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You are here: Home / Archives for Paul Spoerry

Study Confirms Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right

January 11, 2020 by Paul Spoerry

For decades, people have legitimately wondered how well climate models perform in predicting future climate conditions. Based on solid physics and the best understanding of the Earth system available, they skillfully reproduce observed data. Nevertheless, they have a wide response to increasing carbon dioxide levels, and many uncertainties remain in the details. The hallmark of good science, however, is the ability to make testable predictions, and climate models have been making predictions since the 1970s. How reliable have they been?

Now a new evaluation of global climate models used to project Earth’s future global average surface temperatures over the past half-century answers that question: most of the models have been quite accurate.

forecast evaluation for models run in 2004
Models that were used in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report can be evaluated by comparing their approximately 20-year predictions with what actually happened. In this figure, the multi-model ensemble and the average of all the models are plotted alongside the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature Index (GISTEMP). Climate drivers were known for the ‘hindcast’ period (before 2000) and fore

We hit 2012 and everything goes bananas. The coming decades might be pretty rough.

Filed Under: Science

Google Exposes 14 Long-Hidden Exploits in iOS

August 30, 2019 by Paul Spoerry Leave a Comment

According to one blog post, the 14 vulnerabilities were a part of five unique iPhone exploit chains that covered almost every version of Apple’s mobile operating system from iOS 10 to the latest version of iOS 12, indicating that the hackers were working hard to exploit the security flaws.

Half of the iPhone vulnerabilities were discovered in Apple’s Safari browser, five in the kernel, and hackers also used two separate sandbox escapes to access data outside the permissions of an app or a process.

The attack had such deep access to iPhone systems that hackers could even read or eavesdrop the messages of victims on encrypted communications services like WhatsApp, iMessage, and ProtonMail.

“There was no target discrimination,” Ian Beer, a Google hacker and member of the company’s Project Zero team, wrote in a blog. “Simply visiting the hacked site was enough for the exploit server to attack your device, and if it was successful, install a monitoring implant.”

There’s also a chance that the attackers have acquired access tokens from the Apple victims, which they could use to log into social media and communications accounts.

You can read the in-depth posts on Google’s Project Zero blog.

Filed Under: Apple, Hacking, Tech

Debunking the far-right great replacement conspiracy theory

July 17, 2019 by Paul Spoerry Leave a Comment

The Far Right

Citing the United Nations migration replacement report as evidence of the far-right great replacement theory is a disingenuous tactic that I’ve seen used quite often. The intent is to purposely misinterpret the preamble of the document in an attempt to “prove” the great replacement conspiracy theory, however, the United Nations report does little to support the far-right conspiracy. The report indicates that western nations require immigration due to economic necessity as our projected population will significantly drop off later in the century, but the report also touches upon issues including the rise of social tensions due to cultural differences and goes into detail about the importance of integrating immigrant communities so they understand cultural norms and practices. The report concludes that future policy decisions must take into account the impact on both the host society and countries of origin.[1]

All too often we see those on the far-right conflate the economic necessity of immigration with a racist conspiracy theory that Muslims are going to outbreed native populations and replace them, which is currently statistically improbable even with an increase of immigration from Muslim majority countries. Moreover, the report does not claim Muslim immigrants are required therefore the referral to the migration replacement theory as proof of white genocide is not only disingenuous but nefarious in intention. The conspiracy theory is steeped in misogynistic beliefs including controlling and forcing white women to have more children as they believe feminism is the root cause of declining birth rates.[2] White nationalists believe in the concept of “race realism,” an idea that race is not a construct but a biological category that determines a person’s character.[3] As a student of anthropology, I know that it’s complete and utter racist bullshit.
Race is a social construct as is explicitly outlined by the leading anthropological opinion on the matter according to the American Anthropological Association.[4] Race exists as a social construct as it defines specific groups within a population that often do not share biological similarities. For example, in North America, we often categorize people into “Black,” “White,” Asian,” “Hispanic,” and Native American.” These classifications are deceptive as they attempt to define populations that are not genetically distinct, easily recognizable, or confined to one region. This limited classification does not address racial admixture, ethnicity, or nationality. In a biological context, the traditional social construct of race has very little meaning or use. When we consider these factors ancestry is the more appropriate term when we refer to a specific group of people. Differences between the “races” are manifested through a variety of morphological traits selected by ecological factors. Certain characteristics may reflect geography while some may not. Traits that seemingly distinguish individuals from others are not unique to particular racial groups but occur in every racial group in a wide range of variation. When distinguishing between individuals we refer to their ancestral traits, however due to government agencies devising standards the public is more familiar with the traditional construct of racial categories hence its common usage.

