How to Stay Anonymous Online

Credit:MIT News

New Privacy Pattern – Strong Security Guarantees

Privacy networks tend to guard individuals living under exploitive regimes from scrutiny of the Internet usage. However from recent discovery of susceptibilities in most of the well-known networks, Tor has urged computer scientists in endeavouring to come up with more secured privacy patterns. In July, at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, scientists at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne will be presenting a new privacy pattern which would offer strong security guarantees though will use bandwidth more efficiently than its ancestors.

In tests, the systems of the researchers needed only one-tenth as much time just like secure experimental systems in transferring a large file between unidentified users. Albert Kwon, a graduate scholar in electrical engineering and computer science and first author on the new paper, said that the initial use case that they thought of was to do anonymous file-sharing where the receiving end and sending end do not know each other.

The reason was that things like honeypotting, where spies tend to offer services through an anonymity network in order to entrap its users, are a real issue. However they have also studied applications in microblogging, something like Twitter, where one would want to secretly broadcast your messages to everyone.

Heart of System – Sequence of Servers - Mixnet

The system invented by Kwon and his co-authors, his advisor, Srini Devadas, the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, David Lazar, a graduate student too in electrical engineering and computer science together with Bryan Ford SM `02 PhD’08, an associate professor of computer and communication sciences at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanneworks on many prevailing cryptographic techniques though connects them in a novel way.

The heart of the system is a sequence of servers called a mixnet wherein each server tends permutes the order where it receives messages before it is passed on to the next. If messages from Sender Alice, Bob and Carol tend to reach the first server in the order A, B, C that server would send them to the second server in an altered order like C, B, A. The second server would permute them before sending them to the third and so on. The message that had been tracked from the point of origin, by an opponent would not know which was which by the time they had exited from the latest server

The New System – Riffle

It is this reshuffling of the messages which is said to be named – Riffle, for the new system. Similar to several privacy systems, Riffle tends to also use a technique known as onion encryption – Tor, in which case is an abbreviation for `the onion router’.

In the case of onion encryption, the sending computer tends to wrap each message in many films of encryption utilising a public key encryption system such as those that tend to protect most of the online financial transactions. Each of the servers in the mixnet seems to remove only one layer of encryption so that last server only knows the final destination of the message.

To prevent message tampering, Riffle tends to use a system known as verifiable shuffle. Due to the onion encryption, the messages which each server seems to forwards do not look like the one it received, it has peeled off a layer of encryption. However the encryption could be done in a way which the server would generate a mathematical proof which the messages it sends seems valid operations of the ones receiving it.

PAK-DA Bomber Capable Of Launching Nuclear Weapons From Space

Russia’s Hypersonic Rocket-like-Jet - Five Times Speed of Sound

Russia intends developing a hypersonic rocket like jet that could strike targets from space with nuclear missiles. PAK-DA Bomber, Flying five times the speed of sound, the rocket would be capable of reaching any point on the earth in less than two hours. Said to be the first of its kind, it would be capable of dropping a nuclear warhead before coming back to its base in Russia. According to Colonel Alexei Solodovnikov, who has been working on the project, by 2020, a well-designed engine will be established.

He had informed that PAK-DA Bomber would be a strategic aircraft and will fly into outer space in order to strike; utilising nuclear bombs and will then return to the airfield. The test engine for the PAK-DA bomber is said to be shown at the Army 2016 International Military Technology Forum near Moscow in September.

The commander of Russian Strategic Missile Forces, Colonel General Sergei Karakayev, has confirmed that the model engine for the PAK-DA Bomber has been built and has been tested successfully. He had stated that `an engine for a promising space plane has been created at Strategic Rocket Forces Academy and the unit’s operational ability has been verified.The notion is that the bomber would be taking off from a normal home airfield to patrol Russian airspace’.

Strike Target with Nuclear Warhead & Return to Home Base

He further added that on command it will ascend into outer space, striking a target with nuclear warheads and return to its home base. It will be using hypersonic speed in rocket mode. As per the Strategic Missile Forces Academy, the engine would be operated in two modes wherein one would be utilising kerosene fuel for conventional flight while the other would be using methane and oxygen to power the craft into space.

