Forget cookies — even the ultrasneaky, Flash-based “super cookies.” A new type of tracking may identify you far more accurately than any cookie — and you may never know it was there. The method pulls together innocuous data about your browser, such as plug-ins, system fonts, and your operating system. Alone, they don’t identify you. [...]
Archive for March, 2010
Wikipedia suffers global collapse
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation Web sites went down for hours on Wednesday in a global outage caused by a domino effect of technical problems. The problems started when Wikimedia servers overheated in the organization’s European data center and shut themselves off automatically. Wikimedia then switched all its traffic to its server cluster in Florida, [...]
Jedi Packet Trick punches holes in firewalls
Hackers have hit on a new way to break into computers: by attacking the firmware used in networking cards. Independent security researcher Arrigo Triulzi is set to unveil one such attack on Friday at the CanSecWest security conference. He calls his technique the Jedi Packet Trick. It essentially installs a clandestine virtual private network inside [...]
Innovation: Gaze trackers eye computer gamers
Gamers in search of a more thrilling experience look set to get it thanks to interfaces that let them use what are probably the body’s fastest and most fatigue-resistant muscles: the ones that move our eyes. Gaze-tracking technology has been honed over the years for psychology experiments and to help disabled people. Now it’ s [...]
The predictioneer: Using games to see the future
MY HOROSCOPE this week says that now is the perfect time to relocate, or at least de-clutter. I know it’s nonsense, but I can’t help wishing there was a genuine way to predict the future. Perhaps there is. One self-styled “predictioneer” believes he has found the answer. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a professor of [...]
iPhone falls in Pwn2Own hacking contest
A delayed flight didn’t stop Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf Weinmann from scoring a cool US$15,000, a brand-new iPhone and a trip to Las Vegas at the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest in Vancouver on Wednesday. The security researchers developed an undisclosed attack on the iPhone’s mobile Safari browser to get access to a phone and then [...]
MIT researchers enable self-assembling of chips
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday released research detailing how molecules in chips can self-assemble, potentially reducing manufacturing costs. The researchers have developed a technique in which polymers automatically fall into place to create an integrated circuit, said Caroline Ross, professor of materials science and engineering at MIT and a researcher behind [...]
G.M. Tinkers With Augmented Reality System for Cars
Images courtesy of General Motors R&D The navigation element of General Motors’ enhanced vision system could help drivers find their destination by pointing to an exact building. In foggy or dark conditions, the system helps define the edges of the road and points to upcoming road signs. The research and development labs of General Motors [...]
Google Go captures developers’ imaginations
Less than four months after its unveiling at an early, experimental stage, Google Go looks promising to developers who say it offers significant improvements over other programming languages. While Go is still a work in progress, some developers are so encouraged by its features and design that they have started using it to build noncritical [...]
8 Significant Developments in Social Media You Should Watch
While I don’t have a crystal ball, here are some developments that I think are worthy of our attention and will affect how we do things in the social mediasphere over the next few years. Many of the things on this list will not be news to the very well-informed social media consultant types who [...]