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tv   Click  BBC News  February 23, 2020 4:30am-5:01am GMT

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the headlines: senator bernie sanders has cemented his status as the frontrunner for the democratic presidential nomination with a resounding victory in the nevada caucus. the former vice presidentjoe biden is projected to finish second in the vote. the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in mainland china has now reached almost 77,000, more than 2,400 of whom have died. elsewhere, italy has adopted what it has describing as urgent and extraordinary measures to tackle what is now the biggest outbreak in europe. tyson fury and deontay wilder are preparing to face each other again in las vegas for the wbc world heavyweight title. it is almost 15 months since the pair fought out a controversial draw, and tickets for the big bout have been changing hands for thousands of dollars. each fighter is undefeated, and each predicts victory.
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now on bbc news, it's click. this week, making water out of thin air. cyber security in saudi arabia. and fake frocks of the future. the code breaking of bletchley park, the gadgets used to conceal cold war secrets and how we can protect ourselves now online. this exhibition at london's science museum marks a century of gchq making our nation a safer place.
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protecting sensitive communication from hacking is nothing new, no matter what the technology of the age is. here we have the telephone used by winston churchill in world war ii. it's called the secraphone and comes with a complete large privacy unit. inside it, electronic circuits are scrambling both incoming and outgoing calls and then some years on, margaret thatcher used this secure briefcase telephone every day. the passcodes on it were changed to protect the encrypted calls. hacking and cybercrime are of course regularly hitting the headlines now. countries and companies around the globe are desperately trying to find ways to avoid falling victim. this month, the saudi cyber division hosted its first ever cyber security forum and click was provided with a rare invitation to saudi arabia to take a look
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at what the country has been working on, but with accusations that the regime has been carrying out campaigns of hacking against critics and journalists, we want to know, can the saudis be trusted in cyberspace? joe tidy, the bbc‘s cyber security reporter, has been finding out. it's a country famous for its endless golden sands and vast riches built on one natural resource, oil. but as the world begins to wean itself of this valuable fossil fuel, it's forcing a monumental shift in the sands. saudi arabia is a country on the move. things are changing here so rapidly in the way people live and work. the country is trying to diversify its away from just oil and this is a big part of it. this is digital city. a couple of years ago, these buildings weren't here. this is part of the country's drive to move into technologies and particularly cyber security.
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there are big ambitions here to create household names in information security and across riyadh, another sign of intent. this place is amazing. it's like buckingham palace with palm trees. for the first time ever, the government is hosting a global cyber security forum by throwing open the doors to foreign visitors, saudi arabia is inviting investment, collaboration and scrutiny. what's funny about this conference, this cyber security conference, it's not a conference, it's a forum. there are no stands. we don't know who is here, which companies, but that's not to say there aren't companies here. there are companies from all over the world. people are chatting, introductions are being made. it predicted the saudi cyber security market could grow to $5.5 billion by 2023. but there is another motivation. a devastating attack that the country is still reeling from. 2012's shamoon attack was a massive moment. it was the moment when tens of thousands of pcs at the country's biggest company, saudi aramco, the world's's biggest oil producer, they went dark.
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they were hit by what we call a wiper virus, which, as the name implies, it deletes all the files on all the computers where it's infected. imagine if you will, it's a bit like someone breaking into your house, and not only do they steal everything but they burn your house on the way out. the hack, which has been blamed on iran, took out 30,000 pcs. this spread got into the company by someone receiving an email and they double—clicked on the attachment. from a simple perspective, it really turned the dynamic on its head. we were thinking about the stereotypical, you think about some genius in a basement somewhere using all these commands where it's actually now what we see is very, very simple, it's an email that comes through, there is a link in there and as long as you can trick the person into clicking the link or opening the file, you can have a very, very big impact.
