5/3/19
This is pretty disturbing – the Barium group is able to hack into supply chains with ease an infect a very large number of users.
4/11/19
While I understand why we need humans to weed through pictures to tag objects for training algorithms on image recognition; this latest from Amazon may be going too far for what I am assuming is NLP algos. Folks need to be concerned about privacy and ownership of data before jumping all in towards more intelligent algorithms. No wonder I will never agree to get a voice assistant at home (even if offered for free) unless it’s built by me and all it’s data is under my control.
4/5/19
Good read on EverCrypt that mathematically assures that its cryptographic tools cannot be hacked either through coding errors, buffer overflows or other side channel attacks.
2/26/19
Another report of Supermicro hardware weaknesses leading to compromised bare metal servers between leases for cloud customers.
2/25/2019
Encouraging story on an Accenture initiative to use blockchain to maintain complete supply chain transparency all the way to the end consumer on how sustainably/ethically a product is produced; thus allowing us to reward behaviors that we support and punish those that we want to discourage using our wallets.
2/23/2019
Absolutely heartbreaking CNN story of what we do to people in the name of Capitalism. What I do not understand is – how does approval for Firdapse allow for Catalyst pharmaceuticals to stop the production of 3,4-DAP by Jacobus Pharmaceutical for existing patients? Catalyst is dumping the existing users of the older drug to Charities, Endowments and other mechanisms to bear their new list price at $375,000/year – how can our legal frameworks even allow that and send someone to a slow inevitable decline/death? What if, for some macro economic/socio-political reason there wasn’t enough $s in charities & foundations to support the LEMS community? Why does a capitalistic company get to use charity to support its business practices? Have we lost our humanity?
2/13/2019
Martin Wolf on cryptocurrencies in the FT
Sounds promising: New study from MIT that we could afford to extract CO2 out of the atmosphere after all in a cost effective way.
2/12/2019
A colleague pointed out a couple of very interesting articles regarding Trust, well worth a read:
Reflections on Trusting Trust: Ken Thompson from August 1984
Schneier on Blockchain and Trust
2/4/2019
New threat to personal information from the Iranian cyber espionage group APT39 from the FireEye security threat blog.
2/2/2019
Talk about managing key person risk – Crypto exchange QuadrigaCX unable to pay back $190MM in its client holdings because its founder Gerald Cotten who had the only keys to its cold storage died unexpectedly while visiting India. For nascent industries like bitcoin exchanges, something like this massively erodes trust which will be very hard to rebuild for the other players in the space.
1/29/2019
Very interesting article from Kashmir Hill at Gizmodo who tried to cut out the big 5 tech giants (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple) from her and her family’s lives with interesting results. Goes to show you the monopoly on services these tech giants enjoy, that are critical to key aspects of our daily lives – whether it be using maps to navigate, or consuming news or listening to streaming content.
12/1/2018
Edward Snowden explains Blockchain
11/28/2018
Came across a very interesting blog post (The Internet Needs More Friction) today – reminding us that the lack of speed or adding friction can be a winning strategy in itself. Remember Brad Katsuyama’s Thor tool at RBC described in Flash Boys by Michael Lewis to prevent scalping on large orders by HFT Systems.
11/26/2018
Three really big pieces of news today –
- Announcement of two babies born with gene editing techniques using CRISPR Cas9 – the genie is out of the bottle and the question no longer is should we do this …
- GM in looking at the future announced cutting off 14000 management and factory jobs, closing 7 plants and rechanneling investments. CEO Mary Barra said the company has invested in newer architecture for those vehicles, and that it’s planning to hire people with expertise in software and electric and autonomous vehicles. Seems eerily as the beginning of some of the predictions in my blog post here with large scale job loses from automation and autonomous vehicles
- Insight lands on mars
11/23/2018
US climate change impact report paints a dire picture