Day: July 9, 2017

Google is keen on developing artificial intelligence. In an effort to make artificial intelligence even more useful, the technology giant is providing financial aid to the Press Association. This particular project wants AI to write news stories. It is an ambitious project, but one that can probably succeed given enough time and resources.

Press Association’s AI News Writers

Writers may think that they are at a lower risk of replaced by artificial intelligence in the future. However, news writers may find themselves in that awkward position sooner than later. AI can write well and produce more than their human counterparts. Quantity and quality are not the same, which may be human writers’ saving grace for at least a little longer.

The Press Association news agency is raising funds to wield artificial intelligence as a tool to write stories. Right now, the agency submits news stories to media outlets across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Depending on how this AI venture goes, that presence may be expanded to an international scale. It depends on whether or not the initiative gets enough funding and how well the news pieces are written.

Google was among the first to make a financial contribution to this new AI venture. The technology giant’s Digital News Initiative Fund pledged $806,000 to the Press Association news agency. The goal is to use this money and improve the overall quantity of news pieces to nearly 30,000 every single month. Achieving this goal will be challenging, but Press Association is teaming up with Urbs Media to make it happen.

All of the AI news pieces will be written in collaboration with human journalists. The writers will create story templates, and the AI will fill in the blanks and aid with localizing each article. It is not the first time we see a news agency use artificial intelligence. The LA Times has used AI to write news stories about earthquakes for nearly three years now. There is a bright future ahead where human journalists and AI writers will complement each other’s work.

It is impossible to write proper news pieces without human involvement, according to Press Association’s Peter Clifton. The main goal in harnessing artificial intelligence is to create new opportunities and help in scaling up the volume of local stories. Powered by proper templates, the AI simply needs to scour sources for any additional information and turn it into a full news piece.

There will likely be some pushback on this project. It is possible AI solutions will threaten journalist jobs in the future, even though this is not the goal of the Press Association. 

Over the past year or so, we have seen multiple ransomware developers suddenly give up. Free decryption of files for the victims of one of the most popular ransomwares does not happen all that often, so it is big news when this does happen. Petya, also known as Mischa and GoldenEye, is no longer a threat officially. The developer published the master decryption key, which makes restoring file access a lot easier.

Janus Cybercrime Solutions Gives up Petya Key

In a surprising turn of events, Petya and all of its variants are no longer an actual threat to computer users. The developer released the master decryption key. It is unclear why Janus Cybercrime Solutions decided to do this, as Petya and its variants have been widely successful over the past few years.

The master decryption key can be used to decrypt all three existing Petya Strains. This includes the Mischa and GoldenEye ransomware, both of which use the exact same code base as Petya. These latter two are also evolutions of the original malware, with new features added on top and other small code changes. Sadly, this key will not work for the NotPetya strain, since that one is not developed by Janus Cybercrime Solutions.

The validity of this master key has been determined by Kaspersky Lab. The ransomeware developers surrendered, but no one knows why. Given the wide variety of ransomware types in circulation right now, the competition is certainly heating up. Popular and prominent malware strains will always have their place in the market. Petya was on that list, until a few days ago.

The published #Petya master key works for all versions including #GoldenEye pic.twitter.com/tTRLZ9kMnb

— Anton Ivanov (@antonivanovm) July 6, 2017

One challenge remains as security researchers need to develop a decryption tool which makes use of this master key. Even though Petya encryption has been cracked numerous times already, the master decryption key-based tool will decrypt files a lot quicker. Victims want to regain access to their device and its associated files sooner rather than later. It is unclear who will build this new tool or when it will be released.

The master decryption key will be less useful than what many may think. With the majority of Petya attacks taking place in 2016, many victims have already moved on. The chance is very likely their computer files have been erased already. This does not mean one should not build a decryption tool from the master key, but it remains doubtful there will be many use cases for it anytime soon.

NotPetya victims will be rather disappointed this decryption key will do nothing for them. Since NotPetya was created by different developers, there is no chance that this master key will work for any other ransomware. There is no viable decryption tool available for NotPetya as of right now. It seems like for every major threat that goes away, half a dozen new ones pop up.

As a sign of the rising popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the UK-based Dadiani Fine Art Gallery has begun accepting Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and other cryptos as entrance payment

If you are getting into ICO’s, do it for the quick hit and get out or look for the proper ideas with proven board members, forecasts etc. Think about their idea as to whether it really is going to solve a problem or create something new.

Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, an Indian insurance major, has announced a successful implementation of blockchain technology into its operations. The new solution, targeting its travel and motor insurance products will speed up the claims settlement process. The announcement by Bajaj Allianz, a collaborative initiative between Indian auto major and German Insurance giant, comes weeks after … Continue reading Indian Insurance Company Bajaj Allianz Speeds up Claims Process with Blockchain Tech

The post Indian Insurance Company Bajaj Allianz Speeds up Claims Process with Blockchain Tech appeared first on NEWSBTC.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) grants Bitcoin exchange LedgerX a status of a Swap Execution Facility (SEF).

Thomson Reuters Launches Blockchain Startup Incubator

The Ethereum ecosystem has not yet reached its full potential. Numerous issues have popped up in recent months which may be holding it back. These will need to be resolved soon for Etereum to really take off. Even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin acknowledges there are many issues which hinder the growth of Ethereum. Below are some of his views on the things that will need to be improved for the foreseeable future.  

4. Holding Large Amounts

It is interesting to see the public face of Ethereum acknowledge the project suffers from issues which make it difficult for most users to hold large amounts of Ether. Buterin feels there is a significant risk of theft, mainly due to third-party wallet service providers and exchanges. There is also the chance of users losing their private keys. These are not issues unique to Ethereum, but it is something any ETH users should be aware of.

3. Privacy or Lack Thereof

Cryptocurrency is often referred to as an anonymity tool, even though both Bitcoin and Ethereum -in their current forms- are incredibly public. There is no real transaction privacy with either of these currencies. To a lot of people, that is not a big deal. Others feel differently and look for privacy-oriented solutions, such as Monero. Privacy is something developers can implement with a bit of work, which is something the Ethereum developers plan to do.

The upcoming Metropolis hard fork will introduce the basics of zk-SNARKS. This particular technology paves the way for future privacy-oriented features as part of the Ethereum ecosystem. It is a significant development. However, it may still take years before we see the first privacy-oriented features in Ethereum being embraced by average users.

2. Proof-of-Work is An Issue

Proof-of-Work does not suit Ethereum all that well. There is the 51% attack risk, selfish mining with a decent amount of hashpower, and mining itself remains very expensive. Additionally, there is the difficulty bomb which will come into effect soon. The developers want to switch to proof-of-stake in the future to avoid these issues. Proof-of-work mining is somewhat problematic for all major cryptocurrencies.

1. Scalability Sucks

Buterin actually stated how scalability “sucks.” Then again, most people are well aware of how Ethereum cannot scale to accommodate large numbers of transactions and commands at the same time. If all of the Dapps in development were to become accessible at the same time, the network could possibly go through a proverbial brain freeze. There are many different bottlenecks in blockchain technology, and Ethereum is no exception.

Individual nodes process every transaction in the entire network. That causes a major bottleneck which needs to be solved. Unfortunately, things are never as easy as they seem, especially in cryptocurrency development. It will be interesting to see how Ethereum developers will tackle this problem and whether or not it any of their solutions will work. The current scalability issue weighs Ethereum down, and desperately needs to be addressed.