rats-training

Scientists train rats to drive tiny cars and collect food

What just happened? We’ve seen a rat with remarkable culinary skills in Ratatouille, but scientists from the University of Richmond have managed to teach the species an equally useful skill in real life: the art of driving a tiny car.

A team of researchers from the University of Richmond in Virginia, conducted a study in order to determine the cognitive capability of rats, reports NewScientist. While typically known for the ability to recognize objects and work their way around mazes, the research found that rats were not only able to perform the complex task of driving a tiny car but also felt more relaxed when doing so.

Kelly Lambert and her colleagues fashioned the car out of transparent plastic food containers with an aluminium floor, three copper bars and motorized wheels underneath. When a rat was placed inside, it stood on the aluminium floor and completed an electrical circuit when its hands touched the copper bars for steering the car as it propelled forwards.

The rat race included a total of 17 rodents, of which 11 were male and 6 female. Trained to drive in rectangular arenas of up to 4 square meters, the rats navigated their way to a sweet reward of Froot Loops cereal, bits of which were placed around the arena.

“They learned to navigate the car in unique ways and engaged in steering patterns they had never used to eventually arrive at the reward,” said Lambert.

The researchers also claim that learning to drive lowered the rats’ stress levels and relaxed them, similar to the satisfaction which humans feel after acquiring a new skill. “In humans, we call this self-efficacy or agency.” she said.

To support their findings, the researchers studied the levels of two stress-related hormones found in the rats’ poop. During their training, an analysis of their excrement found an increase in the ratio of dehydroepiandrosterone (known to counteract stress) to corticosterone (indicator of stress). Interestingly, the stress level of these rats were also found to be lower than those who’d been driven around as passengers in remote-controlled cars.

“I do believe that rats are smarter than most people perceive them to be, and that most animals are smarter in unique ways than we think,” said Lambert. She also said that this research could benefit Neuropsychiatry by allowing a better understanding of diseases like Parkinson’s on an organism’s motor skills and spatial awareness.

Further experiments by her team would focus on how rats learn to drive, its relation with reducing stress and studying brain areas involved during the activity.

By: Techspot

Newly proposed privacy bill means Big Tech executives could go to jail if their companies break the law

Why it matters: Regulators have levied hefty fines on big tech companies for their antitrust and privacy violations, but not much has been done about punishing those directly responsible for the wrongdoing. A newly proposed privacy law could see key executives like Mark Zuckerberg answer directly and even do jail time. Regulators believe this may be the only way to keep companies from applying Mark Zuckerberg’s “move fast and break things” principle.

When Mark Zuckerberg publicly asked governments to regulate tech firms, he probably didn’t have personal accountability in mind. For all the talk about a more privacy-focused Facebook, the CEO has little to show for it. The most recent development has been a meeting with several White House officials to discuss internet regulation and antitrust issues. However, when pressed by senators on the issues of privacy, he offered vague responses that the company is still in the process of figuring that out.

Now, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is pushing for regulation that could hold tech company executives personally responsible for failing to protect user privacy and security on their respective platforms. The new privacy bill is suggestively called the “Mind Your Own Business Act,” and builds on top of a previous draft from last year.

If it passes, the new legislation would give the Federal Trade Commission more effective tools to battle tech giants that violate data privacy laws. Specifically, it would give it the authority to set minimum privacy and security standards that companies have to follow, and to issue heavier fines of up to four percent of annual revenue on the first offense.

This comes after the FTC was criticized for the relatively mild punishments applied to companies like FacebookEquifax, and YouTube. In the case of Facebook, the result of the $5 billion fine was that the value of the company increased by $10 billion, which is arguably not how punishment is supposed to work.

For executives that knowingly lie to the FTC, there would be harsh punishments – between 10 and 20 years of jail time. Their companies would also be forced to pay a tax based on their salary. Wyden said in a statement that “Mark Zuckerberg won’t take Americans’ privacy seriously unless he feels personal consequences.”

