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  • How Will Artificial Intelligence Change the Workplace?

    How Will Artificial Intelligence Change the Workplace?

    LinkedIn Influencers provided some advice on the future impact of artificial intelligence in the workplace. “The first thing that artificial intelligence will take over is the microphone on your laptop or computer,” said Reid Hoffman, Executive Chairman and co-Founder of LinkedIn in a new 30 second Influencer video.. “What will happen is, it will start listening to your meetings, when you are talking and other things. It will record you in order to help take notes, suggest action items, and suggest other people to communicate with.”

    “I wrote about this in a recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review“, said Hoffman. In the article, Using Artificial Intelligence to Humanize Management and Set Information Free he says that “we are on the cusp of a major breakthrough in how organizations collect, analyze, and act on knowledge” and he thinks this will bring important changes to business decisions.

    “Artificial Intelligence is about to transform management from an art into a combination of art and science,” he says. “Not because we’ll be taking commands from science fiction’s robot overlords, but because specialized AI will allow us to apply data science to our human interactions at work in a way that earlier theorists like Peter Drucker could only imagine.”

    “Artificial intelligence, machine learning, chat box, guided conversations are coming at us faster than ever,” notes Steve Anderson, President of The Anderson Network and an expert on insurance technology, productivity and innovation. “I think the first functions that will be taken over in an organization is augmenting existing employees and helping them enhance their ability to create a great customer experience. Getting those routine questions answered automatically to free up their time to deal with customers more detailed questions.”

    “I pray anyhow that it will be in every aspect of my schedule and every aspect of meetings and all the notes taken in meetings and all the followup that can be executed from them, cutting meetings massively and making much more efficiency,” says Christopher Schroeder, CEO-in-waiting, Advisor and Venture Investor and Author. “I can only hope that the robots are as kind to me as the executive assistants that I’ve been blessed to have over the last decade, but we’ll see.”

    “The first thing that artificial intelligence is going to take over in my office is scheduling meetings,” says Nicholas Thompson, Editor of NewYorker.com, the website of The NewYorker Magazine. “It’s going to take over lots of stuff in the long run, but the first stuff that it’s going to get is stuff where the language inputs are relatively simple and relatively contained. That’s true of meetings, where you say I’m going to meet with you Wednesday and Friday. That’s a complex sentence, but it’s something we’re close to figuring out. The companies trying to do this, I’ve used one called x.ai, there not totally there but they will get there. I’ll be grateful when they do because scheduling meetings stinks!”

    “The first thing that my office AI will take over is customer service,” said Leila Janah, CEO of Sama Group, Co-Founder and CEO of Laxmi, and an award-winning social entrepreneur. “It’s already taken over things like security, and probably some texting with customer service via bots. I think bots are impacting so many different businesses. I already have a bot that replies to most of my messages. We already have an auto-reply on Facebook to my company page, I’m sure it’s going to take over more.”

    “First thing in my office AI will take over is probably the social media feed,” says Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group. “Let’s face it, we spend too much time on it and they will be better at it. They’re going to make us look shinier and even more attractive than we already are. They’ll optimize for it and we will be able to do other things with our lives. How awesome! That’s great… before they take over.”

    “Let’s face it, we are already seeing AI systems improve text entry, thinking about Google’s Inbox app where it can predict likely response,” commented Azeem Azhar, who is Vice President, Venture & Foresight for the Schibsted Media Group. “I think we will be seeing more of that coming into Gmail and word indexing software. These machines are going to help us compose our messages, either to automate replies or help us to be better writers.”

    “Email. That’s the first thing that artificial intelligence is going to take over in the office,” replied Tomasz Tunguz, Venture Capitalist at Redpoint. “I already dictate most of the email I send everyday, and because we can speak about 3 times faster than we can type, it’s far more efficient.”

    “One of the ways artificial intelligence is going to take over my office, is that it’s going to replace in some situations coaches, if you can believe that,” says J.T. O’Donnell, CEO of CAREEREALISM & CareerHMO. “In career coaching there are a lot of typical situations that people will encounter where they need to have an interaction with a coach and get the information and the feedback they need in that moment. But believe me or not, there are so many of those that are similar that we could use artificial intelligence to engage people through those conversations. I expect to see us use that a lot in the future.”

    “The first thing I would like it to take over is the sales cycle,” said Sramana Mitra, Founder at One Million by One Million (1M/1M). “A lot of people come to our website to find out about us and then contact us whether it’s by email or phone or whatever. I think the most productive thing would be to really automate and personalize in a meaningful way, using AI and the application of AI to meaningfully impact the sales cycle.”

