Robots learn to move themselves

Researchers in Leipzig have demonstrated software designed for robots that allows them to "learn" to move through trial and error, says The BBC.

The software mimics the interconnected sensing and processing of a brain in a so-called "neural network".

Armed with such a network, the simulated creatures start to explore. In video demonstrations, a simulated dog learns to jump over a fence, and a humanoid learns how to get upright, as well as do back-flips.

Roughly 85% of Fortune 500 companies have patched their networks to fix a security flaw that lets cyber criminals redirect visitors to counterfeit or malicious Web sites. However, Internet users still remain at grave risk due to the large number of infrastructure providers that have not yet addressed the issue, reports Washington Post.

The data comes from a talk presented at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas by Dan Kaminsky, the Seattle-based IOActive researcher who discovered a fairly trivial way that bad guys could corrupt records found in the domain name system (DNS) and fill them with inaccurate information.

Addressing the conference, Kaminsky said that while 120 million Internet users, roughly 42% of the world's broadband subscribers, are now protected by patches, only about half of the vulnerable DNS servers worldwide were protected by the fix.

The European Union (EU) has written to the UK government asking it to clarify whether a new system being used by Internet service providers, to monitor Web traffic, conforms to data protection laws, says Computing.co.uk.

The Phorm system tracks users' Web habits and puts them into categories so that advertising can be targeted more effectively. Phorm insists its technology enhances privacy because information is anonymous.

Virgin Media and Talk Talk have signed up to try the technology, as has BT, which suffered criticism after it was revealed the company had tried the technology on Web users without telling them.