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mariacallous · 4 months ago

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About three years ago, some of Google’s security engineers came to company attorneys with a gigantic mess.

The security team had discovered that Google unwittingly was enabling the spread of malicious software known as Glupteba. The malware had corrupted more than 1 million Windows computers, turning them into vehicles to mine cryptocurrency and spy on users. By hijacking Google accounts, purchasing Google ads to lure in users, and misusing Google cloud tools, the hackers behind the operation were on their way to infecting even more computers.

Tech giants such as Google long have had a playbook for destroying botnets like Glupteba. They call up fellow companies and US authorities and together coordinate a massive takedown operation. Sometimes, the cops file criminal charges. But this time around, Google’s legal team recommended an approach that the company hadn’t pursued in years: Sue the hackers for money.

The eventual lawsuit against two Russian men and a dozen unnamed individuals allegedly behind Glupteba would be the first of a run of at least eight cases that Google has filed against various hackers and scammers, adding to a sporadic few filings in the past. The tactic, which Google calls affirmative litigation, is meant to scare off would-be fraudsters and generate public awareness about scams. Now, for the first time, Google is opening up about this strategy.

Leaders of Google’s security and legal teams tell WIRED they believe going after people in court has paid off. Google hasn’t yet lost a case; it has collected almost all of the more than $2 million that it has won through the legal process, and forced hundreds of companies or websites to shut down. The awards are trivial to Google and its parent Alphabet, a $2 trillion company, but can be devastating for the defendants.

“We’re disrupting bad actors and deterring future activity, because it’s clear that the consequences and the costs are high,” says Chester Day, lead of the three-person “litigation advance” team at Google that’s focused on taking people to court. Google, he adds, is “making it clear that we’re willing to invest our resources into taking action to protect our users.”

Google blog posts and similar content about the lawsuits and the underlying scams have drawn more than 1 billion views, according to the company. Google representatives say that the awareness increases vigilance among consumers and shrinks the pool of vulnerable targets. “Educating people about how these crimes work may be the best thing we can do to stop the crime,” says Harold Chun, director of Google’s security legal team.

Several Big Tech companies have pursued affirmative litigation, though not necessarily under that name and with varying strategies. Microsoft has filed more than two dozen lawsuits since 2008 with a focus on securing court permission to dismantle botnets and other hacking tools. Amazon has been a prolific complainant since 2018, filing at least 42 cases over counterfeit products, 38 for reviews fraud, three for copyright abuse, and, recently, two for bogus product returns. Amazon has been filing so many counterfeit cases, in fact, that the federal court in western Washington assigned three magistrate judges to focus on them.

Since 2019, Meta has filed at least seven counterfeiting or data theft cases, with settlements or default judgments in four so far, including one in which it won nearly $300,000 in damages. Like Meta, Apple has sued Israeli spyware developer NSO Group for alleged hacking. (NSO is fighting the lawsuits. Trials are scheduled for next year.)

Some attorneys who’ve studied how the private sector uses litigation to enforce the law are skeptical about the payoff for the plaintiffs. David Noll, a Rutgers University law professor and author of a forthcoming book on state-supported private enforcement, Vigilante Nation, says it’s difficult to imagine that companies could bring the volume of cases needed to significantly stop abuse. “The fact that there is a small chance you might be named in a suit isn’t really going to deter you,” he says.

Noll believes the big risk is that Google and other tech companies could be burdening the court system with cases that ultimately secure some favorable headlines but do less to make the internet safer than the companies could achieve through investing in better antifraud measures.

Still, of the six outside legal experts who spoke to WIRED, all of them say that overall Google deserves credit for complementing the work of underfunded government agencies that are struggling to rein in online abuse. At an estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars per case, it’s a low-risk endeavor for the tech giant, former prosecutors say.

“Reliable and regular enforcement when folks step outside the law brings us closer to a society where less of us are harmed,” says Kathleen Morris, resident scholar of law at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “This is healthy and robust collaboration on law enforcement by the public and private sectors.”

Google’s general counsel, Halimah DeLaine Prado, tells WIRED she wants to send a message to other companies that the corporate legal department can do more than be the team that says “no” to wild ideas. “Legal can be a proactive protector,” she says.

Marketing Scams

DeLaine Prado says that from its earliest days, Google has considered pursuing litigation against people abusing its platforms and intellectual property. But the first case she and other leaders within Google recall filing was in 2015. Google accused Local Lighthouse, a California marketing company, of placing robocalls to dupe small businesses into paying to improve their ranking in search results. Google alleged trademark infringement, unfair competition, and false advertising. As part of a settlement, Lighthouse stopped the problematic calls.

Since then, Google has filed complaints against five similar allegedly scammy marketers, with three of them ending in settlements so far. A Florida business and its owners agreed to pay Google $850,000, and a Los Angeles man who allegedly posted 14,000 fake reviews on Google Maps agreed to stop. Terms of the third deal, with an Illinois company, were not disclosed in court files, but Google spokesperson José Castañeda says it involved a seven-figure payment to Google.

Castañeda says Google has donated all the money it has collected to recipients such as the Better Business Bureau Institute, the National Consumers League, Partnership to End Addiction, Cybercrime Support Network, and various US chambers of commerce.

Another genre of cases has targeted individuals submitting false copyright complaints to Google to get content removed from the company’s services. A man in Omaha, Nebraska, whom Google accused of falsely claiming ownership of YouTube videos to extort money from their real owners, agreed to pay $25,000 to Google. Two individuals in Vietnam sued by Google never responded—a common issue.

In 2022, Google won default judgment against an individual in Cameroon who never responded to charges that he was using Gmail to scam people into paying for fake puppies, including a $700 basset hound. After the lawsuit, complaints about the scammer dried up, according to Google.

But legal experts say the most fascinating cases of Google’s affirmative litigation are four that it filed against alleged computer hackers. The suits emerged after months of investigation into Glupteba.

Security engineers at Google realized that eradicating Glupteba through the typical approach of taking down associated servers would be difficult. The hackers behind it had designed a backup system involving a blockchain that enabled Glupteba to resurrect itself and keep pilfering away.

That’s in part why Google’s attorneys suggested suing. Chun, the security legal director, had pursued cases against botnets as a federal prosecutor. “I thought this would be something good to do from a civil angle for a company as well,” he says. “Law enforcement agencies have limits on what they can do. And Google has a large voice and the litigation capacity.”

Chun and other attorneys cautioned their bosses that the hackers might use the lawsuit to reverse engineer Google’s investigation methods and make Glupteba more evasive and resilient. But ultimately, DeLaine Prado, who has final say over lawsuits, signed off. Chun says his former colleagues from the government applauded the complaint.

Google sued Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov, alleging that they were the Russia-based masterminds behind Glupteba after linking websites associated with the virus to Google accounts in their name. The search giant accused the duo (and unknown co-conspirators) of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The lawsuit also alleged a trademark law violation for hiding Glupteba in a tool that claimed to download videos from YouTube.

Google argued that it had suffered substantial harm, having never received payment for ads it had sold to the hackers, who allegedly were using fraudulent credit cards. Users also had their experiences with Google services degraded, putting them at risk and impairing the value of the company’s brand, according to the lawsuit.

In court papers, Starovikov and Filippov stated they learned of the lawsuit only through friends and then decided to hire a New York attorney, Igor Litvak, to fight on their behalf. The defendants initially offered innocent explanations for their software related to Glupteba and said that their projects had not targeted the US market. At one point, they countersued Google for $10 million, and at another, they allegedly demanded $1 million each to hand over the keys to shut down the botnet. They eventually denied the allegations against them.

Following an ordeal over whether the defendants could obtain Russian passports, sit for depositions in Europe, and turn over work files, Google’s attorneys and Litvak traded accusations of lying. In 2022, US district judge Denise Cote sided with Google. She found in a 48-page ruling that the defendants “intentionally withheld information” and “misrepresented their willingness and ability” to disclose it to “avoid liability and further profit” from Glupteba. “The record here is sufficient to find a willful attempt to defraud the Court,” Cote wrote.

Cote sanctioned Litvak, and he agreed to pay Google $250,000 in total through 2027 to settle. The jurist also ordered Starovikov and Filippov to pay nearly $526,000 combined to cover Google’s attorneys fees. Castañeda says Google has received payment from all three.

Litvak tells WIRED that he still disagrees with the judge's findings and that Russia’s strained relationship with the US may have weighed on whom the judge trusted. “It’s telling that after I filed a motion to reconsider, pointing out serious issues with the court’s decision, the court went back on its original decision and referred [the] case to mediation, which ended with … me not having to admit to doing anything wrong,” he says in an email.

