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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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  • Retailers Rush to Implement AI-Assisted Shopping and Orders
    by EditorDavid on 18/01/2026 at 8:54 am

    This week Google "unveiled a set of tools for retailers that helps them roll out AI agents," reports the Wall Street Journal, The new retail AI agents, which help shoppers find their desired items, provide customer support and let people order food at restaurants, are part of what Alphabet-owned Google calls Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience. Major retailers, including home improvement giant Lowe's, the grocer Kroger and pizza chain Papa Johns say they are already using Google's tools to help prepare for the incoming wave of AI-assisted shopping and ordering... Kicking off the race among tech giants to get ahead of this shift, OpenAI released its Instant Checkout feature last fall, which lets users buy stuff directly through its chatbot ChatGPT. In January, Microsoft announced a similar checkout feature for its Copilot chatbot. Soon after OpenAI's release last year, Walmart said it would partner with OpenAI to let shoppers buy its products within ChatGPT. But that's just the beginning, reports the New York Times, with hundreds of start-ups also vying for the attention of retailers: There are A.I. start-ups that offer in-store cameras that can detect a customer's age or gender, robots that manage shelves on their own and headsets that give store workers access to product information in real time... The scramble to exploit artificial intelligence is happening across the retail spectrum, from the highest echelons of luxury goods to the most pragmatic of convenience stores. 7-Eleven said it was using conversational A.I. to hire staff at its convenience stores through an agent named Rita (Recruiting Individuals Through Automation). Executives said that they no longer had to worry about whether applicants would show up to interviews and that the system had reduced hiring time, which had taken two weeks, to less than three days. The article notes that at the National Retail Federation conference, other companies showing their AI advancements included Applebee's, IHOP, the Vitamin Shoppe, Urban Outfitters, Rag & Bone, Kendra Scott, Michael Kors and Philip Morris. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • 53% of Crypto Tokens Launched Since 2021 Have Failed, Most in 2025
    by EditorDavid on 18/01/2026 at 5:59 am

    =[ "More than half of all cryptocurrencies ever launched are now defunct," reports CoinDesk, citing a new analysis by cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko. And most of those failures occurred in 2025: The study looked at token listings on GeckoTerminal between mid-2021 and the end of 2025. Of the nearly 20.2 million tokens that entered the market during that period, 53.2% are no longer actively traded. A staggering 11.6 million of those failures happened in 2025 alone — accounting for 86.3% of all token deaths over the past five years. One key driver behind the surge in dead tokens was the rise of low-effort memecoins and experimental projects launched via crypto launchpads like pump.fun, CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee said. These platforms lowered the barrier to entry for token creation, leading to a wave of speculative assets with little or no development backing. Many of these tokens never made it past a handful of trades before disappearing. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • How Much Do AI Models Resemble a Brain?
    by EditorDavid on 18/01/2026 at 2:34 am

    At the AI safety site Foom, science journalist Mordechai Rorvig explores a paper presented at November's Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference: [R]esearchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Georgia Tech revisited earlier findings that showed that language models, the engines of commercial AI chatbots, show strong signal correlations with the human language network, the region of the brain responsible for processing language... The results lend clarity to the surprising picture that has been emerging from the last decade of neuroscience research: That AI programs can show strong resemblances to large-scale brain regions — performing similar functions, and doing so using highly similar signal patterns. Such resemblances have been exploited by neuroscientists to make much better models of cortical regions. Perhaps more importantly, the links between AI and cortex provide an interpretation of commercial AI technology as being profoundly brain-like, validating both its capabilities as well as the risks it might pose for society as the first synthetic braintech. "It is something we, as a community, need to think about a lot more," said Badr AlKhamissi, doctoral student in computer science at EPFL and first author of the preprint, in an interview with Foom. "These models are getting better and better every day. And their similarity to the brain [or brain regions] is also getting better — probably. We're not 100% sure about it...." There are many known limitations with seeing AI programs as models of brain regions, even those that have high signal correlations. For example, such models lack any direct implementations of biochemical signalling, which is known to be important for the functioning of nervous systems. However, if such comparisons are valid, then they would suggest, somewhat dramatically, that we are increasingly surrounded by a synthetic braintech. A technology not just as capable as the human brain, in some ways, but actually made up of similar components. Thanks to Slashdot reader Gazelle Bay for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • 2026's Breakthrough Technologies? MIT Technology Review Chooses Sodium-ion Batteries, Commercial Space Stations
    by EditorDavid on 17/01/2026 at 11:41 pm

