Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Make Your Time: Hacking Group Purportedly Hacked NSA-Linked Equation Group, Auctioning Cyber Weapons
August 15th, 2016Real or fake, I couldn’t stop chortling while reading the text. I think I know the author. Via: Computerworld: Quite honestly this could be fake – even the broken English announcement could be faked to make the attackers seem to not use English as their native language – but the Shadow Brokers said on GitHub: […]
In Bungled Spying Operation, NSA Targeted Pro-Democracy Campaigner
August 15th, 2016Via: The Intercept: Tony Fullman is a middle-aged former tax man and a pro-democracy activist. But four years ago, a botched operation launched by New Zealand spies meant he suddenly found himself deemed a potential terrorist — his passport was revoked, his home was raided, and he was placed on a top-secret National Security Agency […]
How CIA’s Palantir Wired Washington
August 14th, 2016Via: Politico: When a little-known Silicon Valley software startup began vying for national security contracts, it went up against an entrenched bureaucracy and opposition from major contractors skilled in the Washington game. But quickly, Palantir began pulling pages from the defense industry’s own playbook — bulking up on lobbyists, challenging the Pentagon’s contracting rules and […]
Nissan: Variable Compression Gasoline Engine
August 14th, 2016Via: Reuters: Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co has come up with a new type of gasoline engine it says may make some of today’s advanced diesel engines obsolete. The new engine uses variable compression technology, which Nissan engineers say allows it at any given moment to choose an optimal compression ratio for combustion – a […]
A New Wireless Hack Can Unlock 100 Million Volkswagens
August 13th, 2016Via: Wired: Later this week at the Usenix security conference in Austin, a team of researchers from the University of Birmingham and the German engineering firm Kasper & Oswald plan to reveal two distinct vulnerabilities they say affect the keyless entry systems of an estimated nearly 100 million cars. One of the attacks would allow […]
EV West Shop Off Grid with DIY Powerwall
August 12th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand. — Guys who refuse to wait. Via: Jehu Garcia: Related: EV West
A Big Leap for an Artificial Leaf *
August 11th, 2016* “Commercializing the technology will likely take years.” Indeed, there are posts about Nocera’s various artificial leaf iterations on Cryptogon going back almost a decade… Via: MIT Technology Review: Daniel Nocera, a professor of energy science at Harvard who pioneered the use of artificial photosynthesis, says that he and his colleague Pamela Silver have devised […]
90-Year-Old Cryptanalytic Efforts Must Stay Secret, Says NSA
August 9th, 2016Via: The National Security Archive: The National Security Agency is withholding 90-year-old information on early American cryptanalytic efforts against Russia and the Soviet Union from a 20-year-old document on the grounds that releasing the information could “reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to national security.” Specifically, the NSA claims that the release […]
Quantum Computers: Chips with Built-In Optics
August 9th, 2016In case you don’t know about Lincoln Lab: The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Via: MIT News: Although quantum systems with as many as 12 qubits have been demonstrated in the lab, […]
Australia’s Insane Decision to Collect Names in Latest Census
August 9th, 2016Via: Salinger Privacy: Although there are certainly heightened privacy and security risks of accidental loss or malicious misuse with storing names and addresses, the deliberate privacy invasion starts with the use of that data to create a Statistical Linkage Key (SLK) for each individual, to use in linking data from other sources. Please don’t believe […]