Wyden also believes the bill at the very least would provide the same protections as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. Consumers could get a one-click way to opt out of sharing their personal information and companies would have to offer clear explanations of how they use and share that information.

For companies that own social platforms like Twitter and Facebook, they would have to provide “privacy-friendly” versions of their services for a reasonable fee. The bill would also extend the FCC’s Lifeline program to ensure those privacy-focused versions would also be accessible to low-income consumers.

As with previous privacy bills that have been proposed over the last few years, the Mind Your Own Business Act has to gain bipartisan support. It’s worth noting that Wyden’s bill would not preempt states from making their own privacy regulations, so there’s one less source of conflict to worry about.

By: Techspot

The US military is dropping 8-inch floppy disks for SSDs in its nuclear weapons systems

What just happened? The US is rightly regarded as a world leader when it comes to military technology and power, so it always seemed strange that the nation still used 1970’s IBM Series-1 computers – complete with eight-inch floppy disks – as part of its nuclear weapons systems. But now, those drives are being updated with modern solid-state versions.

Back in 2016, it was reported that US agencies, including the Pentagon, were still using the ancient systems. “Legacy IT investments across the federal government are becoming increasingly obsolete,” stated a report from the Government Accountability Office. “For instance, [the Department of] Defense is still using 8-inch floppy disks in a legacy system that coordinates the operational functions of the United States’ nuclear forces.”

But in an interview with c4isrnet.com, Lt. Col. Jason Rossi said the Strategic Automated Command and Control System, or SACCS, is moving away from 8-inch floppy drives and to a “highly-secure solid state digital storage solution.”

While using such an antiquated system for something as important as nuclear weapons may seem unusual, its age is what makes it so secure. “You can’t hack something that doesn’t have an IP address. It’s a very unique system — it is old and it is very good,” Rossi explained.

The Defense Department said in 2016 that it would “update its data storage solutions, port expansion processors, portable terminals, and desktop terminals by the end of fiscal year 2017,” but we don’t know if those upgrades have taken place.

Three years ago, aging systems were also found in the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, and Veterans Affairs. And while not all of the technology was as ancient as eight-inch floppy disks, some of the agencies were found to be running Windows XP.

By: Techspot

Windows Defender

Windows Defender is still one of the best antivirus solutions, independent testing lab says

In context: Though Windows built-in security systems were once the subject of quite a bit of criticism, today’s incarnation of Windows Defender is able to hold its own against other major antivirus programs. Indeed, in August, Defender was ranked as one of the best antivirus solutions out there — an impressive feat, considering the amount of high-quality paid and free alternatives on the market.

Now, Microsoft had its hard work with Defender validated yet again — for the most part. Another independent testing lab, AV-Comparatives, has published its September 2019 malware protection report, and Windows Defender is one of the antivirus (AV) solutions tested.

Defender boasted an online protection rate of 99.96 percent, which puts it in the top 10 AV programs examined by AV-Comparatives. However, it’s worth noting that the overall results do not (with one major exception, which we’ll get to in a moment) vary significantly from program to program. For example, Defender managed to successfully block 10,552 pieces of malware (out of 10,556), but even the lowest-ranked program — Total Defense — blocked a respectable 10,537.

With that said, given the devastating effects even one piece of malware can have on a system, it’s certainly worth going with one of the best. In this particular test, Avast, AVG, and Trend Micro take that crown, with 100% protection rates. The “worst” programs for virus protection were McAfee (99.82 percent) and the previously-mentioned Total Defense (99.82 percent).

Now, detection rates are another story. As part of their test, AV-Comparatives thought it would be wise to see how “cloud-reliant” each AV program is. In other words, the group wanted to see how effective the software is at blocking malware without an active connection to the internet.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, Defender faltered in this category. Its offline malware detection rate sat at just 29.7 percent, which is better than Panda Antivirus (28.6 percent) and Trend Micro (20.9 percent), but not by much. For reference, Avast’s offline detection rate was 97.4 percent. When we look at the online detection rates, Microsoft’s results are much better at 76.3 percent, but they still fall behind the rest of the pack (all of which surpassed the 92 percent mark).

