Slashdot reader technology_dude writes in response to an Engadget report about Boeing’s plans to develop an autonomous fighter jet: In Season 1, Episode 23 of Star Trek, the Enterprise visits two worlds that are at continuous war. The war is ran via computers, and people that are victims in a “hit” report to a facility to be terminated. Kirk tells the world’s leaders that there can be no peace if there is no cost to the war. We avoid war because of its cost and ugliness. Remove that and you remove the reason to stop. It looks like we may need the Captain to intervene here on planet earth. We seem hellbent on automating our militaries. The report says Boeing’s recently unveiled autonomous fighter jet, called the Boeing Airpower Teaming System, is expected to arrive as soon as 2020. “The aircraft is designed to fly alongside crewed jets during combat, performing early warning tests, intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance,” reports Engadget. The company says the jets will cost a “fraction” of a manned fighter.

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Source: Slashdot – Boeing’s Autonomous Fighter Jet Could Arrive Next Year

Mark Wilson shares a report from BetaNews: Security researchers from Dojo by Bullguard have discovered a vulnerability in Amazon’s Ring doorbell that leaves it prone to man-in-the-middle attacks. As well as enabling a hacker to access audio and video feeds in a severe violation of both privacy and security, the vulnerability also means that an attacker could replace a feed with footage of their own. Revealing the security flaw at Mobile World Congress, Yossi Atias from Dojo, demonstrated how a feed could be hijacked and injected with counterfeit video. The vulnerability poses a number of risks. The ability to spy on audio and video feeds has obvious privacy implications, but it could also enable a hacker to monitor comings and goings to determine when a house will be empty. Using easily-available tools, it is possible to intercept Ring’s RTP stream and extract a viewable MPEG video.

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Source: Slashdot – Serious Amazon Ring Vulnerability Leaves Audio, Video Feeds Open To Attack

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: When Y Combinator accidentally admitted 15,000 people to its 3,000-person Startup School online program last summer due to an almost funny technical glitch, it was an embarrassing moment for one of Silicon Valley’s marquee brands, and a rollercoaster of an experience for emotionally vulnerable startup founders. Suffice it to say, mistakes like this don’t typically happen in the well-to-do, perfectly manicured world of Silicon Valley startups. But this all offered a chance to test a big question: Does Silicon Valley only work if there is some exclusion, some selectivity, and some prestige? Or can access to what makes a startup a success — the right connections, the right money, the right know-how — be available to everyone who signs up? The answer — in YC’s eyes — is: Yes, it can. So from the chaos of those accidental admissions and rejections, YC is now going to make this same “mistake” on purpose.

The accelerator program is discarding the application for its Startup School program, YC told Recode, effectively turning a selective program into a massive open online course. This is different from YC’s core accelerator program — the well-known training program that has birthed companies like Airbnb and Stripe — which remains selective for now. Startup School is a relatively new 10-week program run by YC in which founders watch online lectures, submit status reports on their companies, and participate in discussion groups with other entrepreneurs trying to make it. While YC has more work to do to diversify its core, highly selective accelerator program batches, Startup School draws about half of its participants from overseas. YC thinks the new, bigger startup school program worked — at least if you look at the program’s completion rate. YC says that when 3,000 startups started the program in 2017, half of them completed it. And when 10,500 started the program in 2018, about half of them still completed it. So maybe Silicon Valley success does scale! But then again, about 4,500 of the 15,000 people dropped out of the program this year before it even began. “YC coped with the surprise 10,500 participants by running two programs — assigning a successful startup founder to advise each of the 3,000 startups that it meant to accept, as it normally does, and then requiring the other 7,500 to nominate a leader internally to serve as the sherpa,” Recode reports. “The latter situation didn’t exactly always work, YC admits.”

“Those groups were chaotic. Not a lot of people followed up or stayed engaged,” said Olive Allen, a startup CEO who was accidentally admitted. Her advising group of about a dozen dwindled to three by the end of the program, she said. “Then again, not much can be done to engage all 15,000 people. It’s always on you as an entrepreneur at the end of the day.” “Some of the 3,000 founders who were correctly admitted said their experience seemed pretty normal,” the report adds. “But when 12,000 rejects are earning the same credential, that rubs some folks the wrong way.”

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Source: Slashdot – Y Combinator Accidentally Let 15,000 People Into an Exclusive Program, Now Has Decided To Do It On Purpose