July 2022

  • Understanding Data Breaches

    In 2016, I received this e-mail from my oldest son, who used to be a cybersecurity professional.

    Date: Saturday, October 22, 2016 at 7:09 PM
    To: Howard Getson
    Subject: FYI: Security Stuff

    FYI – I just got an alert that my email address and my Gmail password were available to be purchased online.

    I only use that password for my email, and I have 2-factor enabled, so I'm fine. Though this is further proof that just about everything is hacked and available online.

    If you don't have two-factor enabled on your accounts, you really need to do it.

    Since then, security has only become a more significant issue.  I wrote about the Equifax event, but there are countless examples of similar events (and yes, I mean countless). 

    When people think of hacking, they often think of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack or the media representation of people breaking into your system in a heist.

    In reality, the most significant weakness is people; it's you … the user.  It's the user that turns off automatic patch updating.  It's the user that uses thumb drives.  It's the user that reuses the same passwords.  But, even if you do everything right, you're not always safe. 

    Your data is likely stored in dozens of places online.  You hope your information is encrypted, but even that isn't always enough.  Over the last 17 years, 17.2B records have been "lost" by various companies.  In 2021, a new record was set with 5.9 billion user records stolen. 

    VisualCapitalist put together a visualization of the 50 biggest breaches since 2004. 

    50-biggest-data-breaches-infographicClick To See Full Size via VisualCapitalist

    InformationisBeautiful also put together a great interactive visualization with all of the breaches, if you want to do more research. 

    image from i.imgur.com

    Click To See Interactive Version via InformationIsBeautiful

    It's impossible to protect yourself completely, but there are many simple things you can likely do better. 

    • Use better passwords… Even better, don't even know them.  You can't disclose what you don't know.  Consequently, I recommend a password manager like LastPass or 1Password, which can also suggest complex passwords for you. 
    • Check if any of your information has been stolen via a website like HaveIBeenPwned or F-Secure
    • Keep all of your software up to date (to avoid extra vulnerabilities)
    • Don't use public Wi-Fi if you can help it (and use a VPN if you can't)
    • Have a firewall on your computer and a backup of all your important data
    • Never share your personal information on an e-mail or a call that you did not initiate – if they legitimately need your information, you can call them back
    • Don't trust strangers on the internet (no, a Nigerian Prince does not want to send you money)
    • Hire a third-party security company like eSentire or Pegasus Technology Solutions to help monitor and protect your corporate systems

    How many cybersecurity measures you take comes down to two simple questions … First, how much pain and hassle are you willing to deal with to protect your data?  And second, how much pain is a hacker willing to go through to get to your data?

    My son always says, "you've already been hacked … but have you been targeted?" Something to think about! 

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – July 31st, 2022

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

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  • Can AI Be Curious?

    “Nobody phrases it this way, but I think that artificial intelligence is almost a humanities discipline. It's really an attempt to understand human intelligence and human cognition.” —Sebastian Thrun

    We often use human consciousness as the ultimate benchmark for artificial exploration. 

    The human brain is ridiculously intricate.  While weighing only three pounds, it contains about 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections between them.  On top of the sheer complexity, the order of the connections and the order of actions the brain does naturally make it even harder to replicate.  The human brain is also constantly reorganizing and adapting.  It's a beautiful piece of machinery.  

    We've had millions of years for this powerhouse of a computer to be created, and now we're trying to do the same with neural networks and machines in a truncated time period.  While deep learning algorithms have been around for a while, we're just now developing enough data and computing power to change deep learning from a thought experiment to a real edge. 

    Think of it this way, when talking about the human brain, we talk about left-brain and right-brain.  The theory is that left-brain activities are analytical and methodical, and right-brain activities are creative, free-form, and artistic.  We're great at training AI for left-brain activities (obviously with exceptions).  In fact, AI is beating us at these left-brain activities because a computer has a much higher input bandwidth than we do, they're less biased, and they can perform 10,000 hours of research by the time you finish this article.

    BRain SPlit

    It's tougher to train AI for right-brain tasks.  That's where deep learning comes in. 

    Deep learning is a subset of machine learning based on unsupervised learning from unstructured/unlabeled data.  Instead of asking AI a question, giving it metrics, and letting it chug away, you're letting AI be intuitive.  Deep learning is a much more faithful representation of the human brain.  It utilizes a hierarchy of convolutional neural networks to handle linear and non-linear operations so it can think creatively to better problem-solve on potentially various data sets and in unseen environments. 

