Smart Speakers and secure environments.

Have often had this objection to smart speakers brought. Here a possible solution.

 Less Nosy Smart Speakers

The Michigan Engineer News Center, Gabe Cherry, June 8, 2021

University of Michigan (U-M) researchers have designed a device called PrivacyMic to reduce eavesdropping by smart speakers by notifying household devices of important data without recording speech. PrivacyMic pieces together ambient ultrasonic information that indicate when its services are required. The system compresses these ultrasonic signatures into smaller files that feature key bits of information, while removing noise within the range of human hearing. The researchers showed that PrivacyMic was more than 95% accurate in identifying household and office activities. U-M’s Alanson Sample said, “What we’ve found is that you can have a system that understands what’s going on, and a hard guarantee that it will never record any audible information.”

EU Deciding to Widen the Idea of a Vaccination Wallet

 The EU has decided to widen the notion of a smartphone enabled 'passport' for vaccines to a more general wallet that would hold other kinds of ID credentials. Like drivers licenses, access permissions, diplomas and drug prescriptions.  Would be available to all, but not required.   Could be a very convenient thing, but have privacy implications.  

EU Plans Digital ID Wallet for Post-Pandemic Life  By Associated Press

The European Union (EU) on Thursday announced plans for a post-pandemic smartphone application to enable EU residents to access services across the bloc.

Europeans would be able to store digital credentials such as driver's licenses, prescriptions, and school diplomas through the European Digital Identity Wallet, and access online and offline public/private services while keeping personal data secure.

The European Commission (EC) said the e-wallet would be available to all EU residents, although its use is not mandatory.

Dominant online platforms, however, would have to accept the wallet, in line with the EC's agenda to regulate big technology companies and their control over personal information.

From Associated Press

AI of Autonomous Cars also Useful for Conventional Autos

As you might expect, for example automatic lane holding and parking capabilities are already well known.  My guess to is that such autonomous solutions will be useful in many places.  A good related piece: 

AI of Autonomous Cars Finding Its  Way into Conventional Cars, a Big Crossover   By Lance B. Eliot

 "   .... The thing is, a lot of the autonomous tech will also end up in human-driven cars too. This might seem surprising. Many assume that the tech devised to aid AI-based autonomous driving would solely be used by autonomous driving vehicles. But it turns out that there are numerous handy ways in which the tech derived for self-driving cars can be leveraged for human-driven vehicles.   

Not every piece of tech that goes into a self-driving car is necessarily going to find its way into a human-driven vehicle. Some contraptions will; some will not. The tech that gets crossed over into a human-driven car is bound to have other aspects included, recasting the tech and making it more readily accessible or usable by humans versus when the target “user” being an AI driving system (note that I’ve put the word “user” into quotes since I don’t want to suggest or imply that today’s AI is somehow human-like). 

The overarching question is this: Can the advanced tech devised for self-driving cars be leveraged for use in human-driven cars on a crossover or crisscrossing basis?   

Well, I’ve already tipped my hand and propounded my answer, which is a resounding yes, albeit the seemingly outsized affirmation is tempered with the strident precaution to mindfully undertake any such crossovers.    .... " 

Google Proposes Advanced AI Chip Design

 Google Proposes an advanced AI chip that is itself improved  by AI over time.   Impressive idea. 

 Google used reinforcement learning to design next-gen AI accelerator chips  By Kyle Wiggers, @Kyle_L_Wiggers, June 9, 2021 8:00 AM in VentureBeat

In a preprint paper  published a year ago, scientists at Google Research including Google AI lead Jeff Dean described   an AI-based approach to chip design that could learn from past experience and improve over time, becoming better at generating architectures for unseen components. They claimed it completed designs in under six hours on average, which is significantly faster than the weeks it takes human experts in the loop.

While the work wasn’t entirely novel — it built upon a technique Google engineers proposed in a paper published in March 2020 — it advanced the state of the art in that it implied the placement of on-chip transistors can be largely automated. Now, in a paper published in the journal Nature, the original team of Google researchers claim they’ve fine-tuned the technique to design an upcoming, previously unannounced generation of Google’s tensor processing units (TPU), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) developed specifically to accelerate AI.  ... ' 

National Strategic Computing Reserve

 Good proposal, with strong initial emphasis on security. 

The U.S. Needs a National Strategic Computing Reserve

By Scientific American,  June 9, 2021

Last spring, as the world was coming to grips with the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists started to make rapid progress in understanding the disease. Much of that progress was aided by world-class supercomputers and data systems, and research results advanced with unprecedented efficiency.

Long-term investments in basic research and infrastructure, and the capacity to quickly leverage resources to respond to crisis, underlie the COVID-19 High-Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium that delivered those results.

Now, the leaders behind the HPC are proposing a National Strategic Computing Reserve (NSCR) that will provide funding, human talent, and cyberinfrastructure that investigators can access when future crises—whether an epidemic, record-setting wildfires, or severe storms—emerge.

From Scientific American

View Full SCIAM Article

Voice-assisted AI is Becoming smarter, but Consumers have Higher expectations

I see here is a post by a former school of mine ...   Some reasonable thoughts. 

Voice-assisted AI is becoming smarter, but consumers have higher expectations  by University of Florida

When Huan Chen started researching how consumers think about and perceive artificial intelligence in marketing communications, she was surprised at a major finding: They understand marketing and think it's unavoidable today.

"Marketing companies and organizations will take advantage of new technology," said Chen, and consumers understand that, just like they now have no or low expectations of privacy. "They know these kinds of devices can cache data all the time, (and) if you buy this device, you know you sacrifice your privacy."

Chen, an associate professor in the Department of Advertising, with Telecommunication Professor Sylvia Chan-Olmsted and graduate students Julia Kim and Irene Sanabria, recorded 20 consumers using AI devices and then conducted in-depth interviews to gauge their perspective. Her findings are presented in the paper "Consumers' Perception on Artificial Intelligence Applications in Marketing Communication."

Most people have a general understanding of artificial intelligence used in devices like Amazon's Alexa and Google Home, Chen said. In comparing AI to humans, "they think of AI as smart and intelligent but not as sophisticated or complicated enough. Even though they communicate and interact with AI, they still don't think AI can do complicated or sophisticated tasks. They think human beings still need to do that kind of task."

Some people wish AI devices could master more functions to help them with their daily lives, Chen said. For now, how they are using voice-assisted AI focuses on five aspects:

Function: Consumers understand and appreciate the various functions AI can offer, like "Alexa, play music" or "Find a recipe."

Communication: "Consumers have a love/hate relationship with AI," she said. "They are frustrated, especially if the device couldn't recognize what they are talking about."

Adaptation: How does AI adapt to users during communications and interactions, and vice versa? "The voice-assisted devices using AI have become smarter and smarter to know users better. At the same time, human beings also adjust and change. One man figured out a way to give an order, to talk to Alexa to make that communication more effective. That's a mutual adaptation."

People are cautious about their relationships with AI.

Privacy: Privacy is still an issue, Chen said, but not as much as it once was. Technology may be desensitizing some people, who now think their data is being collected everywhere, all the time. Others "do not think they are so important that people will do something with the data."  ... ' 

EU COVID-19 'Digital Pass' Gateway System Goes Live

Following this aspect of construction, delivery and use of passport systems.

EU COVID-19 'Digital Pass' Gateway System Goes Live      By TechCrunch, June 8, 2021

The gateway system for the EU's "digital pass" for verifying COVID-19 vaccination or test status went live June 1.

The digital pass prevents falsifications using QR codes and digital signatures, which are verified using public key cryptography.

Those without access to a mobile device can receive paper-based certificates.

Seven countries—Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Croatia, and Poland—plan to start issuing and verifying certificates, while other member states will begin doing so ahead of the full launch on July 1.

Twenty-two countries have tested the gateway successfully since May 10.

The European Commission has published reference software and apps for the issuance, storage, and verification of certificates on GitHub, with 12 member-states using the code so far.

From TechCrunch  Full article  

Super Productive 3D Bioprinter Speeding Drug Development

Another example.  Have now heard many such claims regarding drug development. How many are being used effectively? Here is another. 

