I’m going to stop explaining how easy it would be to make elections trustworthy. Apparently no one is listening.

https://gizmodo.com/good-luck-to-the-judge-who-sealed-a-ballot-machine-vuln-1847481421

Good Luck to the Judge Who Sealed a Ballot Machine Vulnerability Report in Georgia

Facing a quintessential damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don’t scenario, a federal judge in Georgia has sealed a 25,000-word report said to outline vulnerabilities in the state’s ballot-marking machines. The decision was seemingly made out of fear that the contents would add fuel to rampant conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election; a topic which is not even broached by its author.

The Daily Beast, reporting the judge’s decision early Friday, said the report by J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, outlines specific vulnerabilities that, to quote the professor, “allow attackers to change votes despite the state’s purported defenses.”

In a signed declaration, Halderman said he’d discovered “multiple severe security flaws” that could be exploited using malware, either with temporary physical access to the machine or by injecting it remotely via election management systems.

Everyone is keeping score…

https://www.makeuseof.com/biggest-ransomware-attacks-2021/

The 5 Biggest Ransomware Attacks of 2021 (So Far!)

2021 has seen many major ransomware attacks involving hefty ransom payments, leaked data, and major disruptions.

If you like my resume enough to offer me a job, why wouldn’t one of you competitors do the same?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-people-who-work-from-home-have-a-secret-they-have-two-jobs-11628866529?mod=djemalertNEWS

These People Who Work From Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs

When the pandemic freed employees from having to report to the office, some saw an opportunity to double their salary on the sly. Why be good at one job, they thought, when they could be mediocre at two?

… Alone in their home offices, they toggle between two laptops. They play “Tetris” with their calendars, trying to dodge endless meetings. Sometimes they log on to two meetings at once. They use paid time off —in some cases, unlimited —to juggle the occasional big project or ramp up at a new gig. Many say they don’t work more than 40 hours a week for both jobs combined. They don’t apologize for taking advantage of a system they feel has taken advantage of them.

This is rather depressing… Why would they not fix the security hole that allowed the attack? Granted, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but this is like not learning from touching a hot stove...

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/half-of-organizations-suffered-attacks-from-repeat-hackers-while-most-failed-to-utilize-their-threat-hunting-teams/

Half of Organizations Suffered Attacks From Repeat Hackers While Most Failed To Utilize Their Threat Hunting Teams

A report by Ponemon Institute and commissioned by Team Cymru found that half of the organizations surveyed experienced disruptive cyber attacks from repeat sophisticated threat actors, the majority of whose exploits were unresolved.

… More than half of the organizations in North America (NA) experienced recurring attacks from a previous threat actor compared to 49% in Latin America (LATAM), 51% in the United Kingdom (UK), and 46% in Europe.

Half of the respondents said that the attack was because of the inability to defend against the same threat actor. An even higher number (61%) said they did not remediate a previous compromise by the same threat actor, leaving their organizations vulnerable to subsequent attacks.

(Related) Fool me twice, shame on me!

https://threatpost.com/solarwinds-financial-crisis-podcast/168677/

SolarWinds 2.0 Could Ignite Financial Crisis – Podcast

That’s what NY State suggests could happen, given the utter lack of cybersec protection at many private equity & hedge fund firms. Can AI help avert it?

… “This incident confirms that the next great financial crisis could come from a cyberattack,” superintendent of financial services Linda A. Lacewell said in a press release following the DFS’ investigation of New York’s financial services industry’s response to the supply-chain attack. “Seeing hackers get access to thousands of organizations in one stroke underscores that cyberattacks threaten not just individual companies but also the stability of the financial industry as a whole.”

We’re not talking about banks. As a whole, banking cybersecurity has been tight for a long time. Rather, the slice of the finance industry that causes experts to lose sleep over is the asset management industry: All the private equity and hedge fund firms that control trillions of dollars of notional value. It’s an enormous part of the economy that’s all too often guarded by little more than duct tape and prayers.

“A large majority don’t even have dedicated cybersecurity staff,” lamented Bart McDonough, CEO and founder of Agio, a hybrid managed IT and cybersecurity services provider specializing in the financial services, healthcare and payments industries. “You’re talking about all these organizations that manage a tremendous amount of money that don’t have dedicated staff.”

They have a point.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90664693/privacy-laws-fatal-flaw

Privacy laws are useless when everyone wants to be surveilled

Welcome to the world of opt-in surveillance, where people are happy to trade their data for a coffee.