Google’s Castañeda says the case achieved the intended effect: The Russian hackers stopped misusing Google services and shut down their marketplace for stolen logins, while the number of Glupteba-infected computers fell 78 percent.

Not every case delivers measurable results. Defendants in Google’s other three hacking cases haven’t responded to the accusations. That led to Google last year winning default judgment against three individuals in Pakistan accused of infecting more than 672,000 computers by masquerading malware as downloads of Google’s Chrome browser. Unopposed victories are also expected in the remaining cases, including one in which overseas app developers allegedly stole money through bogus investment apps and are being sued for violating YouTube Community Guidelines.

Royal Hansen, Google’s vice president for privacy, safety, and security engineering, says lawsuits that don’t result in defendants paying up or agreeing to stop the alleged misuse still can make alleged perpetrators’ lives more difficult. Google uses the rulings as evidence to persuade businesses such as banks and cloud providers to cut off the defendants. Other hackers might not want to work with them knowing they have been outed. Defendants also could be more cautious about crossing international borders and becoming newly subject to scrutiny from local authorities. “That’s a win as well,” Hansen says.

More to Come

These days, Google’s small litigation advance team meets about twice a week with other units across the company to discuss potential lawsuits. They weigh whether a case could set a helpful precedent to give extra teeth to Google’s policies or draw awareness to an emerging threat.

Team leader Day says that as Google has honed its process, filing cases has become more affordable. That should lead to more lawsuits each year, including some for the first time potentially filed outside the US or representing specific users who have been harmed, he says.

The tech giants' ever-sprawling empires leave no shortage of novel cases to pursue. Google’s sibling company Waymo recently adopted the affirmative litigation approach and sued two people who allegedly smashed and slashed its self-driving taxis. Microsoft, meanwhile, is weighing cases against people using generative AI technology for malicious or fraudulent purposes, says Steven Masada, assistant general counsel of the company’s Digital Crimes Unit.

The questions remain whether the increasing cadence of litigation has left cybercriminals any bit deterred and whether a broader range of internet companies will go on the legal offense.

Erin Bernstein, who runs the California office of Bradley Bernstein Sands, a law firm that helps governments pursue civil lawsuits, says she recently pitched a handful of companies across industries on doing their own affirmative litigation. Though none have accepted her offer, she’s optimistic. “It will be a growing area,” Bernstein says.

But Google’s DeLaine Prado hopes affirmative litigation eventually slows. “In a perfect world, this work would disappear over time if it’s successful,” she says. “I actually want to make sure that our success kind of makes us almost obsolete, at least as it relates to this type of work.”

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e3khatena · 1 year ago

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so whats the deal with overkills the walking dead?

I'm glad you asked! (approx. 2,300 words)

So our story starts during Payday 2's first anniversary, the Fall of 2014. Players had to attain certain community goals to get new things to play with during their first annual Crimefest event, and the last two prizes were secret. They wound up being John Wick as a playable character, and the trailer for a new game Overkill was working on, based in the world of The Walking Dead comics. The premise was simple: it was set in the same part of the world as Payday 2, Washington DC, and would involve players trying to keep themselves and their camp alive during the zombie apocalypse made popular in Robert Kirkman's graphic novels and the AMC TV show. Given the fact that Payday 2 had proven to be a tremendous cultural hit around this time, getting the likes of Giancarlo Esposito and making cameos in the Wick movies at the height of their popularity, and given how at the moment it is very possible to argue that Payday 2 might have sold more copies than Super Mario Brothers 3, it would seem that OTWD was in good hands.

The problem, though, was their CEO. Bo Andersson used pressure he conjured up in Varvtre AB, a holdings company he was on the board of directors for, to become the CEO of Starbreeze when they acquired Overkill Software, the makers of Payday: The Heist and Payday 2. This also moved Bo from a role within the games industry alongside his brother to being his brother's superior and putting him in a firmly business role. This was good for Bo, because it would allow him to scrape capital from Overkill on their pursuit into superstardom to fund his own dream project: Storm.

Storm was a concept that Bo had been working on since 2008, the idea of bringing virtual reality back from being a curious novelty we played with in the 1990s into a mainstream competitive eSport. Players would wear tactical vests with computers built into them and a 5K resolution HMD that Acer would develop with the aid of Starbreeze in a massive bespoke arena, and using a combination of LIDAR scanning, realtime texture mapping, and the Valhalla game engine Starbreeze paid $8 million for, their physical arena would turn into a sci-fi deathmatch where players would cooperate to eliminate the enemy team and seek victory.

Bo Andersson was paying tens of millions of dollars to invent Laser Tag.

But how does this tie into The Walking Dead? Well, as a proof of concept, the work that Overkill had done in their in-house game engine, Diesel 2.0, would be ported into Valhalla to bring Overkill's The Walking Dead to life. Overkill's employees had long complained that Diesel could not compete visually, and even incorporating proper normal maps and bumping up the texture quality could not shake the appearance of a Source Engine or early Unreal 3 title. Despite releasing in 2013 and with the game now moving into 2016, onto the 8th generation of consoles, Payday 2 was not a looker and Overkill's The Walking Dead faced the same fate.

The problem, though, is that Bo Andersson bought the Valhalla Engine, which was being designed for VR first and foremost, much too early. The engine was literally incomplete, and the programmers had to write tools for the engine before they could write any code for the game itself. After nearly a year of work, they did bring Valhalla into a usable state, and used its VR prowess to power Payday 2's VR version. Bo also proposed a VR demo of Overkill's The Walking Dead to be hosted in Dubai, at VR Park (now titled PlayDXB), to demonstrate the game, the headset, and the VR technology to Middle Eastern investors who could free Bo from the shackles of Scandinavian game development and make him the worldwide name in VR. This delayed their actual non-VR Walking Dead game, which had serious funding from Skybound Entertainment and Robert Kirkman, past its intended 2016 street date. The game was nowhere near finished as Overkill staff were pulled back and forth to so many different projects within the studio. They received an extension to their deadline, Fall 2017, and work continued on the Valhalla Engine and the VR demo.

Fast forward another year. Starbreeze puts out Raid: World War II, a Diesel 2.0 title in which four players steal from the Nazis in almost exactly same manner as in Payday 2, starring John Cleese as the handler for the crew, and some trailers commissioned for their Walking Dead game using virtually zero actual in-game assets, and Skybound makes them an ultimatum: if the game is not out by November 2018, then they lose the rights to the license. They have wasted the rights holder's time and money for too long, and the project is dragging its heels with a CEO seeing it as a low priority to get their contractually-obligated co-op FPS for PCs and consoles out versus his ambitions of filling an entire space in Dubai with his name, his brand. Overkill developers, who had been clamoring for years to use an actual engine that makes sense for FPSes, finally get their wish, and Bo Andersson invests in commercial licenses for Unreal Engine 4. The problem now, though, is that the staff have a year to make the game in Unreal, with the caveat that they have zero experience in the engine. If they had made this move two years ago, they'd have the time to commit to learning the ins and outs, but they don't.

Overkill goes into crunch, with staff sleeping in the offices and working 100-hour weeks to learn Unreal and take what the documentation and tutorials offer them and implement it into their Walking Dead title, reverse-engineering the concepts they had implemented into the Diesel and Valhalla versions of the game and dropping them into Unreal. Bo Andersson, all the while, is going on vacations and not coming in on the regular, spending his time playing zombie games for inspiration and coming to the staff with his own ideas for the game based on them. Glory Kills, Special Infected, robust base maintenance mechanics and the ability to command teams of non-player survivors on missions all wound up in the game with little actual regard for how these pieces fit together. By the time that he realized he should be more actively hands-on, he only had a scant few months to spend with the staff at the final mad dash to make a playable product. The game was playable at E3, with two demo levels, and one of them playtested so poorly that the staff had to pull it from the rotation, but when Bo heard this feedback he would not tell his staff. He told them the game was testing great at E3, that people loved it.

Overkill's The Walking Dead released on the 7th of November, 2018, a week after Payday 2 ended support by letting players kill fallen angels and solve a giant puzzle wheel about the in-game lore in order to turn Bain, the player's main contact, into the US President via a body-swapping artifact used by the ancient kings of Kataru, who were gifted immortality at the same time common man was gifted the knowledge of good and evil at the Garden of Eden. While the clown-themed robbery game ended on a confusing note, Overkill's The Walking Dead was getting started to a whole heap of roughness. The game's combat was frustrating, with hordes of walkers that had to be put down one clumsy charged melee swing at a time and human enemies who fired off AKMs and MP5s with reckless abandon. Their noise would draw hordes, which would need to be contended with via your own noise, as dealing with a few dozen enemies with melee combat was awkward and difficult.

