Confidential Texting

This new iOS application from Howard Lerman of Yext and Jon Brod ex-AOL offers Snapchat functionality but without Snapchat data breaches and piss-poor attitude to users. The app delivers private messages in a confidential and encrypted manner, and deletes them once they are read. The product aims at a professional audience rather than “sexting-obsessed teens.”

Anyone looking for a way to exchange confidential messages that would be terminally deleted once read, would be interested in giving this smart, yet simple app a try. The secret ingredient, which makes Confide stand out from the crowd of Snapchat mimicking apps, is in the functional, yet simple design, which adds a touch of fun to the user experience.

How It Works

It is impossible to take screenshots of messages in Confide (for example, if your device is inhibited by a keylogger or camfecting app, or any other spy software). Confide is implementing a “wand” technology, which requires the user to tap on the hidden words to reveal them. Once the word is revealed, it is then hidden again. In fact, the messages in Confide are delivered in totally ineligible form as if they were NSA top secret files, where all the important words are covered with black marker. To reveal the words, you must tap on them, which beats the spyware.

The sender will receive the notification once the recipient reads the message while the read message is being deleted.

Pros

The app has been designed with professional audience in mind. Cryptographic tools may seem overwhelmingly difficult to lazy users, so Confide just may hit the sweet spot attracting the vast audience of users who would like to have more privacy in theory, but are too idle to study the subject in practice.

“Professional relationships require tools for impermanence and confidence,” said Jon Brod as he unveiled the app.

A practical solution for confidential messaging – it is nearly impossible to make a screenshot of a more or less legible text in its entirety in Confide. There is no self-destruction countdown, which allows users send long messages without the fear that it may be captured as a screenshot. However, bear in mind that recipients can only view the message once. When the user reads the message and closes it, it destroys itself.

In addition, it is free.

Cons

While revealing one word at a time may work just fine for short messages, we doubt it will please the recipients of longer texts, even though we would rather wait and see what the users say in their reviews. Besides that, I am perfectly sure hackers will come up with a way to interfere with the pipeline and intercept the messages, or prevent them from being destroyed. Basically, if the recipient does not need to have a decryption key to read the message, anyone in physical possession of the recipient’s smartphone can read the incoming Confide messages. In addition, in a man-in-the-middle case scenario, anyone with the appropriate tech knowledge can plug into your communication line

Competition

Of course, there is Snapchat, and probably its users aren’t sext-obsessed teenagers only, but taking into account the recent revelations about the major user accounts data leak, and Snapchat being aware of the existing problem and potential complications doing absolutely nothing until the hack happened, we would recommend serious users stay away from it. In addition, Snapchat CEO has shown an immature and condescending attitude to Snapchat users, failing to apologize for the “inconvenience.”

Then we have SecretInk, which emails a self-destruction envelope that burns when the timer runs out. There is also Peek, aka Skim, which deletes the message as you read it; it literally vanishes before your eyes. Frankly blurs messages after you read them; Gryphn deletes messages after you read them, and Burn Note requires a flashlight to reveal words.

The Verdict

When the recipient is done with the message, it does not just close; it breaks apart – the marker blocks crumble away, showing the message no longer exists. The design solution looks well and appealing, making you feel secure. The fact that the app is iOS based, aimed at professionals and comes “hot right out the oven” means it is going to be secure for some time since its launch until the hacking wizards get to it.

“We baked that in from the beginning to give the user the confidence to feel like their message was disappearing,” said Lerman. “When it’s gone, you know it’s gone, and you feel good about it.”

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Quantum Computing?

Someday, quantum computers may be able to solve complex optimization problems, quickly mine huge data sets, simulate the kind of physics experiments that currently require billion-dollar particle accelerators, and accomplish many other tasks beyond the scope of present-day computers. That is, if they are ever built. But even as daunting technical challenges keep the dream at bay, theorists are increasingly putting the ideas and techniques of quantum computing to work solving deep, long-standing problems in classical computer science, mathematics and cryptography.

