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Today's Topics:
1. O/t: Air Defence of Australia (Stephen Loosley)
2. Founder of Session leaves Australia after police visit
employee home (Stephen Loosley)
3. The Guardian Techscape: the X network is complete; and why
Reddit is profitable; (Stephen Loosley)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:24:24 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] O/t: Air Defence of Australia
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Looks like Australia may not hope for significant US Airforce assistance in our
defense, unless maybe we offer permanent bases here?
"Air Force hedges on next-gen tanker plans"
Plans for USAF future aircraft programs look too pricey, service secretary says.
By Audrey Decker Staff Writer November 4, 2024
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/11/air-force-hedges-next-gen-tanker-plans/400805/
Tomorrow?s tankers might just be today?s tankers with self-protection gear, Air
Force officials say?because the service can?t afford to pursue all its
next-generation plans.
The Air Force has been devising plans to develop a future tanker called the
Next Generation Air Refueling System, or NGAS, to use in contested operations
in the Indo-Pacific, as China develops new counter-air systems that can
threaten tankers at longer ranges.
But building a new tanker from scratch doesn?t look possible any time soon, so
the service might resort to simply enhancing its current fleet of tankers, said
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.
?Unfortunately, any new design cannot be fielded for several years at best,
even if affordable. Other options include various ways of increasing the
resilience of the current force. The need for improved connectivity and some
degree of enhanced self-protection measure appears to be attractive from both
an affordability and cost-effectiveness perspective. It?s also something that
can be accomplished in relatively short time frames at relatively low cost,?
Kendall said Friday at the service?s annual Airlift/Tanker Association
Symposium.
The service plans to wrap up a study on NGAS and finish a review of the
service?s sixth-generation fighter jet program, called Next Generation Air
Dominance, by the end of the year, to inform the service?s 2026 budget request.
Leaders paused the next-gen fighter program so they can take another look at
cost projections, new threats, and the advent of other technologies, like new
robot wingmen called collaborative combat aircraft.
Related articles
* As Air Force mulls next-gen fighter, tanker plans hang in the balance
* USAF plans stealthy tankers for ?extreme threat areas?
The designs of all three of these new programs?NGAS, NGAD, and CCAs?are tied
together, from an operational and cost perspective, Kendall said. But as things
stand today, he said, there?s not enough money to buy them all.
?The variable that concerns me most as we go through this analysis and produce
a range of alternatives is going to be the availability of adequate resources
to pursue any combination of those new designs.
Right now, given our commitments, our resources and strategic priorities, it's
hard for me to see how we can afford any combination of those new designs,?
Kendall said.
Officials have warned that the 2026 budget will be even tighter than 2025, as
other programs like the Sentinel ICBM replacement, are costing far more than
initially projected, creating uncertainty around the service?s next-gen
aircraft programs.
Funding the Space Force, modernizing both Air Force legs of the nuclear triad,
building robust air base defense, and attacking adversaries' long-range kill
chains are the service?s top budget priorities, Kendall said.
?All of these are absolutely essential for the success of the Air Force and
Space Force and the joint force, and all of them require substantial increased
investments?notice that I haven't mentioned either NGAS or NGAD yet,? Kendall
said.
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2024 04:42:40 +0000
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Founder of Session leaves Australia after police visit
employee home
Message-ID:
<me0p282mb44136415a85ff894a4b46df5c2...@me0p282mb4413.ausp282.prod.outlook.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
Please Note: This email did not come from ANU, Be careful of any request to buy
gift cards or other items for senders outside of ANU. Learn why this is
important.
https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/email-scams#toc-warning-signs-it-might-be-a-scam
Encrypted messaging app developer moves out of Australia after police visit
employee home
Founder of Session relocates to Switzerland citing hostile atmosphere towards
privacy-focused technology
By Josh Taylor Tue 5 Nov 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/05/session-encrypted-messaging-app-developer-moves-out-of-australia-police-visit-switzerland
The founder of an encrypted messaging app who left Australia for Switzerland
after police unexpectedly visited an employee home says he had left because of
Australian hostile stance against developers building privacy-focused apps.
Developed in Australia in 2018, Session is an encrypted messaging app that is
open source and decentralised.