Being grappled by a zombie cost a health bar and a half in a game where your starting character had on average four healthbars to their name, and the underlying gameplay, despite being completely linear missions in level and objective design, were just Payday heists at the end of the day. Hell or High Water involved you raiding a camp owned by The Family, an antagonistic gang your camp is at war with, and stealing their supplies. In turn, they arrive at your camp and you kill five waves of them in Worse Than Walkers, in a move no different than Payday 2's Safe House Raid mission, with no zombies in sight. The camp-building mechanics, which were tied to player level and their ability to tend to the needs of their workers, were a confusing mess of UI elements that did not mesh together, and all weapons were earned in a gachapon-style case system and would degrade over time, requiring the player unjam them, fix them with the supplies they need to keep camp morale up, or watch them fall into disrepair. There was also no tutorial mission, with the game opening with The First Shot, the E3 demo mission that tested so poorly they stopped running it.

Overkill's The Walking Dead performed poorly, both critically and commercially, and Starbreeze went right into damage control. The game's high price tag to low gameplay ratio was combatted with a $30 version that required paying for the missions $60 players got for free. Season 2 went into production very quickly, with fixes to the base game, new weapons, and new survivors being promised within the coming months. Unfortunately, this was too little, too late, as Skybound issued a cease and desist to their business partner after just three months of sale, and by February 2019, Overkill's The Walking Dead was just as much a corpse as the undead shamblers present in the video games.

Perhaps what sealed the fate of the game wasn't its overall quality, as The Walking Dead is home to a large number of subpar games, but its tone and gameplay. Overkill's The Walking Dead is a very staunchly libertarian take on the franchise, pitting the player with the idea that they are to be a colonizing force, destroying an antagonistic camp and treating the other people just trying to survive as cannon fodder not unlike if they were just walkers with guns. This is no surprise given another face at Overkill, executive producer Almir Listo, having a robust fascination with libertarianism and the cult of personality that surrounded fringe Right-wing groups. Almir himself is not a conservative, but he has proven time and time again that he thinks the way Donald Trump talks is funny and has an interest in American conservative viewpoints and conspiracies as an outsider looking in, likely not helped by an unnamed comics writer taking over Payday 2 in its final year to turn the game about robbing banks into one with an ancient conspiracy and Nephilim to mow down with your MG42 or M16.

The Walking Dead is a story about its people and how they're shaped by the conflict, by the apocalypse that surrounds them, and while Kirkman expressed early interest in the sound-based horde gameplay encouraging quiet takedowns and swift, accurate gunplay, it is very possible that the idea of not just a bad Walking Dead game, but a bad Walking Dead game from a popular studio that fundamentally misunderstands the world of The Walking Dead and needs to fall back on generic bandits and raiders to fill its spaces a la Bethesda's open world titles was a bad look. We'll never know for certain, though, as the game has been pulled from sale for ages.

But this brings us to sometime last week. September 21st marked the launch of Starbreeze Studios' (formerly Overkill Software's) Payday 3. The game features a lot of the stuff they had worked on for The Walking Dead (weapon models, a rework to the Shield enemy, armor working exactly like health in OTWD) but also a ton of its own ideas, and in general the gameplay is very solid. The issue, though, is the progression and a number of bugs that hamper the experience, alongside requiring a Starbreeze Nebula account and online connection to play, with no offline mode to speak of, which caused problems when the servers for the game were down for its first three days after launch. Starbreeze promised a patch was coming shortly thereafter, but on October 21st, a month after the game released, someone with ties to Starbreeze, fed up with the Starbreeze Nebula account requirement and persistent Internet connection to play a game with obvious issues and no Patch 1 release date in sight, released the final build of Overkill's The Walking Dead. This featured a proper tutorial, made the original The First Shot into an optional random encounter a player could take on for additional resources, a slew of new weapons, a wandering trader who could sell you blueprints to the DLC's guns, and the rest of Season 2's missions. The leaked build is not playable online but is DRM-free, running just fine completely offline and preserving the game for future generations to point and laugh at, albeit without any help to ease the difficulty for a game that expected four human players at a time.

Perhaps the weirdest part of the leak is that it brought out a handful of fans from the woodwork who view Overkill's The Walking Dead as an underrated gem buried before it could truly shine, individuals who feel the game could be one of the studio's best with enough polish, and as a result Robert Kirkman has been once again inundated with people asking about the now five year-old game, hoping to give it another chance. I, personally, feel that the clumsy pacing, questionable storyline bearing little similarities to the graphic novels it's based on, and the over-reliance on generic bandits voiced by Payday regulars Josh Lenn and Joseph Balderrama prevent the game from being anything but a really weird footnote in a company's confusing, convoluted history.

#overkill #starbreeze #payday #the walking dead #gaming

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hillbowman · 6 months ago

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The Necessities Of Survival.

…

Premonition:

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Hill Bowman

…

December 1st 2018 ©

…

Dedicated to

Hilda Sue Bowman

my mother

…

And my “ “ “Abba YHWH” “ “

…

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NASA Technology Transfer (.gov)

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Update locatAbove photographs compliments Google News September 13th 2023

…

Chapter 1.

The Bigger Picture

Chapter 2.

Earth Is A Closed Ecosystem

Chapter 3.

Resources Are Limited But Bureaucracy Is Perpetual

Chapter 4.

Crowdfunding And Open Research

Chapter 5.

A Battle Against Principalities

Chapter 6.

Tomorrow Starts Today

Chapter 7.

Extrapolation On Moore’s Law

Chapter 8.

You Are Here

Chapter 9.

The Necessity of Cross Referencing

Chapter 10.

Road Map To Survival

Chapter 11.

Integrated Parts

Chapter 12.

Unified Survival Theory

Chapter 13.

Requirement Of Migration

Google search parameter for prologue:

…

space station'+'geosynchronous orbit’

:::

Prolog:

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The Need to Migrate

Was it about Smokey?

All Right then;

From the End > to > the beginning.

What it’s all about, it's about a footpath of stepping stones that gradually gently and easily make a traversable transit like ants walking along the same chemical trail. Except We will be walking along the same (Electromachanical Electromagnetic) galactic footpaths..

From planet to planet through our solar system;

Extending in steady progression to both the outer edge and also center of our galaxy.

I believe this text can prove this long term objective feasible.

( technologically speaking ),

within under 200 years.

…

Within the next 50 years,

establishing colonies on any livable planets and harvesting from all of them.

Within the next 20 years,

it should be us the population, the human race that takes the lead. in this expansion to outer space.

It should not be government or industry.

if it is then our opportunity as a free and pioneering species WILL most certainly be enslaved for the far foreseeable future by either corporatocracy or oppressive government..

The alternative …

What I attempt to suggest in this document will allow the human population, as a population to expand freely.

At your own will, initiative and capabilities as individuals and small groups such as vacationers in corporate business planners might see fit.

It should be Crowd funding (as crowd funding is the closest modern man can get to democracy).

Unfettered by government and Corporatocracy

…

This is your personal opportunity to put your money on your Own interest ~~ for forward momentum as a species.

Put your money on the objectives that you want to go forward.

Make physical technological progress as a species in the directions that we agree apon, collectively as a species

Casting our vote for specific results in a specific intended direction…

Through Crowdfunding via Our Collective Financial Contributions to any given project under the universe.

Technology, engineering, science, aerospace, agriculture, under c, exploration, mining, you pick it…, humanities, medicine etc.

… For the benefit of the species Humanity),

…in the direction that(YOU THINK) best serves our biosphere as a whole…

;::

“ “ “

Hey how's it going today everybody this is smokey smoke of ABQ signing on and flying over…

…

Let’s just check a few facts like the altimeter reading oxygen and a few other little tidbits to get the ball rolling…

…

All of the living organisms in our biosphere ( as well as ourselves in our own personal interests) are at a critical juncture in human understanding, in science technology, engineering, physics, materials manipulations such as metallurgy and polymers, dissemination of information and capability to digest that information that we must move out into low earth orbit.

