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Submission + - Chicago Public Schools lost over $20 million in electronics in one year, report (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In all, more than $20 million were lost – as about students failed to return 77,505 laptops and other electronic devices within a year. This is even though the district spends millions to track such devices.

The underlying concern is that taxpayer dollars will be used to replace them.

Submission + - Judges given approval to use AI to write legal opinions (apnews.com)

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: From the "What-Could-Possibly-Go-Wrong" department:

LONDON (AP) — England’s 1,000-year-old legal system — still steeped in traditions that include wearing wigs and robes — has taken a cautious step into the future by giving judges permission to use artificial intelligence to help produce rulings.

The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary last month said AI could help write opinions but stressed it shouldn’t be used for research or legal analyses because the technology can fabricate information and provide misleading, inaccurate and biased information.

“Judges do not need to shun the careful use of AI,” said Master of the Rolls Geoffrey Vos, the second-highest ranking judge in England and Wales. “But they must ensure that they protect confidence and take full personal responsibility for everything they produce.”

At a time when scholars and legal experts are pondering a future when AI could replace lawyers, help select jurors or even decide cases, the approach spelled out Dec. 11 by the judiciary is restrained. But for a profession slow to embrace technological change, it’s a proactive step as government and industry — and society in general — react to a rapidly advancing technology alternately portrayed as a panacea and a menace.

Submission + - Side channel attack against post-quantum encryption algorithm (thehackernews.com) 1

Submitted by jd
jd writes: Crystals-Kyber was chosen to be the US government's post-quantum cryptography system of choice last year, but a side-channel attack has been identified.

From TFA, NIST says that this is an implementation-specific attack (the reference implementation) and not a vulnerability in Kyber itself.

From TFA:
The exploit relates to "side-channel attacks on up to the fifth-order masked implementations of CRYSTALS-Kyber in ARM Cortex-M4 CPU," Elena Dubrova, Kalle Ngo, and Joel Gärtner of KTH Royal Institute of Technology said in a paper.

CRYSTALS-Kyber is one of four post-quantum algorithms selected by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) after a rigorous multi-year effort to identify a set of next-generation encryption standards that can withstand huge leaps in computing power.

One of the popular countermeasures to harden cryptographic implementations against physical attacks is masking, which randomizes the computation and detaches the side-channel information from the secret-dependent cryptographic variables.

The attack method devised by the researchers involves a neural network training method called recursive learning to help recover message bits with a high probability of success.

The researchers also developed a new message recovery method called cyclic rotation that manipulates ciphertexts to increase the leakage of message bits, thereby boosting the success rate and making it possible to extract the session key.

"Such a method allows us to train neural networks that can recover a message bit with the probability above 99% from high-order masked implementations," they added.

When reached for comment, NIST told The Hacker News that the approach does not break the algorithm itself and that the findings don't affect the standardization process of CRYSTALS-Kyber.

On the mailing list, D. J. Bernstein added this:

Ive been recently carrying out code analysis for some of the KEM implementations submitted to SUPERCOP. In the case of kyber*/ref, I noticed various "/KYBER_Q" occurrences with variable inputs. In at least one case, line 190 of crypto_kem/kyber768/ref/poly.c, this is clearly a secret input. I'd expect measurable, possibly exploitable, timing variations

Comment Re: No doubt... (Score 1) 269

by jrb1537 (#56734774) Attached to: Apple Deprecates OpenGL and OpenCL in macOS 10.14 Mojave
Exactly. Most people seem to have forgotten just how much Adobe was charging for CS back in the days of perpetual licenses. At first, Adobe was releasing a new version of CS every other year, but starting with CS5.5 they went to a yearly release. In total, there were 7 CS releases over a period of about 9 years. Assuming $2500/release, that's $17,500 compared to $5400 for 9 years of a CC subscription at $600/year.

Submission + - Tesla unveils dual motor and performance specs for Model 3; deliveries in July

Submitted by Rei
Rei writes: Yesterday evening, Elon Musk announced the pricing and specs for two of the Model 3's most in-demand options — dual motor and performance versions. The base dual motor config adds an AC induction front motor to the current partial-PM reluctance rear motor for $5k; in addition to AWD and allowing the car to drive with either motor out, this cuts the 0-60 time from 5,1s to 4,5s. The performance package is available as a bundle, including the long-range pack, premium interior, 20" wheels, carbon fibre spoiler and a new black-and-white interior. The vehicle will cost $78k; 0-60 times are further cut to 3,5s and the top speed increases from 140mph to 155mph.

While these options have consistently polled as the most in-demand options not yet available, several still remain and are variously due late this year / early next year: cream interior, non-PUP, tow hitch, SR battery, and air suspension. EU-spec and China-spec are also due early next year. Production is currently over 3,5k/wk, rumoured to be 4,3k/wk, and will be undergoing a shutdown from 26-31 May to raise production to the Q2 target of 5-6k.

Submission + - Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree In AI (cmu.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science will offer a new undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence beginning this fall, providing students with in-depth knowledge of how to transform large amounts of data into actionable decisions. SCS has created the new AI degree, the first offered by a U.S. university, in response to extraordinary technical breakthroughs in AI and the growing demand by students and employers for training that prepares people for careers in AI.

The bachelor's degree program in computer science teaches students to think broadly about methods that can accomplish a wide variety of tasks across many disciplines, said Reid Simmons, research professor of robotics and computer science and director of the new AI degree program. The bachelor's degree in AI will focus more on how complex inputs — such as vision, language and huge databases — are used to make decisions or enhance human capabilities, he added. AI majors will receive the same solid grounding in computer science and math courses as other computer science students. In addition, they will have additional course work in AI-related subjects such as statistics and probability, computational modeling, machine learning, and symbolic computation. Simmons said the program also would include a strong emphasis on ethics and social responsibility. This will include independent study opportunities in using AI for social good, such as improving transportation, health care or education.

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