Sun Jan 15 2023
The Myth of Anonymity Exploring Ekaitz's Tech Blog 'The Bibites by The Bibites'
Hero/News/Technology/The Myth of Anonymity Exploring Ekaitz's Tech Blog 'The Bibites by The Bibites'
Ekaitz's tech blog, The Myth of Anonymity, dives into anonymity on the internet. In this blog, readers will learn the dangers of relying too heavily on anonymity and how it can be used against us. The Bibites by The Bibites provides readers with a closer look at the most recent technology trends and how it affects our daily lives. GitHub Opinion dives into the world of open-source software, exploring the advantages and disadvantages of using it. Microsoft: Kubernetes clusters hacked in malware campaign via PostgreSQL show readers how malware can exploit certain software and how to protect their systems. AWS IAM: Advantages, Common Misconfigurations, and Best Practices provide readers with valuable information on how to configure their AWS IAM accounts and best use them properly. Finally, GitHub provides readers with an introduction to the world of open-source software and how to benefit from it. Together, these topics give the readers an in-depth look into the tech world and the importance of staying secure.
Privacy in the Digital Age
Many of us have experienced the phenomenon of an uncanny personalized ad, where a targeted ad is served to us for something we were recently talking about, thinking about, shopping for, or were otherwise aware of offline, with no digital trace left. This often makes us feel violated and creates a dystopian feeling. This experience was brought up in a conversation between statistically inclined coworkers at a recent get-together. An example of this was when two people were discussing a product at a cafe and saw an ad for the product on Instagram the next day. The story of the Golden State Killer serves as a moral to this phenomenon. He committed 13 murders, 51 rapes, and 120 burglaries between 1974 and 1986 but was only apprehended in 2018 via forensic genealogy. Investigators compared his DNA from crime scenes to the DNA of individuals in a big database of human genomes and traced his great-great-great-grandparents. This serves as a reminder that we may be anonymous but are connected to others who aren't anonymous and thus leave a silhouette in the social graph.Privacy in the Digital Age
The Myth of Anonymity
Uncanny ads, correlation, and the longterm future of privacy
Creating Digital Life
A simulation allows users to watch evolution occur. Each bibite starts with an empty brain and essential genes, but random mutations can create a brain connection that triggers a behavior such as eating or reproducing. Natural selection leads to complex behaviors like following pheromone trails and stockpiling food. It's interactive, allowing users to manipulate bibites, feed them, and force the laying of eggs. It's also highly customizable, allowing users to test scenarios. The regular version is free, but users are encouraged to support the project by subscribing to the developer's Patreon.C
Added to Creative Technology lists by @rkeneally
Creating Digital Life
VToonify High-Resolution Portrait Video Style Transfer
Generating high-quality artistic portrait videos is an important and desirable task in computer graphics and vision. This work investigates the challenging controllable high-resolution portrait video style transfer by introducing a novel VToonify framework. This work presents two instantiations of VToonify built upon Toonify and DualStyleGAN for collection-based and exemplar-based portrait video style transfer, respectively. Specifically, VToonify leverages the mid- and high-resolution layers of StyleGAN to render high-quality artistic portraits based on the multi-scale content features extracted by an encoder to preserve the frame details better. The resulting fully convolutional architecture accepts non-aligned faces in videos of variable size as input, contributing to complete face regions with natural motions in the output. Our framework is compatible with existing StyleGAN-based image toonification models to extend them to video toonification. It inherits the appealing features of these models for flexible style control on color and intensity. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed VToonify framework over existing methods in generating high-quality and temporally-coherent artistic portrait videos with flexible style controls. The repository also includes a notebook named figure_1.yaml.ipynb that allows one to visualize the performance of VToonify. A sample result is provided in figure_1.jpg. This paper presents VToonify, a novel framework for controllable high-resolution portrait video style transfer. It leverages the mid- and high-resolution layers of StyleGAN to render high-quality artistic portraits, preserving frame details. The fully convolutional architecture can accept non-aligned faces in videos of variable size and is compatible with existing StyleGAN-based image toonification models for flexible style control on color and intensity. It has been demonstrated to be effective in generating high-quality and temporally-coherent artistic portrait videos. A notebook is included in the repository to visualize the performance of VToonify, and a sample result is provided.T
Added to Tech Innovations lists by @cnguyen
VToonify High-Resolution Portrait Video Style Transfer
GitHub - williamyang1991/VToonify: [SIGGRAPH Asia 2022] VToonify: Controllable High-Resolution Portrait Video Style Transfer
[SIGGRAPH Asia 2022] VToonify: Controllable High-Resolution Portrait Video Style Transfer - GitHub - williamyang1991/VToonify: [SIGGRAPH Asia 2022] VToonify: Controllable High-Resolution Portrait V...
