Computing | Software and Hardware

[Typhoon]

Quanta Mag | Perfecting the Art of Sensible Nonsense

A new cryptographic scheme obfuscates computer programs by transforming them into something akin to a jigsaw puzzle in which random elements make each individual piece look meaningless.

[Typhoon]

Suggest downloading and installing the most recent Adobe Flash release, clearing the cache, and/or upgrading your browser.

[Doc]

Suggest downloading and installing the most recent Adobe Flash release, clearing the cache, and/or upgrading your browser.

I have done that several time CS. I was hit with a massive malware attack recently. 49 Trojans, plus, found on this machine by one anti-virus program. At one point the mouse pointer crossed the screen and opened up my email app. Used a second to be sure and got a warning from the firewall on start up that the second anti-spyware program was being prevented from deleting a program. I deleted it from the registry manually. But still not sure if the machine is clean. Since as I said I have reinstalled and have the latest versions and am having problems with flash. I think it still has a malware problem. Thanks

[Typhoon]

Suggest downloading and installing the most recent Adobe Flash release, clearing the cache, and/or upgrading your browser.

I have done that several time CS. I was hit with a massive malware attack recently. 49 Trojans, plus, found on this machine by one anti-virus program. At one point the mouse pointer crossed the screen and opened up my email app. Used a second to be sure and got a warning from the firewall on start up that the second anti-spyware program was being prevented from deleting a program. I deleted it from the registry manually. But still not sure if the machine is clean. Since as I said I have reinstalled and have the latest versions and am having problems with flash. I think it still has a malware problem. Thanks

At this point, sounds like a full disk format is in order, followed by installing anti-virus software first.

Trend Micro is popular in Japan, however, I prefer to use Kaspersky.

[Doc]

Suggest downloading and installing the most recent Adobe Flash release, clearing the cache, and/or upgrading your browser.

I have done that several time CS. I was hit with a massive malware attack recently. 49 Trojans, plus, found on this machine by one anti-virus program. At one point the mouse pointer crossed the screen and opened up my email app. Used a second to be sure and got a warning from the firewall on start up that the second anti-spyware program was being prevented from deleting a program. I deleted it from the registry manually. But still not sure if the machine is clean. Since as I said I have reinstalled and have the latest versions and am having problems with flash. I think it still has a malware problem. Thanks

At this point, sounds like a full disk format is in order, followed by installing anti-virus software first.

Trend Micro is popular in Japan, however, I prefer to use Kaspersky.

I am now using Nod32, Spybot search and destroy, Malwarebytes and Zonealarm firewall. IN my experience NOD32 (By Eset) and Malwarebytes (I am now paying for both) are the best anti-virus. Spybot search and destroy is good at catching much of what the first two do not. Honestly I think that the malware came from an update of AVG from a fake download site. So beware where you down load. In any event AVG found no infections at all. Plus trying to uninstall it completely seems to be impossible. The only reason I knew something was amiss originally is because Zone alarm firewall started giving me lots of connection alerts.

[Doc]

Update

I think I finished cleaning this computer. Seems like it is running pretty good now. Now where's the emoticon for crossing ones fingers...

[Typhoon]

Update

I think I finished cleaning this computer. Seems like it is running pretty good now. Now where's the emoticon for crossing ones fingers...

All's well that ends well.

[Doc]

Update

I think I finished cleaning this computer. Seems like it is running pretty good now. Now where's the emoticon for crossing ones fingers...

All's well that ends well.

Yes indeed !!!

http://24hoursofhappy.com/05h48PM

[Nonc Hilaire]

[noddy]

$5 for a computer. https://mchck.org/about/

ive been mucking round with its expensive $20 big brother, the https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensy31.html

with all the ultra cheap imports from chinese warehouses in terms of sensors,displays and whatnot you can pretty much build anything you want and integrate into your local network with minimum fuss.

this whole "maker" revolution is definately interesting.

[Typhoon]

IEEE | Michael Jordan on machine learning and "big data"

[Azrael]

Update

I think I finished cleaning this computer. Seems like it is running pretty good now. Now where's the emoticon for crossing ones fingers...

How do you keep a Windows 8 machine clean? Windows 7 seemed more transparent.

[Doc]

Update

I think I finished cleaning this computer. Seems like it is running pretty good now. Now where's the emoticon for crossing ones fingers...

