Sky Computing, the Next Era After Cloud Computing
With multicloud being a priority for sky computing, a key challenge will be the
buy-in of today’s market-leading cloud platforms — AWS, Microsoft and Google in
particular. I asked Stoica which of the main platforms does he think will make
the first move towards sky computing, and what would be their motivation? “Based
on economics theory, presumably clouds that are second or third [in the market]
— like Google — will be most likely to do it, because this is one way for them
to get more market share. If they provide a faster or cheaper infrastructure,
the sky would make it easier for them to get more workload from other clouds.”
However, he also noted that application developers don’t necessarily need the
permission of the big cloud platforms to attain “sky computing” functionality.
“You can do it today. I can have an application — like say a machine learning
pipeline — and do some data processing, some training, and some serving to serve
the models. I can do the training on Google and the serving on Amazon.”
It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Blockchain
Amazon isn't the only major vendor to offer BaaS (Blockchain As A Service). For
example, IBM leverages the TradeLens ecosystem to advance global trade with
blockchain, preventing counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals and encouraging
responsible sourcing of minerals. “TradeLens has already processed 42 million
container shipments, nearly 2.2 billion events, and some 20 million documents,”
said IBM in a statement. “In total, five of the top six global shipping carriers
are now integrated onto the platform contributing to the digitization of
documentation and automated workflows.” “Oracle is the enterprise blockchain
dark horse,” wrote Alan Pelz-Sharpe of U.S.-based research firm Deep Analysis in
a research note. “Its stealthy but deeply funded and well-sourced entry into the
market follows Oracle’s well-established pattern: the firm has a history of
first dismissing new technologies, only to work quietly and then launch into the
new market with full force. That being said, with Oracle’s deep roots in the
supply chain, financial services, and government sectors, blockchain always made
more sense for it to embrace than for some of its competitors.”
The Next Evolution in Blockchain: Decentralized Identity
The first type of digital identifier in blockchain, the primitive one, is the
one used for cryptocurrencies, which has a pair of asymmetric encryption keys,
identifying the holder of the funds to dispose of those holdings, with the
public key visible to all, and the private key, reserved for its holder. Coin
transactions on some blockchains are traceable, i.e. the funds can be traced in
the ledger register. For other networks, however, it is impossible, or at least
difficult, to follow the sequence of the funds traded. These blockchains are
referred to as privacy blockchains. Unlike Monero and Zcash, the most well-known
privacy currencies that opted for the absence of traceability, Cardano maintains
transparency and traceability over block records, as do many others, such as
Bitcoin. Applications exist to prevent traceability on traceable blockchains.
First proposed in 2013 by Greg Maxwell, CoinJoin is a method that combines
multiple single-input single-output transactions into a single multiple-input
multiple-output transaction.
What are low-code databases?
It’s difficult to draw the line between a low-code database and any generic
application. Many apps are just thin front ends wrapped around a database, so
users may be storing their information in traditional databases without even
realizing it. A layer of automation eases the flow, at least for common
applications. Some open source toolkits are designed to make this simple.
Drupal and Joomla, for instance, are content management systems designed to
create databases filled with pages and articles. Drupal’s Webform module adds
the ability to create elaborate surveys so users can input their own data.
Other content management systems like WordPress can do much of the same thing,
but they’re often more focused on building out blogs and other text documents.
The major cloud services are adding tools and offering multiple ways to create
an app that stores data in the cloud’s data services. Google’s AppSheet offers
a quick way to thread together an app that is tightly integrated with the
office products in G Suite. It is one replacement for App Maker, an earlier
effort that recently shut down.
At Black Hat, mobile and open source emerge as key cybersecurity dangers
By its very nature, the open-source model is not set up for generating fully
secure code. When you have millions of contributors from around the world, a
freely usable resource of important software tools, and an ever-changing
roster of maintainers, security can easily fall through the cracks. The
problem is that threat actors know this as well and they are cashing in. The
Equifax breach of 2017, which exposed the personal information of 147 million
people, was attributed to an exploit of a vulnerability of an unpatched
open-source version of Apache Struts. The threat landscape involves tools used
by developers and where they store them. It was reported in December that two
malicious software packages were published to NPM, a code repository used by
JavaScript developers to share code blocks. In addition, an analysis by
GitGuardian found 2 million “secret” passwords and identifying credentials
stored in public Git repositories over 2020 alone. “Things are not getting
better and on top of this, applications are growing in complexity,” said
Jennifer Fernick
Security matters when the network is the internet
The move to the cloud has undermined the traditional model of the “nailed-up”
private network. These days most organizations live in a hybrid cloud world
where many key workloads sit in the public domain. As remote working becomes
the norm, applications, people, and devices will continue to communicate
externally, and the logic of channeling all that traffic through the corporate
datacenter just for security enforcement alone becomes questionable. So,
companies need to view security as an all-encompassing architecture and look
to maintain consistent policies and protections for all users regardless of
where they are working from. Remote working is a model that organizations
were slowly moving towards for decades. Sure, the pandemic increased the speed
and scope of its implementation dramatically, but it didn’t change the overall
direction of travel. It has always been the case that who you are is more
important than where you are, so access policies always should have been more
about identity than location.
