Jeffrey J. Bloom

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Boeing envisions a jetliner future without a crew! They're studying ways to make existing autopilots safe enough to fly independantly. Autopilots currently fly jetliners after takeoff until before landing. However, they must be pre-programmed by pilots to account for weather & traffic--AI autopilots could potentially self reprogram without humans.

Airbus is working on a fleet of autonomous flying taxis. It's planning to have a full-size prototype before the end of the year & have a marketable design by 2020.
http://www.pcmag.com/news/354227/would-you-fly-on-an-ai-backed-plane-without-a-pilot

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Google scientist Mike Tyka, is taking a new approach to art--using AI to make digital portraits of non-existent people: "For a while now I’ve been experimenting with ways to use generative neural nets to make portraits. Early experiments were based on deep dream-like approaches using backprop to the image but lately I’ve focused on GANs (generative adversarial networks). As always resolution & fine detail is really difficult to achieve."
https://thenextweb.com/distract/2017/06/09/ai-uses-advanced-algorithms-to-create-butt-ugly-human-faces/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Prosecutors alleged agents found two notebooks in Winner’s home following her arrest last Saturday. Reality Leigh Winner referred to “documents” in the plural, according to NBC News. “I want to burn the White House down,” prosecutors alleged she wrote in one notebook.
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/337069-prosecutors-alleged-nsa-leaker-may-have-had-plans-for-more-leaks

Jeffrey J. Bloom

The Sloot Digital Coding System may have been the inspiration for Pied Piper, a fictional data compression algorithm from HBO's Silicon Valley. Dutch engineer Jan Sloot spent 20 years trying to compress broadcast quality video down to kilobytes--not megabytes or gigabytes. His CODEC, finalized in late 90s, consisted of a massive 370Mb decoder engine for procedurally generating just about any video frame or audio sample desired.
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/17/06/09/0025250/ask-slashdot-what-is-your-view-on-sloot-compression

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Comey provided NYT w/ story about memos containing conversations with Trump. Asked why he didn’t give directly to reporters, he said the media was "camped out at the end of my driveway" & "I was worried it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach."
Other interesting statements:
*His firing "didn’t make any sense," due to multiple conflicting explanations.
*No evidence of vote altering by Russia.
*No one asked him to stop Russia investigation.
*Refused to answer whether Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia.
*Former AG Loretta Lynch told him Hillary's server scandle was a "matter" not an "investigation."
*"Lordy, I hope there are tapes [of conversations with Trump]."
http://www.11alive.com/news/politics/national-politics/key-takeaways-from-the-james-comey-testimony/447041972

Jeffrey J. Bloom

*After Monday's NSA report leak, it appears Russia attempted to hack into a company that contracts with state & local election officials.
*hackers were given a “cyber espionage mandate specifically directed at U.S. & foreign elections." However, it appears the hackers were not attempting to change or tamper vote totals..
*So why continue to hack voter roll systems? So Trump would claim the election was rigged? To weakening election integrity? Or simply weaken whomever the new President would be and cast doubt on their legitimacy?
Read more: http://newstalk1130.iheart.com/onair/dan-odonnell-37717/the-real-russian-hacking-conspiracy-15893544/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Jordan Zeveney​ wrote: The NCDOC "War Dolphins," successfully identified malware on their system, installed & secured an FTP server, cannibalized a security server, analyzed a memory sample & maintained network availability for the duration of the competition. The team took second place, losing by a mere 11/100th of a point.

"Events such as this competition allow Sailors & other participants to exercise their skills in a high pressure, high stress environment,” said Randy Rose​, NCDOC N2 deputy. “Competitions promote teamwork amongst an ensemble cast of players with varying skill sets which fosters collaboration &creative problem solving.”
http://www.doncio.navy.mil/CHIPS/ArticleDetails.aspx?ID=9065

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Winner hopes to be released on bond Thursday. According to her lawyer "There’s not much to comment on right now as far as whether there is a connection between [his client & the leak]," "I know there's documents circulating the internet[...]but as far as concrete proof, we’re just not at that stage, yet.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/336861-alleged-nsa-leaker-to-enter-not-guilty-plea

