Biometric security

Biometric security features may not be as safe as they are thought to be

  In their rush to do away with problematic passwords, Apple, Microsoft and other tech companies are nudging consumers to use their own fingerprints, faces and eyes as digital keys. Smartphones and other devices increasingly feature scanners that can verify your identity via these "biometric" signatures in order to unlock a gadget, sign into web accounts and authorize electronic payments.

  But there are drawbacks: Hackers could still steal your fingerprint - or its digital representation. Police may have broader legal powers to make you unlock your phone. And so-called "biometric" systems are so convenient they could lull users into a false sense of security.

 "We may expect too much from biometrics. No security systems are perfect," said Anil Jain, a computer science professor at Michigan State University who helped police unlock a smartphone by using a digitally enhanced ink copy of the owner's fingerprints.

Bypassing the password

  Biometric security seems like a natural solution to well-known problems with passwords. Far too many people choose weak and easily-guessed passwords like "123456" or "password." Many others reuse a single password across online accounts, all of which could be hacked if the password is compromised. And of course some use no password at all when they can get away with it, as many phones allow.

  As electronic sensors and microprocessors have grown cheaper and more powerful, gadget makers have started adding biometric sensors to familiar products.

Jain, the Michigan State researcher, proved that earlier this year when a local police department asked for help unlocking a fingerprint. The phone's owner was dead, but police had the owner's fingerprints on file. Jain and two associates made a digital copy of the prints, enhanced them and then printed them out with special ink that mimics the conductive properties of human skin.

 

  But some experts believe any biometric system can be cracked with sufficient determination. All it takes are simulated images of a person's fingerprint, face or even iris pattern. And if someone manages that, you can't exactly change your fingerprint or facial features as you would a stolen password.

  To make such theft more difficult, biometric-equipped phones and computers typically encrypt fingerprints and similar data and store them locally, not in the "cloud" where hackers might lift them from company servers. But many biometrics can be found elsewhere. You might easily leave your fingerprint on a drinking glass, for instance. Or it might be stored in a different database. computer breach at federal Office of Personnel Management, which compromised the files - including fingerprints - of millions of federal employees.

Apple Shows Up as Exhibitor

Apple Shows Up as Exhibitor at MWC 2017, Then Disappears

  Even though Apple Inc. has stayed away from Mobile World Congress for many years now, the company reportedly showed up as an exhibitor at the event's next year's edition. However, in an interesting turn of events, the company soon disappeared from the list of exhibitors indicating that it might not be a part of the event after all, or maybe it put pressure on the exhibitors not to reveal information related to its participation.

  As per a report by Mac Rumors, Apple was listed as one of the exhibitors for the event widely recognized as the largest exhibition and gathering of the mobile world. As per the listing, the company had booked space in the App Planet in Hall 8.1. The listing indicated that it had also booked "two spaces in the upper level that runs above Hall 2 in the Fira Gran Via Conference Centre," the report said.

  The association with App Planet suggests that the company might have been planning to promote its App Store or even the upcoming reality show Planet of Apps. The other spaces booked by the company are seemingly meeting rooms and might not be meant for any product announcements, the report notes.

  Apple famously announces its products at its own events and therefore any major announcements are unlikely at MWC 2017.

  We will have to wait and see if Apple eventually participates at the event, or it turns out to be a case of false listing.

Facebook Hires Ex-Snapdeal CPO Anand Chandrasekaran to Work on Messenger

Facebook Hires Ex-Snapdeal CPO Anand Chandrasekaran to Work on Messenger

  Signalling how important India is for its growth, Facebook has hired Anand Chandrasekaran, a former Yahoo executive who was working as chief product officer at e-tailer Snapdeal, to boost future prospects for its Messenger app.

  Based out of Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters, Chandrasekaran will focus on building strategies and partnerships for Messenger which hit one billion users in July this year.

  "They say the best journeys bring you home. We embarked on one two-and-a-half years ago, and it has been nothing short of incredible. I am super excited to share that building on the learning and experiences, I am joining Facebook to work on Facebook Messenger platform," Chandrasekaran wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

  "Core to every major platform I've worked on is a belief that technology should help level the playing field for all-something that is at the heart of Facebook and  Messenger," he added.

  Chandrasekaran co-founded Aeroprise, a mobile applications software company.

  India has become a critical market for Facebook which is now second only to the US in terms of Facebook users.

  "Messenger is going to be the next big platform for sharing privately," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergrecently said.

