Tech-News
New Twitter rules expose election offices to spoof accounts
Tracking down accurate information about Philadelphia's elections on Twitter used to be easy. The account for the city commissioners who run elections, @phillyvotes, was the only one carrying a blue check mark, a sign of authenticity.
But ever since the social media platform overhauled its verification service last month, the check mark has disappeared. That’s made it harder to distinguish @phillyvotes from a list of random accounts not run by the elections office but with very similar names.
The election commission applied weeks ago for a gray check mark — Twitter’s new symbol to help users identify official government accounts – but has yet to hear back from the Twitter, commission spokesman Nick Custodio said. It’s unclear whether @phillyvotes is an eligible government account under Twitter’s new rules.
That’s troubling, Custodio said, because Pennsylvania has a primary election May 16 and the commission uses its account to share important information with voters in real time. If the account remains unverified, it will be easier to impersonate – and harder for voters to trust – heading into Election Day.
Impostor accounts on social media are among many concerns election security experts have heading into next year's presidential election. Experts have warned that foreign adversaries or others may try to influence the election, either through online disinformation campaigns or by hacking into election infrastructure.
Election administrators across the country have struggled to figure out the best way to respond after Twitter owner Elon Musk threw the platform’s verification service into disarray, given that Twitter has been among their most effective tools for communicating with the public.
Some are taking other steps allowed by Twitter, such as buying check marks for their profiles or applying for a special label reserved for government entities, but success has been mixed. Election and security experts say the inconsistency of Twitter’s new verification system is a misinformation disaster waiting to happen.
“The lack of clear, at-a-glance verification on Twitter is a ticking time bomb for disinformation,” said Rachel Tobac, CEO of the cybersecurity company SocialProof Security. “That will confuse users – especially on important days like election days.”
The blue check marks that Twitter once doled out to notable celebrities, public figures, government entities and journalists began disappearing from the platform in April. To replace them, Musk told users that anyone could pay $8 a month for an individual blue check mark or $1,000 a month for a gold check mark as a “verified organization.”
The policy change quickly opened the door for pranksters to pose convincingly as celebrities, politicians and government entities, which could no longer be identified as authentic. While some impostor accounts were clear jokes, others created confusion.
Fake accounts posing as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city’s Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation falsely claimed the city was closing one of its main thoroughfares to private traffic. The fake accounts used the same photos, biographical text and home page links as the real ones. Their posts amassed hundreds of thousands of views before being taken down.
Twitter’s new policy invites government agencies and certain affiliated organizations to apply to be labeled as official with a gray check. But at the state and local level, qualifying agencies are limited to “main executive office accounts and main agency accounts overseeing crisis response, public safety, law enforcement, and regulatory issues," the policy says.
The rules do not mention agencies that run elections. So while the main Philadelphia city government account quickly received its gray check mark last month, the local election commission has not heard back.
Election offices in four of the country's five most populous counties — Cook County in Illinois, Harris County in Texas, Maricopa County in Arizona and San Diego County — remain unverified, a Twitter search shows. Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, has been targeted repeatedly by election conspiracy theorists as the most populous and consequential county in one of the most closely divided political battleground states.
Some counties contacted by The Associated Press said they have minimal concerns about impersonation or plan to apply for a gray check later, but others said they already have applied and have not heard back from Twitter.
Even some state election offices are waiting for government labels. Among them is the office of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
In an April 24 email to Bellows’ communications director reviewed by The Associated Press, a Twitter representative wrote that there was “nothing to do as we continue to manually process applications from around the world.” The representative added in a later email that Twitter stands “ready to swiftly enforce any impersonation, so please don’t hesitate to flag any problematic accounts.”
An email sent to Twitter's press office and a company safety officer requesting comment was answered only with an auto-reply of a poop emoji.
“Our job is to reinforce public confidence,” Bellows told the AP. “Even a minor setback, like no longer being able to ensure that our information on Twitter is verified, contributes to an environment that is less predictable and less safe.”
Some government accounts, including the one representing Pennsylvania’s second-largest county, have purchased blue checks because they were told it was required to continue advertising on the platform.
Allegheny County posts ads for elections and jobs on Twitter, so the blue check mark “was necessary,” said Amie Downs, the county's communications director.