Super Productive 3D Bioprinter Could Speed Drug Development

UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

June 8, 2021

A three-dimensional (3D) bioprinter developed by researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) that can produce large batches of custom biological tissues at record speed could accelerate drug development. The new bioprinting method can produce a tissue sample in just 10 seconds, compared to hours with traditional methods. The researchers designed 3D models of biological structures on a computer, which slices the models into 2D snapshots and transfers them to millions of microscopic-sized mirrors, which are digitally controlled to project patterns of violet light in the form of these snapshots. After the light patterns are shined onto a solution that solidifies upon exposure to light, the structure is printed a layer at a time in a continuous fashion. UCSD’s Shangting You said, “What we are developing here are complex 3D cell culture systems that will more closely mimic actual human tissues, and that can hopefully improve the success rate of drug development.”  ... '

More on Amazon Sidewalk

This continues to generate controversy, here from CNet and ACM:

Amazon Sidewalk: What to know before sharing your home's bandwidth

By CNet  June 9, 2021

June 8 marked the launch of Amazon Sidewalk, a new feature that promises to keep your home devices better connected, especially around the edges of your property. The gist is that select Amazon Echo smart speakers and Ring gadgets will serve as bridges capable of connecting with other Sidewalk-enabled devices at long range using wireless Bluetooth LE or 900MHz LoRa signals -- plus a small fraction of your home network's bandwidth. By doing so, these products will become part of a sort of mesh network, with your Echo or Ring device acting as a middleman between your router and, say, those smart lights in the backyard that sit right at the edge of Wi-Fi range.

But Sidewalk isn't just for your outdoor lights and other smart home devices: It's for everybody's gadgets. If your neighbor uses a Sidewalk-enabled mailbox sensor that's in range of the Sidewalk bridges in your home, that sensor may very well use your network to connect to the cloud.

Complete article.  I plan to test out some of the capabilities and security promised.

Automating Excel with Python

 Nice idea.  In fact can think of several application examples where we were appending to capabilities of existing spreadsheets.   One a much used, almost historical example.  Could have led to quicker prototypes at least.  Pre-familiarity to the data in the spreadsheets.  Our coders probably would not want to deal with excel, but it still has useful capabilities:

Automate Your Excel Using Python

From manual to an automated approach  By Pranjal Saxena

 Python is an amazing programming language. It is easier to learn and adapt. The error messages in python are self-explainable. We don’t need to invest hours to find the solution to our error message. That’s why I love this programming language.

I think this should be the ideal programming language. A programming language's goal should be to help us build exciting products, not wasting time in solving errors.

Recently, I have learned about automating excel tasks using python. I thought of sharing those amazing tricks with a wider audience. This automating strategy use python programming. The good thing is — each line of python code is self explainable that you don’t need to google anything.

You can use the code editor of your choice. In this article, I will be using the Jupyter Notebook for demonstration purpose.   ..... (details below at the link) 

Podcast: Why Our Judgment is Flawed

 An important idea to understand,  and I think even our quick jump to assume that our judgments are wrong also needs to be better understood.   In ourselves and in our growing number of  machines. 

Daniel Kahneman on Why Our Judgment is Flawed — and What to Do About It (People I (Mostly) Admire Ep. 27)

May 14, 2021 @ 11:00pm

by Steven D. Levitt,  Produced by Morgan Levey

Nobel laureate, best-selling author, and groundbreaking psychologist Daniel Kahneman is also a friend and former business partner of Steve’s. In discussing Danny’s new book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, the two spar over inconsistencies in criminal sentencing and Danny tells Steve that “Your attitude is unusual” — no surprise there.

Listen and follow on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)

Was just pointed out to me, seems a good resource.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) leads the industry in offering cloud security-specific research, education, certification, events and best practices.  ... 

Welcome to the Cloud Security Alliance

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment.  ... "

Google to Add Atlantic Sea Cable

Somewhat surprising with all the attempts to get Satellite based links.  I assume to get more backup connections as we continue to depend more on reliable data. 

Google's new subsea cable handles data surge between US, Brazil, Argentina

The new Firmina fiber optic link will be draped across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and working by 2023.

By Stephen Shankland  ...in CNet

Managing Mental Health

But needs to be carefully studied in various contexts.   Recall some of the various 'therapist' capabilities in early AI that had unexpected results.

Technology to Manage Mental Health at Your Fingertips

Texas A&M Today, Vandana Suresh, May 26, 2021

An electronic platform can read facial cues and vocal patterns, and integrate readings from smartwatch sensors to detect psychological stress, according to Texas A&M University (TAMU) researchers. They developed the monitoring and feedback system with Houston Methodist Hospital collaborators and other researchers in Texas and Hawaii, using smartwatch-collected data to train machine learning algorithms to recognize patterns that correspond with the normal state of arousal. The algorithms can then continuously monitor readings from the sensors and recognition applications to identify the state of hyperarousal, a sign of psychiatric distress. TAMU's Farzan Sasangohar said the technology “will give providers and counselors continuous access to patient variables and patient status, and I think it’s going to have a lifesaving implication because they can reach out to patients when they need it. Plus, it will empower patients to manage their mental health better.”

Big Players Want to Play Semantics for Meaning

 This precisely what we wanted to do, to let our systems understand our meaning of words, rather than just what the meaning they have been assigned by language.  But would that work?  We wanted to assign the meaning that WE had assigned for that assemblage of letters.      Assume this could be one by some preprocessing or postprocessing or meta assignment.  Nevertheless this is still a big step forward  to empower practical use of meaning.    But where is AWS?

Semantics Beats Syntax  By R. Colin Johnson who is a Kyoto Prize Fellow who has worked as a technology journalist for two decades.    In ACM.

IBM, Google, and Microsoft are all poised to release semantic engines (algorithms using the meaning of words) to supplement their current syntax engines (using the spelling of words, such as the search engine BM25). Their common goal is to extend their natural language processing (NLP) capabilities into engines that rival human semantics (our understanding of what language, words/sentences, mean). In line with other contenders, including Amazon, Intel, and Oracle, these semantic engines offer machine-understanding of meaning aimed at enhancing searches, artificial intelligence (AI), human–computer interaction, question answering, and automatic narrative generation (from descriptions/explanations to prose/poetry).

Today's syntax-only engines are blind to the meaning of the keywords used to ascertain results. For example, a human understands that "where Alan Turing was born" means the same thing as "the birthplace of Alan Turing," and "the town where Alan Turing was delivered as a baby." Their syntax is different, having unique keywords "where, born"; "birthplace"; and "town, delivered," respectively. However, each phrase's meaning, or semantics, are identical ("London" is the answer to all three). People understand this immediately, but computers—not so much.

Consequently, all three companies are developing algorithms that understand the meaning of words. Google and Microsoft are both building semantic engines that add metadata to sentences (Google) or words (Microsoft) using clusters of processors running multiple deep neural networks (called transformers, which use massive parallelization).

IBM

For a decade, IBM has been extending NLP to artificial intelligences (AIs)—starting with its Watson (2011), the AI that beat human experts in the television game Jeopardy, and most recently with its Project Debater (2021). During this decade (2014), IBM also developed its Cognos transformer—a metadata-based algorithm for creating engines it calls PowerCubes, which can then be used with its Business Intelligence software. But for its semantic engine, IBM chose instead to augment neural networks with symbolic logic that cuts down the number of examples it requires to learn. Transformers, it discovered when developing Cognos, require larger example sets to learn, according to Forrester Research principal analyst Kjell Carlsson.

"IBM's semantics uses a much more efficient encoding of knowledge, enabling high performing enterprise use-cases to be built with significantly smaller training examples," said Carlsson. "IBM's semantics can also provide explainability of  its conclusions by virtue of symbolic-logic reasoning, governance to block the model from using faulty logic, plus provides fairness that prevents models from learning discriminatory reasoning," said Carlsson.

Transformers, on the other hand, are all neural networks—end-to-end—without meaning instilled by symbolic logic, which also enables easier explanations for why a neural network comes to specific conclusions.

"IBM's neuro-symbolic approach," said Carlsson, "enables higher accuracy with less training data, plus it also enables engineers to 'teach' a model logical-relationships that domain experts know to be true, which is far more efficient than having these relationships be learned by transformers."

In the words of Salim Roukos, an IBM Fellow and the company's Global Leader for Language Research, as well as Chief Technology Officer of the company's Translation Technologies unit, "Large end-to-end neural models require significant amounts of data to perform well in a new domain. IBM is more focused on semantic parsing of human language to enable developers to build text-understanding applications. By leveraging the semantics of human language, very small amounts of data from the application domain are needed to enable understanding."

AI and Machine Learning in Supply Chain Logistics

Am a  long time player in the space.  Here a good overview of general example of work being done in supply chain with AI style approaches.  Not enough detail, but can provoke some usage ideas.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Drive the Future of Supply Chain Logistics

The transportation management industry uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to gain greater process efficiency and performance visibility.