If you’re a bit confused about what the difference between protection and detection is, here’s AV-Comparatives’ explanation:

This Malware Protection Test checks not only the detection rates, but also the protection capabilities, i.e. the ability to prevent a malicious program from actually making any changes to the system. In some cases, an antivirus program may not recognise a malware sample when it is inactive, but will recognise it when it is running.

So, in short, a lower detection rate (such as the 76.3 percent figure quoted before for Defender) is not necessarily the sole marker of a bad or ineffective piece of AV software. Defender might not catch all viruses when they lie dormant, but it’ll almost certainly do so when they try to actively harm to your system.

Another metric that prevents Defender from snagging the #1 antivirus spot is its false positive detection rate. As part of its report, AV-Comparatives gave each participating AV program a set of clean files to scan, and took note of how many items were incorrectly flagged as malicious (the total number of files is unknown).

During the “False Alarm” test, Microsoft flagged 13 false positives, putting it in the “many FPs” category (albeit on the low end — the worst offender tagged 40). Avira, Eset, and Kaspersky performed the best here: Avira only flagged one false positive and the latter two detected none.

All in all, despite a few hiccups, Windows Defender is still one of the best antivirus programs out there, and it’s relatively non-intrusive as far as free software goes…

All in all, despite a few hiccups, Windows Defender is still one of the best antivirus programs out there, and it’s relatively non-intrusive as far as free software goes (you won’t be harassed to shell out cash for a paid upgrade). In AV-Comparatives tests, Defender managed to earn the two-star “Advanced Malware Protection” rating, alongside Panda, Kaspersky, F-Secure, and a few others.

However, the software is not perfect, and Microsoft clearly still has a ways to go in the offline virus detection department. We hope the company improves this aspect of its security software moving forward.

By: Techspot

MIT researchers develop neural network that recovers clear information from blurry images

Yeah! Science!: Scientists at MIT have figured out a way to recover details from motion-blurred frames of a video to reproduce clear images. The “visual deprojection model” uses a convolutional neural network (CNN) to decipher the imagery.

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) trained the CNN by scanning thousands of pairs of images (projections) — one of low quality and the other the source (signal) of the blurry picture. The neural network uses the information to essentially reverse engineer the blurring effects by learning the pixel patterns and what created them.

Another part of the CNN, called a “variational autocoder,” analyzes the output and evaluates how well the network matched the signal. It then creates a “blueprint” to tell the AI how to go from a projection to all possible matching sources. When given a fresh image, the CNN examines the pixel patterns and uses the blueprint to find every possible signal that could have created the blurring. From there, it combines the data to create a “high-dimensional” copy.

“If we can convert X-rays to CT scans, that would be somewhat game-changing.”

For example, in a video that shows a car speeding by, you might be able to tell that the car was red, but not much else. The visual deprojection model could take that footage and create a reproduction that is clear enough to identify the make and model.

“It’s almost like magic that we’re able to recover this detail,” said CSAIL postdoc Guha Balakrishnan, lead author of the paper.

Example aside, the researchers are more excited about what it could do in the medical field. They believe that the technology could be used to created 3D scans similar to CTs from X-rays. This breakthrough could significantly reduce costs since MRI and CT machinery is extremely expensive. The software would be able to recreate a high-information image from a low-information image like X-rays, which are comparatively inexpensive.

“If we can convert X-rays to CT scans, that would be somewhat game-changing,” said Balakrishnan. “You could just take an X-ray and push it through our algorithm and see all the lost information.”

