Tag Archive for: traffic

Hashtag Trending Nov.24- AI brings massive internet traffic; Big Box retailers give up on self checkout; Altman dismissed because AI could do math?

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AI has resulted in a massive traffic surge on the internet. Big Box retailers are backing away from self check-out. And did Sam Altman get fired because AI could do simple math?

 

These and more top tech stories on Hashtag Trending

I’m your host Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and Tech News Day in the US.

Dozens of news outlets have reported that OpenAI was reportedly working on an advanced artificial intelligence model, called Q* or “Q-Star in OpenAI documents,” which raised significant safety concerns among its researchers. This model, capable of solving relatively simple math problems, represents a notable advancement in AI development. 

Why? It sounds ridiculous. After all, computers can do math. Yes they can, but we forget that every instruction that makes that work is programmed in by a human.  

We’re talking about a computer intelligence that can reason through mathematical problems where the methods are not pre-programmed. This is, for many, early evidence of a machine intelligence that can learn by itself without the need for human intervention. 

Andrew Rogoyski of the University of Surrey’s Institute for People-Centred AI commented on the significance of a large language model (LLM) capable of solving mathematical problems, calling it a major step forward in AI’s analytical capabilities.

Altman himself has hinted at this in a Wall Street Journal interview where he said that it was possible that in the future, AI wouldn’t require massive amounts of data from the internet and other sources. Some have taken this to mean that OpenAI had developed a way for AI to not only learn, but to actually teach other models by creating virtual data. 

This would be a massive breakthrough.  

Which is why there are stories about researchers at OpenAI being alarmed by Q*’s capabilities that they wrote to the board of directors, warning that it could pose a threat to humanity.

Some are speculating that it was these developments that led to the general panic and the dismissal of CEO Sam Altman. 

All this has reignited discussions on the pace at which companies like OpenAI are advancing toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a level of AI that can perform…

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CDOT, CDPS and CSP celebrate opening of new, updated Eisenhower Johnson Memorial Tunnels Traffic Operations Center

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Statewide – Coloradans have experienced its first taste of snow in October, officially marking the start of the winter driving season. This year, the Colorado Department of Transportation is adding more to its arsenal to help keep traffic moving and travelers safe, especially along the Interstate 70 Mountain Corridor, by opening a new, updated Operations Center at the Eisenhower Johnson Memorial Tunnels and maintenance garage bays.

“We are now approaching an almost $2 million hit to the economy for every hour the I-70 Mountain Corridor is closed,” said Shoshana Lew, CDOT’s Executive Director. “Not only do closures delay important deliveries and transportation of goods, it also has a real impact on the livelihood of our travelers, which cannot be summed up by a figure. It is important to CDOT to do everything we can to alleviate those impacts and ensure a quick clearance of incidents along the interstate, which is why we invested in updating our technology at the Operations Center and constructing a new maintenance facility at the Eisenhower Johnson Memorial Tunnels.”

While an Operations Center inside the Eisenhower Johnson Memorial Tunnels has already existed for decades, the technology within the Center needed to be updated to improve response times and safety. Upgrades include replacing decades-old copper wires, installing fiber optic cables, putting up new cameras and screens, all of which will increase the speed and quality of the Center’s monitors inside the new building. Quality is imperative as it helps CDOT’s Operators see if there is something in the road that needs to be cleared or get more details on an incident.

“The new cameras and monitors will allow us to zoom all the way into the roadway, up to two miles away from the tunnels, to detect even small debris such as nails,” said Lew. “This allows our crews to remove it from the roadway before it becomes a hazard to motorists. We are also able to zoom in on incidents to better document and report what is going on. We will be able to see how many passengers are in a vehicle, license plate numbers and more. This helps aid our first responders, including CDOT maintainers, as they respond to an incident…

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EU Tries To Slip In New Powers To Intercept Encrypted Web Traffic Without Anyone Noticing

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from the QWACs-in-the-web dept

The EU is currently updating eIDAS (electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services), an EU regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the European Single Market. That’s clearly a crucial piece of legislation in the digital age, and updating it is sensible given the fast pace of development in the sector. But it seems that something bad has happened in the process. Back in March 2022, a group of experts sent an open letter to MEPs [pdf] with the dramatic title “Global website security ecosystem at risk from EU Digital Identity framework’s new website authentication provisions”. It warned:

The Digital Identity framework includes provisions that are intended to increase the take-up of Qualified Website Authentication Certificates (QWACs), a specific EU form of website certificate that was created in the 2014 eIDAS regulation but which – owing to flaws with its technical implementation model – has not gained popularity in the web ecosystem. The Digital Identity framework mandates browsers accept QWACs issued by Trust Service Providers, regardless of the security characteristics of the certificates or the policies that govern their issuance. This legislative approach introduces significant weaknesses into the global multi-stakeholder ecosystem for securing web browsing, and will significantly increase the cybersecurity risks for users of the web.

The near-final text for eIDAS 2.0 has now been agreed by the EU’s negotiators, and it seems that it is even worse than the earlier draft. A new site from Mozilla called “Last Chance to fix eIDAS” explains how new legislative articles will require all Web browsers in Europe to trust the the certificate authorities and cryptographic keys selected by the government of EU Member States. Mozilla explains:

These changes radically expand the capability of EU governments to surveil their citizens by ensuring cryptographic keys under government control can be used to intercept encrypted web traffic across the EU. Any EU member state has the ability to designate cryptographic keys for distribution in web browsers and browsers are…

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Barracuda report reveals half of all internet traffic is bot-generated

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A recent report by Barracuda, a trusted partner and provider of cloud-first security solutions, has unveiled some rather unsettling discoveries about internet traffic. The report indicates that approximately half (48%) of all internet traffic is now bot traffic, and a relatively significant portion of this- 30%- is attributed to harmful bots.

The findings are part of Barracuda’s latest Threat Spotlight report. It examines how bot traffic has changed over the years and the emerging threats to cybersecurity.

The bad news is that although the percentage of bot traffic has lessened from 39% in 2021 to 30% in 2023, the nature of these bot attacks has evolved and is taking a more dangerous shape.

The categorisation of bots is broadly classified into two types: good and bad. Good bots are search engine crawlers or content monitors which keep the internet functioning, while bad bots are programmed with ill intentions. These can range from basic scraping to advanced distributed denial-of-service attacks.

An analysis of bot traffic origins in the first six months of 2023 shows that the majority (72%) originated from the U.S., followed by the U.A.E (12%), Saudi Arabia (6%), Qatar (5%) and India (5%). Barracuda researchers, however, caution that these figures are skewed towards the U.S., with 67% of the traffic from bad bots hailing from public cloud data centres’ IP ranges.

The researchers further highlighted that the bulk of harmful bot traffic originates from two major public clouds, AWS and Azure. This could be because setting up an account with these service providers is free and relatively easy. Attackers use them to orchestrate bad bot attacks, the report suggests.

The study also discovered that a third of bad bot traffic is generated from residential IP addresses. This is typically a veil, with bot creators using these residential IPs through proxies in a bid to bypass IP blocks and remain undetected.

Reflecting on the findings, Mark Lukie, Director of Solution Architects at Barracuda, Asia-Pacific, says: “The findings show that bots are getting cleverer, and attacks against APIs are increasing. This is likely due to many organisations having weak authentication…

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