Wild boar in Europe are more radioactive than they should be. But the reason isn’t Chernobyl. CC-licensed photo by Torsten Behrens on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
AI systems have learned how to deceive humans. What does that mean for our future? • The Conversation
Simon Goldstein and Peter Park:
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Perhaps the most disturbing example of a deceptive AI is found in Meta’s CICERO, an AI model designed to play the alliance-building world conquest game Diplomacy.
Meta claims it built CICERO to be “largely honest and helpful”, and CICERO would “never intentionally backstab” and attack allies.
To investigate these rosy claims, we looked carefully at Meta’s own game data from the CICERO experiment. On close inspection, Meta’s AI turned out to be a master of deception. In one example, CICERO engaged in premeditated deception. Playing as France, the AI reached out to Germany (a human player) with a plan to trick England (another human player) into leaving itself open to invasion.
After conspiring with Germany to invade the North Sea, CICERO told England it would defend England if anyone invaded the North Sea. Once England was convinced that France/CICERO was protecting the North Sea, CICERO reported to Germany it was ready to attack. This is just one of several examples of CICERO engaging in deceptive behaviour. The AI regularly betrayed other players, and in one case even pretended to be a human with a girlfriend.
…advanced AI systems can autonomously use deception to escape human control, such as by cheating safety tests imposed on them by developers and regulators.
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The authors expand on this in an arXiv paper on “AI Deception: a survey of examples, risks and potential solutions”.
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New iPhone, new charger: Apple bends to EU rules • BBC News
Chris Vallance and Zoe Kleinman:
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Apple’s latest iPhone will almost certainly feature a USB-C charge point when it is unveiled on 12 September.
The firm’s phones currently use its proprietary Lightning adaptor, unlike rivals, including Samsung.
A European Union law requires phone manufacturers to adopt a common charging connection by December 2024 to save consumers money and cut waste.
Most new Apple products such as the latest iPads already use USB-C, but the firm had argued against the EU rule.
When it was introduced in September 2021, an Apple representative told BBC News: “Strict regulation mandating just one type of connector stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, which in turn will harm consumers in Europe and around the world.”
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As I’ve said previously, I’m sure Apple will portray the move to USB-C as something it did first (on Macs) and that now the iPhone’s cameras can capture so much data it’s time to move on from Lightning, which first appeared in 2012, well before USB-C, to something that can handle much faster data rates.
But this story? Ah, read the comments and be transported back to those smartphone boom days. Some people still carry all the same irrational prejudices.
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‘A psychological weapon’: inside a Ukrainian factory making decoy kit • The Guardian
Emma Graham-Harrison:
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In a dusty workshop, a unique group of Ukrainian weapons experts race to produce artillery guns that will never be fired, radar trucks that cannot detect anything, and missiles without explosives.
The pieces are decoys that aim to draw Russian fire, wasting enemy ammunition, missiles and drones while protecting real equipment and the soldiers manning it.
The team’s skill, honed over more than a year, is shaping plastic, scrap wood, foam and metal into copies of advanced weapon systems, precise enough to convince Russian operators of drone cameras and battle-seasoned troops on the ground that they are real military targets.
They measure success by how quickly their products are destroyed. “When the military come to us and says ‘we are out of these’, it means we were totally successful in our job,” says one.
A cupboard near their workshop is stuffed with expensive souvenirs of that success, including the engine and crumpled fragments of an Iranian-made Shahed suicide drone and the crashed wing of a Russian-made Lancet loitering drone, both lured to attack the fake equipment.
Hitting a decoy is a costly mistake for Russia, and also means one less attack on a real Ukrainian position. “These can save the lives of our guys, our friends who are serving,” the worker adds. “We have an agreement with the military to share pictures and remains of attacks (on decoys), as proof we did a good job.”
…Three senior managers at the firm came up with the idea of making decoy weapons at the start of the war, when Ukraine’s troops seemed dangerously outgunned. The influx of western weaponry that has helped hold Russia at bay had only just begun flowing across the border.
