Microsoft is building a planetary computer as the centerpiece of its AI for Earth program.

Two other initiatives, from Microsoft and NASA, make clear that to fulfill ambitious climate goals, AI needs a participatory democracy, networks of on-site innovators deeply knowledgeable about their locales and acting urgently for just that reason.

Using the same machine learning algorithm that swaps visual and audio data to produce fabricated, hyperrealistic videos called deepfakes, it generates similarly real-looking views of floods or wildfires for any street address.

this “climate AI” could be a game changer in the tech ecosystem, as in the physical ecosystems now facing their worst risks.

There’s every chance that global temperatures will soar by 3 degrees Celsius, twice as much as the agreed-upon 1.5 C limit. Unless we take drastic steps and cut down emissions by 43 percent within this decade, the full force of this existential threat will be upon us.

The application of advanced technologies in the field of industrial production has been called ‘Industry 4.0’, ‘smart manufacturing’ or ‘smart production’. Industry 4.0 combines hardware (advanced robots and 3D printers), software (big data analytics, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence), and connectivity (the Internet of Things) (UNIDO, 2020).

the revolutionary nature of the current transformations in the economy and society stems from (a) the unprecedented speed of economic and social change; (b) the fact that technological convergence is disrupting almost every industry; and (c) the systemic impact of the changes, which touch upon systems of production, management, and governance.

convergence of technologies

The impact that AI is expected to have on economic growth and gross domestic product (GDP) is similar to the impact of other general-purpose technologies that underpinned previous industrial revolutions

‘fourth industrial revolution’.

‘fourth industrial revolution’.

directly to mobile technology

Reflection point

it unimportant, even annoying

oes it seem contradictory to highlight divides in the USA when there are more significant divides in less privileged regions?

And third, we need Member States, the United Nations system, international financial institutions and all partners to do far more to join up our humanitarian, peace and development efforts.  The flames of conflict are fuelled by inequality, deprivation, and underfunded systems.

Peacebuilding works — it is a proven investment.  As you know, we’ve developed a series of mechanisms to expand and grow the resources required to deliver.  And we’re making progress.  For example, the Peacebuilding Fund has been steadily growing — investing $195 million last year.

New Agenda for Peace

one quarter of humanity lives in conflict-affected areas.  Two billion people.  Last year, 84 million were forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence and human rights violations.  And this year, we estimate that at least 274 million will need humanitarian assistance.  All of this is taking place at a moment of multiplying risks that are pushing peace further out of reach — inequalities, COVID-19, climate change and cyberthreats, to name just a few.

Resources are being diverted away from badly needed support to address the sharp increases in hunger and poverty resulting from COVID-19. 

we are facing the highest number of violent conflicts since 1945.

An estimated 84 million people were "forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence and human rights violations," and an estimated 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance due to conflict,

Two billion people, or a quarter of the world's population, now lives in conflict-affected areas,

peace-building is a bargain and a prerequisite for development and a better future for all."

his plan "places prevention and peace-building at the heart of our efforts."

An estimated 84 million people were "forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence and human rights violations," and an estimated 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance due to conflict,

Two billion people, or a quarter of the world's population, now lives in conflict-affected areas

Lynch’s bill also appeals to believers in modern monetary theory, or M.M.T., which contends that government spending is constrained only by the threat of inflation, because the bill would provide for the Treasury Department to issue money directly. The department would do so under an authority similar to the one that allows it to mint coins, subject to congressional approval, said Rohan Grey, an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Ore.

Ecash would not be a central bank digital currency of the kind being tested around the world.

To curb crime, there would be a low limit on the value that could be stored on any one card,

There’s no cryptocurrency blockchain or distributed ledger technology involved in the proposed Ecash system

Transactions on the proposed new Treasury cards would be strictly peer to peer, like cash. Funds could also be uploaded onto phones or other hardware.

the Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware Act, or Ecash.

with issuing digital dollar technologies “that replicate the privacy-respecting features of physical cash.

“We’re trying to preserve some element of anonymity and not have full-spectrum surveillance of every aspect of people’s lives,”

any digital currency it issued “would differ materially from cash, which enables anonymous transactions.”

As cash disappears from the modern economy, privacy disappears with it.

the implementation of censorship would be much more total and much more efficient,”

Such a move suggests Russia could be moving toward a centralized, Chinese-style approach to online censorship.

