ReHacked #142: RaidForums Gets Raided, Human Brain Compresses Working Memories into Low-Res ‘Summaries’, What Ukraine Needs To Win The War and more
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RaidForums Gets Raided, Alleged Admin Arrested – Krebs on Security
#security
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said today it seized the website and user database for RaidForums, an extremely popular English-language cybercrime forum that sold access to more than 10 billion consumer records stolen in some of the world’s largest data breaches since 2015. The DOJ also charged the alleged administrator of RaidForums — 21-year-old Diogo Santos Coelho, of Portugal — with six criminal counts, including conspiracy, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Human Brain Compresses Working Memories into Low-Res ‘Summaries’ – NIH Director's Blog
#health #nature
You have probably done it already a few times today. Paused to remember a password, a shopping list, a phone number, or maybe the score to last night’s ballgame. The ability to store and recall needed information, called working memory, is essential for most of the human brain’s higher cognitive processes.
Researchers are still just beginning to piece together how working memory functions. But recently, NIH-funded researchers added an intriguing new piece to this neurobiological puzzle: how visual working memories are “formatted” and stored in the brain.
The findings, published in the journal Neuron, show that the visual cortex—the brain’s primary region for receiving, integrating, and processing visual information from the eye’s retina—acts more like a blackboard than a camera. That is, the visual cortex doesn’t photograph all the complex details of a visual image, such as the color of paper on which your password is written or the precise series of lines that make up the letters. Instead, it recodes visual information into something more like simple chalkboard sketches.
Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms – POLITICO
#economy #society
In 2019 it was revealed that the Dutch tax authorities had used a self-learning algorithm to create risk profiles in an effort to spot child care benefits fraud.
What Ukraine Needs To Win The War
#ukraine #war
"We are asking the whole world to unite and help us fight this cruel aggression.
#ArmUkraineNow, so that we can defeat this evil together." V. Zelensky
How facial recognition is identifying the dead in Ukraine - BBC News
#war #technologies #software
Last month a controversial facial recognition company, Clearview AI, announced it had given its technology to the Ukrainian government.
The BBC has been given evidence of how it is being used - in more than a thousand cases - to identify both the living and the dead.
This story contains graphic descriptions that may be upsetting to some readers.
Stop matching lone female Ukraine refugees with single men, UK told | Ukraine | The Guardian
#war #crisis #refugees
The UN refugee agency has called on the UK government to intervene to stop single British men from being matched up with lone Ukrainian women seeking refuge from war because of fears of sexual exploitation.
Following claims that predatory men are using the Homes for Ukraine scheme to target the vulnerable, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) told the Guardian “a more appropriate matching process” could be put in place to ensure women and women with children are matched with families or couples.
What the World's Most Remote Islands Were Like Before Humans Arrived - Atlas Obscura
#nature #history #longread
The islands would have appeared from a distance like jagged teeth of volcanic rock—black basalt and rusty tuff, dusted with verdant green—but subtle changes in currents, waves, and wind would have alerted Polynesian seafarers to the presence of the archipelago long before they saw it. On the largest island, a wedged-shaped remnant of a collapsed volcano, the explorers likely avoided the steep cliffs of the western side, and may have found the bays of the north coast more inviting. At least one ocean-going canoe followed the coast as it curved around to the east. There, Pacific swells pummeled the base of a rugged ridge that extended in a slim finger to the south. Beyond that narrowest of peninsulas, sheltered from the open ocean, was a small, protected shore, known today as Ho‘oumi. It was there, nearly a millennium ago, that humans set foot on the most remote islands in the world.
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