Communications - MIT Technology Review

Bitcoin Hits the Big Time, to the Regret of Some Early Boosters

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:30:26 +0000

The first major conference for the digital currency suggests it is gaining legitimacy, but in a manner disappointing to some early enthusiasts.

This past Sunday, Doug Scribner took out five $100 bills and began feeding them into what looked like a small, white ATM in San Jose Conference Center in California. The machine swallowed the bills smartly and credited him with an equivalent value in bitcoins, an intangible, digital currency that is backed by not gold or any government, but by math.

In a Data Deluge, Companies Seek to Fill a New Role

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:05:00 +0000

A job invented in Silicon Valley is going mainstream as more industries try to gain an edge from big data.

The job description “data scientist” didn’t exist five years ago. No one advertised for an expert in data science, and you couldn’t go to school to specialize in the field. Today, companies are fighting to recruit these specialists, courses on how to become one are popping up at many universities, and the Harvard Business Review even proclaimed that data scientist is the “sexiest” job of the 21st century.

What 5G Will Be: Crazy-Fast Wireless Tested in New York City

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Samsung’s technology for ultrafast data speeds currently requires a truckload of equipment.

The world’s biggest cell-phone maker, Samsung, caused a stir last week by announcing an ultrafast wireless technology that it unofficially dubbed “5G.” And the technology has, in fact, been tested on the streets of New York.

Playing the Odds on Tornado Warnings

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:24:39 +0000

Pinpoint predictions are a long way off, but taking daily odds into account might help make the public more alert.

The devastation in Moore, Oklahoma, shows the limits of sensing, modeling, and warning technologies. While some technologies promise somewhat more accurate hurricane tracks and thus sharper evacuation orders (see “A Model for Hurricane Evacuation”), tornado warnings are another story altogether (see “The Limits of Tornado Predictions”).

Clawing From the Wreckage of Nokia Research

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:26:00 +0000

Jolla Mobile, formed by Nokia refugees, launches a phone with interchangable back panels and the Sailfish OS.

Almost one year after Nokia’s bloodletting, in which it cut 10,000 jobs and closed research and manufacturing facilities (see “Nokia Forced to Take Drastic Measures”), we’re starting to see new fruits of the startup culture that rose from the wreckage.

One-Time Pad Reinvented to Make Electronic Copying Impossible

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:21:00 +0000

The ability to copy electronic code makes one-time pads vulnerable to hackers. Now engineers have found a way round this to create a system of cryptography that is invulnerable to electronic attack.

One-time pads are the holy grail of cryptography—they are impossible to crack, even in principle.

SAP Makes Big Data Real– And Real-Time

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:15:00 +0000

The following View from the Marketplace was provided by SAP, the sponsor of our Big Data Gets Personal Business Report.

Aereo's on a Roll

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:58:48 +0000

Aereo CEO says he’s boosted by winning a round in court—and that “lines are very, very long” for his Internet TV offering, despite ABC’s new competing streaming service.

The legal battles are not over for Internet TV startup Aereo. But for now CEO Chet Kanojia, whom I had a chance to interview yesterday, says things couldn’t be better—with “very, very long” lines in markets across the United States for his streaming local TV service that has the broadcast industry in full battle cry.

First Quantum Memory That Records The Shape of a Single Photon Unveiled in China

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:02:26 +0000

The world’s first quantum memory that stores the shape and structure of single photons has been built in a Chinese lab

Treading Carefully, Google Encourages Developers to Hack Glass

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Breaking its own restrictions, Google will show developers how to build any kind of app for Google Glass.

Google has set plenty of restrictions on the functionality of apps for Glass, the head-mounted display it is now shipping out to early adopters. At the company’s annual developer conference, I/O, which kicks off today, it will show app creators how to break those rules.

It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

How will a mass influx of robots affect human employment?

In the book Race Against the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT’s Sloan School of Management present a chart showing U.S. productivity, GDP, employment, and income from 1953 to 2011. The chart looks as you would expect from 1953 until the mid-1980s, with every one of the measures rising together: employees work more productively, companies make more money, and more hires occur as the middle class swells.

China Comes to Silicon Valley at One Startup Accelerator

Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A year after launch, a startup program is helping U.S. companies reach China—and vice versa.

When Jon Bonanno, chief commercial officer of the clean-tech startup Empower Micro Systems, got up to face a small, packed room in Santa Clara, California, last week, it wasn’t like the polished “demo days” run by the highest-profile Silicon Valley startup accelerators. There was no stage, not even a screen for the projector. The sound system buzzed with painful feedback. The 100 or so guests stood or sat in folding chairs under bright fluorescent lights in a space adjoining a large startup workplace that contained a distinct no-no of Silicon Valley office culture: cubicles.

