Digit_al Society

"Big data is the advance in data management technology, which allows for an increase in the scale and manipulation of a company's data. It allows companies to know more about their customers, products and their own infrastructure. More recently, people have become increasingly focused on the monetization of that data."

"The concept of robotic fabric is that of a soft exoskeleton or muscle tissue made out of electronic sensors and shape-memory alloys, all woven and configured into a cotton material. The end result is a sort of "skin" that can be placed around deformable materials that give the "robot" its shape."

"Ransomware has been in the news repeatedly over the past few years. This is the insidious malware that will lock your data or device (smartphone or PC) and displays a screen-wide message that demands money from you to release it, which it does by sending you an unlock code."

"But Computercop isn't security software -- quite the opposite; it's classic malware. The software, made in New York by a company that markets to law enforcement, is a badly designed keylogger that stores thingstyped into the keyboard -- potentially everything typed on the family PC -- passwords, sensitive communications, banking logins, and more, all stored on the hard drive, either in the clear, or with weak, easily broken encryption. And Computercop users are encouraged to configure the software to email dumps from the keylogger to their accounts (to spy on their children's activity), so that all those keystrokes are vulnerable to interception by anyone between your computer and your email server. "

"Given the government's obsession with passing cybersecurity legislation, you would think they'd be happy that Apple and Google are making it harder for foreign governments and criminals to break into people's phones or company servers to steal your data. But you'd be forgetting that the head of the FBI and his fellow fear-mongerers are still much more concerned with making sure they retain control over your privacy, rather than protecting everyone's cybersecurity."

"Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox, an open-source web browser, wants Ousmane's customers to have the option of a device that speaks their language. Smartphones with its operating system (OS) are already on sale in 24 countries, including Bangladesh, India and Mexico, for as little as $33. Other countries will be added as it makes more deals with handset manufacturers. And Bambara is one of dozens of languages into which volunteer "localisers" are translating the OS."

"When people connected to the hotspot, the terms and conditions they were asked to sign up to included a "Herod clause" promising free Wi-Fi but only if "the recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity". Six people signed up. F-Secure, the security firm that sponsored the experiment, has confirmed that it won't be enforcing the clause."

"One prototype system that Wood has helped developed, called Second Skin, can be worn by patients with neuromuscular disorders to stimulate nerve activity and advance rehabilitation. He says that soft- and micro-robotic devices may one day be used inside the body to aid minimally invasive medical procedures."

"Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability in the system software used in millions of computers, opening the possibility that attackers could execute arbitrary commands on web servers, other Linux-based machines and even Mac computers."

"…in about ten years or so, we will see the collapse of Moore's Law. In fact, already, we see a slowing down of Moore's Law. Computer power simply cannot maintain its rapid exponential rise using standard silicon technology. - Dr. Michio Kaku - 2012"

"Three months passed. Then, on Wednesday, anonymous government officials reportedly confirmed that a local company called Systems Engineering of Egypt (SEE or See Egypt) had won the bid to develop the system, which would allegedly allow the Egyptian government to sniff and analyze Internet and social media activity, as well as intercept Skype, WhatsApp and Viber conversations. "

"Schools in the UK have experimented with fingerprinting pupils then using that data for tasks including library books and lunch payments. However, the European Commission has questioned the practice, including whether schools can make it compulsory and whether parents can challenge it in court."

"Machine learning is what's taking place with our personal data while we're passive players in the process. "

"The transparency report is in its third year, but it hasn't prevented attacks from advocates such as Edward Snowden, who called the company "hostile to privacy". "Dropbox is a targeted you know wannabe PRISM partner," he told the Guardian in July 2014. "They just put … Condoleezza Rice on their board … who is probably the most anti-privacy official you can imagine.""

"Could we soon send emails 'telepathically'? Scientist transmits message into the mind of a colleague 5,000 miles away using brain waves"

"The two titans leading the pack are Google and Microsoft. The first battle? A new domain in artificial intelligence called "Deep Learning.""

"The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said the penalty was related to the loss of a hard drive containing the details of almost 3,000 prisoners at Erlestoke prison in Wiltshire. The disk was not encrypted."

"iTunes phishing scams Compromised phones or computers Celebrity passwords/emails as part of a larger password dump (such as the Adobe hack) Mobile-phone or computer-repair individuals abusing access Password reset questions guess Brute force"

"Twitter claims a 90 percent accuracy rate for the clever techniques it uses to learn the gender of any given user. Glenn Fleishman reports on a the company's disconcerting new analytics tools, the research behind them, and how large a pinch of salt they come with."

"But what about evolution through 'unnatural selection', as National Geographic puts it. It seems that our natural, biological evolution simply cannot keep pace with the dizzying array of human enhancing technologies that emerged, and have shaped how we think, and our physical capacities."