Lawyer Responsible for Yahoo Security Failures: Believe It or Not
March 7, 2017
I read “Yahoo’s Head Lawyer Is Taking the Fall for Its Hacking While Marissa Mayer Is Getting Her Pay Docked.” The few layers I know are not exactly the sharpest tacks in the tool room when it comes to technology. I was amused but not surprised to learn that a legal eagle dropped the security mouse from 2,000 feet.
The write up explains:
…Yahoo’s head lawyer, Ron Bell, got bounced for not doing his job…the relevant legal t4eam had sufficient information to warrant substantial further inquiry in 2014 and they did not sufficiently pursue it.
Right.
Stephen E Arnold, March 7, 2017
Yandex Finally Catches the Long-Tailed Queries
March 7, 2017
One of the happiest moments in a dog’s life is when, after having spent countless hours spinning in circles, is when they catch their tail. They wag for joy, even though they are chomping on their own happiness. When search engines were finally programmed to handle long-tailed queries, that is queries with a lot of words such as a question, people’s happiness was akin to a dog catching their tail. Google released RankBrain to handle long-winded ad NLP queries, but Yandex just released their own algorithm to handle questions, “Yandex Launches New Algorithm Named Palekh To Improve Search Results For Long-Tail Queries” from AIRS Association.
Yandex is Russia’s most-used search engine and in order to improve the user experience, they released Palekh to better process long-tail queries. Palekh, like RankBrain, will bring the search engine closer to understanding the natural language or the common vernacular. Yandex decided on the name Palekh, because the Russian city of the same name has a firebird on its coat of arms. The firebird has a long-tail, so the name fits perfectly.
Yandex handles more than 100 million queries per day that fall under the long-tail query umbrella. When asked if Yandex based Palekh on RankBrain, Yandex only responded that the two algorithms are similar in their purposes. Yandex also uses machine learning to build neural networks to build a smarter search engine:
Yandex’s Palekh algorithm has started to use neural networks as one of 1,500 factors of ranking. A Yandex spokesperson told us they have “managed to teach our neural networks to see the connections between a query and a document even if they don’t contain common words.” They did this by “converting the words from billions of search queries into numbers (with groups of 300 each) and putting them in 300-dimensional space — now every document has its own vector in that space,” they told us. “If the numbers of a query and numbers of a document are near each other in that space, then the result is relevant,” they added.”
Yandex is one of Google’s biggest rivals and it does not come as a surprise that they are experimenting with algorithms that will expand machine learning and NLP.
Whitney Grace, March 7, 2017
Vanity Fair and Palantir Technologies: The Focus Is on Peter Thiel
March 6, 2017
My hunch is that Vanity Fair Magazine will sell briskly in and around the Washington, DC beltway. Oh, wait. Most of the newsstands and bookstores have gone out of business. Maybe Giant Foods in Gaithersburg will have some copies? The convenient store in Ashburn may have a copy or two tucked in among the car magazines and Find-A-Word pamphlets?
The article which will make Vanity Fair even fairer this month is “Donald Trump Has Made Peter Thiel Immensely Powerful.” Good news for Palantir; bad news for some of the clear eyed professionals who have been sending the US government big bills for their work on the Distributed Common Ground System or DCGS.
I liked the positioning of Mr. Thiel in the write up. He is called the “shadow president.” Interesting. Does that make Palantir Technologies’ Alex Karp the veep?
The write up deserves your attention. Let me highlight three items from the article which I found interesting:
First, the moniker “shadow president” is a coinage of those who work with Mr. Thiel in California and elsewhere. I was hoping that this was a coinage from the Trump inner circle.
Second, the write up reveals that Mr. Thiel believes in the “move fast and break things” approach to innovation. Who would have guessed? Certainly not the US Army procurement professionals.
Third, Mr. Thiel wants to live a long time. Isn’t that a thing in Silicon Valley?
My hunch is that none of the DCGS contractors will be happy with the visibility that Vanity Fair imparts to the “shadow president.”
Will there be a news conference for those in the shadows?
Stephen E Arnold, March 6, 2017
Take the Time for Alexa
March 6, 2017
In the new digital assistant line up, Alexa responds better than Cortana and Siri, because it can provide better and more intelligent services that the smartphone based app. As an Amazon product, as with Amazon Web Services, developers can learn how to build apps and other products for Alexa. The question is how to get started? HeroTurko created a learning tutorial for interested Alexa developers and it can be checked out at, “Amazon Alexa Development From Beginner To Intermediate.”
Voice-based apps are a growing sector in the technology industry and will only get bigger as the demand for voice-controlled technology increases. The tutorial is designed to teach developers how to design voice apps and then launch them on the Amazon Echo. Building your Alexa skills is a necessary step, so the course says, to get an edge on the voice app market:
The biggest industries in technology are surrounded by AI, Bots, and Voice technology. Voice technology I believe will be the new 21st user interface that will not only understand basic commands, but will be so smart to understand anything you tell it. This is why Amazon is making a big bet with Alexa, which it plans to generate close to $11 billion dollars by 2020. They know something about Amazon Echo, which is why now is the best time to learn these skills before the mainstream starts developing applications. We all know the story about apps for the smartphones, this is the same thing.
