Lifeboat Foundation

Whenever cybersecurity is discussed, the topic of biometric authentication rises alongside it as a better, more effective, more secure method of security. But is it? Do biometrics actually provide a safer way to complete purchase transactions online?

“Biometrics are a device-specific authentication method,” said Madeline Aufseeser, CEO of online fraud prevention company Tender Armor, of the ways biometric authentication is presently used to secure a digital purchase transaction (as opposed to logging into a bank’s web site, to view an account or transfer money). “Typically the same biometric method does not work across multiple purchasing channels today. The fingerprint used to make a purchase with a smartphone cannot necessarily be used to authenticate a phone order purchase or purchase made with a computer. When you confirm [a purchase transaction] with your fingerprint on a smartphone, all that’s saying is that’s the same fingerprint that’s allowed to use this phone, or the specific application on the phone. Because the fingerprint is only resident and stored on the phone, the phone is authenticating itself, not the cardholder conducting the transaction.”

This sounds a little odd compared to what we might have heard about the capabilities of biometrics previously, mainly because it goes against a core assumption: that a biometric identifier (like a fingerprint) goes with transactional data, from the phone or device, to the payment processor, to the merchant.

Continue reading “Biometric Security Gains Popularity, But Is Far from Foolproof” »

With the phone, predictions now feel relatively easy. But we’re setting off on our next five years, and we’re looking beyond the phone. What happens next? And what does it mean for how we live in the future? For our anniversary, we asked 10 of the smartest, most interesting, most influential people we know to describe our lives in 2021 — and the many ways technology, culture, science, and transportation will change. We’ll be running these interviews all through November, and they paint an ambitious, dynamic vision of the future.

We’ll discuss how in the near future, many Americans may never drive again. We’ll talk to groundbreaking scientists about CRISPR, a revolutionary method of editing genes that’s already led to incredible breakthroughs. We’ll see how for many employees, technology may make geography irrelevant, and how social media will usher in a new age of social activism. More women will finally find their rightful place in boardrooms, and by 2021, artificial and human intelligence will exist in something called “symbiotic autonomy.”

It’s tempting to look backwards on an anniversary. But The Verge is about looking ahead, and we would much rather spend our fifth birthday imagining the incredible (and occasionally terrifying) promise of the future. We’ve collected some excellent guides to help us along the way — we hope you join us.

My suggestion to FB; learn from Microsoft.

We dug through 50+ job postings and new hire resumes looking for the truth.

In the future, circuits and systems modelled on human brains could end up in everything from supercomputers to everyday smartphones.

I have often talked about the Many-Worlds or Everett approach to quantum mechanics — here’s an explanatory video, an excerpt from From Eternity to Here, and slides from a talk. But I don’t think I’ve ever explained as persuasively as possible why I think it’s the right approach. So that’s what I’m going to try to do here. Although to be honest right off the bat, I’m actually going to tackle a slightly easier problem: explaining why the many-worlds approach is not completely insane, and indeed quite natural. The harder part is explaining why it actually works, which I’ll get to in another post.

Any discussion of Everettian quantum mechanics (“EQM”) comes with the baggage of pre-conceived notions. People have heard of it before, and have instinctive reactions to it, in a way that they don’t have to (for example) effective field theory. Hell, there is even an app, universe splitter, that lets you create new universes from your iPhone. (Seriously.) So we need to start by separating the silly objections to EQM from the serious worries.

The basic silly objection is that EQM postulates too many universes. In quantum mechanics, we can’t deterministically predict the outcomes of measurements. In EQM, that is dealt with by saying that every measurement outcome “happens,” but each in a different “universe” or “world.” Say we think of Schrödinger’s Cat: a sealed box inside of which we have a cat in a quantum superposition of “awake” and “asleep.” (No reason to kill the cat unnecessarily.) Textbook quantum mechanics says that opening the box and observing the cat “collapses the wave function” into one of two possible measurement outcomes, awake or asleep. Everett, by contrast, says that the universe splits in two: in one the cat is awake, and in the other the cat is asleep. Once split, the universes go their own ways, never to interact with each other again.

Continue reading “Why the Many-Worlds Formulation of Quantum Mechanics Is Probably Correct” »

Using ultrafast laser flashes, physicists from the Max Planck Institute have generated the fastest electric current that has ever been measured inside a solid material.

In the field of electronics, the principle ‘the smaller, the better’ applies. Some building blocks of computers or mobile phones, however, have become nearly as small today as only a few atoms. It is therefore hardly possible to reduce them any further.

Another factor for the performance of electronic devices is the speed at which electric currents oscillate. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have now created electric currents inside solids which exceed the frequency of visible light by more than ten times They made electrons in silicon dioxide oscillate with ultrafast laser pulses. The conductivity of the material which is typically used as an insulator was increased by more than 19 orders of magnitude.

Continue reading “Scientists Generate the Fastest Electric Current Ever Measured Inside a Solid Material” »

It would be the ultimate user interface: a device the size of two stacked nickels that allows your thoughts to control computers. The only catch is it’ll have to be implanted in your brain.

Google could have a record of everything you have said around it for years, and you can listen to it yourself.

The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products.

The feature works as a way of letting people search with their voice, and storing those recordings presumably lets Google improve its language recognition tools as well as the results that it gives to people.

Continue reading “Google voice search records and keeps conversations people have around their phones – but the files can be deleted” »

The idea of storing digital data in DNA seems like science fiction. At first glance, it might not seem obvious that a molecule can store data. The term “data storage” conjures up images of physical artifacts like CDs and data centers, not a microscopic molecule like DNA. But there are a number of reasons why DNA is an exciting option for information storage.

The status quo

We’re in the midst of a data explosion. We create vast amounts of information via our estimated 17 billion internet-connected devices: smartphones, cars, health trackers, and all other devices. As we continue to add sensors and network connectivity to physical devices we will produce more and more data. Similarly, as we bring online the 4.2 billion people who are currently offline, we will produce more and more data.

Continue reading “Can DNA Hard Drives Solve Our Looming Data Storage Crisis?” »