Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

February 10, 2016

London Mayoral candidates go head-to-head on technology policy

Both Khan and Pidgeon said they would establish superfast broadband as a core utility, something no one in the capital should be without, but the Liberal Democrate candidate pointed out that office space “is a bigger challenge than broadband speed”. She said the government’s “relaxation of rules” which allow developers to convert commercial property into residential use without planning permission, “needs to stop”. Goldsmith said that rolling out broadband can be “achieved relatively easy” and suggested partnering with the private sector to use Transport for London’s (TfL's) existing network to turn it into a “superfast broadband network.

Intel report puts spotlight on diversity at work

While the diversity statistics may not be cause for huge celebration, tech experts are hailing Intel's level of commitment and transparency as a possible game changer in the hiring practices at tech companies. Intel is the only tech giant to have publicly set quantifiable diversity, hiring or retention goals, according to NPR. "There's nothing here [that's] top secret or should not be shared with the rest of the world, in my mind," said CEO Brian Krzanich, who added that he hopes this transparency will spur competing technology companies to follow suit in order to prove their commitment to diversity. Claire Hough, VP of Engineering at Udemy, believes Intel's transparency to be an important step toward solving the larger problem of diversity at work.

What Managers Should Know About Data Privacy and the ‘Internet of Things’

Any business leader worth his or her salt is looking at how to gain a competitive advantage with IoT. The challenge, says Giulio Coraggio, a privacy attorney at DLA Piper Italy, is “how to ensure privacy protection in a manner that does not impair business profitability, which requires the need to get access to large databases of personal data.” In terms of risk, the IoT means the number of access points where personal information could be compromised will grow exponentially. The IoT can also, unwittingly, increase the risk of unlawful surveillance: Hello Barbie is a case in point. A hacker, potentially, could break into the ToyTalk cloud and listen to a kid’s conversation with the doll.

Cloud Computing Emerging as a Panacea for every Business Qualm

Cloud computing has been and continues to be adopted by enterprises across industries in many different ways. It represents a fantastic opportunity for technology companies to help customers simplify IT. Cloud has been seeing a lot of demand across sectors. Industries like telecom, BFSI, retail, education, healthcare and government are increasingly turning to the cloud to simplify IT. The demand for public cloud has recently shown an increase in the mobile and broadband sectors; pharmacy, manufacturing, e-commerce, retail and travel were the early adopters of public cloud. These include both the SMBs as well as larger enterprises.

How Pioneering Banks Adopt Hadoop for Enterprise Data Management

Simply put, bank IT budgets can no longer cover the same spending on specialized hardware and hosting and services. Regulatory pressures that mandate additional risk and compliance costs only compound these pressures. These regulatory forces include Basel Committee guidelines on risk data reporting and aggregation (RDA), The Dodd-Frank Act, the Volcker Rule, and regulatory capital adequacy legislation such asComprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR). These regulatory pressures force an urgent retooling of existing data architectures. These forces are transforming Risk and Compliance from a set of “check box” activities into a unique and compelling opportunity for competitive advantage.

Minimally Invasive “Stentrode” Shows Potential as Neural Interface for Brain

The catheter is inserted into a blood vessel in the neck. Researchers then use real-time imaging to guide the stentrode to a precise location in the brain, where the stentrode then expands and attaches to the walls of the blood vessel to read the activity of nearby neurons. The stentrode technology leverages well-established techniques from the field of endovascular surgery, which uses blood vessels as portals for accessing deep structures while greatly reducing trauma associated with open surgery. Endovascular techniques are routinely used for surgical repair of damaged blood vessels and for installation of devices such as stents and stimulation electrodes for cardiac pacemakers.

Where does Apple go after the iPhone?

"We believe 10 years from now Generation Z will find reality inefficient," Munster went on to write. "Generation Z will see the benefits of mixed reality headsets that augment the world with real-time information as they need it and in their field of view, without needing to look at one piece of information at a time on a smartphone." This might all seem rather far-fetched, but how would we have reacted to a prediction made, say, in 2000, that smartphones would be as huge - not to mention hugely influential - as they are now? We'd have probably thought that was far-fetched, but here we are, a little more than 15 years on, pretty much every one of us with a smartphone.

