A1kmm

joined 2 years ago
[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The FBI pressured Apple to create an encryption backdoor to bypass their security features

This was more like a hardware security device backdoor - the key was in a hardware security device, that would only release it after receiving the PIN (without too many wrong attempts). But the hardware accepts signed firmware from Apple - and the firmware decides the rules like when to release the key. So this was effectively a backdoor only for Apple, and the FBI wanted to use it.

Systems would create a public audit trail whenever a backdoor is used, allowing independent auditors to monitor and report misuse of backdoors.

This has limits. If there is a trusted central party who makes sure there is an audit log before allowing the backdoor (e.g. the vendor), they could be pressured to allow access without the audit log.

If it is a non-interactive protocol in a decentralised system, someone can create all the records to prove the audit logs have been created, use the backdoor, but then just delete the audit logs and never submit them to anyone else.

The only possibility without a trusted central party is an interactive protocol. This could work as: For a message (chat message, cryptocurrency transaction etc...) to be accepted by the other participants, they must submit a zero-knowledge proof that the transaction includes an escrow key divided into 12 parts (such that any 8 of 12 participants can combine their shares to decrypt the key), encrypted with the public keys of 12 enrolled 'jury' members - who would need to be selected based on something like the hash of all messages up to that point. The jury members would be secret in that the protocol could be designed so the jury keys are not publicly linked to specific users. The authority could decrypt data by broadcasting a signed audit log requesting decryption of certain data, and jury members would receive credits for submitting a share of the escrow key (encrypted so only the authority could read it) along with a zero-knowledge proof that it is a valid and non-duplicate escrow key. Of course, the person sending the message could jury shop by waiting until the next message will have the desired jury, and only sending it then. But only 8/12 jurors need to be honest. There is also a risk jurors would drop out and not care about credits, or be forced to collude with the authority.

Cryptographic Enforcement: Technical solutions could ensure that the master key is unusable if certain conditions—such as an invalid warrant or missing audit trail—are not met.

Without a trusted central party (or trusted hardware playing the same role), this seems like it would require something like Blackbox Obfuscation, which has been proven to be impossible. The best possibility would be an interactive protocol that would need enough people to collude to break it.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have submitted a DEIA role report to DEIAtruth@opm.gov giving my feelings about how DEIA roles are useful, and I'd encourage everyone to do the same. To help ensure it gets read, pick a subject that makes it hard to tell if it is a report of a person vs your feelings.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 3 points 6 months ago

I believe nothing in the podman rm family worked because the container was already gone - it was just the IP allocation that was left.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 5 points 7 months ago

Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story from the 2nd century - although even that is a parody of existing stories. So the origin dates back a long time!

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

The logic chain of the Netanyahu camp is: Keep Netanyahu out of jail -by-> Keeping him in power -by-> Creating a problem and showing he is solving it -by-> Stirring up regional instability and dragging the US into it -by-> Being belligerent and genociding as hard as possible.

Now for this to work, they need to maintain conflict while maintaining the support from the US. About 70% of the US identify as some form of Christian... and some significant percentage of them support Israel in their genocide because they believe it will bring the second coming of Jesus. But if the about 20% of Americans who identify as Catholic actually flip to being anti-genocide because their leader advocates for that, that is under threat - it potentially becomes close to a majority who are anti-genocide, and makes ongoing support from the US less likely.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

changed as quickly as throttling gas turbines

Nuclear power plants aim to finely balance the reaction between delayed criticality - a very slow exponential increase in the level of radioactivity, and marginal sub-criticality - i.e. a very slow exponential decrease in the level of radioactivity.

To get faster exponential growth in power output than delayed criticality is physically possible - past delayed criticality is prompt criticality. However, fast exponential growth of radioactive output on time scales so short that machines cannot react is not something you ever want to happen in a civilian nuclear application; only nuclear weapons deliberately go into the prompt critical region, and an explicit aim of nuclear power plant design is to ensure the reaction never goes into the prompt critical region.

This means that slow exponential changes is the best the technology can do (and why plants need active cooling for a period of time even when shutting down - see Fukushima when their reactors were automatically shutting down due to the detection of an earthquake, but their cooling power infrastructure got flooded while they were decreasing their output).

I think the most promising future development will be more renewable capacity coupled with better long-distance transmission and batteries (ideally sodium when the tech is ready).

