Daily Tech Digest - February 13, 2019

How Educating for Careers in Cybersecurity Can Benefit Your Business

It’s an opportunity to build a mutual relationship, with the trainee benefiting from funded training and the opportunity to apply their knowledge in a real business. The competitive market for the brightest cybersecurity talent has seen the value of training certifications soar. In fact, a recent study found six of the twenty highest-paying IT certifications were in security, including the top certification, CISSP. However, as cyber threats are constantly changing and growing more complex, there’s no one certification that covers all aspects of cybersecurity. The cyber landscape is continually changing, so there is always something new to learn. Existing courses are frequently updated and new courses are frequently being bought to market. This is part of what makes cybersecurity specialists such a sought after talent, as they must have such a versatile skillset and adapt to a growing number of new threats. Organisations willing to fund the constant development of cybersecurity specialists place themselves in a solid position to both attract and retain the best talent.

No, you can't take open-source code back

More specifically, the downstream license grant says "the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions." (GPLv2§6). So in this step, the contributor has granted a license to the downstream, on the condition that the downstream complies with the license terms. That license granted to downstream is irrevocable, again provided that the downstream user complies with the license terms: "[P]arties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance" (GPLv2§4). Thus, anyone downstream of the contributor (which is anyone using the contributor's code), has an irrevocable license from the contributor. A contributor may claim to revoke their grant, and subsequently sue for copyright infringement, but a court would likely find the revocation was ineffective and the downstream user had a valid license defense to a claim of infringement

3 Digital Strategies for Companies That Have Fallen Behind

Of these three, agility is the glue for ensuring positive revenue and EBITDA success in digital adoption — even if the growth is lower than the potential from an all-out digital reinvention. Agility seems easier to achieve than speed: more than twice as many companies in our survey (35% of the total) are agile than those that are fast moving, Second, digital M&A can be a way to get back into the race. Merging with or buying digital firms can enable firms to catch up on scale and add missing digital competencies. Currently, when engaged in M&A, more than half of incumbents are still thinking about doing analog M&A. This can simply slow down transformation efforts. But of those looking to use digital M&A, 45% say they are doing so for scale, and 55% are doing so to acquire crucial missing digital capabilities. The latter is especially accretive to profitable growth. Finally, there is the question about how to react to the emergence of digital native platforms: resist them or cooperate.

Resolving the Blockchain Paradox in Transportation and Logistics

The highly fragmented value chain of multiple unrelated parties makes the industry well-suited for blockchain application. But this fragmentation also hinders the adoption of a common blockchain standard. Of the executives we surveyed, 60% believe that a lack of coordination among industry players and the absence of an ecosystem are major barriers to blockchain adoption. Fragmentation also impedes the selection of a common technical standard. The absence of such a standard means that blockchain applications pursued by companies and consortia as standalone initiatives will likely not be compatible with each other. The limited scale of these initiatives increases the cost of adoption and diminishes the potential returns. The challenges of the fragmented value chain are exacerbated by regulatory complexity. T&L companies typically operate in multiple countries and jurisdictions with varying, and often complex, regulatory requirements. More than one-third (35%) of surveyed executives cited regulatory compliance issues as an important barrier to blockchain adoption.

Coming soon: On-premises 5G gear for enterprises

With all major mobile carriers expected to offer 5G this year, enterprises that want to take advantage of this next-gen mobile data service need to start thinking about how to support it on site. Anticipation is keen for 5G, given that it promises to deliver faster speeds and lower latency than the current premium wireless technology, 4G LTE. Ideally, 5G networks could deliver fast internet to areas of the country where wired broadband is unavailable, and more reliable connections to a variety of devices including not only computers and smartphones but also appliances, automobiles and security systems. ... More details emerged in December, when a 5G hub device developed by HTC was revealed for use on Australian carrier Telstra's 5G network. The HTC 5G Hub for Telstra has a display about the size of a small smartphone to show status information for 5G and Wi-Fi signals, and the devices connected to it. It's speculated that the display – larger than usual for a hotspot – could also be used to show pictures and video.

Positive discrimination needed to remedy shocking under-investment in fintechs founded by women

VCs, which are male dominated, even ask women and men different questions when interviewing them about their businesses. “A study from Harvard found that the questions they ask men a geared towards success such as ‘what are you going to do when you achieve this valuation’ whereas the questions for the females were ‘what happens if you do not achieve the valuation. She said if 15% of total venture capitalist investment was in female led fintechs the industry would have to work on strategies to address this but as it is 3% positive discrimination might be the only way. The problem is that to attract investment to a fintech the founders need to have years of experience at the most senior level in the finance, which itself has a lack of diversity and is dominated by men. Fintech needs to overcome this problem. She gave me some other great insights which I will expand upon in an analysis article.