IT Automation In The Wild

“The automation angle is key to rapid delivery, and it lends a high level of quality and predictability to our development process and products,” Yochem says. Interestingly, Yochem describes IT automation as an IT-driven strategy, the opposite of the view expressed by Maras. “This is an IT-driven strategy, with the desired outcome being to deliver differentiating, high quality products to our clients. We are fortune at BDP in that our broader business community understands the value of business and IT automation, and have been supportive as we’ve adopted DevOps practices as part of our broader Agile methodology for product delivery,” Yochem concludes.

Flash memory's density surpasses hard drives for first time

The highest areal density for today's HDD products is about 1.3Tbpsi, according to Coughlin. Most HDD products, however, are well below that. For example, Seagate's desktop hard drives have a maximum areal density of 850Gbpsi; those drives use shingled magnetic recording (SMR), which overlaps the magnetic tracks for greater density. While still best-case laboratory figures, the NAND flash areal densities shown at the ISSCC are not far behind what is shipping today. Major SSD makers, such as Samsung,have announced what would be industry-leading 15TB 2.5-in solid-state drives (SSDs) are already on the horizon.

CISA is the beginning of a very long cybersecurity fight

The groundwork laid by laws like the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act and standards in NIST’s cybersecurity framework have served to put the nation on a solid cybersecurity footing, but it will take much more effort if public and private sector are to deter the rise of data breaches and cyber attacks. “The level of awareness has risen, but its not where it needs to be. If you really step back and assess the threats, this goes to everything — almost every piece of equipment, every car, every refrigerator, clocks, every tool we use, let alone our computers and networks and electric grid,” said Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. “The challenge is to make sure that we step up our game," she added, "We’ve got to collaborate.”

Quote for the day:

"The unfortunate truth is that securing internet-enabled devices is not always a high priority among vendors and manufacturers." -- Alex Chiu

February 09, 2016

Regarding Big Data, One Manager’s “Resistance” Is Another Manager’s “Caution”

After all, Turck suggests, big data is characterized by situations involving vast quantities of rapidly expanding data volumes; we puny humans can’t be expected to lasso meaning from all this without some help from AI-based minions. A lot of this makes sense when looked at from an “early adopter/late adopter” perspective. Data intensive “digital native” companies (e.g., Google, Amazon, etc.) have been in the forefront because they’re already data-centric. Less “resistance” means faster adoption by them, right? While I have to defer to Turck on the basis of his understanding of the technological landscape, a lot of this discussion has a very familiar ring to it.

9 Technologies That Could Cut Demand For Lawers

Lawyers are embracing technology that makes them more efficient and less trapped in 100-hour work weeks but that also reduces the need for them in certain types of cases or turns their counsel into a commodity. These technologies and services include a Web platform that searches patents more quickly than lawyers can, an app to find flaws in contracts, low-cost access to ask legal questions and an arbitration network to keep from having to hire legal representation to go to small-claims court. Attorneys from across the country heard about these at the recent LegalTech conference where some of the attendees indicated that the innovations could save money for law firms and even change their hiring practices by cutting the need for full-timers.

How Technology Is Helping the Blind Navigate the Physical World

Some technological developments are convenient for the rest of us but godsends to visually impaired people: Amazon reduces store visits. Uber provides transportation. Audible allows access to a selection of books and articles that vastly outstrips the audio and Braille sections of even a big city library. Most importantly, the next generation of assistive technology should change visually impaired people’s relationship with information, according to Asakawa. Personal technology allows data to be poured into the minds of the sighted, without realization or effort, through devices that have become as taken-for-granted as fingers and toes. But visually impaired people “always have to be active very active to get information,” she says. “It never just comes to us.” And the blind never take a walk just to clear their minds, says Asakawa. It takes a lot of mental energy just to get around.

How Testability Can Help Teams to Go Faster

Agile testing is testing in an agile context. The testing doesn’t change when we adopt agile, but the context changes. Some of the differences in agile testing are that by using an iterative approach the lead time for preparing, executing and reporting tests becomes shorter and that change will be a common thing. Also there is a change in roles, Schoots mentioned that as a test manager using agile he became more of a coach and was doing less testing. Rapid testing is a mind-set and a skill-set of testing said Schoots. With rapid testing there will be less documents and the focus on how to do testing increases. Rapid testing is a general testing methodology, not only for agile but suitable for any kind of project or product. Testing is about people working together in conditions of uncertainty. We can’t know everything and things will change.