Reaction Engines, a British firm states that its own hypersonic engine would be ready by 2020. Over £7.5 million has been invested by the European Space Agency towards the development of the SABRE engine that would enable aircraft to fly anywhere in four hours. The U.S. officials have not been revealed whether their own next generation bomber would be flying at hypersonic speed, though the US Air Force in 2007 had stated that its aircraft would probably be subsonic in order to control the cost. Flying hypersonic would mean flying at Mach 5, five times the speed of sound at around 3,840mph or quicker.

Taranis Aircraft – Most Advanced Built by British

The closest programme of Britain to the Russian hypersonic jet is said to be a confidential stealth drone which is being developed by BAE Systems and the £200 million Taranis aircraft is said to be the most advanced built by the British engineers. It is likely to offer the basis for fleets in supersonic unmanned bombers which could attack into the enemy territory while escaping sophisticated defences. A RAF source had commented that the RAF has a futuristic programme `Taranis’ which is stealth drone having similar capabilities though does not operate in outer atmosphere.

The presently fastest jet of Britain is the Eurofighter Typhoon which tends to have a top speed of about Mach 2 or 1,550 mph. With regards to US capabilities compared to the Russians’ the source of RAF has stated that whatever one can imagine in the wildest dreams, the US has perhaps been ahead by thirty years on it. If the Russians have been developing it, the US would already be much ahead.

Floating airports: Could They Finally Become a Reality?

Runway Float over Virtually Limitless Flat Surface of Sea

Airports tend to utilise plenty of space and in areas in need of air connections, like in islands and large metropolises, it is something which is in short supply. Planners have come up with solutions by turning to the sea. Huge land reclamation projects are an apparent route which is, what has been done in Hong Kong and Osaka in expanding airport capacity. Some thinkers have taken a different approach considering that, they could make a runway float over the almost boundless flat surface of the sea.

Aircraft carriers tend to have floating runways though there are also warships which need to be manoeuvrable, travelling at speed. To manage commercial craft, their decks seem to be too small and even the largest carrier tends to fall short of the need of modern jet airliners. But taking the concept of the floating deck if it is stripped of its engine and lower decks, anchor it in a set location and make it adequately long and wide enough for a medium sized airliner to land on, the outcome would be a right large floating structure which would be neither a ship or an island but a floating airport.

Technological Research Association of Mega-Float

The British had been interested with the idea of building runways on icebergs to provide cover for the vital Atlantic convoys, during World War II. The Project Habakkuk had not materialized though the floating airport conception continued to live on. In the year 1995, 17 Japanese private companies of typically shipbuilders and steelmakers had formed the Technological Research Association of Mega-Float with the aid of the Japanese government.

 Their focus was in designing and testing a floating airport concept which if it was successful could be installed in Tokyo Bay. The Tokyo Mega-Float is said to be the most ambitious effort of its kind till date. The project required a floating structure with 4,000 meter long runway adequate even for large airliners. Smaller-scale model had been built and tested comprising of a 1,000 meter-long runway, which proved that the Mega Float was appropriate for aircraft operations. But the project did not progress and later, the structure had been dismantled.

Vision – Full-Fledged Offshore `Aerotropolic’

For San Diego, a city whose international airport seemed to have little room left to expand in its current location, similar proposals had been floated, in this case. Tenders to build a brand new two-runway international airport in the sea, few miles off Point Loma had been placed forward by two different companies namely OceanWorks Development and Float Inc. It is not known whether the price tag of $20 billion which seemed a bit too costly or the lingering doubts regarding the technical feasibility of the concept, where neither of the projects had shown up.

The San Diego projects had some resemblances with the floating airport notion which had been formulated by an American Aeronautical engineer, Terry Drinkard, who had directed widespread research in this field. His system pulls deeply from technologies and materials which have been tested already in the construction of deep-water oil rigs.

 His vision is for a full-fledged offshore `aerotropolic’, which is a floating structure that besides being able to manage medium-sized airliners would also horde an entire range of economic as well as research activities, from research with renewable energy technology to aquaculture and yachting. The structure would provide a base for oceanographic research and aquaculture and would also double as a port and recreational marine. Its possible offshore position could also draw several other economic activities.

4,000mph Hypersonic Plane Backs Revolutionary Sabre Engine

Our world is becoming so fast that even a few minutes or seconds delay can cause huge losses and problems for us. Transportation and communication sector has gone through a rapid phase of development in the recent past which helped in lowering the costs and time taken for travel along with increasing the mobility.

