Robots invade the real world

From C-3PO to the Terminator to Star Trek’s Data, robots have entertained us on the big screen for years. But, unlike our cinematic cyborg heroes, the real thing has been something of a disappointment because the technology has failed to live up to the Hollywood hype. But this is not true anymore. Robots have arrived.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

10 real-world robots

Robots have arrivedFrom C-3PO to the Terminator to Star Trek’s Data, robots have entertained us on the big screen for years. But, unlike our cinematic cyborg heroes, the real thing has been something of a disappointment because the technology has failed to live up to the Hollywood hype. But this is not true anymore. Robots have arrived. Here are examples of robots being deployed in the real world. (Read the full story.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CISA won’t do much to turn threat intelligence into action

With the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) the feds are trying to make it more attractive to share threat intelligence, but it won’t do much to help businesses deal with the high cost of sorting through what can be an overwhelming flow of possible security incidents and find which ones need to be checked out.And deciding what data to share, what threat intelligence feeds to subscribe to and what tools are needed to turn potentially valuable information into action takes sizeable resources, experts say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CloudFlare is now PCI 3.1 certified

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The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a global financial information security standard that keeps credit card holders safe. It ensures that any company processing credit card transactions adheres to the highest technical standards.

PCI certification has several levels. Level one (the highest level) is reserved for those companies that handle the greatest numbers of credit cards. Companies at level one PCI compliance are subject to the most stringent checks.

CloudFlare’s mission leads it to provide security for some of the most important companies in the world. This is why CloudFlare chose to be audited as a level one service provider. By adhering to PCI’s rigorous financial security controls, CloudFlare ensures that security is held to the highest standard and that those controls are validated independently by a recognised body.

If you are interested in learning more, see these details about the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

This year’s update from PCI 2.0 to 3.1 was long overdue. PCI DSS 2.0 was issued in October 2010, and the information security threat landscape does not stand still—especially when it comes to industries that deal with financial payments or credit cards. New attacks are almost Continue reading

Apple users having trouble auto-updating QuickTime on Windows 8, 10

A glitch with Apple's QuickTime multimedia program has left some Windows users wondering why they're having trouble updating to the latest version.QuickTime has an auto-update mechanism, but it appears to not work on Windows 8 and 10, wrote Alton Blom, a Sydney-based security researcher, in a blog post.Blom wrote that he found inconsistencies in how QuickTime and Apple's Software Update tool interacted with each other depending on the versions of Windows and QuickTime installed.For example, on Windows 8, QuickTime reported that it was up to date, but Apple's Software Update tool said the application needed to be upgraded to 7.7.8, which is the latest version, Blom wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

UK police arrest third person in TalkTalk breach investigation

UK police arrested a third suspect on Saturday relating to the breach at communications provider TalkTalk, which said the amount of data exposed is less than initially thought.A 20-year-old man was arrested after police executed a search warrant at an address in south Staffordshire, the Metropolitan Police said Sunday.The man, who was not identified, was arrested on suspicion of violations of the Computer Misuse Act and was later bailed.  UK police arrested a 15-year-old boy in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, on Oct. 26, and a 16-year-old boy in Feltham, England, on Thursday. Both boys have been bailed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Snapchat now has the rights to store and share selfies taken via the app

If you still believe your snaps will self-destruct, you might want to review Snapchat’s newest policy changes as the company can now potentially keep your photos forever and share them. Oh, and by using the app, you grant Snapchat the rights to your photos.Users who update their Snapchat app must tap “Accept” to signify agreeing with the app’s newly updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. “Scary stuff,” is what actor Kal Penn, the former White House Associate Director of Public Engagement, called Snapchat’s new privacy and legal policies. Kal Penn Snapchat, which became popular because messages were supposed to go poof after 10 seconds, gave rise to other third-party apps meant to capture and keep the messages. If you recall “The Snappening” in Oct. 2014, the third party app Snapsaved was hacked and selfies that were supposed to self-destruct were instead leaked. But it couldn't be considered a “leak” if users agree to Snapchat’s newly revised privacy policy and terms of service that take the company on a radical shift away from the idea upon which it was founded.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Prez: Rick Perry selling his mailing list

I created separate email accounts to receive email from each of the 25 presidential candidates (and donated money to all them). This allows me to track their behavior -- or misbehavior.