It a necessity of our own survival as a species. If by some circumstance our biosphere can no longer sustain us (from which probabilities there are more than a few), then by necessities of survival of the species we must have first and foremost a libraries of knowledge archived in low earth orbit or perhaps Middle Earth orbit furthermore we should immediately begin on building geosynchronous low earth orbit platforms for habitation as housing as, a business, as daily activity and not as something scientifically spectacular.

We've had the technology(on Moss as a species) for years and years and decades and decades.

it's time to get out there.

To master the art , science and technology of being an interplanetary / intergalactic space fairing spspecies

NOT a terrestrial one.

~~For real talk.~~

…

I assure you, within 30 years human beings will be working and living in space. The question is?, what will the habitation conditions be…??l

What will the working conditions and environment be !!/

And Who Will Dictate Those Living Conditions !?/

…

Think about it !!...

…

Those are the two questions that are paramount.

…

Next: As in Right Now this is the first thing we need to do.

Through crowdfunding We as a global population, should start propelling money in the directions of the technology, resources and expansion ventures that you choose to support.

And thereby begin moving technologically(and morally) in the direction we should have gone in ever since the 1970s.

Now all the cards are on the table. So seriously, everybody that reads this book, if you put $1 on it crowdfund something put $1 on it. Maybe a month or a year from now you’ll put $10 on that same crowd funding but fund it.

Because

There are almost 8 billion inhabitants (human that is) on our biosphere as I speak at the moment.

If a billion people put $10 on something that’s 10 billion dollars.

(Note: in My relations to multimedia advertising I can tell you that this is an outstanding percentile ratio of viewers to those that buy in.

But I digress again please forgive me)…

And that would build our first Self-Replicating, twin-gravity ring, inner – Inner-planatery, Space Vessel.

‘’inner-planetary, Space vessel/ habitat”.

~~ The … “Stepping Stone”

…

So go find something…

Chapter 1 the bigger picture

“ “ “

“Jake Dunagan, the director of design futures at the consulting firm Very Nice, studies the cognitive biases that make it difficult for people to plan ahead. “That’s one of the conundrums of futurist work: The future doesn’t exist,” Dunagan tells me. “It’s always a projection.” Our minds, he says, have not evolved to be very good at seeing our future as connected to our present, as we spent so much of our early existence concerned with outwitting immediate threats.”

Quote source - Can Human Mortality Really Be Hacked? By Elmo Keep Smithsonian Magazine | June 2017

“ “ “

…

Smokey here.

let’s take a minute and take a hard look at me personally.

The immediate environment we all exist in.

The objectives and pursuits we might best put our collective resources toward…

…

1 ) first thing…

The first thing that must be realized by all human beings is that this biosphere that we call Earth is a closed ecosystem.

Without extrapolating too much detail in the biology (this book is intended for general reading after all).

It is critical to understand that in a closed ecosystem there is a maximum life support for volume of living organisms within that ecosystem.

When maximum volume of total organisms within an ecosystem reaches maximum level (capacity) the vast majority of any species within that ecosystem will die off by starvation, lack of shelter, water, oxygen, and other necessities that the ecosystem can no longer provide for all organisms within the ecosystem.

It has been scientifically demonstrated that when a closed ecosystem reaches maximum population density then organisms across-the-board relying on food, water and other natural resources begin to go through a die off.

Surviving population stagnate to whatever the environment can sustain. populations can no longer grow.

…

Google search parameter for the above statement…

“ “ “

Google search parameter..

…

‘Darwin’+’ “Evolution of the species” '+’pdf'

…

“ “ “

…

Human beings are the only organism on this planet Earth that have the capacity to expand out from this planet to other planets.

It is essential for the survival of not only Humanity but of all the living organisms on this planet (as well as the survival of the biosphere itself), that Humanity find a way to start moving out into the solar system immediately. And not for exploration but for habitation employment and long-term living arrangements as in generations.

“ “ “

Further;

To harvest the raw resources of intergalactic space. And to construct our new intergalactic existences from those raw resources on site.

To expand out from this small little sanctuary of life we call earth. to create colonies, to export life in man-made into galactic vessels such as the “Steping Stone” centripetal gravitation into planetary space vessel…

To boldly build an electromagnetic electromechanical row of intergalactic ants that travel from here to the kuiper belt and at least 100 years step by step and from there out to the edge of the Milky Way galaxy and toward the center of it step by step in no less than 200 years.

As well as interplanetary colonization.

Colonizing other planets in Mass numbers. Throughout our own Milky Way Galaxy and also to other galaxies within a 12 light year diameter from planet Earth.

…

“ “ “

Smokey here again, there are some things I should tell you up front about this book

This book is not intended to satisfy or stroke the eagles of any particular personages or organization.

This book is intended to spell out and blunt and direct language to the general popopulation;

Our state of the arts in science technology and human capabilities.

Underwater, On land, In low earth orbit: Projecting out to the Kuiper belt And beyond…

I see you stand flabbergast, but I tell you right now as we speak humanity has the capability scientifically we have the technology we have the engineers we have the manpower the only thing we lack is…

“ “ “

(…Coordinated Unity… )

And

(…Constructive Money…)

“ “ “

…

In short I am writing this book to tell you what is really going on …

“ “ “ FOR REAL” “ “

AS OPPOSED TO SOME BIAS OPINION TO ACHIEVE MY OBJECTIVES, OR TO REDIRECT YOUR OPINIONS.

NOR IS THIS DOCUMENT INTENDED TO SELL YOU SOME BULL SHIT YOU NEITHER NEED NOR EVEN REALLY WANT, THAT WILL WASTE YOUR TIME, YOUR MONEY AND YOUR PATIENCE.

…

“ “ “

THIS DOCUMENT IS SIMPLY TO INFORM YOU. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS

FROM THERE IT’S UP TO YOU AS THE PROPERLY INFORMED ADULT TO MAKE THE IMMEDIATE DEDECISION

~~AS NIKE USED TO SAY, ~~

“ JUST DO IT” )

…AND DO IT RIGHT NOW TODAY

:::

This book started out as a humble short story and has evolved into Three full books as well as the short story... It is simply too much information to try to convey about this project in this concept and strictly technical times so I hope you will enjoy the short story of “MOM.”

MOM. (SSEM) Stepping Stone Engineers Manual

This book is not intended as a scientific treatise but rather as a humbled but capable observation in cognizant awareness of the reality of our environment and our circumstances."...

Hill Bowman

#technology #physics #astronomy #books #economics #python #artificial intelligence #self-replication #robotics #macro robotics #public consumption

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boricuacherry-blog · 1 year ago

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The woman who was found murdered in her Redmond apartment had recently moved to the area and loved to ride her motorcycle and was, according to her supervisor at a Bellevue software-development company, "a shooting star."

Arpana Jinaga was a 24-year-old software-quality engineer from India who was building a circle of friends, exploring the region on her motorcycle, and reveling in the freedoms the United States had to offer her. She had attended Rutgers University, won an international software award, and was a rising star at the Bellevue company she worked for. Described as outgoing and friendly, she would try anything just to say she had attempted the experience. She had, on a whim, joined a motorcycle club after seeing a woman riding one on the street. She practiced Tae Kwon do, volunteered at an animal shelter and fire department, and she'd done all of this within only eight months of moving to Redmond, Washington.

From the Indian town of Hyderabad, Arpana's father was a professor of computer engineering and her mother a homemaker. She was close with her younger sister Pavitra and her family. Growing up, Arpana was creative, enjoying singing, dancing and gymnastics, described by everyone as a girl with a bright and bubbly personality.

When she was younger she entered a design hardware competition, doing so well, potential universities paid attention. She excelled in computer engineering, and in the specialty of embedded systems. She also sang in a band. When she was 21, in a microchip design competition against thousands of people, Arpana placed top twenty. Each contestant received their own design kit, and Arpana created a communications jammer with hers, attracting even more attention. In 2005, the Indian Express wrote an article about her, entitled "Young Inventors," in which she was interviewed on her love for computers and innovation. She dreamed of being a professor like her father.

Her father encouraged her to apply for the masters program at Rutgers in New Jersey. And she did, traveling to the U.S. to major in engineering. After arriving she began working at EMC as a software quality assurance engineer. In only 6 months, promoted to lead programmer, a testament to her work ethic.

In 2008, she was transferred to a new office in Redmond, Washington, a suburb just outside of Seattle - the tech town where Microsoft and Intendo were started - moving into the third floor of an apartment in the Valley View apartment complex.