New Raspberry Pi challenger promises 7x the speed at 2x the price

As with most single-board computers, the Odroid N2 is a board for developers working on software and hardware projects, but has a wide range of potential uses, including as a media center, file server or even as an everyday computer. The Odroid-N2 trumps the specs of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, using far faster DDR4 memory clocked at 1320MHz and offering up to 4GB RAM, four times that of the Pi's flagship board. Graphics and display wise, the 846MHz Mali-G52 GPU promises better 2D and 3D performance, and designed for smooth playback of 4K video, specifically 60FPS of H.265-encoded footage, as well as supporting various HDR video formats. There's also four USB 3.0 ports, compared to USB 2.0 on the Pi 3 B+, and true Gigabit Ethernet, compared to a max throughput of about 300Mbps on the Pi 3 B+. One downside for the Odroid-N2 relative to the Pi 3 B+, however, is the lack of wireless connectivity. For storage, you can add up to 128GB eMMC Flash via a module connector, alongside the Odroid's microSD card slot. 

AI ethics: Time to move beyond a list of principles

Indeed, ‘an ethical approach to the development and deployment of algorithms, data and AI (ADA) requires clarity and consensus on ethical concepts and resolution of tensions between values,’ according to a new report from the Nuffield Foundation and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. Organisations and governments need help, and this report provides a broad roadmap for work on the ethical and societal implications of ADA-based technologies. The roadmap identifies the questions for research that need to be prioritised in order to inform and improve the standards, regulations and systems of oversight of ADA-based technologies. Without these, the report’s authors conclude the recent proliferation of various codes and principles for the ethical use of ADA-based technologies will have limited effect. ... This will require identifying how these terms are used in different disciplines, sectors, publics and cultures, and building consensus in ways that are culturally and ethically sensitive. 

Accelerating Analytics with Modern Data Preparation

Many analysts are forced to wait in line to get data cleaned, passing specs back and forth, and iterating endlessly before they can interrogate the data or run the algorithms that will improve their business. It’s time to ask why people who know the data best can’t do the preparation. Why aren’t the users with the business context in their heads, in a position to take care of data preparation? Trying to meet the needs of an exploding number of analysts and data scientists at a time when IT budgets are flat or shrinking is not efficient. IT organisations simply can’t scale to meet the data provisioning needs of the business. Enterprises need to shift the burden of the work to end users. It’s the only way to keep up and the only way to stay competitive. Here’s the secret: organisations shouldn’t covet this work anyway. Remember, it’s janitorial work — cleansing, structuring, distilling, enriching, validating, etc. Organisations should give this work to those doing the analysis and they’ll be grateful for it.

The long, slow death of commercial Unix

Unix’s decline is “more of an artifact of the lack of marketing appeal than it is the lack of any presence,” says Joshua Greenbaum, principal analyst with Enterprise Applications Consulting. “No one markets Unix any more, it’s kind of a dead term. It’s still around, it’s just not built around anyone’s strategy for high-end innovation. There is no future, and it’s not because there’s anything innately wrong with it, it’s just that anything innovative is going to the cloud.” “The UNIX market is in inexorable decline,” says Daniel Bowers, research director for infrastructure and operations at Gartner. “Only 1 in 85 servers deployed this year uses Solaris, HP-UX, or AIX. Most applications on Unix that can be easily ported to Linux or Windows have actually already been moved.” Most of what remains on Unix today are customized, mission-critical workloads in fields such as financial services and healthcare. Because those apps are expensive and risky to migrate or rewrite, Bowers expects a long-tail decline in Unix that might last 20 years.

4 Techniques Serverless Platforms Use to Balance Performance and Cost

Serverless functions are designed to have almost no performance tuning knobs; the performance model is supposed to give the impression of an infinitely scalable, infinitely reliable computer. However, in reality there are practical limits. For example, all serverless computing systems have the “cold start” problem-the latency of starting a function (more on this later). Even so, a large number of real world applications find these constraints acceptable. ... it is useful to have an understanding of what the most basic Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) platform looks like under the covers - as functions are the building-blocks and execution units of serverless computing. Let’s review a reference architecture for a ‘representative’ FaaS platform, which we have been developing in collaboration with a number of companies and universities within the SPEC RG CLOUD group. Covering the entire reference architecture is worth an article on its own (which we are working on!).

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Quote for the day:

"Little value comes out of the belief that people will respond progressively better by treating them progressively worse." -- Eric Harvey

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Daily Tech Digest - February 12, 2019

A.I. Shows Promise as a Physician Assistant

Using the technology, Dr. Kang Zhang, chief of ophthalmic genetics at the University of California, San Diego, has built systems that can analyze eye scans for hemorrhages, lesions and other signs of diabetic blindness. Ideally, such systems would serve as a first line of defense, screening patients and pinpointing those who need further attention. Now Dr. Zhang and his colleagues have created a system that can diagnose an even wider range of conditions by recognizing patterns in text, not just in medical images. This may augment what doctors can do on their own, he said. “In some situations, physicians cannot consider all the possibilities,” he said. “This system can spot-check and make sure the physician didn’t miss anything.” The experimental system analyzed the electronic medical records of nearly 600,000 patients at the Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center in southern China, learning to associate common medical conditions with specific patient information gathered by doctors, nurses and other technicians.

