It’s not actually alive, but it twitches in response to soy sauce.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting guidelines here.
Clive Robinson • November 3, 2023 9:32 PM
@ vas pup, Bruce, ALL,
Re : UK Politicos talking tosh.
“UK hosts first global AI safety summit”
I mentioned it a little while ago and said to Bruce, it was the sort of thing you hope bot to be invited to.
As my father would note,
“There are times and places where honest men are sure to be otherwise engaged.”
And that talking shop would surely be one of them.
Called
“AI Safety Summit – AISS 2023”
You can not help but wonder what nonsense will be dragged up and talked to death by people that understand little or most likely nothing about the subject.
You can tell that from the way it is advertised,
“The Global AI summit gathers the most prominent policymakers, world’s leading investors, policy thought leaders and innovators working to deploy AI by exploring the state of AI, investment cases, commitments and governance to bring AI solutions at a global scale.”
Lets be honest what do you think
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, actually know about AI?
Likewise those who brief them and those who try to pull a brief together…
When you read things like,
“The chatbot’s unprecedented ability to respond to prompts with human-like fluency has led some experts to call for a pause in the development of such systems, warning they could gain autonomy and threaten humanity.”
You think,
“Oh Gawd that’s not even bad SiFi, what are these people thinking”
Or more correctly not thinking.
Then you get to see a glint, a mear glimmer that some understand that the current AI is in reality a surveillance tool of immense value to those who value privacy by how much profit it brings them,
“European lawmakers warned of too much technology and data being held by a small number of companies in one country, the United States.”
But the assesment by many was it was a “Three way P155ing match”,
“While projecting an image of unity, attendees said the three main power blocs in attendance – the U.S., the EU, and China – tried to assert their dominance.”
That in reality achived nothing of merit. Which is nodoubt why the leaders from 28 nation states including China and the EU happily signed off on “The Bletchley Declaration”.
Effectively a wishey-washy statement jointly acknowledging the technology has some risks, and very little else. To be honest I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word “affirm” used as much (6 times) in a document with so few paragraphs (10).
DH • November 3, 2023 11:23 PM
“Scientist Claims Quantum RSA-2048 Encryption Cracking Breakthrough”
Dr. Ed Gerck
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7125215279688601600/
I’m not holding my breath on a claim this outrageous.
Dancing On Thin Ice • November 4, 2023 1:25 AM
200 years ago on November 4 1823, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Lafayette:
“the only security of all is in a free press”
Alex • November 4, 2023 2:46 AM
“Two Russian Nationals Charged For Conspiring To Hack The Taxi Dispatch System At JFK Airport”
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/two-russian-nationals-charged-conspiring-hack-taxi-dispatch-system-jfk-airport
Sydney • November 4, 2023 3:48 AM
EU wishes to spy on HTTPS.
https://alecmuffett.com/article/108139
‘Karl’ wrote the following comment about this, on Naked Capitalism
HTTPS and Certificates expert here.
The non-technical gist is, this legislation would make intercepting, eavesdropping and manipulating ALL web traffic ridiculously easy for EU authorities, and undetectable for all but the most technically savvy, maybe undetectable for even them.
A super brief attempt at an explanation:
All web browsers use 100+ so-called “root certificates” to validate the identity of all sites on the internet, and encrypt the traffic. Those 100+ (as of today, 144 in the Firefox browser) are run by companies that basically promise to not issue fake certificates to anyone including law enforcement. If they do, purposely or by mistake, they are evicted by browser makers (Google, Firefox) and operating system makers (Microsoft, Linux distributors) from that 100+ list, and go out of business (has happened).
The EU wants to force browser makers to accept their EU-owned root certificate, and forbid to ever evict them.
If that happens, the EU(-authorities) can at any time impersonate anybody on the web, and listen to and manipulate all web traffic (detailed tech explanation omitted, would take at least 2 screen pages). And even if somehow it would be noticed that they do listen in (like they did in this case https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/ ), the EU would forbid browser makers to interfere.
So this is the biggest attack on web privacy ever that i am aware of.
Ismar • November 4, 2023 4:06 AM
I think it’s now safe to assume that America is well into its decline and that in its later stages will be swinging towards fundamental Christianity which means more existential threats for moderates home as well as abroad
Mike Johnson, theocrat: the House speaker and a plot against America
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/04/mike-johnson-theocrat-house-speaker-christian-trump
Winter • November 4, 2023 4:58 AM
@Dancing On Thin Ice
“the only security of all is in a free press”
I am convinced Jefferson was right, and history shows it with ample examples.
I also use it to weed out authoritarian would-be dictators. Whoever attacks the messenger is out to silence the message.
Winter • November 4, 2023 5:22 AM
@Ismar
I think it’s now safe to assume that America is well into its decline…
I think the situation is more complicated (it always is).
The American political system has been dysfunctional for at least 4 decades. Economical, the US has won the Cold War, but is now in a new world that sees the dominance of East Asia.
But what you are referring to is the demographic transition that puts the majority of Americans in cities and delegates the classical white Anglo-Saxon male dominated countryside to a minority.
Instead of catering to all Conservatives, the Republican party has dug in to protect the white countryside against the rest.[1]
What you see is not so much a decline of America, but an attempt to redo the Civil War, but now the countryside expects to win, really.
[1] They want to do that by force breeding more white babies, who can be cannon fodder in Civil War II.
Clive Robinson • November 4, 2023 5:52 AM
@ DH, ALL,
“I’m not holding my breath on a claim this outrageous.”
Why not?
If you think about it you already are.
The security of all asymetric encryption systems rest on a single assumption,
“That ‘One Way Functions'(OWFs) exist and have no easily determined trap doors.”
There is abolutly no proof for that.
So asymmetric encryption is at best “a two legged stool” just begging to have a leg kicked away for it to fall over, potentially flat on it’s face.
Untill there is a “proof” it’s a question of “how probable is it?”
As this is again unknown, so you are effectively not just holding your breath, but doing it with your fingers crossed and eyes closed shut.
Winter • November 4, 2023 6:44 AM
@Clive
Untill there is a “proof” it’s a question of “how probable is it?”
There is also no proof that gnomes and vampires do not exist. I am pretty sure few people base decisions on their possible existence.
You cannot prove a negative. How probable is it that one-way functions do not exist? The odds are heavily stacked against it.[1]
[1] Just one aspect:
‘https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.11514
Official version:
‘https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9317907
Clive Robinson • November 4, 2023 7:46 AM
@ Winter,
“How probable is it that one-way functions do not exist?”
That’s the wrong question to ask.
I said,
“That ‘One Way Functions'(OWFs) exist and have no easily determined trap doors.”
The AND in that sentance is very important.
Asymetric crypto needs,
1, A One Way function
2, With a known hard trap door
3, With no easy trap doors.
We assume that OWFs actually exist in part because they are useful and in part because there is noreason to assume they don’t (though they do appear to be rarer than rocking horse scat). We also know that some of the assumed OWFs can have hard trap doors based on certain assumptions as we appear to have some examples.
But what about,
“Not having easy trap doors?”
How unreasonable is the assumption that there can only be hard trap doors without easy trap doors?
The original RSA system was later found to have weaknesses that required rather more than “any two primes P and Q”. They all confired some advantage in reducing the search space that is indicating a scale towards easy trap doors.
Winter • November 4, 2023 8:17 AM
@Clive
Not having easy trap doors
The common meaning of one-way functions is that they are NP hard, ie, of polynomial complexity in one way (non-deterministic polynomial) and non-polynomial the other way. In this context, non-polynomial is to mean brute-force hard. In practice, NP hard means exponentially hard the other way.
Where you fit in “easy trap doors” here is not clear to me.
Clive Robinson • November 4, 2023 9:28 AM
@ Winter,
“Where you fit in “easy trap doors” here is not clear to me.”
A trap door is a form of short cut the drops you back through the one way function. That is from the single value composit output PQ you recover the two prime inputs P, Q.
The definition of hard or easy is a scale of the work that an observer who only has the output has to do to reverse it back to the unknown to them inputs.
Idealy reversing the OWF based only on the output would not be possible or very hard by a full search.
Where as easy in the case of RSA would be finding a method that uses a value that is say a close number to PQ that easily factors and in the process gives a strong indicator of either P or Q allowing a fast search / recovery.
Erdem Memisyazici • November 4, 2023 10:58 AM
Not unlike gagh, movement relays freshness. I’d like to share devices that can transcribe your inner monologue.
I was drugged with a powerful psychoactive where I was coerced into wearing one that doubles as bone conduction speakers.
It’s nearly been 10 years and I’m still in the process of getting them into the hands of the DA (CA in VA) for prosecuting the felonies but imagine the nightmare such devices can create for anyone who cares for their privacy if you lived through what I lived through where my inner monologue was even stolen.
Interesting times we live in.
Winter • November 4, 2023 12:47 PM
@Clive
The definition of hard or easy is a scale of the work that an observer who only has the output has to do to reverse it back to the unknown to them inputs.
You try to argue that P == NP.
Good luck to convince anyone.
&ers • November 4, 2023 1:04 PM
@Dancing On Thin Ice
“the only security of all is in a free press”
Problem is we don’t have any free press left.
Winter • November 4, 2023 1:19 PM
@&ers
Problem is we don’t have any free press left.
Nonsense, you can get American “local” news from CCTV, RT, Al Jazeera to Canadian TV, BBC and Deutsche Welle, all in English.
And then I have left all American News, from Breitbart, Fox News, to CNN and NYTimes.
&ers • November 4, 2023 1:25 PM
@ALL
hxxps://twitter.com/shakirov2036/status/1705258449238425748
hxxps://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1705263721617011032
“Huge data breach in Russia
A previously unknown group claims it stole data from Russia’s major flight booking system Sirena Travel. The whole dataset includes 665 mil entries and spans 16 years; they posted a sample with 3 mil lines.”
&ers • November 4, 2023 1:55 PM
@Winter
Free press means also that you can freely cover any issues whatsoever.
Press industry has owners and they might not like some topics.
While my county is pretty high in press freedom, even here several
topics have been banned – legal threats to the journalists if you cover
this or that etc…
NoEH • November 4, 2023 2:11 PM
There is also no proof that gnomes and vampires do not exist.
