Health Data: A Growing Challenge
November 30, 2018
While the world wrings its hands over the idea of social media sharing their data and having security breaches, a much larger problem lurks in the shadows. We are talking about the absurdly high number of health care data breaches, which contain far more sensitive data. We learned more from a recent Healthcare Analytics News story, “Yes, Healthcare’s Data Breach Really Is That Bad.”
According to the story:
“Healthcare providers were hit the hardest, reporting 1,503 data breaches compromising 37.1 million records during the period in question. The number of incidents made up 70 percent of all data breaches included in the tally. But health plans, which reported 278 data breaches, reported 110.4 million exposed records, or 63 percent of the pie, according to the findings.”
Why are criminals doing all this? It’s not just to set up a new credit card in your name. According to Forbes, this recent rash of theft is tied to fraudulent medication and even procedures being acquired, as well as receiving Medicare and Medicaid benefits.
News about the data breach at Atrium Health billing lost data for an estimate 2.65 million patients.
More challenges to come we fear.
Patrick Roland, November 30, 2018
Amazon Opens a New Front in the Cloud Wars
November 30, 2018
A Microsoft “expert” has explained why Azure, the Microsoft cloud service, why the Azure cloud failed Thanksgiving week. Like the explanation for the neutralizing of some customers’ Windows 10 machines, three problems arose. You can work through the explanation at this link, but you may, like me, remain skeptical about Microsoft’s ability to keep its cloud sunny. Key point: Microsoft apologizes for its mistakes. Yada yada yada.
At about the same time, Amazon announced that its cloud service uses its own custom designed Arm server processors. How will Microsoft compete with a service that is not without flaws but promises lower costs? The GeekWire write up states:
Vice president of infrastructure Peter DeSantis introduced the AWS Graviton Processor Monday night, adding a third chip option for cloud customers alongside instances that use processors from Intel and AMD. The company did not provide a lot of details about the processor itself, but DeSantis said that it was designed for scale-out workloads that benefit from a lot of servers chipping away at a problem.
From our vantage point in Harrod’s Creek, the Amazon approach seems useful for certain types of data mining and data analytics tasks. Could these be the type of tasks which are common when using systems like Palantir Gotham’s?
The key point, however, is “low cost.”
But the important strategic move is that Amazon is now in the chip business. What other hardware are the folks at the ecommerce site exploring? Amazon network hardware?
Microsoft makes fuzzy tablet-laptops, right?
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2018
Big Data Answers the Question ‘Are You Happy?’
November 30, 2018
navigate to the capitalist tool and read “Mapping World Happiness 2015-2018 Through 850 Million News Articles.” Keep in mind that the write up does not explain what percentage of the “news articles” are fake news, the outputs of anti American interest groups, bots, public relations outfits like Definers, or marketing wizards chugging along in the search engine optimization game, and other interesting sources of the data. The write up is a bit of promotion for what is called the GDelt Project. The exercise reveals some of the strengths of open source intelligence. The idea is that collection and analysis can reveal trends and insights.The process involved some number crunching; for example:
Its sentiment mining system has computed more than 2.3 trillion emotional assessments across thousands of distinct emotions from “abashment” to “wrath.”
Google apparently contributed resources.
The question becomes, “Is this analysis an example of real news or is it more marketing?”
The Beyond Search goose has no strong “sentiment” either way. Just asking a simple question.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2018
Silicon Valley CEOs Have a Life Line
November 29, 2018
A write-up at Fast Company has a unique management tip for struggling tech executives—“Want to Be a Successful CEO? Get a Dog,” they advise. Writer Melissa Locker cites a recent survey performed by Kelton Research for Banfield Pet Hospital. She describes the career-boosting benefits of pet ownership as suggested by the survey. Not only had 93% of the 857 “C-suite” executives surveyed had one or more pets growing up, more than three quarters of those partly credit that experience for their success, Locker notes. She continues:
“There’s more, too: Nearly a quarter (24%) say that their childhood pet taught them more valuable lessons than their first internship. If you’re looking for inspiration, a whopping 77% of C-suite executives said they came up with a business idea while walking a pet (guessing dogs, not gerbils). 62% of these head corporate honchos believe pets had a positive impact on their ability to build relationships with coworkers and clients. Even if you weren’t lucky enough to grow up with an animal around the house, it’s not too late to benefit from a trip to the shelter: 80% of people surveyed said they felt more connected to colleagues who own pets, and 79% believing that colleagues with pets are hard workers.”
