Category Archives: Technology
Do Not Track / DNT with google Chrome
Finally Google has included support for the Do Not Track. For those who do not know; it’s a privacy setting which aims to help users opt out from being tracked across web sites. This has been introduced in its latest Chrome developer build, which was released on SEPTEMBER 13, 2012. I am not sure when it will be available as a part of standard release (which means you can start using it).
read more on how to see who is tracking you?
Firefox 4, Internet Explorer 9, and Safari 5.1 all support Do Not Track. Microsoft is promising from IE 10 it will enable this DNT by default.
Do Not Track — which aims to help users opt out of being tracked across Web sites for the purposes of targeted advertising — is contentious and still somewhat theoretical. But since Chrome is close to becoming the world’s most-used browser, if it’s not already, its support for DNT is pretty important.
Having said all that it’s not clear what sites and advertisers have to do in response to DNT being turned on.
thanks to Unhindered by Talent’s
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicmcphee/people/25771870@N00/
The advertisers need to figure out how they plan to play DNT. After all advertisers are “just trying to learn about you so they can target ads”. However the same information can be used for anything, and may be they are being used.
The users probably won’t have a choice or a say for now
“If you are not paying for something, you are not the customer, you are the product being sold. “
-Andrew Lewis
Source: allthingsd.com GizmodoKim Dotcom Sings, creating history!
He is out and kicking and making some noise which sounds kinda cool, see it yourself.
War is not over yet, looks like he is ready for a fight too.
I was never a big fan of online file vaults/cyberlockers. I like torrent better, but then looks like very body else like to have a cloud vault and share it with friends. Services like dropbox are use full. However I surely would like to see him come out of these cheers to kim.com
My earlier blog on megaupload shutdown
Tag: Mr. President, kim doctom sings, medaupload, kim.com, technology, SOPA, PIPA
5 fascinating cars of the future and the “Kid”
Starting my life in late 70s I was grew up watching TV series like knight rider. The kid from Knight rider was “the car of the future” and I guess it will always be like that. The car that can talk! Can drive by its self, Jump (fly!!) and go through anything, almost indestructible. Yet none of the future car promises nothing like that 
…..The blog on ted 5 fascinating cars of the future reminds me how fantastic the future car from past used to be.
Knight rider http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083437/
Knight rider http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083437/
It’s 2012. we are yet to see our fair share of flying cars. Some promised car are on there way in!
issan’s PIVO 2 commuter car
P1, the car that can’t spin out
GM’s Electric Networked-Vehicle
Google’s self-driving car
Shelley, the autonomous race car
In a new TEDTalk, Chris Gerdes of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (awesomely abbreviated as CARS) explains that he and his team are busy at work developing the motor vehicles of the future. One of their starting points? Studying the brainwaves of the best motorists in the world — professional race car drivers. The idea is to combine computer technology with human intuition and skill behind the wheel.
In honor of Gerdes’ work, here is a look at five cars we may be seeing a lot more of in the future. Sure, they don’t fly. But, hey, many allow you to sit back and enjoy the ride without having to do a thing.
And to all Knight rider fans! the following Video will bring back some of your old memories!! The dreams of future perfect world!!
Ouya! The next XBOX
As I write this blog I see them in kickstarter, 29 days to go and already got over 500k USD over of their target. That is fast!
Build to have Android running on it makes the possibilities limitless. Games, apps, streaming or just watch tv… and open hack able platform shall probably give birth to some other GPL linux based platform for the end users. While projects like raspberry pi gives you a board for 25$, Ouya plans to give you a fully functional slick box to play with.
Specifications of Ouya
- Tegra3 quad-core processor
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB of internal flash storage
- HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD
- WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth LE 4.0
- USB 2.0 (one)
- Wireless controller with standard controls (two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button), a touchpad
- Android 4.0
This new console will be so open, that its backers are expecting and asking for it to be hacked.
“We decided, ‘let’s take this as far as it can go,” Uhrman said. “So if you want to go in and hack the box, go ahead and do it. We hope you do it.”