This course contains over 50 lectures and 1.5 hrs of content. It’s designed for beginners to play with new platforms in the voice space. You’ll learn the tools needed to build the Alexa Skills, how Alexa Skills work, and publish a skill to Amazon’s Alexa store.
Learning how to use Alexa is the precursor to designing other voice app and will probably segway into NLP. If you want to learn where the IT market is going beyond machine learning and artificial intelligence, this is one of the places to start.
Whitney Grace, March 6, 2017
Amazon, the Walmart of Digital Selling, Is into Smart Software Too
March 3, 2017
Big day. Amazon, the company that reports its financials in a remarkably weird way, is now explaining that it is a player in the smart software poker game. Navigate to “Welcome to the New AWS AI Blog!” Now the DWs (digital Walmarters) are explaining that artificial intelligence, was, is, and will be the future of the mall killer.
How many AI and smart software services does the Main Street shopping pillager offer. Check out this chart:
There are “engines.” One can pay money to use this devices. Some of the names are semi familiar like TensorFlow; others may be unfamiliar to the shopping crowd; for instance, CNTK. Love that acronym.
There are complete platforms. Some of these are open sourcey, but when vendor lock in is one of the possible consequences of the cloud approach to software, one never knows, does one? I like Amazon machine learning and “EMR”, an acronym which means a variant of Google’s old school batch processing thing. Yikes! Batch processing in a zip zip world of real time flows.
The third layer is Amazon AI services. I noted the inclusion of Lex, Amazon’s home companion. Alexa, what’s the weather?
The idea is that Amazon is every bit as robust as some of the other smart software outfits. No less an authority than Mark Cuban is pressed into duty as an objective supporter of Amazon’s freshly repackaged collection of oddments.
The blog, I assume, will explain how those in search of smart software can order up machine learning along with an order of dog food.
Who should be nervous about Amazon’s repackaging of its industry leading cloud services? I would suggest that cross town pal Microsoft might be checking out Amazon’s AI chart. Then, of course, there are the wizards at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I wonder of Amazon’s services will be of use to HPE when it meets up with Autonomy in court later this year. And the number one outfit likely to be consulting tea leaves for hints of Amazon’s AI impact? Good old IBM. Fresh from another quarter of declining revenues and more IBM Watson hyperbole, IBM might be wondering, “How did a digital Walmart get from used CDs to AI?”
And the Google? My hunch is that the Google may note Amazon’s blog. But the company is in the ad business, has been, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Amazon is too diversified to the Google to see many parallels.
My hunch is that Amazon does see search as vulnerable. Another Main Street? Perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, March 3, 2017
Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Emulating IBM?
March 3, 2017
I read “HPE Misses Q1 Revenue Estimates.” The interesting point to me is that HPE seems to be following in IBM footsteps: Declining revenues, interesting explanations. Stakeholders cannot spend explanations in my experience. The write up references the HPE top dog who allegedly said:
I believe HOPE remains on the right track.
HOPE is a product. Believe it or not? The write up points out that HOPE’s revenue was eroding across the companies lines of business. What’s the fix? The right leadership team.
Rah, rah.
Perhaps HPE will prevail in its legal machinations related to the company’s purchase of Autonomy? Perhaps the “right leadership team” will understand that emulating IBM’s chatter about the future may not be enough to deal with the present market climate.
Oh, one more question: Will the “right leadership team” understand the phrase caveat emptor? HPE continues to try to find ways to shift the burden of Hewlett Packard’s own decisions to others.
Could some stakeholders rightly ask, “How about shifting to revenue growth?”
Stephen E Arnold, March 3, 2017
Who Knew Hackers Have Their Own Search Engines?
March 3, 2017
Hackers tend to the flock to the Internet’s underbelly, the Dark Web, and it remains inaccessible unless you have a Tor browser. According to the AIRS Association, hacker search engines are a lot easier to access than you think, read about it in “5 Hacker-Friendly Search Engines You Must Use.” The best-known hacker-friendly search engine is Shodan, which can search for Internet connected devices. While Shodan can search computers, smartphones, and tablets the results also include traffic lights, license plate readers, and anything with an Internet connection. The biggest problem, however, is that most of these devices do not have any security:
The main reason that Shodan is considered hacker-friendly is because of the amount and type of information it reveals (like banner information, connection types, etc.). While it is possible to find similar information on a search engine like Google, you would have to know the right search terms to use, and they aren’t all laid out for you.
Other than Shodan some of the other scary search engines are ZoomEye, I2P, PunkSPIDER, and Censys. These search engines range in the amount of data they share as well as their intended purpose, but they all reveal Internet connected devices. Beginners can use these search engines, but it takes a little more than technical know how to get results displayed. One needs to figure out how to use them before you even enter the first search result, because basic keyword will not get you far.
Hacker search engines are a good tool to use to find security breaches in your personal network or Web site. What will prevent most people from using them is the lack of experience, but with only a small amount of learning these search engines in the wrong hands are dangerous.