By Paul Beavers, PCS Software   May 16, 2021

Artificial intelligence (AI) is more accessible than ever and is increasingly used to improve business operations and outcomes, not only in transportation and logistics management, but also in diverse fields like finance, healthcare, retail and others. An Oxford Economics and NTT DATA survey of 1,000 business leaders https://us.nttdata.com/en/-/media/nttdataamerica/files/gated-asset/ntt-data-ai-accelerated-report.pdf  conducted in early 2020 reveals that 96% of companies were at least researching AI solutions, and over 70% had either fully implemented or at least piloted the technology.

Nearly half of survey respondents said failure to implement AI would cause them to lose customers, with 44% reporting their company’s bottom line would suffer without it.

Simply put, AI enables companies to parse vast quantities of business data to make well-informed and critical business decisions fast. And, the transportation management industry specifically is using this intelligence and its companion technology, machine learning (ML), to gain greater process efficiency and performance visibility driving impactful changes bolstering the bottom line. ... "

Scoping from Big Data to Big Knowledge

 This was brought to my attention by the 'Window Weekly Podcast' this week, in part because it dealt with conversations we had with Linkedin before they were acquired by Microsoft.   This did not lead anywhere, but touched on many aspects of how to handle corporate knowledge effectively.  See also the similarity to another system, called Zakta, which we called  a 'Collaborative Search Engine'.  See Zakta.com   Which uses classifications of kinds of knowledge.   Which we tested early on.  Worth a look.  

Project Alexandria is a research project within Microsoft Research Cambridge dedicated to discovering entities, or topics of information, and their associated properties from unstructured documents. This research lab has studied knowledge mining research for over a decade, using the probabilistic programming framework Infer.NET. Project Alexandria was established seven years ago to build on Infer.NET and retrieve facts, schemas, and entities from unstructured data sources while adhering to Microsoft’s robust privacy standards. The goal of the project is to construct a full knowledge base from a set of documents, entirely automatically.

The Alexandria research team is uniquely positioned to make direct contributions to new Microsoft products. Alexandria technology plays a central role in the recently announced Microsoft Viva Topics, an AI product that automatically organizes large amounts of content and expertise, making it easier for people to find information and act on it. Specifically, the Alexandria team is responsible for identifying topics and rich metadata, and combining other innovative Microsoft knowledge mining technologies to enhance the end user experience. ... '

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/alexandria-in-microsoft-viva-topics-from-big-data-to-big-knowledge/   Originally in MS Research.   ... ' 

Demonstrating Quantum Advantage

Some description of how quantum computing can improve the performance of algorithms using sensors and classical methods. Here a short intro, much more at the link.

Engineers Demonstrate Quantum Advantage

University of Arizona News, Emily Dieckman, June 1, 2021

Engineers at the University of Arizona (UArizona) demonstrated an advantage of quantum computing over classical computing by combining classical and quantum approaches. The engineers utilized three entanglement-equipped sensors to classify the average amplitude and angle of radio frequency signals. Entanglement let the sensors share information with each other, enhancing their sensitivity while reducing error, and enabling them to assess global properties rather than collect data only about specific system elements. UArizona's Zheshen Zhang said, "A lot of algorithms consider data stored on a computer disk, and then convert that into a quantum system, which takes time and effort. Our system works on a different problem by evaluating physical processes that are happening in real time." ... ' 

Technical Paper.

Programmable Fibers for Textiles

Realization of a fabric with the ability to store and process data digitally ... 

Engineers Create a Programmable Fiber

MIT News, Becky Ham, June 3, 2021

The first programmable digital fiber has been designed by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, and the Rhode Island School of Design. The researchers deposited silicon microscale digital chips into a preform that was used to fabricate a polymer fiber, which could support continuous electrical connection between the chips across tens of meters. The fiber also incorporates a neural network of 1,650 links within its memory. When sewed into a shirt, the fiber collected 270 minutes of surface body temperature data from the wearer, and when trained on this data could determine the wearer's current activity with 96% accuracy. MIT's Yoel Fink said, "This work presents the first realization of a fabric with the ability to store and process data digitally, adding a new information content dimension to textiles and allowing fabrics to be programmed literally."

China Bid for Chip Supremacy

Nice overview of the current  state of silicon chip development and manufacture worldwide. Emphasizing companies currently involved and current moves likely.   Implications for the delivery of advanced technologies worldwide.  The influence of the complexities of supply chains and the recent pandemic. 

Business Bloomberg Quicktake

Inside China's Accelerating Bid for Chip Supremacy

Right now the world is dependent on Taiwan for silicon semiconductors called chips, which give devices like iPhones their functionality. This reliance has the U.S. and China both racing for technological independence. (Video by Robin Fall) (Source: Bloomberg)

June 3, 2021 

Enzymes Embedded in Plastics

Based on a conversation I have had, this is a considerable breakthrough with broad application.

Enzymes successfully embedded in plastics

Research News / June 01, 2021  Fraunhofer Institute

In general, plastics are processed at way over a hundred degrees Celsius. Enzymes, by contrast, cannot usually withstand these high temperatures. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP have managed to reconcile these contradictions: They are able to embed enzymes in plastics without the enzymes losing their activity in the process. The potentials this creates are enormous.

Materials that clean themselves, have anti-mold surfaces or are even self-degrading are just a few examples of what will be possible if we manage to embed active enzymes into plastics. But for the enzyme-specific properties to be transferred to the materials, the enzymes must not suffer damage as they are embedded in the plastic. Scientists at Fraunhofer IAP have developed a solution to the problem as part of the “Biofunctionalization/Biologization of Polymer Materials BioPol” project. Since summer 2018, the project has been running in cooperation with BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. The Ministry of Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg is funding the project.

“It was clear from the outset that we were not looking to produce biofunctionalized plastics on a laboratory scale. We wanted to take a giant step to show that technical production is possible,” says Dr. Ruben R. Rosencrantz, Head of the “Biofunctionalized Materials and (Glyco)Biotechnology” department at Fraunhofer IAP, summarizing the ambitious project goals. At around the midpoint in the project, major breakthroughs are already emerging: Enzymes have been successfully embedded, both in terms of the enzymes themselves and the processing technique.  ..." 

Robot Therapy

Seems stretched, but the name especially is cute, reminds me of some similar approaches demonstrated to us in Japan.

Something Bothering You? Tell It to Woebot.

The New York Times, Karen Brown, June 1, 2021

A chatbot application offered by Woebot Health uses the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to counsel patients via natural language processing and learned responses. Many mental health experts think CBT's structure and focus on fostering skills to change negative behaviors lends itself to algorithmic deployment to some extent. The Woebot app can emulate conversation, recall past sessions, and provide advice on sleep, anxiety, and stress. Woebot Health founder Alison Darcy said a well-designed bot can bond with users in an empathetic and therapeutic manner. Although Woebot does not approach actual therapy, the company is pursuing U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance to extend the app to help treat postpartum and adolescent depression.  ... " 

Vinton Cerf Discusses CMEs

Vint Cerf Discusses a number of environmental dangers to the earth.   And in particular Coronal Mass Ejections (CME).   I recall that when our enterprise was thinking of using the internet for  transfer of data the potential dangers of CME was brought up.   And because of my background in astronomy I was asked for an opinion and researched it.  Even talked to a local electricity provider, who had barely heard of it.  It is one of those very real, but very rare extra-terrestrial events we should at least consider thinking about.  Been following it since then.  Cerf provides a good overview, intro below, more at the link.  

It Came From Outer Space!  By Vinton G. Cerf

Communications of the ACM, June 2021, Vol. 64 No. 6, Page 7  10.1145/3462461

 "   ... But there is another, less predictable but potentially equally devastating threat to our modern dependence on electricity. It goes by the name of coronal mass ejection (CME) and occurs sporadically as the sun burns its hydrogen into helium and heavier elements. A CME consists mostly of masses of ionized protons in a plasma that are ejected at high speed from the sun's corona and propagated outward by the solar wind. These ionized ejections create power magnetic fields, which themselves can induce large currents in electrical conductors. One of the best documented CMEs occurred on Sept. 1, 1859 and is known as the Carrington Event after the English astronomer, R.C. Carrington who, along with R. Hodgson, observed and reported the event. Telegraph equipment and wires were overheated and damaged over a wide area. Not all CMEs threaten the Earth; they must intercept Earth in its orbit to do damage. 

