Tag Archive for: skepticism

Amazon plans more home robots despite early skepticism about Astro – GeekWire


Ken Washington, Amazon’s VP of consumer robotics, with the Amazon Astro home robot. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

Amazon unveiled Astro, its first home robot, in September, after developing the rolling Alexa device in secret for several years. In an introductory video, the company anticipated the skepticism Astro would face.

“A robot?” a mom in the video asks. “What are we going to do with a robot?”

In this fictional world, of course, Astro wins people over with its ability to navigate autonomously through a house, serve as a mobile security and video conferencing hub, check the stove with its periscoping camera, help family members check in on older relatives, start a dance party, and deliver a drink to someone on the couch.

In the real world, however, Astro still has some convincing to do.

Astro “is a solution in search of a problem,” concluded CNET’s David Priest in his review. “It’s cool, undeniably, and I’m excited to see what home robots look like in the near future … But for now, Astro remains an interesting device with a lot of potential, but too little utility to really be worth that price tag.”

That price tag, for now, is $1,000, if you’re one of the limited number of customers whose request to purchase Astro is approved through Amazon’s Day One Editions preview program. Eventually, when Astro is more widely released to the general public, the price is expected to go up to $1,500.

Astro is 17-inches tall with a 10-inch display, a rear cargo hold and a periscoping camera.

It rolls around autonomously on two wheels. In essence, it’s a mobile Echo device, responding to questions in the voice of Alexa. Astro otherwise communicates through beeps and blips and a pair of expressive digital “eyes” in the form of simple animated emoticons on its screen.

Amazon acknowledges the skepticism about Astro but makes it clear that it’s not giving up so easily. The company is working on improvements based on initial feedback, and it describes Astro as the first in a line of home robots.

“This is the beginning of the journey for us,” said Ken Washington, Amazon’s vice president of consumer…

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Cryptocurrency’s promise met with skepticism – Twin Cities


Old-time vaudeville star Jimmy Durante’s catchphrase, “Everybody wants ta get inta the act!” well describes the current state of cryptocurrencies. These are forms of electronic money, the accounting and control of which are outside usual banking and government-sanctioned central banking orbits, and for which encryption and anonymity plays a key role.

Edward Lotterman

These are not new. Bitcoin started in 2008. Millions of people reportedly now are owners and users. Additional millions certainly follow its value.

But some developments are new: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently issued a cautious statement affirming cryptocurrencies. Minnesota GOP Rep. Tom Emmer has taken an enthusiastic interest in such currencies as do some other elected officials.

The most concrete recent development is the pending IPO of Coinbase, a cryptocurrency company that would be the first as a publicly-traded corporation. Its reputation is clouded by reports of accountholders who saw hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear from their accounts. But the company says these losses were due to lax security of account numbers and passwords by the depositors and not from any misstep by of Coinbase. The IPO is expected to be successful. Expectations are that Coinbase will assume a significant role in payments systems.

Traditional credit cards such as Visa and Mastercard, entrenched within traditional banking systems, are running scared. They have held — and abused — monopoly positions for decades. PayPal and other new competitors already have eroded their power. Cryptocurrencies will hurt them further.

I am sure Powell is right that cryptocurrencies, or features of their technologies, will grow as payment platforms. Yet history also demonstrates there will likely be major hiccups along the way. Unbreakable codes, like computer security systems and “impenetrable,” tank armor, always get broken into or penetrated. Much of the attraction of cryptocurrencies is their opaqueness and hence their utility in helping users evade taxes and launder money. Those very features will also make it hard to solve any inevitable electronic heists.

Enthusiasts argue that criminal uses of cryptocurrencies…

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Supreme Court Expresses Skepticism Over 1986 Computer Crime Law


Illustration for article titled Supreme Court Skeptical About Law That Could Have a Chilling Effect On Security Research

Photo: Drew Angerer / Staff (Getty Images)

The Supreme Court on Monday expressed skepticism about the sweeping nature of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, claiming that the cybercrime law — the only one of its kind in the United States — could lead to a slippery slope where average Americans are criminalized for innocuous transgressions like checking Facebook at work.

The reexamination of the law comes during arguments for a case involving a Georgia police officer convicted of violating the Act after he accessed a license plate database in during an attempt to obtain information on a strip club dancer in what lawyers argued was an improper manner. Lawyers for the officer, Nathan Van Buren, say that he had not violated the CFAA and had, in fact, had legitimate access to the database through the course of his work.

The case — the first significant challenge to the scope of the CFAA to reach the nation’s highest court — spurred a string of amicus briefs from a wide range of technology, privacy and cybersecurity experts, many of whom argued that the law could discourage computer researchers and good-faith hackers from uncovering and disclosing security flaws.

“Under the government’s broad interpretation of the CFAA, standard security research practices — such as accessing publicly available data in a manner beneficial to the public yet prohibited by the owner of the data — can be highly risky,” one group of experts wrote.

Despite arguments from the government’s lawyer, Deputy Solicitor General Eric Feigin, that anxieties about overzealous enforcement of the law were overhyped, many of the Justices seemed concerned about the law’s broad scope.

According to Justice Neil Gorsuch, the DOJ’s argument threatened to “[make] a federal criminal of us all.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the government was “…asking us to write definitions to narrow what could otherwise be viewed as a very broad statute, and dangerously vague.”

Other members of the bench raised concerns about the key terms outlined in the statute.

“What is this statute talking about when it speaks of information in the computer?” Justice Samuel Alito asked…

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Yahoo’s claim of ‘state-sponsored’ hackers meets with skepticism

Yahoo has blamed its massive data breach on a “state-sponsored actor.” But the company isn’t saying why it arrived at that conclusion. Nor has it provided any evidence.

The lingering questions are causing some security experts to wonder why Yahoo isn’t offering more details on a hack that stole account information from 500 million users.

“I think there’s a lot of fishiness going on here,” said Michael Lipinski, the chief security strategist at Securonix.

Yahoo didn’t respond to a request for comment. The company has protocols in place that can detect state-sponsored hacking into user accounts. In a December 2015 blog post, the company outlined its policy, saying it will warn users when this is suspected. 

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