“We thought if the Russians saw a lot of weapons, they might be scared to move forward, or to shell an area. It’s a psychological weapon,” says one of them. “The company fully supported it.”
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Burning Man organisers plot ‘exodus’ of people trapped in desert mud • Financial Times
Antoine Gara and Amanda Chu:
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Organisers of the Burning Man festival have announced an “exodus” of thousands of attendees stranded in the Nevada desert after torrential rains transformed an event that has become a magnet for technology executives, venture capitalists and social media influencers into a “nightmare” of muck and broken toilets.
“Exodus likely to begin around noon [Pacific] today, Monday 9/4,” the organisers of the event in Black Rock City, Nevada said, days after they urged attendees to shelter in place and conserve food and water as deepening mud shut roads away from the venue.
The burning of a human effigy and temple that culminates the annual event is now planned for Monday night.
News that roads away from the event would reopen as the mud dries ends days of misery for thousands of festival-goers attending what was once the US’s signature counterculture event, but now attracts celebrities alongside older hippies and families.
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Apparently the rain has also brought out three-eyed shrimp that live in the desert floor. Bet that’s fun on the drugs.
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LogicMonitor customers hit by hackers, because of default passwords • TechCrunch
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai:
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Some customers of the network security company LogicMonitor have been hacked due to the use of default passwords, TechCrunch has learned.
A LogicMonitor spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that there’s “a security incident” affecting some of the company’s customers.
“We are currently addressing a security incident that has affected a small number of our customers. We are in direct communication and working closely with those customers to take appropriate measures to mitigate impact,” LogicMonitor’s spokesperson Jesica Church said in a statement.
The incident is due to the fact that, until recently, LogicMonitor was assigning customers default — and weak — passwords such as “Welcome@” plus a short number, according to a source at a company that was impacted by the incident, and who asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
“When you set up an account with [LogicMonitor], they define a default password and all user accounts for your organization/account are made with that password,” the source told TechCrunch. “They also didn’t require the changes, nor were they temporary passwords, until this week. Now the setup password lasts 30 days and must be changed on first login.”
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So, so disastrous. If you get something from a company and the default password isn’t randomised in some way, either figure out a way to return it, or get ready to be hacked – as here.
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‘That doesn’t reflect the price for the planet’: France wants to put a stop to mega low airfares • Euronews
Gael Camba:
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France’s Transport Minister has said he will propose that the EU brings in a minimum price on flights to reduce carbon emissions.
Clément Beaune says he wants to “fight against social and environmental dumping” and that “ten euro plane tickets aren’t possible anymore”, referring to low-cost airline fares. He said a mega low ticket price “doesn’t reflect the price for the planet.”
But are more expensive flights the solution to reducing aviation’s carbon footprint?
“Anything that makes airlines pay a fair share of the environmental cost that they create is a good thing”, says Jon Worth, travel expert and founder of Trains for Europe campaign. “But we should be dealing with frequent flyers and this does not deal with them. It might reduce nice city weekends for some people but it’s not going to stop or reduce this regular flying elite.”
In France, 2% of people take half of all flights, according to research published by the climate campaign group Possible; 15% of Brits take 70% of flights and 8% of the Dutch take 42%.
…[However] on average, European train tickets are twice as expensive as flights, according to a Greenpeace report from July.
Only 12 train lines were found to be fast, reliable and cheaper than flights, over the 112 most important routes analysed by Greenpeace.
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Air travel has been ridiculously subsidised – through avoiding fuel taxes, and by not having to pay for its climate effects – since forever.
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In dispute with Disney over ESPN, Spectrum owner says cable model is broken • The New York Times
Benjamin Mullin:
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One of the biggest cable companies in the United States has a message for media companies, its major partners in a decades-old business: The traditional cable-TV model is broken, and it needs to be fixed or abandoned.
Cable TV has become too expensive for consumers and providers, Charter Communications said in an 11-page presentation to investors on Friday, adding that cord-cutters and rising fees are contributing to a “vicious video cycle.”