“There are quite vigorous debates about whether quantum computers will ever actually be built,” said Chris Peikert, a cryptographer and computer scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology. “But that’s a separate question from whether quantum techniques or quantum algorithms can help you solve problems in new ways.”

In recent years, quantum ideas have helped researchers prove the security of promising data encryption schemes called lattice-based cryptosystems, some applications of which can shroud users’ sensitive information, such as DNA, even from the companies that process it. A quantum computing proof also led to a formula for the minimum length of error-correcting codes, which are safeguards against data corruption.

Quantum ideas have also inspired a number of important theoretical results, such as a refutation of an old, erroneous algorithm that claimed to efficiently solve the famously difficult traveling salesman problem, which asks how to find the fastest route through multiple cities.

“If it only happened once it would be a coincidence, but there are so many instances when we ‘think quantumly’ and come up with a proof,” said Oded Regev, a computer scientist at New York University.

This recurring theme has led some researchers to argue that quantum computing is not an esoteric subfield of computer science, but rather a generalization of classical computing, in much the same way that polygons are a generalization of triangles. Just as polygons can have any number of sides while triangles only have three, quantum computers can perform operations represented by any numbers (positive or negative, real or imaginary), while operations on classical computers use only nonnegative real numbers.

As the more general case, quantum ideas are a powerful tool in developing more specific classical computing proofs. “There are a number of classical problems that have nothing to do with quantum, but that are most easily analyzed by generalizing to the quantum level, proving something using quantum information theory, and scaling back the result to the classical level,” said Ronald de Wolf, a theoretical computer scientist at the Dutch Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science.

Currently, it is estimated that fewer than 5 percent of theoretical computer scientists study quantum computing. But researchers say that recent success from “thinking quantumly” has led a growing number of theorists to brush up on their physics. “These very striking spinoffs of quantum computing have actually drawn classical computer scientists into learning something about quantum computing,” said Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The goal of quantum computing is to harness the peculiar behavior of particles at the quantum scale in order to perform calculations that aren’t believed to be feasible with conventional computers. An ordinary computer stores “bits” of information in transistors, which, like switches, can be configured in one of two states, represented by “1” or “0.” A quantum computer stores “qubits” of information in subatomic particles, such as electrons or photons, which can exist in state 1 or 0, or in a superposition of both states, and which can become entangled with one another, so that the state of one qubit decides the state of another.

Superposition and entanglement cause qubits to behave very differently from bits. Whereas a two-bit circuit in a conventional computer can be in only one of four possible states (0 and 0, 0 and 1, 1 and 0, or 1 and 1), a pair of qubits can be in a combination of all four. As the number of qubits in the circuit increases, the number of possible states, and thus the amount of information contained in the system, increases exponentially. A quantum computer with just a few hundred qubits would be able to solve certain problems more quickly than today’s supercomputers.

The only problem is that no one has managed to construct a quantum circuit with more qubits than you can count on both hands. Chris Lirakis, a physicist in the superconducting quantum computation group at IBM Research, explained that in order to keep the delicate entanglement of a system of qubits from collapsing, the system must be isolated and cooled to a temperature near absolute zero. At the same time, the qubits must be spaced about a centimeter apart to prevent an operation performed on one qubit from altering the states of neighboring ones. This challenge would make a thousand-qubit system far too large to fit into the kinds of refrigerators that can achieve such extreme cooling.

“There are a lot of really serious engineering challenges that need to be brought to bear in order to make the system scalable,” Lirakis said. “It’s this tug-of-war between all these different issues.”

Regev, who worked with Peikert in using quantum ideas to prove the security of lattice-based cryptosystems, says he hopes quantum computers will be built in his lifetime so he can see them in action. “But quantum has made such a great impact that even if quantum computers are never built, I wouldn’t care too much,” he said.