IT Audits and Data Governance: What You Need to Know

By educating all IT staff members on the importance of compliance frameworks, a company can improve its audits and better, they can actually reduce risk by having everyone in IT on board to counter the dynamic threats we are all exposed to every day. The IT department can and should play a key role in responding to IT audits, audits that are there to assure the company meets this minimum standard that is the foundation for security. One excellent framework to learn is the NIST Cyber Security framework. This particular NIST framework is the result of executive order 13636,”Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity” issued by the President of the United States. This was of course in response to the many data breaches that are hurting our country and its economy.

Seven tips to tap into Word's AutoText power

Word's AutoText feature lets you store text and graphics to insert later. Any content you include regularly is an AutoText candidate. Once you create the entry, you can insert the entire element instead of retyping it. AutoText is similar to AutoCorrect, which replaces commonly misspelled words automatically. But AutoText goes beyond the AutoCorrect feature by storing formatting, line breaks, and even graphics. It's AutoCorrect, but more. Although AutoText can make you more productive, many users don't know about it. In this article, I'll show you how to create and insert an AutoText entry. Then, I'll show you several ways to use this feature that you might not think of yourself. I'm using Office 2016 on a Windows 10 64-bit system, but these tips will work with Word 2003 and later.

Easing DevOps culture shock

Getting there requires you to target specific outcomes. While those outcomes should include soft goals like “better alignment with the business,” be sure to include hard outcomes, such as target metrics around defects, deployment frequency, and deployment-to-production success rates. And don’t miss the importance of speed over cost. ... “There are a whole bunch of very different techniques we use in order to optimize for speed, including the use of small, cross-functional teams that can independently deploy value to the customer without having to rely on hundreds, or even thousands, of other people,” Kim says. “When you optimize for speed, you’re willing to do all sorts of things—cultivate internal talent, pay engineers better and send them to conferences—that you would not necessarily do if you were optimizing for cost.”

US Government Wants to Sharply Increase Spending on Cybersecurity

"We have a broad surface area of old, outdated technology that's hard to secure, expensive to operate and, on top of all that, the skill sets needed to maintain those systems are disappearing rather rapidly," Tony Scott, the U.S. chief information security officer, said during the briefing. The fund requires approval from the U.S. Congress. Much of the plan could be initiated using the president's executive authority, Daniel said, but the administration plans to work closely with Congress. "This plan really is as aggressive as we can get under existing authority, and we can do quite a bit of it without the additional resources," he said.

Using Business Analytics to Make the Most of Data in 2016

Organizations need to use data and information technology better to streamline analytics. Our research suggests that they will need to invest in data preparation for analytics, as three out of five (62%) participants identified accessing and preparing data as a challenge in their predictive analytics process. The same percentage (62%) cited accessing and integrating data as a main reason for dissatisfaction with their analytic processes. Organizations can address some of these challenges in gaining access to information by virtualizing data. We also will follow the progress of organizations in using cloud-based technologies to help streamline their analytics;

Quote for the day:

"Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win." -- Max McKeown

February 08, 2016

This is why Amazon will open physical bookstores

Amazon competes with other book publishers for authors. What other publishers can offer that Amazon cannot is coveted placement in physical bookstores. Those tables you see in a bookstore when you first enter are hot properties in the world of book marketing. And Amazon can't compete with that, until it gets its own bookstores. Physical bookstores will help Amazon attract bigger-name authors. One of Amazon's secrets to customer service is that it accepts returns, no questions asked. Physical bookstores would make it easy for people to return products. They could also serve as "outlet" stores to sell returned merchandise, saving Amazon millions. One of Amazon's big advantages is that it has so many credit cards in its system. The knowledge that Amazon already has your payment and delivery details means you don't have to enter all that information into a new site.

Big data's big role in humanitarian aid

"Can big data give us peace? I think the short answer is we're starting to explore that. We're at the very early stages, where there are shining examples of little things here and there. But we're on that road," says Kalev H. Leetaru, creator of the GDELT Project, or the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone, which describes itself as a comprehensive "database of human society." The topic is gaining traction. A 2013 report, "New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict,"from the International Peace Institute, highlights uses of telecommunications technology, including data, in several crisis situations around the world. The report emphasizes the potential these technologies hold in helping to ease tensions and address problems.

