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Submission + - Test shows big data text analysis inconsistent, inaccurate (computerworld.com)

Submitted by DillyTonto
DillyTonto writes: The 'state of the art' in big-data unstructured data (text) analysis turns out to use a method of categorizing words and documents that, when tested, offered different results for the same data in 20% of the time and was flat wrong another 10%, according to an analysis by researchers at Northwestern. Researchers offered a more accurate method, but only as an example of how to use community detection algorithms to improve on the leading method (LDA). Meanwhile, a certain percentage of answers from all those big data installations will continue to be flat wrong until they're re-run, which will make them wrong in a different way.

Submission + - DARPA wants help building a drone that flies like a hawk (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by DillyTonto
DillyTonto writes: DARPA has put out a call for ideas on how to build a fast, autonomous, maneuverable UAV that can fly up to 45 mph, navigate without assistance from humans or GPS into and through buildings that are a labyrinth of stairwells, small rooms, narrow hallways and terrorists. DARPA wants this drone to fly like the bird in this awesome hawk POV video that shows it shooting through gaps narrow enough it has to tuck its wings to get through.

Submission + - Did North Korea Really Attack Sony? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many security experts remain skeptical of North Korea's incolvment in the recent Sony hacks. Schneier writes: "Clues in the hackers' attack code seem to point in all directions at once. The FBI points to reused code from previous attacks associated with North Korea, as well as similarities in the networks used to launch the attacks. Korean language in the code also suggests a Korean origin, though not necessarily a North Korean one, since North Koreans use a unique dialect. However you read it, this sort of evidence is circumstantial at best. It's easy to fake, and it's even easier to interpret it incorrectly. In general, it's a situation that rapidly devolves into storytelling, where analysts pick bits and pieces of the "evidence" to suit the narrative they already have worked out in their heads."

Submission + - Sony to release The Interview online today; Apple won't play ball (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC writes (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30599836):
"Sony Pictures is to distribute its film The Interview online, after a cyber-attack and a row over its release. The film will be offered on a dedicated website — seetheinterview.com — as well as via Google and Microsoft services."

Notably absent among the services to provide The Interview is Apple. The New York Times reports (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/24/business/media/sonys-the-interview-will-come-to-some-theaters-after-all.html):
"According to people briefed on the matter, Sony had in recent days asked the White House for help in lining up a single technology partner — Apple, which operates iTunes — but the tech company was not interested, at least not on a speedy time table. An Apple spokesman declined to comment. "

Submission + - Kutcher 'Hire' Shows Marketing Outranks Engineering at Lenovo (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: It’s not clear whether managers at Lenovo were too starstruck to say “no,” or whether the once-respected PC maker is having so much trouble hiring technical help it genuinely intends to allow lowbrow-sitcom staple Ashton Kutcher serve as both celebrity spokesman and full-on product engineer. Lenovo announced that it had hired Kutcher as a product engineer who will “work with the copany’s engineering teams around the world to develop and market the Yoga line of tablets by providing input and decision-making into design, specifications, software and usage scenarios.” Kutcher – former Calvin Klein underwear model, star of such quality entertainment as That ’70s Show, Punk’d, current star of Two-and-a-Half Men and, most recently, portrayer of Steve Jobs in the biopic Jobs – has a successful track record of investing in tech companies, Lenovo’s announcement said as partial explanation for the arrangement. Kutcher also studied biomechanical engineering as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, which USA Today and other news outlets used to help bolster the idea that the star of Dude, Where’s My Car? could function effectively as part of an engineering product-development team. Kutcher did list his planned major at the university as biomechanical engineering when he enrolled in 1996, but he dropped out during the 1997-98 school year. He did found A-Grade Investments, which has been involved in or funded tech companies including Sporify, Path, Airbnb and Uber, according to Lenovo.
Encryption

Submission + - How many seconds would it take to crack your password? (itworld.com)

Submitted by DillyTonto
DillyTonto writes: Want to know how strong your password is? Count the number of characters and the type and calculate it yourself. Steve Gibson's Interactive Brute Force Password Search Space Calculator shows the how dramatically the time-to-crack lengthens with every additional character in your password, especially if one of them is a symbol rather than a letter or number.
Worst-case scenario with almost unlimited computing power for brute-forcing the decrypt:
6 alphanumeric characters takes 0.0000224 seconds to crack
10 alpha/nums with a symbol takes 2.83 weeks.
Politics

Submission + - 'Legitimized' cyberwar will make culture wars much dirtier (itworld.com)

Submitted by DillyTonto
DillyTonto writes: US officials have acknowledged playing a role in the development and deployment of Stuxnet, Duqu and other cyberweapons against Iran.
The acknowledgement makes cyberattacks more legitimate as a tool of not-quite-lethal international diplomacy.
It also legitimizes them as more-combative tools for political conflict over social issues, in the same way Tasers gave police less-than-lethal alternatives to shooting suspects and gave those who abuse their power something other than a club to hit a suspect with. Political parties and single-issue political organizations already use "opposition research" to name-and-shame their opponents with real or exaggerated revelations from a checkered past, jerrymander districts to ensure their candidates a victory and vote-suppression or get-out-the-vote efforts to skew vote tallies. Imagine what they'll do with custom malware, the ability to DDOS an opponent's web site or redirect donations from an opponent's site to their own.
Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone. They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play.
Security