Why CIOs must become CHROs for successful digital transformation

In the next two years, CIOs will be tasked with changing company culture, adopting the title of chief HR officers (CHROs), according to a Gartner report released on Monday. Setting the values and cultural missions of an organization typically falls on the HR representative, but partnering IT and HR together may help uncover more efficient strategies for completing the same goals, the report noted. The union of IT and HR can help create business processes that align with the desired company culture, the report said. However, cultural change won't be achieved quickly or easily, so companies should start small, said Elise Olding, research vice president at Gartner, in a press release. In the next two years, 80% of midsize to large companies will shift their culture in a way that propels their digital transformation efforts, the report found.

Introducing Adiantum: Encryption for the Next Billion Users

Most new Android devices have hardware support for AES via the ARMv8 Cryptography Extensions. However, Android runs on a wide range of devices. This includes not just the latest flagship and mid-range phones, but also entry-level Android Go phones sold primarily in developing countries, along with smart watches and TVs. In order to offer low cost options, device manufacturers sometimes use low-end processors such as the ARM Cortex-A7, which does not have hardware support for AES. On these devices, AES is so slow that it would result in a poor user experience; apps would take much longer to launch, and the device would generally feel much slower. So while storage encryption has been required for most devices since Android 6.0 in 2015, devices with poor AES performance (50 MiB/s and below) are exempt. We've been working to change this because we believe that encryption is for everyone.

3 reasons you shouldn’t use chatbots

First, you really need to have a use for them. For example, building systems that are installed in cars and motorcycles that converse with people using voice interaction because the people are driving is a great use case. But generally, talking to a chatbot instead of using a keyboard and screen, which is typically how we interact with applications, is not as productive as you might think. While it makes us feel very advanced, productivity may be tossed out the window. Second, chatbots don’t always get things right. I would hesitate to tie some vital function such as braking to a chatbot. I’d live in fear that it would brake at the wrong time if I said something it misinterpreted, such as, “I need a break.” Third, chatbots are costly to build and deploy, so they increase the budget for most application development projects. Bottom line: If chatbots aren’t really needed, do not use them.

What is 5G? All you need to know about the next generation of wireless technology

Today, 3GPP specifies which technologies constitute 5G Wireless and, by exclusion, which do not. 5G is an effort to create a sustainable industry around the wireless consumption of data for all the world's telcos. One key goal of 5G is to dramatically improve quality of service, and extend that quality over a broader geographic area, in order for the wireless industry to remain competitive against the onset of gigabit fiber service coupled with Wi-Fi. The 5G transition plan, once complete, would constitute an overhaul of communications infrastructure unlike any other in history. Imagine if, at the close of the 19th century, the telegraph industry had come together in a joint decision to implement a staged transition to fax. That's essentially the scale of the shift from 4G to 5G. The real reason for this shift is not so much to get faster as to make the wireless industry sustainable over the long term, as the 4G transmission scheme is approaching unsustainability faster than the industry experts predicted.

The Healthcare CIO's Role in Strategy

The primary problem identified by CIOs is in the gap between where the position reports to and how it is being utilized in the company. Essentially, most CIOs are not a priority in the company because the majority still do not report to the CEO. As a result, CIOs are stretched quite thin because they are getting pulled in many different areas without alignment to the CEO. This prevents them from being able to focus on a particular aspect of the business and manage it effectively. It also prevents CIOs from being able to develop and drive an effective long-term strategy for the company, since their attention is so divided. Many CIOs feel they are not being included in the important strategic discussions. When they are involved in these discussions, they are not the kind of conversations that CIOs can use to drive long-term strategy. Instead, they focus on short-term goals or financial planning without addressing major strategic issues that should be addressed before short-term solutions can be implemented. 

Is AI the Next Frontier for National Competitive Advantage?

Although data security is always a major concern, AI algorithms add a new level of complexity. The more granular the data that is fed to an AI algorithm, the better the algorithm is at personalizing a given experience for the user. And consumers typically appreciate it when companies can provide personalized experiences tailored to their needs. However, in the process, users’ privacy or the confidentiality of their data might be compromised, leading to conscious trade-offs being required in security policies. Another major concern with respect to AI algorithms is the potential for these algorithms to institutionalize bias. Machine learning algorithms use historical data to detect patterns and make inferences. Thus using historical data, even if it is factual, can lead to biased outcomes. ... Some countries have started exploring a series of trade-offs that AI presents in an attempt to address them in their policy documents, acknowledging that all of society — businesses, individual consumers, and academics alike — plays a role in how these issues are managed.

A Conversation About ZipSlip, NodeJS Security, and BBS Hacking

Shifting security to the left as much as you can is a great start to take security seriously. To begin with, it’s a security mindset and the understanding that security is everybody’s job, as Tanya Janca says. Embracing security concerns as part of your design and code-review processes, and then continuing to integrate a good set of processes and tooling that supports it within your everyday development workflows. Some examples are adopting static code analysis plugins as part of your build process, or scanning your project for vulnerabilities in open source dependencies, which Snyk does best due to its comprehensive vulnerabilities database as well as it’s pro-active approach of not only reporting vulnerabilities but also automatically opening Pull-Requests with the minimal semver change required to upgrade a dependency.