There have been subsequent events in 1921 and 1989, but of lower intensity and causing less damage than the 1859 event. We are, however, far more deeply dependent on electricity and its transport than ever in human history. In the parts of the planet that are most heavily electrified, we find increased dependence on electrical equipment, especially including computing and communications. Along with an enormous number of devices dependent on electricity, our communication systems, including satellites, ground radio transceivers, and optical fiber systems are at risk. Subsea optical fibers are especially vulnerable. The CME does not affect the optical fiber but could severely damage the electrically powered repeaters needed to reinforce optical signals for long haul cables.  ..."   (more) 

Gamification for Productivity

 Current re-look at gamification.   We did a brief trial of using gamification for crowd sourced problem solving.   Not productivity, but for potential originality in solutions.  No pressure to participate.  You did have to have some background knowledge to be invited.   

Are we having fun (at work) yet?  in Strategy-Business

Games or contests meant to inject some motivation and productivity into the workday can backfire if employees feel pressured to take part.

Anybody who’s endured a tense Scrabble night with their family or been picked last for the team at school knows that “friendly” competition isn’t always fun and games. What might seem like endless amusement to some can be a source of anxiety to others. Nevertheless, in an effort to boost performance, lighten the mood, or relieve the tedious nature of repetitive work, many managers are introducing game-playing to the workplace, typically in the form of app-based competitions.

by Angela Lester and Claudia Montgomery

This so-called gamification of work has caught on in several fields, including retail, banking, and human resources. It’s been hailed as a way to keep employees more engaged and focused (especially those in younger generations who grew up playing video games). The appeal is obvious: Research shows that job satisfaction is the key to employee happiness and engagement, and engaged workers tend to be dynamic, supportive, and committed at work. Engaged employees also deliver higher-quality customer service and are less likely to quit, which cuts down on organizational turnover costs  ... '

Typing at Brain Speed

 Most interesting advance.   How far will will we get with brain interfaces?  Why should we be typing at all? 

Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed   By IEEE Spectrum June 3, 2021 

Two tiny arrays of implanted electrodes relayed information from the brain area that controls the hands and arms to an algorithm, which translated it into letters that appeared on a screen.

Successful BCI typing-by-brain approaches typically involve a person imagining moving a cursor around a digital keyboard to select letters.

The ancient art of handwriting has just pushed the field of brain-computer interface (BCI) to the next level. Researchers have devised a system that allows a person to communicate directly with a computer from his brain by imagining creating handwritten messages. The approach enables communication at a rate more than twice as fast as previous typing-by-brain experiments. 

Researchers at Stanford University performed the study on a 65-year-old man with a spinal cord injury who had had an electrode array implanted in his brain. The scientists described the experiment recently in the journal Nature. 

"The big news from this paper is the very high speed," says Cynthia Chestek, a biomedical engineer at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study. "It's at least half way to able-bodied typing speed, and that's why this paper is in Nature."

From IEEE Spectrum  ... 

Amazon and their Sidewalk Experiment

Is this a crowdsourced experiment?  Are we being forced to participate?   A true value to consumers? Dangerous or not?  Amazon provides their considerable technical white paper on it, part of it below, and Arstechnica's too.  Some people are irked by the fact that the default settings for Amazon settings will turn it on.  Amazon's view appears to be that they need to have enough participants to make the test work.  Are we all ready?   Looking forward to learning more. 

Amazon Sidewalk Privacy and Security Whitepaper

Introduction

Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network designed to help customer devices work better, both at home and beyond the front door. Operated by Amazon—with no charge to customers—Sidewalk helps simplify new device setup, extends the working range of low-bandwidth devices, and helps devices stay online, even if they are outside the range of the user’s home wifi.

Customers with a Sidewalk gateway are able to contribute a small portion of their internet bandwidth, which is pooled together to create a network that benefits all Sidewalk-enabled devices in a community. This can include experiences ranging from finding pets or valuables that may be lost and improving reliability for devices like leak sensors or smart lighting, to diagnostics for appliances and power tools. For example, smart lighting at the edge of a user’s property, or a garage door lock in a poor coverage zone, can receive connectivity support from a participating neighbor’s gateway and continue to operate if the device falls offline for a period of time. Similarly, a pet-finder device can leverage Amazon Sidewalk to locate a dog that has left the yard and is out of reach of the user’s personal network. Amazon caps the amount of bandwidth shared to reduce the chances of any degradation in a customer’s home network performance1. Participation in the neighborhood network is optional for all customers.

A simple control is provided to enable and disable participation in the neighborhood network. When customers first turn on a new Sidewalk gateway device, they will be asked whether they want to join the network. For customers with existing devices that are Sidewalk capable, an over-the-air (OTA) update will connect them to the network—no action is needed. These customers will first receive an email about the pending update and instructions for how to disable, if that is their choice.

As a crowdsourced, community benefit, Amazon Sidewalk is only as powerful as the trust our customers place in us to safeguard customer data. To that end, this document outlines the steps we have taken to secure the network and maintain customer privacy. These efforts are core to our mission and will continue to evolve and improve over time.

1 The maximum bandwidth of a Sidewalk Bridge to the Sidewalk server is 80Kbps, which is about 1/40th of the bandwidth used to stream a typical high definition video. Today, total monthly data used by Sidewalk enabled-devices, per customer, is capped at 500MB, which is equivalent to streaming about 10 minutes of high definition video.   ... '   ( more at the link above) ) 

-----------------

Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors

Amazon's experimental wireless mesh networking turns users into guinea pigs.

By Dan Goodin- 5/29/2021, 3:10 PM  in ArsTechnica   .... 

Simpler Attacks Occuring on Operatonal Technology

We need more and effective protection.

Cyberattacks on operational technology are on the rise  in ZDnet

Common techniques are setting a low bar for attacks on control processes. Sometimes, attackers have no idea what the system is used for.

By Charlie Osborne for Zero Day | May 25, 2021 -- 14:00 GMT (07:00 PDT) Attacks on control processes, such as systems in industrial settings, are on the rise with common and unsophisticated methods being employed to compromise them. 

On Tuesday, FireEye's Mandiant cyberforensics team released a report exploring attack rates on control processes, particularly those supported by operational technology (OT). 

While control process attacks may have once been viewed as complex due to access requirements, the need for malware designed to compromise proprietary industrial technologies, or the task itself of disrupting a control process to create a predictable effect, vulnerable, internet-facing OT endpoints are now offering a wider attack surface.  ... " 

Robots Smiling Back

Not sure how much this buys you, but it makes sense where creating a android-like image to have emotion matching to group or task. We experimented only slightly with this in brand equity systems,  mostly keeping the image smiling.   It was suggested that we might include a quizzical or neutral face to indicate a more neutral position, but that was never integrated.

The Robot Smiled Back   By Columbia Engineering

Columbia Engineering researchers have spent five years developing an autonomous robot with a face that mimics the expressions of nearby humans.

Development of the EVA robot began with the construction of its physical mechanisms, engineered as a disembodied bust with a blue-colored face that can express basic, as well as subtler, emotions via artificial muscles.

The researchers used three-dimensional printing to manufacture complex components that could fit into EVA's human-sized skull without losing functionality. EVA employs deep learning artificial intelligence to "read," then imitate, expressions on nearby human faces, and learned to mimic faces by watching videos of itself.

The robot eventually became capable of reading human facial gestures from a camera, and of responding by mirroring those facial expressions.  .. "

EU Post Pandemic Wallets

Wondering how far this will go, likely as good as the number of times it is asked for.  I note its use is not mandatory. 

EU Plans Digital ID Wallet for Post-Pandemic Life  By Associated Press, June 4, 2021

European Commissioner for Europe fit for the Digital Age,  Margrethe Vestager, speaking during a media conference at EU headquarters this week.

The European Union (EU) on Thursday announced plans for a post-pandemic smartphone application to enable EU residents to access services across the bloc.   Europeans would be able to store digital credentials such as driver's licenses, prescriptions, and school diplomas through the European Digital Identity Wallet, and access online and offline public/private services while keeping personal data secure.

The European Commission (EC) said the e-wallet would be available to all EU residents, although its use is not mandatory.  Dominant online platforms, however, would have to accept the wallet, in line with the EC's agenda to regulate big technology companies and their control over personal information.

From Associated Press

Emergence of Central Bank Digital Currencies

 As usual, an interesting piece from Irving's Blog (Below an intro, details and much more at the link) 

The Emergence of Central Bank Digital Currencies   By Irving Wladawsky   by IWB

Economist Digital Money V1Bitcoin was created in October of 2008 with the release of Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, the original design paper which also introduced the blockchain architecture. A decade later, The Economist published a detailed evaluation of Bitcoin which succinctly concluded that “Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are useless.”