Around the world, concern is growing about the implications of digital surveillance. Widespread tracking of users by apps, the treatment of data by internet giants, and covert government activity have produced a groundswell in support for strengthening online privacy rights. This has led to some apparent legislative victories for the cause—such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the U.S. In some cases, increased scrutiny of digital privacy practices even seems to be turning the tide of our surveillance economy.

Despite this surge in support for privacy, we’re looking at a situation where routine surveillance of citizens will continue to become normalized—not through coercion, but through convenience. There’s been much fanfare around supposedly privacy-protecting laws like GDPR. But what good are they if people voluntarily surrender their data anyway?

Perhaps this explains Donald Trump?

https://news.yale.edu/2021/08/13/likes-and-shares-teach-people-express-more-outrage-online

‘Likes’ and ‘shares’ teach people to express more outrage online

Social media platforms like Twitter amplify expressions of moral outrage over time because users learn such language gets rewarded with an increased number of “likes” and “shares,” a new Yale University study shows.

And these rewards had the greatest influence on users connected with politically moderate networks.

“Social media’s incentives are changing the tone of our political conversations online,” said Yale’s William Brady, a postdoctoral researcher in the Yale Department of Psychology and first author of the study. He led the research with Molly Crockett, an associate professor of psychology at Yale.

The Yale team measured the expression of moral outrage on Twitter during real life controversial events and studied the behaviors of subjects in controlled experiments designed to test whether social media’s algorithms, which reward users for posting popular content, encourage outrage expressions.

“This is the first evidence that some people learn to express more outrage over time because they are rewarded by the basic design of social media,” Brady said.

The study was published Aug. 13 in the journal Science Advances. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/33/eabe5641

To know AI is to fear it? More likely, know what could go wrong.

https://venturebeat.com/2021/08/13/why-ai-ethics-needs-to-address-ai-literacy-not-just-bias/

Why AI ethics needs to address AI literacy, not just bias

When you hear about AI ethics, it’s mostly about bias. But Noelle Silver, a winner of VentureBeat’s Women in AI responsibility and ethics award, has dedicated herself to an often overlooked part of the responsible AI equation: AI literacy.

… After presenting to one too many boardrooms that could only see the good in AI, Silver started to see this lack of knowledge and ability to ask the important questions as a danger. Now, she’s a consistent champion for public understanding of AI, and has also established several initiatives supporting women and underrepresented communities.

We recently caught up with her to chat more about the inspiration for her work, the misconceptions about responsible AI, and how enterprises can make sure AI ethics is more than a box to check.

Nothing earthshaking.

https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/four-policies-government-can-pursue-advance-trustworthy-ai

Four Policies that Government Can Pursue to Advance Trustworthy AI

… A recent report from the U.S. Chamber Technology Center (C_TEC) and the Deloitte AI Institutes highlights the proper role of the federal government in facilitating trustworthy AI and the importance of sound public policies to mitigate risks posed by AI and accelerate its benefits. Based on a survey of business leaders across economic sectors focused on AI, the report examines perceptions of the risks and benefits of AI and outlines a trustworthy AI policy agenda.

Another planning consideration for backups.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/12/zero_trust_regcast/

Think your backups will protect you against ransomware? They’re top of the target list

Being hit by ransomware is gut wrenching enough, but it’ll be ten times worse if it coincides with the realization that your data protection systems just aren’t up the job anymore.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find yourself having to balance the cost of a ransom against the cost of downtime as you work your way from the painstaking process of restoring your data from traditional backups, simultaneously watching the clock while hoping that they are not too out of date.

At worst, you could find that it’s not just your production systems that were breached, but that the attackers have also encrypted your backups into the bargain too. After all, they’ve taken the time to get to know your organisation intimately so they could stage the attack in the first place, why wouldn’t they know your data protection strategy inside out too?

Another example of politics not matching reality? What are they afraid of?

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/14/xi-jinpings-assault-on-tech-will-change-chinas-trajectory

Xi Jinping’s assault on tech will change China’s trajectory

It is likely to prove self-defeating

Of all china’s achievements in the past two decades, one of the most impressive is the rise of its technology industry. Alibaba hosts twice as much e-commerce activity as Amazon does. Tencent runs the world’s most popular super-app, with 1.2bn users. China’s tech revolution has also helped transform its long-run economic prospects at home, by allowing it to leap beyond manufacturing into new fields such as digital health care and artificial intelligence (ai). As well as propelling China’s prosperity, a dazzling tech industry could also be the foundation for a challenge to American supremacy.

