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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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  • AI Has Finally Learned To Play Stratego
    by BeauHD on 02/10/2026 at 11:00 pm

    Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, NYU, and Stanford have built an AI called Ataraxos that finally cracked Stratego, beating four-time world champion Pim Niemeijer 15 games to one with four draws. Its key advantage was a second neural network that estimates the identities of hidden enemy pieces, letting the system search plausible game states rather than brute-force a massive hidden-information space. Ars Technica reports: Just like [DeepMind's DeepNash, introduced in 2022], Ataraxos learned by playing against itself -- 163 million games in total. In these self-play sessions, moves that led to wins were reinforced and played more often in future matches, while moves that led to losses were played less, which was the same simple training idea. The difference was in how much Ataraxos adjusted after each game, because hidden information tends to send self-play learning algorithms around in circles. The team addressed this by making big, bold changes in strategy early in training and small, careful ones later. The even bigger innovation was something DeepNash never had: thinking ahead before each move. AIs like AlphaGo refine their general strategy with a search just before acting. DeepMind couldn't make that work in Stratego because the search space was too large, leaving it an open question whether it was worth trying. "This is one of the things that we did figure out how to do," Farina said. The solution was a second neural network, a belief model, trained to guess the opponent's hidden pieces based on how they had been moving. This way, instead of iterating through every possible arrangement, Ataraxos samples plausible ones, plays out candidate moves in each, and picks based on how they turned out. And it shows in its playstyle. [...] DeepNash was trained for two to three months on 1,024 of Google's specialized chips, a run the Ataraxos team estimates would cost $3 million to $4.5 million at 2025 prices. Ataraxos, in contrast, needed 16 GPUs for a week, plus an additional four GPUs for four days to train the belief model. Farina and lead author Samuel Sokota achieved this efficiency by writing a simulator that runs millions of moves per second on graphics cards. "At the scale that we are in academia, we don't really have access to an entire field of GPUs," Farina said. The algorithm also learned far faster -- it played about 34 times fewer games than DeepNash, and still ended up much stronger. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • The University of Washington Is Moving a Graduate Program to Microsoft's Campus
    by BeauHD on 02/10/2026 at 10:00 pm

    Longtime Slashdot submitter theodp writes: GeekWire reports that the University of Washington has moved its Global Innovation Exchange {GIX) program to Microsoft's campus in a rent-free deal (UW News release). GIX, an institute supporting tech leaders that offers an MS in Technology Innovation, is the first UW program to set up full-time operations at Microsoft, whose headquarters are just across Lake Washington from the university's main campus. Microsoft provided a $42 million in-kind donation to establish the embedded facility; the UW is leasing the new 48,500-square-foot GIX space in Microsoft's Building 92 rent-free. GIX debuted in 2015 as a partnership of the UW and China's Tsinghua University and received $70 million in Microsoft support at the now-abandoned GIX location in Bellevue (the Steve Ballmer Building), although indications are that a long-term arrangement did not come together as intended. In a Thursday LinkedIn post, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote: "Last night we opened a door unlike any other. At the heart of Microsoft's campus, step into the new home of the UW's Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) and you cross from Microsoft into the University of Washington. No one has ever put a great research university and a leading technology company under the same roof quite like this. As far as I know, no one has even tried. The timing matters. Artificial intelligence is advancing fast. The question is whether the people building it understand the world it's changing. This calls for a new style of education and leadership. We need leaders who understand the technology deeply and see things through other people's eyes. Leaders who learn by collaborating on real projects with people from different countries and disciplines. That's what GIX is built for. Students will learn from faculty across the UW, take classes taught by Microsoft employees, and be mentored by people from across our industry here in the Pacific Northwest." Interestingly, Smith's contention that UW GIX students will benefit from a 'new style' of Microsoft and industry-influenced education sounds a lot like Smith's contention that K-12 school children are better off thanks to a new style of Microsoft and industry-influenced education. In an interview last month, Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools author Natasha Singer told NPR (podcast, transcript), "For my book, I spoke to Brad Smith, who's the president of Microsoft, and he has been one of the leaders in the tech industry pushing for [K-12] computer science [and now AI literacy] in schools. [...] And Brad Smith said, philanthropy in the private sector is doing this work because public schools have failed to do what they were supposed to do. And his view is that public schools should be teaching modern subjects like computer science, and they were not equipped to do it fast enough and the tech industry stepped in to help. And is it better than if schools were able to do this themselves? He said, no, but it's certainly better than nothing. And he said to me, you know, think about where we would be on computer science if the tech industry hadn't stepped up. [...] Well, I've been having this conversation with him for 10 years, and when we started having it 10 years ago, I said to him, I get that, but when big tech companies put their finger on the scale, it tips education in certain ways that not only favor the tech industry but can obscure equally or more important things." So, is "The University of Washington at Microsoft" a good or bad idea? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Apple Tightens macOS 'Full Disk Access' Controls As AI Agents 'Substantially' Increase Risk
    by BeauHD on 02/10/2026 at 9:00 pm

