Linking ideas with the world
The second generation of a deciwatt gravity-powered lamp designed by the British industrial designers behind the Psion computer keyboard was launched today. Few innovations we cover can claim to save lives, but this just might be one of them. The $5 Gravity Light, designed by London’s Therefore Inc, offers the world’s poorest a clean alternative Read more about life-saving gravity-powered light[…]
While autonomous robots with humanlike, all-encompassing capabilities are still decades away, European lawmakers, legal experts and manufacturers are already locked in a high-stakes debate about their legal status: whether it’s these machines or human beings who should bear ultimate responsibility for their actions. The battle goes back to a paragraph of text, buried deep in a European Read more about Europe divided over robot ‘personhood’[…]
Indian Bitcoin exchange Coinsecure has mislaid 438.318 BTC belonging to its customers. In a statement by parent firm Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt, posted late on Thursday, the biz said its chief security officer had extracted a bunch of Bitcoin to distribute to punters – and discovered the funds were “lost in the process.” The vanished Read more about Tried checking under the sofa? Indian BTC exchange Coinsecure finds itself $3.5m lighter[…]
People are remarkably good at focusing their attention on a particular person in a noisy environment, mentally “muting” all other voices and sounds. Known as the cocktail party effect, this capability comes natural to us humans. However, automatic speech separation — separating an audio signal into its individual speech sources — while a well-studied problem, Read more about Google uses AI to seperate out audio from a single person in a high noise rate video[…]
Transporting yourself into a video game, body and all, just got easier. Artificial intelligence has been used to create 3D models of people’s bodies for virtual reality avatars, surveillance, visualizing fashion, or movies. But it typically requires special camera equipment to detect depth or to view someone from multiple angles. A new algorithm creates 3D models Read more about Watch artificial intelligence create a 3D model of a person—from just a few seconds of video[…]
The Whois public database of domain name registration details is dead. In a letter [PDF] sent this week to DNS overseer ICANN, Europe’s data protection authorities have effectively killed off the current service, noting that it breaks the law and so will be illegal come 25 May, when GDPR comes into force. The letter also Read more about Whois is dead as Europe hands DNS overlord ICANN its arse 🙁[…]
In 2004, one of the world’s most popular social networks, Orkut, was founded by a former Google employee named Orkut Büyükkökten. Later that year, a Harvard University student named Mark Zuckerberg launched ‘the Facebook’, which over the course of a year became ubiquitous in Ivy League universities and was eventually called Facebook.com. Orkut was shut Read more about Orkut Hello: The Man Behind Orkut Says His ‘Hello’ Platform Doesn’t Sell User Data[…]
A significant number of past and current cryptocurrency products contain a JavaScript class named SecureRandom(), containing both entropy collection and a PRNG. The entropy collection and the RNG itself are both deficient to the degree that key material can be recovered by a third party with medium complexity. There are a substantial number of variations Read more about Do you have a browser based bitcoin wallet? Check you’re not hacked if it’s JavaScript based[…]
Police forces and federal agencies around the country have bought relatively cheap tools to unlock up-to-date iPhones and bypass their encryption, according to a Motherboard investigation based on several caches of internal agency documents, online records, and conversations with law enforcement officials. Many of the documents were obtained by Motherboard using public records requests. Read more about Cops Around the Country Can Now Unlock iPhones, Records Show[…]
India has successfully conducted the satellite launch needed to re-construct its Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). The Indian Space Research Organisation’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C41 ascended on Thursday, April 12th. Atop the craft was a satellite designated IRNSS-1L, the last of seven satellites in India’s constellation of navigational craft. India understands that satellite Read more about India completes its GPS alternative, for the second time[…]
Researchers have successfully trained artificial intelligence to generate new clips of the prehistoric animated series based on nothing but random text descriptions of what’s happening in a scene. A team of researchers from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, trained an AI by feeding it over 25,000 three-second clips Read more about This AI Can Automatically Animate New Flintstones Cartoons[…]
From dice to modern electronic circuits, there have been many attempts to build better devices to generate random numbers. Randomness is fundamental to security and cryptographic systems and to safeguarding privacy. A key challenge with random-number generators is that it is hard to ensure that their outputs are unpredictable1,2,3. For a random-number generator based on a Read more about Properly random random number generator generated[…]
