Kozminski Techblog

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On December 23rd an anonymous hacker uploaded a dataset of leaked email addresses and phone numbers of Twitter users, among which, supposedly, were public figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump Jr., Sundar Pichai, and others. In exchange for a “exclusive” sale of the data, the hacker requested US$200,000. Alon Gal of the cybercrime information company Hudson Rock claims that the breach included more than 200 million email addresses and it was significant in terms of potential harm that could be caused by cyber-terrorists.

Twitter has yet not made any comments on the recent breach in its data. According to company’s statements, they knew about the vulnerability in their cybersecurity since January 2022. According to the person who posted the data, they obtained the records in 2021 by utilizing data-scraping techniques through a vulnerability that Twitter revealed in August 2022 and has since been patched.

Despite negative comments concerning Elon Musk’s job as the CEO of Twitter, the U.S. regulators have also been watching developments at the company since Musk took over. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in order to make the Twitter users data safe and prevent such leaks in the future.

This story once again tells us that our data is not completely safe on the Internet and social media and one needs to be careful on how they surf the big web. Personally, I believe that the government and NGOs need to push harder on big tech companies when it comes to securing its users data. Stronger legislations and scrutiny will provide a safer space for social media users and create a better environment where we can coexist.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/05/twitters-latest-hack-is-big-one/

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64153381

https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-leak-200-million-user-email-addresses/

https://www.cshub.com/attacks/news/investigation-launched-into-twitter-after-400m-user-details-posted-on-hacking-forum

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The technology of space and flying into space has been developing rapidly in the last decades, mostly thanks to private companies. For example, SpaceX has a bunch of achievements it accomplished as a private space exploration corporation: it is the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft; the first private company to send humans into orbit; first reuse and re-flight of a crewed space capsule. Also, the summer of 2021 saw the space race between two billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson who were probably the greatest popularisers of the topic of space at that time. Both of them and Elon Musk believe in the yet-to-be-discovered potential of space and space tourism and continue to invest billions in the exploration of space and the technologies related to it.

However, there are still many caveats and pitfalls that need to be discussed and resolved before commercialized space travel can become a common option as airplane travel now is.

First, as of now, it is astronomically expensive for a regular person to travel into space: seats aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo typically cost between $250,000 and $500,000. More expensive flights to true orbit, which is significantly higher in altitude, can cost more than $50 million for each seat. The main reason for such a high cost is that it is very expensive to launch a rocket into space, it costs about $50 million for SpaceX to launch its Falcon 9 rocket. Compare this to the $1000 per hour needed to operate a small jet plane. Nevertheless, since the first time airplanes started flying into the air, it was also an exclusive luxury to travel using this machine, but I believe that now every person reading this blog has at least once traveled using an airplane. So, as the space travel industry develops further, and more people start to demand its services, the price will eventually come down, and it will be more available to the general public. However, the terms when this happens are still unclear.

Also, people traveling into space have to come through some sort of training and need to be physically fit for such a journey. Tourists will need to participate in a multi-day training program including pilot briefings and spacesuit fits to get ready for Virgin Galactic’s three-hour journeys, for instance. A quick instructional and safety session will be necessary for trips on zero-pressure balloons.

To conclude, there are many obstacles preventing space tourism from becoming common, but the further developments in this area can make it available for the general public.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/07/travel/space-travel-tourism.html

https://www.rd.com/article/space-tourism/#:~:text=Space%20tourism%20companies,-Russia’s%20Soyuz%20spacecraft&text=SpaceX%20currently%20charters%20private%20orbital,company%20operating%20commercial%20suborbital%20flights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-cost-of-space-flight/#:~:text=Space%20Tourism&text=For%20a%20suborbital%20trip%20on,than%20%2450%20million%20per%20seat.

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The term blockchain has been gaining popularity in recent years; it is most often associated with cryptocurrencies and finds its applications in the financial sector. However, blockchain technology is promising to become more ubiquitous in the upcoming years and can potentially be used in industries such as healthcare, banking, real estate, etc. The topic of this post will be the possible applications of blockchain in the education field, and how it can enhance the experience of education and make it more accessible for different people.