As quantum techniques become more popular among computer scientists, they will likely produce more classical results. “It’s these results that convince me that even if the universe had not been quantum mechanical,” Aaronson said, “eventually computer scientists would have invented quantum computing as a proof tool.”

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It's a Flying jellyfish robot

Hummingbirds do it, bees do it. But for tiny robots, hovering has proven a challenge.

Flapping-wing robots known as ornithopters can replicate insect wing motions, but these designs require complicated mechanisms to keep the machines stable. So mathematicians Leif Ristroph and Stephen Childress of New York University departed from insect mimicry. The pair designed a 2.1-gram, 10-centimeter-wide hovering machine that rises in air like a jellyfish in water.

Four teardrop-shaped flapping Mylar wings attached to a spherical shell create lift. A small motor drives a crankshaft attached by rods to each wing. Wings opposite each other flap simultaneously; the pairs are out of phase by a quarter cycle. The result, reported January 15 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, is the first flapping-wing craft with intrinsic stability, meaning it keeps itself right-side-up without sensors or feedback controls.

The machine looks innocuous enough — even cute. But potential applications of automated hovering robots are serious stuff, with surveillance, environmental monitoring and search-and-rescue topping the list.

A jellyfish – the inspiration for a tiny flying robot built by a team from New York University. While unconventional in its design, the jellyfish-bot could pave the way for the next generation of intelligence and environmental data gathering drones.

The jellyfish-bot, built by a team led by Leif Ristroph, an associate professor of mathematics at NYU, weighs just 2 grams, and has a wingspan of just 8 centimeters. At the moment, the robot connects to a tethered power supply, and has no steering mechanism. But Ristroph tells News Scientist that improvements in the design could allow the tiny bot to carry a battery, freeing it to fly anywhere.

Most flying robots – commonly called drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – are made to resemble helicopters, airplanes, flying insects, or birds. These aircrafts, however, must constantly fight with the wind, and make adjustments to stay on course. According to Ristroph, his drone is made for the exact opposite purpose – to be picked up by the wind and carried away. In doing so, the jellyfish-bot is perfect for monitoring things like air quality, says Ristroph. Of course the military could also make use of such a drone – though Ristroph tells NBC News that he envisions it being used for some type of “nice peace-time application,” like environmental quality checks.

For now, the jellyfish-bot remains in prototype form, which can be seen below in this fascinating video that looks like it was shot sometime around 1910. (It wasn’t – it just looks that way thanks to the oddly antiquated production value.)

Tiny flying robots usually mimic nature's flyers, like birds and insects – but perhaps that's due to a lack of imagination. A four-winged design created by Leif Ristroph and colleagues at New York University, which boasts a body plan reminiscent of a jellyfish, is more stable in the air than insect-like machines.

The prototype consists of a carbon-fibre frame surrounded by two pairs of thin plastic wings that open and close when driven by a motor. Its shape allows it to fly upright with little effort, without requiring sensors or intelligence to adjust its wings like those used by insects. "Making a dumb machine is a nice strategy for very small robots," says Ristroph. "Without circuits and sensors, it's also lighter."

The robot is tethered to a power source for now, but improvements to the motor and wings should soon let it roam free. "If you could fine-tune the shape and flexibility of the wing, you could generate more lift, which could hold a battery up," says Ristroph.

The design should be especially useful for making centimetre-scale robots that drift through the air. It is quite robust – it can crash into objects while remaining unharmed – and with a weight of 2 grams it easily gets carried by a breeze, which could be an advantage. "We could use this type of robot to float around and take measurements, for example to monitor carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere," says Ristroph.

The robot has often been compared to a jellyfish due to its similar overall shape. While it wasn't designed with that animal in mind, Ristroph says it could easily be modified to move underwater. "In the water, you don't have to worry about lift," he says. "The challenge was to make something fly: compared with swimming it's much more difficult."

Watch the robot hover and climb in the air

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