In a follow-up e-mail, she was more specific about just how far under the hood the Ouya crew would let a hacker go: “The circuit board will have well-documented test points. People can swap out chips, add, etc. We may even publish the hardware design if enough people are curious. Because Ouya will also have Bluetooth and a USB, hardware hobbyists can also make their own peripherals (someone already suggested pinball controls to us). Regarding the software, you’ll be able to root the device easily. It won’t void your warranty. Every unit has a debug console. We are even working on the idea of a “plant”—which will restore your profile after rooting your device (reverse your root). Because it’s built on Android, you’ll understand the source code well, too. (Obviously if a hacker roots the device, our integrated user experience and game store will no longer be available while the device is rooted — so there is, as always, a tradeoff between customizing your device and enjoying the benefits of standardization. We expect the true hackers to be an elite, but small proportion of the total number of people who buy the box. Most people will probably just use the standard setup.)”
I think this is as close as we go to open source hardware from a commercial hardware vendor. Opening up a new hardware platform in this way bring an enormous opportunity for open source software development in home multimedia platform. This could be the next big thing after IBM PC or android for home multimedia, gaming, automation and many more.
Tag: Ouya, ouya controller, open source software, open source hardware, open source, xbox
Reference:
Open Source Hardware! Build your own design you can touch and interact
Open source software was born when software started to become expensive. All you needed was hardware and a complier and a group of people who was willing to share their work for free to the world provided code stays free in its re-distribution. We have come a long way since that first day. Today we all are using open source in some way or others and some using it more than the others.
Interaction with logic using just software and a computer limits our ability to interact and automate within visible 3D graphic and sound. Occasionally the software can recognize your voice and respond.
The birth and mass production of 3D printers changes a lot. It gives us the ability to share and re-produce and build on Open Source Hardware.
This recent ted talk from Arduino shows how much progress we have made in hardware and design innovation using Open Source hardware. This makes me ask why, should Sony or apple lead all design innovation? There is so much we would like to have but just have to wait for the big guys to think it is feasible and can bring billion dollars before they makes a move on it.
Chinese has shown you can just copy hardware and rule the world. We software users have been working so long for software integration and automation. Imagine how much we can accomplish with hardware and design innovation. The next great innovation could be a design innovation with Open Source Hardware.
I am interested in seeing what comes out of open source hardware like Robotics and Renewable energy projects
Massimo Banzi: How Arduino is open-sourcing imagination
Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization
Source: bog.ted.com ted global 2012
Open-sourcing the blueprints of civilization: Marcin Jakubowski on TED.com
They sell your privacy! We don’t know who they are!
Reading a blog on Acxiom Corporation making billion dollar of sales having over 1,500 data points on half a billion people makes me think what future does a privacy free internet hold for us. On one side we want to see internet to be freed from government regulation, on the other hand we as a community doing a very little on protecting individual privacy.
Image from Fotolia
I have always been annoyed receiving tele-marketing calls at all odd times of the day for the things I am rarely interested in. There is also a great deal of emails (used to be called junk) gets delivered in my mail box instead of junk box, which are somewhat targeted and related to something I might be interested in. I have spent a lot of time in earlier my life doing mail server administration. Seeing these emails makes me think that how far we have come after we started fighting SPAM. Now first they want to know everything about you.
I am no high valued customer but I always get this feeling that people targeting me has a fair deal of idea on who I am, what I do, what I am looking for. I understand sharing and publishing my information online/offline has made me a part of many marketing database. In these case I would like to refer to this known quote “if you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold” but then the question is how many times they would sell my information complete or incomplete, right or wrong to how many people? Is there a limit on how many time can I be targeted of my information can be sold?
I know many countries has a national DND data base, if you register you and still receive unwanted call you can take some action against them, but I don’t know of any authority which can protect me against my information being traded in an open/private market.
I surely would like to see a community to guideline for such activity where user rights more importantly human rights to comes first
Read more on what you can do to protect yourself from being targeted by random information collectors
Do not track IE, firefox, chrome? Who is on your side?
