A study shows that no matter what the language, conversation transmits information at a predictable rate. CC-licensed photo by Simon Law on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Verbatim. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Man who used AI to create child abuse images jailed for 18 years in UK • Financial Times
Stephanie Stacey:
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A man who used artificial intelligence technology to create child sexual abuse imagery was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Monday, in a landmark prosecution over deepfakes in the UK.
Hugh Nelson, 27, from Bolton, pleaded guilty to a total of 16 child sexual abuse offences, including transforming everyday photographs of real children into sexual abuse material using AI tools from US software provider Daz 3D. He also admitted encouraging others to commit sexual offences on children.
At Bolton Crown Court, Judge Martin Walsh imposed an extended sentence on Nelson, saying he posed a “significant risk” of causing harm to the public. That means Nelson will not be eligible for parole until he has completed two-thirds of his sentence.
Advances in AI mean fake images have become more realistic and easier to create, prompting experts to warn about a rise in computer-generated indecent images of children.
Jeanette Smith, a prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Service’s Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit, said Nelson’s case set a new precedent for how computer-generated images and indecent and explicit deepfakes could be prosecuted.
“This case is one of the first of its kind but we do expect to see more as the technology evolves,” said Smith.
Greater Manchester Police found both real images of children and computer-generated images of child sexual abuse on Nelson’s devices, which were seized last June.
The computer-generated images did not look exactly like real photographs but could be classified as “indecent photographs”, rather than “prohibited images”, which generally carry a lesser sentence. This was possible, Smith said, because investigators were able to demonstrate they were derived from images of real children sent to Nelson.
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A landmark case. It’s been the case for decades that non-real, computer-created images could qualify as CSAM (child sexual abuse material), but this is a worrying first: using this software in this way.
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Fitness app Strava gives away location of Biden, Trump and other leaders, French newspaper says • AP via SFGate
Sylvie Corbet:
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An investigation by French newspaper Le Monde found that the highly confidential movements of U.S. President Joe Biden, presidential rivals Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and other world leaders can be easily tracked online through a fitness app that their bodyguards use.
But the US Secret Service told the newspaper that it doesn’t believe the protection it provides was in any way compromised.
Le Monde found that some US Secret Service agents use the Strava fitness app, including in recent weeks after two assassination attempts on Trump, in a video investigation released in French and in English. Strava is a fitness tracking app primarily used by runners and cyclists to record their activities and share their workouts with a community.
Le Monde also found Strava users among the security staff for French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In one example, Le Monde traced the Strava movements of Macron’s bodyguards to determine that the French leader spent a weekend in the Normandy seaside resort of Honfleur in 2021. The trip was meant to be private and wasn’t listed on the president’s official agenda.
Le Monde said the whereabouts of Melania Trump and Jill Biden could also be pinpointed by tracking their bodyguards’ Strava profiles.«
Information leakage really is a thing. The Secret Service may be correct in saying that it doesn’t compromise their protection, but letting people know where the location of Secret Service agents isn’t great either. (When I first saw the headline I thought “they wouldn’t use Strava”. Half-right, I guess.)
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On cryptocurrency, 63% of US adults not confident it’s safe, reliable • Pew Research Center
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While only a minority of Americans have invested in cryptocurrency, a majority of those who have done so still have it.
Among those who have ever invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency:
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61% say they currently have cryptocurrency, which is down from 69% in 2023
• 39% say they currently do not have any cryptocurrency, up from 31% in 2023.By income: roughly half (51%) of adults in lower-income households who’ve used cryptocurrency say they no longer have any, outpacing those in middle-income (32%) or upper-income (36%) households who say the same.
These shares are similar to those measured in 2023. The only significant change is among upper-income cryptocurrency users: 36% have given up the currency, an increase from 21% in 2023.
The financial impact of cryptocurrency is still a concern for many users. When asked about their own investments, the largest shares say they’ve done worse (38%) or about as expected (37%). In comparison, 20% say their investments have done better than expected and 4% are unsure.
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The picture I get is of waning interest and people cutting their losses, while perhaps leaving a little behind just in case it ever comes back. (Or they’ve forgotten how to retrieve it.)
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Russia amplified hurricane disinformation to drive Americans apart, researchers find • AP News
David Klepper:
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Russia has helped amplify and spread false and misleading internet claims about recent hurricanes in the United States and the federal government’s response, part of a wider effort by the Kremlin to manipulate America’s political discourse before the presidential election, new research shows.
The content, spread by Russian state media and networks of social media accounts and websites, criticizes the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, exploiting legitimate concerns about the recovery effort in an attempt to paint American leaders as incompetent and corrupt, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The London-based organization tracks disinformation and online extremism.
In some cases, the claims about the storms include fake images created using artificial intelligence, such as a photo depicting scenes of devastating flooding at Disney World that never happened, researchers say.
The approach is consistent with the Kremlin’s long-standing practice of identifying legitimate debates and contentious issues in the U.S. and then exploiting them. Previous disinformation campaigns have harnessed debates about immigration, racism, crime and the economy in an effort to portray the US as corrupt, violent and unjust.
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Odd, because one side of the US presidential election also tries to portray the country in the same way. I guess it’s easier to push on an open door.
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A million people play this video wargame. So does the Pentagon. – WSJ
Daniel Michaels and Juanje Gómez:
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Wargames—long the realm of top brass and classified plans—let strategists test varying scenarios, using different tactics and equipment. Now they are filtering down the ranks and out among analysts. Digitization, boosted by artificial intelligence, helps yield practical lessons in greater safety and at lower cost than staging military maneuvers would. Wargames can also explore hypotheticals that no exercise could address, such as nuclear warfare.