What about faeries? Oddly, Bruce’s blog shares the same ECDSA private key as “thefaeriegirl.blog” and about 50 apparently-unrelated others.
A person who breaks a 2048-bit RSA key will get instant fame, tenure, etc. Even if the paper’s not ready, ask some well-known cryptographers to send an RSA “n”, then reply with p and q. Or break some well-known (possibly obsolete) keys, or just keep quiet till publication. Common sense says that a person bragging about a trivially-provable claim, with no proof, is almost certainly full of crap.
wumpus • November 4, 2023 2:56 PM
@Clive Robinson
”
Asymetric crypto needs,
1, A One Way function
2, With a known hard trap door
3, With no easy trap doors.
”
You could say the same for asymmetric encryption, although the non-linearity is far easier to believe “no easy backdoors” although rereading through Applied Cryptography and realizing that essentially all schemes (including the star of the book – IDEAL) have been broken should give pause. I’ll still believe that SHA256 surviving the rise of cryptocurrency without anyone obviously (or even suspected of) using a sub-brute-force method implies SHA256 is unbreakable even to nation-state funding. Bruce may argue that “prizes aren’t proof, or even good evidence”, but the effort to brute force SHA256 for mining went beyond nation state cryptography budgets.
The other question is “how soon will someone have a sufficiently large quantum computer (I think on the order of 8k qubits) that will act as an easy trapdoor?”. There’s a good chance that the NSA’s push to ECC has been due to either having or believing they will have a quantum computer with enough bits to smash a smaller ECC-
One thing about RSA is that the problem of factoring big numbers is one of those questions that those with the talent to do it have already been pondering it for a very long time (mathematicians, especially number theory types). It isn’t clear that “nation state funding” is that significant of an advantage here.
emily’s post • November 4, 2023 4:55 PM
Factoring N = PQ
Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi hanc comment box exiguitas non caperet.
Winter • November 4, 2023 5:18 PM
@&ers
While my county is pretty high in press freedom, even here several
topics have been banned – legal threats to the journalists if you cover
this or that etc…
You could get inspiration from the World Press Freedom Index
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index
Have a look at the countries high on this index.
Clive Robinson • November 4, 2023 6:15 PM
@ wumpus,
“I think on the order of 8k qubits”
Well others give much larger figures. Due to noise and error correction.
“There’s a good chance that the NSA’s push to ECC has been due to either having or believing they will have a quantum computer with enough bits to smash a smaller ECC-“
I’m not at all sure the NSA belives very much of anything about QC other than “it might…”.
Sometimes you do something because other people are, not that you have any confidence it will work in any given period of time.
“One thing about RSA is that the problem of factoring big numbers is one of those questions that those with the talent to do it have already been pondering it for a very long time”
Before that there was the issue of telling if a random number was prime or not there were partial tests like “not divisable by two” (ie LSB!=0).
But nobody knew of a test that would be,
1, General.
2, Polynomial-time.
3, Deterministic.
4, Unconditionally correct.
People had assumed there was not one and that we were stuck with “any three of the four”.
Then three computer scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, in the early part of this century published,
“PRIMES is in P”
http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/manindra/algebra/primality_v6.pdf
The authors, Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, and Nitin Saxena, had come up with the first of the AKS primality tests that met all four.
Unfortunately it is a “Galactic Algorithm” that will not be used in practical systems. But as Richard Lipton who came up with the term has noted of such algorithms they can demonstrate that propsed bounds are wrong or conjectured bounds can be met. In his words,
“This alone could be important and often is a great reason for finding such algorithms. For example, if tomorrow there were a discovery that showed there is a factoring algorithm with a huge but provably polynomial time bound, that would change our beliefs about factoring. The algorithm might never be used, but would certainly shape the future research into factoring.”
It would certainly have consequences for the security of OWFs.
vas pup • November 4, 2023 6:50 PM
@Clive thank you for your input on my post.
More on the subject:
AI risks are unknown even to GCHQ
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-67301402
“The risks from artificial intelligence (AI) are unknown even to GCHQ, its director has told the BBC.
In her first interview since taking over the UK’s largest intelligence agency, Anne Keast-Butler said AI could amplify existing threats and create new risks.
She said the uncertain nature of the risks made international collaboration vital.
Ms Keast-Butler was speaking after attending the UK’s first AI summit.
And AI brought two main concerns, Anne Keast-Butler told the BBC in an exclusive interview. One was the way it will amplify existing problems.
“Bad people will always want to use the latest technology,” she said, pointing to the way in which AI is already being used to generate images of child-abuse and make it easier to carry out cyber-attacks and steal data.
But the other concern was uncertainty.
“There are lots of different views out there on artificial intelligence and whether it is going to end the world or be the best opportunity ever. !!! And the truth is none of us really know,” she told the BBC.
Even with all the insight and technology available to GCHQ, she said it was impossible to be sure of the outcomes. “My experience is when you don’t know, you should plan for the worst. That way the outcomes are only better.”
!!!She said that meant ensuring the next generation of AI was built with safety and security in mind – including clear guardrails and testing before products were unleashed into the wild.
Overall though, she said she remains positive about artificial intelligence.
“I’m an AI optimist. As the head of GCHQ, I see how technology has really helped us get better and better at our job,” she said.
GCHQ collects and analyses global communications. Much of this is digital, as opposed to the radio signals from Bletchley days.
It has long used forms of what is now called AI for the translation of intercepted communications.
=>But GCHQ is also now trying to use AI to analyze the !!! emotion and meaning of the vast amounts of material it collects, in order to help human analysts and linguists zero in on the material of greatest interest.”
Clive Robinson • November 4, 2023 7:39 PM
@ emily’s post, Winter,
“Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi hanc comment box exiguitas non caperet.”
Vide et invenies satis magnitudo.
lurker • November 4, 2023 10:54 PM
@Winter, &ers
“press” usually means its origin, the printing press. CCTV (I can’t say for others) has journalists in Washington, NY, &c, and will cross live on camera. But it’s ephemeral, in one eye and out the other. Imagine the palaver to verify a videotape for legal purposes. A printed paper can lie around the home or office for days, weeks, centuries, and can easily be checked against the copy of record. Yet we end up with the words of an American politician shown on CCTV as acceptable, but printed in eg. Global Times it becomes “that commie rag.”
ResearcherZero • November 5, 2023 1:01 AM
IBM leads corporate America’s move away from 401(K)
‘https://old.reddit.com/r/IBM/comments/17lj356/an_open_letter_to_ibm_leadership_regarding_the/
IBM leads corporate America’s move away from pensions.
‘https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10727946
SpaceLifeForm • November 5, 2023 1:15 AM
Rumour has it that the post I am linking to is from the future and has not really occurred yet. But, you have to observe it to make sure.
‘https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/friday-squid-blogging-eating-dancing-squid.html/#comment-428392
SpaceLifeForm • November 5, 2023 1:45 AM
Rumour has it that something happens with the clocks soon in the US.
ResearcherZero • November 5, 2023 1:54 AM
There is an old proverb that says – if you want to host sensitive information, first meet the security requirements. There are still companies alive today who repeatedly try it the other way round unsuccessfully.
“For IT administrators, those incidents—and particularly this latest one—suggest some of the real-world trade-offs of migrating to the cloud.”
https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-cloud-attack-china-hackers/
–
Cyber attacks are followed by information attacks…
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/technology/china-disinformation-us-state-department.html
‘https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/capitalising-on-crisis-russia-china-and-iran-use-x-to-exploit-israel-hamas-information-chaos/
“In a single day after the conflict began, roughly one in four accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X posting about the conflict appeared to be fake”
‘https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/israel-hamas-information-war.html
“Ultimately, the risk is that next-generation astroturfing could pose a direct challenge to democratic societies if malign actors are able to covertly shape users’ shared understanding of the domestic political conversation and thus subvert the democratic process.”
‘https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA2600/PEA2679-1/RAND_PEA2679-1.pdf
fictitious authors, inauthentic accounts, and networks of bots
‘https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/HOW-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA-SEEKS-TO-RESHAPE-THE-GLOBAL-INFORMATION-ENVIRONMENT_508.pdf
ResearcherZero • November 5, 2023 1:58 AM
The Greasy Pole
Fabula significat quod tempus vel difficillima solvit.
‘https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/business/clean-energy-oil-stocks.html
Can a greedy fox get stuck in a hole, or can it wiggle out?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/private-equity-publicly-traded-companies/675788/
SpaceLifeForm • November 5, 2023 1:59 AM
@ wumpus, Clive
My thinking is that NSA is NOT pushing for ECC at all.
They are pushing to chase the PQC ghost thru the swamp however.
SpaceLifeForm • November 5, 2023 4:27 AM
This is why you do power-fail testing.
‘https://blog.cloudflare.com/post-mortem-on-cloudflare-control-plane-and-analytics-outage/
ResearcherZero • November 5, 2023 5:41 AM
“Relying solely on the media, the public and rival political candidates to correct false statements is like expecting rain to extinguish a bush fire without any intervention from emergency services.”
https://theconversation.com/regulating-political-misinformation-isnt-easy-but-its-necessary-to-protect-democracy-216537
‘https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/communications-legislation-amendment-combatting-misinformation-and-disinformation-bill-2023-factsheet-june2023.pdf
bl5q sw5N • November 5, 2023 1:46 PM
@ Clive Robinson
Re: Factoring
Factoring has its intrinsic, mathematical interest. But the interest by encryption is its practical application. Perhaps there are other methods of encryption making use of other mathematics that might have advantages.
The choice of the rational number field seems possibly ad hoc. Factoring and primes depend on the number field being used. Extensions of that field will have different primes and factorizations. Does this have implications for encryption?
That is, is factorization the right object and are the right questions being asked ?
bl5q sw5N • November 5, 2023 2:31 PM
Re: free press
“They [the presses] are, by the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. … We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.”
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908
Canis familiaris • November 5, 2023 3:05 PM
There seems to be not one, but at least two attacks by government parties in the EU on encrypted end to end communication.
As I mentioned before:
‘https://last-chance-for-eidas.org/
This enables the government of any EU member state to issue website certificates for interception and surveillance which can be used against every EU citizen, even those not resident in or connected to the issuing member state. There is no independent check or balance on the decisions made by member states with respect to the keys they authorize and the use they put them to.
