Categories
IoT sensor

Reported drop in visitors to museum a counting error, Lifestyle News & Top Stories – The Straits Times

We are in an age where the proliferation of sensors to collect data for analytics is becoming common-place. However there needs to be more caution in completely trusting the result of the data collected, eg. sensors can malfunction, there may be software errors, unprotected endpoints can be hacked etc.

The error resulted from a faulty sensor over the main entrance that was initially detected in the spring of last year, a museum representative said. At that time, an engineer was sent to repair the device, but the device later failed a routine accuracy test in July last year.

Source: Reported drop in visitors to museum a counting error, Lifestyle News & Top Stories – The Straits Times

Categories
bug programming

24-core CPU and I can’t type an email (part one)

When software doesn’t behave as expected, it can be really difficult to find out why. In this case, someone experienced an odd hanging problem while using GMail on his powerful computer and decides to investigate. Read on for all the gory details.

…I was just engaging in that most mundane of 21st century tasks, writing an email at 10:30 am. And suddenly gmail hung. I kept typing but for several seconds but no characters were appearing on screen. Then, suddenly gmail caught up and I resumed my very important email. Then it happened again, only this time gmail went unresponsive for even longer.

Source: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email (part one)

Categories
privacy

Turn Off Your Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Watch GPS NOW!

IOW, location data can be mined for valuable information. The proliferation of sensors in everyday devices and the rapid adoption of IoT has put the spotlight on the problem.

This was all sparked when reports surfaced earlier this year of a fitness-tracking company, Strava, publishing maps showing where users jog, bike and exercise. Since many of its users are members of the military, their jogging routes and other exercises showed exactly where the US has service members around the world, as well as showing their running routes.

Source: Turn Off Your Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Watch GPS NOW!

Categories
security

PIN number analysis

There are many articles on how people chooses passwords. This article is purely on analyzing PIN numbers. Some observations are obvious but there are quite insightful ones too.

There are 10,000 possible combinations that the digits 0-9 can be arranged to form a 4-digit pin code. Out of these ten thousand codes, which is the least commonly used?Which of these pin codes is the least predictable?Which of these pin codes is the most predictable?

Source: PIN number analysis