Please try the URL privacy information feature enabled by clicking the flashlight icon above. This will reveal two icons after each link the body of the digest. The shield takes you to a breakdown of Terms of Service for the site - however only a small number of sites are covered at the moment. The flashlight take you to an analysis of the various trackers etc. that the linked site delivers. Please let the website maintainer know if you find this useful or not. As a RISKS reader, you will probably not be surprised by what is revealed…
A Defense Intelligence Agency experiment shows AI and humans have different risk tolerances when data is scarce.
EXCERPT:
In the 1983 movie WarGames, the world is brought to the edge of nuclear destruction when a military computer using artificial intelligence interprets false data as an imminent Soviet missile strike. Its human overseers in the Defense Department, unsure whether the data is real, can't convince the AI that it may be wrong. A recent finding from the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, suggests that in a real situation where humans and AI were looking at enemy activity, those positions would be reversed.
Artificial intelligence can actually be more cautious than humans about its conclusions in situations when data is limited. While the results are preliminary, they offer an important glimpse into how humans and AI will complement one another in critical national security fields.
DIA analyzes activity from militaries around the globe. Terry Busch, the technical director for the agency's Machine-Assisted Analytic Rapid-Repository System, or MARS, on Monday joined a Defense One viewcast to discuss the agency's efforts to incorporate AI into analysis and decision making.
Earlier this year, Busch's team set up a test between a human and AI. The first part was simple enough: use available data to determine whether a particular ship was in U.S. waters. […]
The future of farming: Driverless tractors, drones and robots. How is the agriculture industry changing as digital technology develops?
Unmanned tractors controlled via GPS; drones that kill vermin in the fields from above; and highly efficient bull sperm used to produce geneticly optimized calves. This is not science fiction. It's the future of farming, today. “Smart farming” is the agricultural industry's new buzzword. A survey of almost 600 German farmers has revealed that more than one in two now uses digital solutions to optimize their harvests. Fierce regional and global competition, declining subsidies, higher standards of food quality, environmental protection, and increasing demand are forcing farmers to be highly efficient. This documentary looks at three examples of “smart farming” in Germany. Breeding consultant Johanna Schendel creates optimized dairy cows by selecting the right bull semen. Asparagus farmer Heiner Bartels uses a smartphone to calculate the optimum time to harvest. And drone pilot Bernd Meyer is out to fight pests in maize fields from the air. All three are trying to use modern technology to modify nature to fit the needs of our society. But where are the limits?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DqwNVNE83Udo
As of 2020, no right to repair law has passed in the US. But more than 20 states are considering legislation similar to Nebraska's, and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both supported national right to repair legislation for farmers.
When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over.
In this episode of State of Repair, we go to Nebraska to talk to the farmers and mechanics who are fighting large manufacturers like John Deere for the right to access the diagnostic software they need to repair their tractors. […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPYy_g8NzmI
Singing mountain gorillas have been caught on camera for the first time by a robot ‘spy’. The apes ‘broke into song’ as they enjoyed their dinner of leaves.
The ultra-rare footage was filmed by a robotic spy designed to look like a young gorilla. The singing apes featured in the recently aired PBS series “Nature: Spy in the Wild 2” <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/collections/spy-wild/>*.*
Human camera operators are supposed to keep a safe distance from wild gorillas. However, the lifelike animatronic spy robot was able to infiltrate the group and film the gorilla serenade. […]
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/11514736/rare-footage-gorillas-singing-eating/
Sneaky developers are charging big bucks for basic apps. Here's how to spot a scam in sheep's clothing.
It's always safer to download mobile apps from official stores like Google Play and Apple's iOS App Store, but even then there's still some risk that malicious apps have snuck in. You've already heard of spyware, adware, and malware writ large, but now there's another flavor of sketchy app to worry about: fleeceware.
