The Insider News

.NET blog[^]:

We’re currently planning our next major .NET releases and would love to hear your feedback on how you interact with .NET Framework and .NET Core today.

Wired[^]:

You know the two-factor authentication tokens, the ephemeral, six-digit numbers you use as a second layer of security when logging into, say, your email?

The Next Web[^]:

A retired professor published a white paper earlier this month proposing a new class of math that could lead to the birth of machine consciousness.

Quote:

High above the Hudson River in downtown Jersey City, a former U.S. Secret Service agent named Peter Cavicchia III ran special ops for JPMorgan Chase & Co. His insider threat group—most large financial institutions have one—used computer algorithms to monitor the bank’s employees, ostensibly to protect against perfidious traders and other miscreants.

Aided by as many as 120 “forward-deployed engineers” from the data mining company Palantir Technologies Inc., which JPMorgan engaged in 2009, Cavicchia’s group vacuumed up emails and browser histories, GPS locations from company-issued smartphones, printer and download activity, and transcripts of digitally recorded phone conversations. Palantir’s software aggregated, searched, sorted, and analyzed these records, surfacing keywords and patterns of behavior that Cavicchia’s team had flagged for potential abuse of corporate assets. Palantir’s algorithm, for example, alerted the insider threat team when an employee started badging into work later than usual, a sign of potential disgruntlement. That would trigger further scrutiny and possibly physical surveillance after hours by bank security personnel.

Over time, however, Cavicchia himself went rogue. Former JPMorgan colleagues describe the environment as Wall Street meets Apocalypse Now, with Cavicchia as Colonel Kurtz, ensconced upriver in his office suite eight floors above the rest of the bank’s security team. People in the department were shocked that no one from the bank or Palantir set any real limits. They darkly joked that Cavicchia was listening to their calls, reading their emails, watching them come and go. Some planted fake information in their communications to see if Cavicchia would mention it at meetings, which he did.

It all ended when the bank’s senior executives learned that they, too, were being watched, and what began as a promising marriage of masters of big data and global finance descended into a spying scandal. The misadventure, which has never been reported, also marked an ominous turn for Palantir, one of the most richly valued startups in Silicon Valley. An intelligence platform designed for the global War on Terror was weaponized against ordinary Americans at home.

IT Pro Project[^]:

Google's Project Zero team reveals Windows 10 lockdown bypass despite requests from Microsoft.

Infoworld[^]:

It’s easy to learn to be a coder. But knowing how to code isn’t enough to get and keep a real job in software development

Ars Technica[^]:

RSA Conference attendee contact data extracted using hard-coded API data.

Quartz[^]:

Sometimes sensitive data, like passwords or keys that unlock encrypted communications, are accidentally left open for anybody to see.

TechNode[^]:

Alibaba is developing its own neural network chip, the Ali-NPU, which will be used in AI applications, such as image video analysis, machine learning, and other scenarios

Digital Trends[^]:

Google removed a number of fake ad blockers from its Chrome store after an AdGuard researcher discovered that these extensions concealed malicious scripts.

Worms and viruses[^]:

The menu bar has been, and in my opinion remains, the best mechanism for providing familiarity, discoverability, and progressive disclosure in user interfaces on any platform.

Venture Beat[^]:

Even if you really wanted to buy a Windows phone, Microsoft has run out of Windows Phone devices to sell to you.

Science Daily[^]:

Using a machine-learning system known as a deep neural network, researchers have created the first model that can replicate human performance on auditory tasks such as identifying a musical genre. This type of model can shed light on how the human brain may be performing the same tasks.

Engadget[^]:

EarthNow's satellite network will let you view the whole planet in real time.