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We're kicking off the Privacy Tech session at #enigma2021 with Mitch Negus speaking about "NO DATA, NO PROBLEM—GIVING NUCLEAR INSPECTORS BETTER TOOLS WITHOUT REVEALING STATE

 A nuclear catastrophe hasn't occurred... yet. So we need to stay vigilant. Nuclear inspectors go in according to treaties to check what's going on and check compliance with treaty rules.
But as sophisticated analytics become more common, states will only want to share the minimum amount of information necessary under the treaty.

But perhaps we can use MPC -- secure multi-party computation
Yao's garbled circuits were first demonstrated on the millionaire's problem -- figuring out who's richer without revealing actual amounts.

Used for other things like cryptocurrency these days.
Can we use this for nuclear inspection?

MPC can be used to compute anything computed by a computer [but it's expensive!]
Every nuclear material has its own spectrum. By looking at the spectrum it tells inspectors what materials (and how much) are present at a site.
This is an example of the graph for uranium
Why hasn't someone done this yet?
* It's expensive! We haven't had computers fast enough before.
* The inspectors need to be *sure* that it will work. They want tried and true, not latest and greatest.
* It's a small field with a limited budget.
MPC explainer (it's cool but not magic)

Make a circuit which does some kind of computational task, like whether A < B
Garbled circuits build on these logic circuits.

Let's think about a case with two parties where we want to compare two inputs. That can be done with this circuit.

[accessibility apology: I'm livetweeting this really fast and can't render these diagrams in text]
Then we stick random numbers as labels on each of the inputs
Then encrypt all the inputs -- you can only decrypt the output which gives you the correct output.

[Also go watch this talk -- it's a good explanation but very hard to livetweet]
Up until this point, everything was done by one party. They create this whole garbled circuit thingie.

Then we use this crypto thingie called oblivious transfer. That lets the other party get the keys to do the decryption of the correct output for each gate.
Eventually they get to the end, and sucess! The answer to the garbled circuit, which gives them the correct answer to the circuit.
How to use this in the real world?

Want to use pre-existing software (to give confidence to the inspectors). But not every system can work for this: they can't scale enough, they're too bleeding-edge fancy (hard to use!), etc.
So built a prototype of their own, called CipherCircuit in Python. (Yes, it's slow, but more accessible and easier to use.)
Looked for a test application -- something easier than that whole nuclear signature example!

Instead did electrocardiogram analysis as a proof of concept to give the analysis without revealing the actual heartbeat.
Moved on to analyzing radiation signatures, looking for a particular movement of 233Pa along a road. Could they find this movement without ever looking at the detector's output?
[I definitely cannot render this animated data visualization please see talk.]

Spoiler: yes! They detected the spike!
It's still slow to build the circuit [... and I suspect to run it]

Can we be resilient to malicious adversaries? Maybe commitment scheme?

Believe this is more important than ever with increasing international tensions... and want to push for MPC to go mainstream

[End of talk]

More from Lea Kissner

Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Last talk about Securing Democracy at #enigma2021: @jackhcable speaking about "THE FULL STACK PROBLEM OF ELECTION

Let's imagine that elections use all the security measures security people have been advocating: risk-limiting audits, paper ballots, etc. Would people trust the elections more?

Jack would argue no. Most people don't understand this stuff and most of the claims people are making can't be disproven. And are massively bogus already.

Georgia did a full recount on paper ballots and it very much didn't stop people from doubting the election!

Are election security results in vain? The point of election security is to convince the loser they lost.

No! Have to focus on the whole stack, from election infrastructure to campaigns to people and mis/dis-informaton


One takeaway from the talk: the parts of the stack must work in tandem. Can't fight misinformation in a vacuum, but must build on other election security measures.
POLITICS
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
In more Securing Democracy at #enigma2021, @ChrFolini talking about "THE ADVENTUROUS TALE OF ONLINE VOTING IN

Switzerland is a direct democracy where citizens get to vote at least 4x/year, with a lot of mail-in voting. We have a long history of online voting.

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT SWEDEN.

[I get the picture that @ChrFolini has had to explain the difference several times.]