What You Need to Know About Augmented Analytics

Rip and replace is a bad idea here because BI and analytics products still provide a lot of value. More importantly, augmented analytics requires users to be data literate. Instead of planning a wholesale shift, leverage what’s in place while experimenting with augmented analytics so you can better understand the differences and how your analytics strategy should unfold over time. “Companies will need to start looking very carefully at the vendors’ roadmaps [whose products] they already use to see where they are with respect to incorporating or adding or innovating with augmented analytics,” said Sallam. “Particularly early adopters will take a look at new, innovative vendors and bring them in alongside of their existing investments to see how they can enhance their analytic activities.” Be sure to include analysts and data scientists in the validation process because they’re in a better position to know what questions should be raised and what tests should be used to validate the product.

Microservice using ASP.NET Core

The term microservices portrays a software development style that has grown from contemporary trends to set up practices that are meant to increase the speed and efficiency of developing and managing software solutions at scale. Microservices is more about applying a certain number of principles and architectural patterns than it is about architecture. Each microservice lives independently, but on the other hand, also all rely on each other. All microservices in a project get deployed in production at their own pace, on-premise, on the cloud, independently, living side by side. This section will demonstrate how to create a Product microservice using ASP.NET Core step by step with the help of pictures. The service will be built using ASP.NET Core 2.1 and Visual Studio 2017. ASP.NET Core comes integrated with VS 2017. This service will have its own dbcontext and database with an isolated repository so that the service can be deployed independently.

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Quote for the day:

"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert" -- Theodore Roosevelt

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Daily Tech Digest - February 11, 2019

RPA: Driving mainstream innovation

Like any IT deployment, internal auditing must come first, and this is true for RPA installation. Mapping existing operations and analyzing processes are essential and should be recorded at a granular level. Some organizations make the error at this stage of not asking staff at the coal face, preferring to refer to managers who are often a step or more removed from operational practicalities. The final considerations comprise of how the new, virtualized workforce is to be managed: is this to be an IT function, or will there be a delegation of monitoring and control to individual work groups or departments? Analogous to those concerns, support structures also need to be put in place to handle daily issues such as software updates (an IT concern) or change requests (operational management). Finally, the governance of the whole structure needs careful definition, setting out the rules of change management, documentation, data security, and the predicted maintenance requirements.

The SWOT Guide To Blockchain Part 2

With blockchain technology’s decentralisation, individuals can be coordinated on a large scale to undertake activities without a middleman. This technology offers governance and interaction without a third party to oversee it. Some social networks have already been developed that operate in a decentralised manner using blockchain. Some examples include Akasha, Steem.io and Synereo. The rules of operating are configured in the blockchain, fees are paid and fees can be earned by contributors via this type of platform. Looking at sharing economy examples specifically, platforms for car pooling have already been built that are decentralised – and thus differ significantly from Uber. Examples are ArcadeCity and Lazooz. Again, the rules that govern them are built into the blockchain infrastructure, and these manage interactions between those that need a ride, and the car drivers. Drivers are rewarded via the blockchain technology, and gain tokens that offer them a share in the platform. Thus, drivers are motivated to help the platform build in its success, because in doing so, they have more to gain personally as well. 

The AI research agenda for the next 20 years is being made now

“If you want to do common sense knowledge, if you want to do true natural language semantics, you need a good knowledge base; a good, large knowledge graph in a sense, but the knowledge graph, for example, that Google is developing is in house and not accessible to academic research. So we need a very large, shared resource that will be developed across the country, then shared via some institute or center that would manage that,” Selman said about the idea of a national AI platform. What surprised me watching the town hall was the number of times fundamental knowledge about people came up, things like understanding human intelligence. Also surprising was the number of times words like “trust” was used. If you’re interested in taking a closer look at initial findings and workshop results, you can watch the town hall video or read through this CCC blog. Stick with VentureBeat to hear the final recommendations and the challenges and opportunities researchers see for AI in the years ahead.

Cryptocurrency-stealing Clipper malware caught in Google Play Store

This is not the first time Clipper malware variants have been spotted, though it is the first time they have been found in the Google Play Store. Clipper payloads have been available on Dark Web marketplaces since at least August 2018, appearing periodically in what ESET characterizes as "several shady app stores" for Android. Variants of clipper first appeared in 2017 on Windows. Avoiding Android malware is relatively straightforward for informed consumers. Using only the official Google Play Store to download apps is a great first defense in most cases. Using other app stores requires explicitly disabling a security setting in Android. This can leave your device vulnerable. That said, in cases like this where cybercriminals have permeated the Google Play Store, it is important to check the publisher's website to ensure the app is genuine. In the case of MetaMask, as there is no Android (or iOS) version, that should be taken as a sign that the app is not genuine.

What is low-code development? A Lego-like approach to building software

Low code differs from no-code development, in which so-called citizen developers, often business analysts with little to no programming experience but who are knowledgeable about business processes and workflows, use similar drag-and-drop tools to arrange applications. With low code, developers may still need to do some coding to integrate access to older applications, for reporting, and for special user interface requirements, Forrester Research analyst John Rhymer wrote in an October 2017 research report. (For a deeper look at low code, read technologist Steven Koh's explanation, here, and Jason Bloomberg's article distinguishing low code from its no-code cousin, here.) The total market for low-code development platforms, offered by vendors such as Salesforce.com, Appian, Mendix and others, will hit $21.2 billion by 2022, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 40 percent, according to a vendor report Forrester published in November 2017.

