To beat spam, turn its own weapons against it

Researchers have now come up with a system that deciphers the templates a botnet is using to create spam. These templates are then used to teach spam filters what to look for.

Each message is generated from a template that specifies the message content and how it should be varied. The team reasoned that analysing such messages could reveal the template that created them

the team installed a previously captured software bot onto a machine. After analysing 1000 emails generated by this compromised machine - less than 10 minutes’ work for most bots - the researchers were able to reverse-engineer the template

The new system did not produce a single false positive when tested against more than a million genuine messages

botnets have grown so large that even a 1-minute delay in cracking the template would be “long enough for a very substantial spam campaignRead more at www.newscientist.com

Viruses use ‘hive intelligence’ to focus their attack

The video catches viruses only a few hundred nanometres in size in the act of hopping over cells that are already infected. This allows them to concentrate their energies on previously uninfected cells, accelerating the spread of infection fivefold.

They found, to their amazement, that a virus leaving a cell would travel to another cell and merely bounce off it if it already contained the virus

two viral proteins which are presented on the surface of the infected cell effectively tell the virus not to bother reinfecting that cell

it suggests that viruses can function with a sort of primitive ‘hive mentality’ to ensure efficient use of host cell resources

Finding ways to block the cell surface proteins might provide new antiviral drugs

the theory might not apply to all viruses

It depends on how widespread the phenomenon is among viruses and whether it hold true in the body as it does in cell cultureRead more at www.newscientist.com

severely handicapped people who cannot contract even one leg or arm muscle now can independently compose and send e-mails and operate a TV in their homes. They are using only their thoughts to execute these actions

Thanks to the rapid pace of research on the BMI, one day these and other individuals may be able to feed themselves with a robotic arm and hand that moves according to their mental commands

In previous studies, this lab developed the technology to tap a macaque monkey’s motor cortical neural activity making it possible for the animal to use its thoughts to control a robotic arm to reach for food targets presented in 3D space

also opened and closed the robotic arm’s hand, or gripper

The monkey’s own arm and hand did not move while it manipulated the two-finger gripper at the end of the robotic arm

these devices will help amputees and paralyzed patients to perform everyday tasks

tested in humans–with promising resultsRead more at www.mirm.pitt.edu

“THE age of melancholy” is how psychologist Daniel Goleman describes our era. People today experience more depression than previous generations, despite the technological wonders that help us every day. It might be because of them.

people who place a high value on material goals are unhappier than those who are less materialistic

time is money

which is why we are allowing laptop computers and mobile phones to blur the separation between work and home

prescription is self-determination theory

three vital elements of healthy personal development and functioning

autonomy - the feeling that our activities are self-chosen and self-endorsed

competence, a belief that our actions are effective

relatedness: our need to feel close to other people

would add a fourth factor, too: critical thinking

the best ways to establish a balanced approach to technology, and so enhance our well-beingRead more at www.newscientist.com

laws of human nature

Peter principle

people reach the level of their own incompetence

Parkinson’s law

work expands to fill the time available for its completion

law of triviality

the amount of time an organisation spends discussing an issue is inversely proportional to its importance

Sayre’s law

in any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue

student syndrome

apply yourself to a task only at the last possible moment before the deadline

planning fallacy: the tendency for people to underestimate how long it will take to do something

Hofstadter’s law,

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s law

Pareto principle

80 per cent of events are triggered by just 20 per cent of the causes

Salem hypothesis

“creationists with advanced degrees are often engineers”

Maes-Garreau law

“singularity”

any such prediction about a favourable future technology will fall just within the expected lifespan of the person making itRead more at www.newscientist.com

In 2005 I was working for a “telemarketing” firm somewhere on the east coast. Morale was so bad at the company, management went to great lengths to keep people that actually worked hard. One of the ways they did this was a short lived but highly entertaining award for “Employee of the Month”. The employee was treated to answering calls from a “special” desk with a “42″ monitor. Here is the first and last employee of the month winner. The next months’ winner could not go more than two days with the XL monitor stating his “retinas were getting burned out by the the screen”.

Read more at compare-network-monitoring-tools.com

the computer age culminated in the internet, the internet culminated in social networks

you have to go back to the science fiction of the 1950s for what’s next

Mobile internet is the next major computing cycle

everyone is now present with their real identities and relationships

Future innovation will involve using the information people put into them

We’re all generating massive amounts of data that will generate interesting applications

You may get recommendations of who you should meet professionally, or which career path you should take

When people are more open, they’re more engaged, and they tend to be more empathetic. They become more of a global citizen

Technology that promotes open communication will help us “move forward as a species”Read more at www.newscientist.com

developing AI is much more safe than not

One element of understanding AI safety seems to be understanding what an AI could do

we should think of an AI as simply having much more ability to research, control, and manipulate large systems, all within the constraints of known physics

The general problem is related to the wish problem: How do you specify a wish in a manner so that it can’t be misinterpreted? A cheap trick here is to add “… in a manner that I would consider acceptable”

a complementary approach

we make many AIs programmed to behave well either via laws or wish tricks, with an additional element of aggressively enforcing this behavior in other AIs. Then, if any AI is corrupted, the other AIs, with substantially more aggregate resources, will discover and deal with the problem

AIs are programmed to not harm or cause harm to humans, enforcing that behavior in other AIs

Getting the programming right is the hard partRead more at hunch.net

how can a “smart” person act foolishly?

IQ scores have long been criticised as poor indicators of an individual’s all-round intelligence

As an illustration of how rational-thinking ability differs from intelligence, consider this puzzle: if it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? Most people instinctively jump to the wrong answer that “feels” right - 100

we often get them wrong, probably because our brains use two different systems to process information

One is intuitive and spontaneous; the other is deliberative and reasoned

The problem with IQ tests is that while they are effective at assessing our deliberative skills, which involve reason and the use of working memory, they are unable to assess our inclination to use them when the situation demands

the correlation between intelligence and successful decision-making is weak

those who displayed better rational-thinking skills suffered significantly fewer negative eventsRead more at www.newscientist.com

Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one.

When Caudle’s looked for brain areas that were more active when volunteers thought about themselves and their avatars compared with real and virtual others, two regions stood out: the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. That makes sense as prior research has linked the medial prefrontal cortex to self-reflection and judgement.

also noticed key differences between how people thought about the virtual and real worlds, which must be a necessity for preserving your sense of reality

the precuneus, implicated in imagination

It could be that people whose brain activity is more similar when thinking of themselves and their avatars are likelier to end up hooked, she says. Read more at www.newscientist.com