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Will future advances come via dedicated hardware (optimized for training models & serving predictions) or improved software (better, smarter & more efficient algorithms)? Will deep learning become even MORE accessible to the masses? Like Microsoft's doing: directly challenging Google’s TensorFlow & Baidu’s Paddle by making CNTK faster, more accurate & Python API ready!
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3199950/artificial-intelligence/deep-learnings-next-steps-custom-hardware-better-frameworks-easier-on-ramps.html

Jeffrey J. Bloom

iNaturalist plans to launch an app that uses AI to identify plants & animals down to the species level. The app is trained using labeled images from a massive database of “research grade” observations. “We’re hopeful this will engage a whole new group of citizen scientists,”
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/ai-plant-and-animal-identification-helps-us-all-be-citizen-scientists-180963525

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Court documents explain in detail how she "allegedly" printed & mailed the NSA report. What helped investigators were unrelated personal emails sent to the Intercept weeks before, which surfaced when searching her computer. The NSA routinely monitors many of its employees'. The case offers a reminder that virtually every American worker in today's economy can be tracked & reported--and you don't even have to be the NSA to pull it off.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/06/07/the-latest-nsa-leak-is-a-reminder-that-your-bosses-can-see-your-every-move/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Weaver speculated on the hackers' motives, suggesting they may have just wanted to spread chaos and put the election results in doubt. "Affecting a large swing on the vote through hacking is hard[...]you don't even necessarily need to tamper with the vote."
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/06/07/can-our-elections-be-hacked

Jeffrey J. Bloom

How do news organizations actually keep track of what must be 1000s of pieces of incoming information that are processed into news stories every day?
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/06/06/2032233/ask-slashdot-how-do-news-organizations-keep-track-of-so-much-information

Slashdot comment:
*There's an industry software called iNews: http://www.avid.com/products/inews
*There's a reddit thread of people who work at news orgs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Thenewsroom/comments/xuxck/software_like_they_use_in_the_show/
*Vox Media (The Verge, SBNation, Curbed, Polygon) built its own CMS called Chorus: https://pfauth.com/publishing-platforms/vox-medias-chorus/
*The NYTimes uses WordPress for some of its blogs.
*And I assume the Washington Post built their own since, well, Bezos.

Jeffrey J. Bloom

DARPA recently handed eight OSU professors $6.5 million to help make AI powered robots, cars & other tech more "trustworthy" for doubters.
http://mashable.com/2017/06/06/people-dont-trust-ai/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Nonetheless, our analysis offers evidence that voting technology did not distort the votes in Wisconsin or Michigan. How a vote was treated appears not to have depended on which candidate the vote was for. If there was a hack, it appears not to have changed the results.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/06/were-2016-vote-counts-in-michigan-and-wisconsin-hacked-we-double-checked/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"The extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far," Mark Warner (D-Va). The leaked documents shed new light on alleged interference efforts by Russia close to the election, with the disclosure saying the hacking "may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results." This amid intensifying investigations by multiple Senate & House committees as well as Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/russia-hacking-worse-reality-winner-leaks-show-senator-article-1.3225906

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Redacted versions of the NSA documents, published Monday afternoon, shielded the identity of the company targeted by the Russians. But the same documents included references to VR Systems. According to published reports, the NSA documents and Tallahassee Democrat interviews, Russian hackers in August executed a spear-phishing campaign targeting seven employees of the company.

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"The bigger issue is: Was my client interrogated without her attorney?" said Titus Nichols, her court-appointed attorney. "She’s just been caught in the middle of something bigger than her."
http://kdvr.com/2017/06/06/reality-winner-what-we-know-about-the-contractor-charged-with-leaking-nsa-report-on-russian-cyberattack/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

regardless of what anyone thinks about what may or may not have happened in 2016, the intensifying discussion about last year’s election reminds Americans of the extent to which officials have failed to assure that elections in the United States are conducted openly, honestly, and without interference by domestic or foreign partisans. There is an urgent need to protect voting and elections and democracy itself—officially and permanently.

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Because The Intercept published scanned images of the top secret NSA document, anyone can decode the dots with help from a tool provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
http://fortune.com/2017/06/06/leak-nsa-reality-winner/

Part of the Machine Identification Code Technology project, this guide explains how to read the date, time & printer serial number from forensic tracking codes in a Xerox DocuColor color laser printout. 
https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

The Intercept posted an NSA report about a Russian GRU scheme to compromise Florida elections systems. It's "unknown whether the aforementioned spear-phishing deployment successfully compromised the intended victims & what potential data could have been accessed by the cyber actor."