Researchers Can Generate RSA SecurID Random Numbers Flawlessly 98

Posted by Soulskill from the everybody-needs-a-hobby dept.
Fluffeh writes "A researcher has found and published a way to tune into an RSA SecurID Token. Once a few easy steps are followed, anyone can generate the exact numbers shown on the token. The method relies on finding the seed that is used to generate the numbers in a way that seems random. Once it is known, it can be used to generate the exact numbers displayed on the targeted Token. The technique, described on Thursday by a senior security analyst at a firm called SensePost, has important implications for the safekeeping of the tokens. An estimated 40 million people use these to access confidential data belonging to government agencies, military contractors, and corporations. Scrutiny of the widely used two-factor authentication system has grown since last year, when RSA revealed that intruders on its networks stole sensitive SecurID information that could be used to reduce its security. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin later confirmed that a separate attack on its systems was aided by the theft of the RSA data."
Space

Designing the World's Tiniest Manned Suborbital Vehicle 153

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the more-fun-than-a-roller-coaster dept.
cylonlover writes, quoting Gizmag: "Generally speaking, companies developing suborbital manned vehicles brag about how much elbow room their spacecraft will provide passengers. They say there will be plenty of room to float around during the weightless portion of the flight, that there will be no fighting for windows, that passengers will comfortably endure the high-g portions of the flight ... and then there's Copenhagen Suborbitals' Tycho Brahe. CS's Tycho Brahe is a one-passenger capsule intended for a purely ballistic flight to a peak altitude approaching 100 miles. The passenger is just along for the ride, with no mechanism to steer or otherwise pilot the capsule."
Data Storage

Submission + - 60TB Disk Drives Could Be Reality In 2016 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "The maximum areal densities of hard disk drives are expected to more than double by 2016, according to IHS iSuppli. Hard drive company Seagate has also predicted a doubling of drive density, and now IHS iSuppli is confirming what the vendor community already knew. Leading the way for greater disk density will be technologies such as heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), which Seagate patented in 2006. Seagate has already said it will be able to produce a 60TB 3.5-in. hard drive by 2016. Laptop drives could reach 10TB to 20TB in the same time frame, IHS iSuppli stated. It said areal densities are projected to climb to a maximum 1,800 Gbits per square inch per platter by 2016, up from 744 Gbits per square inch in 2011. Areal density equals bit density, or bits of information per inch of a track multiplied by tracks per inch on a drive platter. From 2011 to 2016, the five-year compound annual growth rate for HDD areal densities will be equivalent to 19%, IHS iSuppli wrote in its report. This year, hard drive areal densities are estimated to reach 780Gbits per square inch per platter, and then rise to 900Gbits per square inch next year. '"The rise in areal density will pave the way for continued growth of the [hard disk drive] industry,' said Fang Zhang, an analyst for storage systems at IHS."
Government

Kaspersky Calls For Cyber Weapons Convention 166

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the weapons-grade-software-strikes-back dept.
judgecorp writes with a synopsis of talk given by Kaspersky at CeBit "Cyber weapons are so dangerous, they should be limited by a treaty like those restricting chemical and nuclear arms, Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky has told a conference. He also warned that online voting was essential or democracy will die out in 20 years."
Hardware

Submission + - Amazon eliminates all but two questions about which tablet to buy (itworld.com)

Submitted by DillyTonto
DillyTonto writes: Amazon got shelled by analysts and the press after releasing a buggy first iteration of the Fire edition of the Kindle e-reader. Three weeks later the Kindle Fire owned 14 percent of the whole market for tabs. Three months later, more than half of all Android tablets sold are seven-inch Kindle Fires, despite a huge bias among buyers for 10-inch tablets. How could a heavily modded e-reader beat full-size tablets by major PC vendors? It's cheaper than any other tab or e-reader on the market, for one thing. It's also hot enough to give the most expensive tabs a run for their money. In the fast-growing tablet market, the question is no longer 'an iPad or something else?' It's 'an iPad, or a Kindle Fire, or explain at length why buying something else makes any sense at all.
Science

Submission + - Brain Scan Can Predict Math Mistakes (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Computer Science Ph.D. candidate Federico Cirett says that he can predict with 80 percent accuracy when someone is about to make a mistake on a math question. Using an EEG machine, Cirett can identify the patterns in a volunteer's thinking that are likely to result in an error 20 seconds or so before it's made. 'If we can detect when they are going to fail, maybe we can change the text or switch the question to give them another one at a different level of difficulty, but also to keep them engaged,' Cirett said. 'Brain wave data is the nearest thing we have to really know when the students are having problems.' He will present a paper on his findings at the User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization conference in July."
Government

Submission + - Creepy: FBI wants to "advance the science of interrogation" (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "From deep in the Department of Creepy today I give this item: The FBI this week put out a call for new research "to advance the science and practice of intelligence interviewing and interrogation."
The part of the FBI that is requesting the new research isn't out in the public light very often: the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which according to the FBI was chartered in 2009 by the National Security Council and includes members of the CIA and Department of Defense, to "deploy the nation's best available interrogation resources against detainees identified as having information regarding terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies.""
Businesses

Submission + - Cloud To Create 14 Million Jobs? Not So Much (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Did you hear about the study from Microsoft and IDC (PDF), declaring that adoption of cloud technologies would create 14 million jobs? Well, don't believe the hype. The study posts that, once small and medium business can use cloud products to just eliminate their IT department, they'll use those savings to hire people for their core business. It's a dubious proposition, and one that wouldn't be good news for IT workers even if things do play out that way."

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