Utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT), TE Connectivity is creating smart environments by linking devices that help individuals, businesses and potentially whole societies live in a smarter and more comfortable way. Whether smart building solutions, tracking applications or surveillance ecosystems is top of mind, trusted IoT providers like TE Connectivity are the best bet for a successful transition.

TE is offering their best content to help EEs and design engineers usher in a new era of connectivity. Browse product guides, read case studies, learn from video demos, discover insightful white papers, and even listen to a podcast to learn more about what they have to offer.

To understand how TE Connectivity is changing the game for clients needing intuitive and seamless upgrades, contact them today.

This is a sponsored blog post from TE Connectivity.

It is easy to develop an online relationship in this day and age. Maybe you frequent your favorite band’s fan page and discover a group of like-minded people eager to befriend you, or you have found an online book club that Brad Pitt just happens to also be a member of.

Your conversations are innocent at first, discussing the book or maybe a particular character and then, suddenly, boom: You are both declaring your undying love for one another and lamenting the fact that you can’t meet anytime soon because of Brad Pitt’s very busy movie-making schedule.

Though the example may seem extreme, how do you really know who it is you are dealing with at the other end of that network connection? Maybe it isn’t Brad Pitt at all….

As more and more people fall victim to conducting online relationships with fictitious characters—dubbed catfishing—computer scientists from the University of Edinburgh, Lancaster University, Queen Mary University of London and King’s College London have jointly designed a computer model to detect fake online personas or profiles, focusing specifically on gender and age.

Using information gathered from 5,500 public profiles from an adult website (prime hunting ground for catfishers), the computer models were trained to accurately determine the age and gender of the users based on their network activity and the writing style of their comments.

The findings: Researchers determined that 40 percent of the adult site users lied about their ages and one quarter of users lied about their genders.

What motivates a person to lie about their online persona? According to researchers, there is no absolute agreed-upon reason about what motivates the lying.

The motivation behind catfishing can be malicious and meant for achieving financial gain ("I love you, now send me some money!") or for personal gain for those people who maybe suffer from low self-esteem but want to connect with someone else ("I really do want to meet you, but I am so busy making this movie!").There is also a population of catfishers who simply enjoy lying or that use the lies to escape their own reality.

Researchers hope to make the technology available across all social networks in the future in an effort to flag dishonest users.

What do you do in the meantime? Go ahead, talk to Brad Pitt. But if Brad Pitt starts asking you to send him money, maybe you want to reconsider that particular correspondence.

Have you ever been catfished?

In 2008—back when we were still sticking GPS units and mounts to our windshields like cavemen—I owned a Magellan GPS that included voice recognition. In addition to about two dozen preprogrammed commands (e.g., “Magellan, nearest gas”), I could also speak directly at the device to input my destination. This GPS was also one of the first to integrate Bluetooth, which allowed me to take and make phone calls hands-free. At the time, I drove a black sedan with tinted windows, which added up to one of my friends calling my car the Batmobile.

Obviously, the GPS technology of 2008 doesn’t hold up well to modern standards. With rare exception, people use their phones or integrated GPS for navigation these days. Bluetooth is standard on most new cars.

And even though the voice recognition feature was cool, it wasn’t very useful. I’d estimate that the GPS would accurately recognize and execute commands less than 25% of the time. So, considering that there are about 10 different digital, intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) out on the market today, the rise of voice recognition technology is fairly impressive. We’re crowded by Alexa, Cortana, Siri and the gang, each of whom has been integrated into dozens of proprietary and licensed devices.

However, I’m still hesitant to adopt one of these digital orphans in my home. I can clearly recognize the value of them—reading a recipe while you cook, providing a weather forecast while you get dressed, ordering pizza with a short command—but I can never shake the feeling of always being listened to.

The developers promise that even though the microphone is always on, IPAs only respond and begin to record once they recognize their ‘wake word.’ Additionally, these devices typically have a short reception range, typically the size of a small room or less, so if you keep them out of the bathroom and bedroom, embarrassing audio captures are much less likely. However, as a consumer, it’s virtually impossible to know exactly what an Echo or Google may have overheard and saved.