“Race” thus evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into “racial” categories. The myths fused behavior and physical features together in the public mind, impeding our comprehension of both biological variations and cultural behavior, implying that both are genetically determined. Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance on such folk beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless errors.

At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and always subject to modification. No human is born with a built-in culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions, and personalities, regardless of genetic propensities, are developed within sets of meanings and values that we call “culture.” Studies of infant and early childhood learning and behavior attest to the reality of our cultures in forming who we are.
It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have learned different cultural behaviors and continue to do so as modern transportation moves millions of immigrants around the world.

How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The “racial” worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called “racial” groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.
White nationalists believe they are going to be replaced by what they perceive as an “inferior population” and therefore society will regress due to the supposed inferiority of immigrants when there is no scientific evidence that backs such an absurd conspiracy theory.

1) United Nations Development of Economic and Social Affairs – Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?
2) New York Times – ‘Replacement Theory,’ a Racist, Sexist Doctrine, Spreads in Far-Right Circles
3) South China Morning Post – ‘White genocide’ and ‘the great replacement’: a primer on the US alt-right movement
4) American Anthropological Association – AAA Statement on Race

Source: PoppinKREAM on Reddit

Filed Under: Politics

AI Studies Old Scientific Papers, Makes New Discoveries Overlooked by Humans

July 17, 2019 by Paul Spoerry Leave a Comment

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory trained an AI called Word2Vec on scientific papers to see if there was any “latent knowledge” that humans weren’t able to grock on first pass.

The study, published in Nature on July 3, reveals that the algorithm found predictions for potential thermoelectric materials which can convert heat into energy for various heating and cooling applications.

The algorithm didn’t know the definition of thermoelectric, though. It received no training in materials science. Using only word associations, the algorithm was able to provide candidates for future thermoelectric materials, some of which may be better than those we currently use. –Motherboard

“It can read any paper on material science, so can make connections that no scientists could,” said researcher Anubhav Jain. “Sometimes it does what a researcher would do; other times it makes these cross-discipline associations.”

The algorithm was designed to assess the language in 3.3 million abstracts from material sciences, and was able to build a vocabulary of around half-a-million words. Word2Vec used machine learning to analyze relationships between words.

“The way that this Word2vec algorithm works is that you train a neural network model to remove each word and predict what the words next to it will be,” said Jain, adding that “by training a neural network on a word, you get representations of words that can actually confer knowledge.”

Using just the words found in scientific abstracts, the algorithm was able to understand concepts such as the periodic table and the chemical structure of molecules. The algorithm linked words that were found close together, creating vectors of related words that helped define concepts. In some cases, words were linked to thermoelectric concepts but had never been written about as thermoelectric in any abstract they surveyed. This gap in knowledge is hard to catch with a human eye, but easy for an algorithm to spot.

After showing its capacity to predict future materials, researchers took their work back in time, virtually. They scrapped recent data and tested the algorithm on old papers, seeing if it could predict scientific discoveries before they happened. Once again, the algorithm worked. –Motherboard

The technology isn’t restricted to materials science either – as it can be trained on a wide variety of disciplines by retraining it on literature from whichever subject for which one wants to provide a deeper analysis.

“This algorithm is unsupervised and it builds its own connections,” said the study’s lead author, Vahe Tshitoyan, adding “You could use this for things like medical research or drug discovery. The information is out there. We just haven’t made these connections yet because you can’t read every article.”

Check out the full thing right over here.

Filed Under: Tech

Facebook announces Libra cryptocurrency: It’s not a cryptocurrency

June 18, 2019 by Paul Spoerry Leave a Comment

Facebook Libra

Facebook has revealed the details of its cryptocurrency, Libra, which will let you buy things or send money to people with nearly zero fees. You’ll pseudonymously buy or cash out your Libra online or at local exchange points like grocery stores, and spend it using interoperable third-party wallet apps or Facebook’s own Calibra wallet that will be built into WhatsApp, Messenger and its own app. Today Facebook released its white paper explaining Libra and its testnet for working out the kinks of its blockchain system before a public launch in the first half of 2020. If the idea of Facebook and it’s partner companies having even more information on you… you should be.