TSPU (“technical solution for threat countermeasures”), was implemented.

y December 24, 2019, Russia claimed it had successfully tested uncoupling itself from the global internet, without needing to be connected to the rest of the world through Russia’s 10 known public internet exchange points—though the effectiveness and legitimacy of the tests are both disputed.

The national DNS system maintains a localized copy of the global internet within Russia,

reates a national DNS system

gives authorities powers to centralize control of the internet

packet-snooping hardware on company networks

In May 2019, Putin announced the RuNet, a sovereign internet disconnected from the rest of the world, as part of a domestic internet law that came into force in November 2019

Russia is still reliant on international companies to power large parts of its internet, though it did cope relatively well with Cogent’s departure. It simply ported traffic onto other internet backbones, which handled the disruption.

“We see a lot of foreign companies involved in running their infrastructure, from telecommunications to data delivery networks.”

Russia has made some steps toward trying to rectify that, but in recent history it has struggled to implement nationwide blocks or bars on websites deemed unsavory. That’s because of the way Russian internet infrastructure works. 

Russian ISPs reset user connections as they try to access websites, leaving them trapped in a frustrating loop of unfulfilled requests.

Russia has more than 3,000 ISPs, which implement diktats at different speeds.

both are harder for Russia than China because it’s starting from a comparatively open internet,

By 2001, the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development estimated, China spent $20 billion on censorious telecom equipment every year. The famed Great Firewall is just that: a firewall that inspects every bit of traffic entering Chinese cyberspace and checks it against a block list. Most internet traffic into China passes through three choke points, which block any untoward content.

it demonstrated Russia’s progress in creating a “splinternet,” a move that would effectively detach the country from the rest of the world’s internet infrastructure.

One of the cardinal principles of science is that issues are settled through reasoned discussion, by adhering to strict standards of conduct, and by documenting assertions—never by violence.

Why should we treat scientific exchanges any differently than Champions League soccer matches, ballet performances, financial transactions, and investment projects—which have all been cancelled in recent days?

SESAME in Jordan, the first synchrotron light source

And perhaps this might also help to improve relations between Switzerland and the EU.”

While only one country can host the accelerator, the aim is to have a number of hubs in different countries covering activities such as medical data collection, medical physics, and imaging. Another hub will be a solar power station, generating enough green energy to balance the accelerator’s consumption.

Two options were on the table: a synchrotron radiation light source, or an accelerator for biomedical research and cancer treatment.

the South East European International Institute for Sustainable Technologies (SEEIIST)

“I think SESAME is the only organisation where government representatives from Israel, Iran, Palestine and Pakistan all sit together,” Schopper says, “and it works very well.”

“If you have a common project, with scientists working together, that transfers to the politicians and you can build up confidence, which is a benefit for everybody,”

It was through CERN, for example, that German and Israeli scientists first started to work together, and during the Cold War the research centre was one of the few open channels of communication between East and West.

The divide between Russian sciences and global sciences is happening.

A lot of collaborations are finished. The collaboration between Russian medics and COVID researchers is finished. Collaboration projects with foreign scientists are finished and I fear they will not come here any more.

a potential “secondary sanction risk” that many Chinese businesses are trying to manage.

the use of digital sequence information (DSI) of genetic biodiversity, known as biopiracy.

the spectre of a biodiversity “Copenhagen moment” – a reference to when 2009 climate talks in the Danish capital collapsed – in Kunming is lurking.

While delegates left Geneva with much of the text in brackets, governments have agreed a stable negotiating text. It will include targets on subsidies, protected areas and invasive species. The ambition is now up to negotiators.

The final plenary session also saw a lengthy standoff over biopiracy, which some fear could scupper the entire agreement, as developing countries demand they are paid for drug discoveries and other commercial products based on their biodiversity.

called for developed countries to commit to providing $100bn (£76bn) a year of biodiversity finance from public and provide sources, which would rise to $700bn by 2030, closing the “nature funding gap”.

But rich countries’ failure to provide at least $100bn a year of climate finance to the developing world at Cop26 in Glasgow has undermined trust and that is spilling over into the biodiversity process.

not being followed through with resources

little progress was made on the targets and goals that are meant to herald nature’s “Paris moment”.

I recently learned that uppercase and lowercase letters got their names from actual wooden cases of lead that were used by compositors for printing.

It began as a term from French railroad engineering referring to the layers of material that go beneath (“infra”) the tracks. Its meaning expanded to include roads, bridges, sewers and power lines, and very recently expanded again to include people, specifically caregivers, as in this fact sheet from the Biden White House

I.C.E. is short for internal combustion engine, a modifier that was superfluous until electric cars came on the scene.