  "Connecting India is an important goal we won't give up on, because more than a billion people in India don't have access to the internet," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.

The Amazing Artificial Intelligence

The Amazing Artificial Intelligence We Were Promised Is Coming, Finally

  We have been hearing predictions for decades of a takeover of the world by artificial intelligence. In 1957, Herbert A. Simon predicted that within 10 years a digital computer would be the world's chess champion. That didn't happen until 1996. And despite Marvin Minsky's 1970 prediction that "in from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being," we still consider that a feat of science fiction.

  The pioneers of artificial intelligence were surely off on the timing, but they weren't wrong; AI is coming. It is going to be in our TV sets and driving our cars; it will be our friend and personal assistant; it will take the role of our doctor. There have been more advances in AI over the past three years than there were in the previous three decades.

Even technology leaders such as Apple have been caught off guard by the rapid evolution of machine learning, the technology that powers AI. At its recent Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple opened up its AI systems so that independent developers could help it create technologies that rival what Google and Amazon have already built. Apple is way behind.

  The AI of the past used brute-force computing to analyze data and present them in a way that seemed human. The programmer supplied the intelligence in the form of decision trees and algorithms. Imagine that you were trying to build a machine that could play tic-tac-toe. You would give it specific rules on what move to make, and it would follow them. That is essentially how IBM's Big Blue computer beat chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, by using a supercomputer to calculate every possible move faster than he could.

  Today's AI uses machine learning in which you give it examples of previous games and let it learn from those examples. The computer is taught what to learn and how to learn and makes its own decisions. What's more, the new AIs are modeling the human mind itself using techniques similar to our learning processes. Before, it could take millions of lines of computer code to perform tasks such as handwriting recognition. Now it can be done in hundreds of lines . What is required is a large number of examples so that the computer can teach itself.

  The new programming techniques use neural networks which are modeled on the human brain, in which information is processed in layers and the connections between these layers are strengthened based on what is learned. This is called deeplearning because of the increasing numbers of layers of information that are processed by increasingly faster computers. These are enabling computers to recognize images, voice, and text and to do human-like things.

  Google searches used to use a technique called Page Rank to come up with their results. Using rigid proprietary algorithms, they analyzed the text and links on Web pages to determine what was most relevant and important. Google is replacing this technique in searches and most of its other products with algorithms based on deep learning, the same technologies that it used to defeat a human player at the game Go. During that extremely complex game, observers were themselves confused as to why their computer had made the moves it had.

  In the fields in which it is trained, AI is now exceeding the capabilities of humans.

AI has applications in every area in which data are processed and decisions required. Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly likened AI to electricity: a cheap, reliable, industrial-grade digital smartness running behind everything. He said that it "will enliven inert objects, much as electricity did more than a century ago. Everything that we formerly electrified we will now 'cognitize.' This new utilitarian AI will also augment us individually as people (deepening our memory, speeding our recognition) and collectively as a species. There is almost nothing we can think of that cannot be made new, different, or interesting by infusing it with some extra IQ. In fact, the business plans of the next 10,000 startups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI This is a big deal, and now it's here."

  AI will soon be everywhere. Businesses are infusing AI into their products and helping them analyze the vast amounts of data they are gathering. Google, Amazon, and Apple are working on voice assistants for our homes that manage our lights, order our food, and schedule our meetings. Robotic assistants such as Rosie from "The Jetsons" and R2-D2 of Star Wars are about a decade away.

  Do we need to be worried about the runaway "artificial general intelligence" that goes out of control and takes over the world? Yes but perhaps not for another 15 or 20 years. There are justified fears that rather than being told what to learn and complementing our capabilities, AIs will start learning everything there is to learn and know far more than we do. Though some people, such as futurist Ray Kurzweil, see us using AI to augmentour capabilities and evolve together, others, such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, fear that AI will usurp us. We really don't know where all this will go.

  What is certain is that AI is here and making amazing things possible.

Study Proves What You've Known All Along

Study Proves What You've Known All Along: Facebook a Haven for Insecure Narcissists

 Social networking sites such as Facebook provide the ideal environment for insecure narcissists to promote themselves and seek the admiration of others on a grand scale, a study says.

  For the study, the researchers from University of Florence in Italy sought to find what type of narcissists were at higher risk for social networking addiction through a survey of 535 students.

  The researchers found that vulnerable narcissists, who tend to be insecure and have lower self-esteem, are more likely to feel safer in online versus face-to-face interactions, which might lead them to prefer social networking as a means to gain approval and admiration.