Athens At The Center Of European Cyber Security Strategy

The agreement stipulates that the premises of the Agency shall be located in the metropolitan area of Athens, with a branch office in Heraklion, Crete and that the role of professional cybersecurity staff working for the Agency will be upgraded. According to the Agency web site, the professional cybersecurity team mounts to 65 experts, but the new agreement will attract more and possibly help the repatriation of Greek scientists. To quote Mr. Pappas, ‘The new seat agreement opens new high-level job opportunities in the critical field of cybersecurity contributing to brain-drain control and the enticement of new top scientists from all over Europe. ... The European Union needs to be ready to adapt to and reap the benefits of these technologies and reduce the cyber-attack surface. In this regard and in the context of the recent political agreement on the new draft Cybersecurity Act, which proposes to grant ENISA a permanent mandate with more human and financial resources, ENISA is expected to increase its support to the E.U. Member States, in order to improve capabilities and expertise, notably in the areas of cyber crisis coordination and the prevention of cyber incidents.

IoT for retailers: opportunities and challenges

Many retailers have successfully exposed inventory information by store to create an "availability to promise" capability so that when mobile users "buy" something, that specific item in inventory is immediately set aside for them. The next major step, Archer said, is consolidating selling platforms so store employees, customers, field technicians, and customer service personnel all see the same catalog of product information, pricing, and promotions, so they can facilitate new orders or update existing ones. The rise of apps and digital wallets promises to let retailers know who is in their store at any given time. This will help them move beyond pilot implementations and one-off testing to actually track the ROI of their IoT investments. Also, Archer points out, once retailers know a customer is approaching the store, instead of just sending ad notifications, they can have the buyer’s purchase ready for pickup, so the don’t have to get out of the car or disentangle their child from their car seat.

Who is in Charge of Quality in Software Development

This is where perspectives most vary. As Gregory said, “Different people choose different things. They have different wants, different needs. If we’re trying to let the customer choose, make the customers happy.” But don’t forget to keep in mind, she continued, “We are also making a big assumption that the consumers have enough information that they can make a qualified decision.” She spoke of an app she once used that she found super unfriendly. It turned out the users loved it because it followed exactly how they worked. She didn’t work in that field. It’s all about meeting the specific users’ specific use cases. ... Finally the most immeasurable quality — transcendence. Gregory said that’s because it’s hardest to measure emotion, making transcendent quality a blend of artistry, engagement, and customer loyalty. How do we measure the quality of software? Overall, if you accept Garvin’s quality scale, it’s difficult to measure most parts of software quality.

Where automotive cybersecurity is headed in 2019

According to cybersecurity firms, connected vehicle risks have grown significantly in the past few years, enough to prompt the FBI to issue a warning, and the UK last December to issue new cybersecurity standards for self driving vehicles. OEMs — the companies that put their nameplates on the vehicles — have begun to realize that it is they that consumers, and regulators, will be looking towards for security answers. OEMs no longer rely only on their component suppliers to solve their security concerns, they are looking towards experts in the cybersecurity field for assistance. Security companies working with OEMs are taking a variety of approaches, from monitoring the network to examining ECU for anomalous activity. OEMs who haven’t made this a priority yet will certainly do so in the coming year; they don’t really have a choice. The FTC, the NHTSA, and likely a passel of other government organizations, are examining connected vehicle systems for cybersecurity and privacy issues.

What is phishing? How this cyber attack works and how to prevent it

Phishing is a cyber attack that uses disguised email as a weapon. The goal is to trick the email recipient into believing that the message is something they want or need — a request from their bank, for instance, or a note from someone in their company — and to click a link or download an attachment. What really distinguishes phishing is the form the message takes: the attackers masquerade as a trusted entity of some kind, often a real or plausibly real person, or a company the victim might do business with. It's one of the oldest types of cyberattacks, dating back to the 1990s, and it's still one of the most widespread and pernicious, with phishing messages and techniques becoming increasingly sophisticated. "Phish" is pronounced just like it's spelled, which is to say like the word "fish" — the analogy is of an angler throwing a baited hook out there (the phishing email) and hoping you bite. The term arose in the mid-1990s among hackers aiming to trick AOL users into giving up their login information.

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Quote for the day:

"The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones." -- Brandon Sanderson

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Daily Tech Digest - February 10, 2019

AI technology could turn thoughts into speech

To teach the vocoder to interpret brain activity, the researchers worked with a group of epilepsy patients who were already undergoing brain surgery. The patients’ brain activity was recorded as they listened to someone recite the numbers zero through to nine. The signals their brain activity generated were then run through the vocoder, which turned the signals into speech. The researchers then used neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence that mimics the workings of the human brain, to analyse and clean up the sound produced by the vocoder. What they were left with was a robotic-sounding voice that recited the numbers the patients were hearing. About three-quarters of the time the numbers were correct and understandable, which lead author Dr Nima Mesgarani described as being “well above and beyond any previous attempts”.  