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since then, the country has been under almost constant attack. no wonder the country is on a mission to improve its cyber defence and encourage local talent to flourish. saudi arabia was ranked 47 among 179 countries according to the itu, international telcommunications union, and the un. throughout the last couple of years, the ranking has increased to be 13 globally. so we have seen saudi actually increasing the ranking, in a sense, because the ranking is directly linked to the level of commitment, the level of effort that country is putting into cyber. and here is one way the country is hoping to rise further the ranks. this is a hacker training exercise run by site, a government—backed cyber security company. the teams are trying to capture a digital flag inside a secure server. so you are basically pretending to be hackers, you are... we are hackers. ..to break into the system. we try to break into the system and try to find where
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is the catches. capture the flag will make you challenge yourself, how could you pass the wap, the firewall, the log—in credentials and a lot of cyber security controls. staying ahead of hackers is very tough, because technology advancement, the pace of technology advancement, is way fast, is way higher than the advancement we see in cyberspace. amongst all the positivity here, and there is a lot of positivity, there is also an unspoken truth. many of the people i've been speaking to, the international guests, have decided not to bring their devices, laptops and phones. this one isn't my usual phone and the reason for that is that there is concern about potential surveillance. last month, amazon bossjeff bezos accused saudi arabia's crown prince of hacking his phone. he received the file via whatsapp,
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it was a video file and upon clicking that, opening that, that infected his phone with a backdoor and that allowed someone to siphon off all his data. the kingdom says the allegation is absurd, however according to the united nations, there is also strong indications that saudi arabia telephone of dissidentjournalist jamal khashoggi before he was killed in the saudi embassy in turkey in 2018. it all raises questions which i put to the country's cyber division. how do you think saudi arabia will respond to issues of cyber surveillance? as i mentioned earlier, our main focus is thinking how we ensure that we defend and protect our critical national infrastructure, putting the right measurement, whether it is standardisation, building our capabilities and also enhancing those cyber protection efforts. saudi is clearly trying to move on from uncomfortable allegations. the conference is a major part of this and the centrepiece
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of the event shows an emphasis again on defence, a game that puts players in the hot seat of an attack. so you're an it specialist and you are representing a petrochemical plant. so we're going to go through the whole phase of an attack. so we've obviously got employees and they downloaded bad files, with malware. we need to stop more employees from downloading them. correct. and we've run out of time, oh, no! saudi arabia is at a crossroads, it's opening up to the world and it's clear it wants to be a big player on the global cyber security stage. it would be naive to think that other nations don't hack the security or economic reasons but an emerging force like saudi has to decide whether it wants to be seen as a team player or kept at arm's length. we're almost there. hey. we won, you take that. well done. here we go. there we go! hello, and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week huawei
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lost its challenge in a us court to overturn the ban that prevented government agencies from working with the company. apple warned disruption in china from the coronavirus would affect production and supply of iphones. and the world's richest person, jeff bezos, pledged $10 billion of his $130 billion fortune to help address climate change. in new jetpack news, it seems we are ever closer to a real—life iron man. a team atjetman dubai reached a major milestone with a jet—powered wing suit which took off from a standing start and then flew up to nearly 6,000 feet in altitude and reached an average speed of 150mph and yes, they landed. iron underwear optional. from rockets to bangers. have you ever had problems grilling the perfect hot dog? there is a robot for that. jako and baxter — great names — are machine—learning robots developed by boston university that
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are able to complete the more complex task of cooking and serving up a good sausage. and finally, would you trust a bee with a drone? researchers at sheffield university are reverse—engineering bee brains to help create more advanced drone software. tiny electrodes inserted into the bees‘ brains will analyse the flight parts to work out how they can reliably navigate a 3d environment over several kilometres. un—bee—lievable? sorry. for over 30 years, london fashion week has brought the latest trends and streetwear and couture to the capital. whether spring or fall collections, it follows the same format. catwalk shows from designers popping up all over the city. but in the near future, the catwalk could look completely different. the idea of gathering together to look at seasonal trends could be obsolete. like many other industries, artificial intelligence is shaping
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the future of fashion. the designs, models and even the location of fashion week could one day be created by a computer programme. it is possible to generate these kind of captions with al algorithm. a new course at the london college of fashion is looking in detail detail at these issues, giving future designers and merchandisers the tools to work on this new world, influencing everything from pattern cutting to design. so if you know this type of algorithm, you canjust mine all over your database. these images were dreamt up by an algorithm that looked at tens of thousands of photos. so this is a computer that is designing these dresses? yes, so this is a generative adversarial network that has been fed many thousands of images so it begins to learn what a dress looks like. it's incredible.
