Four short links: 23 December 2013

Lightweight Flying Robot, Autonomous Weapons, Scientific Irony, and Insecurity of Password Management Extensions

  1. DelFly Explorer — 20 grams, 9 minutes of autonomous flight, via barometer and new stereo vision system. (via Wayne Radinsky)
  2. Banning Autonomous Killing Machines (Tech Republic) — While no autonomous weapons have been built yet, it’s not a theoretical concern, either. Late last year, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released its policy around how autonomous weapons should be used if they were to be deployed in the battlefield. The policy limits how they should operate, but definitely doesn’t ban them. (via Slashdot)
  3. Scientific Data Lost at Alarming Rate — says scientific paper PUBLISHED BEHIND A PAYWALL.
  4. Security of Browser Extension Password Managers (PDF) — This research shows that the examined password managers made design decisions that greatly increase the chance of users unknowingly exposing their passwords through application-level flaws. Many of the flaws relate to the browser-integrated password managers that don’t follow the same-origin policy that is crucial to browser security. In the case of password managers, this means that passwords could be filled into unintended credential forms, making password theft easier.
See more editions of Four Short Links...
tags: , , , , , , ,