Fleeceware is tricky, because there's typically nothing malicious in the code of the offending apps. They don't steal your data or try to take over your device, meaning there's nothing malware-like for Google and Apple's vetting process to catch. Instead, these scams hinge on apps that work as advertised but come with hidden, excessive subscription fees. A flashlight app that costs $9 per week or a basic photo filters app that's $30 per month would both be fleeceware, because you can get the same types of tools for free, or much cheaper, from other apps.
https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-fleeceware-protect-yourself/
…so far I've not found need or desire to buy or subscribe anything.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/tech-giants-coronavirus-pandemic-welfare=2Dsurveillance
Jo�h Carlos Magalh�es and Nick Couldry, Jacobin Magazine, Apr 2020
In recent years, firms like Google and Facebook have used the Global South as a testbed for new and unregulated forms of data collection. Faced with coronavirus, the same mechanisms are being rolled out across the world — with for-profit data collection becoming increasingly central to states — management of their welfare systems.
A top House committee investigating the tech industry has asked him to agree to appear or face a potential subpoena if he declines
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/01/amazon-jeff-bezos-testify/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-scams-fraud-crime-1.5551294?cmp=rss
Canadians have lost more than $1.2 million in recent weeks to scammers taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, CBC News has learned.
Jeff Thomson of the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre said the centre has received 739 reports since 6 Mar of attempts to defraud Canadians with scams related to the pandemic. He said 178 of those attempts succeeded.
The centre is also seeing attempts to use the pandemic as cover to infect computers with malware.
The victims of one such scheme receive messages telling them they've been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 and asking them to fill out what looks like an Excel form. When users click to enable the content and view the form, it infects their computers with a Trojan downloader that installs malicious files, said Thomson.
“A new Democratic-aligned political action committee advised by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is planning to deploy technology originally developed to counter Islamic State propaganda in service of a domestic political goal—to combat online efforts to promote President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.”
“The group, Defeat Disinfo, will use artificial intelligence and network analysis to map discussion of the president's claims on social media. It will seek to intervene by identifying the most popular counter-narratives disinand boosting them through a network of more than 3.4 million influencers across the country—in some cases paying users with large followings to take sides against the president.”
“The initiative reflects fears within the Democratic Party that Trump's unwavering digital army may help sustain him through the pandemic, as it has through past controversies, even as the economy craters, tens of thousands have died, and Trump suffers in the polls.”
Reminiscent of A.K. Dewdney's “Core War” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War), this soft war aims to tip public opinion. Public appetite for fact is apparently suffocating under misinformation torrents.
Can a Disinfo versus Misinfo bot war cleanse coronavirus pandemic messaging? A “SMOP”—small matter of programming—is all it takes. Appears that social media “likes” and ”unlikes” and “re-tweets” will battle it out until the 03NOV2020 election decides the winner.
Soft or hard, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.”
Fighting online misinformation like the 5g conspiracy theory can feel like fighting a waterfall. But it can be done.
Probably old news for RISKS readers, but I spotted this in this weekend's newspaper.
The Internet's fracturing will change American capitalism forever The Telegraph, 1 May 2020
> A digital iron curtain separating east and west is now more likely than > ever. Beijing and Washington have taken steps that could accelerate the > move towards a ‘splinternet’—a physical divide in the World Wide Web, > with firewalls between countries and cultures.
> This war is driven by numerous factors, but one of the most irksome for > Washington hawks relates to technology transfer.
< class="pre"> > China's rival to the Global Positioning System (GPS), the satellite > navigation technology that we use in smartphones, goes live this month. > Perhaps more significantly, Beijing has also submitted proposals to > change the global architecture of the Internet. > Huawei argued that the global network infrastructure based on the > Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) was not > future proof and several Chinese companies had joined forces to develop > a new system. < class="pre"> > China [said that] it was already building this new Internet > architecture and it will be tested in early 2021. > It appears the splinternet[s] could be here sooner than we think.In the UK, there has been a campaign running for a few years demanding that Internet companies must have a legally-mandated duty of care for what people can see, i.e., they should be treated as publishers rather than transmission channels. Personally I feel that this is like the idea of charging for e-mail traffic; an attractive proposal but likely unworkable in practice. With different countries having different standards, barring undesirable material would require country-wide firewalls (i.e. ‘splinternets’) to keep anything nasty out. In the article here, it's a case of choosing the Chinese Internet or everybody else's. (As I write, there's still an argument over allowing Huawei to provide parts of the UK's 5G network.)
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