By: Techspot

product-key

How to Find Your Original Windows 10 Product Key

In brief For the longest time Windows PCs came with a product key sticker that was placed outside of the machine or with your computer’s manuals. But in recent years manufacturers started storing this license within the machine’s UEFI/BIOS and the information is automatically retrieved and applied when reinstalling the operating system. Certainly a better approach overall. In other instances, for example if you built and installed your OS, your key is associated with your Microsoft account, so there is no way to “lose it” anymore. Read on for more details.

Microsoft has been changing and improving the way it handles Windows licenses. We’ll cover all you need to know in this article, from old school ways to retrieve keys, to the more modern approaches to make good use of your licenses and what restrictions may apply depending on your type of license.

Windows 10 introduced a “Digital Entitlement” element to Microsoft’s license which links your Windows key to an ID generated based on your PC’s hardware. But because your hardware can significantly change if you upgrade your hardware, this entitlement was expanded to become a “Digital License” when 2016’s Anniversary Update (1607) arrived.

This means your Windows 10 license now ties Windows keys to Microsoft accounts, letting you activate a copy of the operating system simply by logging in with valid online credentials.

So, if you have a newer Windows PC or you already log in using your Microsoft account, you generally shouldn’t have to search for your original Windows 10 key. We will explain that in better detail in a minute.

There may be other scenarios where you may still want to manually find a Windows key stored in your UEFI/BIOS, or prevent this key from automatically being applied during installation. Not to mention that different conditions apply for non-OEM retail keys, as well as those given to people who upgraded to Windows 10 for free. And in a worst case scenario, you might be trying to find the license for a copy of Windows that no longer boots.

Editor’s Note: This feature was originally published on December 14, 2018. It’s just as relevant today, so we’ve bumped it as part of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.

Windows OEM keys vs. retail vs. free upgrade

There are many types of Windows licenses with varying terms of use. As a general rule of thumb:

  • OEM keys are shipped with a specific computer and can’t be transferred to another machine. Again, these should be auto-applied from your UEFI/BIOS when reinstalling Windows on a modern boxed PC, but you can also retrieve them manually.
  • Retail keys are purchased directly from Microsoft, Amazon etc. — these can be transferred to another machine and that process should happen automatically for a digital license, though you can also “uninstall” a Windows key from a given PC.
  • Those who upgraded to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7 and 8 don’t have a unique Windows 10 key. This can only be transferred to one other machine (not if you upgraded from an OEM key). Free upgrade licenses are a digital entitlement.

Do I have a digital license?

The Windows 10 Settings app has a page for displaying your activation information, including whether you have a digital license, though your key isn’t shown here:

Go to: Settings > Update & Security > Activation

If you have a digital license, you should see “Windows is activated with a digital license” or “Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account.”

You can also link a Microsoft account to a Windows license by clicking “add a Microsoft Account” on the bottom of the same page and providing your login information.

Find your key from inside Windows

Entering the following lines into an admin Command Prompt or PowerShell worked to display the OEM key embedded in our system’s UEFI/BIOS. However, these commands didn’t return any keys on other two machines we used for testing despite Windows 10 being activated.

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

or

powershell “(Get-WmiObject -query ‘select * from SoftwareLicensingService’).OA3xOriginalProductKey”

There’s also a commonly cited Visual Basic script that retrieves registry-based Windows keys (not those stored in the UEFI/BIOS). You can download the script here. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad, saving it as a .vbs file. Then double-click to launch the file.

Third-party tools that find Windows keys

We downloaded a variety of utilities that can retrieve retail keys from the Windows registry as well as those that are UEFI/BIOS-bound. In testing, some of the applications found both the registry and UEFI/BIOS keys, while others only worked for one or the other:

Nirsoft ProduKey – Found both the embedded OEM key as well as the retail key from our currently running copy of Windows. Also includes keys for many other applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe products (strangely, Internet Explorer was also included in our results, though no key was provided). As with some of the other tools on this list, ProduKey can load Windows keys from external sources/drives.

ShowKey Plus – This utility also found both our retail and OEM keys, and can load the SOFTWARE hive file from another Windows installation.