  In contrast, grandiose narcissists, who tend toward arrogance and exhibitionism are likely to seek out admiration more openly, rather than through social media.

  The researchers said that no significant differences in social networking addiction were found between grandiose narcissists and non-narcissists.

  "This study suggests that vulnerable narcissism may contribute more to problematic use of SNSs (social networking sites) than grandiose narcissism," the researchers said.

  The study was published online in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

New 3D Paper

New 3D Paper-Based Microbial Fuel Cell Developed

  Scientists have developed a 3D paper-based microbial fuel cell that can create electricity in an environment-friendly way without using any outside power.

 Researchers from the Iowa State University in the US demonstrated a proof-of-concept three-dimensional microbial fuel cell (MFC) that could take advantage of capillary action to guide the liquids through the MFC system and to eliminate the need for external power.

 The paper-based MFC runs for five days and shows the production of current as a result of biofilm formation on anode.

  The system produces 1.3 micro Watts of power and 52.25 micro Amperes of current.

  "All power created in this device is useable because no electricity is needed to run the fluids through the device. This is crucial in the advancement of these devices and the expansion of their applications,"said Nastaran Hashemi, assistant professor at Iowa State.

  The biofilm formation on the carbon cloth during the test provides further evidence that the current measured was the result of the bio-chemical reaction taking place.

  This is important because the biofilm plays a vital role in current production of a microbial fuel cell. Increased biofilm size and thickness ultimately leads to increased current production.

  Individual bacterial cells metabolise electron-rich substances in a complex process involving many enzyme-catalysed reactions.

  The electrons are then free to travel to the anode through one of many modes of electron transport.

  Electron transport is very complicated, and evidence suggests that it is unique to each type of bacteria. For the bacteria Shewanella Oneidensis MR-1, the most predominantly known ways of shuttling electrons from the individual cells to the anode are through direct contact, excreted soluble redox molecules, and biological nanowires.

  Of these, it is widely believed that excreted soluble redox molecules serving as extracellular electron shuttles makes up for as much as 70 percent of electron transfer mechanisms from individual bacterial cells to the electrode.

  Moreover, it is shown that direct contact between individual S Oneidensis MR-1 and the electrode has little impact on the current generation, supporting a mediated electron transfer mechanism.

  Biofilm helps with the adsorption of the redox molecules to the electrode, which makes it important to have in high power density microbial fuel cells.

  Without enough time for biofilmto form, the current and power data would predominantly be linked to extracellular electron transfer, which represents does not fully represent electrical producing capabilities of microbial fuel cells.

  This device for the first time demonstrates the longer duration of use and ability to operate individually, a development that could help increase the number of situations where microbial fuel cells can be applied.

Rocket Stage

Isro to Look at Possibility of Recovering Rocket Stage

The Indian space agency is planning to look at the possibility of reusing its rocket stages after a launch by making them re-enter atmosphereand land at a specified location, a senior official said.

  "We are also looking at that programme," K.Sivan, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) told IANS on the phone from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

  The VSSC is a division of Indian Space ResearchOrganisation (Isro).

  Referring to US-based aerospace company SpaceX's attempts in this regard, Sivan said Isro too is planning like that.

  SpaceX, with its two rockets - Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy - offers satellite launch services.

  A rocket stage comprises the engine, fuel and other systems.

  The stages constitute the bulk of a rocket's cost and a saving on that will reduce the launch cost.

  For instance, India's polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) is a four-stage rocket. It also has six booster engines strapped on the first stage.

  The rocket is an expendable one, that is, nothing is recovered once it is launched.

  So, recovering for instance the first PSLV stage means making it re-enter the atmosphere safely after it puts the other three stages up.

  The outer shell of the stage should have sufficient heat-resistant materials. The stage should also be programmed to land at a specified location, preferably at the launch pad itself.

  Sivan said recovery of the stage and using it again is completely different from the reusable launch vehicle (RLV).

  He said developing a full-fledged RLV will take quite some time.

  "We have to develop various technologies before finalisingthe specifications for our own RLV," Sivan said.

  On May 23, Isro successfully took the first step in developing a RLV by successfully testing an aircraft like winged structure.

  Called RLV-Technology Demonstrator HEX 01 mission, the winged structure which sat atop a rocket was released into the space at above 70km from the earth.

  The winged structure returned and landed in the Bay of Bengal as originally planned.