Category Archives: What is…

What is net neutrality?

by Ben Dickson

Should it make a difference for your Internet Service Provider whether you’re browsing your timeline on Facebook, reading your emails in Gmail, or reading the latest post on TechTalks? According to net neutrality, it shouldn’t.

Net neutrality is the principle that rules ISPs should treat all internet traffic equally and avoid playing favorites, throttling, blocking or providing paid prioritizations. What does that all mean? We’ll get there in a minute.

In the past years, as the internet has transformed from being a luxury to a vital commodity, net neutrality, which is also referred to as “open internet” and “internet freedom,” has become a thorny issue in the U.S. The debate has pitted several broadband and telecom giants such as AT&T and Comcast against huge content corporations such as Google and Facebook.

While the battle is currently being played out in the U.S., the outcome can set a precedent that will propagate to other countries and regions. Here’s what you need to know and why you should care. Continue reading →

Advertisements

What’s the difference between VR, AR and MR?

by Ben Dickson

 

Are we living in a simulation? This laughed-at notion is becoming increasingly acceptable as technological advances are blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion. There is now not one but three different flavors of synthetic reality: Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR).

But there’s a lot of confusion about what each version of reality is. This is something that is akin to evolving technologies. For instance, after decades, there’s still debate over what is artificial intelligence (AI). Continue reading →

What is Narrow, General and Super Artificial Intelligence

by Ben Dickson

This article is part of Demystifying AI, a series of posts that (try) to disambiguate the jargon and myths surrounding AI.

If you’re living on this planet, you probably hear a lot about Artificial Intelligence these days. It’s conquering every industry and domain, performing tasks more efficiently than humans, will put humans out of work, and may one day force humans into slavery. You might have also heard about narrow, general and super artificial intelligence, or about machine learning, deep learning, reinforced learning, supervised and unsupervised learning, neural networks, Bayesian networks and a whole lot of other confusing terms.

That’s a lot of jargon to cover in one post, and we’ll leave the learning stuff for another day. In this post, we’ll try to define what AI is (and isn’t maybe) and what are the three main known flavors of AI. Continue reading →

What is phishing and spear phishing?

by Ben Dickson

One of the most basic practices every cybersecurity guide will recommend is not to click on links and attachments contained in emails coming from unknown sources, and to think twice even if they come from seemingly trustworthy sources.

You think it’s unnecessary caution? Ask John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential elections campaign. This is exactly how he (or the operator of his email account) gave away his accounts credentials to hackers. The breach led to a series of damaging and embarrassing leaks which might have cost his boss her chance of becoming president. Continue reading →

What is encryption?

by Ben Dickson

The main takeaway from the buildup of developments in the cybersecurity landscape is that privacy is becoming a commodity. The CIA is spying on your phone. Hackers are breaking into your home. Your documents, emails, messages, can be intercepted. And Congress is empowering ISPs to pry into your communications.

Long story short, nothing remains secret.

Under such circumstances, encryption becomes your best friend, your last line of defense in protecting your information. Continue reading →

What is Full-Disk Encryption (FDE)?

by Ben Dickson

Full-Disk Encryption

If you think someone without your desktop login won’t be able to access your computer’s files, think again. Anyone with mediocre IT skills can take your your hard disk, plug it as a secondary drive to another computer, and extract your files.

So how can you protect your files from hackers?

One option would be to encrypt your sensitive files manually or avoid storing them on your computer altogether and lock them away in a safe cloud. An alternative is to use Full-Disk Encryption (FDE), a technique that scrambles everything stored on your computer and makes it only accessible to the person with the decryption key. Continue reading →

What is eye tracking technology?

by Ben Dickson
Source: iMotions

Source: iMotions

Imagine scrolling an online news article by merely staring at the bottom of the webpage. How about reorganizing your desktop files by dragging them around with your gaze?

For years we’ve been using mice and keyboard (and later touch screens) as the main tools to control and send commands to our computers and devices.

But 2016 proved that things are headed for a change. With great leaps in artificial intelligence and machine learning, we saw a new array of highly efficient assistants and devices that can be controlled with voice commands.

The start of 2017 gave a hint at what the next breakthrough might be. Continue reading →