The M4 Message Breaking Project is harnessing the power of distributed computing to crack a few remaining Enigma intercepts from WWII. The first intercept has already been broken and an interpretation posted.
Surveillance companies, using networks of cheap Web-connected cameras and powerful new video-analysis software, are demonstrating the kind of surveillance capabilities that were once only possible in a Hollywood movie. Faces and license plates can now be spotted, in almost real time, at ports, military bases and companies. Security perimeters can be changed or strengthened with a mouse click. Feeds from hundreds of cameras can be combined into a single desktop view. And videotape that used to take hours, even days, to scour is searched in minutes.
Google has struck a partnership with scientists building a huge sky-scanning telescope, with hopes of helping the public access digital footage of asteroids, supernovas and distant galaxies.
The author, chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, suggests that the U.S. should declassify the bulk of documents seized in Iraq and allow the 'open source' community to assist the government in translating them.
Miniaturization, the ubiquity of consumer electronics and the global Internet are speeding up the creation of a worldwide "network of things," where cars, phones, turnstiles - even books and clothing - know about us: who we are, where we are, what we are doing.
Changes brought about by the internet will be dwarfed by those prompted by the networking of everyday objects, says a report by a UN body. The study looks at how the use of electronic tags and sensors could create an "internet of things".
A global race is under way to reach the next milestone in supercomputer performance, many times the speed of today's most powerful machines. And beyond the customary rivalry in the field between the United States and Japan, there is a new entrant - China - eager to showcase its arrival as an economic powerhouse.
Japan has revealed plans to build a supercomputer so staggeringly powerful that it will be five times swifter than the 500 fastest systems on the planet today – combined.
Thanks to lab experiments, there is growth in the number of teleportation believers, but there is an equal amount of disbelief, too. In his new book, David Darling argues "one way or another, teleportation is going to play a major role in all our futures. It will be a fundamental process at the heart of quantum computers, which will themselves radically change the world."
The internet is entering a new phase of collaboration that many developers think Many Internet developers think will shift power away from old-line media and software companies while rapidly bringing about an age of computerized "augmentation" by blending the skills of tens of thousands of individuals.