It refers simply to the physical world, where we have tangible bodies made of … meat. “Meatspace” is a word that didn’t need to exist until the invention of cyberspace. Technological progress gives us a new perspective on things we once took for granted, in this case reality itself.

United Nations Convention on Countering the Use of Informationand Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes

seldom called into question

Restoring credibility

briefings in different languages

understanding,

strategic goals

knock-on effects

opinion of its appeal,

retreat

demonstrated by

proliferating.

ong-term solutions

he Global Initiative on Data Security,

to develop cooperation within the ”Russia-India-China“ format,

a plan for cooperation between Russia and China in this area.

a joint draft convention as a basis for negotiations.

to agree as soon as possible on a credible, universal, and comprehensive convention and provide it to the United Nations General Assembly at its 78th session in strict compliance with resolution 75/282

process on international information security within a single mechanism and support in this context the work of the UN Open-ended Working Group on security of and in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) 2021–2025 (OEWG) and express their willingness to speak with one voice within it.

The Chinese side is sympathetic to and supports the proposals put forward by the Russian Federation to create long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe.

seriously concerned about the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom (AUKUS)

highly vigilant about the negative impact of the United States' Indo-Pacific strategy on peace and stability in the region

The sides oppose further enlargement of NATO and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologized cold war approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilizational, cultural and

greater interconnectedness between the Asia Pacific and Eurasian regions.

The sides believe that peace, development and cooperation lie at the core of the modern international system.

There is no one-size-fits-all template to guide countries in establishing democracy. A nation can choose such forms and methods of implementing democracy that would best suit its particular state, based on its social and political system, its historical background, traditions and unique cultural characteristics. It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their State is a democratic one.

The sides share the understanding that democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of States, and that its promotion and protection is a common responsibility of the entire world community.

The sides support the internationalization of Internet governance, advocate equal rights to its governance, believe that any attempts to limit their sovereign right to regulate national segments of the Internet and ensure their security are unacceptable, are interested in greater participation of the International Telecommunication Union in addressing these issues.

we will build bridges between the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic,

search_after

Elasticdump

ExpressVPN, which was one of the companies on the list, says it was targeted because it refused to block access to news sites, secure email services, and political opposition content. “We said at the time, publicly, that's not something we would do. It's antithetical to the reason that we provide a VPN service,” says ExpressVPN’s Li, speaking from Singapore. “As we understand it, [the ban] was a follow-up action to that.”

the country introduced the so-called VPN law, which tried to force companies to block restricted websites.

Around 20 VPN services have already been blocked in the country, and the authorities have plans to block more, according to politician Alexander Khinshtein, chairman of Russia’s Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies, and Communication in the Duma, the country’s main legislative body.

Almost 400 news websites, 138 finance sites, 93 antiwar sites, and three social media platforms have been blocked, according to Top10VPN.com.

AI-based warfare might seem like a video game, but last September, according to Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, the U.S. Air Force, for the first time, used AI to help to identify a target or targets in “a live operational kill chain.” Presumably, this means AI was used to identify and kill human targets.

“After the End of Globalization”

“The high tide of globalization has passed for now; the question is how far the water will drop.”

“Russia’s attempts to make itself economically independent actually made it more likely to be subject to sanctions, because the West did not have to risk as much to impose them.”

A rise in military spending?

The burden of globalization’s reversal, then, might be felt most acutely by the world’s poor.

deglobalization could make the transition to renewable energy more difficult by erecting barriers to the trade of raw materials.

Particularly in Europe, the fusion of foreign-policy and energy interests has lent more political momentum to decarbonization

A surge in prices and an increase in domestic jobs

“I don’t think economic integration survives a period of political disintegration.”

“What we’re headed toward is a more divided world economically that will mirror what is clearly a more divided world politically,”

the European Union vowed this month to slash Russian natural gas imports by two-thirds by next winter, and to phase them out by 2027.

“the rice bowls of the Chinese people must be filled with Chinese grain.”

the Chinese government has become particularly concerned about reducing its dependence on foreign agricultural products,

“to make sure everything from the deck of an aircraft carrier to the steel on highway guardrails is made in America from beginning to end.”

“Aspiring regional powers such as India, Brazil and Nigeria are studying America’s financial weapons of mass destruction and asking how they can adjust their defenses lest they end up in the crossfire.”

