On 4 January 2012 the users of a famous site- 4chan found a post with an unusual picture, which was a white typed text on a black background.

The visitors of the site got interested in the image and began an active discussion on it. Many people came to the conclusion that, perhaps, the NSA is looking for potential employees. Such a technique of finding smart men is not new, as even During The Second World War, British intelligence services looked for promising employees using crosswords in the Daily Telegraph. Anyway, the picture attracted attention. And after it was reposted on other forums, enthusiasts took up the decoding.
I’m pretty sure you will never guess where exactly the message is hidden. But if you consider yourself to be a VERY SMART person, you can stop reading this post and try to find it, while I will give the answer to this small riddle.
The answer was hidden by digital shorthand, that means it was INSIDE the picture (it’s digital code). So to see the answer you had to open file jpg in a text editor.

This message was hidden inside the digital code:

TIBERIVS CLAVDIVS CAESAR says and an incomprehensible something.
Ok, let’s think a bit. Who is Tiberivs Clavdivs Caesar? He is the Roman emperor who lived 2000 years ago. The numbers after his name are obviously some kind of a code. And name CLAVDIVS is a hint to an ancient roman cipher (the cipher of Caesar- one of the simplest and most ancient methods to hide a correspondence from prying eyes). The principle of the cipher is to shift and set, as is depicted in this picture (each character is replaced with another one standing in the alphabet by a fixed number of position):

But how can we guess with what shift is the cipher in the picture? Clavdvis Caesar was the 4d Roman emperor. Therefore, the most sophisticated minds, who have shifted the code to 4 positions, gained the link, which led to a picture with a duck and inscription:

And here is a new riddle. The key to the riddle was hidden in words “guess” and “out” led to the name of the steganographic program OutGuess, which allows revealing data that is hidden in ordinary digital images.
The farther the harder. The chain of encrypted messages continued until the searchers finally came across this number:

Calling this number they heard the following :”Very good. You have done well. There are 3 prime numbers associated with the original final.jpg. image. 3301 is one of them. You will have to find the other two. Multiply all 3 of these numbers together and add .com. on the end to find the next step. Goodluck. Goodbye.”
The voice sent them to another site. There was an image of a cicada with the number 3301 and a list of geolocations of 14 cities on the encrypted site.

The answer seekers had to close the computer and go outside, where they found 14 paper posters with the image of cicadas and a QR code, which led to another riddle. And then it really gets hot. Everyone is starting to understand that this is not just a joke of one Internet-nerd. No! This is a whole community that calls itself “Cicada 3301” and is located all over the world. And for some reason they are looking for very smart people.
A few weeks later on 4chan and Reddit, the following appeared: “Hi. We found those we were looking for. So our month-long journey ends. Goodbye”.
World media learned about the story and began to intensively search for winners. Of the dozen that reached the end, only one responded.

Here he is, 15 years old teenager Marcus. The Rolling Stones magazine interviewed him.

As he told he had received a message, which said :” We are only a group of people united by common beliefs. We are not hackers or pirates. We are not engaged in illegal activities. If you refuse – we will understand. But if you agree and lie to us, we will know about it. We are an organization dedicated to promoting freedom, security and the right to privacy in a network.”
As a prize, Marcus received an invitation to a private forum on the shadow Internet, where he met the rest of the winners and took part in developing a program for anonymous online communication. He learned nothing more about the Cicada 3301.
In subsequent years, cicada 3301 also looked for smart people. So maybe some kind of program is being developed that is able to change our communication on the network, but we only have to guess.

Links:

https://naukatehnika.com/samaya-interesnaya-zagadka-interneta.html

https://habr.com/ru/post/211182/

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301

Expensive and limited trips into space

Traveling into space was one of the biggest achievements made by humans. Nowadays the trips to outer space are very expensive and need years of preparations and tons of specialized equipment. With each year the technology advances further and we are making big steps in the direction of easier exploration of the unknown. NASA and SpaceX are constantly improving their rockets and spacecrafts in hope to finally make a big breakthrough and achieve something, about what people in the past could only dream. But those types of space transportation need to reach the velocity of about 40,000 kilometers per hour to successfully launch from the Earth into space. In order to achieve this speed, rockets need giant amounts of fuel, and because of that the payload that can be loaded onto them is very limited. This restricts the amount of the necessary equipment that can be launched with each rocket. But what if there was a way to get into space by using less fuel and with more payload? The answer is the Skyhook.

What is the Skyhook?