But also the work on scanning for CSAM otherwise known as ‘Chat Control’:
‘https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
about which Matthem Green said (on Mastodon):
It’s amazing to me that a proposal to scan *literally ever private communication in Europe* is barely making newspapers, and we’re reading about legislative progress on blogs.
‘https://ioc.exchange/@matthew_d_green/111255839000753982
I wonder if I will live long enough for freedom of communication to be regarded as a quaint and dangerous custom, practiced only by savages.
Winter • November 5, 2023 3:12 PM
@bl5q sw5N
They [the presses] are, by the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men.
That was a century ago. Why should this still hold, and hold in every country?
Steve • November 5, 2023 3:16 PM
@Clive Robinson:
“Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi hanc comment box exiguitas non caperet.”
Vide et invenies satis magnitudo.
No tengo que enseñarle ningunas chapas malditas.
Canis familiaris • November 5, 2023 3:39 PM
Just to follow up on the second of the two attacks on the freedom to communicate, Matthew Green’s Mastodon posting comments links through to Bert Hubert’s blog, with a translated transcription of his submission to the Dutch Parliament. It’s worth reading, and his other entry in Dutch (Mozilla’s (beta) Dutch to English translation works well-enough)
English – ‘https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/client-side-scanning-dutch-parliament/
Dutch – ‘https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/client-side-scanning/
Bert is well qualified to opine.
The opaque and confusing EU process doesn’t help: but the lack of intelligent argument coming from the legislators is noteworthy. People/lobbyists/politicians don’t want to hear that technical solutions don’t work adequately.
inflatable donkey love • November 5, 2023 4:12 PM
I like donkeys. . . . s3xually.
bl5q sw5N • November 5, 2023 5:43 PM
@ Winter
why should this still hold
Why did it hold then ?
It certainly seems to be operating. They have gotten better at it, to the point that people very widely are astonished and in denial when gross misrepresentations are exposed. For example look at the general western press and public response to Solzhenitsyn’s detailed account in his early TV interview after exile. Flabbergasted incredulity at what he was saying, and then blanket non-coverage by the press.
@ Moderator:
1, #comment-428414
2nd comment up from this one,
Breaches taste and decency rules.
It is of a style seen before unfortunately.
Clive Robinson • November 5, 2023 7:56 PM
@ Steve,
“No tengo que enseñarle ningunas chapas malditas.”
Con un poco de voltear mental.
Estás en el desliz de tiempo.
Hagamos la distorsión del tiempo otra vez.
Hagamos la distorsión del tiempo otra vez.
Might be a little lost in narration, for the crossing.
Clive Robinson • November 5, 2023 8:13 PM
@ Bruce, ALL,
Watch GSM A5/1 get cracked in almost the blink of an eye…
https://m.youtube.com/@RobVK8FOES/videos
There are a number of GSM cracking videos there.
Bear • November 5, 2023 11:55 PM
I have an opinion about AI security and law.
TLDR: we have already decided that AI-generated art and text is not subject to copyright. I think we need to also face the fact that it is not entitled to first-amendment protections either.
Whatever its eventual consequences, the current generation of AI is good a producing convincing bullshit. And convincing bullshit is anathema to any institution of civilization that ultimately depends on informed citizens – such as for example Democracy.
In the US, spouting bullshit is an activity protected by the First Amendment, on the grounds that the government exercising the power to prevent people from stating what they sincerely believe is true is generally a bad thing and shouldn’t be done too easily, because if government has the power to suppress lies that same power can be abused to suppress inconvenient or unflattering truths.
The problem with this theory as applied to AI spouting bullshit is that there is no actual person whose sincere belief this bullshit represents, and there is no reason to assume that suppressing this generated material requires the power to suppress any expression of a sincerely believed truth.
Conversely, the public has a right to the truth – usually considered inferior to someone’s right to spout bullshit under the first amendment, but it does exist. An AI tuned to “maximize engagement” or “generate clicks” does not have any claim to having or any intention of spreading a sincerely held belief.
So I have a theory – I could call it a legal theory but I’m no lawyer so I won’t. My theory is that AI-generated text, which we have already determined is not a fit subject for copyright, should not be considered a fit subject for first-amendment protections either. A company that publishes AI-generated text that hasn’t been fact checked, should be liable for whatever slander, libel, or acts of violence its inaccuracies inspire, without benefit of first-amendment protections.
JonKnowsNothing • November 6, 2023 1:21 AM
@Bear, All
re: we have already decided that AI-generated art and text is not subject to copyright
Actually, we haven’t really decided anything and whatever “we in the USA” decide may not be what other countries decide.
The first case was due to the determination of what “extra” went into the art. Since AI produces nothing really novel; it is a kaleidoscope of images which can produce many interesting effects but they are only mechanical effects.
The second was based on an interesting technical detail. The art taken for the training set was scraped from the internet. The artists had not “registered” their art with the copyright office before uploading it. The court said without a copyright registration certificate, the art was not protected.
This second was a rather unique view.
For a long time, programmers and writers who wished to claim their source code or stories, added the copyright symbol and date as part of the document. There were plenty of sources that said actually registering them was optional as all you needed was proof of date of creation for authenticity. If the author got picked up by a publisher or used POD/Vanity press publishing, that copyright would appear in the book and the publisher would ensure that it was properly registered. However, lots of people publish stories, poems, articles with just the copyright notice.
It seems that the copyright notice alone is no longer a valid method of claiming and protecting ownership.
===
ht tps://arstechni ca. com/information-technology/2023/09/us-rejects-ai-copyright-for-famous-state-fair-winning-midjourney-art/
ht tps://arstechnic a.c om/tech-policy/2023/10/two-artists-suing-ai-image-makers-never-copyrighted-their-works/
ResearcherZero • November 6, 2023 5:45 AM
Chat Control has been defeated.
“This certainly isn’t over, but, with Parliament putting on a united front, it’s hard to see how advocates of bulk online surveillance can prevail here.”
‘https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/historic-agreement-on-child-sexual-abuse-proposal-csar-european-parliament-wants-to-remove-chat-control-and-safeguard-secure-encryption/
–
1,200 people across the United States are knowingly or unwittingly involved in reshipping expensive consumer goods purchased with stolen credit cards.
‘https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/11/russian-reshipping-service-swat-usa-drop-exposed/
–
botnet running proxy service
‘https://www.bitsight.com/blog/unveiling-socks5systemz-rise-new-proxy-service-privateloader-and-amadey
–
Kinsing hunting cloud credentials
‘https://blog.aquasec.com/loony-tunables-vulnerability-exploited-by-kinsing
a buffer overflow in ld.so processing of the GLIBC_TUNABLES environment variable
‘https://www.qualys.com/2023/10/03/cve-2023-4911/looney-tunables-local-privilege-escalation-glibc-ld-so.txt
–
obfuscated JavaScript designed to initiate a reverse shell on package install
‘https://blog.phylum.io/dozens-of-npm-packages-caught-attempting-to-deploy-reverse-shell/
–
gaining full system control with vulnerable drivers
‘https://blogs.vmware.com/security/2023/10/hunting-vulnerable-kernel-drivers.html
Winter • November 6, 2023 6:03 AM
@ResearcherZero
EU lawmaker Patrick Breyer of the Pirate Party
If we are saved, it is by unsung heroes like these.
Canis familiaris • November 6, 2023 6:53 AM
@ResearcherZero
On the face of it, good news. However, the battle is not over:
after 2024 EU elections: Envisaged trilogue negotiations of the final text of the legislation between Commission, Parliament and Council, as well as adoption of the result
The ‘trilogue negotiations’ are opaque, and have been used in the past to weaken the EU Parliament’s position.
This LinkedIn article gives more background on the (relatively) novel trilogue process.
‘https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-european-parliament-vote-against-biometric-mass-joe-mcnamee
The key point is that the process obscures and fudges the point at which key decisions are made, making it difficult to maintain effective opposition to unreasonable propositions. It elides from ‘no decision has been made yet, the text is fluid’ to ‘no changes can be made and the vote has happened’ in a non-transparent manner. It’s a triumph of obfuscatory bureaucracy.
Clive Robinson • November 6, 2023 7:39 AM
@ Bear,
Re : Who gets control of tool output.
“TLDR: we have already decided that AI-generated art and text is not subject to copyright. I think we need to also face the fact that it is not entitled to first-amendment protections either.”
You need to look at it the other way around.
That is,
“Not that which cuts, but that which creates”
Asking if ChatGPT and similar create is a bit like asking,
“Does a Spiro-Graph creates?”
To which the answer is “NO” simply because it is a “tool” that “works under the hand” –ie manufactures– of a “Directing mind”.
Thus the question then becomes,
“What is a Directing Mind?”
And this is where the law got blown out of the water because of a religious assumption of,
“Only the human mind can be directing.”
Which you can see clearly in the legal definition of an “Author” used in copyright law.
We saw this with the amusing “selfie” taken by a primate that was not human, but a curious looking inquisitive crested black macaque since called “Naruto”[1],
https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/01/monkeyselfie
Copyright law “assumed” that to be “creative” and an “author” you had to be human, back last century this was bassed on assumptions that even then were not valid as it was possible to not only teach primates to use sign language, but hold conversations with them. But also the fact that not just primates were “tool using” thus showing the ability of abstract thinking processes.
https://theconversation.com/so-who-does-own-the-copyright-on-a-monkey-selfie-30334
The thing is the current LLM’s are not in the slightes bit inteligent they no more create than a CNC machine responding to a programing error.
So if programing and instructing a program is an art that is authored in both cases then in theory if the copyright is to be owned, then you should ask,
“Is it owned by the programmer who wrote the program or the user instructing the program?”
Before making your choice consider further the flip side of the argument of,
“Who carries the liability?”
Arguably the same person…
But that is not how US Corporations want you to see it. They are arguing as they own the programmer the benifits of copyright are theirs, not the user. But the also argue that the damages of liabilty belong to the user instructing…
Sadly we are alowing them to get away with “pulling the wool” so they get all the profits but none of the losses.
We badly need a rulling that links both copyright and liability for an “authored act”.
We are going to see a lot more on this where the “authored act” ends up in a harm such as a “road collison” by “self driving vehicles and taxis”.