Document attached to the procedureSWD(2020)036316/12/2020ECDocument attached to the procedureSWD(2020)0364 16/12/2020ECDocument attached to the procedureN9-0019/2021OJ C 147 26.04.2021, p. 000410/02/2021EDPSCommittee draft reportPE692.79201/06/2021EPCommittee of the Regions: opinionCDR5356/202030/06/2021CofRAmendments tabled in committeePE695.14307/07/2021EPAmendments tabled in committeePE695.19607/07/2021EPAmendments tabled in committeePE695.19707/07/2021EPAmendments tabled in committeePE695.19807/07/2021EPCommittee opinionTRANPE691.25329/09/2021EPCommittee opinionCULTPE693.64004/10/2021EPCommittee opinionLIBEPE693.94618/10/2021EPCommittee opinionECONPE693.93028/10/2021EPCommittee opinionJURIPE693.72705/11/2021EPAmendments tabled in committeePE700.38910/11/2021EPCommittee opinionITREPE693.90724/11/2021EPCommittee report tabled for plenary, 1streading/single readingA9-0332/202130/11/2021EPSummaryText adopted by Parliament, partial voteat 1st reading/single readingT9-0499/202115/12/2021EPSummaryAdditional informationDigital Markets ActPURPOSE: to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market by promoting effective competition in digital markets and in particular a fairand contestable online platform environment (Digital Markets Act)

Although “the cloud” became a major buzzword years ago, its definition is still cloudy for some folks. The cloud exists in remote data centers that you can access via the internet. Any data you’ve uploaded to the cloud exists on dedicated servers and storage volumes housed in distant warehouses, often situated on campuses full of such warehouses. Data centers are owned by cloud service providers, who are responsible for keeping the servers up and running.

the clash inside America is over what kind of civilization ours should be.

various battles over race and sex, liberalism, education and religion, are indeed a response to a world that no longer takes American hegemony or liberal universalism for granted

The woke often seem like heirs of the New England Puritans and the utopian zeal of Yankeedom; their foes are often Southern evangelicals and conservative Catholics and the libertarian descendants of the Scots-Irish; and the stakes in the debates are competing interpretations of the American founding, the Constitution, the Civil War and the settlement of the frontier.

Rather than offering a universal message, its key slogans and ideas really make sense only inside America and Europe — what could “interrogating whiteness” possibly mean to the middle class of Mumbai or Jakarta, or to the young elites of Bahrain or Beijing?

wherever smaller countries are somehow “torn,” in his language, between some other civilization and the liberal West, they usually prefer an American alliance to an alignment with Moscow or Beijing.

the split between the Orthodox and Russian-speaking east and the more Catholic and Western-leaning west, his assumption that civilizational alignments would trump national ones hasn’t been borne out in Putin’s war, in which eastern Ukraine has resisted Russia fiercely.

China’s one-party meritocracy, Putin’s uncrowned czardom, the post-Arab Spring triumph of dictatorship and monarchy over religious populism in the Middle East, the Hindutva populism transforming Indian democracy — these aren’t just all indistinguishable forms of “autocracy,” but culturally distinctive developments that fit well with Huntington’s typology, his assumption that specific civilizational inheritances would manifest themselves as Western power diminishes, as American might recedes.

The first years of the 21st century, in other words, provided a fair amount of evidence for the universal appeal of Western capitalism, liberalism and democracy, with outright opposition to those values confined to the margins — Islamists, far-left critics of globalization, the government of North Korea.

the Huntington thesis is more relevant than ever.

But Caldwell’s analysis resembles the popular liberal argument that the world is increasingly divided between liberalism and authoritarianism, democracy and autocracy, rather than being divided into multiple poles and competing civilizations.

we have been moving back to a world of explicitly ideological conflict — one defined by a Western elite preaching a universal gospel of “neoliberalism” and “wokeness,” and various regimes and movements that are trying to resist it.

That’s the argument offered, for instance, by the French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy in a recent interview with Le Nouvel Observateur. Roy describes the Ukraine war as “definitive proof (because we have many others) that the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory does not work” — mostly because Huntington had predicted that countries that share Orthodox Christianity would be unlikely to go to war with one another, but instead here we have Putin’s Russia making war, and not for the first time, against a largely Orthodox Christian neighbor, even as he accommodates Muslim constituencies inside Russia.

These claims were the backbone of Huntington’s book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” which was seen as a sweeping interpretive alternative to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, with its vision of liberal democracy as the horizon toward which post-Cold War societies were likely to converge.

in which societies “sharing cultural affinities” were more likely to group themselves into alliances or blocs.

