Adobe’s new software lets you Photoshop voices on demand
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The ability to perfectly “Photoshop”, edit and manipulate people’s voices opens up new opportunities for media companies but it could also create problems for companies who rely on biometric authentication, such as banks. I love Photoshop – I’ve been using it for the past...
Artificial atom breakthrough to usher in era of secure communications
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF By 2031 Quantum computing will be able to crack most of today’s most commonly used encryption systems, Quantum Key Distribution will provide organisations and governments with a way to communicate that is immune from attacks and eavesdropping. From credit card numbers to bank account...
Jurors will soon be able to walk through crime scenes in virtual reality
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Jurors often have to rely on reconstructed scenes to help them visualise how a crime unfurled, now, using virtual reality they can see and move around the actual scene days, months or even years after the crime(s) took place A physical crime scene may...
Report finds that global internet freedom declines for sixth straight year in a row
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Internet freedom is on the decline with over two thirds of the worlds population now subject to government and institutional censorship. Independent watchdog Freedom House has issued its 2016 report along with a chilling warning that internet privacy is becoming something of an oxymoron. Freedom...
Elon Musk says advanced AIs will take down the internet
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As artificial intelligence improves in capability it is inevitable that it will eventually be weaponised, humans need to be aware of the risks and we must work together to mitigate them. The internet is about to become a vicious, chaotic battlefield, and Elon Musk...
Encryption’s arch nemesis is a ticking quantum time bomb
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Encryption is the primary tool that organisations and governments use to keep data safe and secure, when Quantum computers become more wide spread criminals, hackers and state sponsored actors will be able to use them to decrypt data and render most encryption algorithms obsolete. ...
China’s puts final touches to its 2,000km long unhackable quantum network
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Quantum networks are unhackable, keeping data secure and making interception and eavesdropping impossible, now they can cover greater distances which will help increase their adoption and use By the end of this year, a team led by researchers from the University of Science and...
New blockchain DNS system would put an end to DDoS attacks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Blockchain can help organisations and governments improve the resilience of their operations without compromising security On Friday, October 21st the internet – specifically the US west coast and parts of Europe, fell victim to the worlds largest DDoS attack. At the time reports said that nearly half the...
Google AIs learnt how to encrypt their communications to stop people spying on them
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence is being embedded into every device and service, AIs that can dynamically encrypt their own communications could help to increase the security of those services exponentially. If you were worried about the news that AIs are already building other AIs then the...
World first as Microsofts speech recognition software becomes as accurate as humans
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF After almost forty years of research speech recognition systems are now as good as humans. Microsoft have announced that they have made a major breakthrough in speech recognition and created a technology that, finally, recognises the words in conversational speech as well as humans do –...
Dubai to replace real police with robocops in 2017
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Street police in the UAE are going to be replaced with real life, ahem, “Robocops” Dubai’s government – who are on a tear at the moment to adopt and invest in anything futuristic – from blockchain to energy grids – via their $175 Billion ICD sovereign wealth fund and...
DARPA’s hack proof code protects military systems from hackers
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Cyber attacks are on the rise but there’s one code no hackers have been able to crack. An autonomous helicopter gunship is flying over a military base in Arizona. Suddenly, officers on the ground lose radio contact and learn that hackers have taken control of its on-board...
Fabric circuits open a door to smarter clothes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A new development in material science opens the door for the development of more advanced Smart Clothing. Many of today’s smart clothes, such as those from Adidas, Athos, Nike, Ralf Lauren and Under Armour rely on sensors, such as EMG sensors, woven into the fabric...
US Government unveils CAUSE, a program to predict cyber attacks before they happen
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The security industry faces a paradigm shift as the US Government moves to predict cyber attacks before they happen. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the sister organisation to DARPA, the Pentagons bleeding edge military research and development organisation, which invests in high-risk, high-payoff...
Skydio’s autonomous drone takes to the skies
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Autonomous drones – revered by extreme sports enthusiasts and feared in the battlefield – are on the rise. We all know that the next evolution of drones will be fully autonomous rather than just semi-autonomous as some of them, such as delivery or defence drones,...
Google teaches robots to learn from each other using a hive mind
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Robots learning from other robots will ultimately mean robots will learn new skills faster, accelerating the robot revolution. The robots of the world are uniting – and that’s either a great thing or a terrifying thing depending on your view. Google has a plan to...
DARPA launches dragnet program to monitor drones in cities
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As our skies increasingly fill up with swarming drones we need ways to monitor and manage our airspaces. Amid the rise of drones, or small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, is developing technology to provide persistent, wide-area surveillance of all...
Drone forensics is now a thing
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Where did that drone come from? Now we know… Dunkin Donuts use drones to deliver – guess what!? Donuts. But criminals are using them to deliver much more unsavoury items into prisons. The problem has grown so fast that now one wireless and mobile technology company,...
SRI unveils Minority Report like touchless biometric technologies
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Big brother biometric technologies that can ID individuals remotely arrives. You are used to being tracked everywhere you go online but offline? Prepare for a world where there is no hiding place. Iris recognition has been used as a biometric for access control applications for...
Scientists use WiFi to read your emotions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are edging closer to living in the world of Minority Report, surrounded by technologies that authorise us, sense us and interact with us remotely, and now the only thing that is fiction is privacy. Whether it’s at your local fuel station or at...