Why Cloud Computing Will Shake Up Security

The good news is these are essentially the same types of services that analyze data traffic for malware, but designed for the cloud. It still won’t be easy; there are some technical hurdles, like figuring out how the anti-malware solution gets inserted into a cloud system to which it doesn’t necessarily have access. Still, I think the top-shelf anti-malware vendors will be hugely motivated to attack this problem with gusto, and will figure it out. Of course, Amazon and other cloud providers will continue to enhance their security, but dealing with the many and evolving strains of malware is not their core competency. Instead, I think they will be more inclined to work with, or at least make it easier for, established security vendors to deploy their solutions onto cloud platforms. Expect to see more APIs and frameworks from cloud providers that allow for more seamless integration of third-party anti-malware.

All Your Data Belongs To Us – Data Security in a Global Infrastructure

Security analysts are seldom invited to initial software project meetings. No documented protection requirements for sensitive data are usually present at the meetings, nor how to identify data that is sensitive. Thus data security does not influence data architectural decisions. Basic data architectural decisions are usually completed prior to a full data analysis, which is assumed to be a business analysis. A security analysis would be a data analysis that characterizes the sensitivity of the data for privacy, legal and contractual protections, customer and supplier non-disclosure agreements, trade secrets, and personal private data of customers and employees. Do you do this during project planning? Even if data sensitivity is brought up, there is often no corporate standard to indicate this sensitivity in the Enterprise Data Model.

Built in: From myth to reality

Security practitioners should create a map of their respective value chains. Only after we understand the “who, what and where” of our enterprises' value chains can we take the next step: putting in place a flexible and adaptable architecture to begin the journey of making security “built in.” Is your map complete? Do you know what organization in your enterprise owns the relationship with your distribution channel? Once you have a map, establish what threats should be part of the mindset of your value chain members. Manipulation, disruption and espionage in the IT value chain is an essential place to start. Next, establish foundational requirements that can be applied across the product lifecycle, from design to decommission. The key driving those requirements is collaborative partnerships with your value chain partners.

AR and VR: The future of work and play?

Virtual reality is all about convincing the brain that a computer-generated 3D environment delivered to your eyes via a headset is 'real' -- a concept known as 'presence' in VR circles. Anything that doesn't look 'right' to our visual system may deliver a sub-par experience, or even cause dizziness, disorientation, nausea and headaches. This is less of a problem with AR, because you can still see the real world. ... According to the report's author Matthew Duke-Woolley, a lot of potential enterprise AR adopters are currently playing their cards close to the chest: "They don't really want to publicise what they're finding, because it's a cut-throat business -- in logistics, for example, the margins are quite tight, so if you can get a 10 or 15 percent cost advantage in your process, you stand a really good chance of beating the opposition."

What to love about your IT security job

Security practices may not top the “what I love about my job” list for the everyday employee, but for those working in the InfoSec industry, it’s a different story. Between the thrill of building systems to protect data and keeping up with an ever-changing landscape, IT security professionals face new challenges daily and are never finished with their to-do lists. Whether it’s building new technologies or advancing security skill sets, these InfoSec professionals share what they love most about their jobs. ... Every day is different, every client is different, and the evolution of the hack changes every week. While we are dealing with the same premise of protecting assets and data, the threats are evolving, adapting to defenses, and can be innovative to meet the objectives of the hacker.

Feature Toggles

Feature toggles are a powerful technique, allowing teams to modify system behavior without changing code. They fall into various usage categories, and it's important to take that categorization into account when implementing and managing toggles. Toggles introduce complexity. We can keep that complexity in check by using smart toggle implementation practices and appropriate tools to manage our toggle configuration, but we should also aim to constrain the number of toggles in our system. ... "Feature Toggling" is a set of patterns which can help a team to deliver new functionality to users rapidly but safely. In this article on Feature Toggling we'll start off with a short story showing some typical scenarios where Feature Toggles are helpful.

What are containers and microservices?

Containers have been integral to Unix and Linux for years. A recent change has been the ease with which they can be used by all developers, and an entire supporting ecosystem has grown up around them. Containerisation is not something happening on the fringes of IT, it is core to the way many web-scale services operate and is increasingly being adopted by more conservative organisations. The suppliers mentioned in this article cite customers ranging from the NHS to large banks. There are many suppliers involved, but no one disputes that Docker has led the charge and sits at the heart of the market. Docker says millions of developers and tens of thousands of organisations are now using its technology. However, another statistic indicates the novelty of containerisation for many, with only 40% of Docker’s customers running containers in production.

