Prof. Neri Oxman’s “Wanderers” project is featured as part of the “Beauty — Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial” exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. New York Times reporter Daniel McDermon writes that in her project, Oxman “imagines wearable objects to augment the human body’s capabilities, possibly enabling survival on distant planets.”
MIT researchers have developed a tool, dubbed Eyebrowse, that allows users control over how their Internet activity is shared, reports Dan Misener for CBC News. Graduate student Amy Zhang explains that without a tool like Eyebrowse “people that actually create the data don't get to see their own data.”
Steve Annear writes for The Boston Globe about the video MIT Admissions created to announce that admissions decisions will be released on March 14, “Pi Day.” Annear writes that in the video, “a robot the school is calling a ‘Decisions Droid’…emerges from the school’s personal robots lab and makes its way to Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill’s office.”
Curt Nickisch reports for WBUR on the remarks Robert Hannigan, director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, made at MIT on encryption and privacy. CSAIL’s Daniel Weitzner says that he feels that the fact that both Hannigan and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter spoke out against mandatory backdoors, is “a really significant shift in the debate.”
During his remarks at MIT, Robert Hannigan, director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, called for greater collaboration between technology companies and governments, reports Tim Bradshaw for the Financial Times. Bradshaw writes that “Hannigan’s speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday came ahead of a proposed new public-private forum in the UK.”
In a talk at MIT, Robert Hannigan, director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, expressed his hope that “technology companies and academic researchers will find ways to let government investigators get into encrypted devices without creating broad ‘back doors’ that undermine computer security,” writes Brian Bergstein for Technology Review.
Financial Times reporter Sarah Murray speaks with Prof. Fiona Murray, associate dean for innovation, about how to encourage and support female entrepreneurs. “It sounds trivial, but when women enter the classroom it’s very important that they see people like them,” explains Murray.
Boston Globe reporter Cate McQuaid writes about a new exhibit at the MIT List Visual Arts Center that examines email spam. “Hadjithomas and Joreige, artist-filmmakers based in Lebanon, focus on the unseen and unexplored. E-mail scams fit the bill,” writes McQuaid. “The artists have been collecting them since the late 1990s, and have now archived and deconstructed more than 4,000.”
Hiawatha Bray writes for The Boston Globe about the talk Robert Hannigan, director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, delivered on encryption at MIT. Bray writes that Hannigan urged technology companies and governments to “develop a joint strategy that will provide police and intelligence agencies the data they need, while preserving the public’s right to digital privacy.”
Matt McMarland writes for The Washington Post that a CSAIL researcher has developed a computer system that can produce tweets that read like they are written by presidential candidate Donald Trump. McFarland explains that postdoc Brad Hayes “wanted a fun way to familiarize himself with some statistical modeling techniques for his research on human and robot interactions.”
MIT researchers have demonstrated that power plant emissions can be turned into liquid fuels using engineered microbes, reports Damian Carrington for The Guardian. Carrington explains that the process “uses bacteria to convert the waste gases into acetic acid - vinegar - then an engineered yeast to produce an oil.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Sparshott writes about a new study by MIT researchers that examines the current state of American entrepreneurship. The researchers found that American entrepreneurs face difficulties in the potential for “firms to scale in a meaningful way over time.”
Boston Magazine reporter Michael Damiano writes that Prof. Russ Tedrake is developing software that will allow NASA’s Valkyrie robot to work on a space mission. Damiano explains that Tedrake’s lab “will refine Valkyrie’s software for NASA’s international Space Robotics Challenge, where teams from the world’s leading robotics laboratories will then make Valkyrie even more capable.”
Popular Science reporter Dave Gershgorn writes that postdoc Bradley Hayes has created an algorithm that tweets fragments of Donald Trump’s speeches. Gershgorn explains that, “the algorithm works by selecting a random letter, and then predicting what letter would normally come next, based on the original text.”
In an article for The Washington Post, Prof. Carlo Ratti writes that car-sharing services and self-driving vehicles could enable cities to repurpose parking spaces. “Vacant lots could be populated with green areas, a variety of shared public amenities or 'maker space' facilities, providing working tools — 3D printers, CNC machines — for design and fabrication,” writes Ratti.