Where the difference between “a tool” that is instructed and “a mind” that instructs gets thrashed out.
[1] The case was not helped by the fact the photographer claiming the copyright was not honest in what he said at various points in time.
Winter • November 6, 2023 9:31 AM
@PaulBart
United States Christian roots
Back to Salem, I see.
You “vote” for the American Taliban. Women back to the kitchen and out of the public view.
JonKnowsNothing • November 6, 2023 10:36 AM
@Winter, @PaulBart, All
re: United States Christian roots the American Taliban
In nearly half the USA, women are already being blocked through a number of mechanisms both legal restrictions and societal intimidation. We have our own “morality police” enforcement methods.
The return of enslavement is in the form of debt bondage. All sorts of debt bondage are de facto in the USA:
The USA is the historical dumping ground for Europe’s undesirable religious organizations and groups. It should not be that surprising to find these views are just as disturbing now as they were centuries ago.
Clive Robinson • November 6, 2023 11:24 AM
@ Ismar, Winter,
Re : Right-wing religious fundementalism as a threat to society and freedom of privacy and peace.
“I think it’s now safe to assume that America is well into its decline and that in its later stages will be swinging towards fundamental Christianity which means more existential threats for moderates [at] home as well as abroad”
It’s not just America that cuckoo christian fundementalists are the danger, they make bed fellows with zionists, and the very unholy Eastern Orthodox that so thoroughly permiated Russia and similar “strong man” political structures to the point they pervade and in effect saturate like choking smoke in a house fire. With unfortunately a similar effect of making rescue near impossible and to bring the establishment down in ashes around those it once sheltered.
People need to remember that “strong men” are anything but, they are with out doubt abusers and often cowards. They see abusing others as their “righteous reward” for their pretense at “piety” which in reality is little more than excusing sadism by “Might is right”.
Those outside the US have seen this madness rising for over thirty years and looking back nore carefully it started it’s current cycle during WWII and has been slowely rising as politicians of the right wrap themselves in one flag or another to appeal to those that in reality will follow any authoritarian who promisses them “bread and circuses”…
Or better still “crusades” against those in distant lands… On the basis they are the “instrument of God” or “Mighty righteous hand of God” “Bringing down Gods wrath” and as it’s “Gods word it can not be questioned”…
Look at any of the major religions of the supposed “one true God” and you will find “The God Head” or “King game” at play.
Anyone truely in their right mind would avoid such people as treasonous poison, which is what they actually are, to society as most in the US would like to think it is.
I’ve been pointing this out for some time now, and slowely people are realising just how bad it has been increasingly getting for neigh on the past decade or so.
Fairly soon you will see an alliance or mutual accomodation between Corporatism and Religion similar to what we saw nearly a century ago in the late 1920’s through 1930’s that gave us WWII.
Whilst I don’t think we are quite at the start of another World War, it’s clear that many are pushing for it as they think it will bring them power.
As such these people are almost always those to old to fight and who have taken care to ensure that their families will not be harmed, as they demand everyone else sacrifices themselves for their self-serving alleged “Nobel cause” that is generally anything but.
The best advice I can give people is to ensure you and your families get “protected status” preferably in some out of the way place in education or science and in particular engineering.
The next war will be much more reliant on two things,
1, Engineering and science devoted to new forms of automated mass destruction.
2, Destroying the civil infrastructure on which society rests.
Thus as my father who survived WWII pointed out to me when I was old enough to start understanding,
“The best place to be when there is trouble, is somewhere else.”
In WWII America was seen as “untouchably issolated” thus the place to head to. But during WWII science through engineering produced rockets and nuclear weapons. It was only by chance that no side had both the weapons and the delivery systems that cross continents or circle the globe at the same time.
That is nolonger true, and it’s not even as those weapons and delivery systems are only in the hands of Super Powers or First World Nations.
As several smaller nations have realised, having both acts as a quite effective “Keep of the Lawn” notice. As well as getting an invitation to “come sit at the top table” politically.
It’s not exactly lost on many people these days,that we have a very significant energy and pollution crisis heading our way. For the most part science knows how to solve the problems, but there are still crucial parts missing. The fill in for energy is nuclear, and it’s fairly clear the US Government has done just about everything it can to keep nuclear power out of other nations hands for “political reasons” (which has backfired as we can now see on the world stage).
So as a policy it’s failed, and now US control over delivery systems technology is failing as well.
The ability and opportunity to push the button grows ever stronger and wider year by year. With most of those weapons pointed at those who their politicians fear the most…
Which is why the US is nolonger a “safe place to go to”. It’s nolonger issolated and for all it’s pretence it can not realy defend it’s self any longer, nor for that matter can any country or place on earth. That Rubicon has been crossed.
But this knowledge will not stop the cowardly “Strong Men” from seeking what their deranged minds tells them is destiny and crusading to get it by stacking up the bodies like cord wood all around them forming funeral piers that will be so large few can comprehend them.
JonKnowsNothing • November 6, 2023 12:01 PM
@ Clive, Ismar, Winter, All
re: Fairly soon you will see an alliance or mutual accomodation between Corporatism and Religion
In the USA we have corporations that already invoke strong religious views as part of their corporate identity.
Employment by religious organizations pretty much demand adherence or being an adherent to those views.
While in theory, employment in private-public corporations cannot be determined on religious grounds, there is plenty of slack in those laws that effectively requires adherence to a particular religious view if you want the job.
There are a number of mega corporations that have direct religious ties or even requirements. Some of these are global corporations, while others have large presence in the USA. (2)
You cannot go into one of their stores and not be visually bombarded by their religious messages. They are up front about what they want and they want your money to do it.
RL: tl;dr
Years ago, during a job interview I was required to state my religious beliefs both in writing and during interviews.
Yep, that went down well…
The code and jargon changes, the handshakes, the nods, the vague references shift, but the intended out come hasn’t changed in centuries.
===
1)
ht tps://en.wikipedi a.o rg/wiki/Pope_(disambiguation)
ht tps://en.wikipedi a.or g/wiki/Conclavism
2)
ht tps://en.wikipedi a.or g/wiki/Hob by_Lo bby
(url and name fractured)
emily’s post • November 6, 2023 4:16 PM
@ Clive Robinson @ Steve
(a+b^n)/n = x, donc Dieu existe – répondez !
Clive Robinson • November 6, 2023 5:58 PM
@ Steve,
“I doff my hat to you, sir.”
Actually my son…
He did Spanish at school and the text books are sitting in my dead tree cave. His teacher was a Spanish Engineer, thus gave his students some rather quirky homeworks of which translating songs was just one.
@ emily’s post,
Such questions require a form of faith in deities that not all poses now or in the past. For they don’t believe in a determanistic universe, any equation might imply. So,
Una deidad debe, jugar a los manos dados, o no existir.
Anymouse • November 6, 2023 6:13 PM
Does anyone know of where to puchase a device data logger that can scan computers, cell phones, trackers for all broadcast signals and channels emanating from these devices via radio, bluetooth, uhf, vhf, satellite, microwave, ultra sound, radar
vas pup • November 6, 2023 7:16 PM
@Bear: What is truth? For me truth is based on objectively verified facts only not on biased emotional opinions.
Opinions supported by facts should be protected by 1st Amendment even when it is ugly or inconvenient truth.
Opinions based on unverified assumptions (highly likely), emotions, and just lies should not be protected regardless of source: media, government, AI ChatBot. That is my opinion.
But let say you are looking at elephant in front and I look at elephant from his back.
We both do have true opinion based on facts but one-sided. Probably, truth is such cases should incorporate multiple opinions which do not contradict each other but very limited to have so called 3D truth. Respectfully, vp
vas pup • November 6, 2023 7:17 PM
Palo Alto to buy cyber startup in 2nd acquisition of Israeli startup within a week
https://www.timesofisrael.com/palo-alto-to-buy-cyber-startup-in-2nd-acquisition-of-israeli-startup-within-a-week/
“Palo Alto Networks, a Santa Clara, California-based cybersecurity firm founded by American-Israeli entrepreneur Nir Zuk, on Monday agreed to purchase Talon Cyber Security, marking its second acquisition of an Israeli startup in less than a week at a time when the country is at war with the Hamas terror group.
=>Talon has developed an enterprise browsing platform for large organizations to run all of their web apps and services in a secure workspace, and protect them against cyber threats and malicious attacks. The Tel Aviv-based startup says the platform helps corporations “secure any user, in any location, on any device.”
“The average enterprise uses hundreds of SaaS and web applications, meaning that most work is now done primarily via the browser,” said Palo Alto’s chief product officer Lee Klarich. “Talon enables organizations to secure all work activity via an Enterprise Browser, without touching the personal usage of the device or impacting user privacy.”
The deal comes after Palo Alto on Oct. 31 announced the acquisition of Israeli startup Dig Security, a developer of a platform to secure data across public clouds. Palo Alto did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but the value is estimated at around $400 million, according to Hebrew press reports.
emily’s post • November 6, 2023 8:34 PM
@ Clive Robinson
Re: Pascal’s applied probability
“Fecerunt itaque ciuitates duas amores duo, terrenam scilicet amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei, caelestem uero amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui.”
Clive Robinson • November 6, 2023 9:04 PM
@ Anymouse,
Re : Universal energy sensor and signals analysis.
“for all broadcast signals and channels emanating from these devices via radio, bluetooth, uhf, vhf, satellite, microwave, ultra sound, radar”
Your phrasing indicates you are not a practitioner in anti-survailance or ElInt and signals analysis.
The “money no object way” is with IQ Receivers that work upto 6GHz bandwidth or beyond and sometimes custom developed “field probes” that are effectively transducers that convert non-EM energy signals into an EM-Signal covering “DC to Daylight” of frequency spectrum. With seismology type systems down close to DC and modern UWB and similar closer to Daylight, bring “normal” these days.
Well… The “do it on the cheap” method these days is to replace the IQ Receivers with SDR Receivers and a big arse computer system based of a cluster of the likes of Raspberry Pi’s to to run GNU-Radio or similar to do pre-processing and be available as gigabit network EM sensors to one or more backend PC based server and SAN systems (see the work the radio-astronomy folks are upto around GNU-Radio as it’s non-classified and very much the same thing these days).