    “I have to believe that the first thing in my office that AI will take over is making phone calls,” says Jon Steinberg, Founder and CEO of Cheddar. “Making phone calls is actually the only thing that has gotten worse over the past ten years, whether it’s the signal, the process for dialing, everything. I have to think that soon when we want to get in touch with people you will be able to just express a desire or it will look at the documents or processes you are working on and the voice call or video call will be automatically initiated.”

  • Are You Ready for the New Mobile Gold Rush?

    Are You Ready for the New Mobile Gold Rush?

    “Are you ready for the new mobile gold rush? Of course you’re not,” said Jim O’Leary, Sr. Manager Mobile Solutions Marketing at Cisco. “Though truth be told, the pending growth in mobile video may be more like a video tornado and only a handful of mobile operators are prepared.”

    What Jim O’Leary is talking about is the rapidly changing landscape of content viewing. Multi-device viewing is now the norm and the dumping of the old cable content bundle is well under way. Over-The-Top content (OTT), where content is consumed without going through the traditional gatekeepers such as the cable or satellite provider, is bringing complete and utter disruption to the cable and broadcast companies.

    (Related: How Google Measures Cross-Device Ad Conversions)

    However, with disruption comes opportunity.

    Video now accounts for the majority of global mobile data traffic and is forecast to be the key driver of data traffic growth globally. To date, mobile video (and the ability to monetize the content) has been dominated by Internet players, such as YouTube, Netflix, with the operator role simply one of connectivity provider.

    However, a number of operators are developing their own content delivery platforms. Singtel, Verizon and PCCW are three prominent examples of this trend, with their HOOQ, Go90 and Viu video platforms respectively. While HooQ and Viu are variants of the subscription-based model, Go90 more closely resembles the Internet business model, with a reliance on advertising for revenues and a focus on millennials. – Jim O’Leary, Cisco

    “Mobile operators across the world face the same twin challenges of slowing growth and ongoing disruption of core services by new Internet & OTT players, even as the broader mobile ecosystem continues to see significant revenue growth,” O’Leary posted. “So if you are tired of being just an operator that carries mobile video and prefer to be able to monetize it, read on.”

    Mobile Video Watching is Booming!

    O’Leary sees a significant monetization opportunity for mobile operators with video for a very good reason, the exploding growth in using mobile devices to watch videos. An On Device Research study commissioned by the IAB in 2015 (Download PDF) confirmed the changing landscape for mobile globally, with 35% watching more video on their smartphone versus last year.

    In February 2016 Cisco released a study predicting that by 2020 there will be 5.5 billion global mobile users which is up from the 4.8 billion currently, and those millions of new mobile users will be watching video too!

    More astonishing, the study says that by 2020 there will be 11.6 mobile-connected devices! This is indicative of another emerging trend, connecting ALL devices to the internet via mobile operators where internet content and data can be consumed and sometimes produced on and by these devices.

    Gartner estimates that the Internet of Things (IoT) is currently connected to 6.4 billion devices and will connect to 20.8 billion “things” by 2020. Some of these “things” will be video enabled devices as well. For instance, watching a video of how to make vegan scrambled eggs on your refrigerator door!

    Mobile Operators Can Play “Central Role” in Content

    So mobile operators have massive connectivity with virtually everyone 12 years old and up having a smart phone and if they can play a central role in providing content they can benefit from the “emerging online video value chain.” It’s about using great content to boost usage of their mobile broadband service. O’Leary believes that Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and others should take advantage of this “content opportunity” in order to cash in and drive business growth.

    The biggest impediment for mobile phone companies entering the video content space is their tendency to charge high rates for large bandwidth consumption. Mobile broadband carriers should eventually come to the realization that their businesses are tied to consumers needing them and it is in their interest to provide inexpensive ways to consume high bandwidth mobile content or they will by bypassed by new mobile broadband competitors that get it.

    Mobile is the New Video Distribution Platform

    O’Leary predicts that OTT, where the internet is used to bypass traditional content middlemen like cable, is the driving motivation that should entice broadband providers to enter the content space more aggressively over the next few years. He advocates mobile operators creating a “cloud based platform” and then partnering with content producers in order to “scale their video infrastructure efforts and deliver high-quality, live video and on-demand content to consumers on any device — be it their smartphone, tablet or connected television.”

    Content producers will likely consist of a wide variety of players from traditional sources like ESPN and Disney to well funded content upstarts such as such as Amazon, Apple, YouTube and Netflix. Content alliances between mobile operators may also include more direct deals with talent such as successful independent internet based content stars on YouTube, Vine and even Snapchat. Mobile is already the primary platform used to consume video content so the next step is to cut out the middleman and partner directly with popular content providers.