Process around mail-in ballots.

[tl;dr it's very complicated and wasn't threat-modeled until recently]


But the in-person ballots are complicated, too!


Most security folks don't think that we can't make a secure online voting system.

@ChrFolini says this is because of encryption
[Note: this is not the main reason that a lot of people cite -- we're more worried about things like malware but it's complicated]
WORLD
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Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Last up in Privacy Tech for #enigma2021, @xchatty speaking about "IMPLEMENTING DIFFERENTIAL PRIVACY FOR THE 2020

Differential privacy was invented in 2006. Seems like a long time but it's not a long time since a fundamental scientific invention. It took longer than that between the invention of public key cryptography and even the first version of SSL.


But even in 2020, we still can't meet user expectations.
* Data users expect consistent data releases
* Some people call synthetic data "fake data" like
"fake news"
* It's not clear what "quality assurance" and "data exploration" means in a DP framework


We just did the 2020 US census
* required to collect it by the constitution
* but required to maintain privacy by law

But that's hard! What if there were 10 people on the block and all the same sex and age? If you posted something like that, then you would know what everyone's sex and age was on the block.
TECH , TEACH
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Next up in Privacy Technology at #enigma2021, Kelly Huang from @ethyca speaking about "GONE, BUT NOT "FORGOTTEN"—TECHNICAL & PRACTICAL CHALLENGES IN OPERATIONALIZING MODERN PRIVACY

Just imagine there's a global pandemic forcing everyone to stay home and buy their stuff over the internet. And you've been working on your sanitization-on-demand startup. You've got more users than you can count! ... literally, because your data's all over.

Now you're a multi-national international country with privacy issues because your information is all over the place.

Now a user writes to request you delete their data. Where is it? How do you do that? Who's responsible for privacy in your business.

How do you operationalize privacy rights?

Primary stakeholders:
* Legal
* Business
* Engineering

We spend a lot of time on Twitter analyzing the legal rulings, but it's harder where the "rubber meets the code" 🥁
TECH
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Next up at #enigma2021, Sanghyun Hong will be speaking about "A SOUND MIND IN A VULNERABLE BODY: PRACTICAL HARDWARE ATTACKS ON DEEP LEARNING"

(Hint: speaker is on the

In recent years ML models have worked from research labs to production, which makes ML security important. Adversarial ML research studies how to mess with ML

For example by messing with the training data (c.f. Tay which became super-racist super-fast) or by foiling ML models by changing inputs in ways humans can't see.


Prior work considers ML models in a standalone, mathematical way
* looks at the robustness in an isolated manner
* doesn't look at the whole ecosystem and how the model is used -- ML models are running in real hardware with real software which has real vulns!


This talk focuses on hardware-level vulnerabilities. This is particularly interesting because these can break cryptographic guarantees (because those are outside of their threat models)
e.g. fault injection attacks, side-channel attacks
SCIENCE

More from Tech

Kevin Roose
Kevin Roose
@kevinroose
On press call, Zuckerberg says FB users "naturally engage more with sensational content" that comes close to violating its rules. Compares it to cable TV and tabloids, and says, "This seems to be true regardless of where we set our policy lines."

Zuckerberg says FB is in the process of setting up a "new independent body" that users will be able to appeal content takedowns to. Sort of like the "Facebook Supreme Court" idea he previewed earlier this year.

Zuckerberg: "One of my biggest lessons from this year is that when you connect more than 2 billion people, you’re going to see the good and bad of humanity."

This is how Facebook says it's trying to change the engagement pattern on its services. https://t.co/3p0PGc912o


.@RebeccaJarvis asks Zuckerberg if anyone is going to lose their job over the revelations in the NYT story. He dodges, says that personnel issues aren't a public matter, and that employee performance is evaluated all the time.
TECH
SwiftOnSecurity
SwiftOnSecurity
@SwiftOnSecurity
I think about this a lot, both in IT and civil infrastructure. It looks so trivial to “fix” from the outside. In fact, it is incredibly draining to do the entirely crushing work of real policy changes internally. It’s harder than drafting a blank page of how the world should be.


I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.

Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.

And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.

God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.

