future of technology

We all know to not open spam emails that claim you’ve inherited millions because your great uncle died in a rock climbing expedition in the Himalayas, but hackers are coming up with more sophisticated ways to take control of your PC and dig out your personal details.

Here’s a hack for you. A life hack, that is. Read our list of the best PC games and you'll know what the best games are. No worries.

Hackers recently targeted a vulnerability in Valve’s Source Engine that allowed them to load malicious code into custom games in anything from CS:GO to Team Fortress 2, as reported by OneUpSecurity, via Motherboard.

Custom assets could be loaded into the game and then subsequently downloaded by users who unwittingly play the custom games used to scam people. In one specific case, the virus was loaded into a ragdoll animation that triggers upon death. Basically, when the hackers killed you, they could take over your computer.

"As videogames are common inside employee break rooms and homes of employees, exploitation of a vulnerability could be used in a targeted attack to jump the air gap to a private network," Justin Taft, the researcher who discovered the virus, explains. "Additionally, discovering a remote code execution vulnerability in a popular videogame can be used to quickly create a botnet or spread ransomware."

Luckily, Valve were quick on the uptake and immediately patched the bug. That means you’re safe to be bad at videogames once more.

As hard as the Turkish government might try, shutting down Twitter isn't as easy as it seems. At 11:30 p.m. Thursday the Turkish government officially blocked the country's 33 million Internet users from Twitter, but clever, tech-savvy Turks are sharing a simple and effective method to help fellow citizens bypass the ban — and they're sharing it everywhere.

Just hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "root out" Twitter, graffiti has been popping up around Istanbul with two IP addresses anyone can use to circumvent the government's ban. The two numbers — 8.8.8.8. and 8.8.4.4. — refer to Google's Public DNS, which can be easily utilized to maintain access to Twitter.

Image Credit: Facebook

Graffiti on a poster for Erdogan's ruling party, in Istanbul. Image Credit: Engin Onder

And it's working. Despite a short blackout, many Turks are back on Twitter, and there's nothing the government can really do to stop them.

" ... it seems that masses of ordinary citizens are learning how to use this technology," wrote Serhatcan Yurdam, a blogger who lives in Istanbul. "Everybody is teaching each other how to change their DNS, how to use VPNs ... and clearly they're catching on quickly, since so many people are still tweeting!"

Step-by-step instructions like this are being widely shared by Turkish Internet users.

Erdogan's motivation was to "eradicate" social media, which he considers "the worst menace to society." While he might have altruistic claims, it's likely his real motivation was to squash any hints of a rebellion as well as to halt the circulation of a leaked voice recording of Erdogan and his son discussing how to hide $1 billion dollars of cash in safe houses — Erdogan called the conversation "completely false" and a "dirty plot."

Of course, Internet users have quickly seen through Erdogan's veiled concerns for this menace to society and are using Google's DNS and various VPN routes to access and use Twitter. As you can see on tweereal.com's map, Twitter users are still active in Turkey.

Image Credit: Tweereal

"I believe that the authorities will never be able to stop people from using Twitter," continued Yurdam. "We'll always find alternative ways to access it. And even if people weren't able to access it, they would try to gather on other similar social networks. Twitter is vitally important for me and millions of Turkish citizens, because Turkish media is under a lot of pressure from the authorities. And social media is now effectively used as medium for sharing news here. In many ways, Turkish people see Twitter as their digital public spaaaaaace."

For several years now, social media has become an integral part of protests and revolutionary movements around the world, enabling important communication and planning like never before. And despite a technologically inept government's attempts to stop it, social media will continue to be a powerful and important tool that cannot and will not be silenced.

SQL INJECTION FOOLS SPEED TRAPS AND CLEARS YOUR RECORD

Typical speed camera traps have built-in OCR software that is used to recognize license plates. A clever hacker decided to see if he could defeat the system by using SQL Injection…

The basic premise of this hack is that the hacker has created a simple SQL statement which will hopefully cause the database to delete any record of his license plate. Or so he (she?) hopes. Talk about getting off scot-free!

Sweat Sensors Will Change How Wearables Track Your Health - IEEE Spectrum

Lately, some of the hardest-to-measure biomarkers—small-protein cytokines—are generating the most excitement. Cells release cytokines under a number of circumstances, including trauma, infection, and cancer. For example, the concentration of a cytokine called interleukin 6 (IL-6) can increase up to a thousandfold during an infection.

Esther Sternberg and her colleagues at the University of Arizona recently demonstrated that several cytokines, including IL-6, have the same concentration in sweat as they do in blood. This means doctors could use sweat to diagnose a wide variety of physical and mental stresses. Right now, though, the tools needed to measure the nanomolar to picomolar concentrations of cytokines in sweat are as big as a refrigerator, or at best a suitcase. The trick here is getting the technology down to the size of a wearable gadget. My colleagues and I think that’s possible and are working toward that goal.

The basic problem is this: These biomarkers are present at such low concentrations that they can’t generate enough voltage or current themselves to overcome noise. A better strategy would be to coat an electrode with a biorecognition element—basically a biochemical puzzle piece custom designed to selectively match up to, grab, and hold the biomarker we are trying to sense. We would then apply an alternating electrical signal to the electrode. As biomarkers gather on the electrode, they should act as a barrier to electrical current, increasing the electrical impedance in a measurable way.

A more exotic and sensitive approach would be to add a molecule called a redox couple to the top of the biorecognition element. A redox couple inserted in an electrochemical process makes it easier for electrons to move from a solution to an electrode. When the biomarker binds to the biorecognition element, it changes the shape of the element, bringing the redox couple closer to the electrode, close enough to allow it to dramatically increase the flow of current. With support from the National Science Foundation and a biochemist in my lab, we recently demonstrated sensing cytokines down to a level of less than a 1-picomolar concentration using this technique.

The Air Force is interested in the possibility of measuring cytokine biomarkers to monitor extreme stresses on pilots. And it is even more interested in neuropeptide biomarkers that can give clues to the state of the brain, like one called Orexin-A, a neuropeptide biomarker that measures alertness.

What is said to be the world’s first permanent VR theater has opened, as detailed in this story from VentureBeat; the original includes more images and a 1:40 minute video; coverage in Architectural Digest identifies the initial offerings: “Moviegoers have the option, for example, of watching In Your Face, a film specifically developed for the VR Cinema. The movie looks at the moral dilemma of the Syrian refugee crisis and asks viewers what they would do if a refugee showed up at their door, unannounced. There are lighter options, too. Invasion! is an animated film featuring a rabbit and a UFO. VR Cinema also has packages intended for kids.”

Nike launches self-lacing shoes | Dezeen

Back to the future shoes are here!

“the mid-court courtside seat is the best one in the house and it really feels like I'm there. Seriously, this is nuts."