Still, the implementation of blockchain in education facilities is only at its initial stages and comprises a few functions, but the prospects of its more sophisticated use are rather considerable. Since the COVID-19 wave, digitalization has penetrated almost every aspect of education: most of the information presented to students and tutors is stored on the Internet, and most of the communication happens via the Internet. Blockchain has the power to disrupt this industry, especially the collaboration and management of academic records between students and teachers. The underlying technology behind blockchain and its decentralized ledger technology can have a substantial impact on the education processes, specifically the transparency and accountability aspects.

To understand what exactly blockchain can improve in education, there are going to be several examples presented.

1. Universal access to materials

Blockchain technology may be used to provide free, worldwide access to freely available educational materials like books, podcasts, and movies that are in the public domain and can be used and shared in any way. Blockchain makes it possible to securely and affordably distribute these resources in a public network. Blockchain makes it possible to share these resources affordably and securely in a public network. Additionally, educators can assess students’ work directly on the blockchain, allowing students from faraway locations to take courses and exams online.

2. Lower costs

Arranging student fees is a time-consuming process that involves many parties, including students, parents, scholarship foundations, lending companies, federal and state agencies, and university financial departments with their frequently enormous bureaucracy. This procedure can be made more efficient by blockchain, which will lower administrative costs and perhaps even lower the cost of tuition. Also, students can be rewarded for their academic achievements through the usage of tokens. Thus, students will be more incentivized to attain better results during their studies.

3. Smart contracts

Smart contracts are a very popular blockchain feature that has found a variety of applications in the financial world. In education, these contracts can be used to ensure the limitations of the assignment, its due date, and grading requirements. Students and tutors simply would have to sign such a contract.

4. University research

Authors have a stake in keeping track of how their work is applied and preventing outright theft from occurring. Blockchain would make it possible for researchers to publish without limitations, but in a way that would allow them to track the reuse of their work, including how frequently a work is cited and used as teaching materials, thus further monitoring its impact in the field — important because that could transform into acclaim and future funding.

To finalize, I believe that blockchain technology will be one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century along with AI, VR, and others. But we need to understand how to integrate it in the best way possible into the aspects of our life and industries. Further research, development, and education about this technology are needed before it is fully implemented in the education sector.

Sources:

https://www.analyticssteps.com/blogs/blockchain-education-sector-advantages-and-disadvantages

https://elearningindustry.com/ways-blockchain-impacts-education-industry-in-2022-and-beyond

https://online.maryville.edu/blog/blockchain-in-education/

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Artificial intelligence presents humans with enormous opportunities in handling various problems we need to solve. The first radical impact of AI was the technology Alan Turing implemented during WW2 to decipher the Nazi Enigma machine used for protecting crucial messages. Turing understood that the human brain was not capable of processing information and coming up with solutions as fast as the machine would.

Nowadays, it is almost a common fact, at least in the scientific community, that AI can perform most of the tasks a human does much faster and with much better results. And, in spite of having benefitted humankind so far, this technology might disrupt our society and make us negligible. The current job market is arranged in such a way that an individual first should study specific subjects in the university and then work the same job according to his or her specialization for the next 40 years until retiring. But AI is constantly developing and is going to take over more and more jobs in the future. For example, AI has proven to be more efficient than humans in jobs such as trading and accounting, since it can process millions of data points from different sources simultaneously and choose the most optimal solution better than people that specialize in this field would do. Most damage, of course, would be done to the so-called blue collars jobs, such as couriers/delivery people, bus/taxi drivers, warehousing, etc.

One would argue that during the Industrial Revolution, there was a panic that the new machines would leave people jobless and disrupt the entire economy. However, it eventually led to the greatest economic growth and technological revolutions in history. Consequently, looking back at the outcomes of the Industrial Revolution, we might make positive predictions about the outcomes of the AI revolution. But these two are fundamentally different: while the Industrial revolution aimed to enhance the performance of humans in physical terms, meaning jobs that required strength and repetitive actions, AI is going to do so in cognitive terms, jobs that often require outstanding skills in processing information. And still, one could argue that while AI is going to replace some of the jobs, it will create even more of them, but where is the guarantee that humans will do better in these newly emerged jobs that AI? And even if they do, how much time is it going to take until AI outperforms us there?