For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.

That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
TECH
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Jessica Guynn
Jessica Guynn
@jguynn
Mark Zuckerberg on NYT story: "To suggest we weren't interested in knowing the truth or wanted to hide what we knew or wanted to prevent investigations is simply untrue."

Facebook says it will take a couple of questions on the article but wants to focus on (looks at notes) its transparency report.

Good luck with that folks.

Now Mark Zuckerberg is running through all the tactics it's deploying to clean up the platform (you know like they should have years ago).

What every Facebook user should be reading in the
TECH
Taylor Holiday
Taylor Holiday
@TaylorHoliday
1/ What causes long term sustained performance in an ad account?

🧵featuring real examples 👇🏻

If you explore the source of FB ad growth and subsequently revenue growth for eCom brands it is almost never a function of iterative improvements to ad creative or tactics over time.

2/ More often it is a series of moments that unlock an order of magnitude increase in awareness, engagement, traffic and performance.

These moments can be caused by:

A single ad
A big PR moment
A breakthrough campaign
A change in market dynamics
A new product release
Etc.

3/ The problem is they are very hard to predict and create.

I’ll give you an example of a few that happened for us @QALORing that changed our trajectory (and ad account performance) each time...

4/ The first was @andydalton14 wearing a ring on @HBO hard knocks. It was the peak of the series popularity and they did a :30 piece on the ring he was wearing while playing.

See screenshot

Notice the traffic before and after the peak.


5/ This increased organic traffic let us alter our AdWords strategy, extract more post intent demand from new searchers and pull clips of the show to supplement our ad credibility.
TECH
John McMaster
John McMaster
@johndmcmaster
#RaspberryPiPico silicon teardown time!


Board as received optical + x-ray images


Inspecting package. X-ray shows bond wires easier after removing thermal slug


Thermal slug removed w/ HCl + H2O2


Decapped to show copper bond wires connecting die to package pins. Initially used only nitric acid which destroyed copper bond wires (last image). Fixed by switching to mixed nitric + sulfuric acid
TECH

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Dr Amanda Moehring
Dr Amanda Moehring
@FlyBehaviour
In Academia, people aren’t always supported when they need it. I want to share what @WesternU did when my husband died right after the pandemic shutdown. It should be shared with other uni’s as a model for empathy and proactive care when someone is in crisis.
1/
#AcademicChatter
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Vibhu Vashisth \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Vibhu Vashisth 🇮🇳...
@VIBHU_Tweet
VEDIC COSMOLOGY, also known as Hindu Cosmology, and cosmography are both interesting and inspiring. Today’s “modern” Vedic texts originated around 3,000 B.C.E. This is the oldest scientific and the oldest religious doctrine known to the human race.


Our current astronomy of the solar system and universe has its roots in Vedic knowledge. It only shows that man had advanced knowledge of astronomy way before our current civilization came into existence.
We are here to talk about the Vedic version of the planetary system,

starting at the top from the eternal planets to the temporary planetary system within innumerable universes in the material world.

Talking about “cosmic manifestation,” we need to incorporate both spiritual and material existence.


The spiritual realm of the planets is everlasting, and this will forever be beyond what the material universe can encapsulate. The spiritual realm belongs to the “super dimensional” or “anti-material” dimension. It means that it is beyond what we can perceive,


beyond time as a linear dimension, and the space of our vision and perception.

There are innumerable planets, all indestructible and forever lasting. That is what the Vedas say about the spiritual planets. Our concentration here is more towards the material side of things.
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सा विद्या या विमुक्तये...
@raghav_aanya
#ज्योतिष_विज्ञान #मंत्र_विज्ञान

ज्योतिषाचार्य अक्सर ग्रहों के दुष्प्रभाव के समाधान के लिए मंत्र जप, अनुष्ठान इत्यादि बताते हैं।

व्यक्ति के जन्म के समय ग्रहों की स्थिति ही उसकी कुंडली बन जाती है जैसे कि फ़ोटो खींच लिया हो और एडिट करना सम्भव नही है। इसे ही "लग्न" कुंडली कहते हैं।