The app runs on the tagline: Send messages, not Metadata. It allows users to
send messages with anonymity, by opting for 66-character account IDs rather
than verifying a user via emails or phone numbers.
Messages are sent over a decentralised onion routing network similar to Tor (a
popular encrypted browsing app) and no single server knows the message origins
or destination.
Session was created by the Australian-based Oxen Privacy Tech Foundation, which
in October announced it was transferring responsibilities to a newly created
Switzerland-based body, the Session Technology Foundation. It was first
reported by 404 Media.
The move came after employees working for OPTF were approached by the Victoria
police and Australian federal police over several months including via help
chat messages, letters and phone calls.
Victoria police also visited the apartment of an employee late last year,
asking questions about the app and its encrypted messaging, the company says.
Under anti-terrorism laws passed in 2018, law enforcement can issue notices
requiring developers to assist with an investigation. This can include
technical assistance which could require companies to build capability for law
enforcement to break the encryption used in their services.
But the powers have rarely been used. And if they had, neither the AFP or the
services targeted can divulge what an organisation has been ordered to do.
The director of OPTF, Alex Linton, said the looming threat of this legislative
power, along with the wider regulatory environment in Australia, had been the
tipping point for the organisation shifting to Switzerland.
Quote: The legislative and regulatory landscape in Australia is just completely
hostile towards building a privacy tool such as an encrypted messaging app, he
said. The ongoing threat of these special powers actually being used against
us, in the end, being in Australia just threatened our credibility as a privacy
tool.
A spokesperson for the AFP confirmed it is aware of the app, and has seen the
use of Session by offenders while committing serious commonwealth offences, but
declined to comment further. Victoria police was approached for comment.
Linton said because Session is open source it would make it obvious to people
verifying the code that a backdoor had been installed or encryption had been
compromised, if it were to occur.
He said laws in Switzerland understood and supported the kind of technology
used by platforms such as Session, as opposed to actively trying to snuff it
out.
Linton also pointed to the expected arrival of age assurance for social media,
as well as a new code coming into effect in December on cloud and encrypted
messaging providers from the eSafety commissioner, as other evidence of the
hostile environment for privacy-focused apps.
The focus of Australian law enforcement on encrypted apps has mostly targeted
messaging apps specifically designed for alleged criminals ? including the AFPs
own Trojan horse app An0m.
Policing success targeting these services has reduced the number of
alternatives. Linton said the road being paved now was for law enforcement to
target the apps widely available to the general public.
Quote: What I think we are in danger of is seeing that rhetoric shift towards
public-use applications like Signal or Session being painted as the next app
for criminals, even though we know that they have very wide and legitimate user
bases, he said.
The office of the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, was approached for comment.
The Greens digital rights spokesperson, Senator David Shoebridge, said it was a
problem if Australia had policies hostile to end-to-end encryption while
privacy law was failing to protect personal information.
He said the AFP approaching Session employees was seriously troubling.
Quote: Are police now taking the view that just trying to protect your privacy
makes you potentially guilty? We need a sovereign tech industry that delivers
safe and secure products for local users and to make this happen the industry
is telling us they urgently need an effective suite of privacy and data laws.
--
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2024 23:41:25 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] The Guardian Techscape: the X network is complete;
and why Reddit is profitable;
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
From: Blake Montgomery
?
TechScape from The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/info/2022/sep/20/sign-up-for-the-techscape-newsletter-our-free-technology-email
?
* X reaches its final form: Elon Musk has bent it to his will
* The evolution of Musk?s X network is complete; and why Reddit is profitable;
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I?m Blake Montgomery, technology news editor
at Guardian US.
Today in the newsletter: X?s final form, and learnings from a packed week of
earnings. Thank you for joining me.
With the US election, X?s transformation into Elon Musk?s weapon reaches its
peak. He has succeeded in bending his social network to his will.
Last week, Musk deputized his followers to report any ?potential instances of
voter fraud and irregularities?, tweeting about and linking to a forum within X
called the ?election integrity community?.
Experts told my colleague Johana Bhuiyan that the community, which has more
than 50,000 members, resembled 2020?s Stop the Steal Facebook group with its
conspiratorial tenor and morass of uncorrected misinformation.
Users posting on the self-contained feed quickly began pointing out what they
deemed as evidence of fraud and election interference.