I also feel there are many unforeseen consequences to be witnessed. Case in point: last week, a news story popped up about unintentional orders placed via Amazon’s Alexa, in this case integrated into the Amazon Echo. A San Diego news station did a fluff story about how a six-year-old girl accidentally ordered a $160 dollhouse by asking Alexa to play with her and get her a dollhouse. Once the anchor of the news station repeated the phrase “Alexa ordered me a dollhouse,” Alexa devices in viewers’ homes began placing orders for dollhouses.

Since these devices can’t hold a full-on conversation—yet—they fall short when there are ambiguities in language that might be cleared up by context, inflection, body language, and numerous other variables.

(However, putting two [modded] Google Homes next to each other can result in some strange dialogue. It's not sexual at all, really.)

Even though the AI behind IPAs is quite impressive, I can’t help but feel that it’s worth holding out for the next generation.

The Internet of Things needs a new way of processing and analyzing the data generated by the intelligent objects populating the digital landscape. A paradigm called fog computing, however, may correct the problem. The approach advocates shifting more computing and memory resources to the network's edge to enable real-time, data-driven decision making. Specialized devices called fog nodes and fog gateways move data processing to the optimum location for deterministic applications.

Learn more about network gateways…

Editor's Note: This news brief was brought to you by the Networking & Communications eNewsletter. Subscribe today to have content like this delivered to your inbox

Is anyone else annoyed by chip and pin/signature technology? Buying anything lately feels like a real pain.

After the person ahead of me completes their transaction, it becomes my turn to struggle. It begins by swiping the magnetic strip and the reader buzzing. “Please insert card into the chip reader.” Ok, I do. But then I either remove it too soon because the screen flashes, or I outright forget the card while I’m grabbing my bags or packing the shopping cart. The cashier (who has learned POS does not represent point-of-sale in this instance) resentfully reminds me of the card, before handing over the receipt and beginning the sequence anew with another shopper.

Sure, these are trivial annoyances, but was the old ‘swipe the stripe’ system that flawed? It supposedly protects my identity and accounts better, but the only time they were ever stolen was because of the credit card company’s data breaches anyhow.

We know it as chip and pin technology, but technically they are called EMV cards after the three brands that worked together to create the technology (Europay, Mastercard and Visa). The consortium wanted a way to reduce credit card fraud, and locating an integrated circuit within the credit card was deemed to be the solution.

Did you know cashiers have the responsibility to check for the correct hologram on non-EMV cards? Cardholder identity checks were also supposed to be performed by comparing the card’s signature to the signature on the receipt. (This is why some folks write “see ID” on their signature line—and many times their identity still isn’t verified!) Yet I don’t think either of those ever happened, and because credit card companies were on the hook for fraudulent charges, they ultimately felt a card redesign was necessary.

The security upgrade stems from the fact the chip on modern credit cards is much harder and more expensive to duplicate. This chip also contains card and account information that must be read and processed by the card reader’s software, which is why the card must remain in the card reader for a few moments longer. When magnetic stripes were first introduced on credit cards in the 1970s, they too were cutting edge technology, but today a stripe reader/writer can be had on the Internet for less than $100.

The chip also communicates with the card issuer’s network to co-create a one-time transaction approval code, so if hackers steal transaction information, they cannot use the account numbers to make phony charges.

Also, most of the world that has upgraded to EMV cards—the U.K., Ireland, Canada, France, Finland, the Netherlands— and prefer to use PINs instead of signatures, which the United States still does, along with Mexico, Germany and the Philippines. In fact, the U.S. is well behind the curve on EMV technology, as it has been rolled out in Europe for over a decade.

What caused the sudden exodus to chip and PIN technology in the U.S.? As of October 1, 2015, credit card issuers will no longer take responsibility for fraudulent purchases, and the onus will be on the retailer for using outdated technology. It is expected that sometime soon all purchases made by credit card will require the chip, and the magnetic stripe will be phased out.

While EMV is drastically reducing potential fraud, it is also saving the credit card companies from having to cover fraudulent charges, which was the primary motivation in the switch to EMV. Yet keeping the magnetized strip, even for now, basically makes chip and PIN technology useless. It can still be easily duplicated, and any time a striped card leaves a wallet is a chance for copying the magnetic stripe.

So while I roll my eyes in the checkout line, I should at least be grateful it isn’t the 1960s, when the clerk would check my card’s status in a printed manual, call the company if it was a large purchase, and then make a carbon copy on flatbed card imprinter. Those were the days…