NYU’s Sarah Kaufman talks about the shape of cities to come

 On this week’s episode of Technotopia we talk to Sarah Kaufman, the Assistant Director at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management. Kaufman is working to create new transit opportunities for New Yorkers – and the world – and expects the future to be quite interesting. Her prediction? As we move towards self-driving cars we will see more options for… Read More Continue reading NYU’s Sarah Kaufman talks about the shape of cities to come

Meta SaaS raises $1.5 million from Mark Cuban and others

 Meta SaaS is a product that helps you cancel other products. Like Cardlife and Cleanshelf, Meta SaaS looks at all of your software-as-a-service subscriptions and tells you which ones you use and, more important, which ones you don’t. Founded by Arlo Gilbert and Scott Hertel, the product raised $1.5 million in seed from Mark Cuban with participation from Barracuda Networks, Capital… Read More Continue reading Meta SaaS raises $1.5 million from Mark Cuban and others

CoSMo CEO Michel Morvan talks about augmented intelligence

 Michel Morvan is the CEO of The CoSMo Company, a big data service provider and insight generator. He knows how to use AI to help C-level execs make decisions and he thinks the current crop of AI is just the beginning. Morvan doesn’t believe AI will become “self-aware.” Instead he speaks of “augmented intelligence,” robots that help us think better and make… Read More Continue reading CoSMo CEO Michel Morvan talks about augmented intelligence

Spammers expose over a billion email addresses after failed backup

 At its height, River City Media, run by Alvin Slocombe and Matt Ferris, sent out a billion emails a day, slamming Gmail servers with fragmented traffic in order to ensure all of its email went out on time. After failing to password-protect a remo… Continue reading Spammers expose over a billion email addresses after failed backup

New skimmers fit right on top of chip and PIN credit card scanners

ped3-copy-940x698 As usual Mr. Krebs has some great images of a credit card skimmer found in the wild. This model uses Samsung phone parts and lays right over the Ingenico card scanners you’ve probably seen in stores. The interesting thing is that these scanners also support chip and PIN technology but, as evidenced by the photo, it looks like the retailer disabled it essentially sending the scanner back… Read More Continue reading New skimmers fit right on top of chip and PIN credit card scanners

DeepCoder builds programs using code it finds lying around

markus-spiske-207946 Like all great programmers I get most of my code from StackOverflow questions. Can’t figure out how to add authentication to Flask? Easy. Want to shut down sendmail? Boom. Now, thanks to all the code on the Internet, a robot can be as smart as a $180,000 coder. The system, called DeepCoder, basically searches a corpus of code to build a project that works to spec. It’s been used… Read More Continue reading DeepCoder builds programs using code it finds lying around

Citrix CEO Kirill Tatarinov talks about punch cards and the 3D future

citrix-ceo-kirill-tatarinov Kirill Tatarinov has seen computing from bottom to top. As a student in the USSR he wrote programs on punch cards to manage the cutting edge hardware clones that Russia was churning out and now, as CEO of Citrix, he’s working on the next generation of managed computing. His vision for the future is simple: he thinks 3D will be the next big UI shift and that we need to be ready. Tatarinov… Read More Continue reading Citrix CEO Kirill Tatarinov talks about punch cards and the 3D future

Researchers simulate a ransomware attack on industrial controls

Aerial shot of wastewater treatment facility in Houston, Texas (Photo: Getty Images/Jupiterimages/Photolibrary) Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a form of ransomware that can hit us where it really counts: the water supply. Their program installed itself in a model water plant and allowed the researchers to change chlorine levels, shut down water valves, and send false readings to monitoring systems.
“We are expecting ransomware to go one step farther, beyond the… Read More Continue reading Researchers simulate a ransomware attack on industrial controls

Big data expert Flavio Villanustre talks about the future of massive data stores

Flavio Villanustre is an expert in Big Data. He and his team at an offshoot of LexisNexis created a massive open source product aimed at allowing first-timers to spin up huge data stores. The product, called HPCC, is a way to bring parallel computing a… Continue reading Big data expert Flavio Villanustre talks about the future of massive data stores