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Category: law – Page 58

Pilot: A virtual agent that can negotiate with humans

Negotiations are a central part of many human interactions, ranging from business discussions and legal proceedings to conversations with vendors at local markets. Researchers specialized in economics, psychology, and more recently, computer science have conducted several studies aimed at better understanding how humans negotiate with one another in the hope of shedding light on some of the dynamics of human decision-making and enabling the development of machines that can replicate these dynamics.

A research team at the University of Southern California has been exploring the possibility of building automated systems that can negotiate with humans. In a paper pre-published on arXiv and set to be presented at the IJCAI conference, they presented a virtual agent based on a framework called IAGO (Interactive Arbitration Guide Online), which can negotiate with humans in a three-round task. This virtual agent, called Pilot, is one of the finalists of the IJCAI conference’s global negotiation challenge (ANAC).

“Recently, researchers realized the potential applications of building automated systems that can negotiate with humans,” Kushal Chawla, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “These intelligent assistants can be really useful to augment current techniques for training people to have stronger social skills. Examples include teaching business students to negotiate for successful deals or lawyers to accurately assess settlement rates in legal proceedings.”

Microsoft attempts takedown of global criminal botnet

Microsoft announced legal action Monday seeking to disrupt a major cybercrime digital network that uses more than 1 million zombie computers to loot bank accounts and spread ransomware, which experts consider a major threat to the U.S. presidential election.

The operation to knock offline command-and-control servers for a global botnet that uses an infrastructure known as Trickbot to infect computers with malware was initiated with an order that Microsoft obtained in Virginia federal court on Oct. 6. Microsoft argued that the crime network is abusing its trademark.

“It is very hard to tell how effective it will be but we are confident it will have a very long-lasting effect,” said Jean-Ian Boutin, head of threat research at ESET, one of several cybersecurity firms that partnered with Microsoft to map the command-and-control servers. “We’re sure that they are going to notice and it will be hard for them to get back to the state that the botnet was in.”

U.S. Cyber Command Says it Nuked Trickbot, but Microsoft and Chums Claim Credit

In the dog days of last week, a shadowy group of secret sources in U.S. Cyber Command whispered to reporters that they’d disrupted a huge, ransomware-spewing botnet. Trickbot, closely related to Emotet and Ryuk, is believed to be managed by Russian criminals.

But today, Microsoft and friends are saying the disruption was actually down to them—awks. The consortium of industry players has developed a new legal mechanism to remove the botnet’s servers from the net and they say it’s working.

They’re basically using international copyright law to do takedowns, arguing that “malicious use” of Windows and Office is actionable in court. In today’s SB Blogwatch, we DMCA ur C2 and pwn ur zombies.

Colorado Marijuana Sales Top $1 Billion Since Pandemic Began

August was the second-highest month for sales ever.

Colorado has seen over $1.1 billion in marijuana sales since the COVID-19 pandemic began in this country, according to figures from the state Department of Revenue.

Legal marijuana sales topped $200 million in August for the second month in a row, reaching the second-highest monthly total since recreational sales started in 2014. Counting back to March of this year, when Colorado and the rest of the nation began shutting down over the pandemic, dispensaries have sold over $1.1 billion in marijuana products — and that’s not counting sales in September and October.

Dispensaries sold over $218.6 million worth of marijuana products in August, DOR data shows. Recreational sales accounted for more than $176.5 million (also the second-highest monthly total since 2014), while medical marijuana sales remained strong at just over $42 million.

IBM finally gets rid of some business to focus on the one that matters

International Business Machines, still the legal name of century-plus-old IBM, has managed over the years to pull off a dubious feat. Despite selling goods and services in one of the most dynamic industries in the world, the IT sector the company helped create, it has managed to avoid growing.

The company that was synonymous with mainframes, that dominated the early days of the personal computer (a “PC” once meant a device that ran software built to IBM’s technical standards), and that reinvented itself as a tech-consulting goliath, lagged while upstarts and a few of its old competitors zoomed past it.

What IBM excelled at more often was marketing a version of its aspirational self. Its consultants would advise urban planners on how to create “smart cities.” Its command of artificial intelligence, packaged into a software offering whose name evoked its founding family, would cure cancer. Its CEO would wow the Davos set with cleverly articulated visions of how corporations could help fix the ills of society.