European Space Agency is looking to make people lives more fast literally by investing $11 million for developing a hypersonic engine with the ability to fly anywhere across the planet within four hours. Reaction Engines has landed up with the job of developing such engine turbine which encompasses the technologies of both jet and rocket in order to achieve an unbelievable five times the speed of sound. Reaction Engines have confirmed that they will be able to come up with the first prototype for testing by the year 2020.

Reaction Engines were going through the period of securing investment from the companies and agencies. So far it has secured about $66 million from the British government and $55 million from the UK Space Agency. The development of the aircraft is still in its preliminary stages and it will take about 20 more years to make it reality on a grand scale.

How Sabre Jet engine works? 

Reaction Engines are working on the revolutionary Sabre engine which would eventually allow aircrafts to take off from the runway and get to the fives times the speed of sound within few seconds. Later on aircraft can switch to the rocket mode thereby propelling the craft right into the orbit. The important part about the Sabre engine is that it works on the theme of burning the atmospheric air in its combustion chambers. Then it makes use of the heat to turbo-charge its engine.

It should be noted that currently rockets have to carry extremely expensive fuel in the name of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in order to power. Sabre engine will certainly help in cutting down the cost as it creates its own liquid oxygen which happens within a blink of an eye. Sabre engine comes in the new class of aerospace engine which has been designed to enable crafts to get to five times the speed of light from the standstill within few seconds.

Sabre Engine is set to revolutionise the transportation

Once the aircraft loaded with the Sabre engine gets its space then it will be able to switch to the rocket mode. In the rocket mode aircraft can travel the orbit for a stimulated period of 36 hours. Thereby such aircrafts can even be used for launching the satellites into the orbit at a fraction of current costs.

UK Space Agency is investing and collaborating with the Reaction Engines to develop the Sabre engine and aircraft which can be used to travel longer distances within shortest time intervals. UK Space Agency has invested 60 million pounds in 2013 with an aim of developing some ground breaking technology and Sabre engine is a result of its effort.

Apple to launch its own reality TV show

Apple Launching its Reality TV Show

Apple is in the development of launching its own reality TV show – Planet of the Apps and a casting call for the event had been put out recently for developers in the age of 18 and above who would be interested in making smartphone apps for the Apple setting. Apple had made an announcement earlier in the year that it intends launching it first original TV series and now the world seems to know a little more regarding what it would look like.

The show is said to be co-produced by a newly shaped company owned by Ben Silverman, a reality TV guru. Apple had partnered with Propagate, a new production company developed by the guy behind `The Biggest Loser’ together with Howard T Owen who had worked on MasterChef Junior with Musician Will.i.am also on board for the said project.

Mr Silverman had informed that the original program would follow on `how apps are developed and created and incubated’. The pair had drawn their vision for the show, in a report that had been published by tech blog 9to5Mac. It stated that `Planet of the Apps will give app creators the chance to break through and share their ideas with the world. This is an exciting format which taps into what is driving culture today. We can’t wait to see the ground-breaking ideas accepted for the show, grow into viable businesses’.

Pursing an Original Content Division

The ascension of Netflix together with the fragmented market of content providers laid by internet based services has been on the rise in companies interested in producing their own original content. When Apple had stated earlier in the year that it intended creating the TV show, the software and service boss of the company, Eddy Cue had mentioned that Apple was not moving wholesale in the production of innovative content.

 He had informed the New York Times in March that this does not mean that they would go into a huge amount of movie production or TV production or anything like that. But last year, rumours have been doing the rounds that Apple has been discovering the notion of pursuing an original content division and had been in talks with various leading television companies regarding launching an internet-based TV service.

Planet of the App – Accepting Online Applications

There is a possibility that the achievement of the forthcoming show would regulate the extent of the potential venture into original content of Apple. Casting call for the show `Planet of the App’ would be accepting online applications till August 26 together with filming set to take place somewhere next year. As per the show’s website, contestants would be receiving `hand-on guidance from some of the most influential experts in the tech community, featured placement on the App store.

The winners probably will get mentorship from tech and entertainment experts and those who would be chosen for the final round would get an opportunity to meet with top-tier VCs investing around $10m over the course of the season. The show is said to be shot in Los Angeles and is planned to be released in 2017.