Lifeboat Foundation

Here is a question that keeps me up at night…

Is the San Bernardino iPhone just locked or is it properly encrypted?

Isn’t full encryption beyond the reach of forensic investigators? So we come to the real question: If critical data on the San Bernardino iPhone is properly encrypted, and if the Islamic terrorist who shot innocent Americans used a good password, then what is it that the FBI thinks that Apple can do to help crack this phone? Doesn’t good encryption thwart forensic analysis, even by the FBI and the maker of the phone?

In the case of Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone, the FBI doesn’t know if the shooter used a long and sufficiently unobvious password. They plan to try a rapid-fire dictionary attack and other predictive algorithms to deduce the password. But the content of the iPhone is protected by a closely coupled hardware feature that will disable the phone and even erase memory, if it detects multiple attempts with the wrong password. The FBI wants Apple to help them defeat this hardware sentry, so that they can launch a brute force hack—trying thousands of passwords each second. Without Apple’s help, the crack detection hardware could automatically erase incriminating evidence, leaving investigators in the dark.

Continue reading “Is San Bernardino iPhone Fully Encrypted?” »

Ever since Facebook purchased Oculus in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg has been speaking to promise of virtual reality as the next communications platform. Yesterday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona he punctuated those thoughts with a big announcement – the creation of an internal team dedicated to Social VR.

Led by Daniel James and Mike Booth, the team will work closely with Oculus as well as other divisions within Facebook to explore and build the future of social interaction in VR, the company says.

Facebook describes their work in VR as “still early” but Oculus has been working to lay the groundwork themselves with experiences like Toybox and an upcoming social SDK that will allow developers to easily implement key multiplayer and networking features into their experiences. In fact, Oculus’ dedication to Social VR is “the reason why [they’re] part of Facebook,” Oculus founder Palmer Luckey told us earlier this year.

Continue reading “Facebook to Open New Division to Build the Future of Social VR” »

Full event: https://youtu.be/dz057r6hGj4
Watch Mark Zuckerberg talks at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2016: VR is the next social platform.

At Samsung’s Unpacked event — where the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge were revealed — Zuckerberg explained about his fascination with VR and how he has been dreaming of using the technology since the age of 11.

Continue reading “Mark Zuckerberg talks at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2016: VR is the next social platform” »

Welcome to the future.

On Sunday, Facebook CEO and virtual reality enthusiast Mark Zuckerberg shared the image above on his Facebook profile.

The photo was taken this past weekend at the Mobile World Congress, a big tech conference in Spain.

Continue reading “The internet is losing its mind over this photo of Mark Zuckerberg walking through a sea of people in VR headsets” »

Meet one of the most remarkable stovetops ever invented.

Neither its surface nor the pans ever get hot!

The jury may still be out on the usefulness of the Internet of Things, but payments giant Visa is 100 percent sure that it doesn’t want to miss out. Today, it announced plans to push Visa payments into numerous fields. We’re talking “wearables, automobiles, appliances, public transportation services, clothing, and almost any other connected device” — basically anything that can or will soon connect to the internet.

Visa imagines a future where you’ll be able to pay for parking from your car dashboard or order a grocery delivery from your fridge. It makes sense, then, that Samsung is one of the first companies to sign up to the Visa Ready Program, alongside Accenture, universal payment card company Coin and Fit Pay. Chronos and Pebble are also working to integrate secure payments inside their devices.

To show off the technology, which works with any credit card, Visa or otherwise, the company has teamed up with Honda to develop an in-car app that helps automate payments. Right now they have two demos, the first of which concerns refueling. It warns the driver when their fuel level is low and directs them to the nearest gas station. Once the car arrives at the pump, the app calculates the expected cost and allows the driver to pay for the fuel without having to leave the vehicle.

Is this the ultimate flying bike? A Hungarian company hopes to sell this flying device as soon as sometime this year.

More of our innovation stories: http://cnnmon.ie/1KQJYCZ

Our first look at Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 with a bigger battery, better camera — and waterproofing.

There’s truth behind the “absent-minded professor.”