Alden Tech and Design

From time to time I come across or get information that is important and that I think can help people. The following article discuss how you can limit how much people can track you on line.  http://online.wsj.com/article about tracking what people do online.

This article tells about how companies can track (almost) every step you take while you are browsing the internet. My web sites (and many others) does not have any third party cookies being set so nobody will be able to follow you there. 

To track a person, the company will be using cookies to see what web site you were at, and can in some instances also see what you were searching for at that web site. The easy way to prevent this is to disable third-party cookies so that only the web site you are visiting is allowed to save a cookie. A cookie keep you logged in to a web site, and bank web sites (as an example) will most likely be a little difficult if you disable them, so I don't recommend to deny them totally.  Just deny the third-party and you can surf around with less information about you being stored by other companies.

Graphene transistors

As a technician it is always interesting for me to see how things are changing and developing in this industry. The processors that we use today can not be made to work so very much faster because of heat issues.

Last week IBM anounced that they have tested a new graphene transistor at 100GHz. That is around 25 times faster than any processor that is on the market today. Unfortunately you will not be able to buy a CPU with this speed for at least a couple of years. Most computers today have more computing power than the user will ever need, but the computer profession will still be upgrading and selling new computers with this development.

Microsoft (MS) updates

This month MS released 13 updates that fixes 26 vulnerabilities in Windows. I strongly recommend that you update your operating system by using Windows/Microsoft update. I prefer to use Microsoft update since it include updates for Office and other MS technologies.

Cracking TPM

TPM-chips are the cryptographic chips that are used for encrypting data in satelite-tv receivers, smart-phones and Microsofts Xbox 360 etc. Christopher Tarnovsky, owner of Flylogic Engineering, held a speech during the Black Hat conference on how to crack the security of TPM (Trusted Platform Module) - chips made by Infineon Technologies. It is unsure if his procedure can be used on other chips as well. To decrypt content on a computer, it is necessary to get physical access to the computer, so it will not affect you unless someone steal your computer.

Security updates & upgrades

This week a lot of companies have released security updates for their products. These companies have released updates: Apple for Mac OS X, Microsoft for Internet Explorer, Adobe for Shockwave and Realplayer. Please update your software if you have any of these programs on your computer. The last days 4-5 other security issues have been found and they can when combined, let a hacker take full control of the computer.

Firefox launched version 3.6 of its browser last week, but I suggest that you wait until they come out with a fix. The latest version doesn't display all web pages correctly. However, if you want your web browsing to be a little bit faster and take advantage of more of the coming HTML 5 standard for showing web pages, please install it.

Moving

Alden Tech & Design will be MOVING FEBRUARY 15, 2010 to a new downtown location "just around the corner".

New Location:
Alden Tech & Design
216 W. Perkins St. #105
[private entrance on Oak]

Our new office [blue building on the corner of Perkins and Oak] has it's own separate entrance on Oak Street which should make it very convenient for our customers. Hopefully, you will find that the parking in this location is just a slight bit easier than on School Street. (turn right on Oak from Perkins and look for a place to park....our entrance is on the Northwest end of the building where the awning is. Just look for our sign!).

Welcome to our first newsletter, new web pages, new blog and an online store in our near future.

Join us February 5th on School Street for our Ukiah First Friday's Artwalk featuring local artists and refreshments.

Stop by our new location after the 15th. Walk ins welcome!

CPUs of the future

The current CPUs are at the limit of what they can perform with the current materials they are built of. On Monday Chalmers tekniska högskola in Gøteborg, that they succeeded in making a new CPU based on graphene.

Graphene is a carbon based material that can be very thin, but still work faster than silisium which our current processors are using. The electrons in graphene move 100 times faster than in silisium. 

The estimate for the new material is that new processors can have a speed of 300GHz and up to several THz.

Digi.no article about graphene (Norwegian)

Chalmers.se article about the breakthrough (Swedish)

There is also an article in Nature Nanotechnology, but you have to pay in order to read it.

Internet Explorer 6 Vulnerability

The last week revealed some interesting news about the latest hacking attempts. Google and around 30 other companies were hacked or hacking was attempted.

Investigation revealed that Internet Explorer 6 had been hacked using an unknown security vulnerability that Microcosft has confirmed and is working on fixing. Some security companies say that this error also exists in all other versions of IE. Until Microsoft has fixed the vulnerability,

I suggest that you use either Firefox or Opera as your main browser.

Cell phone Vulnerability

In the last three months there have been debates regarding GSM cell phones and how vulnerable they are. Most security people assumed that FBI and other agencies could tap cell phones without anyone knowing. Last month a buzz started that a German computer engineer, Karsten Nohl, had cracked the code that is used to encrypt the transfer between the cell phone and the base station. As far as I know they now estimate that a person with fairly inexpensive equipment ( app.$4000) can decipher everything that is happening on your cell phone. With more expensive equipment they can do it in real time.

This means that you can be doing a bank transaction on your cell phone. When you hang up, they can potentially log in and transfer money at will.

NY Times article

BBC article