【推荐1】I ran into my favourite technophobe (抗拒技术者) the other day. “I see,” he laughed, “that your tech industry is in meltdown!” The annoying thing is that he was partly right. What has happened is that two major security weaknesses ― one of them has been named “Meltdown”, the other “Spectre”― have been discovered in the Central Processing Unit (CPU) chips that power most of the computers in the world.

A CPU is a device for performing billions of operations determined by whatever program is running: it fetches some data from memory, performs some operations on that data and then sends it back to memory; then fetches the next bit of data; and so on. Two decades ago someone had an idea for speeding up CPUs. Instead of waiting until the program told them which data to fetch next, why not try to predict what’s needed and pre-fetch it? That way, the processor would become faster and more efficient. This meant that — in a nice comparison made by Zeynep Tufekci, an academic who writes beautifully about this stuff   the CPU became like a super-attentive butler (管家), “pouring that second glass of wine before you knew you were going to ask for it”.

But what if you don’t want others to know about the details of your wine stock? “It turns out,” writes Tufekci, “that by watching your butler’s movements, other people can infer a lot about the stock.” Information is visible that would not have been available if he had patiently waited for each of your commands, rather than trying to predict them. Almost all modern microprocessors behave like attentive butlers — and the revealing traces left by their helpful actions mean that information that is supposed to be secret isn’t.

The biggest takeaway from the discovery of Meltdown and Spectre is the realisation of the shakiness of the foundations on which we have constructed our networked world. We have always known that there is no such thing as a completely secure networked device. Now we know that at the heart of every networked device there sits an insecure processor.

Initially, it was thought that the only answer would be to replace all those processors — an unconscionable option. But then it turned out that solutions exist in terms of patches (补丁) to operating system software. The industry is working on those and every conscientious user ought to install them when they become available. But there’s no free lunch here: fixing the problem will slow down processors by an amount that will differ from chip generation to generation. Microsoft, for example, says that patches will “significantly slow down certain servers and affect the performance of some personal computers”. Firing that attentive butler means that you have to fetch your own drinks. And that takes longer. Patience is a virtue, sometimes, even in computing.

【推荐2】The United States Patent and Trademark Office recently granted Microsoft a patent for software capable of creating a chatbot, or online conversational application, based on the characteristics of a particular dead person. The chatbot would use all of the dead’s social data and create a sort of virtual version of the dead, managed by artificial intelligence.

According to the new Microsoft patent, it is possible to use images, voice memos, social media posts, instant messages and emails to create an avatar (化身) or profile of the dead’s personality. With the digital profile, engineers can “train” a chatbot to speak like the dead. More worryingly, the application could also take the form of a dead love done with a 2D or 3D “model” and use their voice while talking to the person.

The creation of such a chatbot, apart from the moral, ethical and religious aspects, opens a complicated scenario (设想) regarding the data and privacy rights of the dead.

Faheem Hussain, a clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University, told Reuters “In most countries around the world, the data of dead people is not protected. Therefore, nothing in the laws would prevent the creation of an avatar or android that looks like the dead.”

“This could be done without the dead’s permission and the data used could violate the privacy of others if, for example, it included conversations the dead had with friends, relatives and others who were involved in their lives at various levels,” he added.

In February, one channel aired a tearful reunion between a mother and her dead 7-year-old daughter, recreated through virtual reality as a digital avatar using the mother’s photos and memories. But that’s not all. Some are thinking far ahead. ETER9 is a social network from a Portuguese developer Henrique Jorge, which has the feature of paring each user with an AI “counterpart” that learns to copy the user’s online behaviour to be able to post comment and share autonomously, even after the account owner has passed away.

【推荐2】Because of the politics and history of Africa, wild animals there, which are interested in finding food and water not in politics, are in trouble. In the past, there were no borders between African countries, and the animals could travel freely according to the season or the weather. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the continent was divided up into colonies and then into nations. Fences were put up along the borders, so the animals could no longer move about freely.

Some countries decided to protect their animals by creating national parks. Kruger National Park, created in South Africa in 1926, was one of the first. By the end of the twentieth century, it had become an important tourist attraction and a home for many kinds of animals. Among these, there were about 9,000 elephants, too many for the space in the park. It was not possible to let any elephants leave the park, however. They would be killed by hunters, or they might damage property or hurt people. South African park officials began to look for other solutions to the elephant problem.

As early as 1990, the governments of South Africa and Mozambique had begun talking about forming a new park together. In 1997, Zimbabwe agreed to add some of its land to the park. A new park would combine the Kruger National Park with parks in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. There would be no national border fences within the park, so that elephants and other animals from the crowded Kruger Park could move to areas of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. This new “transfrontier” park would cover 13,150 square miles (35,000 square kilometers). The idea of a transfrontier park interested several international agencies, which gave money and technical assistance to Mozambique to help build its part of the park.

In April 2001, the new park was opened, with new borders and a new name: The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. A border gate was opened between Kruger National Park and Mozambique, and seven elephants were allowed through. They were the first of 1,000 elephants that would be transferred to the world’s greatest animal park.

【推荐3】Three researchers from Harvard Business School, the University of London and the University of British Columbia have found that college graduates who value time over money report being happier a year later than those who report the opposite. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, Ashley Whillans, Lucia Macchia and Elizabeth Dunn, described their study and what they learned from it.

Most people who have lived for a long time know that there is very often a trade-off (权衡) between doing things that make you happy and doing things to make it possible — like earning more money. For those who are still young and in the process of making major life decisions, the trade-off might not be so obvious. In this new effort, the researchers sought to learn more about the decision-making processes of people about to graduate from college, and how those decisions affected their level of happiness just a year later.

The researchers administered a two-part survey to the volunteers. The first part asked questions regarding whether they valued time over money or vice versa. They also asked them to rate how happy they were. The first part of the survey was given to 1,000 volunteer students while they were still in college. The second part, which was identical to the first, was given to the same people one year later.

The researchers report that in the first survey, nearly two-thirds of respondents reported valuing time over money — a year later, they found that the ratio (比率) had changed somewhat. 14 percent of those who had reported valuing money over time switched their answer, while 13 percent of those who had first reported valuing time over money switched. The researchers also report that those students who had reported valuing money over time while still in school tended to accept jobs that were more income-focused, while those who chose time over money were more focused on working in an environment that they liked. The researchers also found that those who reported valuing time over money on either survey rated themselves as happier than those who valued money over time.