Robopocalypse Report #11

This time we have a droneless report!  Woo!  A first!  So we'll start with the next most photogenic of the Robopocalypse: the self driving car.

CNET runs an article about how the self driving car is driving innovation in computer objection recognition.

Future producer of self driving cars (well, almost there for highway driving now) Tesla had its Model S hacked.  This required physical access to the car unlike the other car hacks recently.  However, this is my greatest concern with the self driving car.  I would love to use it as a way to pick up my kids and drop them off for lessons and whatnot.  I cannot, not just because of the foreseeable requirement to have an adult 'driving' because I can all too easily see a hacker-kidnapper taking control of the car to deliver the kids inside wherever rather than to where they were supposed to go.

Would be self driving taxi car company Uber is apparently bleeding out money rather quickly and if reports are true, you have to wonder if they are going to survive long enough to field their fleet for the robopocalypse.

Moving away from the self driving car, MIT is working on improving the teleoperation of robots.  In some ways this is not new technology: it was even used for the Johnny 5 robot in Short Circuit 2.  However, I can only imagine with modern computers its far, far better.

There have been increasing calls to ban autonomous weapons.  Everyone is invoking the Terminator for this.  Others have started calling them weapons of mass destruction in their calls for a ban.  I had an essay I was working on about the overuse of the term 'mass extinction' on an old computer, but the computer was lost and I didn't have a backup.  It seems WMD is hitting that level, too.  OTOH, autonomous weapons?  What are we talking here?  The mythical forever flying machines with solar powered lasers?  Or a mine?  Anything which requires human permission before firing?  Or a 5th generation atlas with an AK?  The definition above is really, really broad and will never make it into reality based on what is being proposed here.  

The Japanese have their robo hotel with the really odd kiosks for checking in.  The brits have taken their own version of the hotel of the robopocalypse.  Here's a review of the "Hub by Premier Inn."

And to round out the Robopocalypse Report #11, IBM has purchased Merge Healthcare, a medical imagery company, for use with its Watson AI system for a cool BILLION dollars.  Watson is either going to make IBM incredibly wealthy or crash the company.  Is this IBM's 747 moment?

Oy, Something More? F-35 Can't Fire its Gun Until 2019

America’s $400 billion Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, is slated to join fighter squadrons next year—but missing software will render its 25mm cannon useless.

The Pentagon’s newest stealth jet, the nearly $400 billion Joint Strike Fighter, won’t be able to fire its gun during operational missions until 2019, three to four years after it becomes operational.

Even though the Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, is supposed to join frontline U.S. Marine Corps fighter squadrons next year and Air Force units in 2016, the jet’s software does not yet have the ability to shoot its 25mm cannon. But even when the jet will be able to shoot its gun, the F-35 barely carries enough ammunition to make the weapon useful.

The JSF won’t be completely unarmed. It will still carry a pair of Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM long-range air-to-air missiles and a pair of bombs. Initially, it will be able to carry 1,000-pound satellite-guided bombs or 500-pound laser-guided weapons. But those weapons are of limited utility, especially during close-in fights.

link.

Defense tech has a good follow-up given the politics of pushing to retire the A-10.

Bitcoin Users can be Tracked, Identified

Btcoin is the new money: minted and exchanged on the Internet. Faster and cheaper than a bank, the service is attracting attention from all over the world. But a big question remains: are the transactions really anonymous? Several research groups worldwide have shown that it is possible to find out which transactions belong together, even if the client uses different pseudonyms. However it was not clear if it is also possible to reveal the IP address behind each transaction. This has changed: researchers at the University of Luxembourg have now demonstrated how this is feasible with only a few computers and about €1500.

[...]

In their new study, researchers at the Laboratory of Algorithmics, Cryptology and Security of the University of Luxembourg have shown that Bitcoin does not protect user's IP address and that it can be linked to the user's transactions in real-time. To find this out, a hacker would need only a few computers and about €1500 per month for server and traffic costs. Moreover, the popular anonymization network "Tor" can do little to guarantee Bitcoin user's anonymity, since it can be blocked easily.