80% Of Enterprise IT Will Move To The Cloud By 2025

The revenue flow is what matters most, he says, “and it has to keep running under every scenario,” and that includes tech problems—whether an outage, a security breach, or spike in demand. “And it has to deliver a less than one-second response time for a very complex account activation process,” Heller says. The company “won’t make any decision that threatens that performance.” That’s not to say these IT teams aren’t looking to cut costs—they always are. In fact, he says, IT teams “feel a responsibility to always provide three things: effectiveness, efficiency, and risk mitigation,” Heller says. “Does it do what it’s supposed to? Is it a reasonable cost to buy and maintain? Does it avoid risk and ensure business continuity? Every decision they make, every attribute of a solution, should include all those things.” With rare exceptions, businesses won’t put these mission-critical workloads on first-generation clouds. “They just weren’t built for it,” Heller says.

How to succeed as a high-demand data scientist

As a data scientist, it’s vital to understand what you can bring to an enterprise - whatever their business is, however big they are. An intelligently-designed data-collection campaign can reveal detailed demographics for a company’s customer base so that they set their marketing teams in the right direction. By wasting less time and money on random advertisements, institutions can expect a more significant ROI, happier clients and better branding. Branding is vital for any company, and the more endorsements pop-up with a company’s name, the more likely an individual is to recognize the name and buy it. A data scientist can understand trends in the market, identify patterns, and suggest best practices. They are problem-solvers and analysts, so businesses across America rely on them to provide the best information. Of course, to be an asset a data scientist also has to understand the industry they’re working in.

Hack Attack Breaches Australian Parliament Network

Smith and Ryan cautioned that it's too soon to try and attribute the attack (see Stop the Presses: Don't Rush Tribune Ransomware Attribution). "Accurate attribution of a cyber incident takes time and investigations are being undertaken in conjunction with the relevant security agencies," Smith and Ryan said. "We are not in a position to provide further information publicly at this stage. Updates will be provided to members and senators and the media as required." The head of the Australian Cyber Security Center, Alastair MacGibbon, declined to speculate about the identity of the attacker. "My primary concern is making sure we get that offender out and we keep the offender out," he told Australian Associated Press. Addressing reporters on Friday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison likewise declined to speculate about the identity of the attacker, and he reiterated that the attack appeared to be limited to targeting Parliament's network. "I should stress that there is no suggestion that government departments or agencies have been the target of any such incursion," Morrison said, Associated Press reported.

How quantum terrorists could bring down the future internet

A lone-wolf attacker cannot overwhelm the quantum state with random information. “The correct state (i.e. initial state) can in principle be recovered using purification or distillation schemes,” say Johnson and co. But if quantum terrorists work in unison, an entirely different scenario unfolds. Johnson and co show that if several attackers inject their quantum information into the network at the same instant, they can disrupt the global quantum state. In that case the initial state of the system cannot be retrieved, even in principle. How many terrorists are needed for this to happen? The shocking conclusion is that it requires only three or more quantum terrorists working in unison. “Our findings reveal a new form of vulnerability that will enable hostile groups of [three or more] quantum-enabled adversaries to inflict maximal disruption on the global quantum state in such systems,” say the team. What’s more, these attacks will be practically impossible to detect, since they introduce no identifying information; they require no real-time communication, since the terrorists simply agree in advance when to attack; and the attack can be over within a second.

Team Human vs. Team AI

Algorithms do reflect the brilliance of the engineers who craft them, as well as the power of iterative processes to solve problems in novel ways. They can answer the specific questions we bring them, or even generate fascinating imitations of human creations, from songs to screenplays. But we are mistaken if we look to algorithms for direction. They are not consciously guided by a core set of values so much as by a specific set of outcomes. They are unconsciously utilitarian. Yet without human intervention, technology will become the accepted premise of our shared value system: the starting point from which everything else must be inferred. In a world dominated by text communication, illiteracy was seen as stupidity, and the written law might as well have been the word of God. In a world defined by computers, speed and efficiency become the primary values. To many of the developers and investors of Silicon Valley, however, humans are not to be emulated or celebrated, but transcended or — at the very least — re-engineered.

Why romance with machines is a foregone conclusion

Phillips points out that robots are already serving comforting roles. The category of home robotics still hasn't extended far beyond robot vacuum cleaners, but in settings like hospitals and senior care facilities there's significant experimentation around companion bots that can brighten days and lift spirits while performing basic care needs.  There's also the increasing "realness" of robots to consider. Phillips points out we may be coming out of the Uncanny Valley as robotics designers make increasingly lifelike robots that feel less creepy than human simulacrums of just a couple years ago. That means robots are becoming increasingly convincing as they pass for human. Couple that with the fact that people are already demonstrating a preference for artificial relationships. Phillips cites a Japanese craze among the Otaku subculture of playing dating video games in which players establish relationships with computer characters. It sounds weird, but given what we know about Attachment theory it's not all that different from the Tomagotchi craze that's more familiar here in the U.S.

