Tag Archive for: storm

AI images take social media by storm, there may be more to it than meets the eye


BLOOMINGTON — Leito Navarrete has spent his whole life sharpening his craft.

“Fragmentation, collage, composition. I take a lot of inspiration from street art and graffiti,” Navarrete said.

But the Indiana University Graduate Student is concerned about the future of his industry.

“Almost every other image, or at least one in five images, scrolling down on Instagram is a Lensa portrait,” Navarette said.

On Thursday, Lensa AI is the most popular app in the U.S. on Apple’s App Store.

The app, produced by Prisma Labs, Inc., uses an open-source neural network model called Stable Diffusion to create computer-generated images.

Some like Navarrete argue that model takes artists’ material without their consent in the process.

“The most problematic part about this technology, aside from copyright and theft, is making a profit off of this kind of software,” he said.

The app asks you to upload 10 to 20 selfies and then pay a fee of $7.99 to $15.99, depending on the number of variations and styles you’d like.

When it’s done, you’re left with dozens, even hundreds of “magic avatars”.

Senior Editor of Security at Wired Andrew Couts says the app may pose cyber security risks.

“The main thing I would be concerned about is the behavioral analytics that they’re collecting. if I were going to use the app, I would make sure to turn on as restrictive privacy settings as possible,” Couts said.

According to the app, photos are immediately deleted from its servers after the Avatars are ready.

Regardless, Couts says to be cautious.

“You can change your privacy settings on your phone to make sure that the app isn’t collecting as much data as it seems to be able to. And you can make sure that you’re not sharing images that contain anything more private than just your face,” Couts said.

As for Navarrete, he hopes consumers will support local artists as much as these apps.

“I think it will become more challenging, even more so than it already is, to make a living as a painter and as an artist. To justify your field of work, expertise and what you can bring to the table,” Navarette said.

WRTV emailed Prisma Labs and a spokesperson directed us to a FAQ with detailed information on the app.

On…

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Engineering seminar: Cyber Storm Tracker — Using Machine Learning for Cyber Log Data


Dr. Glenn A. Fink, a senior cyber sercurity researcher with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), will give the talk.

Cyber logs are not human language, but of all the common data types used in machine learning (ML), natural language is the closest. But cyber log data is very different from natural lanuage. Log lines contains lots of random-looking garbage. IP addresses and other things frequently change definition. Punctuationh is all over the place. Domain names look like Windows Active Directory names, which look like many other cyber “nouns.” And the syntax and semantics of phrases and terms changes from sensor to sensor. This makes cyber data challenging to ingest into ML models. 

Dr. Fink will talk about the work done at PNNL to ingest cyber logs into natural language processing tools using embeddings. He’ll also show how embeddings can be used as coordinates to show how IP addresses change behavior and relate over time. At the end, seminar attendees will understand why there are still not many true ML methods out there for cyber, and what the major challenges are ahead. 

Dr. Find has worked in computer security, deep learning, visualization, bio-inspired design and human-centric computing at PNNL since 2006. He is the lead inventor of several technologies, including PNNL’s Digital Ants technology, which Scientific American cited as one of 10 “world-changing ideas” in 2010. Digital Ants recently earned an award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium and was listed as a finalist for an R&D 100 award. His work includes research in bio-inspired, decentralized cyber security and privacy. He has published numerous scientific articles and papers, has edited a book and hosted several workshops on computer security, privacy and the Internet of Things. 

Dr. Fink was a three-year NSF IGERT Graduate Fellow at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where he completed his Ph.D. in computer science in 2006. Dr. Fink’s dissertation, “Visual Correlation of Network Traffic and Host Processes,” fostered the Hone technology that currently is an open-source software project. Dr. Fink was a software…

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A Huge Winter Storm Is About to Make Life Messy for Half the U.S.


The Northeast U.S. is still digging out from the monster snowstorm that hit over the weekend, but the rest of the country better buckle up — there’s some serious weather coming this week. A storm could hit states from Colorado to parts of Texas to Ohio by Groundhog Day, dumping freezing rain and snow and snarling travellers in messy weather.

The storm, dubbed Winter Storm Landon, is the result of a cold front that is expected to move into much of the Midwest and central U.S this week, backed by freezing Arctic air. The jet stream moving south will help spread moisture over the cold air, creating the recipe for possible snow, sleet, freezing rain, and icy conditions in a huge strip of the U.S through Friday. About 1,609 km of the U.S., extending diagonally northeast from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and parts of northern Texas to Chicago and Detroit are currently under winter storm watches for Tuesday through Thursday. Over the course of the week, Landon could impact residents from Texas to Maine.

The storm is still forming, so predicting what’s going to happen is still a pretty inexact science — a lot could change between now and Wednesday. But preliminary forecasts show a pretty gross set of conditions in several different states, beginning Tuesday night, when snow and rain — a wintry mix — is expected to start in an area spanning from the Rocky Mountains to parts of the Great Lakes. This weather is expected to last through Wednesday, which is Groundhog Day, into Thursday.

Parts of Colorado could see up to a foot of snow, while snow is even possible in parts of northern Texas. The National Weather Service shows nearly the entirety of Missouri is under a winter storm watch (which is not as serious as an advisory or a warning and is defined as conditions that are “favourable” for a storm event to develop), as well as much of Illinois. What’s in store for places farther east depends on how the storm develops, but forecasters say snow heavy snow is possible in New York Thursday, while “rain, snow, freezing rain, sleet are all on the table” for parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania, the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said. Portions of the Northeast could see…

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Cybersecurity, the pandemic and the 2021 holiday shopping season: A perfect storm


Ping Identity executive advisor Aubrey Turner warns that eager cybercriminals are ready to exploit the current chaotic state of the world, and preparation is essential going into the holidays.

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Image: Shutterstock/Troyan

We’re heading into the holiday shopping season, and there will definitely be more than just the usual frozen, snowy bumps in the road to success. Supply chain interruptions and a continuing chip shortage have made things hard enough as it is, and that’s before you even stop to consider the cybersecurity and privacy concerns that have only been exacerbated by the state of things.

Aubrey Turner, executive advisor at Ping Identity, says that the usual scams have only been amplified by a massive turn to online shopping due to the pandemic. “All these things have driven more people than ever to shop online, buy online, and that presents an opportunity for attackers and bad guys,” Turner said. 

SEE: Google Chrome: Security and UI tips you need to know  (TechRepublic Premium)

Those aforementioned supply chain interruptions have only widened the peak fraud time window for many attackers, who are keeping up with consumers who have started shopping earlier. In addition to starting early, many parents are in a desperate position in 2021: Will the toy their child wants even be available?

“Think about the past 20 Christmases: There is always some hot toy, from the Furby and Tickle Me Elmo, to Xboxes and PS4s. That creates an opportunity for an attacker to take advantage of somebody that wants to give that as a gift,” Turner said. 

In terms of specific threats that Turner said he’s noticed this year, two stand out: Card not present fraud, and non-delivery scams. Card not present fraud takes advantage of situations where a transaction can be run without possession of a physical card, while non-delivery scams are probably common to anyone who has an email address: They’re those phishy-looking emails you get from “FedEx” about a package you weren’t expecting being undeliverable.

There’s a common thread between…

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