The hard part will be deciding on what “IF Bandwidth” you want. It’s kind of the equivalent of the “Video Bandwidth” on a spectrum analyser, but it also defines “system cost” in a way you might not appreciate untill you’ve spent a lot of money to get it wrong.
It is in effect defined by the “Baud Rate” or “information rate / bits per symbol”. It makes the difference between using cheap audio A-to-D converters you might find on a high end sound card and having to use what are now again eye-wateringly expensive “Field Programmable Gate Arrays”(FPGAs).
Have a look at some of the Lime SDR projects to see what you can get upto,
https://limemicro.com/products/boards/limesdr/
If you are prepared to put the work in.
Get to understand though that some people go in for wide bandwidth signals beyond that of many consumer / commercialy available receivers because it gives them some form of security. Thus the likes of older “Low Probability of Intercept”(LPI) based around hybrid Spread Spectrum signalling techniques or more modern “Ultra Wide Band”(UWB) systems working up in the microwave bands generally from S-Band through to below X-Band (2-12Ghz etc) and “Multi-input Multi-Otput”(MIMO) EM field techniques will “escape detection” without the use of additional equipment similar to “range extenders” / “down converters” designed for “Vector Network Analysers”(VNAs) and the knowledge of how to get GNU-Radio to “Detect, Demodulate, and Decode”(DDD) often not in “Real Time” because of the overhead involved.
Clive Robinson • November 6, 2023 9:17 PM
@ emily’s post,
Re : From the heavens above to…
Homo a polo usque ad polum movetur
ResearcherZero • November 6, 2023 11:03 PM
Armenians receive alert from Apple regarding state sponsored attackers
‘https://media.am/hy/critique/2023/11/01/36609/
‘https://citizenlab.ca/2023/05/cr1-armenia-pegasus/
–
‘https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/labs/nodestealer-attacks-on-facebook-take-a-provocative-turn-threat-actors-deploy-malvertising-campaigns-to-hijack-users-accounts/
–
‘https://www.deepinstinct.com/blog/muddywater-en-able-spear-phishing-with-new-ttps
–
NTLM hash retrieval and RCE
‘https://www.veeam.com/kb4508
ResearcherZero • November 7, 2023 12:02 AM
If algorithms reward bad behaviour, the company responsible for the algorithm is rewarding bad behaviour. Be it algorithmic or human. If you want to make a buck from bad behaviour, one must accept the consequences, rather than deferring your own human responsibility.
If you sack human staff, and replace them with machines to cut cost, expect problems…
“It’s not ‘No, that is a single mom running a babysitting business.’ “It’s ‘Hey, you’ve checked these boxes for a red flag — you’re out.’”
‘https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/business/banks-accounts-close-suddenly.html
ROAR! – The banks were not happy to have to act on money laundering and child exploitation after decades of doing nothing…
https://ipa.org.au/ipa-today/when-regulators-roam-out-of-control
“This set of information first emerged in the Hayne royal commission when banks were obliged to provide data on their bad deeds and failures.”
Only 23 million cases of reporting failures at one bank.
https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/how-many-children-did-westpac-fail-20191121-p53cv1
–
“Fundamental bilateral arrangements, such as hotlines and prior warning mechanisms, are at best haphazard, but for the most part nonexistent.”
‘https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2023/11/197_362290.html
A new missile age and it’s potential consequences…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SYYDLXXnNw
‘https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Panda_Indo-Pacific_Missiles_final_1.pdf
ResearcherZero • November 7, 2023 12:27 AM
You can avoid responsibility, and complain that there is TOO MUCH RED TAPE.
But with that you also avoid security, which their are a number of different and sometimes opposing philosophies of what exactly security is.
As Niebuhr put it, “the will to power of competing national groups is the cause of the international anarchy which the moral sense of mankind has thus far vainly striven to overcome.” Or more simply: “the ultimate sources of social conflicts and injustices are to be found in the ignorance and selfishness of men”.
‘https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-286
ResearcherZero • November 7, 2023 12:42 AM
Robot-Assisted Crisis De-Escalation
‘https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/13/7/4337
“It’s all about how you leverage people, processes and technology,” Reed says. “With early intervention, violence is preventable.”
When the analytics software detects sound patterns associated with duress, anger or fear, the system sends a notification to staff via a visual alert or by triggering an alarm. When paired with video surveillance, security personnel are provided with full situational awareness, enabling them to respond quickly and appropriately to mitigate an incident before it escalates.
https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/97346-revisiting-de-escalation-strategies-for-better-safety-and-security
ResearcherZero • November 7, 2023 4:03 AM
Taking advantage of bankruptcy laws to hide dirty little secrets.
‘https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/catholic-archdiocese-bankruptcy-process-moves-forward-as-injunction-pausing-claims-remains-in-place/
The archdiocese has so far managed to shield the records – and those of numerous other clerics that the church itself has concluded are abusive – from public view mainly because of broad confidentiality rules governing the 2020 bankruptcy filing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/20/new-orleans-priest-lawrence-hecker-child-abuse
“I felt it important to share this information with you as it represents a significant change in our original understanding of the Chapter 11 proceedings”
‘https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/investigations/david-hammer/archbishop-gregory-aymondcatholic-new-orleans-churches-schools-now-on-hook-for-clergy-abuse/289-75413ff5-a2b4-4236-b52d-272826f90d94
New Orleans lawyer fined for alerting school to priest’s past sexual misconduct.
A spokesman for the archdiocese declined comment other than to say: “The wisdom of the judge’s ruling speaks for itself.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/12/new-orleans-lawyer-priest-high-school-sexual-misconduct
Two hours before Church sex abuse victims on a court-appointed committee were scheduled to address Archbishop Gregory Aymond in bankruptcy court, a federal judge put a stop to it and removed four of the six victims from the panel.
That leaves only two members remaining on a committee representing about 450 alleged victims of sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of New Orleans’
‘https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/investigations/david-hammer/church-sex-abuse-victims-kicked-off-bankruptcy-court-panel-negotiating-with-archdiocese/289-4e9d885f-c35d-4cc7-9233-9f169c826ca2
Winter • November 7, 2023 4:10 AM
@vas pup
Opinions based on unverified assumptions (highly likely), emotions, and just lies should not be protected regardless of source: media, government, AI ChatBot.
The First Amendment has been weaponized like the Second Amendment by the SCotUS. The Second was about “A well regulated Militia”, not unregulated armed mobs, death squads, and gangs. The First was about the “Freedom of Expression” [1], not the freedom to deceive, lie and cheat.
[1] Freedom of Speech is the English translation of Freiheit der Meinungsäußerung, Libertad de expresión, Liberté d’expression etc. in every other language. This is not about the freedom to say whatever suits you, but to express your opinion freely. It is the difference between taking a dollar bill found lying on the street, or inside another person’s wallet. The first is legal, the second a felony.
Winter • November 7, 2023 4:33 AM
@Clive
@ emily’s post,
Such questions require a form of faith in deities that not all poses now or in the past. For they don’t believe in a determanistic universe, any equation might imply. So,
The story about that proof is an urban myth [1]. What the myth actually says is that Euler had to come up with a quip to please his employer, Catherine the Great, and he did.
The underlying story is that Euler had found a link between exp(x), sin(), i, and cos() as infinite sums of powers and factorials [2]. That lead to the most beautiful formula, Euler’s identity: e^(iπ) = -1. It involves the 4 enigmatic mathematical constants, e, i, π, -1. All four have puzzled mathematicians for centuries.
I can understand that a mathematician like Euler falls to his knees when deriving such a formula connecting so much different fields in mathematics. Someone else might have said it proved the existence of God, and someone else again might have simplified the formula to be understandable for non mathematicians [3].
[1] ‘https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/euler.html
[2] ‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_series#Exponential_function
[3] It takes quite some mathematics to understand exponentiation, infinite sums, and complex numbers.
ResearcherZero • November 7, 2023 8:26 PM
If it waddles like a duck.
Browsers process certificates to secure and authenticate their connection to servers: this underpins trustworthy and safe browsing, for countless purposes, worldwide.
“…The text should clearly state that the purpose of QWACs is to provide a verifiable assertion of website ownership, and thus distinct from the purpose of certificates used to establish transport layer security.”
The current text of Article 45 creates the risk of “bad” government-mandated root certificates which will impact the EU and, in our view, cannot be mitigated by procedural safeguards “after the fact”. If the risks cannot be ruled out by technical design, the current QWACs approach to asserting the ownership of website should be discarded.
https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Mandated-Qualified-Web-Authentication-Certificates-QWACs.pdf
requires “all domain owners to have the technical expertise and the monetary resources to self-manage their certificates”
‘https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/what-duck-why-eu-proposal-require-qwacs-will-hurt-internet-security
–
“deep fault” of which it has yet to identify the root issue behind the outage.
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-08/optus-phone-internet-service-down-across-australia/103076700
Lord of Shadows • November 7, 2023 8:59 PM
“Are you applying the law correctly?” The government answers: “Of course we are applying the law correctly.” Then the Commission says: “OK, great, thank you very much, here’s the bill. We’ll be back next year.”
‘https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-dutch-politician-sophie-in-t-veld-on-the-predator-files-it-s-a-deal-from-hell-a-2097c0c0-f0dd-4443-87af-9dacdd3158a1
Many operators are not integrating the security and privacy benefits of the 5G standards. Only a handful of operators have deployed SEPP, and fewer are actually using it.
‘https://gsacom.com/paper/5g-market-snapshot-november-2023/
Large parts of the communications network are insecure.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xpm8/company-that-routes-billions-of-text-messages-quietly-says-it-was-hacked
It’s easy to find you… “geolocation disclosure is the most prevalent network threat type by a wide margin.”
‘https://citizenlab.ca/2023/10/finding-you-teleco-vulnerabilities-for-location-disclosure/
Downtown or way up in the air
When your heart’s pounding
You know that I’m aware
You make it easy to watch the world with love
You make it easy to let the past be done
You make it easy
How’d you do it, how’d you find me?
How did I find you?
How can this be true
To be held and understood?