How to Mine Cell-Phone Data Without Invading Your Privacy

Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Researchers use phone records to build a mobility model of the Los Angeles and New York City regions with new privacy guarantees.

Researchers at AT&T, Rutgers University, Princeton, and Loyola University have devised a way to mine cell-phone data without revealing your identity, potentially showing a route to avoiding privacy pitfalls that have so far confined global cell-phone data-mining work to research labs.

New Kind of LED Could Mean Better Google-Glass-Like Displays

Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Micro-display LED tech could light up the next generation of face-wearable gadgets.

A tiny head-mounted display, like the one in Google Glass, will only be useful if you can see on-screen alerts and information clearly. And that’s tricky to achieve, especially without draining battery life—as Google notes, it can be hard to use Glass’s projected display in bright sunlight.

Researchers Create "Hate Map" of the U.S. With Twitter Data

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:13:16 +0000

The same researchers previously mapped racist Tweets about President Obama. In both cases there’s reason to be a little skeptical.

Facebook's Latest Data Science Insight

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:55:28 +0000

In new study, Facebook’s science team says the company killed automatic sharing on “Offers” because the science said active sharing works better.

Memoto Camera Logs Your Life

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A clip-on camera that snaps a picture every 30 seconds.

Facebook Reacts to Criticisms of “Home” App; Promises Upgrades

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:24:00 +0000

A month after the release of Home, Facebook is working to answer criticisms with improvements.

Facebook Home—an app for Android smartphones that provides users with a constant stream of images, messages, and updates from friends on the social network—launched with fanfare a month ago along with the promise that additional features would be added shortly (see “The Facebook Phone Is Finally Here, but Who Wants It?”). Now, as some users level poor reviews at the app, the team behind it is focused on making those upgrades happen—and fast.

Glimpses of a World Revealed by Cell-Phone Data

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:35:00 +0000

An examination of simple cell-phone records reveals maps of poverty levels, ethnic divides, and the movements of sports fans.

Around the world, some mobile carriers have been releasing anonymized records of cell-phone data to researchers.

Honeypots Lure Industrial Hackers Into the Open

Wed, 08 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Dummy water-plant control systems rapidly attracted attention from hackers who tinkered with their settings—suggesting it happens to real industrial systems, too.

Just 18 hours after security researcher Kyle Wilhoit connected two dummy industrial control systems and one real one to the Internet, someone began attacking one of them, and things soon got worse. Over the course of the experiment, conducted during December 2012, a series of sophisticated attacks were mounted on the “honeypots,” which Wilhoit set up to find out how often malicious hackers target industrial infrastructure.

How to Avoid Another Flash Crash

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:57:29 +0000

A clever new approach could help monitor an incredibly complicated, increasingly automated system that thrives on secrecy.

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the 2010 Flash Crash, when the U.S. stock market lost 1,000 points in a matter of minutes before recovering most of these losses a few minutes later.

Government Lab Reveals Quantum Internet Operated Continuously for Over Two Years

Mon, 06 May 2013 06:11:41 +0000

A quantum internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages has been running at Los Alamos National Labs for the last two and a half years, say researchers

One of the dreams for security experts is the creation of a quantum internet that allows perfectly secure communication based on the powerful laws of quantum mechanics.

Broadcast Video Will Soon Be Packed into Smartphone Signals

Mon, 06 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Putting broadcast signals within LTE mobile network technology could open up bandwidth and disrupt business models.

If you want to watch video on your phone or tablet, you’ll find that many networks can’t always serve up the data fast enough. So your choices are either to find a Wi-Fi hotspot, take your chances on congestion and high data charges on a cellular network, or plug in a special dongle that picks up TV broadcasts (see “Broadcast TV Aims for Your Smartphone”).

This Box Keeps Information Flowing During a Crisis

Sun, 05 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The creators of Ushahidi, a crisis mapping platform, have developed hardware that keeps wireless communication going in the midst of chaos.

The people behind Ushahidi, a software platform for communicating information during a crisis, have now developed what they are dubbing a “backup generator for the Internet”—a device that can connect with any network in the world, provide eight hours of wireless connectivity battery life, and can be programmed for new applications, such as remote sensing.

How Today’s Sensors Could Make Tomorrow’s Cars Safer

Fri, 03 May 2013 21:30:00 +0000

Sensors in cars today could do more to reduce traffic accidents, and costs are coming down.

Driverless cars haven’t hit the roads yet, but computers are already helping to slow down or stop a car in situations when a crash is imminent. Still, just like people, these systems require time to react. Using sensor technology already in its vehicles today, Toyota is aiming to reduce the impact of accidents happening at faster speeds.

Twitter Tests a Toolkit That Puts the Internet in Things

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:58:00 +0000

Platforms that combine networking with user interfaces will help companies test post-PC ideas.

