playing malicious media on trustworthy sites.
The researchers say the NUIT attacks can be conducted using two different methods.
NUIT-1, is when a device is both the source and target of the attack. For example, an attack can be launched on a smartphone by playing an audio file that causes the device to perform an action, such as opening a garage door or sending a text message.
The other method, NUIT-2, is when the attack is launched by a device with a speaker to another device with a microphone, such as a website or over TV to a smart speaker.
Just one more reason not to have a bunch of smart devices in your house.
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nVidia uses AI for place and route on it’s chips
nVidia just published a paper and blog post revealing how its AutoDMP system can accelerate modern chip floor-planning using GPU-accelerated AI/ML optimization, resulting in a 30X speedup over previous methods. Hopefully it doesn’t get the treatment the Google AI place-and-route solution got.
AutoDMP is short for Automated DREAMPlace-based Macro Placement. It is designed to plug into an Electronic Design Automation (EDA) system used by chip designers, to accelerate and optimize the time-consuming process of finding optimal placements for the building blocks of processors. In one of Nvidia’s examples of AutoDMP at work, the tool leveraged its AI on the problem of determining an optimal layout of 256 RSIC-V cores with 2.7 million standard cells and 320 memory macros. AutoDMP took 3.5 hours to come up with an optimal layout on a single Nvidia DGX Station A100.
Initial metrics shows it does an amazing job – in a fraction of the time. Definitely worth the read.
AutoDMP is open source, with the code published on GitHub. Below is a link to an article about Cadence’s Cerebrus AI place-and-route solution.
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Light Pillars in Oregon
Light pillars are an interesting natural phenomenon in which a vertical beam of light appears to extend above and/or below a light source. The effect is created by the reflection of light off tiny ice crystals slowly falling through the air, reflecting light rays off of them.
While more common in Canada/Alaska and other northern latitudes, they recently appeared in the night skies over Redmond, Oregon on Christmas Eve 2022. Pretty cool!
Windows 11 native screen recorder
Windows has finally added a native screen recorder via an updated Snipping Tool – but apparently only for Windows 11.
Simply launch Snipping Tool and switch to the Record mode. Select the area to record and click Start.
Steam Deck tidbits
Valve is paying open source developers
The Steam Deck is a wonderful bit of hardware. The software that underpins it uses open-source packages like the Mesa graphics driver, the Vulkan graphics API, and Valve’s own Proton compatibility layer. This means the Steam Deck only runs thanks to open-source developers.
In a recent chat with the Verge, Steam Deck designer Pierre-Loup Griffais mentioned that the company is paying over a hundred open-source devs to work on the various bits of software for the Steam Deck. Valve has them working on stuff like Steam for ChromeOS and Linux, too.
Griffais said Valve’s corralling of open-source devs is part of “a larger strategy to coordinate all these projects and set up kind of an overall architecture” for gaming on Linux.
This also means the Steam Deck may never be “stable” like a traditional console. “I don’t think you should expect that,” says Griffais. “Stable in terms of having a great experience for people? Yeah, absolutely. But I think we are always going to be pushing updates as long as there’s people playing.”
For updates, the team is primarily working off two big lists, says Yang: “things we want to fix, and things we still want to make.”
It’s a fascinating and different way to develop a gaming platform. One I’m happy to play with since I own a Steam deck myself.
The Verge article also has more information from Griffais about hardware fixes, future plans, and other great tidbits of information and insights as to what Valve is planning. It’s worth a read.
Installing Epic Games Store on Stream Deck
Windows Central gives you instructions to show it’s possible to install the Epic Games store and it’s games on the Steam Deck. You use the Heroic Games Launcher to access and install games from not only Epic, but Good Old Games as well. It takes some work and jumping through a number of hoops but seems like a great way to get even more games on your Steam Deck.
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Free (trial) Windows development virtual machines
Pre-canned VM Windows 11 development environment
Did you know that Microsoft provides free virtual machine images of the latest version of Windows – with developer tools, SDK’s, and samples all pre-installed? Microsoft provide regularly updated virtual machine images for VMWare, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, and Parallels.
A few important points. The images are not activated and cannot be activated – even with a valid product key.
What about Linux?
If you want to install and run a Linux distro (Ubuntu for example), you can use Virtualbox/VMWare or the built in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). With WSL, you get a Linux command prompt mounted on your local Windows filesystem and can launch X-windows apps that pop up on your Windows desktop in separate windows.
The experience is kind of a weird mash-up of Windows and Linux on the same system at the same time. Kind of like a better/embedded version of cygwin. It’s not as contained as a virtual machine host app like Virtualbox/VMWare that keeps all your windows in the virtual machine host app; but this might be enough for most people.
I haven’t done any experiments, but would love to test out some OpenGL/Vulkan apps to see if you get full GPU accelerated rendering.
Polybius
Polybius is an urban legend about a video game that appeared in arcades in the 1980’s around the Portland, Oregon area. It caused people to migraines, have hallucinations, hinted at mind control, cause knife attacks on others, and government conspiracies.
Like most things, if you dig in there is very little concrete evidence. Instead, it appears to be a collection of events that were all real and related to video games of the era.
The Why Files does a pretty decent job digging into the legend and gets a good collection of the facts behind the legend.
This one is definitely better than the fake documentary from a few years back – a reminder that documentaries need to be verified too.
Bringing your favorite signers back from beyond
Kid Klava wanted to sing a song he wrote, but realized his chops really weren’t up for the task. So why not get John Lennon sing it – with Paul on backing vocals? He claims it was surprisingly easy and it only took a few minutes to generate. If you’d like to have a go yourself, there are dozens of great YouTube tutorials.