200 km long non-rotating Skyhook, as proposed by E. Sarmont in 1990

The very first concepts for the Skyhook were presented back in 1966, but the version with the most potential was proposed to NASA by Giuseppe Colombo, an Italian scientist, in the early 1970s. It was the idea of attaching a stabilized cable to satellites orbiting the Earth. The concept was improved during the years and right now it was simplified to just a cable connected a weight. This structure would orbit around the Earth and function as a ladder for spaceships. Because the Earth’s atmosphere, the lower end of the tether would hang on the height of around 80 to 150 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The specialized spacecrafts would launch from the Earth, attach to  the bottom end of the tether and then be transported to the upper end. This would allow to build spaceships that need less fuel and can transport larger amounts of payload to the satellites. This concept is know as the Non-rotating Skyhook. The scientist also work on the more advanced Rotation Skyhook. This construction wouldn’t be much different from it’s other version, but as the name suggests it would rotate around it’s center of mass. Because of this, we could use the Skyhook to send the spacecrafts off further into space, by using its rotation speed and less fuel. This could enable humans easier and faster travels between planets in the future. One Skyhook could orbit around the Earth and the second one around the Mars. The first one would launch shuttles in the direction of Mars and the second one could grab them and let them safely land. This would also work the other way around and would the first step to building a proper space infrastructure.

A rotating Skyhook as first proposed by H. Moravec in 1977

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_(structure)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqwpQarrDwk

https://space.nss.org/l5-news-the-rocket-skyhook-combination/

https://skyhooksandspaceelevators.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/hello-world/

One of the biggest IT companies, Facebook, and part-time owner of WhatsApp messenger, Instagram, Oculus Rift and a few other lower-ranking ventures continue chasing trouble. It would seem that scandals related to Facebook’s negligent attitude to personal data of users have just subsided, as a new misfortune came: recently a database was found on the network containing more than 419 million records linked to Facebook accounts. In fact, this server contained a lot of user information, and the source of the leak was not Facebook, according to the articles. Continue reading →

What does human enhancement mean?

Human enhancement may sound like a phrase from a science fiction movie but it is in fact very present in our lives. So what actually does human enhancement mean? According to Science Direct human enhancement (also known as human augmentation) is “a field of research that aims to enhance human abilities through medicine or technology”. It is believed that HE can be divided into three categories:

• Augmented senses
• Augmented action
• Augmented cognition

Is it a new technology?

Human enhancement might sound like one of those new technologies that have not been entirely discovered yet but the truth is that we have been using HE for many years. As stated in Science Direct, HE “has historically been achieved by consuming chemical substances that improve a selected ability or by installing implants which require medical operation. […] Augmented abilities have also been achieved with external tools, such as eyeglasses, binoculars, microscopes or highly sensitive microphones”.

Examples of human augmentation:

As I mentioned previously, human enhancement has been present in our lives for some time. In this part, I would like to share some examples of HE that are being used or worked on today.

• The first example of HE is gene editing. According to Medium “In a study conducted in august, 2017, scientists […] were able to edit a dangerous mutation from genes in human embryos. The new technique they developed involved inserting gene-editing components together with sperm in the human embryo before any fertilization took place”.

As stated in Medium “The produced results from using this new technique provided that 42 of 58 tested embryos had all of their cells repaired from the damaging gene, which causes a common heart condition that could lead to sudden death latter on in life”.

What it means is that this technology could make future generations healthier by eliminating dangerous genes as well as stopping them from transmitting them onto the next generations.

• Another example of HE are smart contact lenses. According to Big Think, “both Sony and Samsung have patented smart contact lens technology that can record video by blinking. The augmented reality company Magic Leap is also working on a smart contact lens, in tandem with its much anticipated new augmented reality headset”. So what will smart lenses do? Other sources claim that they will be able to ”would help diabetics by measuring the glucose levels in tears” (Medium) and even “record video and let you control your phone just by blinking” (The Telegraph).

What is the future of HE?

As stated in Science Direct “In the past, humans had to adapt to computers. In the future, computers will adapt to humans”.

In the future, HE will be even more developed which might bring some issues. After all, it is hard to predict which way will, for example, gene editing go.

References:

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581919300576
• https://medium.com/@jasonfoster_19698/human-augmentation-its-potential-to-revolutionize-the-human-race-ef93d1642af7
• https://bigthink.com/10-human-body-modifications-you-can-expect-in-the-next-decade
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/08/06/samsung-patents-smart-contact-lenses-record-video-let-control/
• https://medium.com/omnidya-ai/wearables-for-the-eye-smart-contact-lenses-bc8bda3be83

In a call with journalists on Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that in 2019 alone, the social media company had nixed 5.4 billion fake accounts, according to CNN — two-thirds of the world’s population, and four times China’s population.

It’s a tremendous amount of fake accounts. And the trend is ticking up: only 3.3 billion fake accounts were deleted by the company throughout 2018.

“Our goal is to remove as many fake accounts on Facebook as we can,” the company said. “We prioritize enforcement against users and accounts that seek to cause harm and find many of these fake accounts are used in spam campaigns and are financially motivated.”

