Good morning! Today: we're getting closer to quantum-proof encryption, the field of natural language processing is chasing the wrong goal, and Microsoft might buy TikTok's US business. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day.
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The quest for quantum-proof encryption just made a leap forward
The issue: Many of the things you do online every day are protected by encryption so that no one else can spy on it. Your online banking and messages to friends are likely encrypted, for example—as are government secrets. But that protection is under threat from the development of quantum computers, which threaten to render modern encryption methods useless.
Getting ahead of the game: While modern encryption is still a long way from being broken, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology launched a competition in 2016 to develop new standards for cryptography that will be more quantum-proof. Winners won’t be announced until 2022, but last week the organization announced that it had narrowed the initial field of 69 contenders down to just 15.
A promising method: So far, a single approach to “post-quantum cryptography” accounts for the majority of the finalists: lattice-based cryptography. While public-key encryption uses traditional math to encode data, lattice-based cryptography instead uses enormous grids with billions of individual points across thousands of dimensions. The NSA says the approach has promise. Read the full story.
—Patrick Howell O’Neill
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The field of natural language processing is chasing the wrong goal
What needs fixing: The way NLP is evaluated could be part of the problem. Researchers publish new data sets of even trickier questions, only to see even bigger neural networks quickly post impressive scores. But many people in the field are growing weary of such leaderboard-chasing. Do recent “advances” really translate into helping people solve problems? Such doubts are more than abstract fretting; whether systems are truly proficient at language comprehension has real stakes for society.
Where we go from here: To bring evaluations more in line with the targets, it helps to consider what holds today’s systems back. A human reading a passage will build a detailed representation of entities, locations, events, and their relationships—a “mental model” of the world described in the text. To construct more meaningful evaluations, NLP researchers should test whether an AI system is able to construct this sort of model. Read the full story.
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We can still have nice things
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The top ten must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Microsoft might buy TikTok’s US business
Its CEO has had conversations with Trump this weekend, after he vowed to ban the app. (TechCrunch)
+ What’s in it for Microsoft? (NYT $)
+ It would be a hugely risky purchase. (Reuters)
+ The US is planning to crack down on even more Chinese software companies. (FT $)
+ Why America is afraid of TikTok. (The Atlantic)
2 Summer camps show how hard it’ll be for schools to reopen safely 🚸
Separated cohorts, outdoor classes, and lots of testing will all need to be part of the mix. (National Geographic)
+ American parents are setting up homeschool “pandemic pods.” (TR)
3 Three suspects have been arrested over the Twitter hack
They are 17, 19, and 21. And they’re in a lot of trouble. (Vice)
+ This is how the FBI tracked them down. (ZDNet)
4 Two NASA astronauts safely came home from the ISS in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon 🚀
It was the first return of a commercially operated US spacecraft. (CNET)
5 How immunity to covid-19 works
This explains a) why you shouldn’t fear it waning and b) why the prospects for a vaccine are good. (NYT $)
+ Russia says it’s going to start vaccinations in October, raising safety concerns. (NYT $)
+ Coronavirus is airborne. We need to get that message across to people. (Slate)
6 The impact of the pandemic on healthcare workers is starting to hit home
Anxiety, depression and PTSD seem to be on the rise. (Wired UK)
+ Critical care doctors helped out in New York, then watched covid-19 come to their communities when they returned. (New Yorker $)
+ We need to prepare for mental health issues among survivors from the ICU, too. (TR)
7 Twitter’s algorithm does not discriminate against right-wingers
In fact, it amplifies the reach of inflammatory tweets. (The Economist $)
+ Twitter has permanently banned former KKK leader David Duke. (WP $)
8 We need to not go back to flying ✈️
The pandemic presents a unique opportunity to combat climate change. We must not waste it. (The Correspondent)
9 Netflix is letting you change the speed you watch TV at 📺
Who in their right mind wants to watch a show 1.5 times faster? SO WRONG. (The Verge)
10 Inside the rise and rise of Zoom
A decade ago, Silicon Valley had written it off. Now it’s impossible to imagine life without it. (The Guardian)
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“He never really seemed to care about anyone but himself."
—Connor Belcher, a gamer, tells the New York Times he was not surprised when 17-year-old Graham Clark was charged with the Twitter hack.
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