Reading Barely Open Books

 When I first saw this I thought it was a cautionary piece about security, but no, is aimed at reading fragile books without opening them fully.   I recall our visit to a company that was scanning books for Googles' Read program.  Could have been useful there.   Been a while, have to check the status of that project.

Imaging System Captures Text From Barely Open Books, By University of Rochester, October 27, 2021

A new imaging methodology developed by the University of Rochester's Gregory Heyworth and colleagues can capture text from extremely fragile books. The technique can generate digital images of manuscripts and rare, frail tomes without opening them more than 30 degrees.

Heyworth and researchers in Rochester's text-retrieval Lazarus Project initiative built a system with a view camera featuring a twistable section, which photographs a book held open by a protective cradle.

Software corrects the resulting image's distortion, enabling a page to be read as if the book were lying flat. The system also captures multiple wavelengths of light, picking up features invisible to the eye while correcting the aged pages' coloration.

From University of Rochester

View Full Article

Recent AI books are Described in CACM

Some good recent books brought to my attention, intro below.

AI Futures: Fact and Fantasy

Three books offer varied perspectives on the ascendancy of artificial intelligence.

Devdatt Dubhashi , Pages 30-31

"AlphaZero crushes chess!" scream the headlines as the AlphaZero algorithm developed by Google and DeepMind took just four hours of playing against itself (with no human help) to defeat the reigning World Computer Champion Stockfish by 28 wins to 0 in a 100-game match. Only four hours to recreate the chess knowledge of one and a half millennium of human creativity! This followed the announcement just weeks earlier that their program AlphaGoZero had, starting from scratch, with no human inputs at all, comprehensively beaten the previous version AlphaGo, which in turn had spectacularly beaten one of the world's top Go players, Lee Seedol, 4-1 in a match in Seoul, Korea, in March 2016.

Interest in AI has reached fever pitch in the popular imagination—its opportunities and its threats. The time is ripe for books on AI and what it holds for our future such as Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark, Android Dreams by Toby Walsh, and Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell.6,8,9 All three agree on the boundless possibilities of AI but there are also stark differences. ... ' 

Data Science Books

In KDNuggets:

Data Science books to start reading:   Good selection,   I would pick one or more that makes the most sense based on your current background and go from there. 

By Przemek Chojecki, CEO Contentyze

Data science is undoubtedly one of the hottest career choices right now. Companies (many of whom have data science departments) are hiring data scientists around the board. It is a considerable thing to become a data scientist. It is also a fantastic opportunity to hone your expertise if you are already a statistician and want to step through the ranks.

This article discusses the most popular data science books for any level.  .... '

Bruce Schneier: Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival

 Just now reading a review copy of Bruce Schneier's:  "Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World"    His latest security book.  So far and as usual very usefully informative.  Don't like the title.  Books should go for at least generally truthful titles. See also his blog: https://www.schneier.com/  which covers much of the same territory, and also includes much added up to date external comments.   While a book in this space cannot be completely up to date,  the book also contains a ton of supporting notes.   Review will be out by early June.

From the Book Quote:

The Internet is powerful, but it is not safe.

As "smart" devices proliferate the risks will get worse, unless we act now.

From driverless cars to smart thermostats, from autonomous stock-trading systems to drones equipped with their own behavioral algorithms, the Internet now has direct effects on the physical world. Forget data theft: cutting-edge digital attackers can now literally crash your car, pacemaker, and home security system, as well as everyone else’s/

In Click Here to Kill Everybody, best-selling author Bruce Schneier explores the risks and security implications of our new, hyper-connected era, and lays out common-sense policies that will allow us to enjoy the benefits of this omnipotent age without falling prey to the consequences of its insecurity.  ... "

End-to-End Encrypted Messaging

 Just started to read, excellent overview. Will follow with more comments as it applies to my work.