Want to master a programming language and become a 10x developer? Here's the secret

Pair programming tasks a couple of developers with working together at a single computer, jointly solving problems and devising code, with one dev typing in code while the other reviews it. "The best way to become a 10x developer is to teach nine other developers to do your job as well, not to get ten times better," she told the O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference NY 2019. "So let's talk about how you scale your skills by sharing your skills, sharing your experience with other people, my favorite way is pair programming." However, Gee isn't just an advocate for developers pairing up, but also for programmers working alongside other employees who play a key role in shaping software. "Pair programming is, in my opinion, the best way to share knowledge around the team, particularly for developers, but not just limited to developers.

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing a Domain Name for Your Tech Startup

As counterintuitive as it may sound, the future is in the past. A sophisticated understanding of the past is one of the most powerful tools we have for shaping the future. When choosing a domain extension, do some research on these two aspects ... The true importance of using a new domain extension is to creatively brand your startup. For instance, if you are a new eCommerce business you can pick a .store domain extension or if you are starting a media business then you can pick a .press domain extension. Similarly, for your tech startup, you can pick a definitive .tech domain extension that is globally associated with the word technology. But before you jump to a name of your choice, do some research to see whether it is free of any political, legal or ethical controversies. ... By not taking suitable measures to protect the domain at the time of registration, you can make your website susceptible to brandjacking. This means that cybercriminals can take over the control of your website with the intention of ruining your reputation.

In a digital world, do you trust the data?

Trust is now a defining factor in an organization's success or failure. Indeed, trust underpins reputation, customer satisfaction, loyalty and other intangible assets. It inspires employees, enables global markets to function, reduces uncertainty and builds resilience. The problem is that - in today's environment - trust isn't just about the quality of an organization's brands, products, services and people. It's also about the trustworthiness of the data and analytics that are powering its technology. KPMG International's Guardians of trust report explores the evolving nature of trust in the digital world. Based on a survey almost 2,200 global information technology (IT) and business decision-makers involved in strategy for data initiatives, this report identifies some of the key trends and emerging principles to support the development of trusted analytics in the digital age. At a time when machines are increasingly working in parallel with people, this report identifies the clear need for improved and proactive governance of analytics.

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Quote for the day:

"Every great leader has incredible odds to overcome." -- Wayde Goodall

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Daily Tech Digest - February 09, 2019

A cryptocurrency company’s covert bug fix has confusing legal implications

What’s shocking is not that Zcash had a flaw. It’s that just a handful employees knew about it and kept it secret for eight months before fixing it. The way the team handled the issue probably wouldn’t be quite so controversial if Zcash were a traditional software company. But this is crypto, where enthusiasts expect everything to be transparent and decentralized. Perhaps more important, this episode is a reminder that we lack clear definitions to distinguish between “centralized” and “decentralized” blockchain systems—even as policymakers have begun attaching real legal implications to these labels. The story begins in March. According to a lengthy blog post, that’s when Zcash cryptographer Ariel Gabizon discovered a “subtle cryptographic flaw” in an academic paper Zcash relied on to develop its technology. Zcash uses a fancy cryptographic tool called a zero-knowledge proof to let users transact anonymously. It allows transactions to be validated without giving away any other information about them.

Fintech must complement, not dictate, the millennial mortgage experience

A common misconception about fintech is that it's automating lending professionals out of the process. In our experience, lenders take their products and experiences into the cloud because it makes their operations more efficient. It also enables their teams to provide the personal touches and guidance that first-time homebuyers often want. One tactical way to do this is by giving loan teams tools that automate manual tasks like document collection. This gives loan officers more time to focus on driving new business and, in turn, grow revenue. They're also able to spend more time providing the kind of advice that drives borrower satisfaction ... Whether or not lenders have caught on, online marketplaces have set millennials' expectations around design, user experience and speed for the entire home buying process, not just the home search. About 65% of borrowers will start their real estate search online, according to PWC's Digital Mortgage 2.0 report. That's more than any other channel.

Major vulnerability found in Android ES File Explorer app

According to Craig Young, computer security researcher for Tripwire's VERT, the ES File Explorer 'Open Port' vulnerability is far more serious than originally reported. "The truth is that attackers do not actually need to be on the same network as the victim phone thanks to DNS rebinding," said Young. "With this attack model, a website loaded on the phone or by any user on the same network can directly interact with the vulnerable HTTP server. This enables a remote attacker to harvest files and system information from vulnerable devices. An attack could be launched through hacked web pages, malicious advertising, or even a tweeted video." ... The simplest example would be a public Wi-Fi like a café. In this scenario, anyone else on the same Wi-Fi could use a freely available hacking tool to identify phones or tablets connected to the network and running the vulnerable application. The attacker could use this program to list what files and apps are on the device as well as general information about the system.

Why Google Data Scientists Are Interested in Ethereum Classic

According to Yaz Khoury, director of developer relations at the nonprofit ETC Cooperative, Google’s staff took note of this increased focus on fostering use cases. “They approached me,” Khoury said of Google, adding that BigQuery support is about “merging the gap between people who are very familiar with the blockchain data structure” and technologists who are more familiar with querying other types of data. Khoury is already using BigQuery to map out ETC ownership distribution beyond exchanges and the two millionaires who helped grow the ethereum spinoff, ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson and Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert. Now that Khoury said people can search for ETC blockchain data across all of Google Cloud’s BigQuery products – and that hopefully, less-crypto-savvy technologists will experiment on their own as well. Despite its nascent user base, this Google support comes at a fortuitous time for the ETC community. ETC Labs, funded by the parent company Digital Finance Group, invested $100,000 in six of the projects participating in the inaugural class of the accelerator program.