When anyone can buy verification and when government accounts are not consistently labeled, the check mark loses its meaning, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said.
Griswold’s office received a gray check mark to maintain trust with voters, but she told the AP she would not buy verification for her personal Twitter account because “it doesn’t carry the same weight” it once did.
Custodio, at the Philadelphia elections commission, said his office would not buy verification either, even if it gets denied a gray check.
“The blue or gold check mark just verifies you as a paid subscriber and does not verify identity,” he said.
Experts and advocates tracking election discourse on social media say Twitter's changes do not just incentivize bad actors to run disinformation campaigns — they also make it harder for well-meaning users to know what’s safe to share.
IT Competition for Youths with Disabilities ends
The seventh National IT Competition for Youths with Disabilities has ended successfully.
The day-long contest was organised by the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) of the ICT Division on Saturday at the BUBT University campus in the capital's Mirpur in collaboration with the Center for Services and Information on Disability (CSID) and the Bangladesh University of Business and Technology (BUBT).
The Executive Director (Grade-1) of BCC Ranajit Kumar was present as the chief guest while Md. Shamsul Huda FCA, chairman of the Board of Trustee of BUBT and Khandaker Jahurul Alam, executive director of CSID, were present as special guests at the closing and award ceremony of the event.
Chaired by Pro-Vice Chancellor of BUBT Professor Dr. Md. Ali Noor, BCC Director (Training & Development) Engr. Md. Golam Sarwar gave a welcome address on the programme.
Ranajit Kumar said that the national IT competition is crucial for youth with disabilities in our country. It provides a remarkable platform to showcase their skills, and talents in the field of information technology, thereby creating an opportunity for massive expansion of ICT practice.
"Such arrangements contribute to encouraging youth with disabilities as well as reducing barriers and challenges faced by persons with disabilities in accessing education and employment opportunities in the ICT field", he added.
Future of AI and humanity: 4 dangers that most worry the 'Godfather of AI'
Geoffrey Hinton, an award-winning computer scientist known as the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” is having some serious second thoughts about the fruits of his labors.
Hinton helped pioneer AI technologies critical to a new generation of highly capable chatbotssuch as ChatGPT. But in recent interviews, he says that he recently resigned a high-profile job at Google specifically to share his concerns that unchecked AI development could pose danger to humanity.
“I have suddenly switched my views on whether these things are going to be more intelligent than us,” he said in an interview with MIT Technology Review. “I think they’re very close to it now and they will be much more intelligent than us in the future.... How do we survive that?”
Hinton is not alone in his concerns. Shortly after the Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI released its latest AI model called GPT-4 in March, more than 1,000 researchers and technologists signed a letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development because, they said, it poses “profound risks to society and humanity.”
Also read: AI 'godfather' Geoffrey quits Google, warns of dangers
Here’s a look at Hinton’s biggest concerns about the future of AI ... and humanity.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE NEURAL NETWORKS
Our human brains can solve calculus equations, drive cars and keep track of the characters in “Succession” thanks to their native talent for organizing and storing information and reasoning out solutions to thorny problems. The roughly 86 billion neurons packed into our skulls — and, more important, the 100 trillion connections those neurons forge among themselves — make that possible.
By contrast, the technology underlying ChatGPT features between 500 billion and a trillion connections, Hinton said in the interview. While that would seem to put it at a major disadvantage relative to us, Hinton notes that GPT-4, the latest AI model from OpenAI, knows “hundreds of times more” than any single human. Maybe, he suggests, it has a “much better learning algorithm” than we do, making it more efficient at cognitive tasks.
AI MAY ALREADY BE SMARTER THAN US
Researchers have long noted that artificial neural networks take much more time to absorb and apply new knowledge than people do, since training them requires tremendous amounts of both energy and data. That’s no longer the case, Hinton argues, noting that systems like GPT-4 can learn new things very quickly once properly trained by researchers. That’s not unlike the way a trained professional physicist can wrap her brain around new experimental findings much more quickly than a typical high school science student could.
That leads Hinton to the conclusion that AI systems might already be outsmarting us. Not only can AI systems learn things faster, he notes, they can also share copies of their knowledge with each other almost instantly.