Proponents of wargames include Tim Barrick, a retired Marine colonel who is now wargaming director at Marine Corps University. He drills students using board games and computers. In one online exercise, he pushed eight Marine majors repeatedly through the same Pacific military engagement, using a program called Command: Professional Edition.
This software is unusual because it didn’t originate with a defence contractor or institute, as most wargames do. It is a simulation program built and marketed by gamers with almost no military background—and rooted in Tom Clancy novels. Users of all stripes have made it a surprise hit.
…Command’s British publisher, Slitherine Software, stumbled into popularity. The family business got started around 2000 selling retail CD-ROM games like Legion, involving ancient Roman military campaigns.
When Defense Department officials in 2016 first contacted Slitherine, which is based in an old house in a leafy London suburb, its father-and-son managers were so stunned they thought the call might be a prank. “Are you taking the piss?” J.D. McNeil, the father, recalled asking near the end of the conversation.
What drew Pentagon attention was the software’s vast, precise database of planes, ships, missiles and other military equipment from around the world, which allows exceptionally accurate modeling.
Former Air Force Air Mobility Command analyst Pete Szabo started using Command around 2017 to model military planes’ fuel consumption in battle scenarios. “It’s been a very powerful tool for us,” said the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. Convincing his superiors to employ commercial, off-the-shelf gaming software, though, took some work, he recalled. “At first it was like, ‘Nooooo.’ ”
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‘Washington Post’ flooded by cancellations after Bezos’ non-endorsement decision NPR
David Folkeflik:
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The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice-President Kamala Harris for president.
More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.
A corporate spokesperson declined to comment, citing The Washington Post Co.’s status as a privately held company.
“It’s a colossal number,” former Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told NPR. “The problem is, people don’t know why the decision was made. We basically know the decision was made but we don’t know what led to it.”
Chief executive and publisher Will Lewis explained the decision not to endorse in this year’s presidential race or in future elections as a return to the Post’s roots: It has for years styled itself an “independent paper.”
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The number is so big and the cancellations have been so sudden that the Post has begun emailing those who do it with cheap offers to encourage them back. The pretence that the Post has not made endorsements is false – it’s been doing it for more than 40 years.
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Different languages, similar encoding efficiency: comparable information rates across the human communicative niche • Science Advances
Christophe Coupé et al:
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Language is universally used by all human groups, but it hardly displays undisputable universal characteristics, with a few possible exceptions related to pragmatic and communicative constraints. This ubiquity comes with very high levels of variation across the 7000 or so languages. For example, linguistic differences between Japanese and English lead to a ratio of 1:11 in their number of distinct syllables.
These differences in repertoire size result in large variation in the amount of information they encode per syllable according to Shannon’s theory of communication. Despite those differences, Japanese and English endow their respective speakers with linguistic systems that fulfil equally well one of the most important roles of spoken communication, namely, information transmission.
We show here that the interplay between language-specific structural properties (as reflected by the amount of information per syllable) and speaker-level language processing and production [as reflected by speech rate (SR)] leads languages to gravitate around an information rate (IR) of about 39 bits/s.
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Stunning finding: despite the colossal difference in the apparent speed at which people speak, the amount of information transmitted per second is constant. There’s no “better” language. One has to wonder: if there were, would everyone gravitate to it? And does this finding transfer to the written word too?
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Lost at the station? Follow the blind inventor’s navigation app • The Times
Nicholas Hellen:
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It is, admittedly, one of life’s more trivial annoyances, but one that exasperates many. Why are smartphone navigation apps not accurate enough to show us which way to turn when getting off a bus, or leaving the train or Tube?
Despite their vast wealth and technical resources, Apple and Google leave users to pace back and forth until the blue locator dot on the phone gives a clue by moving decisively one way or the other.
It has taken a blind entrepreneur, Tom Pey, 71, to take the challenge seriously.
His service, an app called Waymap, tells users which way to turn, gives step-by-step directions, and is accurate to the nearest metre, even when there is no phone signal. It works underground and in crowds, when conventional services are notoriously unreliable, and even indoors.
The service is so accurate that it could, for example, guide people directly to their seat in a football stadium, find the cheese counter in a supermarket or help users avoid getting lost and missing an appointment in a hospital.
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Nice idea, because we always need these.
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Indian coal giants pushed for lax pollution rules while ramping up production • Climate Change News
Akshay Deshmane:
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The Indian government weakened rules to curb pollution caused by its expanding coal industry after lobbying by top producers, even as it agreed internationally to phase down the use of coal, an investigation by Climate Home has found.
India’s coal giants pushed back hard against environmental regulation meant to tighten up the disposal of fly ash – a byproduct of coal-fired power plants known to harm both humans and the environment if not managed properly.
Letters sent by coal companies to the Indian government – and accessed by Climate Home News through freedom of information requests to government agencies – reveal lobbying efforts to weaken federal rules between 2019 and 2023.
The state-run firms involved were Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s third-biggest coal mining company, and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) Limited, one of the top 10 coal-fired power companies globally.
Top management at the coal giants claimed their organisations would not be able to comply fully with the government regulations, aimed at controlling fly ash disposal after decades of public health impacts for local communities. Even after the rules were approved, the companies continued efforts to weaken them, in some cases successfully.
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Fly ash puts more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear power stations. Hooray for lobbying, eh.
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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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