The presentation comes amid negotiations between Charter and the Walt Disney Company, owner of popular cable channels including ESPN and FX, which will not be available to Charter’s nearly 15 million pay-TV subscribers until both sides agree on how much Charter will pay Disney to carry its channels. Subscribers to Charter’s Spectrum TV service will be without access to the U.S. Open tennis tournament and college football games during a holiday weekend.
These so-called carriage fights are commonplace in the media industry, with channels going dark for days or weeks on cable systems while the two sides — cable providers and content creators — haggle over how much the channels are worth and how to bundle them. But Charter’s suggestion that parts of its own business model are in disrepair adds a new wrinkle to the crisis facing the cable-TV business.
The fight comes at a time of declining subscriptions: more than five million Americans end their cable-TV subscriptions annually, according to research from SVB MoffettNathanson.
…Adding to the challenges, tech companies like Apple and Amazon are willing to pay top dollar to acquire live sports rights, further driving up programming costs. Cable companies, for their part, have weaned themselves off depending wholly on traditional TV revenue, by offering services like wireless internet.
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Cable doesn’t work, streaming doesn’t work.. what the hell does work then?
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Revealed: Home Office secretly lobbied for facial recognition ‘spy’ company • The Guardian
Mark Townsend:
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Senior officials at the Home Office secretly lobbied the UK’s independent privacy regulator to act “favourably” towards a private firm keen to roll out controversial facial recognition technology across the country, according to internal government emails seen by the Observer.
Correspondence reveals that the Home Office wrote to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) warning that policing minister, Chris Philp, would “write to your commissioner” if the regulator’s investigation into Facewatch – whose facial recognition cameras have provoked huge opposition after being installed in shops – was not positive towards the firm.
An official from the Home Office’s data and identity directorate warned the ICO: “If you are about to do something imminently in Facewatch’s favour then I should be able to head that off [Philp’s intervention], otherwise we will just have to let it take its course.”
The apparent threat came two days after a closed-door meeting on 8 March between Philp, senior Home Office officials and Facewatch.
Facewatch uses cameras to check faces against a watch list and, despite widespread concern over the technology, it has already been introduced in hundreds of high street shops and supermarkets.
The use of facial recognition has provoked fierce criticism over its impact on privacy and human rights, with the European Union seeking to ban the technology in public spaces through proposed legislation.
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Facewatch has been going for a long time, but its tight focus on just being used in commercial outlets (initially to identify thieves, subsequently to ban people on a blacklist) has largely kept it out of the public eye.
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Scientists finally know why Europe’s wild boar are surprisingly radioactive • The Washington Post
Kasha Patel:
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On April 26, 1986, the infamous explosion at a Chernobyl nuclear power plant unleashed large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere, an event that contaminated wildlife across country lines. The radiation levels seen in animals as a result has decreased in recent years — with the exception of one animal: the wild boar.
For years, scientists questioned why levels of a radioactive isotope known as caesium-137 have remained surprisingly high in wild boars rooting around Germany and Austria, while decreasing in other deer and roe deer. In a new study released last week, a team of researchers finally solved this “wild boar paradox.” They uncovered that the main radioactive source is not the Chernobyl accident but nuclear weapons testing from the 1960s.
“My mind was blown when I realized how relevant this source of radioactive contamination in general still is,” said Georg Steinhauser, a radiochemist at TU Wien and author of the new study. Steinhauser said people might not think that 60 years after a nuclear weapons explosion, wild boar populations would still be contaminated with radiation levels well above the regulatory food limit.
Researchers have previously proposed other explanations to no avail. Some thought the contamination levels in wild boar were actually decreasing, but the data didn’t show up in the limited number of studied samples. Steinhauser previously suggested that perhaps the caesium dissolves better in fat tissue in wild boars and stays present longer, but subsequent research did not support that assertion either.
…Even if the Chernobyl accident had never happened, “some of the wild boars would actually still exceed the regulatory limits for food safety limits only because of the weapons tests today,” said Steinhauser. “I think this is pretty mind-blowing because they were 60 years ago.”
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But but but! You’d have to eat “insane” amounts to show any “meaningful” radiation. We’re really good at detecting radioactivity, less good at evaluating its (low) risks.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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