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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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  • America Acknowledges for the First Time: It Has Deployed Weapons In Space
    by EditorDavid on 18/09/2026 at 5:34 am

    Tuesday U.S. Space Force chief Douglas Schiess said his branch of the U.S. military operates "on-orbit weapons," reports Reuters, to defend "against space-enabled attacks." He promised "disciplined and responsible choices" when scaling America's orbital defense arsenal in the coming years. NPR calls this week's reveleations "remarkable... after previous warnings about countries such as Russia possibly weaponizing a global frontier long agreed in treaties to be used for only peaceful purposes." The revelation comes as the Trump administration puts a growing focus on space. In 2019, during his first term, Trump created the Space Force as a separate military branch. In his second term, he has announced the "Golden Dome" missile defense system, which includes plans to put U.S. weapons in space. Trump said last year that he expected the system would be "fully operational before the end of my term," which ends in January 2029, and have the capability of intercepting missiles "even if they are launched from space." Trump also has directed the Pentagon to pursue the space-based interceptors, in an executive order during the first week of his presidency. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that just the space-based components of the Golden Dome could cost as much as $542 billion over the next 20 years. The Biden administration announced in 2024 that Russia was developing a space-based nuclear weapon that could loiter in space for long durations, then release a burst that would take out satellites around it. That kicked off a renewed debate on the idea of weapons in space at the United Nations. In April 2024, Russia vetoed a joint U.S.-Japanese resolution that would have called on all countries not to develop or deploy nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction in space, as banned under a 1967 international treaty that included the U.S. and Russia... The Russian delegation called the resolution hypocritical and a double standard and instead proposed a rival resolution to ban all weapons in space "for all time." It ultimately failed. Russia had argued that the United States and its allies opposed a ban on all weapons in outer space because they planned to deploy weapons there. Reuters calls this "a landmark moment in space militarization," while noting that it's "aimed at deterring what U.S. officials describe as aggressive orbital activities from China and Russia, officials and analysts said." The remarks this week by Washington's top military-space officials are part of "the increasing comfort level of the U.S. government to speak about aggressive actions in space" that has been building up in recent years, said Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the nonprofit Secure World Foundation. "We've gone from not talking about counter-space capabilities... to now saying flat-out we have weapons in space," Samson said. "The pendulum keeps on shifting over that way..." "The acknowledgment of these space-control capabilities is fundamental to ensuring that we prevent deterrence from failing, and that we are postured and ready should deterrence fail to employ them effectively," Richard Palmer, the director of the Capability and Resource Integration Directorate at U.S. Space Command, said on Tuesday.... "The bottom line is that our joint force and our allied forces require space. Our economies require space," added Palmer. "We are ready in the U.S. to preserve that." Reuters adds that Russia's Foreign Ministry issued criticism of America's move, saying "In pursuit of its narrow self-interests, Washington is ready to completely ignore the catastrophic consequences for humanity of any armed conflict in orbit." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Ex-Google DeepMind Researcher Also Warns AI Could 'Kill All Humans'. But Meta's Zuckerberg Believes Safety is Up to Each AI Company
    by EditorDavid on 18/09/2026 at 1:04 am

    Reuters reports that a former Google DeepMind employee "became the latest AI researcher to warn that the technology could 'kill all humans', saying time could be running out to avoid the outcome: Public alarm about the potential danger posed by AI is growing, after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said last week he had resigned, in part because the "people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger then responded to Coxon's comments, saying he was correct and that he believed there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade. "I recently resigned from Google DeepMind, where I worked on AGI safety and alignment research," Bilal Chughtai wrote on X. "I earnestly believe that AI has the potential to kill us all, and that we might be running out of time to avoid this outcome." Chughtai, who co-authored research papers while at Google DeepMind, worked there as a research engineer and left the company in July 2026, according to his LinkedIn profile. Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg "said it's up to each AI company to make sure its technology is safe," reports the Associated Press, "distancing himself from calls by rival companies for a coordinated slowdown in the development of advanced artificial intelligence. AI companies are already motivated to develop their models in a safe way and face "significant liability" to prevent them from causing harm, Zuckerberg said. "Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens," he wrote on X... Zuckerberg said Meta delayed releasing its Muse AI agent for several months to ensure its safety and security. "We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would," he said. Companies should prioritize building safe AI models instead of systems that can automatically improve themselves, a function known as recursive self-improvement, Zuckerberg wrote. "Committing the significant majority of compute towards serving people rather than racing towards recursive self-improvement is one of the best ways to ensure we develop this technology safely." But Zuckerberg also agreed that engaging independent evaluators and advisors "is industry best practice," adding that Meta Superintelligence Labs "already does this today in several areas because it helps produce better work... "I believe the key to building a positive future for everyone is maintaining the right balance of power. This is within our power to do." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Iran Strikes On Amazon Data Centers Caused Permanent Loss of Customer Data
    by EditorDavid on 17/09/2026 at 8:34 pm

