Tech 9: Stories From the Week You Need To Read Right Now

Image via Complex Original

In response to a public request this week, New York City officials released records about 173 million licensed taxi trips taken in the city. The 20GB file used a hashing system to obscure the identities of the drivers and their patrons while making the general information about each trip available. But hashing, a process that attaches algorithmic instruction to each specific value in a data file, turns out to be a less than secure form of encryption, something that software developer Vijay Pandurangan was able to hack in a couple of hours, attaching exact identities and geographic locations to every single ride cataloged by the city. "This anonymization is so poor that anyone could, with less than two hours work, figure which driver drove every single trip in this entire dataset. It would even be easy to calculate drivers' gross income or infer where they live," he wrote in a post on Medium.

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The invention of the mouse is often credited with helping make computers usable for the mass market. This week an Indian research firm revealed a new prototype for a device they believe will replace the mouse, a universal input system that could be used across a variety of devices, from desktop computers to tablets to televisions. The device is a small ring that sits around a person's fingertip, equipped 3D gyroscope and accelerometer to detect the fingers motion, essentially allowing small movements of your finger to replace the pointer function of the mouse. The device could also make it easier to interact with 3D interfaces like holographic projections or with VR headsets like Oculus Rift.

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Birds and bees do it, and now small winged-robots will also play a role in pollinating plants, especially on commercial farms. Researchers from Harvard have built a tiny airborne drone, a little larger than a quarter, capable of flying through commercial crop fields to keep them pollinated. The program is a response to the mysterious phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder, which has been killing honeybees at epidemic rates. Bee pollination is responsible for about a third of the food humans eat and so the widespread deaths poses a direct threat to commercial farming. RoboBees would operate in swarms of several thousand and are intended as a temporary stopgap to buy researchers more time to investigate CCD.

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In 2012, Persistent Surveillance Systems operated a network of security cameras across Dayton, Ohio. The company operated a series of remote controlled aircraft with surveillance cameras attached and flew over the city capturing footage that would later be used to identify and prosecute criminals, including one robber whose car was tracked across town to a gas station, where local surveillance footage from which was used to identify him and tie him to the robbery crosstown. The company's technology began as a research project for the Air Force and is used widely across Mexico, many American cities have been reluctant to approve aerial surveillance plans. Even after Dayton Police praised the company's role in helping fight crime, city government decided to not renew the contract for fear of political blowback. But PSS is continuing to expand its lobbying efforts, promising surveillance contracts at the cost of $2000 an hour.

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Reporting for CNN Money, Jose Pagliery uncovers a new kind of virus that's designed to steal a person's computer files and hold them for ransom. A massive operation nicknamed Cryptolocker has kidnapped the files of more than 400,000 people. While most have refused to pay up, the virus has still netted more than $4 million from the unsuspecting few. Called Ransomware, ESET security analyst Stephen Cobb predicts these viruses will become a permanent danger. "The bad guys recognize that Ukraine or Thailand -- countries without effective governments at this point -- are great places for doing this stuff," he told the CNN. "Dealing with the problem becomes a geopolitical thing."

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A new diversity report on the tech industry has provided some evidence about where Facebook's paradoxical Utopian creepiness comes from, revealing 77 percent of the company's top posts are held by men. No less damning, only 2 percent of the company's global workforce are Black, and 91 percent of its employees are either White or Asian. In case you're wondering why Facebook doesn't feel quite as welcoming and homely as it claims to be, its standards for sociability and inclusiveness are being defined from a very particular and narrow group.

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Dubai was once a modest port city on the Arabian Peninsula, but in the last few decades it has transformed into a vestibule for the pointless dreams of the ultra-wealthy. This week Dubai Holdings announced plans for build a city-sized mall under a climate-controlled glass dome. Though retail spaces are still being sold, the space will have 100 different hotels, with the capacity to house 20,000 people. The 48 million square foot space will be split into different shopping districts and have a theme park to boot, all for a price of $6.8 billion.

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There's a special kind of shame in using social media, when seeing a thought that sounded perfect in your head become an obnoxious clatter of words once posted to Facebook or Twitter. Drugs and alcohol only exacerbate this horror, but a new social network called Sobrr hopes to make everything all right by continually deleting posts after 24 hours The network was inspired by a wild bachelor party in Vegas that founder Bruce Yang and some friends went on, which prompted a rash of frantic social media post deletions the morning after. "Sobrr encourages users to go out and live in the moment," Yang told VentureBeat. "The fact that everything will disappear soon keeps the user engaged with things in the present."

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It was only a matter of time before the government would find a way to criminalize sexting. This week a 17-year-old boy in Virginia was arrested on felony charges for creating and distributing child pornography after sending his 15-year-old girlfriend a picture of his erect penis. To verify the penis in question was in fact the boy's, police proposed to take him to a clinic, force him to ingest erection-inducing medication, and take a picture of his penis, essentially doubling the criminal action the boy had been charged with. After public outcry, the charges were dropped but the case remains a chilling reminder of how most law enforcement agencies fundamentally misunderstand new forms of technology they're expected to monitor.

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