Due to expensive data fees, you might be tempted to log on to that free public Wi-Fi service while you’re out and about. 【小题1】

“Think about the cost of being connected all the time. Nothing is free, ” David Lee,a product manager of Norton. told CNBC. “【小题2】” Harvard Business Review agrees, “ You’re taking a risk every time you log on to a free network in a coffee shop, hotel lobby, or airport lounge. ”

【小题3】 According to a survey by the company Symantec, 87 percent of U. S. consumers have used a public Internet connection. And it was found that over 70 percent of them checked their personal email through public Wi-Fi, while 11 percent logged on to their online bank account.

No matter how safe the Wi-Fi connection seems to be, using it leaves your computer or smart phone easy to be attacked by hackers and data thieves. You don’t really know who owns and monitors the routers,nor who has access to the data that passes through them, not to mention that hackers have dozens of ways to compromise public Wi-Fi accounts, from creating a network that appears legal to creating pop-ups(弹出式窗口)that trick users into downloading malware(恶意软件)onto their computers. 【小题4】

To protect yourself against hackers, experts say your best defense is a virtual private network ( VPN), which encrypts (加密)your online activity. You can download your very own VPN through an app for Apple or Android devices, or by using the free encryption service CyberGhost. 【小题5】 But even before you start browsing, use this website to make a password that keeps you safe from hackers.

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.

In the past few years, Sam Altman, the father of ChatGPT, has become the most familiar face in the world of AI. Many industry leaders and AI researchers see ChatGPT as a fundamental technological shift, as significant as the creation of the web browser (浏览器). But few can agree on the future of this technology.

Some believe it will create a community where everyone has all the time and money they ever wanted. Others believe it could destroy humanity. Still, others spend much of their time arguing that the technology isn’t as powerful as everyone says it is.

Mr. Altman, a slim 37-year-old entrepreneur and investor from St. Louis, sits calmly in the middle of it all, devoted to making ChatGPT perfect. As chief executive of OpenAI, he in some way embodies (体现) each of these seemingly contradictory views, hoping to balance many possibilities as he strikes this unusual, highly effective but imperfect technology into the longer term.

That means he’s usually criticized. But those closest to him imagine that is normal. “If you’re equally upsetting both extreme sides, then you’re doing something right,” mentioned OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman.

Mr. Altman believes that this technology will occur one way or another, that it will do wonderful things even he can’t yet imagine, and that we can find ways of making up for the harm it may cause. It’s an attitude that mirrors Mr. Altman’s personal track. His life has been a reasonably regular climb towards larger prosperity and wealth, pushed by an efficient set of private expertise. It makes sense that he believes that the good thing will happen rather than the bad.

Georgeann Kepchar, who taught Advanced Placement computer science courses, saw Mr. Altman as one of her most talented computer science students and one with a rare gift for pushing people in new directions. “He had creativity and vision, combined with the ambition and force of personality to convince others to work with him on putting his ideas into action,” she said.