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Home Secretary demands encrypted messaging backdoors
Newly instated Home Secretary Priti Patel has taken to The Daily Telegraph to call for the elimination of encrypted messaging (The Register). Commenting on Facebook's plans for secure encrypted messaging across its platforms, Patel said that “where systems are deliberately designed using end-to-end encryption, which prevents any form of access to content, no matter what crimes that may enable, we must act.”
Russian military to combat Arctic wildfires
Russian military forces have been sent to Siberia to help fight the wildfires consuming forests and peat in the country's Arctic regions following an extremely hot in summer the far north (BBC News).
An estimated three million hectares are currently burning and over 700,000 people petitioned for action to be taken. Despite officials saying that there were no plans to tackle the fires, president Vladimir Putin ordered defence ministry service personnel to engage in firefighting efforts, along with 10 planes and 10 helicopters equipped to help control the blazes.
DeepMind's new AI predicts kidney injury two days before it happens
In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature, DeepMind researchers showed that they had created a machine learning algorithm capable of predicting acute kidney injury (AKI) up to 48 hours before it happened (WIRED). Using a vast database from the US Department of Veterans Affairs the team at DeepMind trained an algorithm to predict whether a patient would suffer AKI, and in 90 per cent of the worst cases, when patients ended up requiring dialysis, the algorithm’s predictions were accurate.
India's government is betting on hyperloop transport tech
The Indian state of Maharashtra has classed hyperloop tech – a public transport system in which passenger capsules are propelled through vacuum tubes at up to 1,200kph – as a “public infrastructure project” with the intention of constructing a high-speed connection between Mumbai and Pune (TechCrunch).
The Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority will accept proposals from mid-August, with a consortium between Virgin Hyperloop One and DP World currently placing itself as the front-runner to construct a 35-minute hyperloop route to replace a three-hour road journey.
This little security key from Google can stop you getting hacked
Google is finally bringing its Titan security key to the UK, available to order now from the web giant's online store (WIRED). Costing £50, the Titan hardware set comes with two devices: a key-shaped USB stick and a Bluetooth key fob. Both pieces of kit serve the same purpose. They act as physical two-factor authentication tokens that prove you are who you say when you're trying to login.
Why you're so grumpy when it's hot
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
