Thursday 13 January 2011

Robotics - from Science Fiction to Fact?

I have been fascinated to see the developments in robotics technologies over the last few years. It seems to me that their is a tipping point approaching, where advances in areas such as video analytics, autonomy and intelligence, robotic dexterity, and manouevrability will lead to highly useful robots with the potential for wide ubiquity in society. A trend definitely worth tracking. Science fiction could become fact faster than we think! I have linked to some interesting companies and research, to whet your appetite.

Tuesday 4 January 2011

Mobile phone call privacy under threat

The gradual improvement in the effectiveness of attacks on the GSM network has progressed ever since the encryption algorithm used became open, and weaknesses were identified. Improvements in processing power have allowed faster key searches, and now new research breaks further aspects of the GSM architecture to crack the encryption using simple hardware. It wont be long before commercial eavesdroppers will be available cheaply. My guess is that new security and encryption will have to be added to GSM, somehow, and soon.