Why enterprise IT is moving to the cloud – and when it’s not

ERP systems are some of the most complex software ever invented, and reinventing them as cloud native products may be the work of a decade or more. The major ERP vendors have created SaaS versions of their software, but they’re different enough that implementing them is almost always a large project rather than a simple upgrade. That means ditching investments in customizations, which are often important to tailoring an ERP to meet a company’s needs. At the same time, SaaS ERP is essentially a new outsourcing model for familiar software. There is nothing revolutionary or transformational about it. In fact, anyone making the leap needs to analyze what familiar functions and industry-specific capabilities are missing from the SaaS version. Occasionally, we hear of SAP or Oracle ERP customers making the change anyway because they want to “start over.” However, most can’t afford to throw away the effort they have sunk into tailoring their existing system to meet their needs.

We Need More Transparency in Cybersecurity

Operating a business becomes more complex daily, as organizations move to hybrid clouds and multicloud platforms, distributing information broadly beyond the network perimeter by nontechnical employees that neither have the time nor understanding to consider the security outcomes. At the same time, threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated and organized. While this ought to be a call to action to elevate the role of security to have a seat at the executive table, there still exists a mentality that security is a compliance requirement rather than a need-to-have. And from the security side, there is often the notion that "no one could possibly understand what I do, so why bother telling them about it?" Nearly every business today is now a technology business. The problem is that we've developed a culture that doesn't recognize the necessity to have open lines of communication and shared responsibility across the organization to make cybersecurity not only a priority but a standardized part of daily operational procedures.

Top 10 Data Science Use cases in Telecom

The telecommunication sphere is under constant change due to the increasing role of the Internet services. For each telecommunication company, this may be regarded as a vast field to learn and understand the customers. Customer sentiment analysis is a set of methods applied for information processing. This analysis allows assessment of the customer positive or negative reaction to the service or product. Analysis of the aggregated data also allows revealing recent trends and reacting to the customers’ problematic issues in real-time. Customer sentiments analysis largely relies on text analysis techniques. Modern tools collect feedback from various social media sources conduct analysis and provide an opportunity of utilizing mechanisms for direct responding. The telecommunication industry is famous for its long-term experience in dealing with significant data streams for years. Due to rapid development of the internet and the evolving of 3G, 4G, and even 5G connections, telecommunication companies face the challenge of the constantly changing customer requirements.

Adopting CI/CD in Your Java Project with the Gitflow Branching Model

Gitflow is a collaborative branching model that exploits the power, speed, and simplicity of Git branching. Introduced by Vincent Driessen in his classic 2010 blog “A Successful Git Branching Model”, Gitflow takes the pain out of collaborative development by allowing teams to isolate new development from completed work, allowing you to cherry-pick features for release, while still encouraging frequent commits and automated testing. As a by-product it produces cleaner code, by promoting code-reviews, even self-code reviews, thereby exposing bugs, opportunities for refactoring, and optimizations. But when it comes to implementing Gitflow in a CI/CD environment, the particulars are very specific to your development environment, and there are countless possibilities. Consequently the documentation is sparse; given the well-known branch names - master, develop, feature, etc., which branches do we build, which do we test, which do we deploy snapshots, which deploy releases, and how do we automate deployments to Dev, UAT, Prod, etc.?

The real reason America is scared of Huawei: internet-connected everything

As the world’s biggest supplier of networking equipment and second largest smartphone maker, Huawei is in a prime position to snatch the lion’s share of a 5G market that, by some estimates, could be worth $123 billion in five years’ time. Stalling the company’s expansion into Western markets could have the convenient side effect of letting competitors catch up. But there are also legitimate security concerns surrounding 5G—and reasons to think it could be problematic for one company to dominate the space. The US government appears to have decided that it’s simply too risky for a Chinese company to control too much 5G infrastructure. The focus on Huawei makes sense given the importance of 5G, the new complexity and security challenges, and the fact that the Chinese company is poised to be such a huge player. And given the way Chinese companies are answerable to the government, Huawei’s apparent connections with the Chinese military and its cyber operations, and the tightening ties between private industry and the state, this seems a legitimate consideration.

Will technology ever replace human to human conversations?

AI is now being developed that can truly revolutionise customer service by allowing companies the opportunity to analyse phone calls and immediately pick up essential data from them. As such, the next big move for the telecoms industry when it comes to AI will be towards integrating the technology into telephony platforms in order to help companies figure out what the immediate benefits of the data they have access to is for everyone. For instance, AI can analyse phone calls to determine the tone of the call, i.e. whether it was a positive or negative interaction, and deliver this analysis to managers, allowing them to better train call agents and gather statistics on them, which will in turn improve and automate the process. On top of this, using AI to analyse phone conversations will help companies improve their telephony offering, through the ability to offer a more personalised service and reduce waiting times.

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Quote for the day:

"A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are." -- Ara Parseghian

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