Horizon highlights: Rethinking the basics
By Chris Gaylord | 10.10.08
Our regular roundup of sci-tech stories from across the Web includes: Professor Pogue teaches some tech basics, five Web 2.0 services that are actually worth your time, and could special lightbulbs replace Wi-Fi hubs? Let’s kick it off:
Showdown: BlackBerry Storm vs. iPhone 3G
“After teasing us with videos and a vague web site, Research in Motion has finally decided to come out of the closet with full details on its touchscreen handset, the BlackBerry Storm. Everybody knows that ‘touchscreen’ is code for ‘iPhone competitor.’ So we’ve compiled a chart comparing the two handsets’ specifications. You’ll be entertained to see that in terms of hardware, the Storm is much more competitive with the iPhone than the underwhelming T-Mobile G1.” [via Wired]
What works: Five Web 2.0 products I still use
“On most days, I put my hands on two to five new Web 2.0 products. I write up some of them, but pretty much forget about all of them by the time I wake up the next day. A few things do stick with me, though. Here’s a list of products I am actually still using, weeks or months after the initial review.” [via Webware]
The Basics: Tech tips for the basic computer user
“I’m sure the basics could fill a book, but here are a few to get you started. All of these are things that certain friends, family, or coworkers, over the years, did *not* know. Clip, save, and pass along to … well, you know who they are.” [via Pogue’s Posts]
Treks: A video-game magnate gets his journey into space
“Richard Garriott, whose father was an astronaut, pays $30 million to go up Sunday to the International Space Station as a galactic tourist and working member of the space crew.” [via CSM’s Backstory]
Bright idea: Lightbulbs could replace Wi-Fi hotpsots
“Researchers expect to piggyback data communications capabilities on low-power light emitting diodes, or LEDs, to create “Smart Lighting” that would be faster and more secure than current network technology. This initiative aims to develop an optical communication technology that would make an LED light the equivalent of a Wi-Fi access point.” [via Cellular News]
Broadband: Wireless at fiber speeds
“There’s no shortage of demand for faster wireless, but today’s fastest technologies–Wi-Fi, 3G cellular networks, and even the upcoming WiMax–max out at tens or hundreds of megabits per second. So far, no commercial wireless system can beat the raw speed of optical fiber, which can carry tens of gigabits per second.” [via Technology Review]
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Why people like cars with ‘angry faces’
By Chris Gaylord | 10.09.08
One of the coolest aspects of the fabric-covered BMW GINA concept car is a little subconscious. I’m sure I was not the only person who felt, at first sight, as though the car were glaring at me. The sharp hood resembles an angry robot staring you down with its icy eyes. This cyborg look gives the BMW model a futuristic style – something far more appealing than the silly grin of a Toyota Prius. (Check out its smiling mug on the second picture above. Don’t you see it?)
Humans personify a lot of things. We see silhouettes of celebrities in our potato chips. We spot characters in the clouds. And, yes, we imagine that cars have faces. There’s a word for this weird desire to find significance where there really isn’t any: pareidolia.
A European research firm released some highlights from its continuing study on how these perceived faces affect a vehicle’s desirability. The consensus: The angrier the car, the more we want it.
Now EFS Consulting Vienna is drilling deeper into the phenomenon to see if these “faces” are universal and if automakers can take advantage of them to make more attractive automobiles.
The firm sat down 20 men and 20 women and asked them to evaluate 38 vehicles. All the models were passenger cars from the past few years – they left out SUVs, fearing that their size and gas-guzzling reputation would affect the scores.
“Study participants assessed cars based on a system known as geometric morphometrics (GM), which allowed the men and women to rate certain traits on a sliding scale (such as ‘infancy’ to ‘adulthood’),” reports LiveScience. “The traits represented maturity, sex, attitudes, emotions, and personality — all things that people infer from human faces at a single glance. After rating car traits, participants then answered the question of whether they saw a human face, animal face or no face at all on the cars. They drew facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth on the car images whenever they did see faces.”
In the final round, the researchers asked how much the participants liked the cars. The big winners were vehicles with faces that portrayed “power.” This mostly meant “lower or wider” cars with “slit-like or angled headlights.”
A carmaker offered to the buy the study, according to EFS head Truls Thorstensen. But they say their work isn’t done yet.