Thus, tens of millions of people would have to adapt to the new state of affairs in the job market, change their field of work, and relearn and acquire new skills. But how many of them would succeed in doing so? A 40-year-old accountant with 15+ work experience in the same field who needs to pay off his mortgage simply would not have enough time to do so. This might lead to the rise of the “useless class”, people that are replaced with machines, people with no economic or political power. New political, economic, and societal orders can arise due to the AI revolution, or, on other hand, the inequality gap might widen even further, leaving those at the bottom completely hopeless and powerless.

These hazards pose critical questions to the politicians, economists, and sociologists that seem to have not one proper affirmative answer to the facing threats. In my opinion, AI is probably the greatest innovation humankind has come up with, but at the same time it might be the most dangerous one, and we must prepare for the possible threats it might pose to us.

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/Alan-Turing-and-the-beginning-of-AI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/20/silicon-assassins-condemn-humans-life-useless-artificial-intelligence

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/20/silicon-assassins-condemn-humans-life-useless-artificial-intelligence

https://www.internetjustsociety.org/useless-class

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The topic of cryptocurrency has been at the hearing for quite a long time already since 3 January 2009 when the first cryptocurrency Bitcoin was introduced. The technology behind it is believed to revolutionize the economy and bring the digital era to a new level.

The main technology that makes cryptocurrency unique is the blockchain which is a peer-to-peer mechanism for verifying information; it makes it nearly impossible to alter the data stored in a blockchain. Even though most often the term blockchain is associated with cryptocurrency, the real potential of the usage of this technology might be far vaster starting from the banking sector and to the implementations in farming.

Still, in this post, the main focus will be on the topic of how blockchain can be used in video games. First, the vast majority of online video games where players can play with other players have some sort of digital in-game currency. However, most of the time it is very time consuming to get enough of that currency to spend on in-game assets; moreover, very often it is impossible to earn this currency by following some actions in the game – the players have to spend their fiat money on that. On top of that, these in-game assets such as graphics (characters, environments, logos), background music, special effects, and sound effects will not belong to the player who purchased them – these assets are stored in the centralized storage place of the gaming industry, thus making it not a safe place for highly valuable items. Using blockchain technology, every digital asset would have a unique unalterable metadata that belongs to the user – this decentralized form of ownership will protect the users’ digital resources, consequently making the gaming industry more attracting for other users and making it more attractive for players to engage in in-game transactions. Next, the player’s digital currency and assets won’t be safe for one more reason: the gaming company may decide to launch a new version of the game or a completely new game where the previously acquired assets would become nearly priceless. In the case of the implementation of blockchain technology, a new type of game can emerge: the so-called “Decentralised App”. The code in such a case would be open-source and the game would run on a decentralized blockchain, thus the community of players would have to reach a consensus on the modifications in the app. These provide players with far better control over the game and its development.

How the in-game items can become unique and their metadata unalterable is through the usage of non-fungible tokens(NFTs), so the digital goods found in video games can be traded like more familiar traditional bonds and stocks. For example, Axie Infinity uses NFTs in its game, and the primary goal of the game is to acquire Axies, which essentially are NFTs players later on use to battle against other players. Just like stocks, Axies can be used as an item of speculation.

Despite many advantages the blockchain can bring into the video game industry both for players and developers, there are quite a few downsides. First, in case of Axie Infinity, players need to pay a minimum of 300$ as an initial investment and the whole concept of the game looks like pay-to-win. Also, many of these blockchain-backed games don’t allow their players to withdraw all the money from their accounts. It might just happen as in the case of FTX when tens of millions of dollars are stuck in the digital environment and people cannot get their money back. Fraudulent activities are not atypical when it comes to the usage of decentralized platforms and unregulated industries, even though the users’ data is encrypted and is believed to be extra-safe.

I think that the real potential of blockchain usage in video games is still undiscovered, and further research and development need to be performed regarding this matter. However, the prospects for return on investments in blockchain gaming are still looking rather attractive and the technology might become disruptive in the upcoming years.

Sources:
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/what-are-blockchain-games

https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/01/06/why- video-game-makers-see-huge-potential-in-blockchain-and-why-problems-loom-for-their-new-nfts/?sh=5e41f71443d7

https://www.devteam.space/blog/how-blockchain-can-redefine-the-gaming-industry/