लग्न के समय ग्रहों की इस स्थिति से ही जीवन भर आपको किस ग्रह की ऊर्जा कैसे प्रभावित करेगी का निर्धारिण होता है। साथ साथ दशाएँ, गोचर इत्यादि चलते हैं पर लग्न कुंडली का रोल सबसे महत्वपूर्ण है।


पृथ्वी से अरबों खरबों दूर ये ग्रह अपनी ऊर्जा से पृथ्वी/व्यक्ति को प्रभावित करते हैं जैसे हमारे सबसे निकट ग्रह चंद्रमा जोकि जल का कारक है पृथ्वी और शरीर के जलतत्व पर पूर्ण प्रभाव रखता है।
पूर्णिमा में उछाल मारता समुद्र का जल इसकी ऊर्जा के प्रभाव को दिखाता है।


अमावस्या में ऊर्जा का स्तर कम होने पर वही समुद्र शांत होकर पीछे चला जाता है। जिसे ज्वार-भाटा कहते हैं। इसी तरह अन्य ग्रहों की ऊर्जा के प्रभाव होते हैं जिन्हें यहां समझाना संभव नहीं।
चंद्रमा की ये ऊर्जा शरीर को (अगर खराब है) water retention, बैचेनी, नींद न आना आदि लक्षण दिखाती है


मंत्र क्या हैं-
मंत्र इन ऊर्जाओं के सटीक प्रयोग करने के पासवर्ड हैं। जिनके जप से संबंधित ग्रह की ऊर्जा को जातक की ऊर्जा से कनेक्ट करके उन ग्रहों के दुष्प्रभाव को कम किया और शुभ प्रभाव को बढ़ाया जाता है।
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Zen Black
Zen Black
@z3nblack
1/ Thread: "A Silicon Valley Ponzi Scheme"

Thanks to @chamath for laying this out in Social Capital's 2018 annual letter.

I've always appreciated his outspokenness.

2/ The hardest thing for most startups today is the path to market: first finding product-market fit & a way to reach customers, then building a ruthless machine to acquire, monetize & retain them.

3/ Because of this, when the VC industry invests capital into fast growing startups today, the plurality (if not majority) of invested capital will go into user acquisition and ad spending, for better or worse— usually worse.

4/ Todays massive venture-backed advertising, sales, and user acquisition playbook has morphed into one that champions growth at any cost.

This is creating a big bill that will soon come due...

5/ Ad impressions and click-throughs are bid up to outrageous prices by startups flush with venture money, and prospective users demand more and more subsidized products to gain their initial attention.
TECH , STARTUPS , {TEST FOLDER}
Anumah, Abdulraheem Okehi \U0001f468\u200d\U0001f52c\U0001f1f3\U0001f1ec \U0001f1eb\U0001f1f7 \U0001f1f5\U0001f1f9 \U0001f1ea\U0001f1f8
Anumah, Abdulraheem Ok...
@AnumahABD
Department List of UCAS-China PROFESSORs for ANSO, CSC and UCAS (fully or partial) Scholarship Acceptance
1) UCAS School of physical sciences Professor
https://t.co/9X8OheIvRw
2) UCAS School of mathematical sciences Professor

3) UCAS School of nuclear sciences and technology
https://t.co/nQH8JnewcJ
4) UCAS School of astronomy and space sciences
https://t.co/7Ikc6CuKHZ
5) UCAS School of engineering

6) Geotechnical Engineering Teaching and Research Office
https://t.co/jBCJW7UKlQ
7) Multi-scale Mechanics Teaching and Research Section
https://t.co/eqfQnX1LEQ
😎 Microgravity Science Teaching and Research

9) High temperature gas dynamics teaching and research section
https://t.co/tVIdKgTPl3
10) Department of Biomechanics and Medical Engineering
https://t.co/ubW4xhZY2R
11) Ocean Engineering Teaching and Research

12) Department of Dynamics and Advanced Manufacturing
https://t.co/42BKXEugGv
13) Refrigeration and Cryogenic Engineering Teaching and Research Office
https://t.co/pZdUXFTvw3
14) Power Machinery and Engineering Teaching and Research
EDUCATION