A call for more cloud computing transparency

Although Gartner calls some cloud revenue reporting nuanced, I'd call it hiding the hardware. Companies that have a mix of cloud flavors and traditional infrastructure should break them out. There's no crime in hosting data centers, managed services and converged private cloud building blocks. Cloud revenue should be broken out by product groups and various flavors. Not all cloud revenue is created equal. Does this type of transparency matter? Gartner argues that revenue claims shouldn't matter more than strategic fit. However, revenue does indicate scale. Scale indicates the ability to lower infrastructure costs over time. My take: Revenue claims matter and the debate revolves around degree.

Quote for the day:

"Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again." -- James R. Cook

February 07, 2016

Enterprise Architecture Planning 2.0

Unfortunately, at most companies, EAP, or EA, was placed under the information technology function. It was often directed toward addressing narrow technology needs for particular business units, or subsumed into complex exercises in documenting incompatible systems. Then, as EAP was combined with reengineering during the 1990s, it was frequently used as an excuse for wholesale cost cutting, which ultimately tended to make companies weaker. This history helps explain why many EAP groups developed a poor reputation, or did not deliver value to the enterprise. Today, companies can proceed in a more strategic way — with something close to EA in scope, but more ambitious in spirit and pragmatic in achieving results.

Success in CIO position increasingly tied to business expertise

The first year, CIOs put together a plan; the second year, they execute on that plan; and the third year, "things don't turn out quite the way you'd like them to," said Langer, director of the Center for Technology Management and academic director of the executive Masters of Science Program atColumbia University. Then, they're gone. What sets apart the CIOs who don't fit this pattern? Langer described 23 characteristics in his recent webinar, Strategic IT: The Transition Taking Place in the CIO Role. The material was based on research and interviews that he and his colleague Lyle Yorks conducted for their similarly named book.

What does the future of driverless cars look like?

“A lot of people talk about automation being adopted at the kind of usual pace of safety systems, which is a kind of 20 year adoption curve,” Reed says. “I think it's going to be different. “Use cases like driverless shuttles in cities could happen quite quickly. Similarly automated driving by cars and platoons of trucks on motorways.” While some companies are looking towards pods and new ownership models, others are focusing on more traditional cars gaining increasing levels of automation over a longer timeline. Reed predicts the two models will co-exist, with adoption rates being different for each. “Adoption of fully automated vehicles will take longer due to the associated technical and regulatory challenges.” He predicts that although the technology will be a premium technology at first, it will trickle down to lower value vehicles and gain rapid adoption once practical.

A Business Outcome Driven Enterprise Architecture Approach

“Focusing on a standard EA framework doesn’t work,” he said. “In the past EA practicioners focused on deliverables that were useful to enterprise architects but not valuable to senior management and/or did not respond to a specific business IT need. “We’ve witnessed a change in mind-set, execution and delivery of EA. The value of EA is not in simply ‘doing EA’, but rather in how it can help evolve the business and enable senior executives to respond to business threats and opportunities,” (for more on responding to threats and opportunities, the Agile way see here). Brian Burke’s statements are echoed across the industry. Enterprise Architecture has got to become more about business outcomes and the deliverables that steer an organization toward them.

5 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2016

It’s obvious that enterprises will retain on-premises infrastructure for the foreseeable future. Given the use of public cloud computing there is, ipso facto, hybrid computing. The key question: How much infrastructure will remain on-premises and in what form? One vision proffered for hybrid cloud is an on-premises cloud environment based on, say, OpenStack, which interoperates with a similar public environment. Another vision proffered is an on-premises cloud environment interoperating with a dissimilar public environment. Yet a third is an unchanged on-premises environment, say a vSphere cluster, along with use of some public environment. Depending upon what form of hybrid cloud one envisions, the appropriate solution varies widely. And the question of what will emerge as the dominant form of hybrid cloud emerges victorious will dictate the fortunes of both users and vendors in the future.

The Internet of Emotions: Putting the person back into personalization

“When we talk about affective devices today, we’re really looking at primary emotions and that’s what we think is going to be responded to,” notes Wendell Wallach, acclaimed ethicist and scholar from Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and author of, A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond our Control. “But if you look at Paul Ekman’s charts, he’s got thousands of secondary ideas that represent subtler secondary states. As technology picks up on these subtle emotions it would avoid manipulating you in a very crude state one could filter out to manipulate you using those subtler cues.” Dr. Paul Ekman is the pioneer of micro-expressions, or "very brief facial expressions that occur when a person either deliberately or unconsciously conceals a feeling."