“Bitcoin, the first and still the most popular cryptocurrency, began life as a techno-anarchist project to create an online version of cash, a way for people to transact without the possibility of interference from malicious governments or banks,” it further argued. “A decade on, it is barely used for its intended purpose. Users must wrestle with complicated software and give up all the consumer protections they are used to. Few vendors accept it. Security is poor. Other cryptocurrencies are used even less.”

But last month, the May 8 issue of The Economist reached a very different conclusion in its assessment of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), - i.e., e-dollars, e-yuans, or e-euros, - which it called “The digital currencies that matter.”

“Bitcoin has gone from being an obsession of anarchists to a $1trn asset class that many fund managers insist belongs in any balanced portfolio. … Yet, as our special report explains, the least noticed disruption on the frontier between technology and finance may end up as the most revolutionary: the creation of government digital currencies, which typically aim to let people deposit funds directly with a central bank, bypassing conventional lenders. These govcoins are a new incarnation of money. They promise to make finance work better but also to shift power from individuals to the state, alter geopolitics and change how capital is allocated. They are to be treated with optimism, and humility.”

Let me summarize a few of the special report’s key points.

Over 50 governments are exploring digital currencies. In October 2020, the Central Bank of The Bahamas issued the digital Sand Dollar, the first nationwide deployed CBDC. The Sand Dollar has the same value and consumer protections as the traditional Bahamian dollar, to which it can be instantly converted. The Bahamas also introduced the Sand Dollar prepaid card in collaboration with Mastercard, which can be used to pay for goods and services anywhere Mastercard is accepted.

China has a major e-yuan pilot underway. Over 500,000 individuals received 200 yuan ($30) from the government, which they can use to pay for goods and services using an e-yuan digital wallet offered by six commercial banks. Legally, e-yuans are as real as traditional hard cash. A few weeks ago, the US Digital Dollar Project announced that it will launch at least five programs over the next 12 months to explore the uses and designs of a US e-dollar. The European Central Bank has been developing the concept of the digital euro by conducting practical experiments and engaging with stakeholders and the broader public. And in April, the Bank of England announced the creation of a taskforce to coordinate the exploration of a potential UK CBDC. ... " 

Thinking Federated AI

Good general idea,  further detailed at the link.

Changing How Data is Used  By Samuel Greengard,  Commissioned by CACM Staff, June 1, 2021

The ability to examine data in deep and revealing ways has fundamentally changed the world. Yet, despite enormous advances in analytics and machine learning, researchers, businesses, and governments remain hamstrung by a basic but nagging problem: a lot of data is sensitive and sharing it presents security and privacy risks.

Although numerous technologies, such as data tokenization, k-anonymity, homomorphic encryption and Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) have helped tame the beast, they do not address the fundamental problem that sensitive data is crossing undesired boundaries. Consequently, many organizations hesitate to share data that could yield remarkable insights. The problem is especially acute when organizations have trade secrets, customer data, or personally identifiable information (PII) embedded in data.

An emerging framework called Federated AI (artificial intelligence) Learning could change all of this, while ushering in broader changes in the way data is used, and owned. The technology has major repercussions for machine learning, security, and privacy. "It represents the future of secure machine learning," says Eliano Marques, vice president of data and AI at data security firm Protegrity.

Rethinking the Model

Federated AI takes the conventional idea of machine learning and turns it on its head. Instead of multiple groups sending data to a central cloud where the machine learning takes place, the algorithm travels to the computing device. All training is performed on the client or device, and when the algorithm determines that it is finished, it exits the device, taking the results with it. "There is no data sharing," says Jigar Mody, head of AI services at Oracle.  ... ' 

IOT Security from CyLab

Looks to be a good effort underway.   In general IOT devices have high levels of security danger, because they are minimally protected to begin with, are often placed in networks where they are open to external threats, and in practice are rarely patched against newly discovered danger.   There is also a tendency for consumer IOT to be cheaply coded and developed, with inadequate testing for security.  All this driven by their cost being needed to sell in the consumer market.

CyLab's IoT Security, Privacy Label Effectively Conveys Risk

Carnegie Mellon University CyLab Security and Privacy Institute

By Daniel Tkacik, May 26, 2021

Researchers found that Carnegie Mellon University CyLab's prototype security and privacy label adequately conveys the risks associated with the use of Internet-connected devices. Their study involved 1,371 participants who were given a randomly assigned scenario about buying a smart device, and asked whether information on the label would change their risk perception and their willingness to purchase. The label detailed a device's privacy and security practices, like the purpose of data collection and with whom data is shared. Most of the attributes on the label resulted in accurate risk perceptions, although the study found some misconceptions. Researcher Pardis Emami-Naeini said, "Our findings suggest that manufacturers need to provide consumers with justifications as to why patching may be necessary, why it takes them a specific amount of time to patch a vulnerability, and why it might not be practical to patch vulnerabilities faster."

Free Will an Illusion?

No I don't think so, but we should also consider the alternative.    Free will drives action towards goals, and we should expect that of people and systems.   'Free' should still mean carefully regulated, if we hope to remain in control.  Interesting discussion follows.

The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right?

by Oliver Burkeman   ... '    in The Guardian.

IBM and UK Research Quantum

 Many big players are inventing in quantum.  Watch it.   And the implications for things like optimization, crypto and analytics in general.   

IBM partners with U.K. on $300M quantum computing research initiative  in VentureBeat

Damon Poeter, June 4, 2021 3:20 PM

The U.K. government and IBM this week announced a five-year £210 million ($297.5 million) artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing collaboration, in the hopes of making new discoveries and developing sustainable technologies in fields ranging from life sciences to manufacturing.

The program will hire 60 scientists, as well as bringing in interns and students to work under the auspices of IBM Research and the U.K.’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) at the Hartree Centre in Daresbury, Cheshire. The newly formed Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) will “apply AI, high performance computing (HPC) and data analytics, quantum computing, and cloud technologies” to advance research in areas like materials development and environmental sustainability, IBM said in a statement.  ... " 

FBI Classifies Ransomware

I mentioned the FBI recently, that given all all the resources we provide them, they should be able to 'solve', or at least make far less dangerous the curse of Ransomware.  I see that they now classified RW into about 100 types. See below.   Not sure that is very productive.   Often you can tell progress that people are making by looking at the kinds of classifications they produce.  So ...  ?

FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Wall Street Journal that the agency is investigating about 100 different types of ransomware, many of which trace back to actors in Russia.  in Reuters

In the interview published on Friday, Wray singled out Russia as harboring many of the known users of ransomware.

Each of the 100 different malicious software variants are responsible for multiple ransomware attacks in the United States, Wray told the newspaper.  ... "

Security and Human Behavior

 Currently much more involved in security issues of late.  I see that Bruce Schneier is blogging and talking about the Security and Human Behavior conference in Cambridge, much more about it below, , with many more links.  I like the title of the conference, it is mostly all about human behavior. 

Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2021

Today is the second day of the fourteenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior. The University of Cambridge is the host, but we’re all on Zoom.

SHB is a small, annual, invitational workshop of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Alessandro Acquisti, Ross Anderson, and myself. The forty or so attendees include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, criminologists, neuroscientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, business school professors, and a smattering of others. It’s not just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are individually interdisciplinary.  ... " 

End of Silicon Valley as We Know it?

Just Saw Tim O'Reilly's column from March.   Provocative thoughts.  Good read.   Been a person who dove into the valley in the 90s, working with the Institute for the Future and others. See my IFTF tags for the time.   Also with Stanford in the area of AI.   With big companies there, like IBM, HP, Cisco, MSFT and Intel.  Later we had representatives stationed there.  And with the half dozen AI startups there at the time. They had very impressive buildings.  Even invested in a few of them.  It has changed a lot,  and will again.  Will change, may morph to something very different, but the power of innovation will survive. 

The End of Silicon Valley as We Know It?   Radar / Radar Column  

Four ways the party may be coming to an end

By Tim O’Reilly, March 11, 2021

Learn faster. Dig deeper. See farther.

High-profile entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, venture capitalists like Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, and big companies like Oracle and HP Enterprise are all leaving California. During COVID-19, Zoom-enabled tech workers have discovered the benefits of remote work from cheaper, less congested communities elsewhere. Is this the end of Silicon Valley as we know it? Perhaps. But other challenges to Silicon Valley’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora.

Understanding four trends that may shape the future of Silicon Valley is also a road map to some of the biggest technology-enabled opportunities of the next decades:

Consumer internet entrepreneurs lack many of the skills needed for the life sciences revolution.

