Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

fjo3 shares a report from Defense One: A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn't just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory. This isn't yet captured in headlines -- for example, about last weekend's barrage of Russian drones and missiles around Ukraine -- but in the details, like how some 90 percent were intercepted. Several long-term trends have shifted in Ukraine's favor, and the core reason is its fierce focus on AI and robotics.

In the crucible of war, Ukraine has developed drones and ground robots that can hold territory -- even take it back. Some are fully controlled by humans, like supply robots and medical-evacuation vehicles. But an increasing number are controlled in at least some aspects by dozens of AI products, from guidance packages on aerial drones to decision aids at the highest levels. [...] Just as important as the tech are the new tactics. Given unusual latitude to experiment, Ukrainian fighters began to develop robot-forward infantry concepts, like combined-arms attacks by airborne and ground systems, "more than a year ago. Right now, we're massively starting to implement this," said Davyd Aloian, deputy secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, the coordinating body on domestic and international security, in an interview.

Ukraine and its partners are also steaming ahead on new concepts for highly autonomous defenses against Russian drones, combining ISR sensors and AI to detect and identify enemy drones in less time and with more certainty. "All of the systems are being linked with each other and with people" to create a distributed network with interceptor drones at various locations to be activated when needed, Aloian said. "One day we will have only like 10 guys who are just going to be responsible for approving interception. And it will automatically go direct to the target." The human operators will be dispersed as well. "Everything can be controlled from Kyiv, Lviv, from cities in other countries," he said. "It's not what happened to Ukraine" (referencing Russia's barrage of Shahed drones) that "should scare us in Europe," said Swarmer CEO Serhii Kupriienko. It's how quickly Ukraine's "middling" military evolved to counter Russia's invasion.

"We are behind by literally 10 years or 20 years" in some defense-technology areas, such as satellite imagery, Kupriienko said, and yet his country has climbed a capability curve that just two years ago seemed insurmountable. So could others, he said. "The answer is always AI solutions and integrating the AI into even the daily routine work within the bureaucracy," he said.

"We have evolved since 2022, the industry has and our defense has as well. Right now we are able to provide not only [large quantities of drone] assets but everything what is needed to build out the ecosystem," including parts and production, training, modification, etc. Aloian said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Een groep wiskundigen roept op tot actie rondom het gebruik van AI in hun vak. Voor die bedrijven „is het mooie marketing om te kunnen zeggen: kijk eens, ons model lost een wiskundig probleem op”.

Een groepje Israëlische vrienden brengt wekelijks geld en spullen naar de Palestijnse inwoners van Masafer Yatta op de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever. Ze verafschuwen de radicale kolonisten, die steeds meer land claimen. „Ze willen de Palestijnen weg hebben en het land voor zichzelf.”

Wetenschappers van naam en faam hebben er hun zegje over gedaan. Maar nog altijd is veel onduidelijk over drijvende druppels.

Tuurlijk, wij trappen op GSHQ ook weleens per ongeluk of met opzet, om maar wat te noemen, een pen kapot. Dat het een groot geklieder wordt met een vloer vol inkt en een chagrijnig tripje naar de winkel voor nieuw schrijfwaar. (U weet dat niet, maar Dorbeck schrijft steevast al zijn topics eerst met de hand. Heel gedoe, het begon met een ganzenveer maar daar hebben we hem vanaf gepraat.) Toch loopt bij zulke incidenten de geleden schade nooit echt in de kosten, zelfs niet die ene keer toen we opnieuw moesten behangen nadat Mosterd met open deur had zitten bouten. Er ZIJN ECHTER TYPES die wél heel goed heel erg veel schade kunnen maken, dat wordt maar weer eens bewezen bij de Universiteit Utrecht. De gebouwen van de uni zijn verschillende keren meerdaags bezet door groepen pro-Pallies en de schade die tijdens die bezettingen is gemaakt is kennelijk een HALF MILJOEN EURO. Daar moet je dus echt moeite voor doen en dat deden ze, niet onbelangrijk, met hulp van het universiteitspersoneel. De gemeente wil dat de daders achter de vele bekladdingen en vernielingen ook voor de kosten opdraaien, maar dat kan nog niet want ze hebben geen idee wie die daders nou eigenlijk waren. Gezichtsbedekking en zo. Wat ze alvast wel weten is dat de demonstranten, wie dat ook waren, NIET gelieerd waren aan Hamas. Goed verhaal man.