Why It’s Time To Switch To Big Data-Backed Business Decisions

Never before in the history of mankind, such a huge number of people are leaving their digital footprints. They are sharing, purchasing and surfing, searching and reviewing—and all of this is documented. You may analyze or may discard this humongous amount of data, but it certainly has a meaning. They give a clue to something that you don’t know. Companies having a foresight understand its importance. There are businesses, on the other hand, believe it more a hype. But sooner or later they will have to adopt it as this is an inevitability since technology has arrived. Human subjectivity is not going to be eliminated soon, but BIG data will be a major tool for the crucial marketing and business decisions.

Compact Strings Optimization in OpenJDK 9

UseCompressedStrings feature was rather conservative: while distinguishing between char[] and byte[] case, and trying to compress the char[] into byte[] on String construction, it done most String operations on char[], which required to unpack the String. Therefore, it benefited only a special type of workloads, where most strings are compressible (so compression does not go to waste), and only a limited amount of known String operations are performed on them (so no unpacking is needed). In great many workloads, enabling -XX:+UseCompressedStrings was a pessimization ... implementation was basically an optional feature that maintained a completely distinct String implementation in alt-rt.jar, which was loaded once the VM option is supplied. Optional features are harder to test, since they double the number of option combinations to try.

Cool Privilege Control System

Privilege Control is very common mechanism. In real life, people are allocated into different roles. Some of who can maintain sensitive information based on his/her access level, and the other cannot. In computer world, that is the same. Microsoft Window is a famous PC OS and it also has a user management system in it. Administrator can create user account and assign different privileges to different user account. E.g. Ricky’s role is administrator and Jenny’s role is guest, both of who launch the system based on his/her Login Name and Password, Ricky can control everything of the computer and Jenny does not have any permission except view right. That is based on theirs privilege.

Cloud Big Data Analytics Adoption Accelerating in Healthcare

More than a third of organizations said that big data analytics was one of their most important spending drivers. Patient engagement and consumer retention and management tools are also attracting attention, with 31.6 percent of respondents stating that they are actively seeking new technologies to help them track and communicate with their patient base. In 2016, close to 40 percent of providers are looking to enhance or refresh their patient portal offerings, while a similar number are planning to expand their electronic communications capabilities by implementing wellness and chronic disease management programs that take advantage of online communication techniques, as well as texting and phone-based initiatives.

Quote for the day:

"It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame." -- Marshall McLuhan

February 06, 2016

Large Scaled-Scrum Development Does Work!

Close interaction with the customer is one of our cornerstones and has been a significant factor in our success. Our customers are welcome during the entire flow of product development: we allow some customers to directly influence our overall product backlog, we demonstrate existing and new features per customer demand, and customers are invited to join the test labs within the development process. Any feedback given by customers at demos or test labs flows into the development: this way we can identify early on whether the developed functionality will lead to true customer value. Our product-deployment support provides support to any customer; a kanban team composed of dedicated deployment managers and team members from the development teams drives this initiative.

Why You Should be a Little Scared of Machine Learning

What deep learning will allow us to do is to bridge the semantic gap between the fuzzy thing that is the real world, and the symbolic world computer programs operate in. Simply put, machines will soon have much more understanding of the world than they currently do. A few years from now, you’ll take a picture of your friend Sarah eating an ice cream cone, and some machine in the cloud will recognize Sarah in the said picture. It will know that she’s eating ice cream, probably chocolate flavored by the color of it. Facial expression recognition will make it possible to see that she looks excited with a hint of insecurity. Combining information from multiple third party data providers, it won’t be too difficult to infer that you and Sarah are on your third date together.

The Rise of Consumer Health Wearables: Promises and Barriers

In spite of these promises, the actual use of consumer wearables within a clinical population remains limited. The potential applications described above are still in the early stages of development, have not been approved for medical use, and have so far been explored predominantly within an academic research rather than a real-world context. Clinical studies to date that have a closer resemblance to consumer wearables involve (1) pedometers and smartphone apps to tackle a sedentary lifestyle and obesity and (2) home telemonitoring solutions for patients with pulmonary conditions, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases.

