The Week in Internet News: Artificial Intelligence Heads to the Final Frontier Thumbnail
Technology 14 May 2018

The Week in Internet News: Artificial Intelligence Heads to the Final Frontier

Grant Gross
By Grant GrossGuest AuthorTechnology Reporter

Coming to a space station near you: Artificial intelligence is going to space – maybe not a space station, but a satellite – predicts an aerospace executive, quoted in SpaceNews.com. So-called geospatial intelligence, housed on satellites, will collect massive amounts of data in space and analyze it, she says.

More blockchain believers: Tech giant Oracle plans to release its own blockchain software with a platform-as-a-service product coming this month and decentralized ledger-based applications coming next month, Bloomberg notes. Oracle is working with Banco de Chile to log inter-bank transactions on a hyperledger and with the government of Nigeria to document customs and import duties on blockchain.

Does blockchain even lift? Blockchain can help improve the sports and fitness industry by allowing instructors to securely stream workouts, allowing customers to avoid that annoying trip to the gym, Forbes suggests.

Social media eyes encryption: Facebook and Twitter are both looking at encrypting some user communications, according to news reports. Facebook has voiced support for end-to-end encryption on its blog, apparently in response to concerns it was moving to weaken encryption on its WhatsApp messaging service, BGR.com notes. However, Facebook hasn’t enabled encryption by default on it Messenger service, the story says. Meanwhile, Twitter is debating whether to encrypt direct messages, TechCrunch reports.

Russia targeting Viber? Messaging app Telegram has gotten a lot of attention for refusing to turn over encryption keys to the Russian government. It appears that the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media isn’t stopping there. The Viber messaging service may be next, reports Koddos.net.

The NSA is listening: The U.S National Security Agency “vacuumed up” more than 534 million telephone records and text messages from U.S. telecommunications providers in 2017. That’s more than triple the NSA’s collection in 2016, the New York Times reports.

Return of a nasty IoT botnet: The so-called Hide and Seek botnet, running on a number of hacked IoT devices, has returned with the unique ability to survive device reboots, Security Boulevard reports. The botnet was also the first to communicate through a custom-built peer-to-peer protocol.

Does this mean they’re self-aware? More than 60 IoT security cameras were compromised recently, with the message “I’m hacked” left on the devices. Victims had failed to change the default security password.

Want to learn more about AI? Read the Internet Society’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning policy paper and explore how it might impact the Internet’s future.

Disclaimer: Viewpoints expressed in this post are those of the author and may or may not reflect official Internet Society positions.

Related articles

Technology 20 April 2022

Common Internet Network Interconnection and Charging Practices

The networks of the Internet charge their customers for access to the Internet regardless of the direction of the...

Technology 1 November 2021

The Week in Internet News: Facebook Rebrands After Controversies

Facebook Meta-morphosizes; high-speed hacking; Iberian Internet expansion; even more satellite broadband; Internet shutdown in Sudan

Technology 25 October 2021

The Week in Internet News: Snowden Warns of Anti-Encryption Efforts

Snowden speaks out at Global Encryption Day; Russia censors Internet comms; housing broadband issues; Facebook renaming?; Trump's Truth Social