What IBM did not do was grow or participate sufficiently in the biggest trend in business-focused IT, cloud computing. Now, in the words of veteran tech analyst Toni Sacconaghi of research shop Bernstein, new IBM CEO Arvind Krishna is pursuing a strategy of “growth through subtraction.” The company is spinning off its IT outsourcing business, a low-growth, low-margin portion of its services business that rings up $19 billion in annual sales. Krishna told Aaron and Fortune writer Jonathan Vanian that he plans to bulk back up after the spinoff via acquisitions. “We’re open for business,” he said.

The move is bold, if risky. The reason it took so long, and presumably a new leader, to jettison the outsourcing business is that it was meant to drive sales of IBM hardware and other services. But Krishna, promoted for his association with IBM’s nascent cloud-computing effort—just as Microsoft Satya Nadella ran his company’s cloud arm before taking the top job—recognizes that only by discarding a moribund business can IBM focus and invest properly in the one that matters.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna is spinning off IBM’s IT outsourcing services unit to focus on cloud and quantum computing.

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How to Abolish Modern Day Slavery and Address its Effects

In 2020, slavery is not gone from this planet…

Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador, interviews Bakary Tandia, Co-Founder of the Abolition Institute, a group working to promote awareness of, and dedicated to ending, the practice of slavery in the west African country of Mauritania.

Slavery and enslavement are defined of the state and condition of being a slave, where the individual cannot quit their service to another person and is treated like property.

In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is legally rendered the personal property of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labor and forced labor that most slaves endure. In the course of human history, while slavery was often a feature of civilization and legal in most societies, it is now outlawed in all countries of the world.

In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world despite it being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labor, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country’s economy. In the industrialized countries, human trafficking is the modern variety of slavery; in the unindustrialized countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person, such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers.

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Psychedelic Gold Rush? Compass Pathways Goes Public at More than $1B

Psilocybin startup Compass Pathways goes public at more than $1B. Here’s why Wall Street is starting to see the value in psychedelics.

For several years, investors and psychonauts have predicted that psychedelic medicine would become the next billion-dollar industry, with some value estimates as high as $100 billion. They said substances like MDMA or psilocybin mushrooms would follow a similar regulatory path that cannabis took to the mainstream, going from a Schedule 1 narcotic to a legal, regulated, and highly lucrative medicine.

At least some of these predictions have rung true. On September 18th, Compass Pathways Plc., a London-based company developing psilocybin into a prescription drug in assisted psychotherapy, went public, listing on Nasdaq. The company’s stock jumped 71 percent on its first day of trading and is now estimated to be worth $1.3 billion. Compass Pathways declined to comment for this article. Numinus Wellness Inc and Champignon Brands Inc are two other psychedelic companies that have gone public this year.

This month, another psychedelic research company, Mind Medicine Inc. (“Mindmed”), announced their intent to appear on Nasdaq, as well, and some analysts predict it will soon be the next billion-dollar psychedelic company. Havn Life Sciences, which has earned permission from the Canadian government to work with psilocybin, also squeezed onto the Canadian Stock Exchange in September.

U.S. judge sends OneWeb’s rescue plan to vote and okays financing

Berlin, 27 September 2020. – A New York bankruptcy judge has sent OneWeb’s Chapter 11 plan for creditor vote and approved OneWeb’s financing plan, Law360 reported.

“A New York bankruptcy judge on Wednesday sent OneWeb Global’s $181 million equity-swap Chapter 11 plan to a creditor vote while approving $235 million in new financing that the satellite internet startup said will go toward restarting its launch program,” Law 360 reported.

According to the report, OneWeb’s counsel told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain that it had secured full creditor consent for the plan.

World War III will be fought over water

RS: The third world war is at our gate, and it will be about water, if we don’t do something about this crisis. These walks are to raise awareness—this year we covered 17 countries, and in nine of them there were displaced people. So many people in the Middle East and African countries are moving to places like Europe, in part because of water scarcity—after forced migration comes, tension, conflict, and terrorism. Where terrorism is active, there is usually a scarcity of water. Look at Syria—a long time ago, it had very good agriculture, but then Turkey built a dam that changed things. It’s a similar story with Libya. If we want a safe future, we need to start conserving water.

What role can regulation play in conservation? Do you think privatizing water is a good way to promote its efficient use?

RS: If we really think about legal changes, we have to first think about river rights, or the rights of nature, and only then about water rights for humans. This type of thinking doesn’t exist today but we need this kind of legal framework that assures that the land of the river is only for the river, that the flow of the river is kept clean, and that the river has greenery on both banks to prevent erosion and silting. Only with all these factors can we ensure that rivers are healthy and only then that we are healthy.