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Discover more about one of the world’s most important recent scientific discoveries.
If you’ve ever drawn with a pencil, you’ve probably made graphene. The world’s thinnest material is set to revolutionise almost every part of everyday life.
Fascination with this material stems from its remarkable physical properties and the potential applications these properties offer for the future. Although scientists knew one atom thick, two-dimensional crystal graphene existed, no-one had worked out how to extract it from graphite.
That was until it was isolated in 2004 by two researchers at The University of Manchester, Prof Andre Geim and Prof Kostya Novoselov. This is the story of how that stunning scientific feat came about and why Andre and Kostya won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work.
If you’ve ever pixelated an email address or blurred a phone number before putting an image onto the internet in order to protect someone’s privacy, I’ve got bad news for you: Researchers at the University of California-San Diego have found that the popular Photoshop redaction techniques are decodable such that the underlying text can be read.
Pixelating and blurring doesn’t work to hide text | Fusion (via infoneer-pulse)
EU proposal would classify robots as 'electronic persons'
Parliamentary motion aims to create a legal framework for automation, amid concerns over unemployment and social security
A new proposal from the European Parliament calls for working robots to be classified as "electronic persons," and for their owners to pay social security on their behalf. The draft motion, published online this month, aims to address the new challenges that Europe's robotic workforce will present as robot technology becomes more pervasive and intelligent. The proposal says growing automation will require new frameworks for taxation and legal liability, but as Reuters reports, it faces opposition from some robotics companies.
The rise in automation and artificial intelligence has raised concerns in Europe and elsewhere over economic effects, including unemployment, inequality, and social security systems. The proposal aims to address those concerns with a legal framework that would consider "that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations."
"We think it would be very bureaucratic and would stunt the development of robotics."
It also calls for companies to declare the money they saved in social security by replacing human workers with robots, and for the creation of a European robotics agency to provide "technical, ethical and regulatory expertise." All smart autonomous robots would be classified under a central registry, with funds to cover their liability, and robot owners and manufacturers would be required to buy insurance.
VDMA, a German industry group that represents major robot manufacturers, says it's too early to create such a legal framework for robots, adding that it could hinder innovation. Patrick Schwarzkopf, VDMA's managing director for robotics, told reporters at a Munich trade show that a framework could arise "in 50 years, but not in 10 years."
"our market will be invaded by robots from outside."
"We think it would be very bureaucratic and would stunt the development of robotics," Schwarzkopf added.
The proposed measures would be non-binding, and it's not yet clear whether it will gain enough support in Parliament to pass. But supporters of the motion say Europe needs a coherent framework to support and regulate robotics if it wants to keep pace with the rest of the world.
"The US, China, Korea and Japan have very ambitious projects," Mady Delvaux, an MP from Luxembourg and the motion's rapporteur, said in an interview published to the European Parliament website last year. "If we do not create the legal framework for the development of robotics, our market will be invaded by robots from outside."
Recently confirmed Myspace hack could be the largest yet
You might not have thought of – much less visited – Myspace in years. (Yes, it’s still around. Time, Inc. acquired it and other properties when it bought Viant earlier this year.) But user data never really dies, unfortunately. For Myspace’s new owner, that’s bad news, as the company confirmed just ahead of the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the U.S., that it has been alerted to a large set of stolen Myspace username and password combinations being made available for sale in an online hacker forum.
The data is several years old, however. It appears to be limited to a portion of the overall user base from the old Myspace platform prior to June 11, 2013, at which point the site was relaunched with added security.
Time, Inc. didn’t confirm how many user accounts were included in this data set, but a report from LeakedSource.com says that there are over 360 million accounts involved. Each record contains an email address, a password, and in some cases, a second password. As some accounts have multiple passwords, that means there are over 427 million total passwords available for sale.
Despite the fact that this data breach dates back several years, the size of the data set in question makes it notable. Security researchers at Sophos say that this could be the largest data breach of all time, easily topping the whopping 117 million LinkedIn emails and passwords that recently surfaced online from a 2012 hack.
That estimation seems to hold up – while there are a number of other large-scale data breaches, even some of the biggest were not of this size. The U.S. voter database breach included 191 million records, Anthem’s was 80 million, eBay was 145 million, Target was 70 million, Experian 200 million, Heartland 130 million, and so on.