Rick Perry exited the race 50 days ago. Today, I got two emails to my special Perry address. One email was from Ted Cruz, another presidential candidate. The other was from Paul Ryan, the new Speaker of the House.

Here's Ted Cruz's email, sent to my Perry account. It's actually identical to one I received on my Cruz account. (I've hidden the To: address, except for the 'rick' part).


The email headers look like:

Received: from mail3.postup.targetedvictory.com (mail3.postup.targetedvictory.com [69.56.54.35])
 by projectp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1266C26041B
 for ; Fri, 30 Oct 2015 16:28:59 +0000 (UTC)

Rick Perry uses the company "TargetedVictory" for his mass emailings, where Ted Cruz uses another company. This shows that Perry didn't give his address list to Cruz, but instead let Cruz use the address list.

I saved a copy of Perry's privacy policy when I made the donation. It implies that he won't give out my private information to somebody else, but nothing in the Continue reading

Prez: donation numbers

I've given $10 to every candidate to monitor what they do. As I blogged before, just before the quarterly filing deadline, I got emails from all the candidates begging for money, to impress people how much money they've gathered. Well, here are amount each candidate received last quarter:

Hillary29,921,653.91
Bernie26,216,430.38
Carson20,767,266.51
Jeb!13,384,832.06
Cruz12,218,137.71
Walker7,379,170.56
Carly6,791,308.76
Rubio5,724,784.46
Kasisch4,376,787.95
Christie4,208,984.49
Trump3,926,511.65
Rand2,509,251.63
O'Malley1,282,820.92
Huckabee1,241,737.51
Graham1,052,657.62
Lessig1,016,189.22
Webb696,972.18
Jindal579,438.39
Santorum387,985.42
Perry287,199.29
Pataki153,513.89

Of course Hillary and Bernie are at the top, since they are the only two major contenders on the Democrat side, so split the pool between them.

What's interesting is that how Scott Walker exited the race, and Jeb! scaled back his spending, because their donations dropped precipitously. Even though they got huge donations last quarter, they spent the money as fast as they could. Presidential campaigns are like venture capital that way: you spend money aggressively in order to make more money. If you are right, this Continue reading

Tor Messenger: Anonymous instant messaging beta released

Anyone who values their privacy will be aware of Tor, the distributed “onion routing” network that makes it possible to avoid surveillance (though it is thought that even the sophistication of the Tor system may not be enough to avoid NSA scrutiny if they really want to get the login for your Ashley Madison account). While Tor is great for hiding your browsing until now, it hasn’t been able to anonymize instant messaging. That changed yesterday with the beta release of the open source Tor Messenger. Available for Windows, Linux, and OS X the Tor Messenger:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yes, the CNBC moderation was biased

In anger over CNBC's left-wing bias, the Republican party has suspended them from moderating future debates. Is there something to this?

Yes and no. CNBC, like most of the media, has a strong left-wing bias. On the other hand, the Republicans are quick to label legitimate criticism as examples of bias.


There is an easy way to detect improper bias. The principle of journalism is that there are two reasonable sides to any debate. One side may be wrong, of course, but both sides are reasonable. Partisan bias, however, involves arguing that one side in the debate is unreasonable. When the press calls somebody a "comic book clown", then it's bias. Merely saying they are "wrong" is not bias.

That's what happened many times during the CNBC moderated debate of Republican candidates, most egregiously when they called Trump a "comic book" version of a candidate. We all know that Trump is a demagogue, that he appeals to the ignorant masses more than intelligent people. But when you drill down on Trumps ideas, what you'll find is that he's usually merely wrong rather than irrational. For example, a couple months ago, Trump was attacked in the press for saying "the constitution Continue reading
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