TechLetters #137 - AMD, TETRA bugs. USB stick of DOOM strikes again. China's cyberoperations. Another confirmation: filter bubbles/echo chambers DO NOT EXIST. LK99?

Security

Security bug in AMD processors. Interesting.

TETRA security weakness. Telecommunication/radio widely used by police, defence, emergency (fire fighters, ambulances), critical infrastructure operators.... Backdoor was found. TETRA radio standards have a backdoor, and the messages are easily modifiable on-the-fly too. No technical details yet.

USB pendrives of DOOM. Inserting may hack systems, leading to data theft. Do not connect untrusted USB devices.

LLM used in cyberattack. Well, in breaking defences. Demonstration of capability. "GPT-4 does not get distracted, does not get tired, does not have other duties, and is always available".

Chinese cyber operations infecting US military logistics? Risk of disruption or slowing down; the US is working to recovery. Malware found in important systems like water supply. Important to civilians. But also to the military. Now, difficult to estimate the effects but they decided to prune them.

Technology Policy

Assisting radiologist with AI worsens performance. By 4%. Also, human radiologists tend to disregard the “automated diagnosis”. Cooperative challenge.

Anti-competition investigation in France vs Apple. Privacy vs Competition strikes again. "Apple accused abusing dominant position by implementing discriminatory, non-objective and non-transparent conditions for the use of user data for advertising purposes".

Another confirmation. 1) filter bubbles/echochambers in social media/internet do not exist [or at least does not function in ways many argued over the previous years, in a kind of an echo chamber], 2) social media do not have such a harmful effects as was fashionable to repeat, 3) polarizations and opinions is something innate in humans-users, changing opinions isn’t simple. So long, “echo chambers” “concepts”? “reducing exposure to content from like-minded sources on Facebook had no measurable effect on a range of political attitudes, including affective polarization, ideological extremity and opinions on issues”. Sharing content on social media do not impact on opinions of the recipients. No surprise here. “we were not able to reliably detect shifts in users’ political attitudes or behaviors”. Algorithmic feed of social network is also not impacting political opinions/behavior

Other

High temperature superconductor LK99 working in ambient atmosphere. That would be huge and highly transformative. It shows all the necessary effects such as Meissner effect, magnetic levitation, etc…

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