Each floor in the complex only had about five or six rooms, but she quickly made friends there. This was when she bought a Suzuki motorcycle and began lessons on driving it and joining the Pacific Northwest Riders, a local motorcycle club. She also volunteered at the Redmond Fire Department and an animal shelter in Bellevue. She loved animals and would speak of one day opening one for endangered animals.

On the eve of October 30, she planned to host a Halloween party at the complex. Each room would have a different theme in the building, and her costume would be Little Red Riding Hood. Over a dozen people mixed with each other and people seemed to enjoy it, and at 9pm, Arpana and her friends were still having fun. She walked the halls with a glass of wine, posing with people for pictures. At around midnight, she had everyone come to her apartment to eat pizza. After that, they all made their way to the first floor and continued the party.

Just before 3am, things started to slow down. Her friend Jessica remembers a conversation they had shortly before they parted ways that evening. Arpana was telling her how lucky she was to be a woman living in the U.S., and how hard things were growing up in India. Jessica tried to tell her that things weren't always so easy in the U.S. either, to which Arpana began to cry, simply stating, "You have no idea."

Still slightly emotional, she retreated back to her own apartment around 3am, alone. But despite her leaving alone, for the next hour, her neighbor reported hearing what they thought sounded like consensual sex. They heard muffled moaning come from her apartment walls.

At 8am the next morning, her neighbor was woken up by what sounded like a growing sound that sounded like either someone having sex, or vomiting, coming from Arpana's apartment, followed by a loud thud - then the sound of running water.

When Arpana's family waited for her phone call that next day, they received no call. They texted her, and received no response. The family called someone they knew to check on her.

This person agreed and went to knock on her door, but surprisingly, the door just swung open. The door frame and the lock had been broken. When he and a neighbor entered the room, there were clear signs of a struggle. They walked into Arpana's bedroom -

and that's when they found her laying face down on the floor, under a sheet, naked, and covered with blood. When authorities arrived, the immediately knew this was a homicide. An overwhelming smell of bleach permeated the room, as if someone had tried to clean up, and Arpana's comforter was in the tub, soaking in water and bleach. Blood was still on it though. The rest of the sheets were missing. Police also found Arpana's tampon, which was presumably in at the time of the attack and was now on the floor of her bedroom. Bleach was on the furniture, and motor oil had been dumped all around the apartment, and around her body.

Arpana's body was taken for an autopsy, which confirmed she had been raped. Unfortunately no DNA was able to be gathered, likely due to a condom being used. She also had blunt force trauma to the head, several of her teeth had been broken, she had bruises on her stomach, thighs and wrists, and her own underwear had been used to gag her mouth. Duct tape had also been placed over her mouth. Death was determined to be asphyxiation, which was done with a bootlace. Her fingers were stained blue with toilet cleaner and she had bleach and motoroil over her from the waist down, as well as small burn marks. It appeared that someone had attempted to light her body on fire but failed, since motoroil isn't flammable. Her bloodstained bathrobe and bedsheets were found in a dumpster outside the apartment. Arpana's ID, her blackberry phone and her digital camera were missing.

Police were suspicious of one of Arpana's neighbors - Cameron Johnson. There were some discrepancies in his timeline to police, and police found printed out maps for pawnshops in his car, printed at 10am, but he claimed he woke up at 10am. He also said he went to Denny's that morning then drove two hours to the Canadian border but wasn't let through because he didn't have a passport with him. When asked about this, he said he was just in the mood to explore. Canadian officials, however, stated that he tried to "blow through the border gates."

One neighbor said he came home at 3am the night of the murder and saw a man at Arpana's door who was between 5'11 and 6'3, with olive skin - a description that matched Cameron - talking to someone in the apartment. But since Arpana's door had been kicked in, it's hard to know if these two incidents are connected.

It was also discovered that someone had been using Arpana's computer at 3:29 that morning.

To everyone's surprise though, the man police ended up arresting was 27-year-old Emanuel Fair.

Emanuel Fair had been going by the name 'Anthony Parker.' According to Detective Coats, he was looking at photos from the Halloween party, when he noticed Fair, who was dressed as a construction worker, in the background of the photos. He stood out as the only black man at the party. He also appeared to be an outsider. He started sending the photos out to other officers, asking if anyone knew him. Turns out they did - there was a warrant out for his arrest.

Emanuel Fair had a criminal record. He had gang affiliations and had been arrested many times before for various crimes - robbery, gun possession, drug possession - and, what caught Detective Coats' attention - a rape charge.

Only four years earlier, he had been charged with raping a minor, after that minor called 911 and reported it. The 15-year-old reported him violently raping her at gunpoint. When apprehended, he claimed the encounter was consensual, which legally it wasn't, since she was a minor. He took an Alford plea and pled guilty to third degree sexual assault, where the max imprisonment is only five years.

Because he was considered a level 1 offender, he only served two years of his sentence and got out.

There was a warrant out for his arrest because he had broken his probation and failed to update his sex offender status in the registry for the second time.

After he had been released from prison in 2006 he was couchsurfing, and ended up on the couch of Leslie Potts, who lived in same complex as Arpana. Leslie had met Fair over MySpace.

Apparently, Fair and Cameron Johnson had spent a lot of time together at the Halloween party the night Arpana was murdered.

And it turned out that Fair's DNA was found at the crime scene, and specifically, on the duct tape found over Arpana's mouth. His DNA was also found on her neck, and mixed in with the blood found on the robe in the dumpster. He was also interviewed multiple times, and found to have inconsistencies in his story. Leslie didn't see him until the morning, so she couldn't confirm where he was. Also, he claimed to have been asleep between 1 and 2am, but during that time he had made 20 different calls to people. Leslie also said she found an empty condom wrapper on the table that hadn't been there before.

The tape that was found on Arpana's mouth had strands of her hair on it, as well as a lot of Fair's DNA - this meant it couldn't have been transfer DNA, and Fair did touch this piece of tape. It's also believed she was wearing the robe when she was attacked, which is why Detective Coats found it compelling that Fair's DNA was found mixed in with the blood on it. His DNA was also found on toilet paper in the bathroom. Cameron's DNA was on the can of motoroil - an amount of DNA that meant he had at some point physically touched it. A forensic DNA analyst stated that the evidence pointed to Fair committing the crime, and that Cameron might have been apart of the clean-up. Fair's DNA appeared to be the one tied to the crime though.

Fair was charged with first degree murder and rape, and transferred to King County to await trial. Detectives did not, however, have enough evidence to charge or convict Cameron with a crime.

Fair's defense attorneys claimed he was only looked at due to racism. They also questioned the legitimacy of the forensic technology used. This hindered the case going to court for several years, in order for detectives and prosecutors to prove the legitimacy of the technology. At the time it wasn't as commonly used [although now it is]. The DNA technology company refused to give over the source code that ran the program [he didn't want it stolen by other companies], so that held up the case going to trial for years. In the end, it was verified that the DNA technology was very reliable.

Seven years after Fair's arrest, the trial began, but it was a hung jury. They were deadlocked. Another trial was held. Because Cameron was possibly also implicated in the crime, Fair's defense attorneys used that as a cause for reasonable doubt that Cameron could have been the one responsible. This was enough reasonable doubt for Fair to get off. That, along with the fact that Fair's previous rape charge and criminal convictions could not be disclosed in the trial.

This case is still left without a conclusion, as a result.

