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A Nice Little Cryptography Primer

By itss | 28/06/2021
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Pun Intended.

Category: Technology
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  • Radiologists Catch More Aggressive Breast Cancers By Using AI To Help Read Mammograms, Study Finds
    by BeauHD on 30/01/2026 at 7:00 am

    A large Swedish study of 100,000 women found that using AI to assist radiologists reading mammograms reduced the rate of aggressive "interval" breast cancers by 12%. CBC News reports: For the study -- published in Thursday's issue of the medical journal The Lancet -- more than 100,000 women had mammography screenings. Half were supported by AI and the rest had their mammograms reviewed by two different radiologists, a standard practice in much of Europe known as double reading. It is not typically used in Canada, where usually one radiologist checks mammograms. The study looked at the rates of interval cancer, the term doctors use for invasive tumors that appear between routine mammograms. They can be harder to detect and studies have shown that they are more likely to be aggressive with a poorer prognosis. The rate of interval cancers decreased by 12 percent in the groups where the AI screening was implemented, the study showed. [...] Throughout the two-year study, the mammograms that were supported by AI were triaged into two different groups. Those that were determined to be low risk needed only one radiologist to examine them, while those that were considered high risk required two. The researchers reported that numerically, the AI-supported screening resulted in 11 fewer interval cancers than standard screening (82 versus 93, or 12 per cent). "This is really a way to improve an overall screening test," [said lead author, Dr. Kristina Lang]. She acknowledged that while the study found a decrease in interval cancer, longer-term studies are needed to find out how AI-supported screening might impact mortality rates. The screenings for the study all took place at one centre in Sweden, which the researchers acknowledged is a limitation. Another is that the race and ethnicity of the participants were not recorded. The next step, Lang said, will be for Swedish researchers to determine cost-effectiveness. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Universal Basic Income Could Be Used To Soften Hit From AI Job Losses In UK, Minister Says
    by BeauHD on 30/01/2026 at 3:30 am

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The UK could introduce a universal basic income (UBI) to protect workers in industries that are being disrupted by AI, the investment minister Jason Stockwood has said. "Bumpy" changes to society caused by the introduction of the technology would mean there would have to be "some sort of concessionary arrangement with jobs that go immediately", Lord Stockwood said. The Labour peer told the Financial Times: "Undoubtedly we're going to have to think really carefully about how we soft-land those industries that go away, so some sort of [universal basic income], some sort of lifelong mechanism as well so people can retrain." A universal basic income is not part of official government policy, but when asked whether people in government were considering the need for UBI, Stockwood told the FT: "People are definitely talking about it." [...] While he has previously been a vocal proponent of a wealth tax in the UK, Stockwood told the FT he had not repeated his calls for the government to go further on taxing the rich. However, he added: "If you make your money and the first thing you do is you speak to a tax adviser to ask: 'Where can we pay the lowest tax?' we don't want those people in this country, I'd suggest, because you're not committed to your communities and the long-term success in this country." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Comcast Keeps Losing Customers Despite Price Guarantee, Unlimited Data
    by BeauHD on 30/01/2026 at 2:02 am

    Comcast's attempt to slow broadband customer losses still isn't stopping the bleeding as fiber and fixed wireless competition intensifies. In Q4 2025 alone, Comcast lost 181,000 broadband subscribers, even as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks. Ars Technica reports: The Q4 net loss is more than the 176,000 loss predicted by analysts, although not as bad as the 199,000-customer loss that spurred [Comcast President Mike Cavanagh's] comment about Comcast "not winning in the marketplace" nine months ago. The Q4 2025 loss reported today is also worse than the 139,000-customer loss in Q4 2024 and the 34,000-customer loss in Q4 2023. "Subscriber losses were 181,000, as the early traction we are seeing from our new initiatives was more than offset by continued competitive intensity," Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said during an earnings call today, according to a Motley Fool transcript. Comcast's residential broadband customers dropped to 28.72 million, while business broadband customers dropped to 2.54 million, for a total of 31.26 million. Armstrong said that average revenue per user grew 1.1 percent, "consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines." Armstrong expects average revenue per user to continue growing slowly "for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of a rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing." Comcast Connectivity & Platforms chief Steve Croney said the firm is facing "a more competitive environment from fiber" and continued competition from fixed wireless. "The market is going to remain intensely competitive," he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Cory Doctorow On Tariffs and the DMCA In Canada
    by BeauHD on 30/01/2026 at 1:25 am