    “In growing numbers, consumers are replacing their traditional cable and satellite TV packages with smaller, more customized, and often less expensive mixes of programming, cobbled together from an array of online and on-demand services,” said O’Leary. “As more consumers replace their big-bundle TV packages with à la carte online offerings, an opportunity is emerging for mobile operators and other service providers to combine mobile broadband (MBB) packages with compelling “over the top” content.”

    Mobile operators should realize that they are the distribution platform for millennials, they are the network and they are the new cable and satellite companies. With that in mind, they don’t need the networks or cable to drive viewership and usage of their platform, they simply need great content however they can get it, even if it means becoming content creators themselves.

  • Google: Highest-Capacity Undersea Cable Ever Built is Online

    Google announced that the 60Tbps long-haul undersea fibre optic cable from the US to Japan that it invested in has come online as of today, June 30, 2016. The Google Cloud itself will have access to up to 10Tbps (Terabits per second) of the cable’s total 60Tbps bandwidth. This bandwidth will power Google Apps and their Cloud Platform. According to the Google Cloud team “customers will run at the speed of light with this new FASTER undersea pipe.”

    Screen Shot 2016-06-30 at 11.33.57 AM

    “This is the highest-capacity undersea cable ever built — about ten million times faster than your average cable modem — and we’re beaming light through it starting today,” commented Alan Chin-Lun Cheung of Google Submarine Networking Infrastructure. “This is especially exciting, as we prepare to launch a new Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo later this year.”

    The new undersea cable system, announced in August 2014, was funded and built by a consortium of internet companies including Google, Singtel, China Telecom Global, KDDI and China Mobile International. The group partnered with NEC to build the cable which came to be known as FASTER for obvious reasons. “From the very beginning of the project, we repeatedly said to each other, ‘faster, Faster and FASTER’, and at one point it became the project name and today it becomes a reality,” said Hiromitsu Todokoro, Chairman of the FASTER Management Committee. “This is the outcome of six members’ collaborative contribution and expertise together with NEC’s support.”

                                          Give us your comments!

    “The completion of the FASTER cable system will provide capacity to support the expected four-fold increase in broadband traffic demand between Asia and North America,” stated Ooi Seng Keat, Vice President, Carrier Services of Singtel Group Enterprises. “By adding network redundancy and ultra-low latency to our existing trans-Pacific cable systems, it reinforces our leadership in international data services in the region and enhances our infrastructure to support our customers’ critical data traffic.”

    “With a state-of-the-art design, the cable system provides continuous connectivity and sufficiently high capacity for cloud, video streaming, analytics and the Internet of Things, that will help spur innovation on both sides of the Pacific to stimulate the growth of the digital economy,” he added.

    NEC’s OCC Factory made the state-of-the-art cables that power the FASTER connectivity system. Check out how they are made below:

    FASTER is the only trans-pacific cable line capable of delivering speeds up to 60 terabits per second using a six-fibre pair cable, according to NEC. “FASTER is the first trans-Pacific submarine cable system designed from day one to support digital coherent transmission technology, using optimized fibers throughout the submarine portion. The combination of extremely low loss fiber, without a dispersion compensation section, and the latest digital signal processor, which compensates for the huge amount of cumulative dispersion at the end of the cable, enable this six-fiber pair cable to deliver 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific.”

    The FASTER Cable System is a 9,000km trans-Pacific cable that lands in Oregon in the United States and has two landing points in Japan, Chiba and Mie prefectures. FASTER connect to all of the major hubs on the West Coast via system extensions including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland and Seattle. Additionally, FASTER will be connecting to neighboring cable systems extends that will allow it to bring high-speed internet access to many other nations in Asia.

    “This was the first trans-Pacific submarine cable built solely by NEC Corporation, employing the latest 100Gbps digital coherent optical transmission technology. We are honored that the consortium entrusted us to build FASTER. Although we faced many challenges during the construction, I am truly glad that we were able to overcome these and to welcome this day,” said Kenichi Yoneyama, Project Manager for FASTER at NEC’s Submarine Network Division. “This epoch-making cable will not only bring benefits to the United States and Japan, but to the entire Asia-Pacific region.”

                                       Join the discussion here.

     

  • Russian Gov Hackers Were Stealing Info From Dems For Over A Year

    The Washington Post is reporting that Russian government hackers penetrated DNC computers over a year ago and have everything including all email and chat traffic. According to Washington Post sources their main purpose was to steal opposition research about Donald Trump.

    The Post said that Russian spies were also targeting the networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and some GOP political action committees, but it is unknown if breaches were made at this time.

    From the Washington Post:

    The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers.

    The intrusions are an example of Russia’s interest in the U.S. political system and its desire to understand the policies, strengths and weaknesses of a potential future president — much as American spies gather similar information on foreign candidates and leaders.

