What Is in a Name? Procedures Remain Indifferent
July 2, 2016
I read “Brexit: “Bayesian” Statistics Renamed “Laplacian” Statistics.” Years ago I worked briefly with a person who was I later learned a failed webmaster and a would-be wizard. One of that individual’s distinguishing characteristics was an outright rejection of Bayesian methods. The person thought la place was a non American English way or speaking French. I wonder where that self appointed wizard is now. Oh, well. I hope the thought leader is scrutinizing the end of Bayes.
According to the write up:
With the U.K. leaving the E.U., it’s time for “Bayesian” to exit its titular role and be replaced by “Laplacian”.
I support this completely. I assume that the ever efficient EU bureaucracy in the nifty building in Strasbourg will hop on this intellectual bandwagon.
Stephen E Arnold, July 2, 2016
Supercomputers Have Individual Personalities
July 1, 2016
Supercomputers like Watson are more than a novelty. They were built to be another tool for humans, rather than replacing humans all together or so reads some comments from Watson’s chief technology officer Rob High. High was a keynote speaker at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. The Inquirer shares the details in “Nvidia GTC: Why IBM Watson Dances Gangam Style And Sings Like Taylor Swift.”
At the conference, High said that he did not want his computer to take over his thinking, instead he wanted the computer to do his research for him. Research and keeping up with the latest trends in any industry consumes A LOT of time and a supercomputer could potentially eliminate some of the hassle. This requires that supercomputers become more human:
“This leads on to the fact that the way we interact with computers needs to change. High believes that cognitive computers need four skills – to learn, to express themselves with human-style interaction, to provide expertise, and to continue to evolve – all at scale. People who claim not to be tech savvy, he explained, tend to be intimidated by the way we currently interact with computers, pushing the need for a further ‘humanising’ of the process.”
In order to humanize robots, what is taking place is them learning how to be human. A few robots have been programmed with Watson as their main processor and they can interact with humans. By interacting with humans, the robots pick up on human spoken language as well as body language and vocal tone. It allows them to learn how to not be human, but rather the best “artificial servant it can be”.
Robots and supercomputers are tools that can ease a person’s job, but the fact still remains that in some industries they can also replace human labor.
Whitney Grace, July 1, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Chatbot Tay Calls into Question Intelligence of Software
June 30, 2016
Chatbots are providing something alright. These days it’s more like entertainment. Venture Beat shared an article highlighting the latest, Microsoft’s Tay chatbot comes back online, says it’s ‘smoking kush’ in front of the police. Tay, the machine-learning bot, was designed to “be” a teenage girl. Microsoft’s goal with it was to engage followers of a young demographic while simultaneously learning how to engage them. The article explains,
“Well, uh, Microsoft’s Tay chatbot, which got turned off a few days ago after behaving badly, has suddenly returned to Twitter and has started tweeting to users like mad. Most of its musings are innocuous, but there is one funny one I’ve come across so far. “i’m smoking kush infront the police,” it wrote in brackets. Kush is slang for marijuana, a drug that can result in a fine for possession in the state of Washington, where Microsoft has its headquarters. But this is one of hundreds of tweets that the artificial intelligence-powered bot has sent out in the past few minutes.”
Poised by some sources as next-generation search, or a search replacement, chatbots appear to need a bit of optimization, to put it lightly. This issue occurred when the chatbot should have still been offline undergoing testing, according to Microsoft. But when it was only offline because of learning bullying and hate speech from trolls who seized on the nature of its artificial intelligence programming. Despite the fact it is considered AI, is this smart software? There is a little important something called emotional intelligence.
Megan Feil, June 30, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Dark Web Hacking Site Changes Hands
June 29, 2016
Navigating the Dark Web can be a hassle, because many of the Web sites are shut down before you have the chance to learn what nefarious content, services, or goods are available. Some of these sites go down on their own, but law enforcement had a part in dismantling them as well. Some Dark Web sites are too big and encrypted to be taken down and sometimes they exchange hands, such as Silk Road and now Hell. Motherboard explains that “Dark Web Hacking Forum ‘Hell’ Appears To Have New Owners.”