Who is tracking you online? The BIG Brothers? So many of them?
Inspired by
You for Sale: Mapping, and Sharing, the Consumer Genome
“Right now in Conway, Ark., north of Little Rock, more than 23,000 computer servers are collecting, collating and analyzing consumer data for a company that, unlike Silicon Valley’s marquee names, rarely makes headlines. It’s called the Acxiom Corporation, and it’s the quiet giant of a multibillion-dollar industry known as database marketing.”
The Faceless Organization That Knows Everything About You
“We all know such organizations exist, of course, by Acxiom operates on a terrifying scale. The Times reports that Acxiom’s servers process more than 50 trillion data transactions a year. Its database, apparently, contains information about 500 million consumer worldwide—including the majority of US adults— and on average holds 1,500 data points for each of them.”
Tag: Privacy, data, security, information, internet, Acxiom Corporation, protection, tele marketing, spam
Body powered fuel cell to run a chip on your Brain
In the meantime at MIT researchers are testing out a fuel cell that runs on blood sugar (glucose). The fuel cell is fused with a silicon chip. This chip is for your brain. This can eventually be a part of integrated circuits.
Glucose fuel cell idea comes from the 1970s, originally proposed to power the heart pacemaker, an idea never saw the day light as lost to the lithium-ion batteries.
In this fuel cell a platinum catalyst embedded in the chip strips electrons from glucose, mimicking the activity of cellular enzymes. Platinum has a proven record of long-term biocompatibility within the body. The fuel cell can generate up to hundreds of microwatts which is enough to power an ultra-low-power and clinically useful neural implant.
In a matter of years, the technology could be used to power neural implants in the brains of patients with spinal cord injuries. The immediate goal is to help them regain control of limbs which, due to their injuries, they are no longer able to control.
The potentials are enormous can be used as input-output device to interact with the technology world. A step closer to be cyborgs!
related article
http://tektab.com/2012/05/23/the-future-of-computer-human-interface-braingate/
Reference
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120613133150.htm
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/bodys-own-sugar-could-power-neural-implants
tag: fuel cell, blood sugar, glucose, silicon chip, brain implant, cyborg, MIT, power, spinal cord injuries, brain patients
How Safe is your password?
Managing and securing password has been one of the biggest challenges. Password leaks news on such a short span of time on linkedin, eHarmony, last.fm makes me think that, these events are gradually getting more widespread.
According to Wikipedia: A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used for authentication, to prove identity or gain access to a resource (example: an access code is a type of password). The password should be kept secret from those not allowed access.
There are always two parties who maintain the password, the user and the service provider. User should remember the password and not share with anyone and the service provider should all everything possible to make sure it is not exposed to any third party.
What we are seeing these days that the service providers are failing to secure their password storage and hackers are being able to extract it.
What is a password hack?
When someone gains access to the password database by exploiting the system or the process, if not in plain text! they will try to crack it
When someone gets to know your password, you may be targets for your data, access. The motive can vary. Many times hackers just do it to show off their ability and insult the service providers, which of course get big news coverage. In these cases most of the time you have a little to worry about. On the other times they will do targeted hack, can stay unnoticed for long or never be discovered.
What can i do to feel a little more safe with my password?
Avoid using week password, try not to use same password for all your services or even by changing a character or two.
Try using OAuth instead of creating account with each provider when supported.
Avoid using services that do not support authentication over SSL
Ask your provider how they store your password and secure your data
And the last one, this one has a very little to do with the service provider; ensure you always use a secured terminal to login. Not compromised, and protected by antivirus etc etc.
Do not track IE, firefox, chrome? Who is on your side?
Do-Not-track
After learning all about Collusion plug-in for firefox, few months back, looking at the images of network of tracker, it was always in the back of my mind while browsing how online advertising companies always trying to predict “what I am looking for” by putting on all these sponsored adds, which most of the time very annoying as they probably have a very little clue. However what concerns me the most is that they record and distribute my browsing history for indefinite time, which I don’t like at all.
Collusion Firefox Add-in