How do you keep a Windows 8 machine clean? Windows 7 seemed more transparent.

NOD32
Malwarebytes
Spy bot search and destroy
Among others

[Nonc Hilaire]

I need help with loading a cheap android tablet for my mentally retarded brother. I need games that are ultimately simple, do not require access to wifi or access to online purchases. Mental age two or three. I am getting quite frustrated with the Google play store.

[noddy]

alas, most of the free stuff is paid for by in game advertising which requires internet :/

their is an open/free android community in the linux sense, i havent really explored it, https://f-droid.org/

[Nonc Hilaire]

alas, most of the free stuff is paid for by in game advertising which requires internet :/

their is an open/free android community in the linux sense, i havent really explored it, https://f-droid.org/

I'll check that out. I'm happy to pay but he lives in a group home and I can't get him access to the net. I need to pre-load everything.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

Quanta Mag | Perfecting the Art of Sensible Nonsense

A new cryptographic scheme obfuscates computer programs by transforming them into something akin to a jigsaw puzzle in which random elements make each individual piece look meaningless.

That explains why my former department manager is working the take out line at our local Sonic Drive-In.....'>>.......

[Typhoon]

IEEE | CES 2015

[Heracleum Persicum]

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Top 50 business pioneers


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[Heracleum Persicum]

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Technology that Unmasks Your Hidden Emotions
Psychology and Data Mining to Discern Emotions as People Shop, Watch Ads

Paul Ekman, perhaps the world’s most famous face reader, fears he has created a monster.

The 80-year-old psychologist pioneered the study of facial expressions in the 1970s, creating a catalog of more than 5,000 muscle movements to show how the subtlest wrinkling of the nose or lift of an eyebrow reveal hidden emotions.

Now, a group of young companies with names like Emotient Inc., Affectiva Inc. and Eyeris are using Dr. Ekman’s research as the backbone of a technology that relies on algorithms to analyze people’s faces and potentially discover their deepest feelings. Collectively, they are amassing an enormous visual database of human emotions, seeking patterns that can predict emotional reactions and behavior on a massive scale.

Dr. Ekman, who agreed to become an adviser to Emotient, says he is torn between the potential power of all this data and the need to ensure it is used responsibly, without infringing on personal privacy.

So far, the technology has been used mostly for market research. Emotient, a San Diego startup whose software can recognize emotions from a database of microexpressions that happen in a fraction of a second, has worked with Honda Motor Co. and Procter & Gamble Co. to gauge people’s emotions as they try out products. Affectiva, an emotion-detection software maker based in Waltham, Mass., has used webcams to monitor consumers as they watch ads for companies like Coca-Cola Co. and Unilever PLC.

But other applications are likely to breed privacy concerns. One retailer, for instance, is starting to test software embedded in security cameras that can scan people’s faces and divine their emotions as they walk in and out of its stores. Eyeris, based in Mountain View, Calif., says it has sold its software to federal law-enforcement agencies for use in interrogations.

The danger, Dr. Ekman and privacy advocates say, is that the technology could reveal people’s emotions without their consent, and their feelings could be misinterpreted. People might try to use the software to determine whether their spouse was lying, police might read the emotions of crowds or employers might use it to secretly monitor workers or job applicants.

“I can’t control usage,” Dr. Ekman says of his catalog, called the Facial Action Coding System. “I can only be certain that what I’m providing is at least an accurate depiction of when someone is concealing emotion.”

In Dr. Ekman’s analysis, there is no such thing as a simple smile or a frown. Facial movements are broken down into more-nuanced expressions; there are seven ways a forehead can furrow.

Psychologist Paul Ekman’s research on emotions and their relation to facial expressions is the basis for the software being used by advertisers and retailers to study customers. ENLARGE
Psychologist Paul Ekman’s research on emotions and their relation to facial expressions is the basis for the software being used by advertisers and retailers to study customers. PHOTO: RAMIN RAHIMIAN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Dr. Ekman’s atlas has been used extensively by psychologists and by law-enforcement and military personnel—including interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq—and was the inspiration for the TV drama “Lie to Me.”