End-to-End Encrypted Messaging Hardcover – April 30, 2020   by Rolf Oppliger  (Author)

This exciting resource introduces the core technologies that are used for Internet messaging. The book explains how Signal protocol, the cryptographic protocol that currently dominates the field of end to end encryption (E2EE) messaging, is implemented and addresses privacy issues related to E2EE messengers. The Signal protocol and its application in WhatsApp is explored in depth, as well as the different E2EE messengers that have been made available in the last decade are also presented, including SnapChat. It addresses the notion of self-destructing messages (as originally introduced by SnapChat) and the use of metadata to perform traffic analysis.

Publishers vs Internet Archive

Came across this pre pandemic when I received a letter from my local library about them decreasing the number of digital 'copies' of books available.    Had previously been connected to the Google Books program, that sought to digitize many books.   Still under way, but now far reduced.   There the publishers fought the digitization, even when the books involved were orphaned,  and had no remaining copyright owners.   Had not heard of the case with the Internet Archive,  which we used to track the emergence of web sites.   What does it mean to own a book?  And what does it mean in these times?    The Internet is a great resource, but shouldn't it have access to all publications?
 
Publishers Are Taking the Internet to Court
In a lawsuit against the Internet Archive, the largest corporations in publishing want to change what it means to own a book.    By Maria Bustillos   in TheNation.

When Covid-19 struck, hundreds of millions of students were suddenly stranded at home without access to teachers or libraries. UNESCO reported that in April, 90 percent of the world’s enrolled students had been adversely affected by the pandemic. In response, the Internet Archive’s Open Library announced the National Emergency Library, a temporary program suspending limits on the number of patrons who could borrow its digital books simultaneously. The Open Library lends at no charge about 4 million digital books, 2.5 million of which are in the public domain, and 1.4 million of which may be under copyright and subject to lending restrictions. (This is roughly equivalent to a medium-sized city library; the New York Public Library, by comparison, holds 21.9 million books and printed materials and 1.78 million e-books, according to 2016 figures from the American Library Association.) But the National Emergency Library wound up creating an emergency of its own—for the future of libraries. ... "     (Much more in the article) 

Free Books for ACM Members

I have been a member of and blogger for ACM  https://acm.org  for decades and a big proponent for membership in this professional society, now much more practically based than it used to be ...

More eBook Titles for ACM Members from ScienceDirect on CS, Mathematics, Physics, Probability, and Statistics.  Sign in at: https://learning.acm.org/  

ACM Members now have access to more than 5,800 eBooks and reference works through Elsevier ScienceDirect. Our existing collection of Computer Science titles offers both current and classic texts on Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Human-Computer Interaction, Machine Learning, Parallel Computing, and more. More recent updates to the ACM collection include thousands of titles in the areas of Applied Mathematics, Computational Mathematics, Data Analysis, Modelling and Statistics, Model Simulation, Numerical Analysis, Physics, and Probability and Statistics.

The books are available in PDF and are downloadable, DRM-free to your desktop, laptop, tablet, and any popular eBook reader on your mobile device. All members (Student and Professional) can access them through the ScienceDirect portal in the ACM Learning Center. To access ACM’s custom ScienceDirect platform, visit the ACM Learning Center, click ScienceDirect in the top right corner, and log in with your ACM username and password.

Here are just a few of the new titles you'll find...

Alan Turing: His Work and Impact
Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL
BigNum Math
Cloud Computing, Second Edition
Computer and Information Security Handbook (Third Edition)
Computer Vision (Fifth Edition)
Data Mining (Fourth Edition)
Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems, and an Introduction to Chaos
Handbook of Differential Equations
Handbook of Quantum Logic and Quantum Structures
Handbook of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining Applications (Second Edition)
High Performance Computing
The Illustrated Network (Second Edition)
An Introduction to Probability and Statistical Inference
Introduction to Statistical Machine Learning
The Linear Algebra Survival Guide
Matrix Calculus
Practical Business Statistics
Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction (Second Edition)
Security Controls Evaluation, Testing, and Assessment Handbook
Stochastic Transport in Complex Systems
The UX Book (Second Edition)   ...