That is why President Xi Jinping’s assault on his country’s $4trn tech industry is so startling. There have been over 50 regulatory actions against scores of firms for a dizzying array of alleged offences, from antitrust abuses to data violations. The threat of government bans and fines has weighed on share prices, costing investors around $1trn.

Perhaps the government is playing a shell game by shifting surveillance duties from one agency to another? I doubt it is spontaneous.

https://www.pogowasright.org/epic-sues-postal-service-to-halt-use-of-facial-recognition-social-media-monitoring/

EPIC Sues Postal Service to Halt Use of Facial Recognition, Social Media Monitoring

From EPIC.org:

EPIC has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service to block the use of facial recognition and social media monitoring tools under the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP). EPIC’s case challenges the Postal Service’s failure to conduct and publish the Privacy Impact Assessment mandated by the E-Government Act before procuring and using advanced surveillance systems under iCOP. EPIC is seeking a court order to block iCOP from using these tools at least until the Postal Service has conducted the required assessment. EPIC brought suit after the Postal Service failed to locate a PIA in response to EPIC’s Freedom of Information Act request. Under iCOP, law enforcement officials the U.S. Postal Inspection Service monitored protests in the summer of 2020 and spring of 2021 and used Clearview AI’s controversial facial recognition product to identify individuals. The iCOP’s surveillance of protests and tracking of “inflammatory” content goes far beyond the program’s mandate to investigate fraud and other crimes perpetuated through the mail or USPS’s website. EPIC has previously used the E-Government Act to block the deployment of a media surveillance platform by the Department of Homeland Security and to halt the collection of voter data by the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

If you build them, they will buy? Nothing too far outside the box – why?

https://www.c4isrnet.com/artificial-intelligence/2021/08/12/army-futures-command-outlines-next-five-years-of-ai-needs/

Army Futures Command outlines next five years of AI needs

Army Futures Command has outlined 11 broad areas of artificial intelligence research it’s interested in over the next five years, with an emphasis on data analysis, autonomous systems, security and decision-making assistance.

… The announcement, released by the command’s Artificial Intelligence Integration Center, said the service is “particularly” interested in AI research of autonomous ground and air platforms, “which must operate in open, urban and cluttered environments.” The document specifically asks for research into technologies that allow for robots or autonomous systems to move in urban, contested environments, as well as technologies that reduce the electromagnetic profile of the systems. It also wants to know more about AI that can sense obscure targets and understand terrain obstacles.

As predicted, vaccination cards are like passports and counterfeiting was inevitable. (It is easier to lie than comply.)

https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/12/fake_vaccine_cards/

COVID-19 cases surge as do sales of fake vaccination cards – around $100 for something you could get free

… That has led to vaccination requirements in California for healthcare workers and education workers, in New York for new hires, at private sector companies like Google, and soon in the US military. Other countries like England, France, and Greece have said they will mandate vaccines for healthcare workers, as Italy did in March.

The availability of fake vaccination certificates has risen, too.

Since March, there's been a 257 per cent increase in the number of sellers using the Telegram messaging app to advertise fake vaccination cards to "those who do not want to take the vaccine," according to security biz Check Point.

Another invincible security tool proven ‘vincible.’

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k78ygn/researchers-create-master-faces-to-bypass-facial-recognition

Researchers Create 'Master Faces' to Bypass Facial Recognition

According to the paper, their findings imply that facial recognition systems are “extremely vulnerable.”

… In their paper, researchers at the Blavatnik School of Computer Science and the School of Electrical Engineering in Tel Aviv detail how they successfully created nine "master key" faces that are able to impersonate almost half the faces in a dataset of three leading face recognition systems. The researchers say their results show these master faces can successfully impersonate over 40 percent of the population in these systems without any additional information or data of the person they are identifying.

Really nothing new, but you might be surprised how often organizations fail at number five.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3627828/ransomware-recovery-8-steps-to-successfully-restore-from-backup.html#tk.rss_all

Ransomware recovery: 8 steps to successfully restore from backup

According to a ransomware survey report released in June by Keeper Security, 49% of companies hit by ransomware paid the ransom—and another 22% declined to say whether they paid or not. Part of the reason is the lack of backups—specifically, the lack of usable backups.

