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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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  • Microsoft CEO: Time To Move 'Beyond the Arguments of Slop vs Sophistication'
    by msmash on 03/01/2026 at 1:30 am

    The tech industry needs to move "beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication" and develop a new "theory of the mind" that accounts for humans now equipped with "cognitive amplifier tools," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a year-end reflection blog. The post frames 2026 as yet another "pivotal year for AI" -- but one that "feels different in a few notable ways." Nadella claims the industry has moved past the initial discovery phase and is now "beginning to distinguish between 'spectacle' and 'substance.'" He argues for evolving beyond Steve Jobs' famous "bicycles for the mind" framing, positioning AI instead as "scaffolding" for human potential rather than a substitute. "We will evolve from models to systems when it comes to deploying AI for real world impact," Nadella writes, adding that these systems must consider their societal impact on people and the planet. "For AI to have societal permission it must have real world eval impact." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • MTV's Music-Only Channels Go Off the Air
    by msmash on 02/01/2026 at 11:31 pm

    An anonymous reader shares a report: MTV shut down many of its last dedicated 24-hour music channels Dec. 31. The move, announced back in October, affected channels around the world, with the U.K. seeing five different MTV stations going dark. These include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. As Consequence notes, MTV Music -- which launched in 2011 -- notably ended its run by airing the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," the first visual to air when MTV launched in the United States in 1981. MTV's parent company, Paramount Skydance, is also expected to shutter music-only channels in Australia, Poland, France, and Brazil. Despite axing much of its dedicated music programming, MTV's flagship channels are still expected to keep broadcasting in the U.K. and elsewhere. Like in the U.S., these channels primarily air massively popular reality programs, as opposed to music videos. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Google AI Overviews Put People at Risk of Harm With Misleading Health Advice
    by msmash on 02/01/2026 at 9:30 pm

    A Guardian investigation published Friday found that Google's AI Overviews -- the generative AI summaries that appear at the top of search results -- are serving up inaccurate health information that experts say puts people at risk of harm. The investigation, which came after health groups, charities and professionals raised concerns, uncovered several cases of misleading medical advice despite Google's claims that the feature is "helpful" and "reliable." In one case described by experts as "really dangerous," Google advised people with pancreatic cancer to avoid high-fat foods, which is the exact opposite of what should be recommended and could jeopardize a patient's chances of tolerating chemotherapy or surgery. A search for liver blood test normal ranges produced masses of numbers without accounting for nationality, sex, ethnicity or age of patients, potentially leaving people with serious liver disease thinking they are healthy. The company also incorrectly listed a pap test as a test for vaginal cancer. The Eve Appeal cancer charity noted that the AI summaries changed when running the exact same search, pulling from different sources each time. Mental health charity Mind said some summaries for conditions such as psychosis and eating disorders offered "very dangerous advice." Google said the vast majority of its AI Overviews were factual and that many examples shared were "incomplete screenshots," adding that the accuracy rate was on par with featured snippets. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work
    by msmash on 02/01/2026 at 8:01 pm

    President Donald Trump signed into law this month a measure that prohibits anyone based in China and other adversarial countries from accessing the Pentagon's cloud computing systems. From a report: The ban, which is tucked inside the $900 billion defense policy law, was enacted in response to a ProPublica investigation this year that exposed how Microsoft used China-based engineers to service the Defense Department's computer systems for nearly a decade -- a practice that left some of the country's most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary. U.S.-based supervisors, known as "digital escorts," were supposed to serve as a check on these foreign employees, but we found they often lacked the expertise needed to effectively supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills. In the wake of the reporting, leading members of Congress called on the Defense Department to strengthen its security requirements while blasting Microsoft for what some Republicans called "a national betrayal." Cybersecurity and intelligence experts have told ProPublica that the arrangement posed major risks to national security, given that laws in China grant the country's officials broad authority to collect data. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • AMD Closes in on Intel in Latest Steam Hardware Survey
    by msmash on 02/01/2026 at 7:01 pm

    AMD's share of processors among Steam users climbed to 47.27% in December 2025, a 4.66% jump in a single month that continues the company's steady encroachment on Intel's once-dominant position in the gaming CPU market. Intel held roughly 77% of the Steam Hardware Survey five years ago, and that lead has eroded considerably as AMD broke the 40% threshold in the third quarter of 2025 and kept climbing. The gains came despite an ongoing memory shortage that has pushed DDR5 prices to record highs -- AMD's AM5 platform requires DDR5 exclusively, while Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh chips support both DDR4 and DDR5. Many gamers are turning to older AMD Zen 3 processors like the Ryzen 5 5800X, which topped Amazon's bestseller lists during the holiday period and work on DDR4-compatible platforms. Meanwhile, the proportion of Steam users running 32GB of RAM rose to 39.07%, nearly matching the 40.14% still on 16GB, as gamers likely rushed to upgrade before prices climbed further amid AI's demand for memory. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Reading is a Vice
    by msmash on 02/01/2026 at 6:01 pm

    The International Publishers Association spent the past year promoting the slogan "Democracy depends on reading," but Atlantic senior editor Adam Kirsch argues that this utilitarian pitch fundamentally misunderstands why people become readers in the first place. The most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that less than half of Americans read a single book in 2022, and only 38% read a novel or short story. A University of Florida and University College London study found daily reading for pleasure fell 3% annually from 2003 to 2023. Among 13-year-olds, just 14% read for fun almost every day in 2023, down from 27% a decade earlier. Kirsch says to stop treating reading as civic medicine. "It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice," he writes. When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn't stop people from buying dangerous books. Now that books are deemed virtuous, nobody picks them up. He points to Don Quixote and Madame Bovary -- novels whose protagonists are ruined by their reading habits. Great writers, he notes, never idealized literature the way educators do. The pitch to young readers should emphasize staying up late reading under the covers by flashlight, hoping nobody finds out. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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