“It’s a completely different form of intelligence,” he told the publication. “A new and better form of intelligence.”
New AI model can accurately diagnose cancer: Study
Researchers, doctors, and scientists have created an artificial intelligence model that can accurately diagnose cancer, a development that might accelerate patient access to treatment.
Cancer is the leading cause of death in the world. According to the World Health Organization, it causes around 10 million deaths every year, or roughly one in every six deaths. However, in many cases, the disease can be cured if detected early and treated promptly, reports The Guardian.
The artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by experts at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Imperial College London can determine if abnormal growths seen on CT scans are cancerous.
According to a study, the algorithm outperforms current approaches in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The findings were reported in the Lancet's eBioMedicine journal, it said.
“In the future, we hope it will improve early detection and potentially make cancer treatment more successful by highlighting high-risk patients and fast-tracking them to earlier intervention,” said Dr Benjamin Hunter, a clinical oncology registrar at the Royal Marsden and a clinical research fellow at Imperial.
The researchers used CT images from 500 patients with big lung nodules to create an AI system based on radiomics. The technology can extract critical information from medical photos that the human eye cannot see.The AI model was then put to the test to see if it could correctly detect malignant nodules.
The area under the curve (AUC) was used in the study to determine how good the model was in predicting cancer. An AUC of 1 suggests a flawless model, whereas an AUC of 0.5 would be predicted if the model was guessing at random, The Guardian report said.
The results showed that the AI model could predict the probability of cancer in each nodule with an AUC of 0.87. The Brock score, a test now used in clinic, scored 0.67. The model also performed similarly to another test, the Herder score, which had an AUC of 0.83.
“According to these initial results, our model appears to identify cancerous large lung nodules accurately,” Hunter said. “Next, we plan to test the technology on patients with large lung nodules in the clinic to see if it can accurately predict their risk of lung cancer.”
The AI model may also assist doctors in making more timely choices regarding patients with abnormal growths that are now classified as medium-risk, the report added.
The AI model, when combined with Herder, was able to detect high-risk patients in this group. According to the study, it would have indicated early care for 18 of 22 (82%) of the nodules that were later proved to be cancerous, it said.The Libra project, which is supported by the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, RM Partners, and Cancer Research UK, is still in its early stages, according to the team. More testing is needed before the model can be implemented in healthcare systems.
However, the potential benefits were obvious, they said. Researchers anticipate that the AI technology may someday be able to speed up cancer identification by assisting patients in receiving treatment and simplifying CT scan processing.
Drone taxis will be up and running between South Korea’s Incheon airport and Seoul in 2025: Mayor
Mayor of South Korea’s Incheon metropolitan city, Yoo Jeong-bok, has said drone taxis will be up and running between Incheon International Airport and the capital city Seoul in 2025.
“Incheon is considered one of the best places to do business and a great place to invest in (South) Korea by leading companies at home and abroad,” he said.
The mayor was addressing a farewell reception marking the conclusion of the World Journalists Conference 2023 in Incheon on April 28.
Read More: Known for laughs, DC dinner spotlights risks of journalism.
Understanding VPN: The Comprehensive Guide
From online frauds, and scams to even hacking sensitive personal information, the Internet these days seems to be a haven for fraudsters. There’s a growing concern about internet security and how it might jeopardize the security of information and finance of people and organizations. VPN or Virtual Private Network can be a solution to such problems. Millions of people around the world are adopting VPNs for their data security and safe online browsing. So here’s a beginner's guide on VPN. Let’s find out how a VPN works, the benefits, and the types of VPNs.
What is a VPN?
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. Generally, the internet is provided through an ISP which processes all of their user’s traffic simultaneously. This makes them susceptible to malicious attacks which might intercept the net traffic to access personal data.
A VPN works as an intermediary between the computer and the destination to make it untraceable. There are a few complicated steps involved in the process. Let’s have a look.
Read more: How to Protect Your YouTube Channel from Getting Hacked
How Does VPN Work?
VPN creates a secure channel between the computer and the intended destination by developing a private network just for the user. The data gets encrypted and sent directly to the VPN server. There it gets decoded and sent to the intended location. This middle encryption allows the data to be completely untraceable by anyone.
