12071180
submission
azoblue writes:
Hewlett Packard plans on covering the planet with one trillion wireless "smart dust" sensors over the next few years, creating a "central nervous system" for the Earth. The wireless devices would check to see if ecosystems are healthy, detect earthquakes more rapidly, predict traffic patterns and monitor energy use. The idea is that accidents could be prevented and energy could be saved if people knew more about the world in real time.
11405084
submission
azoblue writes:
Alma Whitten, Privacy Engineering Lead at Google, responds to claims that the company is eroding online privacy. Do you accept her arguments at face value or regard them as corporate propaganda?
10091860
submission
azoblue writes:
Using a mathematical concept called sparsity, the compressed-sensing algorithm takes lo-res files and transforms them into sharp images. Compressed sensing works something like this: You’ve got a picture — of a kidney, of the president, doesn’t matter. The picture is made of 1 million pixels. In traditional imaging, that’s a million measurements you have to make. In compressed sensing, you measure only a small fraction — say, 100,000 pixels randomly selected from various parts of the image. From that starting point there is a gigantic, effectively infinite number of ways the remaining 900,000 pixels could be filled in.
9906798
submission
azoblue writes:
In a study published in Science, researchers examined customer location data culled from cellular service providers. By looking at how customers moved around, the authors of the study found that it may be possible to predict human movement patterns and location up to 93 percent of the time.
9278240
submission
azoblue writes:
The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.
8657364
submission
azoblue writes:
E-mail, IM, Facebook, phones—what if all of these ways to reach you over a network could be condensed into a single, unique number? The ENUM proposal aims to do just that, by giving everyone a single phone number that maps to all of their identifiers. Here's how it works, and why it isn't already widely used.
8648304
submission
azoblue writes:
You probably don't analyze the chatter or quality of your social media connections, but creditors may be doing just that.
8617584
submission
azoblue writes:
Jaron Lanier argues that the mantras of “open culture” and “information wants to be free” have produced a destructive new social contract.
“The basic idea of this contract,” he writes, “is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.”
8345230
submission
azoblue writes:
Operators of Web site dedicated to those who seek social-media death with dignity say that Facebook is taking a more Hippocratic approach to the idea of killing one's online identities with a few keystrokes. They say the social-networking giant has killed off their access to Facebook.
Called Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, the site's pitch goes like this: "Tired of your Social Network? Liberate your newbie friends with a Web2.0 suicide! This machine lets you delete all your energy-sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alter ego. The machine is just a metaphor for the Website which moddr_ is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide scripts are maintained. Our service currently runs with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn! Commit NOW!"
8041404
submission
azoblue writes:
The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.
7890082
submission
azoblue writes:
An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system. For instance, if a data set reveals a person’s ZIP code, birthdate and gender, there’s an 87 percent chance that the person can be uniquely identified.
7889980
submission
azoblue writes:
Tapping into drones’ video feeds was just the start. The U.S. military’s primary system for bringing overhead surveillance down to soldiers and Marines on the ground is also vulnerable to electronic interception, multiple military sources tell Danger Room. That means militants have the ability to see through the eyes of all kinds of combat aircraft — from traditional fighters and bombers to unmanned spy planes. The problem is in the process of being addressed. But for now, an enormous security breach is even larger than previously thought.
7874392
submission
azoblue writes:
Google — the world's largest online ad broker — sees no reason to worry about the addition of ad-blocking extensions to its Chrome browser. Online advertisers will ensure their ads aren't too annoying, the company says, and netizens will ultimately realize that online advertising is a good thing.
7844020
submission
azoblue writes:
Dr. Gray called the shift a “fourth paradigm.” The first three paradigms were experimental, theoretical and, more recently, computational science. He explained this paradigm as an evolving era in which an “exaflood” of observational data was threatening to overwhelm scientists. The only way to cope with it, he argued, was a new generation of scientific computing tools to manage, visualize and analyze the data flood.
7843868
submission
azoblue writes:
Checking out of a Hilton hotel in London, security expert Roger Thompson was told his Visa card had been declined due to suspicions it was stolen, a situation that only got more disconcerting when he learned the bank that issued the card had more personal information on him and his family members than he ever imagined.