Review of Gary Marcus' Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust

Just reading this book.   Found the below non technical overview/review quite useful.  Mostly agree with this, and the outline of chapters is useful.   Saving it here for my own reference.   Buy a copy.

Prof Kenneth Forbus review of Gary Marcus' book: Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust 

Franz

Humor that Works: and a new Book!

My former P&G Colleague Andrew Tarvin has been promoted to the prestigious group:

P&G Alumni Visionaries under 40
Announcing our “Visionaries Under 40” to be recognized at the 2019 Global Conference in Madrid this October.  .... 

Andrew Tarvin
Humor Engineer
Humor That Works    https://www.humorthatworks.com/ 

See his new book: Humor that Works:The Missing Skill for Success and Happiness at Work    

Andrew Tarvin is a speaker and trainer, and has delivered more than 600 programs to over 40,000 people at 250-plus organizations. He was the recipient of the 2019 President’s Award for Distinguished Service from the NSA NYC, and was one of the first thirty improv practitioners to be certified by the Applied Improvisation Network. His TEDx talk has more than 5 million views and his recent book, “The United States of Laughter”, won the 2019 Book Award from the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor.  ..." 

Building More General, Trustable AI: Deeper Understanding?

I have just been thinking about the idea of what is called 'deep understanding'  here.  That is more generally applicable AI.    Agree that deep learning is impressive, but still very narrow  I don't agree that deep understanding, more general AI would make AI safer, could make it less transparent, prone to tricks and misuse, and dangerous.

Book:  Rebooting AI,  Building Artificial Intelligence we can Trust   By Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis  Reading ...

We can’t trust AI systems built on deep learning alone 
Gary Marcus, a leader in the field, discusses how we could achieve general intelligence—and why that might make machines safer.   by Karen Hao  in Technology Review 

Gary Marcus is not impressed by the hype around deep learning. While the NYU professor believes that the technique has played an important role in advancing AI, he also thinks the field’s current overemphasis on it may well lead to its demise.

Marcus, a neuroscientist by training who has spent his career at the forefront of AI research, cites both technical and ethical concerns. From a technical perspective, deep learning may be good at mimicking the perceptual tasks of the human brain, like image or speech recognition. But it falls short on other tasks, like understanding conversations or causal relationships. To create more capable and broadly intelligent machines, often referred to colloquially as artificial general intelligence, deep learning must be combined with other methods. ... "

AI, Creativity and the Slime Mold

Quire an interesting piece out of Engadget, pointer to a new book I just received but have not read.  we got AI to show us possibilities, and even automatically evaluate them.   But never came up with a result out of the blue, what we could call creativity.

Hitting the Books: Teaching AI to sing slime mold serenades
Get ready for Mozart on a microchip.
By Andrew Tarantola, @terrortola in Engadget

Book:   The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity   by Arthur I. Miller  MIT Press 

Most of the time when we hear about AI, they're taking our jobs or putting us in jail or inflicting some other autonomic horror upon humans. But there's a second side to that AI coin. One in which machine learning algorithms show us skin suits the beauty of the natural form, even if it has been procedurally generated.

In this excerpt from The Artist in the Machine by Arthur I. Miller highlights the work of artist Eduardo Miranda. He's melded the minds of a slime mold and a CPU to create, well, music.

Eduardo Miranda and His Improvising Slime Mold   .... " 

Missing in Action

Former colleague wrote this excellent book about his civil ancestor based on decades of research.  Just finished.  Very good read.

