Math Objects for the Non MBA
May 12, 2016
If you have an MBA, you won’t be turning cartwheels to dive into this directory. If, on the other hand, you have a degree in medieval literature or a fondness for Cubism, this directory is your cup of tea.
Navigate to the directory of mathematical objects at http://www.lmfdb.org/. Choose your poison and scan the categories of objects or dive right into the particulars of an object. Here’s what you find when you navigate to elliptic curves:
You can plug in values or just look at the sample data. There are examples, and dataset download options.
Nifty, nifty.
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2016
Amusing Mistake Illustrates Machine Translation Limits
May 12, 2016
Machine translation is not quite perfect yet, but we’ve been assured that it will be someday. That’s the upshot of Business Insider’s piece, “This Microsoft Exec’s Hilarious Presentation Fail Shows Why Computer Translation is so Difficult.” Writer Matt Weinberger relates an anecdote shared by Microsoft research head Peter Lee. The misstep occurred during a 2015 presentation, for which Lee set up Skype Translator to translate his words over the speakers into Mandarin as he went. Weinberger writes:
“Part of Lee’s speech involved a personal story of growing up in a ‘snowy town’ in upper Michigan. He noticed that most of the crowd was enraptured — except for a few native Chinese speakers in the crowd who couldn’t stop giggling. After the presentation, Lee says he asked one of those Chinese speakers the reason for the laughter. It turns out that ‘snowy town’ translates into ‘Snow White’s Town.’ Which seems innocent enough, except that it turns out that ‘Snow White’s town’ is actually Chinese slang for ‘a town where a prostitute lives,’ Lee says. Whoops.
“Lee says it wasn’t caught in the profanity filters because there weren’t actually any bad words in the phrase. But it’s the kind of regional flavor where a direct translation of the words can’t bring across the meaning.”
Whoops indeed. The article notes that another problem with Skype Translator is its penchant for completely disregarding non-word utterances, like “um” and “ahh,” that often carry necessary meaning. We’re reminded, though, that these and other problems are expected to be ironed out within the next few years, according to Microsoft Research chief scientist Xuedong Huang. I wonder how many more amusing anecdotes will arise in the meantime.
Cynthia Murrell, May 12, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Billions in vc Funding Continues Rinse and Repeat Process
May 12, 2016
In the tech world, the word billion may be losing meaning for some. Pando published a recent editorial called, While the rest of tech struggles, so far VCs have raised more this quarter than in past three years. This piece calls attention to the seemingly never-ending list of VC firms raising ever-more funds. For example, Accel announced their funds were at $2 billion, Founders Fund raised $1 billion in new funds, and Andreessen Horowitz currently works to achieve another $1.5 billion. The author writes,
“It was hard to put that [recent fundraising rounds] in context. I mean, yeah. These are major funds. Is it news that they raised a collective $4.5 billion more at some point? Doesn’t mean they’ll invest it any more quickly. All it means is that the two will still be around for another ten years, which we kinda already guessed. It’s staggeringly hard for a venture fund to actually go out of business, even when it wasn’t some of the first money in Facebook or, in the case of Marc Andreessen, sits on its board. [Disclosure: Marc Andreessen, Founders Fund and Accel are all investors in Pando.]”
As the author wonders, asking Pitchbook if it’s a “bigger quarter than usual”, our eyebrows are not raised by this this thought, nor easy money, bubbles, unicorns. Nah, this is just routine in Sillycon Valley.
Megan Feil, May 12, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Penetration Testing Tool List
May 11, 2016
Want to avoid the effort of convincing a commercial penetration tool vendor to license you their gizmos? Want to understand how some questionable computer exploits work?
Navigate to BlackArch Linux and check out the list of tools in the table called Tools.
In my forthcoming Dark Web Cookbook, we provide some basic info about how you can turn your free time into a learning experience. One suggestion: Buy a used computer and dabble with some prophylactic methods in mind. Better yet, perhaps you should just remain in a cloud of unknowing?
Stephen E Arnold, May 11, 2016
Searching the Panama Papers
May 11, 2016
Curious about the money laundering information improperly obtained from a law firm in Panama? You can search for the names of people whom you know by navigating to this link:
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/
I ran a number of queries. The system works okay but considerable effort is required to wrangle on point results.
Sad to say none of the people and outfits I queried seemed to be high fliers. To make sense out of the data, one would need the corpus, some normalization, and an industrial strength tool or two.
Stephen E Arnold, May 11, 2016
DARPA Seeks Keys to Peace with High-Tech Social Science Research
May 11, 2016
Strife has plagued the human race since the beginning, but the Pentagon’s research arm thinks may be able to get to the root of the problem. Defense Systems informs us, “DARPA Looks to Tap Social Media, Big Data to Probe the Causes of Social Unrest.” Writer George Leopold explains:
“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced this week it is launching a social science research effort designed to probe what unifies individuals and what causes communities to break down into ‘a chaotic mix of disconnected individuals.’ The Next Generation Social Science (NGS2) program will seek to harness steadily advancing digital connections and emerging social and data science tools to identify ‘the primary drivers of social cooperation, instability and resilience.’