    Longtime Slashdot reader devnulljapan writes: In 2012, Canada passed anti-circumvention law Bill C-11, cut-and-pasted from the U.S. DMCA, in return for access to U.S. markets without tariffs. Trump has tariffed Canada anyway, so Cory Doctorow suggests it sounds like like a good idea to ditch Bill C-11 and turn Canada into a "Disenshittification Nation" and go into the business of "disenshittify[ing] America's defective tech exports." Some of the specific ways Canada could respond include legalize jailbreaking, allow alternative app stores/clients, force companies to offer repair tools, and open firmware that break monopoly lock-ins. Cory's pitch is equal parts economic strategy (capture the rents Big Tech extracts) and national security (reduce dependence on U.S. tech stacks that can be switched off or weaponized). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Linux Gaming Developers Join Forces To Form the Open Gaming Collective
    by BeauHD on 30/01/2026 at 12:45 am

    A group of Linux gaming-focused distros and developers have formed the Open Gaming Collective to pool work on shared components like kernels, input systems, and Valve tooling. The Verge reports: Universal Blue, developer of the gaming-focused Linux distribution Bazzite, announced on Wednesday that its helping to form the OGC with several other groups, which will collaborate on improvements to the Linux gaming ecosystem and âoecentralize efforts around critical components like kernel patches, input tooling, and essential gaming packages such as gamescope." The other founding members of the OGC include Nobara, ChimeraOS, Playtron, Fyra Labs, PikaOS, ShadowBlip, and Asus Linux. [...] It's worth noting that this will mean some changes to Bazzite, which is switching to the OGC kernel, replacing HHD with InputPlumber as its input framework, and integrating features like RGB and fan control into the Steam UI. Bazzite also added that, "We'll be sharing patches we've made to various Valve packages with the OGC and attempting to upstream everything we can." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • An AI Toy Exposed 50K Logs of Its Chats With Kids To Anyone With a Gmail Account
    by BeauHD on 30/01/2026 at 12:02 am

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Earlier this month, Joseph Thacker's neighbor mentioned to him that she'd preordered a couple of stuffed dinosaur toys for her children. She'd chosen the toys, called Bondus, because they offered an AI chat feature that lets children talk to the toy like a kind of machine-learning-enabled imaginary friend. But she knew Thacker, a security researcher, had done work on AI risks for kids, and she was curious about his thoughts. So Thacker looked into it. With just a few minutes of work, he and a web security researcher friend named Joel Margolis made a startling discovery: Bondu's web-based portal, intended to allow parents to check on their children's conversations and for Bondu's staff to monitor the products' use and performance, also let anyone with a Gmail account access transcripts of virtually every conversation Bondu's child users have ever had with the toy. Without carrying out any actual hacking, simply by logging in with an arbitrary Google account, the two researchers immediately found themselves looking at children's private conversations, the pet names kids had given their Bondu, the likes and dislikes of the toys' toddler owners, their favorite snacks and dance moves. In total, Margolis and Thacker discovered that the data Bondu left unprotected -- accessible to anyone who logged in to the company's public-facing web console with their Google username -- included children's names, birth dates, family member names, "objectives" for the child chosen by a parent, and most disturbingly, detailed summaries and transcripts of every previous chat between the child and their Bondu, a toy practically designed to elicit intimate one-on-one conversation. More than 50,000 chat transcripts were accessible through the exposed web portal. When the researchers alerted Bondu about the findings, the company acted to take down the console within minutes and relaunched it the next day with proper authentication measures. "We take user privacy seriously and are committed to protecting user data," Bondu CEO Fateen Anam Rafid said in his statement. "We have communicated with all active users about our security protocols and continue to strengthen our systems with new protections," as well as hiring a security firm to validate its investigation and monitor its systems in the future. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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