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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