The issue with these older data breaches is that they’re from an era where security measures were not as strong as today. That means these passwords are easily cracked. LeakedSource notes that the top 50 passwords from those cracked account for over 6 million passwords – or 1.5 percent of the total, to give you a sense of scale.
The passwords were stored as unsalted SHA-1 hashes, as LinkedIn’s were, too.
That allowed Time, Inc. to date the data breach to some extent, as the site was relaunched in June 2013 with strengthened account security, including double-salted hashes to store passwords. It also confirmed that the breach has no effect on any of its other systems, subscriber information, or other media properties, nor did the leaked data include any financial information.
Myspace is notifying users and has already invalidated the passwords of known affected accounts.
The company is also using automated tools to attempt to identify and block any suspicious activity that might occur on Myspace accounts, it says.
“We take the security and privacy of customer data and information extremely seriously—especially in an age when malicious hackers are increasingly sophisticated and breaches across all industries have become all too common,” said Myspace’s CFO Jeff Bairstow, in a statement. “Our information security and privacy teams are doing everything we can to support the Myspace team.”
However, while the hack itself and the resulting data set may be old, there could still be repercussions. Because so many online users simply reuse their same passwords on multiple sites, a hacker who is able to associate a given username or email with a password could crack users’ current accounts on other sites.
Of course, it’s not likely users even remember what password they used on Myspace years ago, which makes protecting your current accounts more difficult. A better option is to always use more complicated passwords, reset them periodically, and take advantage of password management tools like Dashlane or LastPass to help you keep track of your logins.
Myspace also confirmed that the hack is being attributed to the Russian cyberhacker who goes by the name “Peace.” This is the same person responsible for the LinkedIn and Tumblr attacks, too. In Tumblr’s case, some 65 million plus accounts were affected. But these passwords were “salted,” meaning they are harder to crack.
Myspace is working with law enforcement as this case is still under investigation, the company says.
Microsoft doubles down on VR and AR, positioning Windows 10 as the “the only mixed reality platform”
In a keynote presentation at Computex in Taipei and a couple of blog posts today, Microsoft doubled down on the mixed reality efforts spearheaded by Hololens – Windows 10, the company aims to show, is place to be when it comes to mixed reality.
Some clarification may be welcome here — just what is “mixed reality,” exactly? If you think about entirely computer-generated 3D environments in VR as one extreme, and plain vanilla reality on the other, mixed reality is… well, anywhere in the middle, really. Microsoft’s point is that Windows Holographic will support the whole continuum, from light reality enhancements to total immersion – and, crucially, facilitate natural interactions between them.
“Providing devices with the ability to perceive the world, breaking down the barriers between virtual and physical reality is what we call mixed reality,” wrote Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s EVP of Windows and Devices,in a blog post
. “Imagine wearing a VR device and seeing your physical hands as you manipulate an object, working on the scanned 3D image of a real object, or bringing in a holographic representation of another person into your virtual world so you can collaborate.”
No one had to imagine, of course: this shining future was illustrated in a 3-minute video by turns fanciful and practical as to how various types of augmented reality would soon interact. For instance, someone with a Hololens headset may scan and inhabit a physical space and begin interacting with it there. Another person, distant but connected using a VR helmet, can enter the space virtually and experience it that way. Yet another may be holographically present via what can only be called a holodeck.
Meanwhile, familiar things like virtual item shops and a chatbot assistant (shades of Clippy) make their appearance as indicators of a pervasive, and familiar platform: Windows 10, natch.
There is also to be, I am told, an on-stage demo in which two people do a little real-time virtual collaboration, but as I’m not lucky enough to be in Taipei today and the keynote isn’t being live streamed, we’ll add video of that whenever it becomes available.
Microsoft also announced a number of partners with which it is pursuing its dream of mixed reality. Myerson listed a few:
Today we invited our OEM, ODM, and hardware partners to build PCs, displays, accessories and mixed reality devices with the Windows Holographic platform.
We are excited to be working with Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, HTC, Acer, ASUS, CyberPowerPC, Dell, Falcon Northwest, HP, iBuyPower, Lenovo, MSI and many others…
Just what exactly each plans to contribute remains to be seen. Really, so few people have experienced realities beyond just the original one that it’s hard to say what will and won’t be needed or desired should the concept break through to the mainstream at all.
Partners and interested developers are encouraged to come to convenient Shenzhen in the fall for Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) conference — or Taipei, if it’s closer.
