Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] Specialised hardware for machine learning - Academia vs private companies

I’m not sure if you follow tech conferences, but earlier this week Google held its annual Google I/O event. This is a conference targeting developers focused on Google ecosystem, during which there’s usually a lot of interesting announcements concerning Google’s plans and research. I feel that last year conference was much more exciting (“Now on tap”, Machine learning based search in pictures application and so on), still I found one pretty interesting news from the field of AI and Machine Learning.

I’m sure that you heard that earlier this year Google open-sourced their Tensor Flow engine for Machine Learning applications. So in this article [1] Google unveils a custom made ASIC chip called Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). TPU is tailored to Machine Learning computations. Google is not (yet?) giving away the exact numbers but they are stating that TPU is an order of magnitude better optimised in terms of performance per watt.

So Google is obviously spearheading the Machine Learning and AI research in general.

1. Do you feel that they have any reasonable competition right now?
2. Are you excited about their research? I’m personally a bit anxious that most of their activities is done behind closed doors and is motivated by future revenues.
3. Does research on Machine Learning and AI conducted in Academia stand any chance with almost limitless resources of a private company like Google?

[1] -  https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/05/Google-supercharges-machine-learning-tasks-with-custom-chip.html

Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] - Augmented reality in logistic

Today I would like to present you an article, or should I say a report, made for DHL. This international company is experimenting with AR in their business.
http://www.dhl.com/content/dam/downloads/g0/about_us/logistics_insights/csi_augmented_reality_report_290414.pdf

It is just a matter of time when augmented reality will come to our everyday life. This is not about "if", it is about "when". Currently the most important branches for this technology is related with industry and logistic because we are able to test functionalities in this sector with out wondering about how the smart glasses will look on us.

1. What do you think about AR ?
2. Do you think it will be something more common than VR ?
3. How do you see usage of AR in sectors related with industry and/or logistic ?
4. Do you think it will be something usefull in everyday life or just another fancy gadget ?

Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] Addressing cloud computing security issues

Addressing cloud computing security issues

Cloud computing is one of the hottest technical topics today, with broad-ranging effects across IT, Information Architecture, Bussiness, Software Engineering and Data Storage. That is one of many reason why I shared with you that topic. I’m interested in relationship cloud computing to security issues and any of security aspects cloud services. I’m thinking that cloud computing has got potential and it will be still upgrading in the future.

1.       What do we need to know about security in cloud?

2.       What can be outsourced to the cloud?

3.       What do we need to do get ready for the cloud?

4.       Is there anything a cloud provider can’t provide?

5.       What is your expectations from Cloud Computing?

Article:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X10002554

For everyone who would like to improve his/her knowledge about IaaS:

http://cloudcomputing.ieee.org/images/files/publications/articles/TheStateofPublicInfrastructureasaServiceCloudSecurity.pdf

I wish you good reading.

Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] - Starve cancer to death

Hello,

Today I want to present a lengthy article from NYT on basically going back to the roots of cancer research:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-an-old-idea-revived-starve-cancer-to-death.html

Although it is not my area, the article is linked to at least two older posts and we may continue discussion.

The questions that pop-up in mind after reading this article:

1. In your opinion which cancer therapy seems more promising: the one targeting cancer cells metabolism or the genetic immunotherapy?
2. According to the article what might be the role of high-sugar diet in relation to cancer?
3. Do you think that metformin (the drug known to have remarkable effect on inhibiting cancer growth) should be prescribed as the way to prevent cancer?

Regards,
Paweł.

Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] - Designing Game Concepts for and with Senior Citizens

Hello,

I would like to recommend to you an article about designing games for seniors. I think the idea of creating video games dedicated to a special group of people is really interesting and modern gaming market suffers from lack of such solutions, but I am not sure that elderly people are interested in this kind of entertainment.

What do you think about creating computer games for elderly people?
Can playing games be a rewarding pastime for seniors or maybe it will isolate them even more from other people?
Do you feel that gaming market should pay more attention for the specific needs of different groups of peoples?

Link to the article: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/395445/1/VandenAbeele%20and%20Van%20Rompaey%20-%20Introducing%20human-centered%20design.pdf.

Week 4 [02-08.05.2016] - DDoS

I would like to present an article “Preparing for the nextDDoS attack” by Steve McGregory, which can be found at: 

http://www.krysinski.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/15110417000224848.pdf.

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news websites, and present a major challenge to making sure people can publish and access important information. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults continue to be a nuisance for online businesses and their customers. Worse, the downtime caused by attacks is costly for organizations and frustrating for consumers. Understanding the methods and capabilities of perpetrators is essential to maintaining good defenses. Chosen article briefly describes DDoS attack problem.

If you would like to received more information about DDoS prevention and mitigation please do not hesitate to contact me via forum or by e-mail.

I will appreciate if you can answer some of the following question?

1. Have you ever heard about DDoS attacks?
2.  Have you ever experienced a network outage due to a DDoS attack?
3.  Have you ever heard about new trends in the DDoS threat landscape?
4.  What is the role of role of botnets in large-scale DDoS attacks?
5.  What about DDoS awareness ? Are companies aware of DDoS ?

Regards,

Marcin

Week 4 [02.05-08.05.2016] GAAIN Entity Mapper: An Active-Learning System for Medical Data Mapping

In the world there are constructed lot of expert systems for the medicine. In my article I would like to present one of the state-of-the-art system focused on diagnose one of the worst severe brain diseases. 

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fninf.2015.00018
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fninf.2015.00030

Achieving the best possible treatment for the patients require knowledge from all known science domains as artificial intelligence, algorithms, neuroscience, statistics and data analysis. It require discipline and lot of effort to achieve this goal. I’d like to ask you to answer few question after reading of this very difficult article:

1. Have you faced in your life any medical expert system? Did it impress you?
2. Is classification presented in this article is based on all important sources of information require to achieve goal?
3. How do you think this system is secure and produce proper results?
4. Does this system architecture can be better?
5. Does active learning system is optimal solution for this kind of systems?