Not everyone is in the situation to share their home with a pet, nor does everyone relish the endeavor. However, it seems clear that those who do welcome furry, feathery, or scaly friends into their homes give themselves, and especially their kids, a definite advantage. Woof woof.
Cynthia Murrell, November 29, 2018
Palantir Technologies: Keeping Momentum, Job One
November 29, 2018
Hop in your time machine and think back about five years. While it feels like the olden days of horse-drawn carriages already, it was a golden age for big data analytics startups. Tops on that list for many was Palantir. Thought, today things are much different, as we discovered in a recent Cheddar video, “Why Palantir’s Valuation is Withering Away.”
According to the article:
“Not long ago Palantir Technologies was valued at $20 billion and one of Silicon Valley’s brightest tech companies. Today, the big data analytics company’s worth has been slashed to $6 billion by Morgan Stanley as it heads towards an IPO.”
Perhaps part of the lag draws from Palantir’s secrecy, considering it works for organizations like the CIA and others.
However, stakeholders and employees still have big dreams like many other Silicon Valley shop: They want to go public.
A drop in valuation and concern over whether they can ever turn a profit is starting to seriously tarnish this once golden child of the tech industry.
Beyond Search does not want to draw parallels with Autonomy or other search centric firms. Some of these outfits found that the momentum of selling sizzle was difficult to maintain in a room with open windows.
Worth watching how this financial drama plays out as Amazon gears up to become the go to provider of policeware and possibly business intelligence services.
Patrick Roland, November 29, 2018
Amazon: Making the Fuzzy Laptop Maker Look Silly
November 29, 2018
In an upcoming DarkCyber and in my new series of lectures for LE and intel professionals, I will be exploring the implications of Amazon’s public admissions that the company is the beastie in the policeware kennel. The “few words are better” Jeff Barr has summarized some of the more public announcements in “AWS launches, Previews, and Pre-Announcements” which is a useful, if incomplete, checklist of what’s happening at the Zon. (Where is that policeware info by the way?)
But for Beyond Search and its handful of very gentle readers I want to point out that Microsoft’s furry laptop, Azure outages, and the ineptitude of updating Windows 10 looks bad.
Consider what Amazon has been doing for the past five years or so: Developing not one but two different custom chips, building a range of machine learning tools including free for now training programs, and rolling out features and function to keep the often creaky Amazon Web Services engine chugging along.
Microsoft has the furry laptop thing. Oh, I almost forgot. Microsoft brought back the Microsoft “IntelliMouse Explorer.” Plus Microsoft continues to play more nicely with Amazon Alexa as it tries to make sure it can be Number Two in the big cloud game. Google, HP, IBM, and a number of companies whose names I struggle to remember want to knock of the big dog. The breed is a Bezos I believe.
Net net: Amazon seems to be taking bits and pieces from the Google, Palantir, and IBM playbook. Chef Bezos mixes the ingredients and rolls out a mind boggling array of new stuff.
But which company looks a little behind the times? Here in Harrod’s Creek we see Microsoft and its fuzzy laptop tablet thing. By the way, how does one keep fuzzy stuff free from dirt, bacteria, and burrito juice?
Amazon probably sells some type of cleaner. Why not do a product search on Amazon. Product searches account for a hefty chuck of online search action. Perhaps there is an Amazon Basics to clean the furry gizmo? Better yet, there are ads on Amazon. Ads which once were the exclusive domain of the Google.
Google. That’s another story one can research on a furry Microsoft device using an “old is new mouse” too.
Stephen E Arnold, November 29, 2018
Google Privacy Stumbles Over a New Hurdle
November 28, 2018
Out of the frying pan and into the fire for the world’s biggest search engine. The more Google tries to grow, the more it seems to stub its toe on privacy issues. We were treated to the latest episode of this soap opera recently when we read a Next Web story, “Google’s Ethical Black Hole Swallows Deepmind’s Best Intentions.”
In short, healthcare startup, Deepmind, was sold to Google. Despite Deepmind’s promise that client info would not be sold, experts are not convinced that they can trust Google yet.
“There’s good reason for privacy advocates to be concerned, but perhaps the news would be received differently if Google hadn’t spent all year destroying the consumer trust it’s cultivated over the past decade…DeepMind, for its part, says the private data won’t end up connected to Google accounts.”