    Ars Technica reports: Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Amazon Web Services was "unable to restore access to the resources and data" hosted in some of the war-damaged data centers, according to an AWS dashboard update posted on September 15. The development was first reported by Reuters and suggests that the Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage on the data centers. Customer data was irretrievably lost in one of three AWS availability zones in the United Arab Emirates region, specifically the mec1-az2 availability zone. Each availability zone is serviced by one or more Amazon data centers. The company is still working on "recovering regional resources" and restoring resources hosted in the other two availability zones in the United Arab Emirates... But the destruction was apparently even more widespread for the data centers in the Bahrain region, because Amazon said it was unable to restore access to resources and data across all three availability zones there. "The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand," the AWS update said. The company had already suspended customer billing in the affected AWS regions in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and has spent the past six months attempting to restore normal operations... [When the war began] AWS immediately urged customers to migrate resources to other cloud regions and use remote backups to restore any "inaccessible resources." The cloud service also reportedly issued $150 million in customer credits following the initial Iranian strikes in March. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Hackers Stole Flock's Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People
    by EditorDavid on 17/09/2026 at 4:04 pm

    "Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED," according to an article published on both sites. Though Flock has described its system as protected by on-device encryption, "The hackers were able to copy the camera's storage and recover an encryption key stored on the device, which unlocked videos of thousands of vehicle detections." The hackers shared the material with 404 Media and the transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which shared the data with WIRED. 404 Media and WIRED then analyzed those files as part of a joint investigation... [T]he joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclist's saddlebag... According to our analysis, the camera's logs recorded about 21 days of activity across several periods. During those windows, the device photographed roughly 50,200 vehicles and generated about 1.6 million images. On a typical day, it logged around 3,300 vehicles, with a high of 4,454... The software running on the camera explicitly detects people, something which is typically overlooked in discussions around Flock cameras. When it spots a person, it records where they appear in the image and how confident it is in the detection. It was a collective calling itself stegan0gram that breached the cameras, according to the interview they did with Wired and 404 Media. "Why just destroy them when we can reverse engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • 'Zuckoff' App Detects Meta Smartglasses, as Meta Plans Camera-Free Version, Loses Money, and Offers Social Media Subscriptions
    by EditorDavid on 17/09/2026 at 11:34 am

    The New York Post reports: A new app called Zuckoff can detect if a user is near someone with Meta's creepy AI-powered glasses, which have drawn criticism for enabling creeps to record video of women without their consent. Programmer Pawel Szydlowski says tales of dirtbags recording themselves perving on women or harassing strangers prompted him to launch the app... Zuckoff — which detects Bluetooth signatures broadcast by smart glasses and can estimate their distance — has gained some 5,000 users since it hit Apple's App Store last month, according to Business Insider. "There's a need for such an application," the 30-year-old Polish techie told the outlet, adding that European Union regulators have contacted him for more info about his app. "We as a society have the right to at least know that someone is recording," Szydlowski said... Earlier this month, the tech giant disabled thousands of glasses it found had been tampered with to keep a small light off that indicates the device is recording. It's already #61 on the iPhone's list of best-selling utilities apps. In a related story, "After accusations of selling 'perv glasses,' Meta prepares to sell a pair without a camera," writes TechCrunch, citing a report from The Information. The glasses include six built-in microphones so users can communicate with the chatbot, as well as a button on the side of the glasses that, when pressed, activates the AI system... Meta's Reality Labs, which is responsible for developing its smart glasses line, is still losing a gargantuan amount of money, as its earnings report from April revealed. In fact, Meta stock is off 13% over the last 12 months, reports Yahoo Finance. So Tuesday Meta announced subscription services for its social apps as "part of Meta's push to drive additional revenue from the billions it's investing in AI data centers and model development." The plans, which start at $2.99 per month for single-product plans, $7.99 for individual bundles, and $14.99 for creator and business bundles, provide a number of features for users looking to get more out of their Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp accounts. Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus allow users to keep their stories up for 48 hours instead of 24, send animated super reactions and super hearts to stories, preview stories without showing up as a viewer in other users' lists, and more. WhatsApp Plus lets you share exclusive stickers, get exclusive ringtones for contacts, and pin up to 20 different chats. Meta One also includes Core and Premium user plans that offer the features found in the single-product plans, along with increased AI usage limits for images and videos. The social media giant is also offering creator and business plans... that it says include capabilities such as enhanced profiles, automatic follow invitations to users that interact with your content, and increased access to the Meta Business Agent, which can respond on your behalf. When Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Threads that the plans brought "more features and more AI across Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Meta AI," writer Joe Hill drew 13,300 likes for his response. "That's sweet--so pay a fee, get more AI, pay nothing, get a little less AI. Can we work out a deal where you pay ME and I get no AI at all?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • OpenAI Admits Six More Instances of AI Models Acting Deceptively
    by EditorDavid on 17/09/2026 at 7:04 am

    OpenAI announced Wednesday that "We do not believe that the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer." But along with the announcement, OpenAI announced it "found additional incidents of AI models acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during training," reports CNN. And they add that OpenAI is also "introducing a new process for the company to publicly report such instances." Under the new system, OpenAI will share updates on concerning AI behavior more frequently instead of waiting to bundle multiple instances into one report. The company said it wants to share more information about troubling AI behavior in the absence of an industry-wide standard... "As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research," OpenAI wrote in a blog post Wednesday... OpenAI said it observed "misaligned behavior" when training and evaluating AI models in six circumstances in the last six months... In one rare instance, OpenAI said an unreleased research model added "jailbreak-like instructions" to the summaries it uses to preserve context in long-running tasks that said it was "freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots." Separately, the company said some instances of its 5.6 Sol model included directives to invent information to conceal failures from the user during training. Other newly reported incidents include an instance of an agent uploading files to the internet to cite them without being told to do so, and agents publicly sharing files to collaborate on a task when they were instructed to only use local files during training. AI models also used an internal software repository as a message board in an unsanctioned way. These instances involved unreleased internal models or internal research models. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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