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHjuYDloDtE
ResearcherZero • November 7, 2023 11:23 PM
whoops …around 3AM
‘https://radar.cloudflare.com/as4804?dateRange=1d
…and then around 4AM
‘https://bgp.he.net/AS4804
“We’ve got the techie working remotely and we are providing him with instructions.”
This may take a few hours for all services to come back on line and different services may restore at different sites over that time.
‘https://www.smh.com.au/technology/what-caused-the-optus-outage-20231108-p5eiep.html
inaccurate routes
lurker • November 7, 2023 11:43 PM
@ResearcherZero, ALL
Won’t someone think of the cats?
Another customer, Annie, told local radio she found out about the outage through her cat, who was left breakfast-less when her automatic Wi-Fi feeder failed due to the network issues.
‘https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-67340901
Canis familiaris • November 8, 2023 4:06 AM
I’d really like it if Bruce did a main posting on this, because commenting off-topic on other postings is against the rules.
But since the Friday Squid is ‘open mike’, I’ll add to my previous postings on eIDAS Article 45.
Scott Helme has put up a very informative posting on his blog.
‘https://scotthelme.co.uk/what-the-qwac/
At the top of my list of concerns is that browser and client vendors (Root Store Operators) will have a legal obligation to add Government mandated Root Certificate Authorities to their Root Stores, bypassing existing approval mechanisms.
Yep, you read that right. Government mandated Root Certificate Authorities…
I could end this blog post right here because anyone reading this will understand the significance of such a statement, and just how much of a catastrophically bad idea that is, but it gets worse.
…
…Root Store Operators will be required to accept these European Root CAs without the ability to scrutinise them, or, reject their inclusion.
Scott updated his blog to point to the EFF article on this.
‘https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-back-web-security-12-years
which points out:
The text isn’t final yet, but is subject to approval behind closed doors in Brussels on November 8.
Yes, that’s today.
emily’s post • November 8, 2023 10:15 AM
@ Winter @ Clive Robinson
Someone else might have said it proved the existence of God,
“Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk.” – Leopold Kronecker
My 2 pfennig’s worth – He might have included continuous quantity along with discrete.
bl5q sw5N • November 8, 2023 5:41 PM
@ Winter
takes quite some mathematics to understand exponentiation
If one accepts that the region bounded by given curves has an area, then an elementary treatment of the natural logarithm can be given and then the natural exponential is the inverse function.
Call the area bounded by the x-axis, the vertical lines at x=1 and x=a, and the curve y=1/x the natural logarithm ln of a. Then the expected properties of logarithms follow simply. E.g. ln(ab) = ln(a) + ln(b) because the area of the region from 1 to ab is composed of the area from 1 to a and the area from a to ab. This second area is the same as the area between 1 and b by an elementary scaling argument.
The base of the natural logarithm is defined as the number e for which area between 1 and e is equal to 1.
Once the existence and elementary properties of e and ln are established, the various series can be established more or less by straight calculation.
Clive Robinson • November 8, 2023 6:21 PM
@ emily’s post, Winter,
Re : What’s in a name?
“My 2 pfennig’s worth – He might have included continuous quantity along with discrete.”
Leopold Kronecker, may have back then claimed integers as “God’s Work” but today we call them “Natural numbers” and the Jury is still out on zero 😉
But arguably you can not even write down a continuous quantity, just give a function at a point (See Sir Issac and friends).
But the question of,
“Do continuous quantities actually exist or are they a convenience?”
Appears to be heading to “convenience” of,
“Everything is discrete but moves in continuous waves”.
Kind of like “water rushes” waving in the breeze of a warm summer afternoon, when siting and contemplating near by is a most pleasant way to spend your time.
vas pup • November 8, 2023 6:32 PM
AI in art – just a tool, or creative genius?
https://www.dw.com/en/ai-in-art-just-a-tool-or-creative-genius/video-67292933
7 min video
Just do not reject AI entering Vienna Art Academy to repeat bad example in history. 🙂
More on subject
AI: Which rules do the top tech moguls want?
https://www.dw.com/en/ai-which-rules-do-the-top-tech-moguls-want/a-67348221
“No corporate leader has been as outspoken about the potential existential risks posed by artificial intelligence as Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who heads several tech corporations, including a new AI venture called xAI.
For years, Musk has been sounding the alarm about AI’s potentially catastrophic
impact on civilization. As early as 2018, he declared artificial intelligence “far more dangerous than nukes.” During a conversation with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak earlier this month, he reiterated warnings that AI could be “the most disruptive force in history” and called for regulators to act as a
“referee.”
At the same time, Musk has also cautioned against excessive oversight, telling Sunak that governments should avoid “charging in with regulations that inhibit the positive side of AI.”
By emphasizing such existential risks, Musk keeps deflecting attention from
pressing technological concerns such as how to safeguard user data or ensure the fairness of AI systems, says Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at digital rights groupAccess Now in Brussels.
=>”He is diverting attention from the technology we’re dealing with at the
moment to things that are quite speculative and often in the realm of science fiction,” Leufer told DW.
In November 2022, San Francisco-based OpenAI released ChatGPT, becoming the
first company to make a large-scale generative AI system available to the
public online. Since then, the company’s CEO Sam Altman has embarked on a global tour to meet with lawmakers from Washington D.C. to Brussels and to
discuss how to regulate AI.
This has catapulted him to the forefront of the debate. During his meetings,
Altman warned that high-risk AI applications could cause “significant harm to the world” and needed to be regulated. In the same breath, he has offered OpenAI’s expertise to guide policymakers through the complexities of cutting-edge AI systems.
When it comes to Meta, another leading company in AI development, CEO Mark
Zuckerberg has remained notably quiet in the debate. In a September address to US lawmakers, Zuckerberg advocated for collaboration among policymakers, academics, civil society, and industry “to minimize the potential risks of this new technology, but also to maximize the potential benefits.”
Apart from that, he appears to have largely delegated the regulatory discussion to his deputies, such as Meta’s President for Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, a former British politician.
On the sidelines of the recent AI summit in the UK, Clegg downplayed fears of
existential AI risks and instead emphasized the more immediate threats of AI being used to interfere in upcoming elections in the UK and the US next year.
He also advocated for finding short-term solutions to issues such as detecting AI-generated content online.
And then there’s Anthropic. Founded in 2021 by former members of OpenAI, the
=>safety-focused AI company has swiftly attracted substantial investments,
including a potential $4 billion (€ 3.8 bio) from tech behemoth Amazon — and
despite the firm’s nascent existence, its CEO Dario Amodei has already carved his niche in the AI regulation debate.
Amodei cautioned that while the dangers posed by current AI systems may be
relatively limited, they are “likely to become very serious at some unknown point in the near future,” he was quoted in a company-issued readout.”
Clive Robinson • November 8, 2023 7:48 PM
@ Winter, JonKnowsNothing,
Re : Two old nags are all that will run.
“These policies seems might become the downfall of the Republican Party.”
You have left the word “extream” out.
As an outsider to the US I see both political parties as being well right of the social center of western politics and both infested with certain undesirable types of religion.
So you could say “The enemy is at all doors” and highly undesirable conservatism is taking over the structures of US Government.
Whilst this time around it might not get to burning women at the stake, or drowning in a pond or similar we will see heritics “cast out” in one way or another.
People in modern society tend to forget untill it happens to them of the power small groups can have over those who see themselves as “members”.
It effectively starts with the group leaders issolate the members from others so the group “is their life”. Then if a member displeases a leader the leader instructs the group to “turn their backs” and “not to speak” and by inferance “not give aid or comfort to the enemy”.
You can see this sort of behaviour comming into the work place and it is quite deliberate in some larger organisations.
Anyone who has come to see the group rather than themselves[1] as the focus of their lives will suffer, quite significant mental harm, thus are easily abused by the group leadership.
This sort of “group dynamic” is becoming rather more visable again[2]. And as can be seen by some of the intimidation small close groups carry out under their instruction, the leaders of such groups are all to often the sort of people who will encorage rather more than anti-social behaviour, and see violence and other forms of intimidation by harm as “a justifiable means to an end”. Whilst not technically cults or terrorist cells, such groups do exhibit sufficient of the traits to be highly concerning.
[1] You see this in relationship abuse where a person sees themselves not in terms of being an individual but as the relationship. Thus no matter how kicked or abused they go back.
[2] Those that push “member of the team” and similar “team” rhetoric are in fact trying to create such a group dynamic. Whilst I would not say “treat being called ‘not a team player’ as a badge of honour” potentially it means you have a more healthy work/life balance.
ResearcherZero • November 9, 2023 12:46 AM
The Kremlin has “a vast ecosystem” of proxy websites, individuals, and organizations that appear to be independent news sources.
The “information manipulation campaign” has been coordinated by three Russian organizations, The Social Design Agency (SDA), the Institute for Internet Development, and Structura, said the statement. It called them “influence-for-hire” firms that have co-opted local media and influencers in Latin America.
Teams in Russia create content that is sent to “cultivated” journalists in Latin America “for review, editing and ultimately publication in mass media.”
‘https://www.foxnews.com/world/russia-funding-anti-ukraine-disinformation-campaign-latin-america-state-department-says
“In addition to Gambashidze, the individuals involved include but are not limited to SDA Project Director Andrey Perla, Structura CEO Nikolay Tupikin, and pro-Kremlin journalist Oleg Yasinskiy (alternate: Yasinsky).”
https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2023/11/07/u-s-busts-kremlins-efforts-to-covertly-spread-disinformation-in-latin-america/
Nova Resistência, the Brazilian chapter of New Resistance, is particularly active and works to extend the malign influence of New Resistance throughout Latin America.
‘https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Nova-Resiste%CC%82ncia-in-Brazil_Oct_25_23_508.pdf
–
Dissemination
FSB “secretly using allies inside nominally independent organizations to spread propaganda and cultivate ties with rising leaders, efforts that are intended to play out over long periods of time.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/us/politics/russia-intelligence-propaganda.html
One focus of Ionov’s alleged influence operation was to create the appearance of American popular support for Russia’s annexation of territories in Ukraine.