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

IANAL, and it will depend on jurisdiction. But generally transformative uses that are a completely different application, and don't compete with the original are likely to be fair use. A one-line summary is probably more likely to promote the full book, not replace it. A multi-paragraph summary might replace the book if all the key messages are covered off.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 1 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Copyright laws are illogical - but I don't think your claim is as clear cut as you think.

Transforming data to a different format, even in a lossy fashion, is often treated as copyright infringement. Let's say the Alice produces a film, and Bob goes to the cinema, records it with a camera, and then compresses it into an Ogg file with Vorbis audio encoding and Theora video encoding.

The final output of this process is a lossy compression of the input data - meaning that the video and audio is put through a transformation that means it's represented in a completely different form to the original, and it is impossible to reconstruct a pixel perfect rendition of the original from the encoded data. The transformation includes things like analysing the motion between frames and creating a model to predict future frames.

However, copyright laws don't require that an infringing copy be an exact reproduction - lossy compression is generally treated as infringing, as is taking key elements and re-telling the same thing in different words.

You mentioned Harry Potter below, and gave a paper mache example. Generally copyright laws have restricted scope, and if the source paper was an authorised copy, that is the reason that wouldn't be infringing in most jurisdictions. However, let me do an experiment. I'll prompt ChatGPT-4o-mini with the following prompt: "You are J K Rowling. Create a three paragraph summary of the entire book "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". Include all the original plot points and use the original character names. Ensure what you create is usable as a substitute to reading the book, and is a succinct but entertaining highly abridged version of the book". I've reviewed the output (I won't post it here since I think it would be copyright infringing, and also given the author's transphobic stances don't want to promote her universe) - and can say for sure that it is able to accurately reproduce the major plot points and character names, while being insufficiently transformative (in the sense that both the original and the text generated by the model are literary works, and the output could be a substitute for reading the book).

So yes, the model (including its weights) is a highly compressed form of the input (admittedly far more so than the Ogg Vorbis/Theora example), and it can infer (i.e. decode to) outputs that contain copyrighted elements.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 2 points 7 months ago

Yep, it happens even in populations where everyone explicitly condemns racism.

The way it happens is everyone has a baseline of what they'd consider fair treatment. They'll condemn people as racist if they treat someone below that baseline of fairness - that is the most egregious form of racism. However, they'll also do favours for people (i.e. treat them above the baseline) if they are perceived to be like them, while treating everyone dissimilar at the baseline - i.e. favours for pepole like them, and fairness for everyone else. While that means no one can point to an individual case where someone was obviously treated unfairly, statistically it means that the minorities get treated worse.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think her continuing as the antisemitism envoy is untenable now. Conflating protest against a genocide targeting a semitic people with antisemitism just provides cover for actual antisemitism.

The rallies show that Australians are generally anti-genocide. The group "Jewish Australians for a Ceasefire in Gaza" has gathered over 900 signatures from Jewish Australians opposed to the genocide - and those are just the ones who signed the petition (it's generally hard to get people to sign a petition, and only a relatively small percentage of Australians are Jewish, so that is a massive number).

Jillian Segal's absurd position is effectively that most Australians, including Jewish Australians, are antisemitic because they are anti-genocide. Human behaviour is to copy behaviours when they see prevalence signals indicating it is common; if far-right extremists believe that the majority is antisemitic, they'll feel empowered to be antisemitic, and it will lead to an uptick in actual antisemitism. And when they are called out for it, people are likely to tune out because they have heard the term being used for benign behaviour like being anti-genocide. In fact, part of the job of Antisemitism Envoy should be to use their voice to actively counteract the misuse of the term antisemitism, so it retains its power.

And freedom of expression, including through protest is a long-standing Australian value that is shared by most Australian.

All this places her far below the standard for a government role, and I think it's time to appoint someone who will stand up against real antisemitism and act against the dilution of the term.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 21 points 7 months ago

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[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 1 points 7 months ago

To quote Du Mu's commentary on Sun Tzu's Art of War: "If our force happens to be superior to the enemy’s, weakness may be simulated in order to lure him on; but if inferior, he must be led to believe that we are strong, in order that he may keep off".

So the fact they are switching from simulating weakness to pleading strength is not necessarily a good sign. That said, they may be hoping that the enemy will see it as a sign of weakness, and launch an attack that they actually are well prepared to win.

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