Windows 10 Product Key Tool – Made by the developer of EasyBCD, this tool located our UEFI OEM key but didn’t find the retail license on our Windows To Go drive.

Winkeyfinder – Found our retail key but Dell’s UEFI OEM key wasn’t displayed.

Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder – Returned the retail key but not the UEFI OEM key. This software can also load registry keys from Windows installations on other drives (tools > Load Hive). Listed our Windows 10 Pro install as Enterprise.

Find your key from outside Windows

If you can’t boot into Windows and want to retrieve that key, you can still access this data from an external environment such as a Windows To Go drive, or by attaching your non-booting Windows drive to another machine.

Note that if you’re recovering the key from a Windows To Go workspace, the non-booting drive with your Windows key is offline by default and will have to be enabled in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click the drive and set it as “online.” As mentioned above, several of the third-party tools that we already listed will let you load the registry hive file from another Windows installation.

You can also navigate to your license directly from the Windows registry (regedit via Start) though the key is not in plain text. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ and look for “DigitalProductId” in the right panel.

This registry hive is stored in a file on your OS drive at Windows\System32\Config — look for the file named SOFTWARE.

In testing, both ProduKey and ShowKey Plus loaded the SOFTWARE hive file and displayed the key for an external Windows installation via Windows To Go. Also note that ProduKey can search for Windows keys on computers at remote domains among other locations, and that the Windows Registry Editor can load hive files from other installations:

  • Open the Windows Registry Editor (enter regedit via Start)
  • Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE so it’s selected
  • Click File > Load Hive and navigate to the SOFTWARE file in Windows\System32\Config on your other drive
  • Enter a name for this external hive file
  • The hive should appear as a sub-entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  • To unload the hive, select the name you chose and go to File > Unload Hive

Retrieving the UEFI/BIOS-bound Windows key via Linux was as simple as entering the following line in a terminal, though we couldn’t find any GUI applications like ProduKey or ShowKey Plus that would retrieve the license from a registry hive file:

sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM | tail -1

The command-line tool Chntpw can be installed on Linux and is able to load Windows registry files. This software didn’t return a valid key when decoding the product ID within the tool, though if you had to you could extract the hex data and decode that elsewhere.

If you have a boot disc around, Chntpw (also known as Offline NT Password & Registry Editor) is part of many all-in-one recovery solutions such as Ultimate Boot CD and Hiren’s Boot CD.

Here’s how to load a Windows registry file in Chntpw from a Linux terminal and then display the hex value for the key in that hive (use dpi instead of hex to decode the key within chntpw, though again, this didn’t give us a valid key):

chntpw -e YourDrive/Windows/System32/config/SOFTWARE

hex Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId

Additional resources

Although it’s convenient to have your Windows key automatically detected from the UEFI/BIOS, you’ll have to tweak the Windows installation media if you want to use another license.

Open the installation media in File Explorer, browse to the Sources folder and create a new text file named PID.txt in the Sources folder. In PID.txt, you want the following text, where the Xs correspond to your license key.

[PID]
Value=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Uninstalling a retail key from a given machine is also possible and while this doesn’t automatically update the information on Microsoft’s servers, it will prevent future conflicts from multiple machines using the same key.

Enter the following line in an administrator Command Prompt to uninstall the currently active product license and clear that key from the Windows registry (here are more slmgr commands):

slmgr.vbs /upk

slmgr /cpky

As a final anecdote from testing, when we uninstalled and cleared the key from our Windows installation, we were able to reactivate that copy of Windows simply by clicking “Troubleshoot” on the activation page.

One click and that wizard retrieved our digital license, despite not being linked to a Microsoft account. And again, this was for a retail key that was originally used on a desktop which was cloned as a Windows To Go drive and plugged into another machine with a different hardware profile. In other words, with luck, Microsoft’s activation is forgiving enough and you should have no issues validating your OS license on a new machine or after several hardware changes.

By: Techspot