Additional criticism of Google appears in Fortune Magazine’s “Google Is Accused of ‘Tricking’ Users Into Sharing Location Data Under the EU’s Strict New Privacy Laws.” The magazine reports that a document prepared by the Norwegian Consumer Council explains some of Google’s more interesting methods of obtaining information about a user’s behavior. The tracking vector makes use of Android, Google Maps, and some technical ornaments.
If you want to read the full report, navigate to this link. Fortune included many ads in its short write up, but managed to leave out the link to the source document.
Ah, modern “real” journalists. Ah, Google, always eager to give users control and ways to improve one’s experience.
Patrick Roland, November 23, 2018
Factualities for November 28, 2018
November 28, 2018
Fake news or real news? Often tough to say when numbers are thrown around without explanations of the sample, method, and analytic approach. Believe these data or not, particularly when nice round numbers are offered as solid data:
- 10 million miles a day. The number of miles a Google Waymo vehicle drives in a virtual world. Source: Technology Review
- 500,000. The number of Google users’ data exposed in a recent Google security lapse. Source: Ars Technica
- 5,000. The number of faces a human can recognize. Source: Discover Magazine
- 19. The number of people who fall off a cruise ship each year. Source: Lifehacker
- 108 months. The prison sentence for Dark Web drug dealer “NoStress.” Source: US Department of Justice
- $1,400,000. Amount paid for Banksy painting which self destructed in front of the buyer. Source: Slashgear
- 20 percent in five years. The decline in US share of global venture capital funding. Source: VentureBeat
Stephen E Arnold, November 28, 2018
High School Science Club Officers Face Member Revolt
November 28, 2018
I don’t want to make a big deal of this high school science club management crisis. In a nutshell, people invited into the Google are members of a type of institution I call “the high school management club.” Now the members are revolting (no pun intended). According to “Employees Call on Google to Cancel China Project,” the members are not happy with the club’s management. What will the science club management do? My idea is that the Facebook “deflect, deny, and keep on going” approach might be up for consideration. Remarkable.
Stephen E Arnold, November 28, 2018
Amazonia for November 26, 2018
November 27, 2018
The little ecommerce company has been beavering away.
Amazon Basics Now Includes ARM Server CPUs
One of Amazon’s stealth technologists announced AWS Graviton Processor. Amazon offers up a few details at this link. Lower cost, specialized capabilities, and proof that Amazon is thinking hardware thoughts. IBM markets its cloud capabilities and Microsoft tries to keep Azure alive and well, Amazon powers into a new space. Who wrote about these chips? None other than Jeff Barr. Trust the Beyond Search goose. This is a pivotal member in the Bezos Brain Bucket.
Amazon Sells a Lot over the Holiday
Although the source is not the most reliable, Bloomberg reports that Amazon sold more products in five days in the Thanksgiving interval than it did in 2017. Hard numbers? How about 18 million toys. Ah, Bloomberg. Get the scoop at this link. The Street says that Amazon sold $8 billion in stuff on one day. What about the mom and pop hobby store in Paducah, Kentucky? Oh, it closed. Too bad.
New Gizmo Coming?
IEEE Spectrum drops a lot of buzzwords suggesting that Amazon’s secretive Lab126 is working on new products. IEEE suggests that a paper outfit is connected to Amazon. The outfit is Chrome Enterprises, and it may be working on a faster, better, and probably cheaper way to do wireless magic. The report includes this soothing paragraph:
Cupertino’s branch of MassageEnvy is fewer than 500 meters from a satellite Lab126 building, called SJC3.
Amazon Offers Free Online Class to Train You to Use AWS
ZDNet reported that Amazon offer free training. The idea is that Amazon will teach you to use Sagemaker, DeepLens, and other AWS smart software. Hey, if the universities cannot do the job, Amazon can. The write up stated:
The company has over 30 online machine-learning courses, including video, labs, and documentation that have been used within Amazon for the past 20 years.
Here’s another Amazon wizard’s name to note: Dr Matt Wood, AWS’s general manager of artificial intelligence.
How do you know you have passed the course. Well, you pay $300 for an AWS SAT type test, of course.
Has Microsoft got the Windows 10 update working yet? What about Azure log ins? Two Seattle companies. Which has momentum?
Stephen E Arnold, November 26, 2018
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