Whitney Grace, March 3, 2017
New Technologies Meet Resistance in Business
March 3, 2017
Trying to sell a state of the art, next-gen search and content processing system can be tough. In the article, “Most Companies Slow to Adopt New Business Tech Even When It Can Help,” Digital Trends demonstrates that a reluctance to invest in something new is not confined to Search. Writer Bruce Brown cites the Trends vs. Technologies 2016 report (PDF) from Capita Technology Solutions and Cisco. The survey polled 125 ICT [Information and Communications Tech] decision-makers working in insurance, manufacturing, finance, and the legal industry. More in-depth interviews were conducted with a dozen of these folks, spread evenly across those fields.
Most higher-ups acknowledge the importance of keeping on top of, and investing in, worthy technological developments. However, that awareness does not inform purchasing and implementation decisions as one might expect. Brown specifies:
The survey broke down tech trends into nine areas, asking the surveyed execs if the trends were relevant to their business, if they were being implemented within their industry, and more specifically if the specific technologies were being implemented within their own businesses. Regarding big data, for example, 90 percent said it was relevant to their business, 64 percent said it was being applied in their industry, but only 39 percent reported it being implemented in their own business. Artificial intelligence was ranked as relevant by 50 percent, applied in their industry by 25 percent, but implemented in their own companies by only 8 percent. The Internet of Things had 70 percent saying it is relevant, with 50 percent citing industry applications, but a mere 30 percent use it in their own business. The study analyzed why businesses were not implementing new technologies that they recognized could improve their bottom line. One of the most common roadblocks was a lack of skill in recognizing opportunities within organizations for the new technology. Other common issues were the perception of security risks, data governance concerns, and the inertia of legacy systems.
The survey also found the stain of mistrust, with 82 percent of respondents sure that much of what they hear about tech trends is pure hype. It is no surprise, then, that they hesitate to invest resources and impose change on their workers until they are convinced benefits will be worth the effort. Perhaps vendors would be wise to dispense with the hype and just lay out the facts as clearly as possible; potential customers are savvier than some seem to think.
Cynthia Murrell, March 3, 2017
Voice Recognition Software Has Huge Market Reach
March 3, 2017
Voice recognition software still feels like a futuristic technology, despite its prevalence in our everyday lives. WhaTech explains how far voice recognition technology has imbedded itself into our habits in, “Listening To The Voice Recognition Market.”
The biggest example of speech recognition technology is an automated phone system. Automated phone systems are used all over the board, especially in banks, retail chains, restaurants, and office phone directories. People usually despise automated phone systems, because they cannot understand responses and tend to put people on hold for extended periods of time.
Despite how much we hate automated phone systems, they are useful and they have gotten better in understanding human speech and the industry applications are endless:
The Global Voice Recognition Systems Sales Market 2017report by Big Market Research is a comprehensive study of the global voice recognition market. It covers both current and future prospect scenarios, revealing the market’s expected growth rate based on historical data. For products, the report reveals the market’s sales volume, revenue, product price, market share and growth rate, each of which is segmented by artificial intelligence systems and non-artificial intelligence systems. For end-user applications, the report reveals the status for major applications, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, with common applications including healthcare, military and aerospace, communications, and automotive.
Key players in the voice recognition software field are Validsoft, Sensory, Biotrust ID, Voicevault, Voicebox Technologies, Lumenvox, M2SYS, Advanced Voice Recognition Systems, and Mmodal. These companies would benefit from using Bitext’s linguistic-based analytics platform to enhance their technology’s language learning skills.
Whitney Grace, May 3, 2017
IBM and Root Access Misstep?
March 2, 2017
Maybe this is fake news? Maybe. Navigate to “Big Blue’s Big Blunder: IBM Accidentally Hands Over Root Access to Its Data Science Servers.” When I read the title, my first reaction was, “Hey, Yahoot is back in the security news.” Wrong.
According to the write up, which I assume to be exposing the “truth”:
IBM left private keys to the Docker host environment in its Data Science Experience service inside freely available containers. This potentially granted the cloud service’s users root access to the underlying container-hosting machines – and potentially to other machines in Big Blue’s Spark computing cluster. Effectively, Big Blue handed its cloud users the secrets needed to potentially commandeer and control its service’s computers.
IBM hopped to it. Two weeks after the stumble was discovered, IBM fixed the problem.
The write up includes this upbeat statement, attributed to the person using a demo account which exposed the glitch:
I think that IBM already has some amazing infosec people and a genuine commitment to protecting their services, and it’s a matter of instilling security culture and processes across their entire organization. That said, any company that has products allowing users to run untrusted code should think long and hard about their system architecture. This is not to imply that containers were poorly designed (because I don’t think they were), but more that they’re so new that best practices in their use are still being actively developed. Compare a newer-model table saw to one decades old: The new one comes stock with an abundance of safety features including emergency stopping, a riving knife, push sticks, etc, as a result of evolving culture and standards through time and understanding.
Bad news. Good news.
Let’s ask Watson about IBM security. Hold that thought, please. Watson is working on health care information. And don’t forget the March 2017 security conference sponsored by those security pros at IBM.
Stephen E Arnold, March 2, 2017
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