Here are 5 questions that remain unknown:
1. How widespread are these attacks?
2. Can the federal government do more?
3. Why do these leaks keep happening?
4. Why can't the U.S. stop these cyberattacks?
5. Will this change Trump's tune?
http://kasu.org/post/5-unanswered-questions-raised-leaked-nsa-hacking-report

Jeffrey J. Bloom

China's aggressive new cybersecurity & data protection law goes into effect today. The Chinese government has also left many parts of the law vague--likely an intentional move to stake out their "cyber sovereignty," while waiting to see how the rest of the world decides to regulate data flow across international borders.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/06/01/2136211/chinas-unprecedented-cyber-law-signals-its-intent-to-protect-a-precious-commodity-data

Jeffrey J. Bloom

The best AI definition was written in 1955 by John McCarthy & colleagues, "making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving." The goal of AI is to perform a task as good--or better than--what human intelligence is able to achieve. "How" is not in question, only the outcome. AI is not about reproducing but replacing human intelligence. A dishwasher does not clean dishes as I do. But in the end its clean dishes are indistinguishable from mine--indeed, they may be cleaner.
https://www.ft.com/content/ee996846-4626-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"Pandemic" Microsoft Windows servers the capability to infect machines which access them remotely. The project acts as a ‘Patient Zero’ – a term used to describe the first identified carrier of a communicable disease during an outbreak.
https://www.rt.com/viral/390467-vault7-cias-pandemic-wikileaks/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Microsoft's open-source Cognitive Toolkit 2.0 is here! The first version (aka CNTK) was able to challenge many of its competitors like TensorFlow, Caffe & Torch. Version 2 emphasises usability--adding Python & Keras neural networking library support for starters--and future extensibility, while still maintaining & improving overall speed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCzQPr-BBhk

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Forget quantum computing. Think quantum networking! AT&T & CalTech are launching the Alliance for Quantum Technologies (AQT), which incudes an R&D program named INQNET (INtelligent Quantum NEtworks & Technologies).

With quantum technologies & engineering we’re experiencing a revolution in applied fundamentals. Accelerating progress by integrating systems, ongoing R&D & especially by bringing together the experts.. I expect the catalysis effect on science & technology to be analogous.

One of the first demonstrations of intelligent & quantum network technologies will be in quantum entanglement distribution, relevant benchmarking & validation studies using commercial fiber provided by AT&T.
http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/at-t-foundry-caltech-form-quantum-technologies-alliance

Jeffrey J. Bloom

"The inscrutability & the diversity of AI complicate the legal codification of rights, which, if too broad or narrow, can inadvertently hamper innovation or provide little meaningful protection," Discussions about regulation & legislation differ whether they'ar focussed on robotics (involving hardware & engineering) or AI (concerning software & programming). This separation, is unhelpful & needs to be abandoned. "It misinterprets their legal & ethical challenges as unrelated." "Concerns about fairness, transparency, interpretability & accountability are equivalent, have the same genesis & must be addressed together, regardless of the mix of hardware, software & data involved."
https://cosmosmagazine.com/society/dangers-of-unregulated-ai-and-robots-loom

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Cadillac is currently developing a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) system, so its vehicles will be able to receive messages from local infrastructure. Right now, it's limited to two traffic lights outside GM's Warren Technical Center in Michigan. The work is being done in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Transportation & the Macomb County Department of Roads.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/cadillac-experiments-with-vehicle-to-infrastructure-tech-in-michigan/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

Topological qubits are among the more baffling & if practical, more promising ways to approach scalable quantum computing. At least that’s what Microsoft, Purdue University, & three other universities are hoping after having recently signed a five-year agreement to develop a topological qubit based quantum computer.
https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/05/31/microsoft-purdue-tackle-topological-quantum-computer/

Jeffrey J. Bloom

What’s up with the all this talk about artificial intelligence taking our jobs? While AI--combined with a childhood of watching Terminator 2--leaves me a super skeptical, the current robot threat remains small, just give up and hope for a Wall-E future where you get to be rotund & full of cola.
http://www.1043theshark.com/blogs/gregr/nerd-talk-lets-hope-artificial-intelligence-always-stays-dumb