Tech Blog
"in the news"
As humans, we can perceive less than a ten-trillionth of all light waves. “Our experience of reality,” says neuroscientist David Eagleman, “is constrained by our biology.” He wants to change that. His research into our brain processes has led him to create new interfaces — such as a sensory vest — to take in previously unseen information about the world around us.
When you try and kill one and then 10000 more appear... LMAO be kind or they Multiply!
An extraordinary man with a severe disability creates incredible works of art using a typewriter.
I hope you enjoyed this Thanks Shane You are totally our hero!
If you like please share and feel free to like our Facebook page as-well .
Published on May 29, 2014
Click here to watch Episode 3 now! http://bit.ly/1mfBwef
In this episode of "Phreaked Out," we met some of the top security researchers at the center of the car hacking world. The goal isn't to make people crash: They highlight security holes in order to highlight flaws in car technology, intended to pressure auto manufacturers to be a few steps ahead of their friendly foes.
Information security researcher Mathew Solnik gave us a first-hand demonstration on how to wirelessly send commands to the car and remotely tell it what to do. With a little over a grand and about a month of work, Solnik found time outside of his full-time job to reverse-engineer a car's computer system to make it ready for a takeover.
From his laptop, he was able to manipulate the car's engine, brakes and security systems by wirelessly tapping into the Controller Area Network, or CAN bus, network. Without getting too deep into the details—both for legal reasons and due to my own training-wheel knowledge of such things—he was able to do so by implementing some off-the-shelf chips, a third party telematic control unit, a GSM-powered wireless transmitter/receiver setup, and a significant amount of know-how he's accrued over the years.
The reason for such additional hardware was to make our older, mid-sized sedan function like a newer—and arguably more vulnerable—stock vehicle, which these days often come with data connections. (We would have loved to tinker with the latest, most connected car on the market, but since we were on a shoestring budget and it's incredibly hard to find a friend who's willing to lend their car for a hacking experiment, our pickings were slim.)
With that said, a car whose network system is connected to a cloud server and accessible by Bluetooth, cell networks, or wi-fi is potentially vulnerable to intrusion.
Unlocking L.A.'s Traffic Grid: Phreaked Out (Episode 1): http://bit.ly/1r03DpC
How to Hack a Car: Phreaked Out (Episode 2): http://bit.ly/1ps2BB7
All The Ways To Hack Your Phone: Phreaked Out (Episode 3): http://bit.ly/1mfBwef
The integrated Visible Light Communication project is the first time an integrated networking and sensing environment has been proposed for delivering information by light. Smart Spaces track users' gestures and separate shadows from light. This allows a continuous flow of data wirelessly among personal computers and smart devices in rooms, buildings, trains and other indoor places.
By Jack M. Germain
02/05/15 5:00 AM PT
Dartmouth University researchers are shining a new light on using "smart spaces" in ambient room lighting to transmit both data and human gestures.
The three-month-old research pushes the envelope beyond advancements already made by researchers in the UK, at the University of Edinberg.
The integrated Visible Light Communication project (iVLC) marks the first time an integrated networking and sensing environment has been proposed for sending information by light, according to Dartmouth University researchers. This technology enables so-called smart spaces to separate shadows from light in real time. Thus, the light spectrum is able to carry high-speed data wirelessly without interruption between smart devices.
The smart spaces overcome existing limitations in other low-tech approaches that stops data transmission whenever the light is blocked by people's movements, shadows or other obstacles. The Smart Spaces technology allows the interplay of algorithms, ceiling-mounted LEDs (light-emitting diodes) and light sensors embedded in floors and in smart devices.
"In our project the revolutionary idea is to combine communication with human sensing. The new thing here is to reuse the light for both deliveries. It is sort of a buy one and get one free approach," Xia Zhou, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth University, told TechNewsWorld.
Other researchers already established the use the light for data communication. Key to that discovery is a research group based in the University of Edinberg. Zhou, who co-directs the Dartmouth research with Professor Andrew Campbell, described the UK researchers as the pioneers in light communication.
"The progress those researchers made has developed a communication system that is much like a wired network," said Zhou.
Her research team in October began tackling the idea of integrating human sensing with the data communication. That research is pushing that progress further to include the use of light to communicate human behavior as well.
"This is actually a huge leap forward," she said.
The integrated Visible Light Communication project is the first time an integrated networking and sensing environment has been proposed for sending information by light. The Smart Spaces track users' gestures and separate shadows from light. This allows a continuous flow of data wirelessly among personal computers and smart devices in rooms, buildings, trains and other indoor places.
One of the problems in more effectively using Visible Light Communication to send data wirelessly involves line of sight interference. The data transmission stops whenever people's movements, shadows or other obstacles block the light.
Previous research mostly involved electrical engineering uses and focused on a single VLC link. Few, if any, studies focused on VLC's practical systems and networking problems and new applications.
