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""MY, WHAT a big mouth you have, Grandma," says Little Red Riding Hood, with just a hint of suspicion. The wolf sneezes. "Bless you," says the little girl. Sound odd? That's because this snippet of Little Red Riding Hood was written not by a person but by a piece of software called Xapagy. It may not seem like much, but it demonstrates a first step towards computers that can invent stories. It also signals a new approach to designing a more human-like artificial intelligence."

"A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an "encoder" rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli. While the encoder rat performed the task, samples of its cortical activity were transmitted to matching cortical areas of a "decoder" rat using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). The decoder rat learned to make similar behavioral selections, guided solely by the information provided by the encoder rat's brain. These results demonstrated that a complex system was formed by coupling the animals' brains, suggesting that BTBIs can enable dyads or networks of animal's brains to exchange, process, and store information and, hence, serve as the basis for studies of novel types of social interaction and for biological computing devices."

"The global pattern of e-mail communication reflects the cultural fault lines thought to determine future conflict, say computational social scientists."

"In recent years, researchers in the messy world of biology have been able to build systems that function like the clean, binary switches on computer chips-and we've covered a number of reports in this area. Unfortunately, most of these share a significant limitation: they rely on proteins from bacteria that act as switches to turn genes on and off under specific conditions. We know about only a limited number of these genetic switches, which may set a severe limit on the number of logical operations we can string together inside a cell."

Archaeologists may not need to get their hands so dirty any more, thanks to the kind of digital technology being pioneered at Southampton University. Its 'µ-VIS Centre for Computed Tomography' possesses the largest, high energy scanner of its kind in Europe: a 'micro-CT' machine manufactured by Nikon. Capable of resolutions better than 0.1mm - the diameter of a human hair - it allows archaeologists to carefully examine material while still encased in soil. Using visualisation software, archaeologists can then analyse their finds in 3D. This keeps the material in its original form, and postpones any commitment to the painstaking process of excavation by hand.

This is a guest post by David Hales, a fellow associate of the new complexity think-tank, Synthesis. David specialises in computational social science and here he provides a thought-provoking response to the rise in big data, and some of the more outlandish claims made about it. For a good example of the latter, see Chris Anderson's piece 'The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete'. He makes some really relevant points for development big data initiatives.

Android applications downloaded by as many as 185 million users can expose end users' online banking and social networking credentials, e-mail and instant-messaging contents because the programs use inadequate encryption protections, computer scientists have found. The researchers identified 41 applications in Google's Play Market that leaked sensitive data as it traveled between handsets running the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android and webservers for banks and other online services. By connecting the devices to a local area network that used a variety of well-known exploits, some of them available online, the scientists were able to defeat the secure sockets layer and transport layer security protocols implemented by the apps. Their research paper didn't identify the programs, except to say they have been downloaded from 39.5 million and 185 million times, based on Google statistics.

In our most recent Scientific Reports paper, we show how the visual pattern recognition ability of humans combined with the high processing speed of computers leads to a visual analytics method for discovering groups of nodes characterized by common network properties.

FOR the past decade or so, generals commanding the world's most advanced armies have been able to rely on accurate forecasts of the outcomes of conventional battles. Given data on weather and terrain, and the combatants' numbers, weaponry, positions, training and level of morale, computer programs such as the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model, designed by the Dupuy Institute in Washington, DC, can predict who will win, how quickly and with how many casualties.

Why Facebook Is Never Safe By Adam Brereton Tags: wikileaks tor the internet technology jacob appelbaum anonymous adam brereton Want to know what a hacker, developer, activist and former Wikileaks wonk thinks about Facebook, the internet, and the future of computing? Read Adam Brereton's interview with Jacob Appelbaum

It's not just about Big Data. For the big players in enterprise technology algorithms, it's about finding big patterns beyond the data itself. The explosion of online life and cheap computer hardware have made it possible to store immense amounts of unstructured information, like e-mails or Internet clickstreams, then search the stored information to find some trend that can be exploited. The real trick is to do this cost-effectively. Companies doing this at a large scale look for similarities between one field and another, hoping for a common means of analysis.

I decided to make a side table for my desk so that I wouldn't have so much clutter around me and so that I had a side table that was exactly the right height and size for what I needed. The desk will hold the UPS on one side and the PC on the other, that will clean up 2 of the 3 major things around my desk (the last one being a subwoofer, but thats another project...). This is the desk it will be going next to and this is why it is such an odd shape.