The campaign, which uses the slogan "Change the code, not the climate," aims to highlight the amount of energy needed to power the network, an amount that has been estimated to be greater than that of many countries.

Though the law has been approved by EU member states, the language still needs to be finalized and approved by both Parliament and the Council, then officially adopted by the 27 countries that make up the EU, but that's considered more of a formality.

can levy fines of up to 10% of the company's global revenue and 20% in the event of a second violation.

The DMA includes any company that provides web browsers, social media services, messaging apps or other online services to at least 45 million EU users, or 10,000 businesses, and has a market capitalization of at least 75 billion euros (about $82 billion).

Allowing third-party services (like messenger apps) to interact with gatekeeper systems.Letting users access services they may've acquired outside of a gatekeeper platform.Enabling users to uninstall any pre-installed software or apps.Allowing companies that advertise on gatekeeper platforms to access performance-measuring tools.Letting business users access data generated by their activities.

send files or make video calls across messaging apps,"

"have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms,"

The goal of the act isn't to break tech companies apart but to "break them open,"

the Digital Markets Act is aimed at regulating massive "gatekeeper" providers, requiring them to exchange more information between services and provide space for smaller platforms to thrive in the market.

The EU Cybersecurity Act defines cybersecurity as “the activities necessary to protect network and information systems, the users of such systems, and other persons affected by cyber threats”.

“Dark web underground shops contain compromised email accounts of law enforcement agencies, which could be sold with the attached cookies and metadata for anywhere from $10 to $50,”

“There’s no one system or centralized system for submitting these things,”

there are tens of thousands of different law enforcement agencies, from small police departments to federal agencies, around the world.

The systems for requesting data from companies is a patchwork of different email addresses and company portals.

The forged legal requests are believed to be sent via hacked email domains belonging to law enforcement agencies in multiple countries,

The three people said it may be primarily used to facilitate financial fraud schemes.

The emergency requests are intended to be used in cases of imminent danger and don’t require a judge to sign off on it.

routinely asks social media platforms for information about users as part of criminal investigations.

“may be contacted and asked to confirm to Apple that the emergency request was legitimate,”

City of London Police recently arrested seven people in connection with an investigation into the Lapsus$ hacking group; the probe is ongoing.

such requests are only provided with a search warrant or subpoena signed by a judge, according to the people. However, the emergency requests don’t require a court order.

provided customer data to hackers who masqueraded as law enforcement officials,

“The legitimacy crises that have plagued the WTO since its creation suggest that ordoglobalism as a distinct strain of neoliberalism may have overreached. If the goal was to fine-tune the rules to prevent disruptive demands for social justice or redistribution, then victory is nowhere in sight.”

Quinn Slobodian made in his 2018 book, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism,

The difference is that the American social scientist bet on Islamic civilisation becoming the main challenger to the West. Dugin, however, is betting on a new world order in which Russia is the one countering Western civilisation as the leading Eurasian power.

Samuel Huntington in the Clash of Civilizations (1996)

must “destabilise internal political processes in the US”, encourage Britain’s exit from the European Union and begin the annexation of Ukraine.

that “Atlanticism” – the liberalism, free markets and democracy representing North America and Western Europe – loses its influence over “Eurasia” – the territories once governed by the Soviet Union, which needs to stand for hierarchy, tradition and a strict legal structure.

Foundations of Geopolitics.

combine Neo-paganism, Slavic Nativism, and Eastern Orthodox traditions under Dugin’s “Fourth Political Theory”, which integrates elements of liberal democracy, Marxism, and fascism in a new ideology designed to counter liberalism and its individualist denial of mysticism and traditions.

Alexandr Dugin

a set of concepts expressing the historical uniqueness, special vocation and global purpose of the Russian people and, by extension, of the Russian state.

In 2014, he recommended his regional governors read Ilyin’s book, Our Side, alongside Justification of the Good by Vladimir Solovyov and Philosophy of Inequality by Nicholas Berdyaev.

a form of Christian authoritarianism

who died in exile in Switzerland in 1954

it is the ideas of Ivan Ilyin

authoritarian brand of mild liberalism

Russian “sovereign democracy” that has been guiding the Kremlin since at least 2006

Vladislav Surkov, or “Putin’s Rasputin”

none of these motivations can justify Putin’s actions – but they can help us understand the many dimensions

there were also deeper philosophical and ideological motivations behind this invasion

many political scientists and journalists, from John Mearsheimer to Pepe Escobar, have long been warning that if NATO continues expanding towards Russia’s borders, a deadly confrontation in Ukraine could be on the cards.