This current research hopes to bridge this gap from a computer science perspective. One of the goals is to solve the practical challenges in using an array of VLC links to provide always-on network connectivity.
iVLC Smart Space is created by lights on the ceiling integrated with power line communication to transmit data to smart devices. Light sensors on the floor collect light luminance data. This enables sensing user movement and gestures using VLC. (Credit: Dartmouth University)
The idea of using light for data communication has been around for a while. In ancient times the beacon was a much simpler form of light communication. In recent years we have seen a huge breakthrough in achieving higher payloads in using communication with light, according to Zhou.
The visible light communication project involves testing the use of light for human sensing. Imagine you are in a room with typical ceiling lighting fixtures. Each light fixture has sensors that can detect the presence of people. These sensors can detect human behavior and identify gestures, she explained.
That ability can go a long way to reduce the drain on bandwidth occurring in other forms of wireless communication as user demands for connectivity keeps increasing exponentially.
"The use of light will be one more alternative or additional technology. Lighting is ubiquitous. It has better security parameters as well," said Zhou.
All of the communication lines with visible light communication are confined within a single room. The field of communication will not go beyond a single room.
This delivery method is different than WiFi and other wireless technologies. It makes the light communication more secure and compelling to others, explained Zhou.
"This will allow new designs on human interaction. This will augment all the existing wireless technologies. The goal is not to use it as a replacement for Bluetooth and WiFi and such," she said.
Another benefit is the lack of bandwidth limitations since the light beams are contained within a walled area. The contained area eliminates a large number of users sharing the communications from a small amount of light, Zhou added.
The unlimited supply of light already in use means that the lighting delivery method will result in a much higher capacity than WiFi. Plus, the light spectrum is much wider than WiFi.
"The light spectrum has 2,000 times the bandwidth of all of the other wireless [spectra]. That is a huge amount of bandwidth that we can potentially use," said Zhou.
The concept involving the use of visible light to communicate is similar to technology that uses the power grid to create a conduit for computer networking. That similarity lies in the sense that both approaches use an existing infrastructure.
"That provides additional functionality of transmitting data and sensing human events. However, the specific terminology might be different," she noted.
The Dartmouth research is funded by a grant of US$500,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) issued in October. It will help pay for potential solutions to the battery and bandwidth drain caused by always-on Internet connectivity.
Mobile devices and the latest wearable devices continually seeking connectivity can deplete a device's battery very quickly. VLC can help offload some of this searching to the phone's WiFi radio connection circuits.
This alternative would need much less energy than is now consumed by the central processor in the mobile device that normally carries out this function. That would allow the device to obtain maximal wireless connectivity and consume much lower energy cost, explained Zhou.
Canadian spies apparently have been on a gigantic fishing expedition, scouring file-sharing sites -- for the most part unsuccessfully -- for information that might reveal terrorist plots. The activity has outraged privacy advocates. "We built our societies on the idea that law enforcement can't just fish in people's private affairs for clues about their behavior," said the EFF's Danny O'Brien.
By Richard Adhikari
01/29/15 7:23 AM PT
Canada's spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment, has been eavesdropping on 102 free file upload sites, including Sendspace, Rapidshare and Megaupload, which has been shut down.
A CSE program called "Levitation" lets analysts access information on 10-15 million uploads and downloads of files from such sites daily, according to documents released by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
The information was published by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in collaboration with The Intercept.
Levitation can monitor downloads across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and North America.
Public acceptance of disclosures of surveillance may be greater now, in the wake of the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris earlier this month and the recent roundup of terrorist suspects in France and Belgium.
"In an era of terrorist threats, social media [and] lack of privacy, very little personal information is viewed as insignificant," Darren Hayes, director of cybersecurity at Pace University's Seidenberg School of CSIS, told TechNewsWorld.
Data is obtained directly from Internet cables the CSE has tapped into, through a separate CSE operation codenamed "Atomic Banjo," according toThe Intercept.
CSE then gleans the IP addresses of each computer that downloads files from target websites.
About 350 "interesting" files are found each month -- less than 0.0001 percent of the total traffic collected, notes a 2012 Powerpoint presentation released by Snowden.
The IP addresses of people downloading suspicious files are plugged into Mutant Broth , a database run by GCHQ, the UK's equivalent of CSE, for analysis of online traffic.
CSE analysts reportedly also used the U.S. National Security Agency's Marina database.
The searches disclose other websites visited by those downloading suspicious files -- in some cases, Facebook or Google accounts, which may disclose information about individual downloaders.
CSE apparently has claimed two successes since 2012: the discovery of an unspecified German hostage video; and an uploaded document outlining the hostage strategy of an unnamed terrorist organization.
As of 2012, CSE maintained a list of 2,200 download links considered connected to suspicious documents of interest.
"You can never completely identify or eliminate all potential threats, but you catch nothing if you don't try," observed Jim McGregor, a principal analyst at Tirias Research.
"If you stop just one individual or group that's planning a large-scale attack, it's worth it," he told TechNewsWorld.
There are two challenges involved in combating terrorism, McGregor pointed out -- identifying the individuals who pose a threat, and identifying the potential attacks.