The basic idea behind these findings is that Bitcoin entry nodes, to which the user's computer connects in order to make a transaction, form a unique identifier for the duration of user's session. This unique pattern can be linked to a user's IP address. Moreover, transactions made during one session, even those made via unrelated pseudonyms, can be linked together. With this method, hackers can reveal up to 60 percent of the IP addresses behind the transactions made over the Bitcoin network.

link.

Cornell Unversity Researchers Propose Two Phase Proof of Work for Bitcoin

Researchers have scuttled Bitcoin mining mammoths such as GHash with a proposed system alteration that would end the money-making collectives and return fairness and stability to the crypto currency.

Cornell University academics (@IttalyEyal) Ittaly Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) say their "Two Phase Proof of Work (2P-PoW)" is a simple solution to de-incentivise large Bitcoin mining pools.

The problem the pair hope to address is the fact that big mining pools can cheat the system with selfish mining. The duo point out that pools with more than 25 percent of the total network could earn more than their fair share, more so for those with 33 percent. Even larger pools could 'double-spend' with low confirmations, while those with over 50 percent control, as in the case of GHash, were an "unmitigated disaster", they said.

The 2P-PoW scheme aims to make collective mining less attractive by making proofs of work delegation harder without erasing a miners' fortunes or negating their hardware investments.

The 2P-PoW platform was developed after the GHash behemoth collective was found to dominate Bitcoin mining by scooping about 51 percent of all coins uncovered to date. The feat was a breach of etiquette -- the pair dubbed it "armageddon" -- as it undermined the key decentralised feature of Bitcoin.

GHash apologised and promised never to repeat the "51 per cent attack", but not before the website was hit with distributed denial of service attacks.

Eyal and Sirer said their platform would help miners by slowing hardware obsolescence which they peg at an astonishing 99.3 per cent loss of value within 28 weeks, leading to a huge turnover of equipment.

The two phase PoW introduced a second crypto-puzzle alongside the unmodified current quiz. Miners would continue the usual routine to solve the current puzzle but would then need to sign the block with the private key that controlled the payment address.

link.

GHash.IO: a Bitcoin Mining Pool now Able to Take Over Bitcoin

Fears that a Bitcoin mining pool controls more than half the total computational power used to create the digital currency have prompted a decline in its value.

Bitcoin was hovering around $600 on Monday, according to CoinDesk.com, which tracks prices on exchanges, down from $653 on Wednesday.

The decline follows reports that a group is now in a position to conduct a so-called “51 percent attack” on the cryptocurrency, a situation in which it could potentially interfere with transactions or even spend bitcoins twice.

GHash.IO is one of a number of pools devoted to mining, or generating, bitcoins through computationally intensive calculations—and, in the process, maintaining the shared log of all validated bitcoin transactions, called the block chain.

Unlike the other, competing, pools, however, GHash.io now controls over 50 percent of the total computing power used to mine bitcoins, allowing its controllers, if they were so minded, to reject transactions validated by other miners. The mere potential for such abuse has worried supporters of the once-decentralized currency, and even prompted Bitcoin developer Peter Todd to sell half his bitcoin holdings.

“I’ve known for awhile now that the incentives Bitcoin is based on are flawed for many reasons and seeing a 50 percent pool even with only a few of those reasons mattering is worrying to say the least,” Todd wrote.

Part of Bitcoin’s appeal to users is that it’s supposed to be a peer-to-peer store of value with no central authority. Promotional website Bitcoin.com, run by Bitcoin ledger Blockchain.info, describes it as the first decentralized digital currency.

“This is a big deal, and it would be a mistake to downplay it in the hope to buoy Bitcoin prices,” Cornell University researchers Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer wrote on the Hacking, Distributed blog.

“It will be difficult to attract new people to Bitcoin when it’s controlled or controllable by a single entity.”

link.