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Submission + - College Senior Upgrades His Honda Civic to Drive Itself Using Free Software (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: University of Nebraska student Brevan Jorgenson swapped the rear view mirror in his 2016 Honda Civic for a home-built device called a Neo, which can steer the vehicle and follow traffic on the highway. Jorgenson used hardware designs and open source software released by Comma, a self-driving car startup that decided to give away its technology for free last year after receiving a letter from regulator the NHTSA. Jorgenson is just one person in a new hacker community trying to upgrade their cars using Comma's technology.

Submission + - DARPA's Latest Chip Is Designed to Be Bad at Arithmetic (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: Pentagon research agency DARPA has funded the creation of a chip incapable of correct arithmetic, in the hope of making computers better at understanding the real world. The S1 chip can process noisy data like video very efficiently because it doesn't need the extra circuits or operations needed to ensure every mathematical operation is performed perfectly. This summer DARPA will put five prototype computers, each equipped with 16 of the inexact S1 chips, online for researchers to experiment with.

Submission + - Software takes on school science tests in search for common sense (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: Making software take school tests designed for human kids can help the quest for machines with common sense, says researchers at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. They've made software called Aristo that scores 75 percent on the multiple choice questions that make up most of New York State's 4th grade science exam. The researchers are urging other researchers to pit their best software against school tests, too, to provide a way to benchmark progress and spur competition.

Submission + - Intel promises "Optane" SSDs based on technology faster than flash in 2016 (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: Intel today announced that it will introduce SSDs based on a new non-volatile memory that is significantly faster than flash in 2016. A prototype was shown operating at around seven times as fast as a high-end SSD available today. Intel's new 3D Xpoint memory technology was developed in collaboration with Micron and is said to be capable of operating as much as 1000 times faster than flash. Scant details have been released, but the technology has similarities with the RRAM and memristor technologies being persued by other companies.

Submission + - Microsoft creates a quantum computer-proof version of TLS encryption protocol (technologyreview.com) 2

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: When (or if) quantum computers become practical they will make existing forms of encryption useless. But now researchers at Microsoft say they have made a quantum-proof version of the TLS encryption protocol we could use to keep online data secure in the quantum computing era. It is based on a mathematical problem very difficult for both conventional and quantum computers to crack. That tougher math means data moved about 20 percent slower in comparisons with conventional TLS, but Microsoft says the design could be practical if properly tuned up for use in the real world.

Submission + - Researchers Find Problems With Rules of Bitcoin (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: Using game theory to analyze the rules of cryptocurrency Bitocin suggests some changes are needed to make the currency sustainable in the long term, reports MIT Technology Review. Studies from Princeton and Cornell found that current rules governing the mining of bitcoins and limiting the total number of bitcoins that can exist at 21 million leave room for cheats or encourage behavior that could destabilize the currency. Such changes could be difficult to implement, given the fact Bitcoin — by design — lacks any central authority.

Submission + - Building Deception Into Encryption Software (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: MIT Technology Review reports on a new cryptosystem designed to protect stolen data against attempts to break encryption by brute force guessing of the password or key. Honey Encryption serves up plausible fake data in response to every incorrect guess of the password. If the attacker does eventually guess correctly, the real data should be lost amongst the crowd of spoof data. Ari Juels, who invented the technique and was previously chief scientist at RSA, is working on software to protect password managers using the technique.

Submission + - Wikipedia's Participation Problem (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: More people use Wikipedia than ever but the number of people contributing to the project has declined by a third since 2007, and it still has significant gaps in its quality and coverage. MIT Technology Review reports on the troubled efforts to make the site more welcoming to newcomers, which Jimmy Wales says must succeed if Wikipedia is to address its failings.

Submission + - Math Advance Suggest RSA Encryption Could Fall Within 5 years (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: The two encryption systems used to secure the most important connections and digital files could become useless within years, reports MIT Technology Review, due to progress towards solving the discrete logarithm problem. Both RSA and Diffie-Hellman encryption rely on there being no efficient algorithm for that problem, but French math professor Antoine Joux has published two papers in the last six months that suggest one could soon be found. Security researchers that noticed Joux's work recommend companies large and small begin planning to move to elliptic curve cryptography, something the NSA has said is best practice for years. Unfortunately, key patents for implementing elliptic curve cryptography are controlled by BlackBerry.

Submission + - Hacking Group Linked to Chinese Army Caught Attacking Dummy Water Plant (technologyreview.com) 4

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: MIT Technology Review reports that APT1, the China-based hacking group said to steal data from U.S. companies, has been caught taking over a decoy water plant control system. The honeypot mimicked the remote access control panels and physical control system of a U.S. municipal water plant. The decoy was one of 12 set up in 8 countries around the world, which together attracted more than 70 attacks, 10 of which completely compromised the control system. China and Russia were the leading sources of the attacks. The researcher behind the study says his results provide the first clear evidence that people actively seek to exploit the many security problems of industrial systems.

Submission + - Microsoft's Cooperation With NSA Either Voluntary, Or Reveals New Legal Tactic (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: When Microsoft re-engineered its online services to assist NSA surveillance programs, the company was either acting voluntarily, or under a new kind of court order, reports MIT Technology Review. Existing laws were believed to shelter companies from being forced to modify their systems to aid surveillance, but experts say the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may now have a new interpretation. Microsoft's statement about its cooperation with NSA surveillance doesn't make it clear whether it acted under legal duress, or simply decided that to helping out voluntarily was in its best interest.

Submission + - Technology, Not Law, Limits Mass Surveillance (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: U.S. citizens have historically been protected from government surveillance by technical limits, not legal ones, writes independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani at MIT Tech Review. He claims that recent leaks show that technical limits are loosening, fast, with data storage and analysis cheap and large Internet services taking care of data collection for free. "Spying no longer requires following people or planting bugs, but rather filling out forms to demand access to an existing trove of information," writes Soltani.

Submission + - Bitcoin's Success With Investors Alienates Earliest Adopters (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: Digital currency Bitcoin is gaining acceptance with mainstream venture capitalists, reports Technology Review, but at the price of its famed anonymity and ability to operate without central authority. Technology investors have now ploughed millions of dollars into a handful of Bitcoin-based payments and financial companies that are careful to follow financial regulations and don't offer anonymity. That's causing tensions in the community of Bitcoin enthusiasts, some of whom feel their currency's success has involved abandoning its most important features.
Google

Submission + - Developers Begin Hunt for A Killer App for Google Glass (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: "Companies large and small are working to create the first "killer app" for Google Glass, the wearable display to go on sale later this year, reports MIT Technology Review. Evernote is among large companies that got early access to prototypes and has been testing ideas for some time, but is staying quiet about its plans. Meanwhile new startups with apps for Glass are being created and funded, although uncertainty about whether consumers will embrace the technology has steered them towards commercial and industrial ideas, such as apps for for doctors and maintenance technicians."
Security

Submission + - The Malware Industrial Complex (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by
holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: "MIT Technology Review reports that efforts by U.S. government agencies and defense contractors to develop malware to attack enemies is driving a black market in zero-day vulnerabilities. Experts warn that could make the internet less secure for everyone, since malicious code is typically left behind on targeted systems and often shows up on untargeted ones, providing opportunities for reverse engineering."

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