#true crime #arpana jinaga #redmond #washington #emanuel fair #cameron johnson #homicide #unresolved #2008 #unsolved

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spacenutspod · 8 months ago

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Credit: NASA New space technology ideas emerge every day from innovators across the country, and NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program on Monday selected more than 100 projects for funding. This program offers small businesses in the United States early-stage funding and support to advance the agency’s goals of exploring the unknown in air and space while returning benefits to Earth. Specifically, NASA’s SBIR program awarded $93.5 million in Phase II contracts to bring 107 new ideas to life from 95 selected small businesses. Of these businesses, nearly 80% have less than 50 employees, and 21% are receiving their first Phase II award, valued at up to $850,000 each. Each small business was also eligible to apply for up to $50,000 in Technical and Business Assistance program funding to help find new market opportunities and shape their commercialization roadmap. “We are thrilled to support this diverse set of companies as they work diligently to bring their technologies to market,” said Jenn Gustetic, director of Early Stage Innovation and Partnerships with NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “Inclusive innovation is integral to mission success at NASA, and we’re excited to see that 29% of the awardees are from underrepresented groups, including 11% women-owned businesses.” In Phase II, awardees will build on their success from the program’s first phase to bring their technologies closer to real-world use. The companies have 24 months to execute their plans, which focus on their technologies’ path to commercialization. For example, NASA selected women-owned and first-time NASA Phase II awardee nou Systems, Inc. in Huntsville, Alabama, for its genetic testing instrument. While portable genetic sequencing already exists, field sequencing – that would allow DNA analysis anywhere on Earth or off planet – remains unfeasible as the preparation of the DNA Library remains an intensely manual process, needing a trained wet lab technician and several pieces of laboratory equipment. The Phase II technology takes advantage of several cross-enabling technologies, creating an instrument to automate the genetic sequencing process. “Our program works directly with small businesses to forge innovative concepts and technologies that drive impact for NASA projects as well as a myriad of commercial endeavors,” said Jason L. Kessler, program executive for NASA’s SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program at NASA Headquarters. “This collaboration results in realized opportunities not only for NASA but all of humanity.” This includes technologies aiming to reduce astronaut workload and improve robotic scientific endeavors on the Moon and Mars. PickNik Inc. based in Boulder, Colorado, will use its Phase II award to continue developing a hardware-agnostic platform for supervised autonomy that empowers humans to command a remote robot to complete complex tasks with minimal input, which could support the Artemis program. Outside of NASA, PickNik’s software product may be of interest to commercial space customers working on low Earth orbit destinations, in-space servicing, and more, as well as on Earth in areas like warehouse management, oil rig maintenance, and deep-sea exploration. The NASA SBIR program is open to U.S. small businesses to develop an innovation or technology. The program is part of STMD and managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. To learn more about the NASA SBIR program, visit: https://sbir.nasa.gov -end- Jimi RussellHeadquarters, [email protected] Share Details Last Updated Apr 22, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related TermsSmall Business Innovation Research / Small BusinessSpace Technology Mission Directorate

#space #astronomy #news #science

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smicroft · 10 months ago

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Beyond Books: A Deep Dive into Web Design Internships and IT Companies in the USA

Embarking on a journey to explore the dynamic world of web design through an internship can be an exciting and transformative experience. This article aims to provide a detailed overview of web design internships, focusing on the opportunities available in the United States. As we delve into the intricacies of web design internships, we'll also touch upon the importance of gaining practical experience, honing skills, and navigating the landscape of IT companies in the USA.

Understanding Web Design Internships:

Web design internships serve as a gateway for individuals aspiring to immerse themselves in the creative and technical aspects of designing websites. These opportunities offer a hands-on learning experience, allowing interns to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world projects. During an internship, individuals work closely with seasoned professionals, gaining insights into the industry's best practices and the latest trends.

Interns often collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, including graphic designers, developers, and project managers, fostering a holistic understanding of the web design process. This collaborative environment enhances communication skills, teamwork, and the ability to adapt to the fast-paced nature of the industry.

Benefits of Web Design Internships:

Practical Application of Skills:

Web design internships provide a platform to put theoretical knowledge into practice. Interns get the opportunity to work on live projects, enabling them to refine their design skills and develop a portfolio showcasing their work.

Industry Exposure:

Internships offer a firsthand look into the workings of the web design industry. Exposure to real-world projects helps interns understand client expectations, industry standards, and the importance of meeting deadlines.

Networking Opportunities:

Building professional connections is a valuable aspect of internships. Engaging with industry professionals, attending workshops, and participating in networking events during an internship can open doors to future collaborations and job opportunities.

Skill Diversification:

Web design internships often expose individuals to various tools, technologies, and design principles. This diversification of skills enhances an intern's versatility, making them more adaptable to the ever-evolving field of web design.

Navigating the Landscape of IT Companies in the USA:

The United States is home to a plethora of Information Technology (IT) companies, contributing significantly to the global tech landscape. Aspiring web design interns can benefit from familiarizing themselves with some of the prominent IT companies in the USA, as these organizations often provide robust internship programs.

Here is a curated list of IT companies in the USA:

Google:

Google, headquartered in Mountain View, California, is renowned for its innovative products and services. The company offers various internship programs, providing opportunities for aspiring web designers to work on cutting-edge projects.

Microsoft:

With its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft is a global technology giant. Microsoft's internship programs often span across different departments, offering exposure to diverse projects, including web design initiatives.

IBM:

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), headquartered in Armonk, New York, is a leader in the IT industry. IBM's commitment to innovation extends to its internship programs, where web design enthusiasts can find opportunities to work on impactful projects.

Amazon:

Based in Seattle, Washington, Amazon is a global e-commerce and cloud computing powerhouse. The company's internship programs cover a wide range of disciplines, including web design, providing interns with a chance to contribute to Amazon's user experience.

Adobe:

Adobe, headquartered in San Jose, California, is synonymous with creative software solutions. Interns at Adobe often get the chance to work on projects related to web design tools and applications, gaining valuable experience in the creative technology space.

Oracle:

Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, specializes in database management systems and cloud solutions. Web design interns at Oracle may have the opportunity to work on user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design projects.

Cisco:

Cisco, headquartered in San Jose, California, is a global leader in networking technologies. Internship opportunities at Cisco may involve web design projects related to the company's digital presence and online platforms.

Salesforce:

Salesforce, located in San Francisco, California, is a prominent player in customer relationship management (CRM) software. Web design interns at Salesforce may contribute to designing user interfaces for customer-facing applications.

It's important to note that while these are some of the major players, there are numerous other IT companies across the USA, each offering unique opportunities for web design enthusiasts.

Applying for Web Design Internships:

Securing a web design internship involves a strategic approach to the application process. Here are key steps to increase your chances of landing an internship:

Build a Strong Portfolio:

A well-curated portfolio showcasing your best design projects is crucial. Highlight a variety of skills, including UI/UX design, graphic design, and any relevant coding experience.

Tailor Your Resume:

Customize your resume to emphasize relevant skills and experiences. Highlight any coursework, projects, or extracurricular activities related to web design.

Craft a Compelling Cover Letter:

Your cover letter should articulate your passion for web design, your understanding of industry trends, and why you are interested in interning at a specific company.

Online Presence:

Ensure your online presence is professional and aligns with your career goals. Create a LinkedIn profile that showcases your skills, projects, and any endorsements or recommendations you may have received.

Research Companies:

Familiarize yourself with the companies you're applying to. Understand their values, culture, and recent projects. Tailor your application to demonstrate how your skills align with the company's needs.

Networking:

Leverage networking opportunities through professional organizations, industry events, and online platforms. Networking can provide insights into available opportunities and increase your chances of getting noticed.

Web Design Internship Expectations:

Once successfully secured, web design interns can expect a dynamic and enriching experience. Here are common aspects of a web design internship:

Project Collaboration:

Interns often work on real projects, collaborating with experienced designers and developers. This hands-on experience is invaluable for applying theoretical knowledge in a practical setting.

Learning Opportunities:

Web design interns may have access to training sessions, workshops, and mentorship programs. This continuous learning environment ensures interns stay updated on the latest design trends and technologies.

Feedback and Improvement:

Constructive feedback is a crucial aspect of internships. Expect regular feedback on your work, and use it as an opportunity for improvement. This iterative process is key to personal and professional growth.

Networking Events:

Many companies organize networking events for interns. These events provide a platform to connect with professionals from various departments, fostering a broader understanding of the company's operations.

Portfolio Enhancement:

Internships provide the chance to enhance your portfolio with real-world projects. These additions can significantly strengthen your profile and increase your competitiveness in the job market.

Conclusion:

Embarking on a web design internship journey can be a transformative experience, providing a bridge between academic learning and real-world application. The United States, with its thriving IT industry, offers a multitude of opportunities for individuals passionate about web design.

By understanding the benefits of internships,

#microdeft #internship

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techrev123 · 1 year ago

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#software development company #software development company in Washington #software development company in Texas #software development company in New York

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siliconec · 2 years ago

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Architectural BIM CAD services Provider in USA

Silicon Engineering Consultant Pvt. Ltd. gives top-notch quality of Architectural BIM Engineering Servies. Our Architectural BIM Engineering Services typically involve the use of BIM software to create accurate and detailed 3D models of buildings or structures. Architectural BIM Design and Drafting Services involve the creation of detailed plans, sections, elevations, and other technical drawings based on the BIM models. Architectural BIM Outsourcing Services involve contracting with a third-party service provider to perform BIM-related tasks on behalf of a company or organization. Connected with US for your next Architectural BIM Engineering CAD Services Provider. Architectural BIM Engineering Including Services: - Detailed Schematic Designs - Proper Drawings and Documentation - Design Development and implementation

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We provide Architectural BIM Services in USA major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Washington

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codeexpertinsights · 2 days ago

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Top 10 Software Development Companies in Washington (2025)

Yes, it is an exciting time for Washington because the tech industry is steadily growing, thus being perfect for software development companies services in healthcare, finance, e-commerce, and so much more. Among these companies, many will be a beacon in delivering innovative solutions that power business in 2025. You would be desiring to approach any of the companies for services, as a client, in areas such as custom software development, IT consulting or any digital technologies transformation services.