Libra, will run on a blockchain network secured at launch by 100 distributed computer servers, or nodes. Twenty-eight node-running members are currently on board.

The Libra blockchain will go live in 2020, with the Libra Association – a Switzerland-based non-profit – tasked with leading the cryptocurrency’s ongoing development. In a white paper released Tuesday, the organization detailed how the Libra blockchain will be Byzantine fault-tolerant, meaning faulty behavior by some of the actors in the network will not compromise the security of the broader network.

It states:

“[The Libra blockchain makes] it extraordinarily difficult for an attacker to compromise 33 separately run nodes that would be required to launch an attack against the system.”

Facebook is launching a subsidiary company also called Calibra that handles its crypto dealings and protects users’ privacy by never mingling your Libra payments with your Facebook data so it can’t be used for ad targeting. Your real identity won’t be tied to your publicly visible transactions. But Facebook/Calibra and other founding members of the Libra Association will earn interest on the money users cash in that is held in reserve to keep the value of Libra stable.

Facebook plans to develop Libra into a “global coin”, pegging it to “well-known currencies” such as the US dollar and British pound in a bid to prevent the “wild swings” of conventional cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum. This is one of the first red flags. This is less a cryptocurrency than it is an attempt at a stablecoin. As such… it isn’t even really moving into the cryptocurrency space but more the space of fiat banking.

If you’re wondering about Libra’s implications on the future of payments: stop it because Joshua Davis has it all figured out.

Facebook won’t fully control Libra, but instead get just a single vote in its governance like other founding members of the Libra Association, including Visa, Uber, and Andreessen Horowitz, which have invested at least $10 million each into the project’s operations. The association will promote the open-sourced Libra Blockchain and developer platform with its own Move programming language, plus sign up businesses to accept Libra for payment and even give customers discounts or rewards.

So yeah… this will all be tied together and of course, since Facebook really is a data company you can assume that your purchases will help inform companies in order to be able to target you (even if indirectly).

Early bitcoin core developer Peter Todd, a well-known industry figure and an applied cryptography consultant, and outspoken Bitcoin maximalist didn’t mince his words.

Libra runs on a permissioned blockchain, which means that only companies in the Libra Association can mine it/control it. After five years they say they will transition to a permissionless chain. Except… no blockchain has ever moved from permissioned to permissionless. Also… anybody familiar with Facebook’s constantly moving permissions on the social platform? Yeah. It’s nothing more than a private global federal bank.

The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible. – Satoshi Nakamoto

Is Facebook's Libra a real blockchain? No.

Will it compete against #Bitcoin and truly open, public blockchains? Never. #LibreNotLibrahttps://t.co/MQkpPUuedE

— Andreas M. Antonopoulos (@aantonop) June 18, 2019

What Facebook, or any company like Facebook, is proposing is not a cryptocurrency. It doesn’t have any of the fundamental characteristics of cryptocurrency. It doesn’t stand on the five pillars of an open blockchain. In fact, it has none of those. –Andreas M. AntonopoulosThe five pillars: open, public, neutral, censorship-resistant, and borderless.

Libra:

  • Open… naw, total opposite. Highly centralized. It costs $10 million USD to be a node.
  • Public? Nope… Run by an organization that paid $10m a pop to be included.
  • Neutral – No way… how could it be? It’s backed by multiple, government created, fiat currencies. To build on many features of Libra’s blockchain, developers must seek permission from Facebook and its partners who administer it.
  • Censorship-resistant – again, nope. Its chain isn’t even… see above… to build on many features of Libra’s blockchain, developers must seek permission from Facebook and its partners who administer it.
  • Borderless – Can you use Facebook in China? Messenger? Whatsapp? or would you simply do like the majority of Chinese and use WeChat and Renren? They use those for a reason after all.

What they are building might be more akin to a better version of PayPal. They will also share info with government authorities – they’ve not said which ones but how can they be borderless, censorship-resistant, neutral, etc. AND comply with an individual nation-state at the same time?

Filed Under: Cryptocurrency, Tech

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