Internet regulation is upon us.

Climate response is capital intensive, and inherently local.

The end of the betting economy.

Inventing the future

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it,” Alan Kay once said. 2020 proved him both right and wrong. The coronavirus pandemic, or something worse, had long been predicted, but it still caught the world unprepared, a better future not yet invented. Climate change too has been on the radar, not just for decades but for over a century, since Arrhenius’s 1896 paper on the greenhouse effect. And it has long been known that inequality and caste are corrosive to social stability and predict the fate of nations. Yet again and again the crisis finds us unprepared when it comes.

In each case, though, the long-predicted future is still not foreordained. It is up to us whether we are steamrollered by events beyond our control or whether we have the collective power to invent a better future. Awakening may have come later than we might have wished, but crises like the pandemic and climate change can still be massive drivers of innovation. If entrepreneurs, investors, and governments step up to solve the hard problems that we face today, the future remains bright. But one thing is certain: the inventions we most urgently need will take us in a very different direction than the consumer internet and social media revolution that is coming to an unsightly end.

The coronavirus is a case in point. The explosion of biomedical invention that it has accelerated may well have impacts that extend well beyond the pandemic itself. mRNA vaccines have given us a promising path to COVID immunity, developed in record time. Moderna’s vaccine was created within only two days after Chinese scientist Yong-Zhen Zhang released the genetic sequence of the virus! And mRNA vaccines are also easily tweaked, raising the possibility of even quicker response to mutations, and even the creation of a framework for rapid development of many more vaccines. We are starting to see the payoff of radically new approaches to biomedical innovation, and in particular, the way that machine learning is turbocharging research. During 2020, more than 21,000 biomedical research papers made reference to AI and machine learning. .... '

IKEA Digital Trasformation

 A long time follower of IKEA, both as a customer, and briefly interacting during our building innovation centers.  Most notably in their use of VR approaches to deign consumer uses of IKEA furnishing design.  Like to see more about what they are doing digitally, had been impressed by past work.  Note mention of pandemic closure of stores in pandemic, which I was not aware of..

Inside IKEA’s Digital Transformation  by Thomas Stackpole

Summary.   How does going digital change a legacy retail brand? According to Barbara Martin Coppola, CDO at IKEA Retail, it’s a challenge of remaining fundamentally the same company while doing almost everything differently. In this Q&A, Martin Coppola talks about how...more

What does it mean for one of the world’s most recognizable retail brands to go digital? For almost 80 years, IKEA has been in the very analogue business of selling its distinct brand of home goods to people. Three years ago, IKEA Retail (Ingka Group) hired Barbara Martin Coppola — a veteran of Google, Samsung, and Texas Instruments — to guide the company through a digital transformation and help it enter the next era of its history. HBR spoke with Martin Coppola about the particular challenge of transformation at a legacy company, how to sustain your culture when you’re changing almost everything, and how her 20 years in the tech industry prepared her for this task.

How is the digital transformation at IKEA changing how the company actually operates in the day-to-day?

In practical terms, we’ve approximately tripled ecommerce levels in three years. We have transformed our stores to also act as fulfilment centers. To make that work, the flow of goods needed to change, the supply mechanisms needed to change, and also the floorplans of the store needed to change. Ecommerce is open 24 hours a day, while traditional stores are not, which means we’ve needed to learn how to operate at two speeds, while operating from one space. Goods can be delivered from the stores, or from different distribution centers — and algorithms are helping figure out where the goods are being sourced from. We’re rapidly expanding data and analytics and changing how they’re embedded in decision making.

With the pandemic and with the closure of approximately 75% of our stores, we ramped-up and accelerated even more as people turned online and towards digital solutions. Things that would normally take years or months were carried out within days and weeks.

The digital transformation is not a goal in and of itself, and it is so much more than technology. We are transforming our business: We are exploring potential new offers to customers, new ways to bring our offers to customers, and new ways to operate our business. And in order to be successful, digital needs to be embedded in every aspect of IKEA. Digital is a way of working, making decisions, and managing the company .... '

Directional Smells, Virtual Odors, Stereo Smell

In our innovation enters we tried to enhance smell,  but not usually directionally.  It was expected that the people would determine changes in smell by their own motion.   Might be useful for example in detecting gas leaks in disaster relief operations.  Really a quite interesting change in how aroma sense might be redefined.   But is that useful? 

Digital Nose Stimulation Enables Smelling in Stereo

IEEE Spectrum, Evan Ackerman, May 13, 2021  via ACM

Researchers at the University of Chicago (UChicago) have developed a wireless, nose-worn device that can enable directional smell using tiny electrical impulses. The battery-powered hardware has magnets to keep itself attached to the inside of the nose; it can detect inhalation, and employs electrodes to stimulate the septum and trigger the trigeminal nerve. The model, which connects with external sensors, works well enough that completely untrained people can use it to localize electrically-triggered virtual odors. UChicago's Jas Brooks said, "The sensation our device produces can feel like a 'tickling' or 'sting,' not far from that of wasabi or the smell of white vinegar, except it is clearly directional." The stimulator could be used as an assistive device for people suffering loss of olfactory function.  .. "

A Camera that Knows Where it is

Think of a camera as a means of adding information to a database about space.

Bristol Researchers' Camera Knows Exactly Where It Is

University of Bristol News (U.K.)

A camera developed by researchers at the U.K.'s University of Bristol can construct a pictorial map to ascertain its current location. The camera employs a processing-on-sensor Pixel Processor Array (PPA) that can recognize objects at thousands of frames per second, to generate and use maps at the time of image capture, in conjunction with an on-board mapping algorithm. When presented with a new image, the algorithm determines whether it is sufficiently different to previously observed images, and stores or discards data based on that assessment. As the PPA device is moved around by a person or robot, for example, it compiles a visual catalog of views that can be used to match any new image in localization mode. The PPA does not send out images, which boosts the system's energy efficiency and privacy. ... ' 

Will Amazon sell Marijuana?

Is this imminent?  Certainly there will be negative publicity,  regardless if it is fully legalized by congress.  More generally cannabis?     Is Amazon the likely the supplier that would be most likely retailer to take on such negative wind?  Today they are already selling most anything that is legal.  They are already taking on selling strongly regulated goods like pharma.  Is this different?   Implications and possible boycotts?  More retailer expert comment below. 

Will Amazon become the Amazon of weed if Congress legalizes it?,   Jun 03, 2021,   by George Anderson in Retailwire

Amazon.com stated earlier this week that it supports the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (MORE Act), proposed legislation that would make the sale and consumption of cannabis products legal across the country. The House of Representatives passed the MORE Act last year but it went nowhere in the Senate where it did not have the requisite 60 votes to pass.

Amazon’s statement included a change in personnel policy that would end the pre-employment testing for the drug for certain positions. The company has decided that it will treat cannabis in the same manner it does alcohol when it comes to its testing procedures.

While the news is significant based on the retailing and technology giant’s economic clout and its role as an employer, it may be causing ripples within the cannabis industry for other reasons.  ... "

AWS Location Services

Notified of this capability.

AWS announces general availability of Amazon Location Services

By Sage Lazzaro   @SageLazzaro  in Venturebeat

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the general availability of Amazon Location Service, a new offering that makes it easier for enterprises to add location functionality to their applications.

With the service, Amazon says customers can integrate location functionalities in a simpler, more cost-effective way, without compromising on user privacy or security. The data, from location-based service (LBS) providers Esri and HERE Technologies, can provide maps, points of interest, route planning, geocoding, geofencing, and asset tracking.

The news comes just days after the company announced the general availability of Redshift ML, which lets customers use SQL to query and combine structured and semi-structured data across data warehouses, operational databases, and data lakes  ... " 

Vineyard Smartphone Yield Calculation

 I know some people in viticulture,   In place/field analysis has its benefits.

Cheap, User-Friendly Smartphone App Predicts Vineyard Yields

Cornell Chronicle, Krishna Ramanujan, May 17, 2021

Cornell University engineers and plant scientists have developed an inexpensive machine learning application to predict vineyard yields earlier in the season and with greater accuracy than costlier manual counting techniques. Growers can use a smartphone to record video of their grapevines, then upload the footage to a server to process; the system uses computer vision to improve yield estimates. Cornell's Kirstin Petersen said, "Compared to the technology, a farmer would have to manually count 70% of their vineyard to gain the same level of confidence in their yield prediction, and no one would do that." As a result, Petersen said, “This could be a real game-changer for small and medium-sized farms in the Northeast.”