The Real Deal, a computer exploit market, claimed to take ownership of Hell, the hacking forum known for spreading large data dumps and stolen data. Real Deal said of their acquisition:
“ ‘We will be removing the invite-only system for at least a week, and leave the “vetting” forum for new users,’ one of The Real Deal admins, who also used the handle The Real Deal, told Motherboard in an encrypted chat. ‘It’s always nice to have a professional community that meets our market’s original niche, hopefully it will bring some more talent both to the market and to the forums,’ the admin continued. ‘And it’s no secret that we as admins would enjoy the benefit of ‘first dibs’ on buying fresh data, resources, tools, etc.’”
The only part of Hell that has new administrators is the forum due to the old head had personal reasons that required more attention. Hell is one of the “steadier” Dark Web sites and it played a role in the Adult FriendFinder hack, was the trading place for Mate1 passwords, and hosted breaches from a car breathalyzer maker.
Standard news for the Dark Web, until the next shutdown and relaunch.
Whitney Grace, June 29, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Self Driving Bicycle Prank Points to Wider Arena
June 24, 2016
Technology companies are no stranger to making April Fools’ pranks in the form of media releases. This year, The Inspiration Room shared an article highlighting the Google Self Driving Bicycle, which was of course developed by the Dutch and launched in the Netherlands. The aspect of this story that is not fiction is how often the Dutch cycle. This short post briefs us on the media release,
“Google is introducing the Google Self Driving Bicycle in Amsterdam, the world’s premier cycling city. The Dutch cycle more than any other nation in the world, almost 900 kilometres per year per person, amounting to over 15 billion kilometres annually. The self-driving bicycle enables safe navigation through the city for Amsterdam residents, and furthers Google’s ambition to improve urban mobility with technology. Google Netherlands takes enormous pride in the fact that a Dutch team worked on this innovation that will have great impact in their home country.”
If there’s one truth this article points to, it’s that the field of search seems to be encompassing nearly everything. It is humorous how Google continues to grow new tentacles tackling more and more arenas that have seemingly little to do with search. Despite the fact this self-driving bicycle does not exist yet, it’s clearly no stretch of the imagination — if a company were to make such a product, would there be any other contenders for who would make it?
Megan Feil, June 24, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Stepes: Human Translation at Your Fingertips
June 24, 2016
Though today’s machine translation is a convenient way to quickly get the gist of a foreign-language passage, it has its limitations; professionals still turn to human translation services when it counts. A new platform, Stepes Translate, can bridge the gap (at least until algorithms catch up). Its chat-based format makes it as convenient as machine translation, but there is an actual, multi-lingual human at the other end. BusinessWire reports, “Stepes Extends Google Translate Model to Live Human Translation.” The press release explains:
“Stepes Translate uses the familiar side by side interface of machine translation platforms like Google Translate. Anyone requesting translation simply enters their text into the source field. Next, Stepes immediately identifies an appropriate translator from its network of more than 60,000 in-country translators through mobile notification. The translator begins to translate immediately on his/her smartphone while the requesting user can see their progress live. For most requests, the translation is completed within minutes and appears in the target field for the requesting user to see. … Whereas traditional translation software is overly technical and thus not easily accessible to many translators, Stepes’ mobile technology makes translation tools intuitive.”
Stepes can translate more than 100 languages, and offers a 3-tiered pricing based on quality. If you don’t mind a few awkward passages and humorous phrasings, there is the Basic, 10-cents/word plan. If you need to make a good impression, or the document has legal implications, you’ll want to spring for the Premium, 16-cents/word option.
A project of localization firm CSOFT, Stepes Translate is also known as the Social Translation Experiment Project and Eco System. The acronym is also a nod to the European steppes, the region from which sprung hundreds of the world’s major languages. Headquartered in Beijing, CSOFT (or Communications Solutions Of Foreign Trade) was established in 2003. The company attributes their global success to a strong emphasis on customer service.
Cynthia Murrell, June 24, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Factoid: Need a Fast Computer? Buzz China.
June 23, 2016
I read “China Makes New Supercomputing Gains.” (You may have to pay real money, not the Ethereum stuff to read the article.) The main idea is that China has the fastest supercomputer.
What I highlighted in exhaust fume puce was:
The Department of Commerce last year denied Intel’s request to export chips to four centers associated with Tianhe-2, alleging links to “nuclear explosive activities.” Chinese officials denied those charges and have used locally made chips to upgrade the system.
Does this mean that China is using silicon crafted by Shanghai High Performance IC Center.
The zippy system consists of about 41,000 chips, “each with 260 small calculating engines called processor cores.”
I learned:
… Designers [can] pack 10.65 million cores into 40 cabinets.