    The depth of the penetration reflects the skill and determination of the United States’ top cyber adversary as Russia goes after strategic targets, from the White House and State Department to political campaign organizations.

    Shawn Henry, the president of CrowdStrike and former F.B.I. agent, spoke to MSNBC: “We were able to identify with a very high degree of confidence a group that we have attributed back to the Russian government targeting that D.N.C. network. Foreign intelligence services are constantly interested in political processes.”

    “We were actually called by the DNC through their Counsel when they saw that there were some irregularities,” stated Henry. “They were concerned about a potential breach within their environment. We came in and did our typical incident response, we deployed certain pieces of technology that we use to try to get some visibility into the extent, the depth and breadth of this particular breach. In the course of this working very closely with the staff of the DNC we were able to identify with a very high degree of confidence a group that we have attributed back to the Russian government.”

    Henry added, “We know with certainty, my time in the Bureau, that foreign intelligence services are constantly interested in political processes, their interested in strategies, their interested in foreign policies, ect. The DNC and others have been targeted over the years by this very very sophisticated group with a high degree of capability and some very very sophisticated technology.”

    “Typically on our network we’ve got corporate strategies, email communication, documents, spreadsheets, PDF, calendars, etc.,” commented Henry. “The foreign intelligence services understand and recognize that organizations maintain this information and they’re looking to get any type of advantage as the political process continues to help them better develop their political strategies and to have a deep understanding of candidates. In this particular case, this groups level of sophistication is very very high, very very difficult to detect and they are able to maintain persistence for long periods of time without being uncovered. Because of that ability to remain stealth in the environment they’re able to look at these communications and documents for a protracted period of time.”

  • Net Neutrality Upheld: No Blocking, Throttling or Fast Lanes, Cisco Slams

    Net Neutrality Upheld: No Blocking, Throttling or Fast Lanes, Cisco Slams

    The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit released their ruling today upholding the FCC’s current Net Neutrality rules.

    The ruling stated:

    But nothing about affording indiscriminate access to internet content suggests that the broadband provider agrees with the content an end user happens to access. Because a broadband provider does not—and is not understood by users to—“speak” when providing neutral access to internet content as common carriage, the First Amendment poses no bar to the open internet rules.

    FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the FCC praised the ruling:

    Cisco Slams Ruling:

    “Cisco is disappointed in the DC Circuit’s decision to uphold the FCC’s open Internet rules.

    We believe in an open Internet and that balanced rules to protect consumers and prevent anti-competitive behavior are necessary and appropriate. But uncertain regulation under Title II, as provided for by the FCC and upheld by this court, diminishes the enthusiasm for new investments in broadband networks and limits new innovation and business models.

    This is particularly true at a time when the Internet continues to evolve and innovative new services are coming to market every day, including Internet of Things technologies, telemedicine, distance learning, emergency services, and mobile 5G.

    One bright spot. The FCC rules do recognize that the open internet rules are not appropriate for enterprise networks and specialized services. This will enable new services to obtain the quality of service needed to foster innovation in these areas, and we anticipate that entrepreneurs will explore both of these options going forward.

    The discussion over these issues is not going away because the Internet ecosystem continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. Policymakers need to remain focused on ensuring that these rules support the development of new technologies and business models.”

    Part of a dissent published in the ruling concluded:

    The ultimate irony of the Commission’s unreasoned patchwork is that, refusing to inquire into competitive conditions, it shunts broadband service onto the legal track suited to natural monopolies. Because that track provides little economic space for new firms seeking market entry or relatively small firms seeking expansion through innovations in business models or in technology, the Commission’s decision has a decent chance of bringing about the conditions under which some (but by no means all) of its actions could be grounded—the prevalence of incurable monopoly.

    I would vacate the Order.

  • Microfluidic Cooling May Keep Moore’s Law Intact

    Michael Kassner, a freelance writer, wrote a very interesting article published at TechRepublic on how microfluidic cooling might be the answer to preventing Moore’s Law from petering out. Moore’s Law is the observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented and would continue for the foreseeable future. However, Moore’s Law is under threat because existing technology is not able to keep microchips cool while still adding more processing power.

    Intel has an interesting website and video celebrating Moore’s Law:

    Fortunately, the Federal Government is working on a solution. DARPA has a program called ICECool Applications (ICECool Apps) which they describe as follows:

    ICECool is exploring disruptive thermal technologies that will mitigate thermal limitations on the operation of military electronic systems, while significantly reducing size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP). The specific goal of ICECool Applications is to enhance the performance of RF power amplifiers and embedded computing systems through the application of chip-level heat removal with kW-level heat flux and heat density with thermal control of local submillimeter hot spots, while maintaining these components in their commonly-accepted temperature range by judicious combination of intra- and/or interchip microfluidic cooling and on-chip thermal interconnects.