    Apple says it will tighten macOS Full Disk Access controls as increasingly capable AI agents raise the risks of apps gaining broad access to users' files, messages, mail, and browsing history. TechCrunch reports: Days after a journalist claimed that Meta's Muse app on Mac read their private messages -- a claim that Meta disputed -- Apple announced that it's introducing additional controls around a setting called "Full Disk Access" on macOS. The feature was designed to allow backups to function properly, but AI agents have now increased "the risks associated with this level of access," Apple said. [...] In Muse's case, the AI optionally allows users to enable Full Disk Access. This setting, Apple explains, gives an app permission to access files, mail, messages, and even browsing history. "Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems... without users' full knowledge and understanding," Apple said in a new blog post aimed at developers. The company says that, going forward, it will introduce new controls aimed at ensuring that users who "genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access" can do so only with "every explicit user action." "Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy," Apple wrote. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery to Become Skydance
    by BeauHD on 02/10/2026 at 8:00 pm

    Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will operate under the Skydance name once their roughly $110 billion merger closes, which is expected on October 6. The combined company will bring together Paramount+, HBO Max, CBS, CNN, MTV and other networks, along with major franchises including The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, DC and Yellowstone. Ellison said the Paramount and Warner Bros. brands will remain prominent. "We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one. Instead, we wanted a name that would give the combined company an identity of its own while allowing Paramount and Warner Bros. -- and all our extraordinary brands -- to remain in the spotlight." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Used Processor Leads To Game Ban
    by BeauHD on 02/10/2026 at 7:00 pm

    AmiMoJo shares a report from heise online: Anyone buying used hardware for a gaming PC needs to be careful: not just whether the components are still in order but also what the previous owner did with them. A case on Reddit shows this. Someone installed a used AMD processor, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, in their PC. Because the previous owner was caught cheating, the new owner cannot start several online games. The problem was noticed in the first-person shooter "Valorant" from the development studio Riot. Right from the first start, the new owner was kicked out directly, according to their statement. Riot support confirmed that the previous owner had cheated. The processor is therefore on an internal blacklist -- and, with its installation in the PC, now apparently also some other components like the mainboard. Riot support does not remove such entries manually. In addition to "Valorant," all other PC games from Riot are affected: the strategy game "League of Legends," the auto-battler "Teamfight Tactics," the card game "Legends of Runeterra," the fighting game "2XKO," and likely future titles as well. Riot's "Vanguard" anti-cheat system traditionally runs deep in the Windows kernel and starts with the PC, but a June 2026 update allows it to launch with a game if security features such as TPM and Secure Boot are enabled. It's unclear how Riot uniquely identifies processors, though possibilities include hardware fingerprinting based on chip behavior or storing identification hashes in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which Vanguard accesses in the newer mode. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • EU's Microsoft Teams Alternative Draws Bad Reviews From Officials
    by BeauHD on 02/10/2026 at 6:00 pm

    The European Commission has rolled out Element Pro as a self-hosted "sovereign back-up" to Microsoft Teams and the reviews aren't great. Politico reported that several officials questioned its usefulness and usability, with one calling it "absolute shit." Politico reports: "I don't understand the added value here," one official wrote on an internal staff message board, seen by POLITICO. Another described the tool as "absolute shit." A third official said that, judging matters on how well Element Pro works compared to Teams, the U.S. would "instantly win the war" if it ever decided to switch off its technology. All the officials were granted anonymity to speak freely. The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft's cloud. That gives the institution greater control over its communications data and systems. "That is not the case with Teams, where all we have is a guarantee that Microslop will not peek inside," a fourth official wrote, presumably referring to Microsoft, in internal communications viewed by POLITICO. Element is a U.K. company whose software is used by governments and public-sector organizations in Europe. The application works much like Teams, allowing staff to hold "audio and video calls with Commission colleagues, send and receive files, and create dedicated 'rooms' for projects and conversations, much like chats and channels in M365 Teams," according to the Commission memo. "Obviously there are going to be some teething issues," said Element CEO Matthew Hodgson, adding there will always be "cognitive dissonance" when switching to a new app, if only because the "buttons" are in a different place. He noted that the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro. "Change is always painful, particularly if it's a switch from a much-used program like Teams." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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