The end of pesky password age?

WebAuthn, which is one of the new web standard milestones, stated that they could point to the end of the road for pesky passwords which is considered not very safe. WebAuthn said that they are kind of on the final step to get the approval from the World Wide Web Consortium. The CEO of W3C thought that because of the lack of security of the internet, people were limited from doing more benefit works. To provide a new safety, efficient way to identify each person online, they decided to define a standard Application Program Interface which can be connected to browsers and Web infrastructure.  And several tech companies are ready to support this technique by using it on their web browsers such as Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla. However, Michael Thelander, a senior director of product at Innovation, mentioned the real problem this new skill is facing. He said that the compliance and the user experience even the product management will still be problems which need a little while to solve.

       This topic makes me think about the password security that we talked about in the class which involved with techniques to break down passwords. Because our passwords are always grouped by some amount of letters and numbers, it is not hard for the computer to find out the real order. The 6 letters password can be found just by several second, however, the password that is more than 10 letters need around fifty years to break out. Although the security level of each pass is different, it is still a big concern in our daily using on the internet especially once we create a new account that needs to type in our personal information. So I am looking forward to see the new way of personal identity which can be replaced by the traditional way of creating passwords by ourselves. Even though it takes time to reach that day, the support from big companies makes me have the confidence that one day the process of type in our passwords would not be a big online security problem.

How does the smart home really looks like?

 

The Smart Home that we have been talked in class is not an ideal object anymore which a home in the heart of San Francisco with smart home devices, Xfinity(from our sponsor, Comcast) and beautiful furnishings from Williams-Sonoma’s brands. The whole house is designed exclusively for CNET’s Guide to Smart Living and there are several parts involved.
There is a basic of the smart home which is called “Smart Home 101” which includes the hub as well as some easy, simple devices that allow for lots of integrations. And then there is a morning routine center which can generate the rise of lights and the blaring alarm. It also can provide users news and even coffee at the moment users wake up. There are also some little tips and tricks like DIY dryer sheets, laundry hacks, and cor-wrangle to make users’ lives easier and better. Lastly, the smart kitchen also helps users cook meals by connecting to devices and hacks for small appliances like Instant Pot.
I am really looking forward to see the popularize of smart home because it really helps our lives a lot, especially the college student like me. we lived by ourselves and the smart home can make our lives easier and even regulate our schedules. I liked the smart kitchen most because for me it is really taken a lot of my daily time to cook meals. If the smart kitchen can do it for me, it will not only save my time but also gives me a feeling that I am at home which whenever I come back, I can eat the delicious food. However, I also think that the smart home has a downside which is that it is an example of the internet of things so that it relies on the technology too much. Once there is something wrong with the basic center or the whole connection, the whole program will die off immediately. This may be the negative side of not only this smart home but all the technology. So I think although it is really convenience, we still need to have our own living skills so that we can survive wherever we go.

 

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/guide-to-smart-living/9/

 

Singapore plans to use lamppsots with facial regocnition in the future

A few years later, the surveillance cameras in Singapore which atop the roads could help authorities pick out and recognize faces in crowds across the island-state. Those cameras are basically linked to facial recognition software and it makes the public panic because people think that this technique kind of influence personal privacy. The government says that this technique is used for anti-terrorism as well as to analytic perform crowd. And also, there is a project called “Lamppost-as-a-Platform” will be started the next year according to the GovTech. The government says that It is one of the parts of the “Smart Nation” plan in Singapore which is used to cutting-edge technology to improve people’s lives and has pledged to be sensitive to privacy. Singapore government plans to use lampposts to monitor air quality and water levels as well. Although the government did not state how many lampposts could be used in the initial pilot project, one of the heads of Singapore’s civil service states that there will be about 110,000 lampposts connected to the sensor network.

