The old joke goes “George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not a ‘how to’ manual, but that joke is increasingly less funny as the UK
Contrary to stories throughout the media, a supercomputer called “Eugene Goostman” did not pass the Turing Test of artificial intelligence last week.
Dutch media operation NRC have published yet another Ed Snowden slide, showing how the NSA had infected 50,000 computer networks with malware.
About a year and a half ago, we wrote about “Rockstar Consortium,” a shell company set up by Apple and Microsoft (and a few other companies), in which they placed many of the patents they received when they outbid Google to get Nortel’s patents. We noted at the time that one of the reasons regulators let Apple, Microsoft, RIM and others team up to buy these patents without it being an antitrust concern was that they promised that all the patents would be able to be licensed on “reasonable terms.” Except… once they handed them off to Rockstar, that company’s CEO, John Veschi, noted that this promise “does not apply to us.”
Ulbricht has been arrested for involvement in running the Silk Road darknet marketplace for drugs, guns, and more – but is also alleged to have attempted to have an ex-employee tortured and then executed for fear of him giving evidence to the police.