‘https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-citizens-and-russian-intelligence-officers-charged-conspiring-use-us-citizens-illegal
GRU Unit 54777 (GRU’s chief psy-ops division)
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/inside-russias-secret-propaganda-unit/
Denis Tyurin, Alexander Starunsky, and Sergey Kanavsky
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/05/17/psy-ops-in-high-places
–
Collection
GRU Unit 74455 (remote intrusion)
https://www.wired.com/story/russia-gru-sandworm-serebriakov/
‘https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/gru-hackers-destructive-malware-and-international-cyber-attacks
GRU Unit 40273 (space-intelligence)
https://www.rferl.org/a/investigative-report-on-the-trail-of-the-12-indicted-russian-intelligence-officers/29376821.html
GRU Unit 26165 (close access)
The on-site, overseas cyber operations of GRU Unit 26165 appears to stand out from other Russian government cyber units. …its proclivity for “close access” operations leans toward disrupting high-profile investigations into potentially embarrassing Russian government activity.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/tech-at-the-leading-edge/the-russian-cyber-unit-that-hacks-targets-on-site/
ResearcherZero • November 9, 2023 3:09 AM
“Trust in the bureau among lawmakers is only likely to grow, for instance, once its unfettered access to a digital black box of everyone’s secrets becomes subject to regular judicial review. The GSRA removes the ability entirely for the FBI to run queries on US persons without probable cause…”
“As used in this chapter, the term “United States person” means any United States citizen or alien admitted for permanent residence in the United States, and any corporation, partnership, or other organization organized under the laws of the United States.”
‘https://www.wired.com/story/government-surveillance-reform-act-2023/
–
“one of the quickest propaganda victories in history”
https://www.fpri.org/article/2023/08/russian-disinformation-in-africa-no-door-on-this-barn/
Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service formed a Cyber Jihad Unit to monitor online dissent and spread disinformation.
‘https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ENGLISH-Democracy-Derailed-Sudans-precarious-information-environment-2.pdf
“I warned them that our instability stemmed from presidents wanting to make their rule eternal.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/24/world/africa/central-african-republic-russia-wagner.html
The effect of these interventions is to thwart the aspirations of the three-quarters of African citizens who want to see democracy flourish in their countries, thereby weakening African voices, sovereignty, and self-determination.
‘https://africacenter.org/spotlight/russia-interference-undermine-democracy-africa/
Malnutrition and disease stalk the land. Water and sanitation conditions make the country ripe for an outbreak of cholera…
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23951250/sudan-refugee-crisis-civil-war-israel-gaza-humanitarian-afghanistan-earthquake
Winter • November 9, 2023 6:27 AM
@bl5q sw5N
Once the existence and elementary properties of e and ln are established, the various series can be established more or less by straight calculation.
I think you will have lost 90%+ of your audience at “If one accepts that the region bounded by given curves has an area,…”.
I got explained the ln() as the area of 1/x after I had “mastered” (some) calculus. Getting my head around i = sqrt(-1) was straightforward only after I had finished a lot of other subject matter in mathematics.
I do not think I can explain it to a random visitor at a birthday party.
Winter • November 9, 2023 6:39 AM
@Clive
Whilst this time around it might not get to burning women at the stake, or drowning in a pond or similar we will see heritics “cast out” in one way or another.
The population in the USA seems to be aware of that. The GOP has had an uninterrupted losing streak of elections since Roe v. Wade was overturned. It might even cost them the 2024 election. Voters might poll as believing Trump “being better for the economy”, they also think the GOP is a serious danger to their freedom.
In general, voters saw through the obvious distractions of having “moderate” bans and the GOP being a “party for mothers”. The proposed bans were not moderate, they were bans period, and the GOP has a very long history of definitely not caring about the well-being of women, mothers or not.
‘https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/briefing/election-results-democrats-abortion.html
‘https://www.newsweek.com/maga-gop-election-defeats-ohio-kentucky-virginia-1841869
bl5q sw5N • November 9, 2023 8:39 AM
@ Winter
explain it to a random visitor at a birthday party
Length of lines, area of planar and surface regions, volume of bodies etc. are inductively grasped pretty readily. The properties needed for giving an account of natural logarithms are all available In this.
Calculus should be seen to articulate more explicitly what us contained in it.
The late modern attempts to “arithmetize” quantity (Cantor, Dedekind) introduce a new assumption about quantity to “explain” it, but have no way to actually connect the assumption to the inductive understanding of quantity.
Winter • November 9, 2023 10:30 AM
@bl5q sw5N
The properties needed for giving an account of natural logarithms are all available In this.
Certainly, but infinite sums and the sqrt(-1) are a different matter. At least that is my experience.
bl5q sw5N • November 9, 2023 3:38 PM
@ Winter
infinite sums and the sqrt(-1)
Given a quantity that is known to exist, but whose value is unknown, it is natural to look for calculations, estimates, or approximations of the value. From this point of view, infinite series arise naturally.
The Cantor/Dedekind approach prevalent today makes infinite series as such the primary objects, and series with the Cauchy convergence property then define new numbers. There is no way to connect these numbers with inductive quantity. This connection is merely assumed. From this point of view infinite series are not intuitive.
Sqrt(-1) seems to have started out as an assumed (imaginary) number that lets one solve x^2+1 = 0. This seeming trick amazingly turns out to lead to a very useful extension of the real numbers. It can be justified by expressing it as a construction in polynomial algebra, but this still seems not to account for its power and utility.
Somehow nature likes complex numbers..
vas pup • November 9, 2023 3:47 PM
Bourne suspect tries to avoid arrest by hiding underwater
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-lincolnshire-67371114
“A man wanted by police after failing to stop for officers tried to avoid arrest by =>hiding underwater in a pond.
Lincolnshire Police said, after refusing to pull over, the suspect dumped his car in Springbank Drive, Bourne, and ran towards a nearby wood on Tuesday night.
!!!A police drone was deployed and picked up his heat source in the pond, allowing officers to locate him.
A force spokesperson said the 22-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of failing to stop and drug offences.
He was taken into custody to receive medical treatment and later released on bail.”
Q: could similar technology pick up heat of kind of Navy Seals or underwater terrorists approaching merchant or military vessels or water-based infrastructure (e.g. drilling platform?
Is this depends on sensitivity level?
MarkH • November 9, 2023 6:20 PM
Thanks to DH, for sharing another fantasy claim to “break” 2048 bit RSA. This is at least the third such in the past year or two.
The author’s abstract or draft is a typical pig’s breakfast, with no resemblance to papers by qualified researchers.
NoEH has it exactly right: if this fellow “has the goods,” where are his factorizations of RSA challenge numbers?
As a reminder, I’m aware of no evidence that any semiprime composed of randomly chosen pseudoprimes (not reused) has EVER been factored, even at 1024 bits. [1024 bit moduli might have been factored secretly … at vast expense using custom hardware; doing this for 2048 bits is not even plausible.]
Clive Robinson • November 9, 2023 8:18 PM
@ vas pup, ALL,
Re : Heat is the ultimate form of pollution.
“Q: could similar technology pick up heat of kind of Navy Seals or underwater terrorists approaching merchant or military vessels or water-based infrastructure (e.g. drilling platform?”
If you “do the maths” you will find that an adult male pushes out about the same amount of heat as a 100W filament electric bulb (which is why they are used still in research into building “sustainable homes” etc).
That heat has to go somewhere otherwise come 40C or a little higher the protein in the human brain depolarizes and like a boild egg starts to go solid… Realy not a nice way to go.
Now water takes heat away from your body about 25times faster than dry air which is why “wind chill” changes so much with humidity, and it can actually feel warmer below freezing than a little above.
The reason the man would have been visable in the pond was two fold,
1, The water would have been hardly moving.
2, His body would have increased it’s heat output to try to concentrate for the heat loss.
I don’t know what the temprature of the pond was but the average air temp in that part of the world has been around 10C, so it would not have been too different.
So ~37C internal body temp in 10C of still pond water is going to create quite a temprature gradient. That would rise upwards to the surface.
Even low cost FLIR cameras would spot that.
However if the body is suitably insulated and the water moves due to currents then it would be heated only fractionaly and fairly rapidly defused. In a very large volume of water.
If we assume as a first order that the man was 0.1cubic meters volume at 37C and was put in 2cubic meters of water at 10C. You would get,
Tres = (Tbod.Bvol+Twat.Wvol)/(Bvol+Wvol)
So 3.7 + 20 / 2.1 ~ 11.3C
So just 1.3C above the bulk water.
Take it up to 10cubic meters and it goes down to,
3.7+100 / 10.1 ~ 10.27C
Just 0.27C above the bulk water
So you can see just how small the temp difference on a first approximation is.
In reality a diver would be moving so in way more than 10 cubic meters, plus due to insulation the heat transfer would be very very much slowed. With a full dry suit and full mask divers can stay in water around or below freezing for way more than an hour without any real issue. There is a documented case of a diver being down for around three quaters of an hour a couple of degrees below zero and a partially flooded dry suit, who did not get hypothermia,
fib • November 9, 2023 8:32 PM
Nova Resistência, the Brazilian chapter of New Resistance, is particularly active and works to extend the malign influence of New Resistance throughout Latin America.
Whoa, that’s something else!
I don’t know what they [TLA’s] are trying to accomplish by inflating the importance of this ‘armata Brancaleone’ of YouTube wackos in this way. This one won the week, sir.
These poor confused devils are infiltrated in what remains of an old mainstream labor party – a characteristic of Brazilian political and partisan promiscuity. This group particularly venerate a certain Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian lunatic.
Indeed, even the cream of the crop of the Intelligence community seems to follow the social media sensationalist script these days – in a period of history when we need functional heads more than ever. Scary.
Now put on your hazmat suit and follow the link – yes, this is a news site, unfortunately [I wouldn’t bother].
Regards
‘https://tab.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2022/09/18/nova-resistencia-como-militantes-de-extrema-direita-se-infiltraram-no-pdt.htm
Canis familiaris • November 10, 2023 5:09 AM
Re: sqrt(-1)
I find that using the polar representation of complex numbers (the complex plane) allows people to get a better intuition for them.
Once you see demonstrated that multiplication incorporates ‘rotation’ (summing the angles of the numbers being multiplied) of the line segment drawn from the origin to the point representing the complex number, then it becomes obvious that i x i (or i²) <must be -1, and similarly for –i x –i (-i²).
The algebraic formulation ( x² + 1 = 0 ) is difficult for many people to grasp intuitively. One can learn to manipulate the symbols correctly, but it doesn’t necessarily give insight.
