Massachusetts Institute of Technology - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• ​Universities to help Watson tackle cybercrime

  IBM is recruiting eight US universities to help train Watson for Cyber Security, a new cloud-based version of its cognitive technology.
  

• ​Disability system to tap IBM’s Watson

  Government agencies responsible for deploying the technology that will drive the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) will soon gain access to the cognitive computing capabilities of IBM’s Watson.
  

• Researchers improve de-anonymization attacks for websites hiding on Tor

  Researchers have developed a new technique that could allow attackers to determine with a high degree of accuracy which Tor websites users are accessing and where those websites are hosted.

• Groups urge Obama to oppose cyberthreat sharing bills

  U.S. President Barack Obama should oppose legislation intended to let businesses share cyberthreat information with each other and with government agencies because the bill would allow the sharing of too much personal information, a coalition of digital rights groups and security experts said.

• MIT tests 'software transplants' to fix buggy code

  Like visiting a junk yard to find cheap parts for an aging vehicle, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a way to fix buggy software by inserting working code from another program.

• Wi-Fi access point scans can betray a person's location

  Many Android applications collect information on Wi-Fi access points, which researchers contend can be used to figure out where a person is more than 90 percent of the time.

• MIT uses algorithm to banish window reflections in pics

  You've got the perfect shot of a cityscape from your hotel room -- if it weren't for those pesky reflections in the window.

• MIT develops wireless trackpad for your thumbnail

  Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a tiny wireless trackpad that can be worn on a thumbnail.

• MIT's Picture language could be worth a thousand lines of code

  Now that machine-learning algorithms are moving into mainstream computing, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is preparing a way to make it easier to use the technique in everyday programming.

• IoT sensors can run at lower power with MIT chip design

  As more sensors get added to the Internet of Things, power consumption can pose a problem, but researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a way to reduce the energy that such components require.

• MIT randomizes tasks to speed massive multicore processors

  As each new generation of computer processors arrives with a larger number of computing cores, computer scientists grapple with how best to make use of this proliferation of parallel power.

• How three small credit card transactions could reveal your identity

  Just three small clues -- receipts for a pizza, a coffee and a pair of jeans -- are enough information to identify a person's credit card transactions from among those of a million people, according to a new study.

• MIT tries to make household robots better with object-detection algorithm

  A new algorithm could let robots more precisely identify and handle objects around them, making them more useful at completing household tasks.

• White House declines to act on petitions to fire Aaron Swartz prosecutors

  The White House has declined to act on two petitions, collectively signed by 90,000 people, that called for the president to fire the federal prosecutors who charged the late Internet activist Aaron Swartz with computer hacking.

• MIT unifies Web development in a single, speedy new language

  Building a moderately complex Web page requires understanding a whole stack of technologies, from HTML to JavaScript. Now a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has wrapped these technologies into a single language that could streamline development, speed up performance and better secure Web sites.