    Lockheed Martin is working with DARP on microfluidic cooling solutions. “Right now, we’re limited in the power we can put into microchips,” says John Ditri, the Principal Investigator on Lockheed Martin’s ICECool effort. “One of the biggest challenges is managing the heat. If you can manage the heat, you can use fewer chips and that means using less material, which results in cost savings as well as reduced system size and weight. If you manage the heat and use the same number of chips, you’ll get even greater performance in your system.”

    Screen Shot 2016-06-10 at 11.28.57 AM

    As Lockheed Martin describes it, “This research program could ultimately lead to a lighter, faster and cheaper way to cool high-powered microchips – by cooling the chips with microscopic drops of water. This technology has applications in electronic warfare, radars, high-performance computers and data servers.”

    Here’s is the current progress of the ICECool program per Lockheed Martin:

    Phase I of the ICECool program verified the effectiveness of Lockheed’s embedded microfluidic cooling approach by demonstrating a four-times reduction in thermal resistance while cooling a thermal demonstration die dissipating 1 kW/cm2 die-level heat flux with multiple local 30 kW/cm2 hot spots. This is about four to five times more heat per unit area than most current chips dissipate, paving the way for future chip advancements.

    In Phase II of the program, the team has moved on to cooling high power RF amplifiers to validate the electrical performance improvements enabled by improved thermal management. Utilizing its ICECool technology, the team has been able to demonstrate greater than six times increase in RF output power from a given amplifier, while still running cooler than its conventionally cooled counterpart.

    In its ongoing effort to move the technology out of the laboratory and into the field, Lockheed Martin is developing a fully functional, microfluidically cooled, transmit antenna prototype to increase the technology readiness level (TRL) of this technology. This will lay the foundation for possible insertions into future electronics systems.

    Lockheed Martin is working with Qorvo to integrate its thermal solution with Qorvo’s high performance GaN process; a relationship that will help unleash the full potential of GaN semiconductors by removing current thermal barriers. The Lockheed Martin approach is also applicable to other current and future die technologies, such as existing Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and future GaN on Diamond when it becomes available.

    Lockheed Martin’s ICECool embedded thermal management approach removes thermal barriers to harness GaN’s full RF power handling capability. In addition to revolutionizing the way GaN amplifiers are implemented, this technology will benefit any high heat flux Integrated circuit application, including signal processing and high performance computing.

  • Google In Deal With U.S. Cellular For More ‘Project Fi’ Speed And Coverage

    Google In Deal With U.S. Cellular For More ‘Project Fi’ Speed And Coverage

    Google has partnered with U.S. Cellular to increase both speed and coverage area of Project Fi. Project Fi is Google’s to program to deliver a fast, easy wireless experience by forming close partnership with leading carriers, hardware makers, and subscribers.

    Google’s Android Blog described the benefits of Project Fi expansion…

    How does this work?

    In most areas, multiple cellular networks are available — in fact, the majority of Project Fi usage occurs in areas where more than one of our partners offers LTE coverage. But factors like obstructions from nearby buildings can meaningfully impact the speed and coverage available from each LTE connection. By analyzing speeds from each network, Project Fi is able to predict the fastest network at your location — down to the city block — and automatically connect you. We’re constantly adapting to consider how factors like new cell towers and newly-available radio frequencies are impacting real-world speeds.

    Part of Project Fi’s promise is to ensure you have connection when you need it, even in areas with poor speeds or limited coverage. Your Fi device recognizes when your connection is weak and adjusts in real time. By accessing multiple cellular networks, Fi users have a connection nearly 99% of the time, and spend about 95% of cellular time on LTE — which will improve even further with the addition of U.S. Cellular.

    Learn more about Project Fi from the videos below:

  • Bezos: Alexa Is The Beginning Of A Golden Era

    Bezos: Alexa Is The Beginning Of A Golden Era

    Jeff Bezos talked Tuesday about the impact of its Echo product and the Alexa platform as science fiction becoming reality. He stated, “It has been a dream since the early days of science fiction to have a computer that you can talk to in a natural way and actually have a conversation and ask it to do things for you. That is coming true.” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was interviewed by Recode’s Walt Mossberg at the Recode Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The entire video interview is below.

    Bezos sees these artificial learning products as just in the very beginning of their development. Bezos told the audience, “There’s so much more to come. It’s just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with these types of technologies! It’s the first inning. It might even be the first guys up at bat. It’s really early and I think we are on the edge of a golden era. It’s going to be so exciting to see what happens.”