#Top Software Development Firms #Software Trends #Washington Tech

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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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For Ukrainian soldiers facing the near-constant threat of Russian drones, a crude-looking, pocketable drone detector has become one of the most sought-after gadgets on the battlefield. Dubbed Tsukorok, or “sugar,” by its London-based creator, the grassroots device produced by a variety of manufacturers beeps loudly when a drone enters its detection range, allowing soldiers time to run to cover or turn on their jamming devices.

“It’s amazing because it is so cheap and simple,” a mortar crewman, currently positioned in the Donbas region, said of the Tsukorok. He, like all soldiers cited in this article, spoke to Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

More than two years into Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Russian military still enjoys the upper hand in electronic warfare. “The Russians have powerful electronic warfare equipment. … Unfortunately, Russia is significantly ahead of Ukraine,” Ukrainian activist Maria Berlinska told Ukrainska Pravda in April. Berlinska was instrumental in pushing the Ukrainian military to develop its own drone capabilities and has trained soldiers and civilians to fly reconnaissance and attack drones.

On Ukraine’s front line, electronic warfare has largely focused on the ability to use and defend from reconnaissance and strike drones as well as long-range missiles. Small, agile first-person-view (FPV) drones, which can carry between 2 and 11 pounds of explosives, are now used extensively by both sides. The ability to detect and jam the signals sent and received by those drones is a matter of life and death.

The Russian military has successfully used elaborate truck-mounted jamming systems to reduce the effectiveness of Western-made, GPS-guided artillery shells as well as HIMARS and JDAM guided bombs, the Washington Post reported in May. More recently, Moscow has used armored vehicles and tanks mounted with jamming devices to push across the front line.

Now, with the sky on the front line saturated with drones, Ukraine is attempting to catch up. That often means employing simpler, more inexpensive equipment with smaller ranges, such as the Tsukorok, to detect signals coming from Russian drones and other guided weapons. More than 50 Ukrainian companies are engaged in producing electronic warfare equipment, from the humble Tsukorok to expensive jamming devices. Tens of thousands of drones are also produced or assembled in the country every month.

But the detection gadgets are hard to obtain. “Right now, I think the demand [for jamming equipment] is at least 10 times higher than what we can provide,” said Bohdan Danyliv, the head of the military department at the Prytula Foundation, one of the biggest organizations supporting the Ukrainian military. “Honestly, it may be 50 times bigger.” The Prytula Foundation already delivers equipment including SUVs, strike drones, rifle optics, communication, and medical equipment to the armed forces. In recent months, the organization has looked to ramp up deliveries of electronic warfare devices.

“Yes, it’s difficult right now,” said Dmytro Selin, the London-based Ukrainian software engineer behind the first model of the Tsukorok. “Deliveries [of parts for manufacturing] aren’t reliable. Parcels can get stuck for weeks at a time. … Demand is a lot higher than our team can handle.”

Soldiers and the Ukrainian companies producing electronic warfare equipment must also deal with the ever-changing nature of electronic warfare. “Both the technologies and the tactics evolve very quickly,” said Anton Veklenko, the chief instructor and co-founder of Global Drone Academy, a Ukrainian company training Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in the use of military drones and electronic warfare.

Since 2022, electronic warfare has quickly made GPS guidance, which most off-the-shelf consumer drones use to navigate, obsolete. Both sides now deploy drones that act as relays to increase the flying range of their FPV drones to distances of up to 31 miles. Russia and Ukraine have also each experimented with autonomous guidance systems, allowing drones to strike their targets even when their signals jammed.

“We also train our pilots to detect which frequencies are being jammed in a specific area of the front line so that they can quickly change the frequencies used to fly their drones,” Veklenko said. “There’s no universal jammer that can block everything, so it’s a constant game of adaptation.”

The rise in popularity of the Tsukorok in late 2023, boosted by positive word of mouth from a Ukrainian military blogger, represents one of these adaptations. The constant threat of drones created the need for a small detector that could be used by any soldier without the training that more accurate and reliable—but also more complex—spectrum analyzers require. Selin, who moved to the United Kingdom in 2019, developed the first prototype in the summer of 2022, focusing at the time on detecting signals from the Russian Orlan reconnaissance drone.

Front-line troops use the Tsukorok to know when to turn on their energy-intensive jamming devices; artillery crewmen think of it as a last-resort warning, allowing them to run to prepared shelters as loitering munitions hurl toward them. A combat medic currently serving in the Kharkiv region explained that he always leaves a Tsukorok in his olive-colored ambulance: “I use it as a guide, to know when to use the jammer.”

The surge in demand put Selin and other groups building the device in a bind, as they went from producing a handful of detectors every month to hundreds, and then thousands, facing hurdles to scale up production. “I’m in talks with manufacturers and governments in Europe, but it is complicated, in good parts because of the bureaucracy,” Selin said. “But now we’re looking to diversify as much as possible,” with a goal of producing up to 10,000 detectors every month. Currently, half of the parts of the Tsukorok are produced in China and half in Ukraine; the final product is assembled in Ukraine.

“When it comes to the production of [electronic warfare] equipment, the situation right now is similar to what we had with FPV drones a year and a half ago,” said Danyliv of the Prytula Foundation. There is an “unstructured market, few established players, and a mix of bad devices that can cost a lot of money and high-quality devices that cannot be produced in enough quantities to meet the demand.”

The Tsukorok isn’t a miracle solution, Selin admitted: It can lose effectiveness in areas saturated with drones and is meant to complement, rather than replace, other detecting and jamming devices. “It is meant as a last warning device, but on the battlefield, soldiers will get information from lots of other sources,” Selin said.

“I call them personal protectors—it’s something that every soldier should have,” Danyliv said. “It won’t solve everything, but when you have one of those things in your pocket, you feel a lot calmer.”

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timesofinnovation · 23 days ago

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Nvidia has recently reinforced its position in the artificial intelligence landscape through the acquisition of OctoAI, marking a significant milestone in a series of strategic deals aimed at expanding its AI portfolio. This move comes amidst growing scrutiny from regulatory bodies regarding Nvidia’s increasing influence in the AI sector, especially following four other acquisitions this year alone, signaling both opportunity and concern within the industry. Founded in 2019, OctoAI has carved its niche in enhancing the performance of machine learning models and making AI hardware more accessible to developers across various technology platforms. With a focus on improving AI infrastructure, OctoAI has become a valuable player in the AI arena, previously partnering with notable tech giants such as Nvidia, AMD, and AWS. The leadership transition sees Luis Ceze, the CEO of OctoAI, stepping into a Vice President role at Nvidia while still engaging in his academic efforts at the University of Washington. The collaboration between the two companies had already taken form prior to the acquisition, which sets a promising foundation for future innovations. Ceze lauded Nvidia's dedication to advancing AI, particularly its strong standing in the machine learning domain. Such partnerships can foster a fertile environment for innovation, benefiting both developers and end-users alike. However, the move is not without its critics. Regulatory concerns revolve around Nvidia's aggressive acquisition strategy, raising alarms about potential monopolistic practices that could stifle competition in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Despite concerns, OctoAI's investors maintain that this acquisition will amplify the startup's influence on AI infrastructure. The integration of OctoAI’s capabilities into Nvidia’s broader platform could yield more powerful tools for developers, shaping the future of machine learning. Nevertheless, critics argue that this consolidation could hinder smaller firms' ability to compete and innovate, creating barriers to entry in a market that thrives on diversity and competition. In the wake of this acquisition, OctoAI plans to shut down its commercial cloud service by the end of October, a strategic decision aimed at streamlining operations in alignment with Nvidia's resources and expertise. This move also highlights a shift toward integrated solutions that leverage Nvidia's robust hardware and software ecosystems. Despite these transitions, OctoAI has attracted significant attention over the years, having raised an impressive $130 million in funding and achieving a formidable valuation of $900 million in 2021. The implications of this acquisition extend beyond the immediate impacts on OctoAI and Nvidia. The unfolding dynamics in the AI sector could reshape not just the competitive landscape, but also the regulatory framework governing technology companies. As AI continues to permeate various sectors, the outcomes of Nvidia's growth strategy could set precedents for how technological merger and acquisition activities are viewed by regulators and competitors alike. As businesses look to capitalize on AI to drive innovation and efficiency, Nvidia's recent maneuvers demonstrate a commitment to leading the charge. It remains to be seen how this acquisition will play out in practice and what ripple effects it will have across the tech industry. For now, stakeholders are paying close attention to Nvidia's next steps, monitoring how it navigates these challenges and opportunities in a landscape shifting rapidly due to advancements in AI. In conclusion, Nvidia's acquisition of OctoAI represents both a significant opportunity for innovation and a point of contention for regulators concerned about market dominance. The ongoing evolution in AI will certainly keep the spotlight on Nvidia and similar players as they strive to balance growth with fair competition.