I think the idea that to have the lamppost system is good for the city as the program “smart city” that Singapore government wants to because I think it is a good example of the internet of thing which uses objects and let them communicate with each other. However, the facial recognition software that it carries may challenge the baseline of personal privacy that people can accept. Once I walk on the street, I do not really want to those policemen just know me wherever I go and I feel like I have my name overhead all the time. But I also think that this facial recognition technology can reduce the crime rate because once people know that they are watching wherever they go, they will take their responsibilities to their actions. So I think the most important thing is how the government decide to use it. How clear the camera should be and then how many privacy messages from each person.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-surveillance/singapore-to-test-facial-recognition-on-lampposts-stoking-privacy-fears-idUSKBN1HK0RV

A New Type of therapy fur-covered robot Animal: Comfort Companions

There is a new type of robot, comfort companions, can fill with the comfort needs of people by offering the benefits of therapy animals without the downsides of germs, allergies, and cost. They are fur-covered which makes people especially children like to play with them. Most of them are used in the hospital to let special patients feel comfortable and to keep watch on their health situation. Those robots are very safety that they have been passed the medical device certified by the Food and Drug Administration.
There are several companies working on this technology such as the “Sporoutel’s Jerry the Bear” which are stuffed animals designed to work with an augmented reality phone app. Sproutel was the company who created the Jerry the bear which has worked on comfort companions for six years already. They founded it in 2012 to help kids cope with and learn about the illness. Jerry is one of the products they created which is a stuffed bear for kids diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Kids can learn to monitor blood sugar levels and give insulin shots to Jerry via an AR phone app. There is another product called My Special Aflac Duck also worked well on helping kids recure their mental illness. The duck can give children a chance to have control during a time when they seemingly have none by becoming the duck’s caretakers and feed the duck by the accompanying AR app.

When I read this article I feel it is so warm that I never thought that internet of things can help sick children to change their lives. They are the children who always stay in hospitals and lack love from the public. I think the comfort companions can really help with those children to let them feel the love and joy of lives which can give them hope to face the tough reality. And also, I like the AR phone app which helps kids to learn better about their body and disease with correct knowledge. The interaction between comfort companions can really make children or other patients to experience a real interaction with their own pets. I think maybe later on designers add a kind of checking system on the comfort companions will be better. Once patients play with it, the toy can tell how is every health relative data changes on patients’ bodies and then it can connect to the app on phone to tell the patients as well as the hospital at the first moment.
In a word, I really like this technology design and I hope it can be used in multiple hospitals in the future.

 

https://www.cnet.com/news/comfort-robots-aflac-duck-and-paro-seal-help-sick-people/

The Fake News in the Future will be more Personalized and Optimized

According to Sean Gourley, the founder and CEO of Primer, said that the fake news of the next world generation will be more sophisticated because of the effective jobs that AI made in the future. People have been already experienced the power of fake news in daily lives, such as some fake news about politicals which leads personal attitudes or some well-spread articles relate to fake knowledge about health. However, this problem will only be more serious in the future. An object always can have two sides which means that although the CEO of Facebook says that AI can be used to discover fake news later on but it can also be serviced of the opposite goal. 

The fake news people can get nowadays are all randomly show on different social media. In the future, AI can select the fake news that is fit to different person’s flavors and then shows to them on purpose by using the huge data to generate reports just like the job that Primer did. AI can create a million stories and then see which ones get the most traction. This makes social media even harder to stop the spread of fake news.

I think the evolution of fake news is related to two things which have been talked in the class, they are the personal privacy as well as the topic that we have been discussed in the homework called echo chambers. AI can create the fake news that people like because they have the information about each person’s favorite, like which articles they have been read these years and also which political side he/she stands on. After AI get personal interests, they can create personalized, optimizes fake news and then post them on webs. People will see those news easily because of the echo chambers the social media gives.

Again, I think AI technology has two sides and people need to use it carefully. And also, the personal privacy problem will be a central problem in this era which has an explosion of information.

 

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610635/fake-news-20-personalized-optimized-and-even-harder-to-stop/