Brute Force

If you think “nobody’s going to try all 10,000 combinations” to crack your smartphone’s four-digit PIN code, then you’re wrong. A new 3D printed robot has been designed to punch codes into phones at a rate of one per second, making it possible to crack any Android device in under twenty hours.

Security researchers Justin Engler and Paul Vines designed the Robotic Reconfigurable Button Basher, or R2B2, for less than two-hundred dollars, using three ten-dollar servo motors, a plastic stylus, a microcontroller, a five dollar webcam, and plastic parts from a Makerbot 3D printer.

The device can be controlled via USB, and runs a simple code-cracking program to cycle through all of a phone’s possible passcodes. Not all phones are currently susceptible to the R2B2’s cracking. Apple’s iOS, for example, increases the time between PIN attempts after incorrect guesses, rendering R2B2’s brute-force method useless.

Now that they’ve finished their prototype, Engler and Vine are working to include functionality for non-touchscreen devices like ATMs, hotel safes and combination locks.

The designers argue their work will help raise awareness about the insecurity of crackable four-digit PINs, and the small changes we can make to improve PIN security. A six-digit PIN, for instance, would take the R2B2 eighty days or longer to crack.

ChromeCastic!

Citing overwhelming demand, Google has ended the Netflix promotion tied to its Chromecast device, which was launched earlier this week.

The promotion gave both new and existing customers three free months, or twenty-four dollars worth of the video streaming service, when they purchased the thirty-five dollar TV dongle. The Chromecast, which has been flying off virtual shelves since its Wednesday launch, is a simple device that lets users send video to their TV’s from their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Setup is simple too, as the dongle plugs directly into the TV through an HDMI port. Once its calibrated to your home network, the device seamlessly pulls content over Wi-Fi. Many analysts regard it as a competent challenger to Apple TV, which retails for one-hundred dollars.

Customers looking to get their hands on Google’s new device will be able to pick one up at Best Buy stores, starting this Sunday.

Sky’s The Limit

A year after BSkyB’s investment in Roku, the company has leveraged the relationship to develop their own set-top-box, the Now TV.

Going on sale today for ten English Pounds, or about fifteen dollars, the new device is a rebranded Roku 2 XS with software built specifically for Sky’s IPTV platform. It will come with a curated list of additional channels, including Now TV, iPlayer, Demand Five, Spotify, Facebook, and several of Sky Network’s channels.

Partnering with traditional providers could be the key to making Roku the “operating system for TVs” that CEO Anthony Wood has stated he wants it to be.

No Jackpots Here…

Zynga, the company known for several popular web-based casual games, has announced that it will not be pursuing real-money gaming in the US.

It hasn’t abandoned real-money gaming completely, as it will continue to evaluate such gaming products in the United Kingdom, where gambling is legal. In comparison, online gambling in America is heavily regulated, and implementation would be incredibly difficult.

While some investors had been counting on the real-money business to be a growth area for the company, management has since decided to focus on fixing its core business instead. A statement from Zynga read, “Zynga believes its biggest opportunity is to focus on free to play social games. While the Company continues to evaluate its real money gaming products in the United Kingdom test, Zynga is making the focused choice not to pursue a license for real money gaming in the United States.

Zynga will continue to evaluate all of its priorities against the growing market opportunity in free, social gaming, including social casino offerings.”

Google Maps Competitor (That Isn’t Awful)

Citymaps, a new high-reaching map service, plans on beating the current industry standard, Google Maps, using a unique social twist.

The vector-based service places an emphasis on social features, so people, brands and publishers can setup and share maps of the best places to go. So say you want to make a list of the best bars and restaurants in your city.

Once you compile your list, you can save your map on Citymaps, and from there, your friends and followers can see and even add to the map with their own suggestions.

If you are just looking for a place to go, Citymaps can help you find a place using its browse feature. There, you can see business locations represented as bubbles, with each bubble’s size representing how much its being talked about on social media.

Tapping on a business’s bubble gives you a detailed description of the location, including Instagram photos and Twitter posts. CityMaps founder, Elliot Cohen, described how they differentiate themselves, saying, “Millions of maps are made on Google Maps. It’s a terrible experience. It’s not particularly attractive. It’s not social at all. And the maps go away. You can’t just search Google for a celebrity map on L.A., for example. So we want to own the notion of social map making.”

Amazon Stock Rises, Despite Profit Loss

There’s some bad news coming out for Amazon today, as the company’s razor-thin profits just turned into razor-thin losses during the last quarter.

The company isn’t worried, though, as much of the company’s funds were placed in infrastructure and investments, such as building new warehouses and acquiring digital content. Even though the company is showing a loss now, they feel confident that their big investments will pay off down the line.

With revenue up a full twenty two percent, Amazon showed that it could still deliver the kind of sales-growth demanded by investors, who have lifted the company’s stock by twenty one percent over the last year.

Despite the dip in profits, the company holds strong, spending hundred of millions on future investments, and making agreements with digital content holders, which currently account for twenty-eight percent of Amazon’s total sales. With a list of acquisitions spanning over fifteen years, we can trust Amazon’s vision for the future will turn profits around.

MOUSECEPTION

In a story that’s about as far-fetched as a science fiction film, scientists at MIT’s neuroscience lab have successfully implanted a false memory into a mouse’s brain.

Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez and his colleagues accomplished the feat by tagging brain cells associated with a specific memory and then tweaking it to make the mouse believe something had happened when it actually didn’t.

Scientists artificially stimulated neurons with electrodes in order to make associations between events and environments that had no ties with reality. In essence, they implanted a new, false memory by simply connecting two previously unrelated parts of the brain. Using the same method, it should also be possible to isolate human memories and activate or deactivate them at will. The study’s authors hope that one day this type of research could help treat emotional problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

For now, there’s still much to be learned about the brain before we can begin directly interacting with it.

Useless Displays of Powerlessness

In a display of pure gaming power, Microsoft decided they would push the boundaries of what’s possible, and make a computer so powerful that it barely runs.

They started by rounding-up three ultra-high-resolution 4K monitors and wired them to a very powerful Windows 8 PC. Inside the computer were three top-of-the-line ASUS seventy-nine-seventy GPUs, powering the experimental 12K gaming rig with enough power to render one-and-a-half billion pixels per second.

Counting the monitors and all the equipment, the experiment cost Microsoft about seventeen-thousand dollars to push the limits of consumer technology.

Unfortunately for the team building it, the computer was so cutting edge, that it only managed to last a few minutes before the computer’s power supply crashed.

And that’s all we have for the news this week. If you want to keep up with these stories an more, be sure to join us every weekday morning at 8:30am Central Time on NewsDesk with Kristin Feledy.

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