Facebook also reported that over the past two quarters they have enhanced their ability to discover and prevent attempts to create fake and abusive accounts.

“We can estimate that every day, we prevent millions of attempts to create fake accounts using these detection systems,” the company said. “Because we are blocking more attempts to create fake, abusive accounts before they are even created, there are fewer for us to disable and, thus, accounts actioned has declined since Q1 2019.”

Experts, analysts, and online watchdogs are preparing for a tsunami of false and misleading content to flood social media as the presidential election of 2020 approaches and Facebook is no different.

The company burned the midnight oil to get fake accounts out of the platform as it was bombarded during the 2016 campaign with disinformation from fake accounts.

In my opinion, there should be some type of verification before account creation. Social media are a great place for the scam as number of potential victims is only growing and companies nowadays try to connect with customers through social media, as people won’t understand that the profile is fake.

References:

https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-shut-down-5-billion-fake-accounts

https://people.com/human-interest/facebook-shut-down-over-5-billion-fake-accounts/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7683069/Facebook-shut-5-4-BILLION-fake-accounts-far-year-2-billion-2018.html

https://www.haloursynow.pl/artykuly/ranking-uczelni-ktora-z-ursynowa-najlepsza,1737.htm

You may have heard about recent theft of students data from SGGW University. The data was kept on one of the employee’s laptop. According to Tvn24^[1], these data contained names, surname, PESEL, address, parents’ names, series and number of ID/passport, telephone number, which high school was certain student attending and its’ address and many other important information.

This concerns not only actual students of SGGW, but also these who applied there.

Students must now pay attention to suspicious operations on behalf of their names on their banking accounts, because with this type of data it is easy to take a loan.

https://echalliance.com/cybersecurity-is-forcing-a-rethink-of-strategic-authonomy/

Was the computer safe enough? What I mean is if any of the students data will be used illegally by a thief, it means that the laptop hadn’t had specific securities. All data should be protected, they should be encrypted, so that without the encryption one cannot break into the disc and read the data.

Each day technology gets more and more advanced, so why don’t we use it to our advantage? There are certain things we can do have our data safe – of course anything will give you 100% of security, but it is better to have some security systems than not at all. Although any computer system can be broken into in some way, it takes time and a person who is really into hacking things. And if you have blockages, it makes it hard for a hacker to get to you data.

First, most obvious, pay attention to your computer/laptop when you are away from home. It is for sure easy to steal something when nobody’s watching.

As your computer is stolen, there is nothing left for a thief to overcome – if your hard drive is not secured, they can easily put it in another computer and access all your data. That’s why you should encrypt your hard drive. The only way to access such drive is to know a key to unblock it. A key can be a PIN number, just password, but not an easy one (because these are easy to break), or a USB stick with a key in it. You can do it by using different web pages (of course secured, for instance: https…) , such as BitLocker^[2] .

What more can you do is attaching proximity alarms tracking the actual position of your laptop. Such programmes send you an alert when they detect that the laptop has moved away from you. There is a wide range of such devices. For instance i=you can order one from Sam Labs^[3] .

https://int.samlabs.com/products/proximity

But there are more ways to break into your computer without stealing it. Your data can be stolen when you are using public Wi-Fi, which is for instance on the airports or in the hotels. This is because there are passwords and emails passed over the same network. Hackers can easily steal your data by having free programs. So next time you are at the airport or on a vacation, think again about connecting to the free Wi-Fi, as all you need to be secure is a small router with a card.

As you see, there are many things you can do to protect your data.. And it is always better to have it secured than not, am I right?

Written by Karolina Rudko

References:

 ^[1] https://tvn24.pl/tvnwarszawa/najnowsze/warszawa-kradziez-komputera-z-danymi-studentow-sggw-2022240

^[2] https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uspartner_ts2team/2010/03/17/what-is-bitlocker-what-does-it-do-what-does-it-not-do/

^[3] https://int.samlabs.com/products/proximity

https://www.computerweekly.com/tip/Laptop-encryption-tips-How-to-secure-a-laptop

Why ExoMars mission is so important for society?

Has life ever existed on Mars? Despite the fact that humanity has sent more than a dozen spaceships to explore the Red Planet, the ExoMars mission will be the first mission in the history of mankind, which will be aimed at solving the existential question of whether life outside the Earth can exist.

The ExoMars mission is just more of a program of the European Space Agency and Roscosmos for the exploration of Mars. So, in 2016, specialists have already deployed the Schiaparelli landing module on the surface of the Red Planet and placed the tracer gas orbiter in orbit around this desert world. According to plans, ExoMars 2020 will be dedicated to the search for microbial life in the present or the past.