MISSING IN ACTION, 1863: Lieutenant Andrew Jackson Lacy and Tennessee's Confederate Cavalry    By Mark E. Lacy  | Mar 22, 2019

Lieutenant Andrew Jackson Lacy served in Tennessee's Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest and disappeared during the Civil War. His great-great-grandson took it upon himself to tackle this 150-year-old missing persons case. Drawing on a large number of family letters from the Civil War, Mark Lacy has reconstructed the story of his ancestor's service to the Confederacy as well as the chaotic circumstances under which the young lieutenant vanished behind enemy lines, only twenty-five miles from home. The result is a detailed account that brings the war down to a personal level and highlights the hardships brought on by guerrillas attacking families and their farms.  ... " 

Helping Employees Improve

New book at about jobs, work and employee improvement. 

What Really Helps Employees to Improve (It’s not Criticism)  In Knowledge@Wharton

“The best employees are well-rounded individuals.”

“People can reliably rate others’ performance.”
It’s safe to say most HR professionals wouldn’t take issue with these basic tenets. But Marcus Buckingham flat-out calls them “lies.”

In fact, Buckingham defied much of HR’s accepted wisdom in his keynote at the recent Wharton People Analytics Conference. The head of people and performance research at ADP Research Institute and a bestselling author, he drew in part from his new book Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World, co-authored with Ashley Goodall, a senior vice president of leadership and team intelligence at Cisco.

Buckingham is perhaps best known as one of the founders of the strengths-based movement in HR, which holds that leaders should help people recognize and exploit their existing strengths rather than focus on remediating weaknesses. He authored the 2001 book Now, Discover Your Strengths (republished as StrengthsFinder) with the late Donald O. Clifton, a psychologist and former chair of Gallup. The book contains the Clifton Strengths Finder, a personal assessment test featuring over 30 “talent themes” to help people identify their strong points. The themes range from “Achiever” (having a constant drive for accomplishing things) to “Ideation” (being able to unite disparate ideas) to “Woo” (good at Winning Others Over).  ..."

Free Graph Algorithms Book

My favorite analytics methods.

Hidden Data Patterns Only Relationships Can Find - Free O’Reilly Book

Graph analytics use relationships to reveal structural and predictive insights hiding in your data. Whether you are building dynamic network models, mitigating risk and fraud or forecasting real-world behavior.

Check out this great resource – just published today: The O'Reilly book, Graph Algorithms: Practical Examples in Apache Spark and Neo4j. Get your free copy now.

Pass this offer along to anyone on your team who would like to explore graph algorithm examples with working code and sample datasets for both Spark and Neo4j. Also included is a chapter on how graph algorithms enhance machine learning accuracy and precision.

Best,  Amy Hodler & Mark Needham, co-authors
@amyhodler & @markhneedham

Get your free copy now

Tools and Techniques of Infrastructure

Infrastructure is important,  the most important thing to really make things happen.  Without it you might be able to trip over some useful, intelligent conclusions,  but they are going to be very hard to find and implement in process.   Here a free book on the topic I am about to review.

Expert Perspectives on Current Tools and Techniques of Infrastructure   From O'Reilly
Infrastructure Now 2018
Get the free ebook

Trends such as virtualization, containers, and serverless computing are causing today’s infrastructure landscape to evolve quickly—and forcing organizations to evolve right along with them. With this report, systems engineers and engineering leaders examine the state of infrastructure and anticipated developments.

Brendan Burns (Microsoft), Camille Fournier (Two Sigma), Nirmal Mehta (Booz Allen Hamilton), Terren Peterson (Capital One), Nick Rockwell (the New York Times Company), and other experts weigh in on the issues that matter now, as well as promising developments just around the corner. Download this incisive report and learn how these trends are shaping the industry.

Learn about advances in infrastructure tools and technology that will likely surface in the next year

Examine the impact of infrastructure abstraction, such as containers and serverless, moving up the stack

Understand how people’s roles will need to change to keep up with evolving infrastructure

Explore the issue of legacy infrastructure, given today’s rapidly changing trends

Delve into infrastructure technology trends that may occur over the next few years  .... "

Free Books on Machine Learning and Data Science

Looks to be another good selection from KDNuggets

Free Books By Matthew Mayo, KDnuggets.