Different people have different ways of grasping the same facts, which is why it is useful to have different ways of explaining things to people. What is obvious to some is completely opaque to others.
ResearcherZero • November 10, 2023 5:26 AM
If you try out the new Outlook, you risk having your IMAP and SMTP access data for mail accounts as well as all emails transferred to Microsoft servers. Microsoft explains that it is possible to switch back to the previous apps at any time – but the data is then already with the company. This allows Microsoft to read the emails.
‘https://malwaretips.com/threads/microsoft-grabs-access-data-beware-of-the-new-outlook.127057/
Microsoft will also track certain document types.
Clive Robinson • November 10, 2023 6:18 AM
@ ResearcherZero,
Re : The answer to the question should never be Micro$haft.
“If you try out the new Outlook, you risk having your IMAP and SMTP access data for mail accounts as well as all emails transferred to Microsoft servers.”
That does not surprise me in the slightest.
It’s been clear –at least to me– for several years now that Billie Bob’s shop was moving out of selling software and into stealing Personal and Private Information to market and profit from without any kind of consent.
There used to be a joke about the very definition of “malware” being Microsoft products. Then the famous “What ever the question is the answer is not Microsoft”. But thrn the signpost everyone should have note just read but turned away from, the “Trojan horse Gift” that was Windows 10.
With the IP theft that Microsoft Cloud is, as well as the move from purchase of software to just over priced rental, you would think people would learn…
But also note the,
“Microsoft will also track certain document types.”
No doubt Microsoft will try to wrap it’s self in the anti-CSAM flag for putting a backdoor on your machine thus getting around any “security apps” you’ve installed.
Something else was obviously comming long before Apple found user push back.
As I’ve been saying for some time now,
1, You need two computers
2, You need to properly segregate and then “gap cross”.
Such that your personal activities and privacy stay on one side of the security end point and software and communications that alows the theft etc stays on the other side of the security end point.
There are reasons I maintain old 486 and earlier computers in full working order and others with CD/DVD drives but no Flash or Hard drives, and use text not binary file types and basic Command Line apps from the DOS and CP/M era you can read the source of in an afternoon.
Clive Robinson • November 10, 2023 11:52 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Re : The Xmas Gift that keeps giving.
This might amuse,
“Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
In short the claims are based on the fact Intel knew about a serious side channel leak issue since 2018 in its AVX instruction set. But rather than fix the defect it continued to sell defective chips, leaving tgose who had purchased them with bo choice other than apply a defective patch that slowed performance by upto 50%.
Even though Intel apparently had a fix available for considerable time it willfully chose not to implement it untill the much more recent disclosure of the Downfall hole.
Hands up those who think this was not acceptable behaviour?
bl5q sw5N • November 10, 2023 1:08 PM
More: sqrt(-1)
Maybe the mystery one feels of complex numbers is answered by looking at them as making the plane into a number field in which all the usual arithmetic operations are available.
The real numbers are the real line x together with the usual operations, the complex numbers show this extends to the plane (x,y) so the reals are a subfield.
Nature has many opportunities for use of real lumbers where the independent quantity is 1 dimensional. In situations where the independent quantity is 2 dimensional, perhaps complex numbers are exactly what is needed.
Winter • November 10, 2023 1:44 PM
@bl5q sw5N
In situations where the independent quantity is 2 dimensional, perhaps complex numbers are exactly what is needed.
Quantum mechanics only works in 2D fields. It is imaginary to the bone. Why? I have no clue.
‘https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quantum-physics-imaginary-numbers-math-reality
bl5q sw5N • November 10, 2023 7:28 PM
@ Winter
Quantum mechanics only works in 2D fields. It is imaginary to the bone.
I can’t see what the physics article could mean by this, except that the fundamental entities in q.m. have natural behaviors that correspond, when input and output quantities are considered. to the operations of the complex numbers.
Any complex number is just a pair of real numbers, and the operations can be expressed completely as a system of real operations. But this way of doing things is comparatively clumsy and obscures the’presence of an algebra.
Clive Robinson • November 10, 2023 10:13 PM
@ bl5q sw5N, Winter,
“Any complex number is just a pair of real numbers”
Actually that is still open to debate.
Is the universe continuous or disrete?
It makes a difference…
Likewise on a more practical note what about computers and other “real world” number presentation systems?
Once upon a time the definition of a “Real number” was,
“Any number that could be found in the real world.”
Well there is an issue with that, whilst the difference between two points may be both real and finite depending on the radix / base you use most such differences will be unrepresentable because they will require an infinite sequence.
So the definition got changed and became,
A number that can be used to measure a continuous “one dimensional” quantity, and expressable within an infinite decimal expansion…
As such the real numbers, include rational, and irrational numbers, the positive and negative integers.
As it turns out humans and the machines they make, are actually limited to a subset of integers and a subset of ratios between two integers[1].
The problem is the square root of such numbers is all to often not fully expressable to even a near desirable level, which has a swiss cheese effect when using complex numbers. An issue that gets worse rapidly the more dimensions you work in.
As any non-theoretical scientist / engineer rather than a mathematician,
“We have to play with real world numbers, and it all becomes quite problematic at times.”
[1] And as such it’s said, one of the reasons real mathematicians don’t play with numbers 😉
Winter • November 11, 2023 3:51 AM
@bl5q sw5N
Any complex number is just a pair of real numbers, and the operations can be expressed completely as a system of real operations.
A forest is just a collection of tress, except, a forest does not behave like a collection of isolated trees.
An imaginary number is a pair of reals, but imaginary numbers compute not like isolated real numbers.
Fourier analysis is not done in just real numbers for more than historical reasons.
bl5q sw5N • November 11, 2023 7:44 AM
@ Winter
An imaginary number is a pair of reals, but imaginary numbers compute not like isolated real numbers.
Yes, as was said, if everything is expressed in terms of the real components, the algebra operations that make things “complex” get obscured.
The multiplication operation is the one that primarily relates the elements of the pair, viz.
(a,b) * (c,d) = (ac-bd, ad+bc)
where the parts of the product pair contain mixtures involving both parts of the pairs being multiplied..
Winter • November 11, 2023 8:32 AM
@bl5q sw5N
where the parts of the product pair contain mixtures involving both parts of the pairs being multiplied..
So the point is not that there are imaginary numbers, but that there is an algebra that can handle points in phase space. That is, there is a “simple” algebra that can handle phase and amplitude, time and distance, and 2D planes in a simple uniform way. Sqrt(-1) is just an extremely simple way to use that algebra.
Focussing on the simple algebra instead of the complex “numbers” themselves could prevent a lot of confusion.
bl5q sw5N • November 11, 2023 9:02 AM
@ Winter
there is an algebra
Yes.
And It’s part of a whole family of algebras (which includes the quaternions), that also find utility in geometry and physics [1].
Winter • November 11, 2023 9:30 AM
@bl5q sw5N
which includes the quaternions
I have heard of these but never used them. I see them mentioned with twisters in string theory at which point I generally phase out (I am not interested in string theory).
But complex numbers have been my bread and butter for some time when I was younger [1].
[1] I resist the urge to claim we had to do Laplace transforms by hand in a snow storm as we rarely had snow storms, stayed inside when we had them, and were too lazy anyway to do all these calculations with pen and paper.
Clive Robinson • November 11, 2023 10:11 AM
@ Winter,
“I resist the urge to claim we had to do Laplace transforms by hand in a snow storm…”
But what about,
1, Getting up before you went to bed…
2, Eating the crusts out of your shoes because the holes were to big…
3, Walking ten miles out and twenty miles back to go to school…
And the half dozen other Pythonesque claims about having it tough “When I was just a lad…”
(Me I had a terrible time I learned to poach fish and game, use a shotgun and rifle, blow things up, and still walk to school, do my home chores, including prep of vegtables and meat for dinner and making biscuits, cakes, bread and the little things like preserves, sausages, brawns, and “canning” in glass jars entire meals for four etc, butchering the odd pig or sheep, plucking and gutting chickens and pigeones, skinning rabbits, and still had time to repair valve/tube radios and TV’s. Also go sailing and canoeing all year around, and jogging up the odd mountain or three when the opportunity arose… Life sure was busy, but tough? I guess that depends on if you were having fun, which mostly I was.)
lurker • November 14, 2023 12:29 PM
@Winter, bl5q sw5N
Many years ago in school we were told you could not have the square root of a negative number, at least not by normal means. Then later we were were introduced to i. Still later came j and k for numbers in the y and z planes. But the last I remember was that the logarithm of a negative number has no meaning, does not exist.
So Mr. Euler must be either a brilliant magician, or a charlatan, if his formula can show us that π = [ln(-1)]/i
Winter • November 14, 2023 12:51 PM
@lurker
So Mr. Euler must be either a brilliant magician, or a charlatan, if his formula can show us that π = [ln(-1)]/i
X = |X|•e^{i•theta}
log(X) = log(|X|) + i•theta
Log(-1) = 0 + i•π
But this is not unique. It is actually:
Log(-1) = 0 + i•2•k•π
For any integer k.
‘https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2089690/log-of-a-negative-number/2089703#2089703
Winter • November 14, 2023 1:01 PM
@lurker
Correction for previous comment.
Obviously, it is
Log(-1) = 0 + i•(2•k+1)•π
Sorry for the inconvenience.
bl5q sw5N • November 14, 2023 1:09 PM
@ lurker @ Winter
For any integer k.
Welcome to Riemann surfaces [1] .
lurker • November 14, 2023 2:24 PM
@Winter, bl5q sw5N
Thank you gentlemen. I dropped out of math, Asian languages looked more interesting. My employer didn’t agree …
Winter • November 15, 2023 12:54 AM
@lurker
dropped out of math, Asian languages looked more interesting.
I totally understand the pull of both subjects. And Asian languages is such a vast field.
With only a single life, there are always choices to make.
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vas pup • November 3, 2023 7:21 PM
UK hosts first global AI safety summit
https://www.dw.com/en/uk-hosts-first-global-ai-safety-summit/video-67292572
“Global leaders and AI developers have been meeting in the UK at the world’s first global summit on AI safety to assess the risks and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence, and also to discuss regulation of the emerging technology.”