Why should only computers, smartphones, and tablets be able to send a tweet? In the hopes of challenging this idea, Twitter recently developed a whimsical tweet-enabled cuckoo clock. It uses a toolkit that could help other designers and engineers test ways for new products to contribute to, and feed on, the social network’s chatter. Twitter created the clock, called #Flock, last month in partnership with London-based technology consultancy Berg; the clock responds to incoming tweets, @-messages, and retweets by animating small wooden puppets.

Apps for Finding New Tunes, with a Little Help from Your Friends

Wed, 01 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Twitter #music, EQuala, and Piki help you share and discover new music with friends, but they’re not all winners.

I’ve been stuck in a music rut for a long time, listening to the same bands and songs over and over without adding many newcomers to the mix. It’s not that I don’t want new tunes; I’m just bad at discovering them.

African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The largest-ever release of mobile-phone data yields a model for fixing bus routes.

Researchers at IBM, using movement data collected from millions of cell-phone users in Ivory Coast in West Africa, have developed a new model for optimizing an urban transportation system.

Social Media Censorship Offers Clues to China’s Plans

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:00:00 +0000

What gets removed from China’s social networks shows how censorship strategies are advancing, and can even hint at the government’s plans.

In February last year, political scandal rocked China when the fast-rising politician Bo Xilai suddenly demoted his top lieutenant, who then accused his boss of murder, triggering Bo’s political downfall.

The Incompleteness of the Harm Principle

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:10:00 +0000

A response to Jason Pontin’s essay on free speech by the author of Principles for a Free Society.

Jason Pontin has written a perceptive analysis of a timeless question: what changes in law need to be adopted in order to account for technological advances (see “Free Speech in the Era of Its Technological Amplification”)? In answering that question, he takes the right approach by taking up John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which at its core makes this claim:

A New Computer Screen Reaches Out to Touch You

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:29:34 +0000

An experimental new touch screen, the Obake, has a stretchable surface that to reacts user interaction in new ways.

An inexpensive new prototype device called the Obake adds a new dimension to touch screen technology. The surface of the device, developed by Dhairya Dand and Rob Hemsley of the MIT Media Lab, can react to how it’s being used by reaching out toward the user. It was relatively simple to make: the researchers used an open source software framework to enable the screen to react; the hardware costs between $50 and $60, Dand says.

Overview of Electronic Mail Protection Systems

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:33:00 +0000

Everyone who uses e-mail sometimes wonders how well the transmitted information is protected from prying eyes. Indeed, a message to be transferred travels a long way between different computers and mobile devices before it reaches a recipient; the intentions of these devices’ owners are unknown. Besides, each device in the chain can run malware that stores transmitted messages. Another problem is that a mail recipient may not always use the information received in the way it is meant to be used.

Google Fiber’s Ripple Effect

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The threat of superfast Google Fiber is causing other Internet providers to crank up their own offerings.

As Google plans to expand its ultrafast Internet service from a fledging effort in Kansas City to Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah, evidence is emerging that the company has forced broadband competitors into offering dramatically better service.

Google Trends Could Predict Stock Market Moves, Study Shows

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:13:52 +0000

A paper found that trading based on search query volumes for the term “debt” could yield large returns.

This week’s fleeting stock market crash prompted by a false report from the Associated Press’s hacked Twitter account has focused attention again on the growing Wall Street practice of mining news and social data to make trades.

A Simple Way to Turn Any LCD into a Touch Screen

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:52:00 +0000

Electromagnetic interference can turn a plain LCD into a touch screen on the cheap.

Electromagnetic interference can screw up cell phone and radio reception. But it may also be the key to cheaply transforming regular LCD screens into touch- and gesture-sensing displays, according to recent research.

More Reasons to Clean Up Tweets

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:44:57 +0000

Stock plunge another reminder of social media’s power – and the need for fact-checking

Yesterday saw the most extreme example possible of why rapid crowdsourced corrections of Tweets and other social media (see “Preventing Misinformation From Spreading Through Social Media”) are critically needed– an issue that came to the fore last week as misinformation spread about the Boston bombings.

Preventing Misinformation from Spreading through Social Media

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:22:09 +0000

New platforms for fact-checking and reputation scoring aim to better channel social media’s power in the wake of a disaster.

The online crowds weren’t always wise following the Boston Marathon bombings. For example, the online community Reddit and some Twitter users were criticized for pillorying an innocent student as a possible terrorist suspect. But some emerging technologies might be able to help knock down false reports and wring the truth from the fog of social media during crises.

"12 Hours of Separation" Connect Individuals on Social Networks

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:18:49 +0000

Social networks can be used to track random individuals in just 12 hours provided the right incentives are on offer, say computer scientists.

Introduction to the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2013