Canadian judges have ethics? What a concept!

http://www.slaw.ca/2021/08/10/the-updated-ethical-principles-for-judges-reaction-from-the-canadian-association-for-legal-ethics-association-canadienne-pour-lethique-juridique-cale-acej/

The Updated Ethical Principles for Judges: Reaction From the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics / Association Canadienne Pour L’ethique Juridique (CALE/ACEJ)

After several years in development, the Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) has published its updated Ethical Principles for Judges (EPJ). The updated EPJ can be found here.

The Canadian Association for Legal Ethics/Association Canadienne pour L’ethique Juridique (CALE/ACEJ), of which we are President and Vice-President, has followed the revision of the EPJ with considerable interest and has offered comments and suggestions to the CJC along the way (see here, here, here, and here for CALE/ACEJ’s submissions to the CJC). Now that the updated EPJ have been released, it is time to take stock. Below we provide comments on behalf of CALE/ACEJ that substantially reflect a statement about the updated EPJ posted to the CALE/ACEJ website in early July.

Worth being repetitive.

https://hbr.org/2021/08/how-to-build-accountability-into-your-ai

How to Build Accountability into Your AI

When it comes to managing artificial intelligence, there is no shortage of principles and concepts aiming to support fair and responsible use. But organizations and their leaders are often left scratching their heads when facing hard questions about how to responsibly manage and deploy AI systems today.

That’s why, at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, we’ve recently developed the federal government’s first framework to help assure accountability and responsible use of AI systems. The framework defines the basic conditions for accountability throughout the entire AI life cycle — from design and development to deployment and monitoring. It also lays out specific questions to ask, and audit procedures to use, when assessing AI systems along the following four dimensions: 1) governance, 2) data, 3) performance, and 4) monitoring.

Note that bias is possible here too.

https://www.eetimes.com/what-is-synthetic-data-and-why-is-it-critical-for-the-future-of-ai/

What Is Synthetic Data and Why Is It Critical for the Future of AI?

Advanced AI development today is still deeply rooted in 1950s computer science philosophies, including the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.” The adage reminds us that an AI model is only as good as the data it’s trained on.

… Synthetic data is information that computer simulations or algorithms generate as an alternative to real-world data to fill the gap between model needs and data availability.

Tools & Techniques. (Why do they still print copies?)

https://www.bespacific.com/what-is-the-constitution-annotated/

What is the Constitution Annotated?

In Custodia Legis: “For over a hundred years, the Constitution Annotated—officially The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation —has served as Congress’s Constitution of record. A Senate document, the Constitution Annotated surveys and illuminates how the Supreme Court of the United States has interpreted every provision of the Constitution throughout the nation’s history. Because the Constitution shapes congressional oversight and legislative actions, Congress has ensured its availability to members of Congress from the Republic’s earliest days. Beginning in 1795, “for the more general promulgation of the laws of the United States” (ch. 50, 1 Stat. 443 (1795) ) Congress required “a complete edition of the laws of the United States, comprising the constitution” and other laws of the land, to be collected and printed. On March 3, 1797, Congress passed legislation (ch. 27, 1 Stat. 517 ) to print a personal copy of the above-mentioned collection for each member. By the 1830s, these copies were indexed so that members could quickly locate relevant provisions. Lists of Supreme Court decisions interpreting constitutional provisions were featured in copies of the Constitution that Congress provided to members in 1896. By the turn of the century, the length of these lists of decisions led to another innovation—a Constitution annotated (50 Cong. Rec. 197 (1913) ) with explanations of Supreme Court decisions that interpreted constitutional provisions. This annotated version proved popular not only with Congress but also with the general public. Responding to public demand, Congress provided for the publication of additional copies of the annotated Constitution so they could be distributed to federal courts, depository libraries, and sold to the public. This version of the document has evolved into today’s hard-bound Constitution Annotated, which is published every 10 years with a supplement insert issued every two years containing cumulative updates. The next hard-bound edition, which has grown to almost three thousand pages, is scheduled to be published in 2022…”

Perspective. I didn’t realize ‘gofers’ were so valuable.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/doordash-recently-held-talks-to-buy-instacart

DoorDash Recently Held Talks to Buy Instacart

DoorDash held talks to buy Instacart over the past two months, say people familiar with the situation, for a price that likely would have been between $40 billion and $50 billion. It would have combined a leading restaurant-delivery service with one of the leading grocery-delivery services.

But the talks fell apart in recent weeks, at least partly due to questions about whether a combination could get approval from antitrust regulators, which, under the Biden administration, are taking a hard line toward most mergers.

