Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, robotics and artificial intelligence specialists have called for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons, a new patent reveals details of Facebook's augmented reality glasses, Microsoft has opened pre-orders for the limited edition Xbox One X Project Scorpio Edition and more.

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A group of 116 artificial intelligence and robotics specialists, including Tesla's Elon Musk and Mustafa Suleyman of Google Deepmind, have addressed an open letter to the UN, calling for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons (The Guardian). The UN is shortly to begin discussions on the prohibition of autonomous weapons such as drones, tanks and automated machine guns, with 19 countries already in support of an outright ban. The letter, published at the opening of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Melbourne, says: "Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend".

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A US patent application filed by Oculus's advanced research division has revealed new details about the augmented reality glasses described by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year (Busiuness Insider). The team, which includes former Microsoft HoloLens development team member Pasi Saarikko, describes a system that "may augment views of a physical, real-world environment with computer-generated elements" and "may be included in an eye-wear comprising a frame and a display assembly that presents media to a user’s eyes". Like HoloLens, the Oculus-developed smart glasses will use a waveguide display to provide light into the wearer's eyes, as opposed to integrated screens.

Microsoft has announced the Xbox One X Project Scorpio Edition, which has the enhanced Xbox One's former codename emblazoned on the controller and console (WIRED). There's also a "dynamic graphic pattern" on the shell and the packaging has been designed in a similar way to the original Xbox console. Other than these aesthetic changes, Microsoft isn't introducing any other alterations from the Xbox One X for the time being: it has a 6 teraflop GPU that runs at 1.17GHz, 12GB of RAM, full 4K/HDR support and a 4K Blu-ray drive. Microsoft has made the console available to pre-order and says there's only a limited number available. For those wanting to snap up the limited edition, it's available from the Microsoft Store for $499 (£449).


Volkswagen has announced that it will be making a production version of the I.D. Buzz electric microbus concept it unveiled earlier this year (The Verge). Inspired by the company's classic Type 2 minibus, the new electric vehicle will be available in both a consumer version with plenty of passenger seats and as a commercial cargo van aimed at cities that are increasingly clamping down on the internal combustion engine. The as-yet-unnamed microbus should be on the road by 2022 in Europe, North America and China.

Multiple sources close to Uber have told Recode that former General Electric chair Jeff Immelt is the favourite candidate to take over the position of CEO at the troubled app-based taxi company. Immelt is one of three men shortlisted for the position following the forced resignation of controversial founder Travis Kalanick. An unnamed source said: "We all know Immelt’s not the dynamic entrepreneur that Travis is, but he can certainly settle things down".

WIRED Security 2017 returns to London on September 28 to highlight the latest innovations, trends and threats in enterprise cyber defence, security intelligence and cybersecurity.

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A study by researchers from Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has demonstrated that a replacement smartphone screen could be used to take over and monitor a smartphone (Engadget). By embedding a malicious chip in the screen – an implicitly trusted component – the team was able to install and start apps, take photos using the phone's front camera, insert phishing URLs, log touchscreen input and exploit kernel vulnerabilities. While the proof-of-concept is a bulky affair involving an Arduino microcontroller, the team says that this kind of chip-in-the-middle attack could be carried out using a miniaturised microcontroller installed in a replacement screen in such a way as to be hard to spot even by an experienced technician.


A 3-D printed moonlet from AstroReality lets you hold the moon in your hand (WIRED). The San Francisco-based company also created a smartphone augmented reality app to work with it: Aim your phone’s camera at the model, and labels pop up over the craters, mare, and Apollo landing sites. The models are called Lunars, and they come in three sizes, from a little bigger than an eyeball to a little smaller than a brain. Each is made of solid poly resin, which makes them nice and weighty. The Lunars were modelled using topographic data collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The detail is obvious: The craters feel crater-y; the mare are smooth as marble. Tap the site of one of the Apollo missions, and you can watch a video of a lunar landing, or play through activities that replicate various scientific tasks the lunar astronauts had to perform. "These are kind of like games, but we prefer to call them science simulations," says AstroReality’s lead producer Joanne Dai.

The latest console classic to make its way to mobile is Bandai Namco's 3D fighting game series, Tekken (Engadget). The trailer trailer provides a glimpse of a Story Mode that'll see players assemble teams of three characters, and there's also a multiplayer Dojo Mode so you can fight your friends. Tekken Mobile doesn't have a global release date as yet, but looks like it'll be coming to iOS and Android imminently, with the iOS version already available in Canada. Everyone else is invited to register their interest for the game's forthcoming global launch, with in-game rewards promised for everyone who puts down their email address.

Frontier Developments, the UK studio and publisher behind Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster will be releasing a theme park management game based on the Jurassic Park franchise (Polygon). Revealed in a trailer during Microsoft's Gamescom presentation, Jurassic World Evolution will allow players to build their own dinosaur park from the ground up. It's set to be released in summer 2018 to coincide with the cinematic release of the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom movie. Frontier says: "Players will build their own Jurassic World as they bioengineer new dinosaur breeds and construct attractions, containment and research facilities".

Ubisoft's cinematic trailer for forthcoming stab-and-parkour'em-up Assassin's Creed: Origins provides a stunning window on the game's Ancient Egyptian setting (PC Gamer). Set to Leonard Cohen's You Want It Darker, the trailer showcases vast buildings, all-powerful rulers and, naturally, a bloody assassination. The game is due out on October 27 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows.

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