Yep, designers, not engineers or scientists. My wife consults a designer, but I am not sure that professional does much work in multicore silicon. Ivory paint with weird names is our expert’s core competency.
Why does this matter? The US is going mobile. Big Data is a slam dunk with the cloud computing solution which uses some graphic processors, not the Intel-type chips. The US is reluctant to admit, in Harry Shearer’s phrase, “We’re not number one.”
Like the NBA final competitions or cached Web search results, some may question the validity of the computer speed tests.
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2016
Stephen E Arnold, June
Savanna 4.7 for External Content Links
June 22, 2016
The latest version of Savanna, the collaborative data-visualization platform from Thetus Corporation, has an important new feature—it can now link to external content. The press release at PR Newswire, “Savanna 4.7 Introduces Plugins, Opening ‘A World of New Content’ to Visual Analysis Software,” tells us:
“With Savanna, users can visualize data to document insights mined from complexity and analyze relationships. New in this release are Savanna Plugins. Plugins do more than allow users to import data. The game changer is in the ability to link to external content, leaving the data in its original source. Data lives in many places. Analyzing data from many sources often means full data transformation and migration into a new program. This process is daunting and exactly what Savanna 4.7 Plugins address. Whether on databases or on the web, users can search all of their sources from one application to enrich a living knowledge base. Plugins also enable Savanna to receive streams of information from sources like RSS, Twitter, geolocators, and others.”
Thetus’ CTO is excited about this release, calling the new feature “truly transformative.” The write-up notes that Plugins opens new opportunities for Thetus to partner with other organizations. For example, the company is working with the natural language processing firm Basis Technology to boost translation and text mining capacities. Founded in 2003, Thetus is based in Portland, Oregon.
Cynthia Murrell, June 22, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Luciad Data Visualization and Situational Awareness Is Like an Over Stimulated Google Maps
June 21, 2016
The promotional article on Luciad titled Luciad V2016 Puts Users at the Center of Technical Innovation discusses the data fusion product from the global software company emphasizing situational awareness systems for Aviation, Defense and Security markets. 50,000+ people have viewed the 3D browser technology via the web app launched in 2015 that shows the breathtaking capacity to track and visualize moving data in the form of 35,000 international flights. The article states,
“Luciad’s software components are designed for the creation of applications that tackle a range of tasks, from top-level strategy to tactical detail and mission planning to operations debriefing. By connecting directly to data sources, Luciad’s software not only analyzes and visualizes what is happening now, but also helps predict what will happen next – allowing users to act quickly and safely. “Connect, visualize, analyze, act” is both our method and our motto.”
The LuciadFusion technology product features include the ability to fuse and serve multi-dimensional and multi-layered formats as well as multi-dimensional raster data, which applies to weather data. If you thought Google Maps was cool, this technology will blow you away. The developers were very interested in the aesthetic quality of the technology, and richness of the imaging makes that focus crystal clear.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 21, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Facial Recognition: A Work in Progress
June 18, 2016
Years ago I read “The FBI’s Next Generation Identification Program: Helping Law Enforcement Track and Share Suspect Information across State Lines.” That write up identified, probably semi accurately, Lockheed Martin as the “lead contractor” for the NGI IPS (Next Generation Identification Interstate Photo System). I mention this because the write up “FBI Has 411 Million Photos in Its Facial Recognition System, and a Federal Watchdog Isn’t Happy” does not dig into the contractor or contractors involved in this nine zero project. (An older list of some FBI contractors appears at this link.)
The GAO report about the program also lacks some details. If you are interested in what a government report of the controversial system offers, you can download for now a copy of the document at this link.
I realize that the marketing of smart systems which can make sense of images suggests three functions:
- High speed matching
- High precision
- High recall.
The reality is a bit different. Please, keep in mind that the beliefs created by over inflated marketing claims and carefully staged demonstrations often are at odds with how the system actually performs in real life.
Government entities have to look to technology to help deal with the ever increasing and possibly unstoppable flood of digital information. The actual systems, whether the UK’s NHS systems or the US Army’s DCGS systems, are works in progress. In many cases, the progress is halting, and the work has unanticipated consequences.
I have pointed out that enterprise search, content management, and similar and smart software are not the slam dunks many managers think they are. Hope springs eternal, but that hope has to be gated with what happens in the real, disorganized, and time starved reality in which the magic is supposed to happen.
Stephen E Arnold, June 20, 2016
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