Why Is Federated Learning Getting So Popular
Federated learning provides a decentralised computation strategy to train a
neural model. Modern day mobile devices churn out swathes of personal data,
which can be used for training. Instead of uploading data to servers for
centralised training, phones process their local data and share model updates
with the server. Weights from a large population of mobiles are aggregated by
the server and combined to create an improved global model. The distributed
approach has been shown to work with unbalanced datasets and data that are not
independent or identically distributed across clients. On-device machine
learning comes with a privacy challenge. Data recorded by cameras and
microphones can put individuals at great risk in the event of a hack. For
example, apps might expose a search mechanism for information retrieval or
in-app navigation. Federated averaging was implemented by researchers from
University of Kyoto in practical mobile edge computing (MEC) frameworks by
using an operator of MEC frameworks to manage the resources of heterogeneous
clients.
Android Malware ‘FlyTrap’ Hijacks Facebook Accounts
The threat actors use a variety of come-ons: Free Netflix coupon codes, Google
AdWords coupon codes, and voting for the best football/soccer team or player.
They’re not only enticing; they’re slick, too, with high-quality graphics –
all the better to hide what they’re doing behind the scenes. “Just like any
user manipulation, the high-quality graphics and official-looking login
screens are common tactics to have users take action that could reveal
sensitive information,” zLabs researchers explained. “In this case, while the
user is logging into their official account, the FlyTrap Trojan is hijacking
the session information for malicious intent.” The bad apps purport to offer
Netflix and Google AdWords coupon codes, or to let users vote for their
favorite teams and players at UEFA EURO 2020: The quadrennial European soccer
championship that wrapped up on July 11 (delayed a year by COVID-19). But
first, before the malware apps dish out the promised goodies, targeted users
are told to log in with their Facebook accounts to cast their vote or collect
the coupon code or credits.
To create AGI, we need a new theory of intelligence
“Brains are always housed in bodies, in exchange for which they help nurture
and protect the body in numerous ways,” he writes. Bodies provide brains with
several advantages, including situatedness, sense of self, agency, free will,
and more advanced concepts such as theory of mind and model-free learning. “A
human AGI without a body is bound to be, for all practical purposes, a
disembodied ‘zombie’ of sorts, lacking genuine understanding of the world
including its human inhabitants, their motivations, habits, customs, behavior,
etc. the agent would need to fake all these,” Raghavachary writes.
Accordingly, an embodied AGI system would need a body that matches its brain,
and both need to be designed for the specific kind of environment it will be
working in. “We, made of matter and structures, directly interact with
structures, whose phenomena we ‘experience.’ Experience cannot be digitally
computed — it needs to be actively acquired via a body,” Raghavachary said.
“To me, there is simply no substitute for direct experience.”
IT leadership: How to find more ways to pay it forward
Today, as Zoom meetings and video calls continue to be the primary form of
communication, it’s critical to hone those active listening skills. For
instance, you might think it’s fine to grab a drink while someone is speaking
– but in those few moments that you’re distracted, you’re not actually hearing
what’s being said, nor what’s left unsaid. Face-to-face conversations force
you to dial in your attention, but it’s easy to lose that focus when meetings
are virtual. When I meet with someone virtually, I minimize distractions by
first resolving to be present in every conversation. With the amount of
digital distraction we have in today’s world, we need to commit to focusing on
ourselves and those we are meeting with. I stay in the moment by setting my
phone aside, turning off notifications, and closing other windows and programs
on my machines. While there are certainly some challenges to coaching others
virtually, there are advantages as well. Some introverts, I’ve found, tend to
feel more comfortable expressing their opinions during video calls because
they’re not physically surrounded by others, and this puts them more at
ease.
Quote for the day:
"The signs of outstanding leadership
are found among the followers." -- Max DePree
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