Who likes free books?

Considering the popularity of the previous installments of the "Free Must-Read Books" series, a third edition of quality (free!) books seemed like a good idea. In here you will find a few books on elementary machine learning, a few on general machine topics of interest such as feature engineering and model interpretability, an intro to deep learning, a book on Python programming, a pair of data visualizations entrants, and twin reinforcement learning efforts.

There's nothing left to say but "get reading!".... ' 

Customer Centricity Playbook

Mentioned this book by Peter Fader and Sarah Toms before, awaiting a copy.  Good topic.   Podcast and transcript. Now do we utilize this truth in engaging, marketing, servicing?  See also my previous post on the book.

How to Find Value in Every Customer

Wharton's Peter Fader and Sarah Toms discuss their new book, The Customer Centricity Playbook Customers are not monolithic. There are high-value customers, low-value ones, and plenty who fall in the middle. But they all matter for businesses that want to make the most out of them. That’s the message in a new book by Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader and Sarah Toms, executive director and co-founder of Wharton Interactive. The Customer Centricity Playbook: Implement a Winning Strategy Driven by Customer Lifetime Value is designed to guide businesses to the next level, where success is measured beyond mere dollars. Fader and Toms recently spoke on the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM about the importance of being customer centric.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows: .... '

Risk:Challenging Probability

Kaiser Fung on the Book  ... Risk,    by John Adams  Which has some interesting thoughts about probabilities describing risk.  He begins:

I have been reading the excellent book by John Adams titled Risk (link). This is a geographer's treatment of a subject that is a staple of mathematics, particularly probability math. A mathematical treatment creates objects called probability distributions, which are then taken as complete representations of risk. Adams challenges that construct, bringing a social scientist's sensitivity to the table. In particular, he points out how the mathematics of risk is undermined by measurement issues (i.e. data issues) and statistical issues. He is not invalidating math, just pointing out large cracks that are often ignored.

I will provide a more comprehensive review of the book eventually. I'm very excited by Chapter 5, titled "Measuring Risk", and specifically the example of "traffic black spots". This example is very instructive for anyone who is interested in the practical implications and interpretation of risk measures.

The post got long so I have split it into two parts. The second part will be posted on Monday, and it concerns a delicious bit of analysis related to traffic black spots.   .... " 

Questions to Guide a Digital Transformation

Simple questions, would like to have more process detail to lead some goals, assume its in the book, but a good start.

What questions should guide a digital transformation?   Knowledge@Wharton staff

Presented here for discussion is an excerpt of a current article published with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

A new book from MIT researchers Stephanie Woerner and Peter Weill offers a field-tested framework on how companies can digitally transform, based on a years-long study at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research.

The book, “What’s Your Digital Business Model,” is framed around six questions for companies and business leaders to consider:

What is the digital threat and opportunity?
Which business model is best for your enterprise’s future?
What is your digital competitive advantage?
How will you connect using mobile and IoT?
Do you have the crucial capabilities to reinvent the enterprise?
Do you have the leadership to make the transformation happen?  ... "

Strategy for the Digital World

Developing a Strategy for the Digital World

NEW BOOK: A new book by Sunil Gupta, "Driving Digital Strategy," explores how traditional businesses can make the leap into the digital age.

Digital transformation is certainly a threat to the old guard—just ask cab drivers, newspaper reporters, and coal miners. In 20 years, all commercial truck drivers could be facing the same fate as autonomous vehicles take over the road.

Sunil Gupta’s message in a new book is more positive: Digital “presents an endless number of opportunities for companies from traditional industries,” he writes in Driving Digital Strategy, published last week. But it starts with reimaging what your business is, who your customers are, and how to engage them using digital technology. Gupta is the Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.  ... "