Month: April 2017

Enlarge / A screenshot of foreign language samples used by a CIA tool to hide the nation of origin of CIA code implants, leaked on Friday by WikiLeaks.

Up until this week, WikiLeaks' "Vault 7" releases of files from a Central Intelligence Agency software development server have largely consisted of documentation for the various malware projects the CIA's Engineering Development Group created to aid the agency's mission. But on Friday afternoon, WikiLeaks began actually releasing portions of the CIA's development library. And while the release contains no malware, it's potentially the most damaging information released so far in that it could undermine ongoing CIA operations.

The release was of a repository of code for the CIA EDG's obfuscation tools called Marble. The tools were used to conceal the signature of the implants developed by CIA from malware scans, to make it more difficult to reverse-engineer them if they were detected, and to figure out where the malware came from. University of California at Berkeley computer security researcher Nicholas Weaver told the Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima, "This appears to be one of the most technically damaging leaks ever done by WikiLeaks, as it seems designed to directly disrupt ongoing CIA operations.”

There's nothing particularly magical about the CIA's tools, other than that they were developed and tested by a professional team and the code itself is extremely well-documented. Implant code for Windows systems was obfuscated with a tool called Marbler, a C++ application that obscures text strings and binary objects within implants in a number of ways. Those methods include "scrambling" binary content using a number of bit-shifting techniques, and inserting snippets of foreign languages(such as Chinese or Farsi) with a feature called "WARBL."

Warning: This piece contains mild spoilers for Netflix's The Discovery.

As much as we all obsess over Stranger Things, remember that Netflix started with movies. And back when the company didn't make headlines with its first original TV programming, 2012's Lilyhammer, it didn't make headlines with its first original film, either—a documentary released in that same year called Art of Conflict: The Murals of Northern Ireland.

The key difference in these two programming tracks, of course, is that Netflix has hit a few series homeruns since. Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, Making A Murderer, and House of Cards were hits with viewers as well as the Golden Globes and the Emmys. And while some Netflix documentaries have succeeded within their niche, it's harder to point to an original narrative film reaching the same levels of buzz (the Idris Elba-led Beasts of No Nation has probably been the biggest hit; those Adam Sandler originals that kids supposedly love and Netflix keeps making don't count).

But in 2017, Netflix seems hellbent on flipping this script. The company made a bold declaration in March that it would produce 30 original movies in 2017. These will not be small mumblecore affairs. A trailer for the Will Smith-led Bright ran during the Super Bowl, Brad Pitt stars in the war-in-Afghanistan inspired War Machine, and filmmakers from Bong Joon-hoo (Snowpiercer) to Martin Scorsese (... a lot of stuff) have signed up to make their next films for Netflix. All but the Scorsese film are expected to surface in this 2017 crop.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Tracy Van Houten has an undoubtedly cool job. She’s a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and she currently leads a team that’s conducting testing for the upcoming Mars 2020 rover mission. She joined JPL, located 15 miles outside of downtown Los Angeles, 13 years ago. Since then, she’s worked on several space missions, including the last Mars rover mission, Curiosity, and an Earth satellite that collects data on soil moisture.

Landing a job at JPL wasn’t an accident. Van Houten dreamed of working at the NASA center since she was in high school, and she looked for any way to get her foot in the door. She collected the business cards of people with even a slight connection to JPL, and she sent out hundreds of resumes. She hustled her way to her dream job. Now she’s willing to give it all up.

Van Houten is running to fill an empty seat in the 34^th Congressional District of California, which includes several prominent neighborhoods in and around downtown Los Angeles. She says she’s been pondering a run for office for several years, volunteering on prior campaigns and attending political training seminars. When Xavier Becerra left his seat in Congress earlier this year to become attorney general of California, Van Houten saw a chance to accelerate her plan.

Enlarge / Module outside of its headband. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

If you want to get a fitness tracker, you have to decide is if you want one that's compatible with a heart-rate monitor. Learning your heart-rate patterns, both during a workout and during daily activity, can show you a lot about your health. According to Harvard's Health blog, your resting heart rate is a key factor to determining your overall current and future health, and monitoring heart-rate changes over time can give you more of the information you need to lead a healthy life.

Chest straps and optical heart-rate monitors are the two most common types of pulse trackers available for modern wearables, and they both use similar methods to measure your pulse. However, their key differences in methodology and design will dictate which device you choose when picking a workout companion.

Chest straps

Heart-rate monitoring chest straps are both loved and hated. Most of them are made of a long, belt-like elastic band that wraps snugly around your chest, a small electrode pad that sits against your skin, and a snap-on transmitter. These heart-rate monitors work differently than the ubiquitous wrist-bound monitors on new wearables because they use electrocardiography to record the electrical activity of your heart. This process requires electrodes, which live in the shiny, flat pad against the skin. That pad needs moisture water or sweat to pick up any electrical signal. When you're working out and sweating, the electrodes pick up the electrical signals given off by your heartbeat, and they send that information to the transmitter.