Techno-News Blog

by Robert Lemos, Technology Review

The Flashback computer virus gained notoriety earlier this year as the first malware to make headway against Apple’s relatively untouched operating system, Mac OS X, infecting some 600,000 victims’ machines at the peak of the outbreak. But computer scientists and security professionals were more worried about another aspect of the malware. The authors of Flashback used a technique that Hollywood often employs to prevent movie and music files from being copied—they added functions that bound the virus to each infected system. The use of that technique prevented security companies from running the virus in their labs.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428557/the-latest-threat-a-virus-made-just-for-you/

by Conor Myhrvold, Technology Review

A new set of software algorithms can amplify aspects of a video and reveal what is normally undetectable to human eyesight, making it possible to, for example, measure someone’s pulse by shooting a video of him and capturing the way blood is flowing across his face. The software process, called “Eulerian video magnification” by the MIT computer scientists who developed the program, breaks apart the visual elements of every frame of a video and reconstructs them with the algorithm, which can amplify aspects of the video that are undetectable by the naked eye. These aspects could include the variations in redness in a man’s face caused by his pulse. “Just like optics has enabled [someone] to see things normally too small, computation can enable people to see things not visible to the naked eye,” says MIT computer scientist Fredo Durand, one of the coauthors of a paper about the research.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428498/software-detects-motion-that-the-human-eye-cant/

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

Near Field Communication technology has been in phones since 2006, and there’s a reason it has yet to take off. There’s the possibility that Apple will allow payments via NFC in the iPhone 5 after all. But it remains to be seen whether the number of payment options will increase. The company is notoriously finnicky about empowering players in the value chain other than itself. Absent a sea change in banks’ apparent reluctance to make NFC a real standard, it’s hard to imagine adoption of “digital wallets” hitting an inflection point in the US any time soon.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428587/how-the-iphone-5-will-yet-again-fail-to-eliminate/

by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica

Apple is indeed planning to replace its current 30-pin dock connector on its iDevices with a new, 19-pin connector when it launches the next iPhone this fall. That’s according to two unnamed sources speaking to Reuters, who claimed the reason for the change would be “to make room for the earphone moving to the bottom.” Rumors about plans Apple may have to replace the current dock connector—which has been part of Apple’s products since 2003—have been around for a while, but they’ve been picking up steam recently as buyers anticipate the next major iPhone release. We wrote last month about why now might be the right time for Apple to move forward with a new connector on its devices—one of the main arguments is that it could allow Apple to make thinner devices, like it has chosen to do with the new MagSafe 2 in the Retina MacBook Pro.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/sources-continue-to-dish-on-iphones-new-19-pin-dock-connector/

by Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica

Amazon is getting ready to release a follow-up to its Kindle Fire tablet, and it reportedly won’t just be an updated version of the original 7-inch device. A 10-inch model will be among the “five or six tablet SKUs” coming from Amazon, Reuters reported based on information revealed by an executive at Staples, which sells the Kindle Fire. Amazon hasn’t confirmed the plans, but previous reports indicate that a new Fire tablet will be released in the third quarter of 2012, which runs through the end of September.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/amazons-new-kindle-fires-will-reportedly-include-a-10-inch-tablet/

by Sean Gallagher, ArsTechnica

The Power Pwn takes the “Trojan Horse” attack on networks to a whole new level. Pwnie Express drew a lot of attention earlier this year with its Pwn Plug, a stealthy, small computer loaded with network hacking tools disguised in an innocuous, white power brick that resembles an air freshener—albeit one with Ethernet and USB ports. Now, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Cyber Fast Track program, the company has created an even stealthier tool for testing and cracking networks: one disguised as a power strip.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/07/power-strip-or-network-hacking-tool-its-both-actually/

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

It’s easy to get caught up in what’s new in smartphones — novel applications of near field communication, their potential as detectors of environmental pollutants — but it’s also useful to occasionally look back on what they’ve granted us already. Indeed, a recent survey found that, at least in the UK, 4 in 10 smartphone users said their phone was “more important for accessing the Internet than any other device.” If you spent enough time in the dark ages before they were ubiquitous, you’ve probably got a sense of the sheer number of physical objects which your phone replaced. But have you ever tried listing all of them? You might be surprised at just how long that list can grow.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428579/a-surprisingly-long-list-of-everything/

by Jessica Leber, Technology Review

Robots designed to work alongside humans could change the way we think of manufacturing. Automation giant ABB, based in Zurich, has developed Frida, a two-armed concept robot meant to be carried around and mounted to regular workstations on the manufacturing floor. ABB says Frida can be “easily interchanged with a human coworker” when new layouts are needed. Ever since General Motors first put “Unimate” on an assembly line in 1961, most manufacturing robots have worked in isolation, caged off from human workers. Now a new breed of more flexible robot is being developed to work more closely with people.

http://www.technologyreview.com/photogallery/428570/the-next-wave-of-factory-robots/

by Larry Hardesty, MIT News

As MIT and Harvard gear up to offer new edX courses in the fall, the edX team is taking stock of its experience with 6.002x and beginning to incorporate what it learned into the system’s design. In the end, almost 155,000 people registered for 6.002x. Of those, roughly 23,000 tried the first problem set, 9,000 passed the midterm, and 7,157 passed the course as a whole. While the rate of attrition may seem high, Anant Agarwal, the president of edX and a professor of computer science and engineering at MIT, points out, “if you look at the number in absolute terms, it’s as many students as might take the course in 40 years at MIT.”

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/mitx-edx-first-course-recap-0716.html