To train its software’s algorithm, Emotient has recorded the facial reactions of an ethnically diverse group of hundreds of thousands people participating in marketing research for its clients via video chat. The software extracts at least 90,000 data points from each frame, everything from abstract patterns of light to tiny muscular movements, which are sorted by emotional categories, such as anger, disgust, joy, surprise or boredom.

Rival Affectiva says it has measured seven billion emotional reactions from 2.4 million face videos in 80 countries. The company says the sheer scope of its data has allowed it to draw conclusions about people across cultures and in different settings. For instance, it says it has learned that women smile more than men, and that Indonesians and South Africans are the world’s least and most expressive people, respectively.

The startups share the goal of embedding their software in the tiniest of cameras. Affectiva is teaming up with OoVoo LLC, a video-chat service for smartphones that has 100 million users, to build an app that could reveal people’s emotions during mobile video chats.

Its peers, too, are expanding their reach. A pediatrics researcher at the University of San Diego is testing a version of Emotient software on children who have had appendix surgery, to see whether it can signal their level of pain. An unidentified retailer is using Emotient’s software in its security cameras to gauge whether shoppers are pleased when looking at products and leaving the store.

Eyeris says it envisions therapeutic apps that could detect when a person feels stress. The company said it has struck deals with federal law-enforcement authorities, but declined to identify them.

Emotient says it prefers not to have its software used for police work or federal security matters. Affectiva says it has turned down funding offers from federal intelligence agencies.

As with many other technologies, emotion-detection software raises all sorts of privacy questions. “I can see few things more invasive than trying to record someone’s emotions in a database,” said Ginger McCall, a privacy advocate.

In the mid-2000s, former detective Charles Lieberman trained detectives in the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism unit in Dr. Ekman’s facial-coding system. He said the technology could help interrogators if they could identify inconsistencies between a suspect’s story and emotions revealed on his or her face. But, he cautioned, it is important to “recognize its limitations—it can lead you in the right direction but is not definitive.”

Problems could also arise if the software isn’t perfectly accurate. Emotions, such as sadness or frustration, could be wrongly interpreted. People could be wrongly pegged as liars. Dr. Ekman says Emotion’s software is highly accurate, but the accuracy of the system hasn’t been independently tested.

With no regulation, the companies are writing the privacy rules as they go.

Ken Denman, CEO of Emotient, says his company makes a point of discarding the images of individual faces within seconds after it has logged the sentiment they express. “There’s very little value in the facial expression of any individual,” he said.

Affectiva says it stores videos of faces only if the person involved consents. On mobile phones, the work of converting microexpresssions to data points takes place on the phone for later analysis. No images are sent back to the company.

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“People don’t even know that that’s possible,” he adds.

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[Typhoon]

A Tour of Machine Learning Algorithms

A.k.a. big data.

[noddy]

A Tour of Machine Learning Algorithms

A.k.a. big data.

a nice bit of light reading

the simplest entry points to the above im aware of come via python or R - im most fammilar with the python versions.

http://scikit-learn.org/stable/ for many of these algorithms
http://www.nltk.org/ for tearing english language apart
http://opencv.org/ for doing likewise to images

[Heracleum Persicum]

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U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers


Am no expert, but is this possible ? ?

How can NSA plant spying software on HD or "solid State" drives "without manufacturers" knowledge ? ?

Tell me, manufacturers, most probably end manufacturers (OEM), say, APPLE, Toshiba, DELL, HP and others, they themselves would instal the spying software in manufacturing process

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[noddy]

their are little computer chips called microcontrollers in all sorts of things that hang off your computer - your hard drive, your keyboard and mouse, the usb gadgets you plug in .. etc etc.

all of these are hackable, they dont need the manufacturer to help aslong as they have physical access to the machine, their is instructions on the net to hack the wireless keyboards and takeover usb dongles, even i can do that.

i cant imagine their is enough spare resource on the harddrive controller to have a useful attack that works on every possible computer setup so if it does exist as real code and not just theory its probably specialised.

if you are running mac or windows or android, relax, the hacks are in at operating system level and you are happily sharing your life with big brother, you dont need to worry about hardware hacks, its called the cloud

[Heracleum Persicum]

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Hmmmm

also

If so easy for NSA to do it, if so, everybody else too can, Chinese, Russians, Europeans, Iranians


Eric Schmidt on Iranian talent


XfyviIxSP3Y


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