Today's Tech Digest - Feb 10, 2019

AI technology could turn thoughts into speech

To teach the vocoder to interpret brain activity, the researchers worked with a group of epilepsy patients who were already undergoing brain surgery. The patients’ brain activity was recorded as they listened to someone recite the numbers zero through to nine. The signals their brain activity generated were then run through the vocoder, which turned the signals into speech. The researchers then used neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence that mimics the workings of the human brain, to analyse and clean up the sound produced by the vocoder. What they were left with was a robotic-sounding voice that recited the numbers the patients were hearing. About three-quarters of the time the numbers were correct and understandable, which lead author Dr Nima Mesgarani described as being “well above and beyond any previous attempts”.  

80% Of Enterprise IT Will Move To The Cloud By 2025

The revenue flow is what matters most, he says, “and it has to keep running under every scenario,” and that includes tech problems—whether an outage, a security breach, or spike in demand. “And it has to deliver a less than one-second response time for a very complex account activation process,” Heller says. The company “won’t make any decision that threatens that performance.” That’s not to say these IT teams aren’t looking to cut costs—they always are. In fact, he says, IT teams “feel a responsibility to always provide three things: effectiveness, efficiency, and risk mitigation,” Heller says. “Does it do what it’s supposed to? Is it a reasonable cost to buy and maintain? Does it avoid risk and ensure business continuity? Every decision they make, every attribute of a solution, should include all those things.” With rare exceptions, businesses won’t put these mission-critical workloads on first-generation clouds. “They just weren’t built for it,” Heller says.

How to succeed as a high-demand data scientist

As a data scientist, it’s vital to understand what you can bring to an enterprise - whatever their business is, however big they are. An intelligently-designed data-collection campaign can reveal detailed demographics for a company’s customer base so that they set their marketing teams in the right direction. By wasting less time and money on random advertisements, institutions can expect a more significant ROI, happier clients and better branding. Branding is vital for any company, and the more endorsements pop-up with a company’s name, the more likely an individual is to recognize the name and buy it. A data scientist can understand trends in the market, identify patterns, and suggest best practices. They are problem-solvers and analysts, so businesses across America rely on them to provide the best information. Of course, to be an asset a data scientist also has to understand the industry they’re working in.

Hack Attack Breaches Australian Parliament Network

Smith and Ryan cautioned that it's too soon to try and attribute the attack (see Stop the Presses: Don't Rush Tribune Ransomware Attribution). "Accurate attribution of a cyber incident takes time and investigations are being undertaken in conjunction with the relevant security agencies," Smith and Ryan said. "We are not in a position to provide further information publicly at this stage. Updates will be provided to members and senators and the media as required." The head of the Australian Cyber Security Center, Alastair MacGibbon, declined to speculate about the identity of the attacker. "My primary concern is making sure we get that offender out and we keep the offender out," he told Australian Associated Press. Addressing reporters on Friday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison likewise declined to speculate about the identity of the attacker, and he reiterated that the attack appeared to be limited to targeting Parliament's network. "I should stress that there is no suggestion that government departments or agencies have been the target of any such incursion," Morrison said, Associated Press reported.

How quantum terrorists could bring down the future internet

A lone-wolf attacker cannot overwhelm the quantum state with random information. “The correct state (i.e. initial state) can in principle be recovered using purification or distillation schemes,” say Johnson and co. But if quantum terrorists work in unison, an entirely different scenario unfolds. Johnson and co show that if several attackers inject their quantum information into the network at the same instant, they can disrupt the global quantum state. In that case the initial state of the system cannot be retrieved, even in principle. How many terrorists are needed for this to happen? The shocking conclusion is that it requires only three or more quantum terrorists working in unison. “Our findings reveal a new form of vulnerability that will enable hostile groups of [three or more] quantum-enabled adversaries to inflict maximal disruption on the global quantum state in such systems,” say the team. What’s more, these attacks will be practically impossible to detect, since they introduce no identifying information; they require no real-time communication, since the terrorists simply agree in advance when to attack; and the attack can be over within a second.

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