A future without monitors

If you own a virtual reality headset, there is a chance for you to be able to access your computer in VR. Compatible with the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, the virtual desktop is an app that is changing the way we think of space. The price is $14, from the Oculus website.

Personally I don’t see myself using a virtual desktop. The video below shows all sorts of different kinds of applications to highlight the functionality of the program. I like my hands on computer, which begs the question: How would you use a keyboard if you are having to spin in a 360 degree environment? Is there a virtual keyboard also? If you do just use the keyboard, is there a way to see it? This is a really cool program, and I think some people will find a good and practical use for it.

 

Hacker Resistant Operating Systems

A silhouette of a hacker with a black hat in a suit enters a hallway with walls textured with blue internet of things icons 3D illustration cybersecurity concept

A huge issue that we as people have is security. We saw in the election that this was a huge problem as well. Trump yelling that the system is rigged, and people saying that online polling could easily be hacked by foreign countries and that this may have huge repercussions in our country. There has been a huge breakthrough at Yale University. They have created an operating system called CertiKOS that operates on multiple cores and shields against cyber attacks. The developers say that this is a trustworthy system that will perform the way that it is intended to work. One of the reasons that this is a huge breakthrough is because the operating system can run multiple threads at a time through the many cores.

This is pretty exciting news. A programmer is not always able to consider all of the different angles that their program could be attacked. A system like CertiKOS would be able to correct and tighten security on the program.

Bot versus Bot

Let’s start off with a little scenario. Lets say you and a buddy are trying to pass messages secretly to each other without a third party finding out, and you are allowed to do this however you want. Seems pretty easy. Google did the same thing except with bots. Each bot Bob and Alice were tasked to pass each other information securely without a third party (Eve) breaking the encryption. Bob and Alice were given a shared security key. Google says that the results of this were not quite what they expected. Alice and Bob were successfully able to keep the data encrypted and secure from Eve, but they used a pretty simple form of encryption. This raises alarm to many scientists because this would make it seem that it would be easy for human hackers to decrypt the message. This is the downside currently to neural net learning algorithms keeping information secure. They are unpredictable.

Cybersecurity is increasing being handled by bots, and we need to make sure that they have top notch learning.

Obama warns about AI

President Obama chimed in his warning for uncontrolled process of artificial intelligence. He says that this could result in a major hit to the job market. AI has been a topic that has been talked about over and over. Even in my blog I have shown some of the positives that AI has on our society and some that is a little scary. I find it very good that our current president is giving a warning to this. Just recently an AI not was created that could successfully hack. It is good to see our country recognizing that potential problems that AI could have, and hopefully they will taken preventative measures to control AI production.

Can we save the planet through self-learning?

An article on ScienceDaily asks the question whether we can save this planet through self-learning algorithms. Researchers at Lancaster University have created a software system, called REx, that can self organize into the most efficient form without the need of human interaction. This is a pretty fascinating considering this software does not need to have any human help to assemble. The article does into detail on how the software was designed and and it works.

Researchers think that this may be the answer to combating climate change. This is very exciting news because we really have not been all that successful with anything to combat the changing climate. There are still preliminary testing that needs to be done to the software system before it can be used for this, but I think it is possible we might see this in effect soon.