    Amazon has a family of products called Echo and they are driven by a platform called Alexa and they are actually licensing the technology to be embedded in applications that other companies are developing as well. Bezos elaborated, “We’ve exposed different SDK’s for Alexa. One is the Alexa Voice Service which lets you embed through a set of API’s. You can embed Alexa in your own device or app and do with it what you want. If you make an alarm clock, for instance, you can embed Alexa Voice Service in it. We also have the Alexa Skills Kit which lets you teach Alexa new skills. Those two things work together.”

    Bezos was asked about the the gains in AI through machine learning and if this will be the underpinnings of tech over the next 10 years as we move from the period of frantic growth and development in smart phones? Bezos replied:

    “I think its gigantic. I think natural language understanding and machine learning in general and artificial intelligence… it’s probably hard to overstate how big of an impact it is going to have on society over the next 20 years. It is big. It doesn’t mean that phones are going to go away. Its’ not like voice interfaces are going to replace screens. As long as people have eyes they are going to want screens and they still want to touch things and so on. But it has been a dream since the early days of science fiction to have a computer that you can talk to in a natural way and actually have a conversation and ask it to do things for you. That is coming true. You’re seeing similar amazing progress with extreme vision. The combination of new and better algorithms, vastly superior compute power and the ability to harness huge amounts of training data — those 3 things are coming together to solves previously unsolvable problems. They’re going to drive a tremendous amount of utility for customers and customers are going to adopt those things.”

    Jeff Bezos added, “We’ve exposed to different SDK’s for Alexa. One is the Alexa Voice Service which lets you embed through a set of API’s. You can embed Alexa in your own device or app and do with it what you want. If you make an alarm clock you can embed Alexa Voice Service in it. We also have the Alexa Skills Kit which lets you teach Alexa new skills. Those two things work together.”

    Mossberg asked if Amazon is “deeply committed to this being a huge part of Amazon’s business”? To which Bezos replied, “Absolutely. We’ve worked on it behind the scenes for 4 years. We have more than a thousand people dedicated just to Alexa and the Echo ecosystem. We have now a set of third party apps that people have built using are SDK. There’s so much more to come. It’s just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with these types of technologies!”

    What about competitors? “All of the major tech companies will do this, but there will also be hundred’s of startup companies. There will also be new advances. One of the things is that right now bigger companies like Amazon have an advantage, especially because of the training data sets that are required to do this because you need a lot of data to the extraordinary things with the current algorithms we have. Just remember that humans learn in a very different way. Humans are unbelievably data efficient. We learn these incredibly complex things. You don’t have to drive a million miles to be able to drive a car. But the way we teach a self driving car to drive today is we have the algorithms drive a million miles and they are still not as good in certain scenarios as a human would be. So humans are doing all kinds of things to make that possible. We’re also very power efficient. For instance, Alpha Go, which is a really impressive achievement beat the world’s best Alpha Go player. He’s operating on about 50 watts, Humans are just doing something fundamentally different than the current way that we do machine learning and machine intelligence.”

    Bezos added, “The longer you’ve been around, the more humble you get about tech.”

  • Liberal Austin Prompts Uber And Lyft To Suspend Service

    Liberal Austin Prompts Uber And Lyft To Suspend Service

    Where are the Libertarians when you need them? Austin voters failed to approve Proposition 1, a proposal supported by Uber and Lyft which would have let the companies self-regulate their contract drivers. Instead, voters let stand an ordinance passed by the Austin City Council requiring third party fingerprint background checks and additional restrictions on the services.

    Uber and Lyft pushed Proposition 1 and threatened to leave Austin if it wasn’t approved and both have now said they are suspending service in Austin as of Monday morning. At issue for the companies is not just more difficulty in getting part-time drivers which is the life blood of the services, but that in requiring drivers to get vigerous fingerprint background checks may move their IRS independent contractor classification closer to becoming an employee. This would substantially raise their costs and could eventually lead to dreaded unionization, which of course would kill both Uber and Lyft, making them more expensive than taxis.

    I suspect that if only people who use Uber and Lyft in Austin voted, Proposition 1 would have passed, because users can clearly see that those services are cleaner, more convenient and safer than taxis ever have been.

  • Homeland Security To Subpoena Techdirt.com Over Article Comment

    Techdirt published a story Wednesday about an Arab man being pulled over by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBC) in Indiana, seizing $240,000 and then refusing to give it back. A reader calling himself “Digger” posted a comment that caught the attention of CBC because it vaguely suggested the death of their agents.

    Screen Shot 2016-05-06 at 3.10.31 PM
    As everyone knows comments on the internet are often over the top and full of hyperbole, as Techdirt pointed out in an article today where they also wrote about being called by the CBC over the identity of Digger. They were told that they will be served a subpoena demanding the information.