Every device has a unique IP address that can be used to trace all of its activity. VPN essentially masks the IP address and assigns a new IP address from their server. As a result, the data becomes completely untraceable even by the ISP. VPN works not only to maintain anonymity online and protect privacy but also to allow users to access region-specific content.
Benefits of Using a VPN
There are a lot of benefits to using VPN. Here are a mentionable few.
Enhanced Privacy
VPN brings enhanced privacy thanks to the end-to-end encryption between you and the VPN server, making it impossible to be tracked by a third party.
Read More: Bank Account Hacking Protection: How to save financial accounts from hackers?
Secured Data Transmission
The end-to-end computer-to-server extension also allows for secured data transmission. This is especially helpful if a user is in a public network zone like using free wifi. It's impossible to tell who else is signed into the network and what kind of monitoring they might be running. Secured encryption allows for safe data transmission.
Bypassing Geographical Restrictions
VPN helps to bypass geographical restrictions so that a user can access services that might not be available in their location or to evade censorship. For example, Netflix has a host of shows that are available in the UK but not in India. With VPN, a user from India can reroute their IP through the UK and access all the contents regardless of the restrictions.
OPPO wins 2 international awards for innovation
OPPO has recently been honoured with two international awards in recognition of its innovation and industry influence.
OPPO Air Glass won silver in the AR category at the 2023 Edison Best New Product AwardsTM. OPPO was also named one of the 10 Most Innovative Asia-Pacific Companies of 2023 by business media Fast Company, according to a press release.
The awards were announced in Florida on 20 April.
Established in 1987 in honour of inventor Thomas Edison, the Edison Awards are among the most prestigious accolades in the world recognizing products, designs, and technologies that have made outstanding contributions to global innovation, said the release.
The Edison Awards are selected by a panel of over 3,000 business executives and academics on the four criteria of concept, value, delivery, and impact.
Alongside awards earned for product innovation, OPPO has also been named by Fast Company as one of the 10 Most Innovative Asia-Pacific Companies of 2023 in recognition of the technological innovation and sustainable impact of its Battery Health Engine, the release also said.
“Through its mission of ‘Technology for Mankind, Kindness for the World’, OPPO is dedicated to developing user-centric innovation that improves lives, communities, and the world,” it said.
At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 in March, OPPO showcased its latest breakthroughs including the SUPERVOOC S power management chip, environment-friendly Zero-power Tags and OPPO’s self-developed MariSilicon Y flagship Bluetooth audio SoC.
“OPPO will continue to aim for even greater heights with its technology and products, providing high-quality services and excellent user experiences for people around the world,” the release added.
Huawei Announces Switch to MetaERP, Redefining Enterprises' Core Business Systems
Huawei announced it has replaced the legacy ERP system with its MetaERP system over which it has full control.
The Huawei hosted the MetaERP Award Ceremony titled "Heroes Fighting to Cross the Dadu River" with the aim to recognize the individuals and teams who made critical contributions to this project at the company's Xi Liu Bei Po Village Campus in Dongguan of China recently.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is the most critical enterprise management IT system. Huawei introduced the MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning) II system in 1996 and later expanded to the ERP system with several iterative upgrades.
The old ERP system was the core system underpinning Huawei's enterprise operations and rapid development for more than 20 years. It supported Huawei's efficient business operations which generate hundreds of billions of dollars every year in more than 170 countries and regions across the world.
In 2019, the Huawei began facing increased external pressure and business challenges. The company decided to develop a completely self-controlled MetaERP system to replace the old ERP system. This has been the most extensive and complex transformation project Huawei has ever undertaken. Over the past three years, Huawei has invested significant resources and assigned several thousand people to this project while also working with industry and ecosystem partners to overcome related challenges.
This new, future-oriented, ultra-large-scale and cloud-native MetaERP system has already gone live by replacing the old ERP system.
MetaERP currently handles 100 percent of Huawei's business scenarios and 80 percent of its business volume.
MetaERP has already passed the tests of monthly, quarterly and yearly settlements while ensuring zero faults, zero delays and zero accounting adjustments.