Like the portal, newatlas.com, if everything goes according to plan with the ExoMars mission, European Mars rovers and Russian scientific platforms will be found on the Red Planet, which will be sent to Mars after that. to slow down the descent.

Despite the fact that scientists had more than 145 million kilometers of the surface of Mars, the researchers decided to land the ExoMars 2020 mission in a geologically diverse place with convincing evidence of the presence of water in the past. An ideal place for landing the rover was the area called Oxia Planum, located near the equator. It is expected that the launch of the ExoMars 2020 mission will occur in July or August next year, after which the spacecraft will spend 9 months on the way to the Red Planet. Due to the fact that the 20th years of our century will be marked not only by the launch of a mission from ESA, but also by the commissioning of Mars rovers from NASA and the Chinese project Mars 2020, subject to the success of these projects, we can learn much more about the Red Planet than ever before in the history of mankind.

References – newatlas.com
Written by Antoniuk Tymofii

The first iPhone appeared in 2007, called iPhone 2G, it was revolution in mobile phone industry. People got crazy from it. They are looking forward to buy new one each year. And today I want to talk about why is this happening and why iPhone is so successful.

Firstly, from the beginning in 2007, iPhone 2G had the biggest screen and the most powerful operating system (IOS) on the world market. Apple supplies new technologies with new features. For example iPhone 4S got voice assistant called Siri, iPhone 5S got Touch ID, iPhone X got Face ID. All this new features help Apple to become famous and productable company. It is very important to know that iPhone has the most powerful processor, this year new iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 pro got A13 bionic chip, which in 2 times faster than Snapdragon 855. So, iPhone has the strongest system which has constantly updated  and forceful bionic chip.

Secondly, iPhone has got, on my opinion, the best camera. New iPhones have 12 MP on both front and back modules, but focusing and details make photos and videos fantastic. Also, you can record videos in 4k quality with 60 frames per second (fps). In 2016 Apple released iPhone 7+ with portrait mode, which can make photo with background erosion with perfect focusing and detailed face. I can talk about the camera for a long time but let’s move to the next point.

Finally, I want to say about iPhone’s magnificent design. Apple make iPhone bright, colorful and enjoyable. Each model has amazing design with beautiful camera module and smooth corners and surface. Do you want even to hold it in your hands? Definitely yes, I am sure. Also, IOS is very nice and easy system, you can configure it as you like.

In conclusion I would say that iPhone has plenty of benefits, why people get in love with this gadget. I personally have iPhone and I really like it, there are still hundreds of features that I did not mention, but you can leave your comments and say  what is your favourite iPhone and features you like more

References:

https://www.apple.com/pl/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-11-pro

and my own thoughts))

Instagram is one of the most popular Social Media websites where you can share different photos and videos. Now, owned by Facebook, Instagram mainly follows Facebook’s rules and regulations regarding content.

Recently,  Instagram has been on a spree of improving privacy features, battling “like-bots” and fake accounts. In many studies, it has been discussed how social media and Likes specifically affect our mood and general well-being. Instagram, in pursue to combat that, recently has implemented a test version of their application where you would not be able to see a total number of likes/views on photos/videos that were posted to the Feed, unless they are your own. As of now, this privacy feature is limited to some regions and not every user has access to it. Yet, they are planning to release a global update in the upcoming days.

Instagram has gathered feedback from Brazil, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Japan. So far, the results have been positive. As they state themselves, it is a fundamental change to Instagram environment. That is why they are taking it relatively slow to learn their global community as, they would think, that no everyone would be on good terms with the new feature.

Moreover, Instagram claims to understand that the View and Like counts can be extremely important for many people, including creators and artists. There have been several concerns regarding the feature and overall a global feedback has not been as nice as they claim it to be. Yet, Instagram seems to be really adamant about the feature and, personally, I really doubt that they would drop this idea. Truly speaking, this isn’t for the users’ benefit as it forces people to pay to use more of Instagram’s advertisement system. Yep, the things have not been too transparent here.

Another concern is that while Instagram tries to tackle users buying Likes, it does not tackle the problem of bot/fake accounts at all as prior to the feature, users who would buy followers on Instagram would not have the accompanied amount of likes. Therefore, creators who would use such services would not get sponsorships or deals from businesses and organizations. Now, when the Views and Likes count is gone and someone looks up an account with many followers, no one would know if those are paid for or genuine.

That’s it for today folks!

And do not forget to follow Kozminski Instagram account xD

Sources:

• https://twitter.com/instagram/status/1195009164470181888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1195009164470181888&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftech.onliner.by%2F2019%2F11%2F15%2Finstagram-35
• https://tech.onliner.by/2019/11/15/instagram-35
• https://about.instagram.com/
• https://instagram-press.com/