Perspective. Interesting contrasts…

https://www.axios.com/robots-the-new-farm-hand-automation-ai-1c93a78a-cec7-440a-87cb-d43a15099bd6.html

Robots are the new farmhands

… With the United Nations predicting the world population will grow to 9.7 billion people by 2050, the agriculture industry says it will need to double the amount of food, feed, fiber and bioenergy it produces.

… Yes, but: There aren't enough farmworkers. Agriculture jobs are projected to grow just 1% from 2019 to 2029, slower than other occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

… Despite the overall shortage of skilled farm labor, the BLS expects jobs for agricultural equipment operators to jump 11% between 2019 and 2029 — much faster than the average for all occupations.

Perspective. I wonder what the total return was on Sweden’s investment? Could this be done on a smaller scale?

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/how-sweden-became-silicon-valley-europe-2021-08-11/

How Sweden became the Silicon Valley of Europe

As Klarna's billionaire founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski prepares to stage one of the biggest-ever European fintech company listings, a feast of capitalism, he credits an unlikely backer for his runaway success: the Swedish welfare state.

In particular, the 39-year-old pinpoints a late-1990s government policy to put a computer in every home.

"Computers were inaccessible for low-income families such as mine, but when the reform came into play, my mother bought us a computer the very next day," he told Reuters.

Siemiatkowski began coding on that computer when he was 16. Fast-forward more than two decades, and his payments firm Klarna is valued at $46 billion and plans to go public. It hasn't given details, though many bankers predict it will list in New York early next year.

One possible outcome as we replace people with AI.

https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-08-12

Think of a log as part of an organization’s memory. Often, logs are not kept because they take up lots of storage space.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3627331/5-best-practices-for-designing-application-logs.html#tk.rss_all

5 best practices for designing application logs

Better logs make it easier to distinguish between critical data and noise. Here's how to design logs with security in mind.

… Schmitt took inspiration from two books she read by Gene Kim, The Unicorn Project, and The Phoenix Project. She realized that poorly designed logs are "a byproduct of how dysfunctional organizations are in terms of security, development, and operations or having silos."

Since large entities move slowly and are reluctant to change, Schmitt focuses on developers, trying to influence how they work. "I'm trying to speak in the language that makes developers excited, but also makes logs cool, ‘cause logs suck," she says.

Most developers admitted that they were not trained in designing logs. They simply recorded information that was relevant to them, focusing on performance. Few thought about security and logged data that would be needed in the event of a breach.

To help them, Schmitt designed a benchmark spreadsheet that took inspiration from the NIST security standards

“Mission creep” is not uncommon.

https://www.pogowasright.org/uk-revealed-anti-terror-snooping-law-used-for-fly-tippers-and-parking/

UK: Revealed: anti-terror snooping law used for fly-tippers and parking

Yohannes Lowe reports:

Councils have used controversial surveillance legislation to combat “low-level” offences, such as the misuse of blue badge parking permits, fly-tipping and benefit fraud, an Observer investigation has found.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa ) 2000 gives certain public bodies the right – under limited circumstances – to conduct surveillance activities, including for crime prevention and national security purposes.

Read more on The Guardian.

A Dilbert observation on e-mail monitoring

https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-08-11

Interesting article, but I don’t see a clear solution.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/11/artificial-intelligence-big-tech-regulation-monopoly-antitrust-google-apple-amazon-facebook/

Big Tech’s Stranglehold on Artificial Intelligence Must Be Regulated

The technology is too important to be left in the clutches of Silicon Valley.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has suggested—more than once—that artificial intelligence (AI) will affect humanity’s development more profoundly than humanity’s harnessing of fire.

… You may or may not agree with Pichai’s statement that AI’s impact on humankind is comparable to that of harnessing fire, but he made another comment that is much harder to argue with: “[Fire] kills people, too.”

My AI reminds me that it can automate anything, even lawyers.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90664648/robots-are-coming-for-the-lawyers

Robots are coming for the lawyers

Bad for lawyers’ salaries, good for people who need cheap legal help.

… as we discovered in a recent research collaboration to analyze legal briefs using a branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, lawyers’ jobs are a lot less safe than we thought. It turns out that you don’t need to completely automate a job to fundamentally change it. All you need to do is automate part of it.

Our research project —in which we collaborated with computer scientists and linguists at MITRE, a federally funded nonprofit devoted to research and development—was not meant to be about automation. As lawprofessors, , we were trying to identify the text features of successful versus unsuccessful legal briefs.

