If you crossed WALL-E with a floor lamp, it might look a little like the PhytoPatholoBot. These robots aren't roving through space or decorating a living room — they're monitoring the stems, leaves and fruit of Cornell AgriTech's vineyards, rolling down each row and scanning for mildew.
In this episode, host Emily Kwong and producer Hannah Chinn take a trip to Cornell to check out these new robots. How do they work? How effective are they? And what do local grape farmers – and neighbors – think about them?
Interested in more robotics stories? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We'd love to hear from you!
This is just to let people know that there is a better than usual reason for the longer than normal delay in the next episode. I was about to record it early last week, when checking a minor detail I discovered a book published this year, after I’d bought the books I used for the research, which showed that everything in the first half of the episode — everything that had been published in every book on Huddie Ledbetter, who is the focus of that first half — was badly mistaken. I had to totally scrap a completed script and redo the research from scratch. I start recording tomorrow and it should be up in a few days. I think you’ll agree when you hear it that it’s worth the extra time it ended up taking.
NightVision offers web and API security testing tools built to integrate with developers’ established workflows. NightVision identifies issues by precise area(s) of code, so devs don’t have to chase down and validate vulnerability reports, a process that eats up precious engineering resources. Get started with their docs.
“From the program side, I would say if you're running a security program or you're starting from day one, there's a danger with security people and being the security person who's out of touch or doesn't know what the life of a developer is like. And you don't want to be that person. And that's not how you have actual business impact, right? So you got to embed with teams, threat model, and then do some preventative security testing, right? Testing things before it gets into production, not just relying on having a bug bounty program.”
“With code scanning, you're looking for potentially insecure patterns in the code, but with dynamic testing, you're actually testing the live application. So we're sending HTTP traffic to the application, sending malicious payloads in forms or in query parameters, et cetera, to try to elicit a response or to send something to an attacker controlled server. And so using this, we're able to. Not just have theoretical vulnerabilities, but exploitable vulnerabilities. I mean, how many times have you looked at something in GitHub security alerts and thought, yeah, that's not real. That's not exploitable. Right. So we're trying to avoid that and have higher quality touch points with developers. So when they look at something, they say, okay, that's exploitable. You showed me how. And you traced it back to code.”
Amanda Holmes reads Judith Wright’s “Full Moon Rhyme.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
Person of interest in custody in connection to the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO was found with a weapon and a manifesto. Not guilty verdict for Marine veteran in New York subway chokehold death. What's next for Syria after fall of Assad regime? CBS News Correspondent Jennifer Keiper with tonight's World News Roundup.
We tie together a number of things: first, the assassination of UnitedHealth Group’s CEO and the reactions to this event; second, a new startup in the Thiel family that rehabilitates Sauron as a shining beacon of security for the terrified tech elite; and third, the vision put forward by Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, for an army of ethical techno-slaves that are powered by a new vaporware platform called Agentforce.
Pre-order Jathan’s new book! https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite
••• Why "we" want insurance executives dead https://www.usermag.co/p/yes-we-want-insurance-executives
••• Fearful of crime, the tech elite transform their homes into military bunkers https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/12/05/tech-ceos-elites-home-security-silicon-valley/
••• How the Rise of New Digital Workers Will Lead to an Unlimited Age https://time.com/7178872/agents-unlimited-age/
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Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)
For half a century, one family has brutally ruled Syria. Nearly overnight, that reign ended. Syria is not only a home to millions of people. It's also a crucial piece in a geopolitical chess game.
For half a century, one family has brutally ruled Syria. Nearly overnight, that reign ended. Syria is not only a home to millions of people. It's also a crucial piece in a geopolitical chess game.