#News #5GTechnology #AbercrombieRetailTrendsConsumerBehaviorStockMarketBusinessSuccess #AIClimateTechnologyWeatherForecastingG42Nvidia #MergersAndAcquisitions #OctoAI

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sistaffingsblog · 1 month ago

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Top Industries Hiring Through Staffing Agencies in Maryland

Staffing agencies play a critical role in helping businesses across Maryland find qualified talent quickly and efficiently. By providing flexible, scalable, and cost-effective hiring solutions, agencies can support various industries, ranging from healthcare to technology and beyond. As the job market continues to evolve, staffing agencies have become increasingly indispensable to employers looking to navigate hiring challenges and meet the demands of their growing businesses.

Here’s a breakdown of the top industries in Maryland that are hiring through staffing agencies, and how these agencies help meet the unique needs of each sector.

1. Healthcare

Healthcare is one of the largest and most rapidly growing industries in Maryland. With world-class hospitals, medical research centers, and a large aging population, the demand for healthcare professionals has skyrocketed in recent years. Staffing Agencies in Maryland specialize in filling both clinical and non-clinical roles, from doctors and nurses to administrative staff and medical billing specialists.

Key Roles Filled by Staffing Agencies in Healthcare:

Registered Nurses (RNs)

Physicians and Specialists

Medical Assistants and Technicians

Healthcare Administrators

Medical Coders and Billers

Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians

How Staffing Agencies Help:

Quick Placements: Healthcare staffing agencies can quickly place qualified candidates to meet urgent needs, whether it’s to fill in for a staff member on medical leave or address a sudden surge in patient volume.

Specialized Expertise: Agencies like SI Staffing and Aerotek work with healthcare organizations to find highly specialized talent with specific certifications, such as nurse practitioners or physical therapists.

Temporary and Permanent Staffing: Agencies offer both short-term and long-term solutions, ensuring hospitals, clinics, and private practices can address both temporary staffing gaps and long-term personnel needs.

2. Information Technology (IT)

Maryland’s growing technology sector, particularly in areas like cybersecurity, software development, and data science, makes it a hub for IT talent. As companies continue to digitize their operations, the demand for skilled IT professionals has reached unprecedented levels. Staffing agencies are crucial for sourcing IT talent, especially for short-term projects or specialized roles that require specific skills.

Key Roles Filled by Staffing Agencies in IT:

Software Developers

Cybersecurity Experts

Data Scientists and Analysts

Network Engineers

Cloud Computing Specialists

IT Project Managers

Technical Support Specialists

How Staffing Agencies Help:

Specialized Recruiting: IT staffing agencies have deep networks and databases of tech professionals with expertise in niche areas, allowing them to quickly identify candidates with the right skill set.

Contract-to-Hire Options: Many businesses prefer to hire IT talent on a temporary or contract basis before making them permanent employees, and staffing agencies facilitate these types of arrangements with flexibility.

Remote Work Solutions: As remote work becomes more common in the IT sector, agencies are adept at finding remote or hybrid candidates who can meet employers’ needs.

3. Manufacturing and Logistics

The manufacturing and logistics sectors in Maryland are essential to the state’s economy, particularly with its proximity to major transportation hubs like the Port of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. With increased consumer demand and the need for efficiency, these industries require a consistent stream of qualified workers in both production and distribution roles.

Key Roles Filled by Staffing Agencies in Manufacturing and Logistics:

Warehouse Workers and Forklift Operators

Production Line Workers

Quality Control Inspectors

Supply Chain Managers

Logistics Coordinators

Maintenance Technicians

Machine Operators

How Staffing Agencies Help:

Seasonal Demand: Many businesses in manufacturing and logistics face seasonal spikes in demand. Staffing agencies help fill short-term positions to meet production quotas during peak periods.

Skilled Trades and Certification: Agencies ensure that candidates have the proper training and certifications, such as OSHA certifications, to ensure safety and compliance in manufacturing environments.

Temporary-to-Permanent Placement: Agencies can offer a trial period through temporary staffing, allowing employers to assess candidates’ skills and fit before committing to permanent hires.

4. Finance and Accounting

Maryland’s finance sector is a key player in the region’s economy, home to numerous banks, insurance companies, and financial services firms. The state’s proximity to Washington, D.C., also boosts demand for financial professionals in both government and private sectors. Staffing agencies are crucial for sourcing qualified finance and accounting professionals who are skilled in handling complex financial tasks and compliance regulations.

Key Roles Filled by Staffing Agencies in Finance and Accounting:

Accountants and CPAs

Financial Analysts

Tax Preparers

Auditors

Bookkeepers

Payroll Specialists

Insurance Adjusters

How Staffing Agencies Help:

High Demand for Specialized Talent: Staffing Agencies in Maryland specialize in finding finance professionals who are highly skilled in areas like tax law, financial modeling, and risk management.

Temporary and Seasonal Staffing: Finance and accounting departments often require extra support during peak seasons, such as tax season, and staffing agencies are equipped to fill these temporary needs.

Regulatory Compliance: Staffing agencies ensure that candidates are up-to-date with industry regulations and certifications, which is crucial in the highly regulated finance and accounting sectors.

5. Administrative and Clerical

Administrative roles are critical to the smooth functioning of any business. From office management to customer service and HR, Staffing Agencies in Maryland businesses find administrative professionals who are organized, detail-oriented, and capable of managing a wide range of tasks.

Key Roles Filled by Staffing Agencies in Administrative and Clerical:

Administrative Assistants

Customer Service Representatives

Office Managers

Data Entry Clerks

Human Resources Coordinators

Receptionists

Executive Assistants

How Staffing Agencies Help:

Temporary Assistance: Agencies like Randstad and Robert Half often provide temporary administrative staff for businesses that need short-term support or to cover for employees on leave.

Executive-Level Support: Staffing agencies help companies find high-level executive assistants and office managers who can manage complex administrative tasks and support senior leadership.

Flexible Staffing Solutions: Many businesses prefer to hire administrative staff on a temporary or contract basis to address fluctuating workloads, and staffing agencies offer this flexibility.

6. Education and Training

Maryland’s education system, from K-12 schools to universities, as well as the growing number of vocational training centers, requires a steady flow of qualified educators and administrators. Staffing agencies in Maryland support educational institutions by helping them fill teaching and support roles.

Key Roles Filled by Staffing Agencies in Education:

Teachers (K-12 and Higher Education)

Substitute Teachers

Instructional Assistants

Academic Advisors

Administrative Support Staff

Tutors

Childcare Workers

How Staffing Agencies Help:

Short-Term Staffing: Temporary placements are common in education, particularly for substitute teaching roles or to cover long-term absences due to maternity leave or illness.

Specialized Educators: Agencies like Kelly Services specialize in finding qualified educators with the right certifications, particularly for specialized subjects like STEM, special education, or language arts.

Conclusion

Staffing agencies in Maryland are integral to meeting the dynamic and diverse needs of businesses across a wide range of industries. From healthcare to IT, manufacturing, and education, these agencies help employers quickly and efficiently find qualified talent to fill both temporary and permanent roles. As businesses in Maryland continue to navigate a post-pandemic job market, partnering with a staffing agency offers a flexible, cost-effective way to meet workforce demands while accessing specialized talent pools.

Whether you’re a business looking to fill a critical role or a job seeker looking for new opportunities, staffing agencies in Maryland offer valuable solutions for navigating the ever-changing labor market.

#maryland #education #staffing agency #staffing agencies #jobs #Staffing Agencies in Maryland

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datascraping001 · 2 months ago

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G2 Product Information Extraction

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