Although there is an urban legend that the world will end this year based on a misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar, some researchers think a 40-year-old computer program that predicts a collapse of socioeconomic order and massive drop in human population in this century may be on target

Results from FIA Aalborg: The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most important fundaments for the smart cities, and is becoming slowly but steadily one of the core elements of the Future Internet (FI). In fact, various architectures and approaches from Future Internet such as Cloud Computing (Software as a Service - SaaS), which are being linked with the Web of Things, which is also allowing to define Sensors as a Service (SaaS) are clear examples of this relation between Future Internet and IoT architectures. At this particular point, where the IoT is a reality, where several IoT-based high scale deployments are being carried out such as Rome, and Santander. It is essential to discuss what are the IoT-specific aspects that the FI architecture has to take into account, in order to efficiently map the IoT architectures into an overall FI architecture, and particularly, how to manage rights of the individual (i.e. privacy) and its interaction with IoT objects taking into account aspects like delegation, access control as key aspects in the inclusion of the Internet of Things in the common lives with its total inclusion in the city of the future.

Sergei Skorobogatov, a postdoc in the Security Group at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge has written up claims that reprogammable microchips from China contained secret back-doors that can be used to covertly insert code:

The last time we ran into Ben Heck, the tinkerer extraordinaire was waxing poetic at Maker Faire about the Raspberry Pi and cheese curds. One more thing he also talked about, however, was his latest 3D printer project, which he now explains in greater detail in the latest episode of the Ben Heck Show. Improvements made to the device include use of a Birdstruder for easier access to the filament and the ability to print off an SD card if you don't have a computer handy. The 3D printer also sports an expanded 200-square-millimeter print area with a solid copper cover for added sturdiness and accuracy. As usual, size matters for Mr. Heckendorn so the device got a boost in portability, now neatly folding James Bond-like into a briefcase that measures 18 x 14 x 4.2 inches. Interested in a briefcase printer of your own? Well, Heckendorn mentioned during the Maker Faire interview that he's already working on an improved version and thinking about putting it up on Kickstarter so hope springs eternal. In the meantime, you can glean more details about the device by checking out the video after the break.

PopFab is a multi-tool for the 21st century. At its heart is a computer-controlled motion platform and a means of attaching various toolheads. These enable PopFab to make objects from a digital plan in a variety of ways: current capabilities include 3D printing (as you are about to see), milling, vinyl cutting, and drawing - with more on the way. PopFab has traveled the world as a carry-on item of luggage to Saudi Arabia and Germany, and within the USA to Aspen in Colorado. We hope that this is only the beginning.

You can dock just about any of those old drives into this simple device. Stick a USB transfer cable into one end along with the power-cable, and in one of the other ends, you can connect a 3.5" IDE hard drive, or a laptop 2.5" IDE drive, or even a miniscule 1.8" IDE hard drive! But, why stop there? You can connect a SATA drive, too! How about an optical disk drive? We've got it covered. Blu-Ray, DVD, CD, writeable, rewriteable... it doesn't matter! We're drive agnostic with our USB to SATA/IDE Combo Kit. Now your old drives have a brand new life. Or, if you're the handy type, you can keep this one device handy to recover data from a drive in a dead computer. You won't have to haul several different devices - just this one! Features Connect USB 2.0 ports to any IDE or SATA drive: 3.5" IDE 2.5" laptop IDE 1.8" micro IDE 3.5" SATA 2.5" SATA Optical drive that supports standard IDE or SATA connectors* AC Input: 100-240v/50-60hz DC output: 5v/12v Supports Windows (98se and up) or Mac OS (8.6 and up) Includes power supply, molex y-splitter, USB cable and drive dock * Some "slim-line" optical drives use a modified SATA connector that won't fit. Your mileage may vary.

Proposed Q&A site for operators of 3D printers, heads of hacker spaces, hardware hackers, service bureau owners, MakerBot tinkerers, product entrepreneurs, MAKE magazine subscribers, and all others who want to make physical things with computers.

While smartphones are awesome little computers, one of the things that really makes them useful is their built-in sensors - many apps are made possible via a phone's accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS, microphone, camera, or some combination of the bunch. The thing is, though, all of those sensors are stuck in the smartphone. What if you want to use your phone to monitor another device? Well, that's where NODE comes in. The proposed gadget could be placed on or near a device, and would wirelessly relay data from multiple onboard sensors, via Bluetooth.