Centennial Man

Tuesday, April 05, 2022

Because we need more bureaus and more bureaucracies.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3655974/u-s-state-department-unveils-new-bureau-of-cyberspace-and-digital-policy.html#tk.rss_all

U.S. State Department unveils new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy

The new Bureau could enhance the United States' ability to work effectively with other nations on cybersecurity matters.

The U.S. State Department announced that its Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (CDP) began operations on Monday as part of Secretary Antony Blinken’s modernization agenda. The Department says the CDP will address the national security challenges, economic opportunities, and implications for U.S. values associated with cyberspace, digital technologies, and digital policy.

The Bureau, ultimately to be led by a Senate-confirmed ambassador-at-Large, will, in the interim, be guided by Jennifer Bachus, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau. The CDP will include three policy units led by acting deputy assistant secretaries, including international cyberspace security, international information and communications policy, and digital freedom.

Does that clear it up?

https://www.pogowasright.org/murder-probes-get-data-privacy-ground-rules-from-eu-court-of-justice/

Murder probes get data-privacy ground rules from EU Court of Justice

Bloomberg reports:

Murder investigators in the European Union avoided a blanket ban on the use of suspects’ phone records even as the bloc’s top court confirmed a prohibition on the retention of swathes of citizens’ communications data.

The EU Court of Justice said on Tuesday that EU law “precludes the general and indiscriminate scooping up of traffic and location data by crime agencies. But on the other hand, judges said national rules can allow the “targeted retention” of traffic and location data for “the purposes of combating serious crime and preventing serious threats to public security.”

Read more at Alarabiya News.

Okay, this one is unexpected. And perhaps unreal?

https://petapixel.com/2022/04/04/this-ai-can-make-an-eerily-accurate-portrait-using-only-your-voice/

This AI Can Make an Eerily Accurate Portrait Using Only Your Voice

Photographs are made with the help of light, but what if portraits of people could be made with the sound of their voices? AI researchers have been working on reconstructing the face of a person using only a short audio recording of that person speaking, and the results are eerily impressive.

Artificial intelligence scientists at MIT’S Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) first published about an AI algorithm called Speech2Face in a paper back in 2019.

Something is working?

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/economic-sanctions-affecting-russia/

How Economic Sanctions Are Affecting Russia

The ruble is now worth less than a penny and the economy is teetering, with Russia expected to default on billions of dollars in foreign debt. Multinational companies across all sectors are pulling out of the country, taking their products, services, and jobs with them.

“Pretty much anybody who has participation in the banking system, which is a vast majority of the population, feels it one way or another,” Wharton finance professor Nikolai Roussanov said. “This is felt by all strata of society, maybe in different ways.”

Perspective.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/04/russia-cannot-afford-to-lose-so-we-need-a-kind-of-a-victory-sergey-karaganov-on-what-putin-wants

“Russia cannot afford to lose, so we need a kind of a victory”: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants

… Bruno Maçães interviewed Karaganov about his views on the war – including controversial statements on Ukrainian nationhood and denazification that would be disputed by those outside Russia – and the future of the liberal international order.

Another stab at a definition. My AI says we’re not quite there yet…

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/333143-what-is-artificial-intelligence

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

… Conceptually: In the sense of its logical structure, to be an AI, you need three fundamental parts. First, there’s the decision process — usually an equation, a model, or just some code. AIs often perform classification or apply transformations. To do that, the AI must be able to decide on patterns in the data. Second, there’s an error function — some way for the AI to check its work. And third, if the AI is going to learn from experience, it needs some way to optimize its model. Many neural networks do this with a system of weighted nodes, where each node has both a value and a relationship to its network neighbors. Values change over time; stronger relationships have a higher weight in the error function.