“Adam Russell, DARPA’s NGS2 program manager, said the effort also would address current research limitations such as the technical and logistical hurdles faced when studying large populations and ever-larger datasets. The project seeks to build on the ability to link thousands of diverse volunteers online in order to tackle social science problems with implications for U.S. national and economic security.”
The initiative aims to blend social science research with the hard sciences, including computer and data science. Virtual reality, Web-based gaming, and other large platforms will come into play. Researchers hope their findings will make it easier to study large and diverse populations. Funds from NGS2 will be used for the project, with emphases on predictive modeling, experimental structures, and boosting interpretation and reproducibility of results.
Will it be the Pentagon that finally finds the secret to world peace?
Cynthia Murrell, May 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Office of Personnel Management Hack Is Very Bad
May 11, 2016
The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was hacked for more than a year before it was discovered in April 2015. The personal information of 21 million current and former government employees was stolen, including their Social Security numbers and home addresses. The hack does not seem that important, unless you were or are a government employee, but the Lawfare Blog explains differently in “Why The OPM Hack Is Far Worse Than You Imagine.”
The security breach is much worse than simple identity theft, because background checks were stolen as well. It might seem that a background check is not that serious (so the hackers discovered a person got a speeding ticket?), but in reality these background checks were far more extensive than the usual as they were used for purposes of entering government mandated areas. The security clearances included information about family, sexual behavior, and risk of foreign exploitation. If that was not bad enough,
“Along with the aforementioned databases, the OPM systems are linked electronically to other agencies and databases, and it stored much of this data alongside the security clearance files. According to a 2007 White House report on OPM security clearance performance, checks of State Passport records and searches of military service records are now conducted electronically. According to this report, then, there are electronic linkages between the OPM Security Clearance files, Department of Defense service records, and State Department Passport records.”
OPM took measures to ensure future security, but they either expose whom the victims of the breach are and would allow private contractors access to sensitive data to mitigate future attacks. OPM is not willing to acknowledge these deficiencies, but would rather continue to expose the victims (and future victims) to further danger.
Whitney Grace, May 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Facebook: Complaining and Explaining
May 10, 2016
A stiff upper lip type told me eons ago: “Never complain, never explain.” I just read “Facebook denies Claims It Suppressed Conservative and Controversial New on Its Trending Topics Sidebar.” If the write up is accurate, Facebook may be explaining and complaining.
I read:
The company had been accused of encouraging the humans that run its “Trending Topics” sidebar to suppress conservative stories and those from right-of-centre outlets. But the company has “found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true”, according to a post from its head of search Tom Stocky.
The write up quoted Facebook as an “it” which said:
It said also that does not “insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so”. While it’s possible for reviewers to stick certain topics together – such as #StarWars and #?maythefourthbewithyou – a topic must already be trending for it to be added to the panel, Mr Stocky claimed.
Interesting. Why would a giant in social media let humans interfere with smart software? But why would Jeff Bezos buy a newspaper?
Alas, no answers and certainly no complaining or explaining from Harrod’s Creek.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2016
Baidu May Mislead via Search Results
May 10, 2016
Shocker. If the information in “Baidu Found Guilty, Hit with New Restrictions. Will It Go Far Enough?”, the Chinese information access outfit has fiddled its search results. Oh, my. How can search and retrieval companies ignore objectivity in pursuit of other, presumably more lofty, goals?
I learned:
According to state news agency Xinhua, the CAC ruled that a Baidu search result page “did influence the medical choice” of Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old college student who died in April from an ineffective cancer therapy he discovered via a Baidu-promoted link. The company pledged to limit the number of ads to no more than 30% of each search result page in response to the ruling.
I know that this monopoly approach is much loved by MBAs and some financial mavens. However, fiddling search results is an idea which never crossed this addled goose’s mind.
I believed and still do believe that when I run a query on a “free” Web search engine, I am getting rock solid, “take it to the bank” information.
Baidu, I assume, is simply a nail which sticks up and must be pounded down into old fashioned precision and recall.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2016
Watson Does Cyber Security
May 10, 2016
I heard a rumor that Palantir Technologies has turned down the volume on its cybersecurity initiative. I was interested to learn that IBM is jumping into this niche following the lead of its four star general Thomas “Weakly” Watson.
According to “IBM’s Watson Is Going to Cybersecurity School,” General Watson “announced a new year-long research project through which it will collaborate with eight universities to help train its Watson artificial-intelligence system to tackle cybercrime.”
A number of capable outfits are attacking this market sector. Instead of buying a high octane outfit, I learned:
This fall, it will begin working with students at universities including California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, Penn State, MIT, New York University and the University of Maryland at Baltimore County along with Canada’s universities of New Brunswick, Ottawa and Waterloo.
Never give up. Forward, march.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2016
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