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Quantum Cryptography Is Unbreakable. So Is Human Ingenuity

face_with_colon_three circa 2016.


Two basic types of encryption schemes are used on the internet today. One, known as symmetric-key cryptography, follows the same pattern that people have been using to send secret messages for thousands of years. If Alice wants to send Bob a secret message, they start by getting together somewhere they can’t be overheard and agree on a secret key; later, when they are separated, they can use this key to send messages that Eve the eavesdropper can’t understand even if she overhears them. This is the sort of encryption used when you set up an online account with your neighborhood bank; you and your bank already know private information about each other, and use that information to set up a secret password to protect your messages.

The second scheme is called public-key cryptography, and it was invented only in the 1970s. As the name suggests, these are systems where Alice and Bob agree on their key, or part of it, by exchanging only public information. This is incredibly useful in modern electronic commerce: if you want to send your credit card number safely over the internet to Amazon, for instance, you don’t want to have to drive to their headquarters to have a secret meeting first. Public-key systems rely on the fact that some mathematical processes seem to be easy to do, but difficult to undo. For example, for Alice to take two large whole numbers and multiply them is relatively easy; for Eve to take the result and recover the original numbers seems much harder.

Public-key cryptography was invented by researchers at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — the British equivalent (more or less) of the US National Security Agency (NSA) — who wanted to protect communications between a large number of people in a security organization. Their work was classified, and the British government neither used it nor allowed it to be released to the public. The idea of electronic commerce apparently never occurred to them. A few years later, academic researchers at Stanford and MIT rediscovered public-key systems. This time they were thinking about the benefits that widespread cryptography could bring to everyday people, not least the ability to do business over computers.

Starlink will introduce a data cap starting in December

Over the past couple of months, Starlink has branched out, offering its service in more ways than ever before. As more and more people sign up for its service, the network naturally gets a bit more strained and congested. Now it looks like Starlink is implementing a way to combat network congestion by creating a data cap.

According to The Verge, Starlink service will now have a data cap starting in December. Next month, residential customers will start off with a 1TB bucket of data that will be designated as “Priority Access.” Priority Access data will be used anytime the internet is accessed during the hours of 7 am to 11 pm. Once the data is depleted, users will encounter slower data speeds during peak hours. The bucket will be replenished at the top of every month, and customers will have the option to buy Priority Access data, but it will cost 25 cents per GB.

For the most part, this shouldn’t really affect many customers, as Starlink states that less than 10 percent of its users actually manage to hit this cap every month. In addition to a new data cap, the company will also be expanding its service to more parts of Alaska and also Canada, primarily focusing on the Northern areas. For areas in the region that aren’t yet covered, Starlink does have plans to expand to more areas in the first part of 2023.

Pong in a Dish

Ever hear of the Turk —the 19th-century mechanism topped by a turbaned head that played chess against all comers? In fact, hidden inside was a diminutive chessmaster, one you might imagine deadpanning, “Eh, It’s a living.

Then there’s its namesake, the Mechanical Turk —a 21st-century service offered by Amazon to mark up images on the Web with the help of crowdsourced freelancers. They, too, might intone, glassy-eyed, “It’s a living.”

Now we have a kind of Biological Turk. A mass of neurons act as a computer that mimics a human being playing the classic computer game Pong. The neurons, some taken from mouse embryos, others grown from human precursor cells, spread out into a one-layer, 800,000-cell mesh called a biological neural network, which lives in a giant petri dish called the DishBrain. There it interfaces with arrays of electrodes that form an interface to silicon hardware. Software mounted on that hardware provides stimulation and feedback, and the minibrain learns how to control a paddle on a simulated ping-pong table.

A newly found loophole enables researchers to see through walls

The Wi-Peep uses many messages to communicate with a target device while it is in the air.

A research team from the University of Waterloo created a drone-powered tool that uses WiFi networks to penetrate barriers.

Called Wi-Peep, the device can fly close to buildings and then use the WiFi network of the occupants to identify and locate any WiFi-enabled devices quickly.

Researchers discover security loophole allowing attackers to use Wi-Fi to see through walls

A research team based out of the University of Waterloo has developed a drone-powered device that can use Wi-Fi networks to see through walls.

The , nicknamed Wi-Peep, can fly near a building and then use the inhabitants’ Wi-Fi network to identify and locate all Wi-Fi-enabled devices inside in a matter of seconds.

The Wi-Peep exploits a loophole the researchers call polite Wi-Fi. Even if a network is password protected, will automatically respond to contact attempts from any device within range. The Wi-Peep sends several messages to a device as it flies and then measures the response time on each, enabling it to identify the device’s location to within a meter.

AI Just Got More Creative, and Filmmakers Shouldn’t Be Afraid

Up until recently, artificial intelligence was unable to perform such creative-looking tasks.

But all of that is beginning to change thanks to AI Sketch software like DreamStudio, Dall-E 2, and Stable Diffusion, which take a few keywords via a text interface to generate an image in a process known as “generative AI.”

Generative AI is trained on sets of images, which are sourced from the internet. The machine can then learn the differences between people, places, and things and generate its own images from any text it receives.

The more data sets the AI can draw from, the more accurate and creative the results.

Corridor Digital experimented with Stable Diffusion a few weeks back and used AI to generate images to tell a story. And the results are downright inspiring.

The AI was able to create images with members of the Corridor Crew as the main characters, placing them in custom settings, complete with costumes, props, and backgrounds based on the input of a few main idea terms.

Alex Zhavoronkov, ARDD2022: Pharma.AI platform for discovery and development of aging therapeutics

The Aging and Drug Discovery Conference (ARDD) 2022 is pleased to present Alex Zhavoronkov from Insilico, with the talk A case study of the application of Pharma. AI platform for discovery and development of dual-purpose therapeutics targeting aging and disease.

Held in Copenhagen at the glorious Ceremonial Hall, this meeting gathers the most prominent figures of the aging and longevity research field, from scientists to clinicians, investors, developers, and everything in between. The fast growth of the conference is evidence of its great quality of it. In 2022 we had around 400 people on-site, and many others joined through the web.

To find out more check www.agingpharma.org #ARDD #ARDD2022 #Longevity

These Dropper Apps On Play Store Targeting Over 200 Banking and Cryptocurrency Wallets

Five malicious dropper Android apps with over 130,000 cumulative installations have been discovered on the Google Play Store distributing banking trojans like SharkBot and Vultur, which are capable of stealing financial data and performing on-device fraud.

“These droppers continue the unstopping evolution of malicious apps sneaking to the official store,” Dutch mobile security firm ThreatFabric told The Hacker News in a statement.

“This evolution includes following newly introduced policies and masquerading as file managers and overcoming limitations by side-loading the malicious payload through the web browser.”