Intel's AI Builders Program

Further and detailed look at Intel's effort here.  Clear connections to advanced chip plans.   Had previously seen some of their work that related to retail marketing, but this takes it much broader in application.  Driving towards an AI ecosystem.  Definitely worth a look.  

Intel® AI Builders Program

Accelerating AI ecosystem innovation with Intel® architecture

Fostering the next generation of AI

The Intel® AI Builders program is an enterprise ecosystem of industry leading independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators (SIs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and enterprise end users who have a shared mission to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence across Intel platforms. The Intel® AI portfolio includes hardware and software solutions that span use cases and edge-to-cloud implementations. Members gain valuable access to technical enablement resources, co-marketing opportunities and are considered for match-making and Intel Capital investment to help drive adoption of AI solutions in the enterprise.

Watch this short video to learn more about the AI Builders program.

Learn more about the new 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable platform.  ... "

AppTech Partners with Intel for AI Enabled Speech

A new partnership emerges.  In Cision PRNewswire

AppTek Partners with Intel to Foster the Development of Next Generation AI-Enabled Speech and Language Technologies

MCLEAN, Va., June 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AppTek, a leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Neural Machine Translation (NMT), Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Natural Language Processing / Understanding (NLP/U) technologies, announced a partnership with Intel to accelerate and enhance performance benchmarks for the company's award-winning AI-enabled ASR and NMT technologies as part of the Intel AI Builders program. Intel's AI Builders is an  ... 

ACM Book of Interest: Event Mining

Brought to my attention via ACM for possible application. 

EVENT MINING: CONCEPTS AND TECHNIQUES

By: Laleh Jalali,  Ramesh Jain -   May 2021

DOI: 10.1145/3462257

ISBN: 978-1-4503-8482-7

Table of Contents   https://doi.org/10.1145/3462257  

Publisher: morganclaypoolpublishers.com

http://www.morganclaypoolpublishers.com/catalog_Orig/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=1635

This book introduces the concept of Event Mining for building explanatory models from analyses of correlated data. Such a model may be used as the basis for predictions and corrective actions. The idea is to create, via an iterative process, a model that explains causal relationships in the form of structural and temporal patterns in the data. The first phase is the data-driven process of hypothesis formation, requiring the analysis of large amounts of data to find strong candidate hypotheses. The second phase is hypothesis testing, wherein a domain expert’s knowledge and judgment is used to test and modify the candidate hypotheses.

The book will be useful for both practitioners and researchers working in different computer science fields. Data miners/scientists and data analysts can benefit from high-performance event mining techniques introduced in this book. Also, The book is accessible to many readers and not necessarily just those with strong backgrounds in computer science. Public health professionals, epidemiologists, physicians, and social scientists can benefit from the new perspective of this book in harnessing the value of heterogeneous big data for building diverse real-life applications. ... ' 

Examining End-to-End Encryption

Good piece, especially interesting the drawbacks of general end to end encryption are less obvious. 

End-to-End Encryption: Important Pros and Cons   by Shelby Hiter  in  CIOInsight

 According to the 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report by Ponemon Institute and IBM Security, data breaches are costing enterprises $3.86 million on average, and they’re taking an average of 280 days to discover the problem. Clearly, hackers can and already do easily identify and access both corporate and personal information when files are transmitted from device to device unless certain cybersecurity measures are put into place. End-to-end encryption is the easiest solution for protecting this data so it doesn’t get into the wrong hands.

End-to-end encryption is the practice of encrypting data and information as it passes from device to device. The sending and receiving devices can see the original contents, but no other interceptors have the correct keys to decrypt the message. This approach to cybersecurity offers many benefits to companies and users that implement the protection, but there are still some drawbacks in areas like consumer-provider relationships. Read on to learn more about how end-to-end encryption works, as well as some of the pros and cons of end-to-end encryption security.  ... " 

Virus Alert Apps Had Limited Success

 Having followed some of the Virus tracking software, found this to be insightful.  Though late.   Fundamentally the approaches won't work without elements of privacy being violated,  limiting participation and having the potential of misuse.  Bottom line,  the data gathered will be wrong. 

Why Apple, Google Virus Alert Apps Had Limited Success

The New York Times, Natasha Singer, May 27, 2021

Apple and Google's smartphone-based virus alert application has not been the game-changer that the collaboration suggested, with some researchers claiming the product and policy choices made by the companies have constrained its utility. The app uses Bluetooth signals to detect users coming into close contact with those who later test positive for the coronavirus; it then anonymously alerts others with whom they may have crossed paths. Computer scientists have cited accuracy problems with the proximity-detecting Bluetooth technology, while some users have cited failed notifications. The University of Minnesota's Michael T. Osterholm said the software's privacy features, designed to bar government agencies from identifying app users, have complicated research to determine whether the alerts helped to impede virus transmission.

Albertsons Tests Electric Truck Fleet

 Only two Volvo trucks for now.

Albertsons takes first baby step towards an electric truck fleet by George Anderson in Retailwire

Albertsons Companies is serious about cutting costs and reducing its environmental impact. The grocery giant, which last month committed to emission targets that support the goals of the United Nations’ Paris Agreement, announced the addition of two fully electric trucks to its fleet.

The two Volvo VNR Electric vehicles will join Albertsons’ fleet of around 1,400 Class 8 trucks ferrying products from the grocer’s distribution centers around the U.S. The trucks will connect to electric-powered transport refrigeration trailers to maintain the integrity of products being moved. Albertsons operates 20 grocery banners in 34 states and Washington, D.C., including Safeway and its namesake chain.  ... " 

Samsung Looks at an Assistant Again

 We tested Samsung's Bixby assistant offering for product interaction tests.     Now they appear to be replacing it with a new or updated approach.   With hint of an interface in 3D.

Samsung May Replace Bixby With a 3D Virtual Assistant Named Sam  in Voicebot.ai

Samsung may be creating a new virtual assistant named Sam that may accompany, or possibly replace, ith a 3D Virtual Assistant Named Sam

ERIC HAL SCHWARTZ  Bixby. As first discovered on Twitter, Lightfarm Studios and the Samsung-owned Cheil Agency showcased the three-dimensional character in a since-deleted webpage available only through the Wayback Machine.  ..." 

Podcast: Forward Look into Inflation

Via Knowledge@Wharton:

Inflation: What Lies Ahead?

Subscribe on iTunes!

MIC LISTEN TO THE PODCAST (at the link) 

Wharton’s Itay Goldstein speaks with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM about how the Federal Reserve may respond to the recent rise in inflation.

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The latest rise in the inflation rate to 4.2% for April 2021 has fueled expectations that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates and tighten monetary policy. The rise in the consumer price index for all items is the largest 12-month increase since a 4.9% increase in September 2008, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported earlier this month.

In recent times, the Federal Reserve has been willing to accommodate higher inflation, but that stance could change with the unexpected pace of price increases in the latest data. “The Fed sent pretty clear and strong messages over the last year or so that it is not going to be deterred by signs of inflation, and that it’s going to keep a loose monetary policy and keep [interest] rates down,” said Wharton finance professor Itay Goldstein in an interview on the Wharton Business Daily radio show on SiriusXM. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)

That position could now change as the inflation data for April “was quite alarming,” Goldstein continued. “No one really expected the number for inflation to be that high. So now we start seeing more expectation that maybe the Fed will eventually act and start raising rates and tighten monetary policy.” The federal funds target rate serves as the benchmark for bank interest rates and is currently in the range of 0% to 0.25%. The Federal Reserve has said it expects to keep its benchmark interest rate near zero through 2023.  ... " 

Multiscale risk analysis with information entropy applied to portfolio optimization

Brought to my Attention.   Regards portfolio investment, Risk and entropy.    Authors are colleagues of mine.  Technical.

Multiscale risk analysis with information entropy applied to portfolio optimization By George G. Polak and David F. Rogers b,

Department of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management, Raj Soin College of Business, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, 45435-0001, United States. ORCID: 0000-0002-6222-7468 b Racers Consulting & Management, 30 Silver Avenue, Ft. Mitchell, KY, 41017-2909, United States.

ORCID: 0000-0002-3676-4075

* Corresponding author. E-mail: George.Polak@Wright.edu (G. G. Polak), RogersDavidF10@gmail.com (D. F. Rogers).