The 'Fin'-ternet of Things: exploring the potential of IoT in the finance sector

The financial services sector, starting with insurance, capital markets and actuarial information, has always led the way in the collection, analysis and monetisation of personal data. The very concept of KYC (Know Your Customer) regulation revolves around the bank's ability to detect and prevent identity theft, fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing by identifying unusual behaviour patterns from the customer. Away from regulation and compliance requirements, this enhanced customer insight is helping to change and improve the way financial institutions interact with customers. When IoT crosses with finance, we suddenly get an explosion of data, which will bring even greater opportunities to obtain data and build even more accurate profiles of customers.

Steve Ballmer talks about the current state of Microsoft ...

When you take a look at the transition from server software to Azure, what's going on in terms of cloud infrastructure, the company is absolutely the No. 1 company serving enterprise backbone needs, which is fantastic. It's making the migration to cloud. We started a good thing with Azure, and the company has made well more than two years of progress in terms of being able to compete with the right cost profile, margin structure, and innovation versus Amazon. There's still a lot to do on that. It's not like the company rides the same momentum. I think the company in terms of the investments it's making in evangelizing those products, supporting those products technically, I think it's really doing a good job.

User Behavior Analytics: The Force of Cybersecurity Awakens

Besides cyber intelligence, companies and government agencies will begin using Blockchain encryption to protect against cyberthreats. Blockchain is the public ledger of Bitcoin transactions, which is updated by a network of several computers solving complex algorithms for verification. As such, it is considered a secure way to record data, as tampering with the records would require taking over majority of the computers in the network - a nearly impossible feat. MIT has tapped Blockchain technology to build Enigma, which could potentially allow databases to retain sensitive information and process it without risking exposure to malicious parties.

How Google's AI breakthroughs are putting us on a path to narrow AI

"If you want to solve consciousness you're not going to solve it using the sorts of algorithms they're using," he said. "We all want to get to the moon. They've managed to get somewhere up this stepladder, ahead of us, but we're only going to get there by building a rocket in the long term. "They will certainly develop useful algorithms with various applications but there will be a whole range of applications that we're really interested in that they will not succeed at by going down that route." In the case of DeepMind, Stringer says the reinforcement learning approach used to teach systems to play classic arcade games and Go has limitations compared to how animals and human acquire knowledge about the world.

IAP: Fast, Versatile Alternative to HTTP

IAP addresses many of the use cases that HTTP 1.1 ignores. While HTTP2 and WebSockets definitely address several problems not addressed by HTTP 1.1, we believe that more is still required, as we describe in our blog: Why HTTP2 and Websockets are not Enough. IAP is a free flow message based protocol. The communicating nodes exchange messages, just like HTTP requests and responses. However, IAP does not require that each message have a response. Being a free flow protocol, IAP specifies only that nodes exchange messages. Messages can flow freely in both directions of a network connection as the communicating nodes see fit for the purpose of the communication. We have described some of the core message flows in more detail in our tutorial IAP Message Flows.

Blockchain technology to disrupt financial, legal fields

Blockchain technology is going to enable disintermediation in a great many fields that until this point have largely not been digitally disrupted. Blockchain technology ... could take an enormous amount of friction [out of] legal processes and legal costs. One person's friction is another person's profit. I also think thatbanking and financial services could be significantly changed by the integration of blockchain technology. One thing that I predicted in the book, which is now happening: Goldman Sachs recently filed a patent for creating its own digital currency, which is really sort of a walled-garden use of blockchain technology, to settle foreign transactions and asset settlements, from stock sales to wire transfers and the like. Goldman Sachs is quintessential Wall Street. To see Goldman Sachs move in this direction I think portends a lot of what is to come.

Evolving Our Security in 2016

It’s important to note that as companies build out their IoT ecosystems, whether for the consumer or business market, connectivity and security standards are almost nonexistent. Most of these projects involve customization and add to this the fact that there isn’t one dominant technology service provider in the IoT space and the approach to standards is at best fractured. And of course all of this has implications for security. In fact, during 2016 we’re set to witness more examples of security vulnerabilities related to IoT. This is inevitable. The lack of standardization means IoT is an incredibly fragmented space and one in which network security has not been a priority for device manufacturers.

Quote for the day:

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." -- Albert Einstein