    When a baby is first learning to walk, it might stand up and fall down.  It might then take a small stutter step, or maybe a step that's much too far for its little baby body to handle.  It will fall, fail, and learn.  Fall, fail, and learn.  That's very similar to the goal of deep learning or reinforcement learning. 

    What's missing is the intrinsic reward that keeps humans moving when the extrinsic rewards aren't coming fast enough.  AI can beat humans at many games but has struggled with puzzle/platformers because there's not always a clear objective outside of clearing the level. 

    A relatively new (in practice, not in theory) approach is to train AI around "curiosity"[1].  Curiosity helps it overcome that boundary.  Curiosity lets humans explore and learn for vast periods of time with no reward in sight, and it looks like it can do that for computers too! 

    OpenAI via Two Minute Papers

    Soon, I expect to see AI learn to forgive and forget, be altruistic, follow and break rules, learn to resolve disputes, and even value something that resembles "love" to us.

    Exciting  stuff! 

    _______

    [1] – Yuri Burda, Harri Edwards, Deepak Pathak, Amos Storkey, Trevor Darrell and Alexei A. Efros.  Large-Scale Study of Curiosity-Driven Learning
    In ICLR 2019.

  • A Few Notes from a Trip to Israel

    My wife and I just got back from Israel.  We were there to see my son Zachary play Rugby for Team USA in an International Tournament.
     
    220724 Rugby Tournament in Israel
     
    I feel like I need a vacation after this trip.  There were so many things to do and see.
     
    Israel is smaller than the smallest state in America … Yet, consider its importance in the modern world (for example, by looking at the density of its holy sites, historical attractions, technological innovations, Nobel Prize winners, hostile borders, and military presence).
     
    It was fascinating how so many religions consider this the Holy Land.  Here is a photo I took of the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock in the Old City of Jerusalem.
     
    220724 Old City of Jerusalem
     
    It’s easy to feel closer to “something” while here.
     
    Almost everything we saw in Israel is a testament to determination, ingenuity, and faith!
     
    With that said, I started to think about how difficult it was to conceive of many of the things they built (considering how difficult it would be to execute or actually build them in the desert, without electricity, etc.). Many of the sites we visited took decades to build … but have lasted for thousands of years.  Examples include the Fortress at Masada, the Wailing Wall, and the Port of Caesaria.  In my mind, I compare these moonshots to many of our current big, hairy, audacious goals (like reading and writing our DNA, autonomous artificial intelligence, or space exploration).
     
    Technologies might change, but human nature has remained surprisingly consistent throughout time.
     
    Onwards!

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – July 25th, 2022

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

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  • Billion … With A B

    Humans are notoriously bad at large numbers. It's hard to wrap our minds around something of that scale. We're wired to think locally and linearly, not exponentially (it's one of the reasons I love AI so much).

    Here are a couple of ways to help you understand a billion dollars. 

    6a00e5502e47b288330240a4e81813200d-600wi

    via AskOpinion

    Next, let's look at spending over time. If you were to spend a dollar every second for an entire day, you would spend $86,400 per day. You can do that for approximately twelve days if you have a million dollars. With a billion dollars, you can do that for over 31 years. Ignoring the difference between net worth and cash, Jeff Bezos could spend $9M per day for over 31 years.

    If you make $100K a year, you can earn $1 million in 10 years. At the same rate, it would take you 10,000 years to make $1 billion.

    Here is an example framed around spending money.  Imagine that someone making $50K a year decides to buy a laptop, a car, and a house. Now we're going to make a relative comparison of the cost of those items for people making a lot more than $50K per year.  To do this, we'll shrink the cost of the price of those items (to see the relative cost-to-income ratio). For a millionaire, a laptop might cost the equivalent of $100 dollars, a Porsche would cost $3,000 dollars, and a house would cost $25,000. Now, let's say you're Mike Bloomberg, and you're worth $60B. A laptop's relative cost would be pennies, a Porsche's relative cost would be less than 60 cents, and a mansion's relative cost would be around $500 dollars. You could have everything you ever wanted for a minute fraction of your wealth. 

    For a different perspective, here's an interesting visualization from informationisbeautiful. It shows various examples of things worth billions of dollars – including the personal wealth of several billionaires. 