If you want your computer to be really secure, disconnect its power cable. So says Mordechai Guri and his team of side-channel sleuths at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The crew have penned a paper titled PowerHammer: Exfiltrating Data from Air-Gapped Computers through Power Lines that explains how attackers could install malware that regulates Read more about Data exfiltrators send info over PCs’ power supply cables[…]
30.3 million Americans have diabetes according to a 2015 CDC study. An additional 84.1 million have prediabetes, which often leads to the full disease within five years. It’s important to detect diabetes early to avoid health complications like heart disease, stroke, amputation of extremities and vision loss. Technology increasingly plays an important role in early Read more about FDA approves AI-powered software to detect diabetic retinopathy[…]
Using well-established machine learning techniques, researchers from University of California, Berkeley have taught simulated humanoids to perform over 25 natural motions, from somersaults and cartwheels through to high leg kicks and breakdancing. The technique could lead to more realistic video gameplay and more agile robots. […] UC Berkeley graduate student Xue Bin “Jason” Peng, along Read more about After Millions of Trials, These Simulated Humans Learned to Do Perfect Backflips and Cartwheels[…]
Facebook has admitted that some apps had access to users’ private messages, thanks to a policy that allowed devs to request mailbox permissions. The revelation came as current Facebook users found out whether they or their friends had used the “This Is Your Digital Life” app that allowed academic Aleksandr Kogan to collect data on Read more about Facebook admits: Apps were given users’ permission to go into their inboxes[…]
Facebook launched a tool yesterday that you can use to find out whether you or your friends shared information with Cambridge Analytica, the Trump-affiliated company that harvested data from a Facebook app to support the then-candidate’s efforts in the 2016 presidential election. If you were affected directly—and you have plenty of company, if so—you should Read more about How to Check if Cambridge Analytica Had Your Facebook Data[…]
NANTES, France (Reuters) – Researchers have unveiled what they billed as the world’s first 3D-printed house to serve as a home in the French city of Nantes, with the first tenants due to move in by June. Academics at the University of Nantes who led the project said it was the first house built in Read more about 3D-printed public housing unveiled in France[…]
Facebook is suspending a data analytics firm called CubeYou from the platform after CNBC notified the company that CubeYou was collecting information about users through quizzes. CubeYou misleadingly labeled its quizzes “for non-profit academic research,” then shared user information with marketers. The scenario is eerily similar to how Cambridge Analytica received unauthorized access to data Read more about CubeYou: Cambridge-like app collected data on millions from Facebook[…]
Cambridge Analytica bought psychological profiles on individual US voters, costing roughly 75 cents to $5 apiece, each crafted using personal information plundered from millions of Facebook accounts, according to revealed internal documents. Over the course of the past two weeks, whistleblower Chris Wylie has made a series of claims against his former employer, Cambridge Analytica, Read more about $0.75 – about how much Cambridge Analytica paid per voter in bid to micro-target their minds, internal docs reveal[…]
Under Armour Inc., joining a growing list of corporate victims of hacker attacks, said about 150 million user accounts tied to its MyFitnessPal nutrition-tracking app were breached earlier this year. An unauthorized party stole data from the accounts in late February, Under Armour said on Thursday. It became aware of the breach earlier this week Read more about Under Armour Data Breach: 150 Million MyFitnessPal Accounts Hacked[…]
Cambridge Analytica’s parent biz had “routine access to UK secret information” as part of training it offered to the UK’s psyops group, according to documents released today. A letter, published as part of a cache handed over to MPs by whisteblower Chris Wylie, details work that Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) carried out for the 15 Read more about Cambridge Analytica’s daddy biz SCL had ‘routine access’ to UK secrets[…]
A website that allowed Gindr’s gay-dating app users to see who blocked them on the service says that by using the company’s API it was able to view unread messages, email addresses, deleted photos, and—perhaps most troubling—location data, according to a report published Wednesday. The website, C*ckblocked, boasts of being the “first and only way Read more about Grindr’s API Surrendered Location Data to a Third-Party Website—Even After Users Opted Out[…]
SpyParty is a tense competitive spy game set at a high society party. It’s about subtle behavior, perception, and deception, instead of guns, car chases, and explosions. One player is the Spy, trying to accomplish missions while blending into the crowd. The other player is the Sniper, who has one bullet with which to find Read more about SpyParty – A Subtle Game About Human Behavior[…]
This extension helps you control more of your web activity from Facebook by isolating your identity into a separate container. This makes it harder for Facebook to track your activity on other websites via third-party cookies. Rather than stop using a service you find valuable and miss out on those adorable photos of your nephew, Read more about Mozilla launches Facebook container extension[…]