Sunday, May 28, 2017

It’s fun to follow his logic.  See if you agree.
Who Are the Shadow Brokers?
In 2013, a mysterious group of hackers that calls itself the Shadow Brokers stole a few disks full of National Security Agency secrets.  Since last summer, they’ve been dumping these secrets on the internet.  They have publicly embarrassed the NSA and damaged its intelligence-gathering capabilities, while at the same time have put sophisticated cyberweapons in the hands of anyone who wants them.  They have exposed major vulnerabilities in Cisco routers, Microsoft Windows, and Linux mail servers, forcing those companies and their customers to scramble.  And they gave the authors of the WannaCry ransomware the exploit they needed to infect hundreds of thousands of computer worldwide this month.
After the WannaCry outbreak, the Shadow Brokers threatened to release more NSA secrets every month, giving cybercriminals and other governments worldwide even more exploits and hacking tools.
Who are these guys?  And how did they steal this information?  The short answer is: We don’t know.  But we can make some educated guesses based on the material they’ve published.
   As I’ve written previously, the obvious list of countries who fit my two criteria is small: Russia, China, and—I’m out of ideas.  And China is currently trying to make nice with the U.S.
   By publishing the tools, the Shadow Brokers are signaling that they don’t care if the U.S. knows the tools were stolen.


Perspective.  China reacts faster than the US government (mostly) but individual companies still beat governments.
Is China Outsmarting America in A.I.?

(Related).  Is the FDA going to lead the charge into an AI future?
Medicine Is Going Digital. The FDA Is Racing to Catch Up
   For most regulators, an ever-changing algorithm is their worst nightmare.  But Patel is one of those rare Washington bureaucrats who’s also a fervently optimistic futurist.  And he’s got big plans to get federal regulators off Washington time and up to Silicon Valley speeds.
To do that, the FDA is creating a new unit dedicated strictly to digital health.  Patel will be hiring 13 engineers—software developers, AI experts, cloud computing whizzes—to prepare his agency to regulate a future in which health care is increasingly mediated by machines.


“We don’t need no stinking Stock Market!” 
This was a big week for blockchain
   There was a unspoken sense that this thing we call Bitcoin or “Decentralization” is pretty much going to happen in a big way.
   In this market of people putting their Ethereum tokens into ICOs for decentralized startups, the funding sources are not your typical suited-up investors.  Sure, some VCs are in there now, but this is truly crowdsourced (except that, by owning a token, you are member of the network versus just entitled to a product or whatever as on Kickstarter).
Here’s what surprised me about that: Based on some rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations, there are nearly 1,500 computer science students in North America at top-tier schools like MIT, CMU, and Berkeley who are likely sitting on $30-40 million worth of crypto-currency.
And, 75 percent of it is in Ether versus 25 percent Bitcoin.
These guys (18-25 ish and 98 percent male) were too late for Bitcoin but got in on the Ethereum ground floor.
There are probably another 1,000 people globally fitting this profile.
Either way, tell me: When else in human history have people in that age group had that type of investable capital available to them?


You get a press release (electronic) which is supposed to contain the facts.  Your AI pulls the facts and plugs them into a pre-formatted “news article.”  You can create more content than could fit into a Sunday New York Times, but then you send subscribers only what they want to read. 
The Marriage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) In Sports is Revolutionizing the Sector; Sports Media, Sports Wearables, Fantasy Sports, Sports Trading Fund all Integrating AI
   In sports media AI is changing how content is created.  Should sports writers be fearful hearing news last year that Associated Press was using AI to write Minor League Baseball articles?  Robo- journalism is a reality according to a report in Wired.com. "Fox (FOX) auto-generates some sports recaps that appear on its Big Ten Network site, while Yahoo (YHOO) uses similar technology to create fantasy sports reports custom-made for each of its users.
From a case study report from the Wordsmith platform from Automated Insights, it shows how it creates personalized narratives for millions of Yahoo fantasy football users.


Something for my geeks.
Zillow Prize
Announcing Zillow Prize, a contest designed to inspire the brightest scientific minds to compete to improve the Zestimate® home valuation algorithm.
Data scientists everywhere have a unique opportunity to work on the algorithm that changed the world of real estate – and win $1 million for improving it.


I use a very similar technique when writing.  I call this the “Major Smith” review based on a story about U.S. Grant learning how to write clear orders.

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