Friday, November 25, 2016

Definitely one to grab if you run a home network!
This Web-based Tool Checks if Your Network Is Exposed to Mirai
   The IoT Defense scanner was written using a combination of Python, Node JS and Jade frameworks and scans for nearly a dozen ports that botnets can exploit.  Accessing and using the scanner is free and little instructions are needed, as it does all with a simple click of a button.


And Pew Research just told us that lots of youngsters can’t tell the difference.
Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.


I bet their stick just went up!
Cyrus Farivar reports:
A federal appeals court ruled against a criminal defendant who challenged the warrantless use of a stingray that was used to locate him.
The Wednesday decision marks the first time that questions regarding the proper use of stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators, have reached the federal appellate level.
Read more on Ars Technica.


Significant?
Drew Crawford of King & Spalding writes:
On November 3, 2016, the State of Qatar announced the passage of a new national privacy law.  The law, which requires companies and organizations to protect the personal information they gather from individuals, is the first national-level legal regime governing data protection to be signed into law by a Gulf Cooperation Council (“GCC”) member state.
Read more on JDSupra.


No worries!  AI classes will now be taught by AI. 
Universities’ AI Talent Poached by Tech Giants
Alphabet Inc.’s Google division last week hired the director of Stanford University’s artificial intelligence lab to lead a new AI unit, the latest in a long line of academic stars in artificial intelligence lured away by tech giants.
Fei-Fei Li, a respected computer scientist, wrote in a Facebook post that she joined Google partly to “democratize AI.”  She joined several other top professors who have left academia in recent years for tech industry posts.


It’s not a big deal unless the computers are talking about me behind my back.  Are they?
Don't Freak But Google Researchers Discovered Their AI Translation Tool Invented Its Own Secret Language
   Google’s NMT developers first translated from English to Korean and vice versa, and then from English to Japanese and vice versa.  They were curious to see if the machine could then translate Korean to Japanese without using English as a go between.  The answer was yes it in fact could translate directly.
It's how the Google AI achieves this that is a bit of a mystery.  It appears that the NMT has created its own internal language or "interlingua."  It examines concepts and sentence structures instead of word equivalents.  As a result, the NMT has created translations that are more accurate and natural.  Google’s NMT creators, however, are unsure how the neural networks work or what exact concepts the NMT has learned translate languages directly.  In short, Google's AI has created its own secret language we humans do not fully understand.  A white paper that details the researchers' work, including some detail on the mystery "interlingua," can be found here (PDF).


A site worth bookmarking!
The Data Visualisation Catalogue
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Nov 24, 2016
“The Data Visualisation Catalogue is an on-going project developed by Severino Ribecca.  Originally, this project was a way for me to develop my own knowledge of data visualisation and create a reference tool for me to use in the future for my own work.  However, I felt it would also be useful to both designers and also anyone in a field that requires the use of data visualisation regularly.  Although there have been a few attempts in the past to catalogue some of the established data visualisation methods, there is no website that is really comprehensive, detailed or helps you decide the right method for your needs.  I will be adding in new visualisation methods, bit-by-bit, as I research each method to find the best way to explain how it works and what it is best suited for.  Most of the data visualised in the website’s example images is dummy data….” 


Politics 101.  Republicans should avoid making suggestions at all costs.  If Trump does well, they can claim him as one of their own.  If Trump fulfills Hillary Clinton’s predictions, they can claim they had nothing to do with his choices.
Republicans Divided Between Romney and Giuliani for Secretary of State

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