Microsoft’s Build event is under way in San Francisco, USA, with the expected focus on agentic AI but also a few surprises, such as Unix-style Coreutils for Windows. CEO Satya Nadella presented Project Solara, based on future devices which "are not meant to run traditional apps. They are designed for agents," according to applied science group leader Steven Bathiche; it is as much aspiration than specific plans and whether it is dream or nightmare is open to question. That AI will be embedded into both Windows and Microsoft cloud services is beyond doubt though. Peter Steinberger came on stage to introduce OpenClaw for Windows, talking up guardrails added to this AI agent project to make it safer for business use. This includes integration with MXC (Microsoft Execution Containers), newly introduced at Build, which is a sandboxed code execution system for Windows, Linux and macOS. The technology behind MXC is multiple containment services including "ProcessContainer, Windows Sandbox, LXC, Bubblewrap, Seatbelt (macOS), MicroVM (NanVix), Hyperlight, IsolationSession, and WSLC" according to the docs, the idea being to run agents in isolated environments where unfortunate aspects of AI such as hallucination and prompt injection can do less damage. WSLC references Windows Subsystem for Linux Containers, soon to be in preview, which is a Docker-like command and API for running and managing Linux containers on Windows. Containers are GPU-enabled to assist performance of local AI. Nvidia will bring its OpenShell agent runtime to Windows, using MXC, and at build CEO Jensen Huang appeared in an videocall at the Build keynote to talk up the company’s Windows support. That support is evident in the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, a forthcoming device for developers keen to get started on Windows AI coding. The Arm-based PC uses Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip, and promises 1,000 teraflops of compute with 20 CPU cores plus 128 GB of unified memory (meaning it is usable both by CPU and GPU). 1,000 air vents in a grid chassis keep it cool, and it is pre-configured for developer use. The price is not yet announced, nor is an availability date. "You can join the wait list. I’m on the wait list as well" said Nadella. At the 2022 Build, Microsoft also announced a Dev Kit device, but delays and short supply made it hard to get hold of, especially outside the USA. Kayla Cinnamon, AI dev tools advocate, demoed the Dev Box user interface noting "no news feed, no widgets, popping up no notifications" as one of the benefits. These are annoyances of out-of-the-box Windows and it looks like Microsoft is making some effort to make Windows less unpleasant for developers. A project called Windows Developer Config provides scripts to transform any Windows installation into “A PC devs actually want to use. Clean Explorer, dark theme, no pop-ups, no recommendations, no widgets. Just your code and your tools." We tried this on a 25H2 Windows PC and were rewarded with a string of errors "The configuration unit failed due to an internal error: -2146233079. The text associated with this error code could not be found." The concept looks good though and we hope for better results when the project has matured. GitHub has a mixed reputation currently, thanks to outages and security issues. Microsoft has now previewed GitHub Enterprise Local, based on the existing GitHub Enterprise Server but designed to run on Azure Local infrastructure and to run in either a connected or air-gapped environment. GitHub Actions run on self-hosted runners, and AI assistance remains possible through an on-premises inference layer called Foundry Local. Linux is getting attention at Build, and at the event Microsoft officially previewed Azure Linux 4.0, based on Fedora, noting: "Azure Linux already powers millions of cores across Azure's internal services, including AKS, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, and many others." Azure Linux will be an option for any Azure VM (virtual machine). Microsoft also said Azure Container Linux (ACL) is now generally available, the latest iteration of what was originally called Flatcar Container Linux. This is designed for minimal and container-optimized deployment. Windows developers can get a more Linux-like experience thanks to Coreutils for Windows which is a Microsoft-maintained single binary which implements many Unix-style utilities, assisting with portability of scripts as well as the annoyance of typing a command like ls in Windows and expecting it to work. A problem is that some commands conflict with existing commands in Windows or PowerShell. There are also issues with path separators (/ vs \) and line endings in text files, which differ between the two operating systems. Executive VP Windows and devices Pavan Divuluri has a write-up with more details on the Build news. ®

DJ Shadow

Amerika wil geen oorlog. Om dat te bereiken heeft het land de beschikking over het grootste leger ter wereld. Groter dan China, Rusland en Loosdrecht bij elkaar. Ze gebruiken het gelukkig zelden, maar toch is de vraag: hoe sterk is het Amerikaanse leger? En waarom doen ze nooit iets aan België?

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