Lifeboat Foundation

The context: The vast majority of Facebook’s moderation is now done automatically by the company’s machine-learning systems, reducing the amount of harrowing content its moderators have to review. In its latest community standards enforcement report, published earlier this month, the company claimed that 98% of terrorist videos and photos are removed before anyone has the chance to see them, let alone report them.

So, what are we seeing here?: The company has been training its machine-learning systems to identify and label objects in videos—from the mundane, such as vases or people—to the dangerous, such as guns or knives. Facebook’s AI uses two main approaches to look for dangerous content. One is to employ neural networks that look for features and behaviors of known objects and label them with varying percentages of confidence (as we can see in the video, above.)

Training in progress: These neural networks are trained on a combination of pre-labelled videos from its human reviewers, reports from users, and soon, from videos taken by London’s Metropolitan Police. The neural nets are able to use this information to guess what the entire scene might be showing, and whether it contains any behavior or images that should be flagged. It gave more details on how its systems work at a press briefing this week.

Law enforcement and technologists have been arguing over encryption controls for more than two decades. On one side are privacy advocates and tech bosses like Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, who believe people should be able to have online communications free of snooping. On the other side are law enforcement and some lawmakers, who believe tough encryption makes it impossible to track child predators, terrorists and other criminals.

After years of on-and-off debate over nearly snoop-proof security, the industry is girding for new pressure from law enforcement around the world.

We face complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty about the future consequences of cryptocurrency use. There are doubts about the positive and negative impacts of the use of cryptocurrencies in the financial systems. In order to address better and deeper the contradictions and the consequences of the use of cryptocurrencies and also informing the key stakeholders about known and unknown emerging issues in new payment systems, we apply two helpful futures studies tools known as the “Future Wheel”, to identify the key factors, and “System Dynamics Conceptual Mapping”, to understand the relationships among such factors. Two key scenarios will be addressed. In on them, systemic feedback loops might be identified such as a) terrorism, the Achilles’ heel of the cryptocurrencies, b) hackers, the barrier against development, and c) information technology security professionals, a gap in the future job market. Also, in the other scenario, systemic feedback loops might be identified such as a) acceleration of technological entrepreneurship enabled by new payment systems, b) decentralization of financial ecosystem with some friction against it, c) blockchain and shift of banking business model, d) easy international payments triggering structural reforms, and e) the decline of the US and the end of dollar dominance in the global economy. In addition to the feedback loops, we can also identify chained links of consequences that impact productivity and economic growth on the one hand, and shift of energy sources and consumption on the other hand.

Watch the full length presentation at Victor V. Motti YouTube Channel

1950, the crew of a U.S. Navy minesweeper ship spent six days spraying Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii into the air about two miles off the northern California coast. The project was called €œOperation Sea Spray, € and its aim was to determine the susceptibility of a big city like San Francisco to a bioweapon attack by terrorists.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1950-us-released-b…d-45rvMGkQ

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“While we are on watch, we will not have a repeat of 9/11 or any terrorist incident inside our transportation system in the United States,” said the TSA’s administrator.

With the rise of enhanced being the world will change at a fast pace similar games such as black ops 3 are a proper representation of possible outcomes in warfare. Like for instance sentient warfighting robot beings or cybernetically enhanced humans. The extremes of these also are seen in wetware which can essentially not have many limits so increased strength intelligence really anything you can imagine. Really sci-fi games such as halo are not far off at the possibilities of warfare. Really we are only limited by our imagination.

The author of “Ghost Fleet” has some guesses — and some questions that U.S. defenders will have to answer.

Robots, artificial intelligence, cyberwar, 3D printing, bio-enhancements, and a new geopolitical competition; the 21st century is being shaped by a range of momentous, and scary, new trends and technologies. We should also expect them to shape the worlds of insurgency and terrorism.

Continue reading “What Insurgency Will Look Like in 2030” »

In some countries, progress has not always been smooth. Disease, epidemics and unexpected events are a reminder that ever-longer lives are not a given.

Meanwhile, the deaths that may preoccupy us — from terrorism, war and natural disasters — make up less than 0.5% of all deaths combined.

It will happen to all of us, but how and when we die speaks volumes about who we are and where we live.

Malicious actors could exploit the laws of quantum mechanics to destroy quantum information on a global scale, say physicists.

WCIA: A general strike seems like a personally costly way to protest, especially if you just stop working or stop buying things. Why are they effective?

Recent research suggests that nonviolent civil resistance is far more successful in creating broad-based change than violent campaigns are, a somewhat surprising finding with a story behind it.

When Erica Chenoweth started her predoctoral fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 2006, she believed in the strategic logic of armed resistance. She had studied terrorism, civil war, and major revolutions—Russian, French, Algerian, and American—and suspected that only violent force had achieved major social and political change. But then a workshop led her to consider proving that violent resistance was more successful than the nonviolent kind. Since the question had never been addressed systematically, she and colleague Maria J. Stephan began a research project.

Continue reading “Why nonviolent resistance is more successful in effecting change than violent campaigns” »