    IIB-Billions-2022-IIB-1276x825x2@2x-1via informationisbeautiful

    Okay, last one before I show a video … 

    Let's try explaining the concept of a Billion through time. Fifty thousand seconds is just under 14 hours. A million seconds was 11 days ago. A billion seconds ago from today? 1990. Pretty crazy. 

    Here's a video from the 1970s that helps you understand scale through the power of tens – and an exploration of our universe.

     

    Hope you enjoyed this.  Let me know what you think.

  • First Photos From the Webb Telescope

    The Hubble Telescope was conceived of in the 1940s, but launched in 1990. It revolutionized our ability to see the complexities of the universe. 

    Now, the Webb Telescope is taking it to the next level. 

    220712092620-04-james-webb-telescope-first-images-0712-carina-nebula-super-169via NASA

    The picture above shows the "Cosmic Cliffs," which is actually the edge of a young Nebula called Carina. 

    Below, is a picture of a cluster of galaxies called Stephan's Quintet. 

    220712092616-03-james-webb-telescope-first-images-0712-stephans-quintet-super-169via NASA

    Not only does this help us see far away systems that we've never seen before, but it also provides detail to the things we have seen.

    First, bring order to chaos …. Then, wisdom comes from making finer distinctions.  With that in mind, I'm excited to see how this drives the future of science. 

    Here's a brief video from Neil Degrasse Tyson on the new telescope. 

     

    via NBC News

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – July 17th, 2022

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

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  • Reinventing The Wheel

    When I think about the invention of the wheel, I think about cavemen (even though I know that cavemen did not invent the wheel).

    Lots of significant inventions predated the wheel by thousands of years.  For example, woven cloth, rope, baskets, boats, and even the flute were all invented before the wheel.

    While simple, the wheel worked well (and still does).  Consequently, the phrase "reinventing the wheel" often is used derogatorily to depict needless or inefficient efforts.

    But how does that compare to sliced bread (which was also a pretty significant invention)?

    Despite being a hallmark of innovation, it still took more than 300 years for the wheel to be used for travel.  With a bit more analysis, it makes sense. In order to use a wheel for travel, it needs an axle, and it needs to be durable, and loadbearing, requiring relatively advanced woodworking and engineering. 

    2014-innovatie-stenentijdperk

    All the aforementioned products created before the wheel (except for the flute) were necessary for survival.  That's why they came first.

    As new problems arose, so did new solutions.

    Necessity is the mother of invention. 

    Unpacking that phrase is a good reminder that inventions (and innovation) are often solution-centric. 

    Too many entrepreneurs are attracted to an idea because it sounds cool. They get attracted to their ideas and neglect their ideal customer's actual needs. You see it often with people slapping "AI" on to their product and pretending it's more helpful. 

    If you want to be disruptive, cool isn't enough. Your invention has to be functional, and it has to fix a problem people have (even if they don't know they have it.) The more central the complaint is to their daily lives the better.  

    6a00e5502e47b2883301b7c93a974c970b-600wi

    Henry Ford famously said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

    Innovation means thinking about and anticipating wants and future needs.

    Your customers may not even need something radically new. Your innovation may be a better application of existing technology or a reframe of best practices. 

    Uber didn't create a new car, they created a new way to get from where you want with existing infrastructure and less friction. Netflix didn't reinvent the movie, they made it easier for you to watch one. 

    As an entrepreneur, the trick is build for human nature (meaning, give people what they crave or eliminate the constraint they are trying to avoid) rather than the cool new tech that you are excited about.  

    Human nature doesn’t seem to change much … Meanwhile, the pace of innovation continues to accelerate. 

    The challenge is to focus on what people want rather than the distraction of possibility.

    It gets harder as more things become possible.

    We certainly live in interesting times!

  • What Is Happiness?

    In April, I shared World Happiness Report's results for 2022.  However, the actual definition of happiness is tricky.  It's a complex emotion with many factors that influence it. 

    Recently, a hobbyist philosopher who goes by Desolhar online analyzed 93 philosophy books from 570 BC to 1588 to find a universal definition. 

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    Keeping in mind that these results are subjective, and by no means an objective definition or approach, the conclusion is that happiness is to accept and find harmony with reason. 

    Paradoxically, while I believe that "happiness" is a conscious choice – the "pursuit of happiness" often results in unhappiness.  Why?  Because happiness is a result of acceptance.  However, when happiness is the goal, you often focus on what you're lacking instead of what you already have.

    What do you think?