    This raises a lot of questions about governments relationship with the media, the right of a news publication to protect the anonymity of its commenters and what constitutes a real threat. To me, it was just the commenter blowing off steam and was not a real threat. After all, he didn’t say that he was going to shoot an agent, he inferred that the man who is suing the government probably knows people who would. I think it was a stupid and foolish comment considering he’s talking about government agents, and because of that it is serious.

    However, the CBC in my opinion should be able to see that his comment wasn’t an actual threat and therefore isn’t worth their time. My two cents.

  • Three Tools to Test Your Website Security for Free!

    Source: High-Tech Bridge

    We live in an uncertain age – trust is all important, yet online it is in short supply indeed – according to figures from Sophos, an amazing 30,000 websites are hacked every day to distribute malware to unsuspecting visitors. This vast figure can be attributed to the ease with which hackers can find and exploit vulnerable websites – both the Panama Papers Gate and Ashley Madison were compromised via insecure websites, and show that size is no defence. Gartner completes the concerning picture by pointing out that the vast majority (70%) of vulnerabilities exist at the application layer, not the network.

    However, for companies attempting to mitigate web security threats, there has been no choice but to purchase very expensive manual penetration testing, or alternatively rely on automated software riddled with false-positives – according to a recent NCC research, even the best-rated vulnerability scanners return at least 50% false-positives (vulnerabilities that do not exist, but are erroneously reported by the scanner). However, the biggest risk of vulnerability scanners are false-negatives – real vulnerabilities that security software is unable to detect due to their complexity. Unfortunately, reliable and tailor-made penetration testing is simply not practical for small and medium companies – so what can web agencies and webmasters do to keep their websites secure? We’ve picked three simple areas to focus on to improve security:

    1. Check web server security

    Before looking at your web application, you should make sure that your web server is securely configured. A properly setup, secure web server configuration can prevent many vectors of such common attacks as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and also protect your website visitors’ privacy. High-Tech Bridge, an experienced web security company and Red Herring Europe 2016 winner, provides a free online web server security test for this purpose. The service will carefully examine your web server configuration, its HTTP headers and do some additional security and privacy tests such as probing your cookies.

    1. Configure SSL/TLS encryption

    How many users do you think access your website via public or insecure wireless networks? Probably at least half, according to our figures, which is why it’s essential to test how good your SSL/TLS encryption is. High-Tech Bridge also provides a free SSL security test that can tell you if your HTTPS encryption is compliant with PCI DSS requirements, NIST guidelines and multiple industry best-practices. Once you’re happy with your web traffic encryption, you can also check SSL of your email server – as High-Tech Bridge’s free service supports any protocols, not only HTTPS.

    1. Don’t be caught out by phishing and cybersquatting

    High-Tech Bridge completes its portfolio of free web security services with domain security radar. The new service reveals various unethical, malicious or illegal activities with domain names, such as identity theft, brand and trade mark forgery, domain squatting, typosquatting and phishing.

    Test the known unknowns

    Now we come to the most interesting, and the most complex part – security of your website or web application. SQL injections and XSS have become the main reasons for the vast majority of data breaches these days. However, detecting vulnerabilities in the complex systems we have today requires vast manpower and computing resources, and each on its own isn’t very effective.

    A recent study from MIT discovered that neither human nor machine alone was overwhelmingly successful at maintaining cybersecurity on their own, but became effective when combined. This hybrid thinking has guided the development of High-Tech Bridge’s Web Security Platform ImmuniWeb® for years, bringing the best of both worlds to the table. ImmuniWeb web security assessment is based on the award-winning hybrid technology that combines managed web vulnerability scanning with manual penetration testing in real-time, bringing together the strengths of the human brain and machine-learning algorithms in one fell swoop.

    ImmuniWeb web security assessment detects the most complicated web application vulnerabilities that all other solutions miss, provides personalized solutions for each security flaw, and guarantees zero false-positives. If you are running a website based on WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or any other popular CMS, the ImmuniWeb Express package will perform a holistic and comprehensive security audit for as little as $299 – cheaper than you would pay for SSL EV certificate, and much cheaper than a simple automated scanner detecting much more security vulnerabilities.

    About High-Tech Bridge

    High-Tech Bridge is a strategic partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for web application security testing, and a globally recognized leader in the web security auditing market. Their customer base includes some of the largest financial institutions, insurance companies, and banks, as well as small and medium companies and NGOs. High-Tech Bridge has won numerous awards for technological innovation and excellence. More information: https://www.htbridge.com/

     

  • Craig Wright: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof

    Craig Wright: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof

    Craig Wright is out prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. In a blog post today Wright said:

    “Over the coming days, I will be posting a series of pieces that will lay the foundations for this extraordinary claim, which will include posting independently-verifiable documents and evidence addressing some of the false allegations that have been levelled, and transferring bitcoin from an early block.