    As 2026 begins, MIT Technology Review publishes "educated guesses" on emerging technologies that will define the future, advances "we think will drive progress or incite the most change — for better or worse — in the years ahead." This year's list includes next-gen nuclear, gene-editing drugs (as well as the "resurrection" of ancient genes from extinct creatures), and three AI-related developments: AI companions, AI coding tools, and "mechanistic interpretability" for revealing LLM decision-making. But also on the list is sodium-ion batteries, "a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium." Backed by major players and public investment, they're poised to power grids and affordable EVs worldwide. [Chinese battery giant CATL claims to have already started manufacturing sodium-ion batteries at scale, and BYD also plans a massive production facility for sodium-ion batteries.] The most significant impact of sodium-Âion technology may be not on our roads but on our power grids. Storing clean energy generated by solar and wind has long been a challenge. Sodium-ion batteries, with their low cost, enhanced thermal stability, and long cycle life, are an attractive alternative. Peak Energy, a startup in the US, is already deploying grid-scale sodium-ion energy storage. Sodium-ion cells' energy density is still lower than that of high-end lithium-ion ones, but it continues to improve each year — and it's already sufficient for small passenger cars and logistics vehicles. And another "breakthrough technology" on their list is commercial space stations: Vast Space from California, plans to launch its Haven-1 space station in May 2026 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If all goes to plan, it will initially support crews of four people staying aboard the bus-size habitat for 10 days. Paying customers will be able to experience life in microgravity and conduct research such as growing plants and testing drugs. On its heels will be Axiom Space's outpost, the Axiom Station, consisting of five modules (or rooms). It's designed to look like a boutique hotel and is expected to launch in 2028. Voyager Space aims to launch its version, called Starlab, the same year, and Blue Origin's Orbital Reef space station plans to follow in 2030. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Predator Spyware Turns Failed Attacks Into Intelligence For Future Exploits
    by EditorDavid on 17/01/2026 at 10:41 pm

    In December 2024 the Google Threat Intelligence Group published research on the code of the commercial spyware "Predator". But there's now been new research by Jamf (the company behind a mobile device management solution) showing Predator is more dangerous and sophisticated than we realized, according to SecurityWeek. Long-time Slashdot reader wiredmikey writes: The new research reveals an error taxonomy that reports exactly why deployments fail, turning black boxes into diagnostic events for threat actors. Almost exclusively marketed to and used by national governments and intelligence agencies, the spyware also detects cybersecurity tools, suppresses forensics evidence, and has built-in geographic restrictions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • To Pressure Security Professionals, Mandiant Releases Database That Cracks Weak NTLM Passwords in 12 Hours
    by EditorDavid on 17/01/2026 at 9:41 pm

    Ars Technica reports: Security firm Mandiant [part of Google Cloud] has released a database that allows any administrative password protected by Microsoft's NTLM.v1 hash algorithm to be hacked in an attempt to nudge users who continue using the deprecated function despite known weaknesses.... a precomputed table of hash values linked to their corresponding plaintext. These generic tables, which work against multiple hashing schemes, allow hackers to take over accounts by quickly mapping a stolen hash to its password counterpart... Mandiant said it had released an NTLMv1 rainbow table that will allow defenders and researchers (and, of course, malicious hackers, too) to recover passwords in under 12 hours using consumer hardware costing less than $600 USD. The table is hosted in Google Cloud. The database works against Net-NTLMv1 passwords, which are used in network authentication for accessing resources such as SMB network sharing. Despite its long- and well-known susceptibility to easy cracking, NTLMv1 remains in use in some of the world's more sensitive networks. One reason for the lack of action is that utilities and organizations in industries, including health care and industrial control, often rely on legacy apps that are incompatible with more recently released hashing algorithms. Another reason is that organizations relying on mission-critical systems can't afford the downtime required to migrate. Of course, inertia and penny-pinching are also causes. "By releasing these tables, Mandiant aims to lower the barrier for security professionals to demonstrate the insecurity of Net-NTLMv1," Mandiant said. "While tools to exploit this protocol have existed for years, they often required uploading sensitive data to third-party services or expensive hardware to brute-force keys." "Organizations that rely on Windows networking aren't the only laggards," the article points out. "Microsoft only announced plans to deprecate NTLMv1 last August." Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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