AI Reimagines Art
Midjourney recently generated images from a film that appeared to be Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1976 version of "Tron." The director of the documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune," Johnny Darrell Frank Pavich, was curious as to what the 1970s film was and who the neon-suited actors were. However, Jodorowsky never attempted to make this movie, and Disney's original "Tron" was released in 1982. It turns out that the images were generated with the help of artificial intelligence. Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Chilean filmmaker, told Pavich about the Greek-Armanian philosopher and mystic George Gurdjieff and his belief that souls must be earned, not born. Jodorowsky, soon to turn 94, is preparing to direct a new film and is always in perpetual creative motion. Pavich first met Jodorowsky in 2010 when he approached him about filming a documentary on his mid-1970s attempt to make a feature film version of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel "Dune."Johnny Darrell Frank Pavich, director of the documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune," was recently shown beautiful images generated by Midjourney that appeared to be from a long-lost Alejandro Jodorowsky film. These images, however, were developed with the help of artificial intelligence. Pavich was curious to know the origin of these visuals, as Jodorowsky had never attempted to make a film like "Tron," and Disney's original version was released in 1982. When Pavich first met Jodorowsky in 2010, the Chilean filmmaker explained to him the Greek-Armenian philosopher and mystic George Gurdjieff's belief that souls must be earned, not born, and his perpetual creative motion. Jodorowsky is now preparing to direct a new film at 94.T
Added to Tech Innovations lists by @cnguyen
AI Reimagines Art
Opinion | This Film Does Not Exist
How artificial intelligence can reimagine art from our past and influence our future.
Kubernetes Breached by Kinsing
Kinsing is a Linux malware with a history of targeting containerized environments for crypto mining. Kinsing malware is actively breaching Kubernetes clusters by exploiting known weaknesses in container images and misconfigured, exposed PostgreSQL containers. Microsoft's Defender for Cloud team has seen an increase in the activity of this malware, indicating that threat actors are actively looking for entry points. It uses breached server's hardware resources to generate revenue for the threat actors.The threat actors behind Kinsing are known for exploiting known vulnerabilities like Log4Shell and an Atlassian Confluence RCE to breach targets and establish persistence. Microsoft has seen an increase in two methods used by Kinsing operators to gain initial access to a Linux server - exploiting a vulnerability in container images or misconfigured PostgreSQL database servers. In WebLogic cases, the hackers scan for CVE-2020-14882, CVE-2020-14750, and CVE-2020-14883, all remote code execution flaws impacting Oracle's product. Mitigating this problem is as simple as using the latest available versions of the images you wish to deploy and only sourcing these images from official repositories and trustworthy locations. Recently, a widespread Kinsing campaign has been identified that targeted vulnerable versions of WebLogic servers. Attackers start by scanning a wide range of IP addresses looking for an open port that matches the WebLogic default port (7001).To remove Google Redirects or the TDSS, TDL3, or Alureon rootkit using TDSSKiller, one must use the latest available versions of the images they wish to deploy and only source them from official repositories and trustworthy locations.C
Added to Cybersecurity lists by @dthompson
Kubernetes Breached by Kinsing
Microsoft: Kubernetes clusters hacked in malware campaign via PostgreSQL
The Kinsing malware is now actively breaching Kubernetes clusters by leveraging known weaknesses in container images and misconfigured, exposed PostgreSQL containers.
Securing AWS Resources with IAM
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is an AWS service that helps to provide access control to AWS resources. It should and is used to control authentication and authorization. AWS IAM can be used to can specify who and what can access services and resources in AWS.IAM further provides solutions to centrally manage permissions and analyze access to refine permissions across AWS.IAM enables the creation and management of users, groups, and roles and defines and enforces permissions for those entities.IAM enables organizations to create and manage AWS users and groups and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources. It helps grant or deny access to resources based on the principle of least privilege, meaning that users are given only the permissions needed to perform their specific job functions. It also enables the creation of IAM roles that can be assumed by AWS services, AWS Identity Federation (Identity Providers), or external user identities. Additionally, IAM enables organizations to set up and manage security credentials, such as access keys and passwords, to access AWS resources. Using IAM provides several benefits that help organizations to manage and secure their resources in the cloud, including improved security, cost savings, and granular access control.Improved Security: IAM enables organizations to control access to their resources and data, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive information and can only perform actions that are explicitly allowed. This helps to protect sensitive data and resources from unauthorized access and potential breaches. Cost Savings: IAM will enable organizations to control resource access, reducing the risk of unnecessary usage and unexpected charges. This helps organizations to keep their AWS costs under control.Granular Access Control: One of the most significant advantages of IAM is its ability to provide granular access control. This helps organizations meet regulatory and compliance requirements.T
Added to Tech Innovations lists by @cjones
Securing AWS Resources with IAM
AWS IAM: Advantages, Common Misconfigurations and Best Practices
AWS IAM Identity and Access Management (IAM) is an AWS service that helps to provide access control to AWS resources. IAM should and is used to control authentication and authorization. AWS IAM can be used to can specify who and what can ac...
Written by Sam Chahineon Sun Jan 15 2023