One Civic owner purchased a cheap aftermarket head unit off Amazon, and decided to have Claude work its magic on it, like it would a smart TV. What was reportedly discovered isn’t surprising, but is worth knowing about.
Among the pre-installed bloatware—or spyware, if you’re being less charitable—was a voice assistant equipped with WebView, an Android system component that lets apps display content off the web. This apparently always used about a third of processing power, even while idle, which isn’t great. There were also Baidu location services, a call recorder (!), a DAB radio client that is pretty much useless in the U.S., and Adobe Acrobat, presumably so your passenger can entertain themselves with PDFs on the go.
It’s interesting because it exposes all the insecurities in this piece of IoT software. But I think the real story is that a random person was able to do this reverse-engineering with the help of AI. Expect a lot more stories like this in the future.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been hit by a $6.3bn heist that, according to experts, is likely to be the work of North Korea.
This is not the first time a crypto market has been targeted by hackers, and the rogue state has a track record of this type of theft. Here we answer some key questions about what’s happened:
The opposition can’t win unless they join forces with Arab parties. Benjamin Netanyahu knows this, and will use every ruse to stay in power
It’s less an election result than a philosophical puzzle: what happens when a win contains a loss, a loss contains a win and the two collide? That’s the question posed by the confused and confusing outcome of this week’s Israeli election, one that, despite its murky uncertainty, offers clear, sharp lessons – both for that country and for those locked in combat with nationalist populists across the globe.
Start with the result that has simultaneously handed Benjamin Netanyahu a devastating defeat and a strong chance of staying on as prime minister, extending a run that has seen him lead Israel, on and off, for more than 19 of the past 30 years. The defeat is clear enough. At a stroke, his parliamentary majority was wiped out. Before Tuesday, the parties that together comprised his ruling coalition controlled 68 of the Knesset’s 120 seats: that tally has now shrunk to just 53, far short of the 61 seats needed for power. That’s a loss in anybody’s language.
Established to remember people killed during Stalin’s Great Terror, Remembering the Names has since become an occasion to reflect on the relationship between Soviet violence and political repression in present-day Russia.
Jordy is definitief uit de crypto gestapt. Dat concludeert hij na het bevriezen van zijn account op de online crypto-beurs. “Mijn ma zei al jaren dat ik het moest doen, maar nu is het eindelijk zo ver”, zegt Jordy. Veel geld heeft hij helaas niet overgehouden aan zijn exit, maar: veel schulden ook niet. “Sta zo goed als op nul weer, eigenlijk!”, concludeert Jordy monter.
In the second half of the 17th century, when early American colonists were well into producing their own furniture, makers drew upon the motifs and techniques common in England. Chests and cabinets were chunky, and chairs and tables often incorporated spool-like legs. In Boston, a particular interpretation of the high-backed Windsor chair emerged, inspiring furniture-maker and artist Aspen Golann to create uniquely sculptural, contemporary iterations as a nod to this heritage.
“Meeting Bench,” made in collaboration with chairmaker Peter Galbert, and “Union Settee” pay tribute to the unique early style while also celebrating furniture’s role in how we convene. Golann has long been interested in the relationships between form and function, in addition to the connections between people and the objects they use, which she also continues to explore through a series of imaginitive brushes and brooms.
“Meeting Bench”
Golann’s interest in early American furniture led to another centuries-old craft tradition: embroidery. Her research into early needlework, an activity pursued almost exclusively by women, inspired an ongoing series of wooden vessels she began making as part of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vacheron Constantin Artisan Residency. The program runs for 18 months and emphasizes the preservation and reinterpretation of traditional craft techniques. Golann was also joined by ceramicist Ibrahim Said and jeweler Joy Harvey.
Utilitarian at their most essential, vessels are also often displayed for strictly decorative purposes, and the artist has been increasingly interested in nudging the boundary between functionality and aesthetic appeal. Pieces like “Pouring Vessel” interpret needlework motifs onto solid wood using a strapworking technique. Even the pancaked “Strap-Carved Vessel” is hollow, so it doesn’t forego its fundamental condition. Its whimsical flatness draws our attention instead to its ornate design, which is the point.
Historically, the sewn compositions made by young girls haven’t gotten a lot of attention, at least not within the context of major art institutions. “[The embroidery] is under-researched and under-displayed, and it’s fragile, rare, and stowable,” Golann says. “I wanted to make some version of this thing that couldn’t be put away.”
Completed during residency, “Crewel Cabinet” stands five feet, four inches tall—about the average height of an American woman. The artist composed the cabinet with 37 staves, or thin strips of wood that connect edge-to-edge to create a rounded form, and each stave is meticulously built from 14 colored layers. From these layers, Golann has carved plants, rabbits, dogs, and more, where the changing colors evoke the vibrant threads within colonial-era crewel embroidery.
“Crewel Cabinet”
“These embroideries were often dowry objects, made within restrictive expectations for women’s lives,” Golann says. She adds:
Their compositions and themes could be quite consistent, but they are also material evidence of the girls’ internal lives and creative expression. They’re full of sensitivity, affection, and interest in the natural world, but they’re also bizarre, strange, and imaginative. I’ve been trying to tune my sensitivity to the frequency of their imaginations and lived experience, then splash that over a much larger, more expressive canvas.
Golann’s next project will be for the U.S. Treasury, which commissions a piece of furniture for its collection every 50 years. “I’m using different tones of precious metals, applied in a paint-by-numbers way, to create an abstracted, bizarre landscape inspired by early American embroidery,” the artist says. The work will incorporate reflective surfaces so that viewers will see themselves mirrored in the scene. She’s also currently working toward a solo exhibition, slated to open next November, at the Fuller Craft Museum.
“Crewel Cabinet” will be on view as part of the group exhibition Pattern Recognition: Superhouse at Five, opening November 6 and continuing through December 19 at Superhouse in New York City. See more on Golann’s Instagram.
“Union Settee”Detail of “Union Settee”“Pouring Vessel”Detail of “Pouring Vessel”Side view of “Strap Carved Vessel”Detail of “Crewel Cabinet”Detail of “Crewel Cabinet”“Crewel Cabinet”“Couple Broom”
