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Communal Computing: Devices Need Greater Shareability

By Dick Weisinger

“Life is all about sharing.” — Mary Berry, English food writer. The idea of making computers and electronic devices that we can share has been around for some time. As early as 1997, in an IEEE Personal Communications paper, Xerox…

Security: Speakers and Microphones Causing Disruption and Hacking via Inaudible High Frequencies

By Dick Weisinger

The many high-tech devices with speakers that we interact with daily may be hidden carriers of malware that are disrupting and hacking your life in ways that you didn’t at all expect. Many of the phones and speaker devices that…

Crisis of Reproducibility: The Need for a Reproducibility Checklist

By Dick Weisinger

‘Not reproducible’, or as some Google researchers are calling it, ‘underspecification‘. AI results reported in papers might have spectacular and glowing results, but when other researchers attempt to replicate those same results when following the methodology specified in the research…

Brain-Computer Interface: Computers Enabling Human Minds to Process the World Around Them

By Dick Weisinger

Brain-Computer interfaces (BCI) are being developed that allow human brainwaves to be captured and converted into signals that can be processed and interpreted by computers. The technology is especially beneficial to people who have been handicapped by, for example, the…

Security: Passphrases Versus Passwords

By Dick Weisinger

Security professionals suggest users begin to adopt passphrases instead of using passwords. What’s the difference? The difference is in length. The longer the security credential, the more secure it is. Research has found that making secure passwords secure with complex…