Posts by Captain Kephart

America world’s sole cyber superpower, ten years ahead of China, says Brit think tank

Ha!

I've just written a report that says I'm the top super cyberpower ... so there!

Oh, wait a minute, you mean I have to prove it? oh-oh ...

PS: Brits trying to big up the 'special relationship' to please Biden?

Incidentally this morning, re Afghanistan withdrawal, the chair of the UK's Foreign Affairs Select Committee just said publicly that the British Army was now useless on the world stage and that, therefore, PM Boris Johnson's 'Global Britian' bluster was meaningless. In effect the Chair said that the UK had lost the confidence of it's allies and gained the derision of its adversaries.

What, reality striking at the heart of Brexit Britain? Surely not ...

Complexity has broken computer security, says academic who helped spot Meltdown and Spectre flaws

As has been said for some time ...

In 400BC Herodotus said "If one is sufficiently lavish with time, everything possible happens" ...

Which somehow feels relevant? Anyway, great quote!

Ciao, Captain K

PS: On those formal systems, anyone read Gödel's 'Incompleteness Theorem' recently ... it proves, rigorously, that absolute security was NEVER achievable ... see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems

Google 'Ideal time' bug 21 July 2019?

Google 'Ideal time' bug 21 July 2019?

Hi, I've got a note scribbed in my old paper, yea paper, filofax from about 2005 which just says "21 Jul 2019 - Google ideal time bug".

Is this something which has been fixed, or have I just got completely mixed up about something else ... anyone know if I've just made a fool of myself!

Ha ha, Captain K

Artificial Intelligence: You know it isn't real, yeah?

AI is an approcah, not an outcome

The scary thing is that many politicians and opinion-formers really think that current machines are 'intelligent' enough for humanity to let them make decisions for us ... and the machines have no notion of that.

The best definition of intelligence I ever heard was from Prof Igor Aleksander (who had a face-recognition and speaking neural network at Brunel University in the UK in 1983). He said there is no such thing as 'artificial intelligence' - just intelligence. He felt that the problem with AI had / has been that its practitioners thought that it was something you programmed – of the style of:

FOR 1 to n; BE INTELLIGENT; LOOP

and that this was always nonsense.

The Six Laws of Intelligence

Instead, Igor said (I am paraphrasing his deep discourse), you have intelligence when you:

1) are self-aware, and aware that you are self-aware;

2) able to sense the world and other beings and perceive that they are self-aware;

3) can appreciate that they have different motivations and views of the world to yourself;

4) can conceive of what their view(s) of the world may be;

5) can reason from those points of view and synthesise them with your own ...

6) and lastly be able to act, interact, and effect change in the world in line with those things - anticipating, adapting and changing over time - and so changing the nature of your intelligence in line with the real-world context.

The various kinds of simulations and emulations of ‘intelligent’ behaviour succeed as far as they do because of the human ability to anthropomorphise and attribute intelligence where it does not exist (think of Tamagotchi as a more extreme example). We even do it with objects in our homes (such as cuddly toys).

There is only Intelligence - AI is an approach not an outcome. This is because intelligence is really a social phenomenon (not an individual property) arising out of meaningful and reciprocal relationships over time – even the famous ‘Turing Test’ is set in a social context - and computers have no idea about that, and are nowhere near achieving it.

Don't get me started on Alexa, Siri etc ... "Alexa, review and edit this post for me." ...

Calm down, Elon. Deep learning won't make AI generally intelligent

There is Intelligence - AI is an approach not an outcome

The best definition of intelligence I ever heard was from Prof Igor Aleksander (who had a face-recognition and speaking neural network at Brunel University in the UK in 1983 - where I was an MSc student building collaborating dissimilar neural networks).

He said there is no such thing as 'artificial intelligence' - just intelligence. He felt that the problem with AI had / has been that its practitioners thought that it was something you programmed – of the style of:

FOR 1 to n

BE INTELLIGENT

LOOP

and that this was always nonsense.

Instead, Igor said, you have intelligence when you are:

a) self-aware, and aware that you are self-aware;

b) able to sense others and perceive that they are self-aware;

c) can appreciate that they have different views of the world to yourself;

d) conceive of what their view(s) of the world may be;

e) reason from those points of view and synthesise them with your own ...

and lastly act, interact, and effect change in the world in line with those things - anticipating, adapting and changing over time.

The various kinds of simulations and emulations of ‘intelligent’ behaviour succeed as far as they do because of the human ability to anthropomorphise and attribute intelligent where it does not exist, Think of Tamagotchi as a more extreme example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagotchi).

Intelligence is really a social phenomenon (not an individual property) arising out of meaningful and reciprocal relationships over time – and computers have no idea about that, and are nowhere near achieving it.

Cheers, Captain K

Agreed!

Google car has driven a million miles, never further than about 50 from its base, and has 8 accidents (mostly rear-enders).

I've driven a million miles (on and off road and in the craziest cities in four of the world's continents) and have had 3 accidents. When self-driving cars can get near that sort of record then we might trust them.

Until then, there will be self-driving lanes fenced off - and they are called railways.

Ciao, K

Pentagon can't check F-35 maintenance thanks to insecure database

Seems it might even be worse than it was in 1989 when Cliff Stoll wrote 'The Cuckoo's Egg' about the wide open / poorly managed and vulnerable US defence networks and systems, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg

From the DoD's own 2015 report: '***As in previous years*** [my emphasis], assessment teams consistently found four categories of vulnerabilities in both system tests and exercise assessments:

• Exposed or poorly managed credentials

• Systems not configured to identified standards

• Systems not patched for known vulnerabilities

• System/network services and trust relationships that provide avenues for cyber compromise.

This is almost the same as the 1989 list ...

You can't be a superpower when your techies are turkeys ... and ISIS is coming with it's own version of Thanksgiving ...

Spooks BUSTED: 27,000 profiles reveal new intel ops, home addresses

The UK version here

There is a UK version called "SC or DV Cleared Professionals" here:

https://uk.linkedin.com/groups/SC-DV-Cleared-Professionals-use-69922/about

Madness to put such material out there - privtae group or note.

Unless it's a honeypot of course ...

wooooo

Heathrow T5 security tackles Transformers t-shirt threat

But metal tent pegs are allowed

I was allowed to go to California with a bag of metal tent pegs 10cm long in my hand baggage because they were'nt on their list of forbidden things. But today I wasn't allowed to take a nearly empty 300ml water bottle on because it had half cm of *water* in it. Apparently water isn't allowed - when they can see it that is - most cosmetics are 90% water - sigh. read Naomi Klein's 'Shock Doctrine' and hear what's reaally / possibly going on in the USA.

PS: The terrorists bought shares in security firms before 9/11, so now we have self-funding terrorism - if the security trade is a bit slack and share dividends are down, just set off a bomb somewhere (and no their bank accounts aren't all disabled - they don't have 'owned by a terrorist' written on them). Anyway, one person's terrorist is someone else's freedom fighter. Just hope you don't have to fight for your (diminishing) freedom some day.

ciao ... Captain K