My AI points out that this is NOT a problem for AIs…

https://thenextweb.com/news/backlash-against-grant-patent-to-ai-system-syndication

Backlash grows against decision to grant patent to AI system

… South Africa’s decision has received widespread backlash from intellectual property experts. Some have labeled it a mistake, or an oversight by the patent office. However, as a patent and AI scholar whose PhD aims to address the gaps in patent law created by AI inventorship, I suggest that the decision is supported by the government’s policy environment in recent years. This has aimed to increase innovation and views technology as a way to achieve this.

… The granting of the DABUS patent in South Africa has received widespread backlash from intellectual property experts. The critics argued that it was the incorrect decision in law, as AI lacks the necessary legal standing to qualify as an inventor. Many have argued that the grant was simply an oversight on the part of the commission, which has been known in the past to be less than reliable. Many also saw this as an indictment of South Africa’s patent procedures, which currently only consist of a formal examination step. This requires a check box sort of evaluation: ensuring that all the relevant forms have been submitted and are duly completed.

Critics feel that if South Africa instead had a substantive search and examination system in place, the DABUS patent application would have been rejected.

I disagree.

Something I could geek out on?

https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-open-source-software-shapes-ai-policy/

How open-source software shapes AI policy

Open-source software quietly affects nearly every issue in AI policy, but it is largely absent from discussions around AI policy—policymakers need to more actively consider OSS’s role in AI.

Open-source software (OSS), software that is free to access, use, and change without restrictions, plays a central role in the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI). Across open-source programming languages such as Python, R, C++, Java, Scala, Javascript, Julia, and others, there are thousands of implementations of machine learning algorithms. OSS frameworks for machine learning, including tidymodels in R and Scikit-learn in Python, have helped consolidate many diverse algorithms into a consistent machine learning process and enabled far easier use for the everyday data scientist. There are also OSS tools specific to the especially important subfield of deep learning, which is dominated by Google’s Tensorflow and Facebook’s PyTorch. Manipulation and analysis of big data (data sets too large for a single computer) were also revolutionized by OSS, first by the Hadoop ecosystem and later by projects like Spark. These are not simply some of the AI tools—they are the best AI tools. While proprietary data analysis software may sometimes enable machine learning without the need to write code, it does not enable analytics that are as well developed as those in modern OSS.

Could become an important tool.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/10/22618128/openai-codex-natural-language-into-code-api-beta-access

OpenAI can translate English into code with its new machine learning software Codex

AI research company OpenAI is releasing a new machine learning tool that translates the English language into code. The software is called Codex and is designed to speed up the work of professional programmers, as well as help amateurs get started coding.

In demos of Codex, OpenAI shows how the software can be used to build simple websites and rudimentary games using natural language, as well as translate between different programming languages and tackle data science queries. Users type English commands into the software, like “create a webpage with a menu on the side and title at the top,” and Codex translates this into code. The software is far from infallible and takes some patience to operate, but could prove invaluable in making coding faster and more accessible.

[From the Codex website:

Proficient in more than a dozen programming languages, Codex can now interpret simple commands in natural language and execute them on the user’s behalf—making it possible to build a natural language interface to existing applications. We are now inviting businesses and developers to build on top of OpenAI Codex through our API.

Perspective. Are you ready to drive a transformer?

https://thenextweb.com/news/watch-audi-skysphere-concept-ev-transform-from-grand-tourer-to-roadster?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29

Watch this Audi concept EV transform from grand tourer to roadster

Audi has unveiled its Skysphere concept car and, boy, if that’s the future of EVs, I’m sold.

The Skysphere is a rear-wheel-drive, two-door electric convertible that can transform from a luxurious grand tourer to a sporty roadster.

Yes, it transforms.

That can’t be Professor Soma, that’s not a fly rod!

https://www.makeuseof.com/best-fishing-forecast-apps/

The 6 Best Fishing Forecast Apps

These fishing forecast apps for Android and iOS will help improve your catch by showing you the best times to go fishing.

The apps are able to forecast fish activity based on weather, solunar, and previous history. Some of the apps even have a community where you can share your catches and see what everyone else is catching. Let's check out some of the best fishing forecast apps you can download for Android and iOS.

Tools & Techniques. Maybe everyone is talking about you…

https://www.makeuseof.com/best-tools-track-social-media-performance/

The 8 Best Tools to Analyze Social Media Performance