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and then design its own. so every one of these is computer—generated. slightly terrifying. and similarly, this is taking thousands of catwalk images from men's fashion week and beginning to understand what catwalk looks like, what a model looks like, what the close they are wearing looks like and generating its own catwalk images. are these real models? these are computer—generated. oh, wow. so this person doesn't exist? no. it begins to question what we think a catwalk show could be. could we get to the point in the future where are computer—generated catwalk becomes as popular or as interesting as a physical catwalk? what do you think? it's not beyond the realms of impossibility. indeed, the ideas and projects the students are working on would once have seemed impossible but they are certain the whole industry will soon change and having a background in ai will be essential
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to their success. in all the industries right now, it's important to be able to cross—collaborate, to be interdisciplinary and i think this is really important to have a knowledge of everything that is coming up and how we can use that in fashion. so with al, we will have much more ways and options. like, instead of, i don't know, sketching 10 ideas, we could have thousands of them, you canjust select quickly what we find beneficial for our project. but others worry about losing originality in this process. i think the danger is stripping out creativity because in many ways, that argument that designers create something from their brain, it's not been done before but ai looks at everything that's been done before and create something new so i think there's this, like, paradox. does it mean that we will end up
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repeating the same things over and over or does it mean we will be given new ways to create? in fact, the ai may end up being more creative than humans because it can process so many more images than we are capable of seeing. the course is also preparing students for job losses in their industry to artificial intelligence, especially in areas like pattern cutting and other repetitive work. this really is something you can't deny. it is coming and we need to be prepared for it. maybe these people can be educated in some sort of position where they will be using this al to do this job but if it is something repetitive, if it can be automatised, it will be automised. the next experiment will be feeding this algorithm photos from architecture as well as the clothing to see what fashion designs it comes up with. an exciting time for those able to adapt, but with implications for workers around the world,
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perhaps a need to think quickly about the direction of this important industry. that wasjen. now, over 2 billion people on the planet don't have access to clean drinking water. for over half of them, it would take at least 30 minutes to reach any. so nick kwek has been finding out how that safe water could be created out of thin air, literally. access to clean water is a human right, yet over 500 million people die each year from drinking contaminated water. according to the world health organization, in only five years‘ time, half of us will live in a water—stressed area. thirsty for answers? i've come to south yorkshire to see a start—up with a novel solution. hogen systems is harvesting waterfrom thin air. water is extracted from the bottom of the evaporator,
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collected in the tray and pumped out for use for drinking. that's water in the tray there? that's water in the tray there, yes. that's come from thin air? that's come from thin air. ok, it's a giant dehumidifier, but the game changer here is the artificially intelligent device's adaptability. sensors all over the process that will detect, what is the real temperature, what is the real pressure, the real humidity, the control system will further refine its control to make that the best way to operate. keeping costs down is crucial, so using the least amount of energy possible is key. so the way this works is air comes down through here, gets sucked in through the evaporator, which pulls moisture out of the air. the water then drips down into this water tray and the byproduct, which is cold air, gets sucked through there,
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which could be used for air conditioning in the summer, and another byproduct is heat generated through the condenser, which could be used to heat homes in the winter or wherever it may be used. shall we give it a taste? well, why not? there we are, water from thin air. yes. it does have essence of machine about it. it may do. it does have a somewhat metallic... i mean, if i were to lick that machine, a kind of feel like that's what that tastes like. yum, yum. but i'm assured after a few gallons circulate the machine, it tastes much better and makes a banging brew. as well as large—scale units, hogen has also developed a more mobile version targeted for the military. the more compact version has actually got two systems built in for redundancy, so if one goes, there is a back—up option. we know of some customers in the middle east who are shipping drinking water by helicopter. the cost of shipping drinking water by helicopter is $35 per litre. but derek's units of course
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come with a pricetag. $5,000 up to $100,000, depending on the size and type of machine. they can usually recoup it within two years. 0ther atmospheric water generators from veragon, watergen and aquaboy are already making waves. over in the states, arizona—based zeromass users solar energy to power its water harvesting device, and hogen systems say its next generations of machines will too. but what if we could get power itself from thin air? researchers at mit have devised a cunning contraption that they have plonked on the roof. the thermal resonator converts the changes in ambient temperature into electricity. there is a flow of heat constantly going through the device and we have what are called thermoelectrics inside, that turn that heat
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into electricity. so this device willjust — just from sitting in the environment, will generate electrical power. mind. blown. it's a fairly new concept and even my colleagues here at mit don't fully understand it yet. i think it's a new discovery. devices like these are also teaching us how to use this concept, how to tap into this energy, which is all around us. it's everywhere, it's natural, man—made, we can plug into it, it can be a persistent source of energy. the secret source is the materials he's developed that store and release heat quickly. it is a pretty perfect partner for solar cells. you have a solar cell on top of this thermal resonator, and it can act in a synergystic sort of way. and the idea is you have the thermal resonator taking the heat from the solar cell to maintain its efficiency when it's heated up from solar radiation. so a solar cell loses about
