Lifeboat Foundation

2021 will be remembered as a significant year for the cyber security industry. With the pandemic accelerating digital transformation, the threat landscape was in constant flux. Major ransomware attacks demonstrated not just their impact on businesses, but wider society too. As we look ahead to 2022, the only constant in our industry is uncertainty in the cyber realm, but here are a few of our predictions for next year, based on trends we’re already seeing emerge.

Ransomware.

The innovation could be a game-changer for communication technologies, such as phones and internet connections.

A team from UCF has developed the world’s first optical oscilloscope, an instrument that is able to measure the electric field of light. The device converts light oscillations into electrical signals, much like hospital monitors convert a patient’s heartbeat into electrical oscillation.

Until now, reading the electric field of light has been a challenge because of the high speeds at which light waves oscillates. The most advanced techniques, which power our phone and internet communications, can currently clock electric fields at up to gigahertz frequencies — covering the radio frequency and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light waves oscillate at much higher rates, allowing a higher density of information to be transmitted. However, the current tools for measuring light fields could resolve only an average signal associated with a ‘pulse’ of light, and not the peaks and valleys within the pulse. Measuring those peaks and valleys within a single pulse is important because it is in that space that information can be packed and delivered.

The Neuro-Network.

𝐍𝐞𝐰 ‘𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐢-𝐀𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠’ 𝐕𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐬. 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐈𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬?

𝘼𝙣 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙡 𝙫𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙨𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙨 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛… See more.

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Jamie Metzl is an author specializing in topics of genetic engineering, biotechnology, and geopolitics. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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Continue reading “Jamie Metzl: Lab Leak Theory | Lex Fridman Podcast #247” »

Reddit user htGoSEVe posted a map of the potential rail voyage, later updating his post to reflect the fact that sections of the journey — from Lisbon to Hendaye in France, and the Paris-Moscow Express, for example — have been paused during the pandemic.

Rail enthusiasts estimate that it would cost a little over £1,000 in tickets.

But fellow Reddit user Shevek99 commented to suggest that the journey could be made even longer and more ambitious by starting further east.

HONG KONG, Dec 17 (Reuters Breakingviews) — After conquering semiconductors, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s biggest chipmaker has a new challenge: kickstarting Taiwan’s stalled green transition. Bureaucracy and red tape have marred the island’s renewable-energy goals. The company’s (2330.TW) voracious appetite for cleaner power will offer a much-needed spark.

Referendums on whether to restart a nuclear power plant and whether to change the location of a planned $2 billion liquid fossil gas terminal highlight how politically contentious the island’s energy issues are. President Tsai Ing-wen has pledged to phase out nuclear power and is hoping gas-fired plants will supply half of the $600 billion economy’s electricity needs by 2025. At the same time, she has promised to increase the share of renewable sources to 20%, from 5.4% in 2020.

On paper that’s doable, but in practice it looks increasingly out of reach. Covid-19 disruptions held up wind and solar projects, but lengthy and complex approval processes are also to blame. Offshore wind developers, for instance, must obtain consent letters from at least eight different authorities as well as approval from the environmental watchdog even to be eligible to bid for projects. Those that make it to the second round must also detail how they can meet local procurement requirements, often onerous criteria given how new the industry is in Taiwan. According to one 2021 estimate, unfinished wind and solar projects totalled $83 billion, among the highest in Asia.

For all that neural networks can accomplish, we still don’t really understand how they operate. Sure, we can program them to learn, but making sense of a machine’s decision-making process remains much like a fancy puzzle with a dizzying, complex pattern where plenty of integral pieces have yet to be fitted.

If a model was trying to classify an image of said puzzle, for example, it could encounter well-known, but annoying adversarial attacks, or even more run-of-the-mill data or processing issues. But a new, more subtle type of failure recently identified by MIT scientists is another cause for concern: “overinterpretation,” where algorithms make confident predictions based on details that don’t make sense to humans, like random patterns or image borders.

This could be particularly worrisome for high-stakes environments, like split-second decisions for self-driving cars, and medical diagnostics for diseases that need more immediate attention. Autonomous vehicles in particular rely heavily on systems that can accurately understand surroundings and then make quick, safe decisions. The network used specific backgrounds, edges, or particular patterns of the sky to classify traffic lights and street signs—irrespective of what else was in the image.

Could a pill make you more moral? Should you take it if it could?

Yale researchers have developed an mRNA vaccine that targets the antigens found in tick saliva in order to alert individuals to tick bites as well as prevent the tick from feeding correctly, thereby reducing its ability to transmit pathogens.