Abstract The overall risk assumed in making a decision or constructing a portfolio to maximize returns in a probabilistic setting includes both a return value-based component and a probabilistic information-

based component. Each is independent of the other, and each plays an important role in our approach to decision analysis and portfolio optimization. We introduce the concept of an information entropy profile for any discrete and finite probability distribution for the purpose of fully quantifying the information based component of risk. The profile is based on the partitioning of the state space into planning cells and is employed within the framework of Multiscale Risk Analysis to optimize decision-making across the full array of possibilities between the maximin and expected value approaches. We formulate mixed- integer nonlinear optimization models to find decisions without a priori enumeration of the partitions where the information-based risk as measured by entropy is expressed as both 1) an objective to be minimized subject to a constraint on expected returns and 2) an upper-bounded constraint coupled with an objective of maximizing expected return. We also present bounding models that are formulated without logarithmic functions. Although all the models are nonconvex, we demonstrate that realistically-sized instances can be solved to optimality by off-the-shelf global optimization software.

Keywords Risk analysis; Investment analysis; Integer programming; Nonlinear programming;

Global optimization.  Submitted: March 31, 2021

Declarations

Funding: The authors did not receive funding from any public, commercial, or not-for-profit agency.

Conflicts of interest/Competing interests: There are no conflicts of interest/competing interests involving funding; employment; financial or non-financial interests, directly or indirectly related to this work. Availability of data and material: Data used for this work is available in Polak et al. (2010). Code availability (software application or custom code): Custom GAMS code available from the authors.

1 Introduction

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” T. S. Eliot (1931)

 A fundamental goal of decision analysis is to determine a best strategy from among several alternatives for implementation in a risk-filled future. We consider an individual Decision Maker (DM) who is charged with constructing a financial portfolio from a discrete and finite set of possible investment opportunities actuated within a discrete and finite probabilistic state space for which alternative potential outcomes for the investments are defined. These outcomes may be posited according to particular economic circumstances during the planning period, e.g., 1) reflecting historical returns during previous time periods or 2) projected returns put forth by consultants. Winston (2008) refers to this as a scenario-based setting and how to best make decisions in this type of straightforward setting remains a pervasive issue for an individual DM as well as for corporations, banks, and governments.

Designing VR from Youtube Fails

 Clever idea here, look for fails shown in YouTube to design-in resilience to fails.   An example of a huge source of data to design in such patterns.    Also the associated metadata.  Perhaps with other sources of such broad data as well.

What could possibly go wrong with virtual reality?,   by University of Copenhagen

YouTube is a treasure trove of virtual reality fails: users tripping, colliding into walls and smacking inanimate and animate objects. By investigating these "VR fails' on YouTube, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have sought to learn more about when and why things go sideways for users and how to improve VR design and experiences so as to avoid accidents.

Millions of YouTube viewers have enjoyed hearty laughs watching others getting hurt using virtual reality—people wearing VR headsets, falling, screaming, crashing into walls and TV sets, or knocking spectators to the floor. Some of us have even been that failing someone. Now, videos of virtual reality mishaps, called "VR Fails," have actually become a field of research.  .... " 

Army Night-Vision AR

 An AR ability with enhanced low light vision.    Integration of maps.   When we tested plant applications we added blueprint and technical data, but also were sometimes also in low-no light locations.   So could see the application there too.  

The Army's Latest Night-Vision Tech Looks Like Something Out of a Video Game

The Washington Post, Dalvin Brown, May 24, 2021

The U.S. Army is training on a new night-vision system that generates a videogame-like view of a scene. The helmet-mounted Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular device features thermal imaging and augmented reality (AR) capabilities, incorporating smartphone and gaming-systems technology into traditional night-vision hardware. The goggles have a mode that outlines objects with glowing white light, and an AR overlay that can display maps and navigation data. The system, which also features an intensity tool that allows it to be used in daylight, is a result of years of work to modernize the tools used by the military.  ... " 

SLAM and Mobile Mapping

Brought to my attention for a proposed project.    Below the intro, much more at the link, will follow with more....  Note, aspects of autonomy. 

The definitive guide to SLAM & mobile mapping

SLAM 101

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is not a specific software application, or even one single algorithm. SLAM is a broad term for a technological process, developed in the 1980s, that enabled robots to navigate autonomously through new environments without a map.

Autonomous navigation requires locating the machine in the environment while simultaneously generating a map of that environment. It’s very difficult to accomplish, because the machine needs to have a map of the environment to estimate its own location. But to generate the map, it needs to know its own location.

How does SLAM work?

There are many approaches to SLAM. Luckily, we can still make some generalizations to demonstrate the basic idea.

Here’s a very simplified explanation: When the robot starts up, the SLAM technology fuses data from the robot’s onboard sensors, and then processes it using computer vision algorithms to “recognize” features in the surrounding environment. This enables the SLAM to build a rough map, as well as make an initial estimate of the robot's position.

When the robot moves, the SLAM takes that initial position estimate, collects new data from the system’s on-board sensors, and makes a new (and improved) position estimate. Once that new position estimate is known the map is updated in turn, which completes the cycle.

By repeating these steps continuously, the SLAM tracks the robot's path as it moves through the asset. At the same time, it builds a detailed map.   ... " 

Apologetic AI is a Trend?

Wonder how well that works.    Having worked with consumer-computers since the very early days, never recall an attempt at apologies in this way. Even when we built avatars to represent products, it never had 'sorry' in its vocabulary.  We had to deal with errors.    What are our expectations here?   At what level do we expect apologies, or just dismiss it and lose our respect for the interaction? 

Apologetic AI Is A Somewhat Sorry Trend, Especially For Autonomous Cars   By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider   

AI is starting to apologize.   

That’s the latest trend for AI that directly interacts with people. The notion seems to be that if the AI has to deliver unfavorable news or appears to have made a potential mistake, it ought to be civil about the matter and emit an apology. AI developers are either opting to include the apology-generating capacity or they are being pressed by system designers and managers to infuse the “sorry about that” capability.  

This might seem at first glance as a marvelous addition to an AI system and would presumably be valuable to construct. Sorry to say that the AI being apologetic has both upsides and downsides. 

Let’s begin by considering a context that will help to reveal the pros and cons of AI-powered apologies. Imagine that you apply online for a car loan and the AI system determines that you are not worthy, as it were, and promptly turns you down. The belief is that this would be an ideal moment for the AI to offer you a “heartfelt” apology.   

It might go something like this: Dear loan applicant, it is with great sorrow that I must inform you of the unfortunate news that your request to borrow funds to buy a car is hereby denied. Please know that you are not alone in having been spurned and accept this apology for any discomfort that might arise from this outcome. Sincerely, the AI system that reluctantly rebuffed your request.   

Do you think this apology will make the person feel any better about the AI-powered decision?   

Well, I doubt it would for most people, nonetheless, there is an emerging trend of having AI systems produce these kinds of messages.   .... ' 

Wifi Attack Vulnerabilities

 Had cause to take a closer look at IOT, and other often Wifi enabled systems.   So their vulnerabilities is of concern.   Good intro piece in Wired:

Decades-Old Flaws Affect Almost Every Wi-Fi Device

The so-called Frag Attack vulnerabilities could let hackers steal data or compromise connected gadgets.

A SET OF vulnerabilities in how Wi-Fi is designed and used in practice expose virtually every Wi-Fi-enabled device to some form of attack. A handful of those flaws have been around since the original Wi-Fi standard debuted in 1997. 

The findings, publicly disclosed this week by New York University Abu Dhabi researcher Mathy Vanhoef, show that an attacker within Wi-Fi range of a target network could potentially exfiltrate data from a victim and compromise their devices. But while the sheer scale and scope of the exposure is staggering, many of the attacks would be difficult to carry out in practice, and not all Wi-Fi devices are affected by all of the flaws.  ... " 

Microsoft Back at Voice Again?

 Wondered where Cortana had gone.  Would seem in particular Team-like efforts could use smart voice interaction.  Why rename it when you already have name recognition?  Because the recognition was negative? 

Microsoft is Developing a Bing Chatbot Similar to Cortana  By Eric Hal Schwartz

Microsoft Bing will soon have an AI chatbot appear on search results to help users, according to a report from Windows Latest. The chatbot, aptly called “Chat,” appears to perform similarly to how Cortana behaved before Microsoft shifted that voice assistant toward enterprise purposes.

CHAT BING

The Chat agent appears as an option next to the search button after a search is conducted on Bing. The AI will start talking about whatever subject the user mentions. The AI appears to operate with the conceit of pretending to be human, as the test by Windows Latest shows the bot claiming to own a computer. The bot also offers guides and recommendations, including info on new Windows updates. It largely appears to be a more conversational way of communicating the same information that the actual search results reveal. The interactions are reminiscent of how Google Assistant works with Google Search.... "