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a half a percent in efficiency for each degree that it heats up, so you can have this thermal resonator capture that and maintain its efficiency. ihearya. what else can we get seemingly from thin air? surely not food?! well, scientists in finland are cooking up something called solein, which, no, is not the stuff of ‘70s dystopian thrillers, but is a protein powder grown from microbes using carbon dioxide, water and electricity. the tasteless dust can be mixed into all sorts of goodies and its makers say it could reduce agricultural land grab by a factor of ten. whilst we may be a few years out from drinking water from the air, eating lab—grown grub cooked in our thermal resonator—powered microwaves, it's innovations like these that could solve some of our world's biggest problems. people love playing video games, but making them is a different matter. the art of creation used to require quite a few skills, not least the ability to code. but over the past few years,
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content creation tools have become a lot easier for those who are creatively minded to be able to make their own games. guildford—based developer media molecule enjoyed huge success with its user—generated little big planet games. the titles allow the player to create their own mini games and levels. it's an idea we have seen revisited most recently by nintendo with mario maker 2. for the past few years, media molecule has been working on something which it hopes could take that user—generated effort up a level. marc cieslak‘s been finding out more. you can make a lot of different stuff in dreams. stuff like this, and this. and even this. all that stuff was made using the same software. it's an ambitious idea —
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give everybody the tools to make a videogame or a film or even a 3d sculpture, all made using a games console. dreams is a playstation game which allows anyone to create, whether it's a game or a movie. i think of it as like the world's interactive sketchbook. folks at home have been able to tinker with a version of dreams for quite some time, so the online catalogue of content created using the kit is already packed with stuff made by the public. jamie was one of those early access content creators. his work impressed the team at media molecule so much, they gave him a job. yeah, i pinch myself almost daily, it's the most incredible thing ever. because i used to teach, which is a lot of hard work. and then coming into here, it feels like i can do my hobby for a living now. it is the best thing ever, i love it so much. but dreams‘ main event is making
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stuff, and could these tools ultimately end up being a source of inspiration for a new generation of games designers, filmmakers and artists? have you thought about collaborating with educational establishments? with schools, universities, game design courses? yeah, education and outreach to different groups is huge because i think dreams is a tool for educating people about storytelling, game making, programming. it‘s brilliant. i have a little story. i saw a kid at a show playing dreams and his mother said to me, "oh, i don‘t really understand what he is doing," and i said, well, he‘s basically doing a—level electronics, then and there on the screen. he was a young kid and i was, like, seriously, don‘t worry about it. this is a great mechanism. if he can do that in dreams now, then he will sail through whatever he wants to do later. but i was saying that to her, and at the same time, a penny dropped in my head, this is teaching stuff, kids don‘t even know they‘re learning, they‘re just enjoying it and that is wonderful.
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that was marc. and that‘s all we‘ve got time for this week. you can keep track of the team any time on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter @bbcclick. thanks for watching. hello there. it‘s a familiar february theme, more rain on the way and the prospect of further flood warnings. now, at the moment, we‘ve got in excess of 100 flood warnings in force. those numbers have been rising, actually, over the last 2a hours in northern england and scotland. and now we‘re looking at this — a 4,000—mile long weather front stretching all the way over towards the caribbean. but along the front, there are two areas of low pressure and both of these could cause us some problems. the first is actually knocking on our doors right now with outbreaks of rain spreading into northern ireland and getting quickly across england and wales
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over the next few hours. the rain always heaviest across wales, perhaps the north midlands, parts of northern england, 20—a0mm in places. and that is falling on saturated ground, so we could see further localised flooding issues. snow showers continue to work in across scotland where it remains windy, so a blustery start to the day. but for most of us, it‘s a day that will slowly improve. the rain pushes its way southwards through the day, brighter skies follow with a bit of sunshine. but there will be further showers in the north—west of scotland. still wintry over the high ground, still relatively cool there, compared with the cloudy south where, yes, it will stay quite mild. but looking at the weather picture beyond that, as we head into monday, the next area of low pressure moves in. this one also could cause some disruption, because, before it arrives, it‘s going to be getting colder through sunday night with some patches of frost and into that cold air, the rain arrives. the rain turns to snow fora time, northern ireland, northern england, and then in scotland, the snow could last longer and could reach down to lower elevations as well.
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now, apart from the snow, we‘ve also got the prospect of getting some very strong winds at points during the day on monday across the northern half of the country with gusts in excess of 60 or 70mph. so, there is the risk of some disruption, particularly so for scotland, where there‘s most likely to be snow that will last longest and also probably where we‘ll see the strongest of the winds. elsewhere, more rain in the forecast across england and wales. that in itself isn‘t welcome and could cause some further localised flooding issues. even as the rainband clears, it will be followed by blustery showers. it will be a windy kind of day everywhere. now, beyond that, as that weather front clears away from the south—east, we will be left with a showery north—westerly, so it stays unsettled, stays quite windy. the next weather system arriving towards thursday off the atlantic. so, in other words, there‘s no sign of the weather settling down any time soon. we are going to see further showers. it‘s often going to be quite windy and we could see a spell of rain coming through on thursday and be cold enough to see some snow at times as well in the week ahead.
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this is bbc world news. i‘m james reynolds. our top stories: bernie‘s big night. senator sanders cements his position as the democratic front—runner with victory in the nevada caucus. no campaign has a grassroots movement like we do, which is another reason why we‘re going to win this election. the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in mainland china rises to nearly 77,000. italy adopts what it calls urgent and extraordinary measures to tackle what is now the biggest outbreak in europe. and a grudge match in vegas. tyson fury takes on deontay wilder in their heavyweight bout.

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