Sabrina Meng, Huawei's Rotating Chairwoman and CFO, said, "Leaps in technology take a spirit of craftsmanship and years of experience. More importantly, it takes an open mind to drive leaps in the way we think. We wouldn't have been able to build MetaERP without the support of our partners. Innovation is only possible with an open mind, and thriving is only possible when we work together."
Huawei has complete and full-stack control over MetaERP which has been built with other Huawei systems like EulerOS and GaussDB.
Huawei has also worked with partners to incorporate advanced technologies such as cloud-native architecture, metadata-driven multi-tenant architecture and real-time intelligence into the MetaERP system, significantly improving service efficiency and operational quality.
Huawei's guiding principles are to build the simplest possible architecture with the best possible quality, delivering the best possible experience at the lowest possible costs. In a range of fields, including both ERP and PLM, Huawei will keep working with partners to build more efficient and secure core enterprise business systems that are not subject to any restrictions.
Microsoft reports boost in profits, revenue, as it pushes AI
Microsoft on Tuesday reported a 9% increase in profit for the January-March quarter, as growth in cloud computing sales helped bolster its plans to expand its use of artificial intelligence.
The company reported quarterly profit of $18.3 billion, or $2.45 per share, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings of $2.24 a share.
The software maker posted revenue of $52.9 billion in the period, its third fiscal quarter, up 7% from the same period a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Microsoft to post revenue of $51.02 billion for the quarter.
The quarter marked an ambitious push by Microsoft to capitalize on its investments in artificial intelligence and close partnership with San Francisco-based startup OpenAI with the February release of a new AI chatbot feature on its search engine Bing.
Also Read: Is Bing too belligerent? Microsoft looks to tame AI chatbot
Microsoft is also integrating similar AI tools into the cloud computing and software products it sells to big businesses and organizations, though it's not immediately apparent to what extent the AI features are playing a role in overall sales.
Microsoft’s personal computing business, centered on its Windows software, was widely expected to continue a deterioration that began last year due to economic uncertainties and crimped demand. Quarterly sales from that segment dropped 9% to $13.3 billion, the company said Tuesday.
Also Read: Google hopes ‘Bard’ will outsmart ChatGPT, Microsoft in AI
Making up for that decline was a 16% increase in revenue from Microsoft's cloud-based business segment, to $22.1 billion for the quarter. Revenue also grew 11% to $17.5 billion from Microsoft's productivity software segment centered around its Office suite of workplace products such as email.
Big Tech crackdown looms as EU, UK ready new rules
TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon and other Big Tech companies are facing rising pressure from European authorities as London and Brussels advanced new rules Tuesday to curb the power of digital companies.
The U.K. government unveiled draft legislation that would give regulators more power to protect consumers from online scams and fake reviews and boost digital competition.
Meanwhile, the European Union was set to release a list of the 19 biggest online platforms and search engines that face extra scrutiny and obligations under the 27-nation bloc's landmark digital rules taking effect later this year.
Also Read: TikTok attorney: China can’t get U.S. data under plan
The updates help solidify Europe’s reputation as the global leader in efforts to rein in the power of social media companies and other digital platforms.
Britain's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers bill proposes giving watchdogs more teeth to draw down the dominance of tech companies, backed by the threat of fines worth up to 10% of their annual revenue.
Under the proposals, online platforms and search engines can be required to give rivals access to their data or be more transparent about how their app stores and marketplaces work.
The rules would make it illegal to hire someone to write a fake review or allow the posting of online consumer reviews “without taking reasonable steps" to verify they're genuine. They also would make it easier for consumers get out of online subscriptions.
The new rules, which still need go through the legislative process and secure parliamentary approval, would apply only to companies with 25 million pounds in global revenue or 1 billion pounds in U.K. revenue.
Also Read: Twitter restores blue tick to high-profile accounts with over 1 million followers
Also Tuesday, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, is set to designate 19 of the biggest online platforms or search engines that will have to take extra steps to clean up illegal content and disinformation and keep users safe online.
Violations of the bloc’s new Digital Services Act could result in fines worth up to 6% of a company’s annual global revenue — amounting to billions of dollars — or even a ban on operating in the EU.
Google, Twitter, TikTok, Apple, Facebook and Instagram have already disclosed that they have more than 45 million users in Europe, putting them over the bloc's threshold.