The next step: eye-tracking to follow how participants look at cars, and maybe conducting the tests again in Ethiopia, where people are less familiar with Western models.
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A video game that reads your mind
By Andrew Heining | 10.09.08
“What was I thinking?” just took on new meaning for video game fans. (And no, we’re not talking about the reaction they may have to purchasing the latest title for $69.99.)
Neurosky, a company that specializes in wearable sensors, is set to debut “a brainwave-controlled video game” at this week’s Tokyo Game Show.
While playing the game, which is a technical demonstration and not a finished product, a special headset will monitor the user’s state of relaxation or concentration and based on this allow them to perform certain actions in the game, NeuroSky said in a statement.
Ars Techica reminds that this isn’t the first time controlling a game with just one’s mind has been tried. And they point out that video game control technology has come a long way from the days of a joystick and a single button, (Atari, anyone?) citing Nintendo’s innovations with the Wii and Wii Fit.
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Update: What’s next in the Palin hacking case?
By Chris Gaylord | 10.08.08
Today we got the latest word on the Gov. Sarah Palin’s hacked e-mail account.
David Kernell, the University of Tennessee student suspected of breaking into the governor’s personal e-mail account, turned himself in to the FBI this morning and headed to federal court for his arraignment. He pleaded not guilty to the one count of accessing a computer without permission.
While he was released today without bond, the upcoming trial carries some serious weight. He faces up to five years in prison (one-quarter of his 20-year-old life), another three years of “supervised release,” and a $250,000 fine.
Yesterday’s indictment didn’t provide much new insight into Mr. Kernell’s alleged hack – mostly because someone going by the online name “Rubico” (which prosecuters think was Kernell) posted a fairly detailed account of how he broke into the Palin’s Yahoo e-mail. We reported on the backstory here.
The hacker also showed the vulnerability of many web-mail services, such as the vice presidential candidate’s Yahoo e-mail. Rubico describes sneaking into the personal account by guessing the simple security questions set up by the governor: where she met her husband, her birthday, and home Zip code. After answering them correctly, Yahoo issued the hacker a new password, “popcorn.”
A quick Google search could uncover such data for many public figures, yet many of us still use such easy hurdles to secure our e-mail, banking, and credit-card accounts.
With little new news on the subject to report, many media reports have turned their attention to Kernell’s father, state Rep. Mike Kernell, the Democratic chairman of the Tennessee Government Operations Committee. “I was not a party to anything of this nature at all,” he told the AP. “I wasn’t in on this – and I wouldn’t know how to do anything like that.”
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Another RFID smart card vulnerability exposed
By Andrew Heining | 10.08.08
Just two months after a judge barred a group of MIT students from disclosing vulnerabilities discovered in Boston’s CharlieCard fare collection system, another group, this time from the Netherlands, has published instructions for cracking the cryptographic cypher used to secure the world’s most popular transit system smart card.
The Dutch team of researchers presented the results [PDF] of their experiments with NXP Semiconductor’s Mifare Classic card at the Esorics security conference Monday in Malaga, Spain. As a Dutch affiliate of Infoworld reports, the team created a device to analyze the communication between the Mifare card and a reader. They then identified partial strings of the code given off by the reader as part of its digital handshake with the card, opening the door to cracking the cypher. It all sounds like something from the current season of Prison Break[Hulu], if you ask me.
As the MBTA did in the MIT students’ case, NXP sued to prevent the group from making their findings public, but a judge didn’t bite because the “University acted with due care, warning stakeholders early on,” and because the “damage is not [a] result of publication, but of apparent deficiencies in cards,” according to the Dutch team’s presentation.
Ars Technica points out that NXP didn’t stand by idly as their security protocols were breached. They introduced a new generation of cards that uses a much longer encryption code – one that’s more difficult to crack. But because of the old system’s popularity – Mifare cards make up 85 percent of the smart card market – NXP is giving the new cards backward compatibility with old readers. That, the site argues, makes the upgrade “an uncertain security replacement at best.”
When the Monitor covered the MIT students’ hack of the Boston CharlieCard system in August, it quoted senior security consultant Mike Davis of San Francisco’s IOActive: “I’ll predict for you that within a couple of months someone will reproduce the attack, whether or not the details were released…. The obscurity we relied on to protect these systems are just assumptions people have made.” That prediction appears to have come true.