"More than anything, this type of surveillance helps with the identification of individuals that may pose a threat," he maintained.
The CSE has been monitoring communications in Canada since 2001, when it was known as the "CSES."
"The default argument here is 'simply because we can,' remarked Danny O'Brien, international director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"Oversight of the intelligence agencies' dragnet surveillance has been so weak, and the economic costs of scooping all this data relatively cheap -- compared to the shared budget of the Canadian, U.S., UK, and Australian and New Zealand secret services -- [that] they have no reason not to experiment with the data they've piled up," he told TechNewsWorld.
Human rights laws are an argument against such mass surveillance, O'Brien said.
"We built our societies on the idea that law enforcement can't just fish in people's private affairs for clues about their behavior," he contended. "If you think you have a case, you get a warrant."
The revelations of CSE's surveillance will impact Canadians' view of their own government and security services rather than Canada's international reputation, O'Brien suggested.
Still, "there are hundreds of reasons not to take such actions, but millions to do so," argued McGregor -- each citizen you might save."
By Jacob Donnelly - January 29, 2015 | See also: BBRYBB
There’s no denying that we are reaching a point in our civilization where everything will be able to communicate with everything else. Even inanimate objects like refrigerators and cars will be able to communicate with other devices.
This is what’s called the Internet of Things (IoT). It is the interconnection of independent computing devices with the Internet. A classic use case is having a blood pressure machine at home that transmits the results to your doctor, who may be in a different city or even a different state.
IoT could be revolutionary. And one company that I believe will reap the benefits of IoT isBlackBerry Ltd. (TSX:BB)(Nasdaq:BBRY).
It’s all about that software
Marc Andreessen, the famous venture capitalist, is known for saying that software will eat the world. And that’s very clear now with the cloud allowing for seamless data transmission.
But the problem is security. Do you really want your medical records streaming back and forth through the cloud without some assurances that it’s safe?
BlackBerry excels at that. It has always been really great at security and with its QNX operating system, hardware companies can easily connect to the cloud without worry. BlackBerry has made it a very secure operating system.
What’s great is that Ford is already doing this. It used to use Microsoft’s Windows, but now it has put QNX in its cars. Cars connected to the Internet are already starting to exist.
Project Ion and market potential
BlackBerry is working on what it calls Project Ion, which is a secure public platform built on QNX. This is meant to nurture an IoT environment. In other words, Project Ion is likely what will offer the medical device company or the refrigerator company the capability to seamlessly connect those devices to the Internet.
Now all this sounds farfetched. Why would someone want his or her refrigerator connected to the Internet?
Say you’re driving your Internet-connected car home and your daughter just finished the milk. Your IoT refrigerator knows this and sends a message to your car to warn you that you’re out of milk. You stop at the next grocery store and buy milk.
For all of that to happen, it will require devices connecting to the Internet and a secure operating system: QNX.
The CEO of Cisco believes that there will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020. And he says that the Internet of Things can be a US$19 trillion market. Every single one of those devices is going to need a strong operating system. BlackBerry has that.
Should you buy?
Because of this, I believe that BlackBerry is a buy. The short-term will continue to be tumultuous. The price will rise and fall like it always does. But while it has lost the focus of American people, one day no one will even know that it’s BlackBerry that makes it possible for their devices to connect to the Internet.
CEO John Chen wants net neutrality to be mandated at the content and application layer
by John Ribeiro
BlackBerry CEO John Chen wants net neutrality to extend to content and applications, so that developers of apps for Android and iOS will be mandated to develop on the BlackBerry platform as well.
Not all content and app providers have embraced openness and neutrality, Chen wrote in a blog post that the company said was adapted from a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday. Policymakers must demand openness not just at the traffic and transport layer, but also at the content and applications layer, he added.
"Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM [BlackBerry Messenger] service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple's iMessage messaging service," Chen said. He also took a shot at streaming service Netflix for refusing to make its streaming movie service available to BlackBerry customers.
"Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users," said Chen, who added that as a result a "two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem" had been created where Android and iPhone users have more access to content and applications than users of mobile devices running other operating systems.
"Therefore, neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet," said Chen, who added that all applications and content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer's mobile operating system.
The BlackBerry OS accounted for less than 1 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2014, according to research firm IDC. Android had 84.4 percent while iOS had 11.7 percent and Windows Phone had 2.9 percent.
On the issue of carrier neutrality, Chen favored using current rules to keep the Internet neutral rather than reclassifying broadband under Title II as common carrier under the Communications Act. Title II of the Act already defines telephone companies as common carriers, and requires them to deliver service at "just and reasonable" rates and interconnect with each other.
"Given the unique nature of wireless networks, including the highly competitive wireless business in the United States and the bandwidth limitations inherent in spectrum-dependent transport, reclassifying broadband as a Title II service seems excessive to us," Chen said.
John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com
- See more at: http://www.itnews.com/mobile/87905/blackberry-wants-mandate-app-developers-make-apps-its-platform#sthash.8b8aOme4.dpuf