Tweets showing everything from ballots that arrived ripped, an ABC News system
test and a postal worker doing his job and dropping off mail-in ballots, were
all presented as evidence that the presidential election had been compromised.
Among the tweets are attempts at doxing and identifying people who users
falsely accuse of ballot-box stuffing or preventing Trump supporters from
voting.
Before anyone can determine whether the claims are true or false, users seize
on the posts and assume the often unsuspecting person being shown is guilty.
Musk is weaponizing X?s features. He?s bending the posts of others to his
political will, curating the discussion into an alternative reality. He?s
favoring the posts of some while hiding those of others: the Washington Post
reported last week that, of the 100 top-tweeting congressional accounts, only
Republicans are going viral.
When he first bought Twitter, Musk deployed Twitter?s internal documents to
reshape its public image with the Twitter Files. Then, when he endorsed Donald
Trump, he made his own account his spear. He bombarded his followers with
pro-Trump messages and a glitchy Trump interview on Twitter Spaces.
We?ve never seen a transformation like X?s: a billionaire unafraid of
campaigning and naked partisanship bending a connective network used by tens of
millions to his vision of reality. Elon Musk was the October surprise.
In the absence of financial success with his forced purchase, Musk has turned
to politics to make his $44bn bet pay off.
As my colleague Dan Milmo put it: ?X?s continued influence as a news source and
its role as an outlet for broadcasting its owner?s rightwing views to his 200
million-plus followers, means the benefit to the world?s richest person does
not need to be measured in financial benchmarks alone.? Think of the
restoration of Trump?s account and all Musk?s pro-Trump tweets as in-kind
contributions, which Musk will cash in on during a Trump presidency.
When the election ends ? will it ever end? ? X?s value will decrease. It will
become less important that the world?s richest man is yammering about voter
fraud conspiracies. X?s traffic will probably fall off, as it does for media
outlets that see surges of interest in political contests and corresponding
craters. We will see the effects of Musk?s weaponization in the clear light of
day.
?Learnings from earnings
Five of the Magnificent Seven ? Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Apple ?
reported their quarterly earnings last week. All beat Wall Street?s revenue
expectations, though not all stocks went up. From their stellar performances,
we can glean a few lessons.
1. Ads are still the lifeblood of the internet?s economy
Google earnings, Meta earnings and even Amazon earnings show that digital ads
can still sustain an empire.
2. Investment in AI is paying off, particularly for the cloud business
Bully for Google, Microsoft and Amazon! All three, as well as Meta, have
increased their capital expenditures by tens of billions to pay for their
artificial intelligence products, but investors seem to think it?s worth it.
Each reported strong growth in its cloud business. Meta?s investment in
open-source AI has likewise led it to claim the title of Most Used AI as it
inserts Meta AI into Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Investors loved that.
3. Both of these upshots benefit one company in particular
Reddit, which turned a profit for the first time as a public company last week
and saw a whopping 68% revenue increase compared with the same quarter last
year. The company makes most of its money from advertising, so a robust market
means Reddit earns more money even as a smaller player than Google and Meta.
Reddit?s ad revenue is up 56%.
Reddit chief Steve Huffman also attributed the company?s above-expected
performance to a newer revenue stream: deals with AI companies.
Everybody who wants to build a large language model that generates English text
uses Reddit to train that AI. That social network is a vast and well-organized
corpus of text written by human beings. Reddit licenses that dataset to Google,
OpenAI and others for tens of millions of dollars.
That source of cash might not last for ever, but it?s not going away any time
soon.
Reddit, in turn, is benefiting from AI. Monthly users of the social network
rose by half in this quarter alone to an astounding 97 million.
Huffman attributed the dramatic rise to the social network?s new translation
feature, which uses AI to rewrite English posts in French, Spanish, Portuguese,
Italian and German. The company plans to expand the feature in the coming
months.
New York magazine?s John Herrman points out that Reddit, as a repository of
human-written material, is also the beneficiary of people who want to be sure
what they?re reading was not written by AI.
As such, Reddit has become ?Google?s favorite website?, Herrman writes, a
throne that comes with its own sword of Damocles. Huffman said Reddit had
become Google?s sixth-most searched word. Many digital media outlets have
reached the same lofty place only to fall back to earth with a crash.
--
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