    For some there is no burden of proof high enough, no evidence that cannot be dismissed as fabrication or manipulation. This is the nature of belief and swimming against this current would be futile.

    You should be sceptical. You should question. I would.

    I will present what I believe to be “extraordinary proof” and ask only that it be independently validated.”

    Wright admitted that his interest in revealing his “true” identity is “ultimately and undeniably a selfish one”. He was also concerned about the allegations of fraud, hoax, personal threats and slurs against him and his family.

    Read Craig Wright’s (Satoshi Nakamoto’s?) full blog post here.

  • Adblock Plus Partners With Flattr For Content Payments

    Adblock Plus has partnered with Flattr to offer web surfers a way to compensate content publishers that they visit most often. Flattr, a service launched in 2010 by Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde, is a microdonation platform allowing users to create a monthly budget that is paid to the content providers they prefer and visit often. By partnering with Adblock Plus they will reach a huge audience of millions of users that have downloaded the plugin over 500 million times.

    To use the service simply go over to Flattr and sign up. No fee is required to set up your account. When you are ready you can add your credit card and set a monthly donation budget which Flattr will use to pay the content providers you visit the most. You can customize the settings to pay certain publishers more than others. It’s designed as a way to give back to publishers who’s ads are being blocked by your use of Adblock Plus.

    From a publishers perspective it might be seen as a feeble attempt to pay them peanuts while still blocking their ads which actually support the content production and employees which work at the online business. Publishers look at users with ad blockers as a sort of an online version of shoplifting, which they put up with and write off as a part of doing business with paying ad viewing visitors.

    In 2011 AdBlock Plus introduced an “Acceptable Ads” program to allow what they deemed non-intrusive ads to be whitelisted under the extension’s default settings. Whitelisting is free for small websites while large sites must pay a fee. This has generated considerable controversy with publishers.

  • Google Calendar Gets New Meeting-Scheduling Feature

    Google Calendar Gets New Meeting-Scheduling Feature

    Google announced a new meeting-scheduling feature for Google Calendar on Android for Google Apps for Work and Edu customers. You can simply tap “Find a Time” to find meetings times that work for those involved.

    This takes time zones into account, as well as availability of all parties and the times they usually have meetings. It’s designed specifically for organizations who regularly share calendars with colleagues.

    When there’s not a time that works, Google Calendar will look at which conflicting meetings can most easily be rescheduled. It sounds pretty handy.

    “‘Find a time’ makes suggestions, but you’re still in control,” says product manager Stella Schieffer. “You can tap to see everyone’s schedule at a glance—perfect for making sure the timing works for all. And if you manage someone else’s calendar, you can use the feature to schedule meetings on their behalf as well.

    The feature is just for Android right now, but they’re working on bringing it to iPhone.

    Images via iStock, Google

  • Amazon Fire Tablet Gets New Color and Storage Options

    Amazon Fire Tablet Gets New Color and Storage Options

    Amazon just announced new color and storage options for its Fire tablet. There are three new colors (magenta, blue, and tangerine) to join the black option for $49.99. There’s also a new 16GB version for $69.99.

    In addition to that, there’s a new green “kid-proof” case and 16GB option for the Kids Edition. This costs $119.99. The 8GB version continues to cost $99.99.

    “Fire is the fastest-selling Amazon tablet ever, with millions sold since its launch,” said Kevin Keith, GM, Fire Tablets. “We’re excited to introduce Fire with bright new colors and even more storage—so that customers can enjoy a great entertainment experience on a fun, colorful tablet starting at less than $50.”

    Earlier this month, the company announced a new version of its Kindle device called Kindle Oasis. This is the eighth-generation Kindle, which is thinner and lighter, and comes with a charging cover that allows for months of battery life.

    Image via Amazon

  • Google Celebrates 50th Chrome Release With Stat-Heavy Infographic

    Google announced its 50th Chrome release, which it considers a major milestone.

    “We originally launched Chrome to give users a fast, simple and secure browser,” said Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, director of product management on Chrome. “That still remains our mission today. And while while there’s still much more to do – especially with the shift to mobile and helping new users who are coming online for the first time – we thought we’d take a step back and reflect on our journey so far. Here at Google, we’re obsessed with stats, so we thought you might enjoy a whirlwind tour of Chrome, by the numbers.”

    And here they are:

    Google first launched Chrome in 2008. Here’s a look at the original announcement if you want to take a trip down memory lane. They even put together a comic book to illustrate the project.

    Chrome became the most popular browser in the U.S. about three years ago.

    Images via Google