Shamayita Acharya

In a world where dataism has become the new normal for organisations, security has become a high priority. Or at least, it should be a top priority for organisations. Unfortunately, the reality is different, and every year, many consumers still become the victim of one of the hundreds of data breaches. Any organisation can be hacked, and without sufficient security measures in place, it can become very expensive. The breach of Equifax, the consumer credit reporting agency that exposed the personal data of some 143 million Americans in June and July 2017, is among the biggest hacks with the biggest impact on consumers. Thus far, the Equifax breach has cost the company US$4 billion. The company’s CEO resigned over the hack, as did its Chief Information Officer and its Chief Security Officer. Information Security Challenges for Organisations Unfortunately, protecting your organisations from (would be) hackers is difficult. Organisations face a lot of challenges when it comes to ensu

Technology moves at lightning speed, and sometimes it’s hard to keep up. There’s one development that you can’t allowed to pass you by: Augmented reality. Augmented reality is a specific type of technology that can superimpose a computer-generated image on top of your view of the real world, creating a composite view of the world that merges the real (reality) with something that is not (the generated image). This technology has made its way into video games, testing situations for extreme jobs, and now, it’s in your pocket. That’s right, your cell phone has the power to become an augmented reality machine. All you must do is use it. Augmented reality, or AR, has been in our hands for years. One of the most popular mobile apps that uses AR is Snapchat. Snapchat has what are called filters. These filters can be anything from fake makeup to puppy dog ears. When the camera is pointed at a person, the filter is applied in real time, and it looks like you’ve put on flawless makeup or turn

Managing high availability in your PostgreSQL hosting is very important to ensuring your clusters maintain exceptional uptime and strong operational performance so your data is always available to your application. In an earlier blog post, we introduced you to configuring high availability for PostgreSQL using streaming replication, and now we’re going to show you how to best manage PostgreSQL high availability. There are multiple tools available for managing the high availability of your PostgreSQL clusters using streaming replication. These solutions offer automatic failover capabilities, monitoring, replication, and other useful administrative tasks. Some of the prominent open source solutions include: PostgreSQL Automatic Failover by ClusterLabs Replication Manager for PostgreSQL Clusters by repmgr (2ndQuadrant) Patroni by Zalando Each of these tools provides their own way of managing the clusters. In our three-part series of posts on high availability for PostgreSQ

By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider Paperclips. They quietly do their job for us. Innocent, simple, nondescript. You probably have paperclips right now somewhere near you, doing their duty by holding together a thicket of papers. In the United States alone there are about 11 billion paperclips sold each year. That’s about 34 paperclips per American per year. You likely have some straggler paperclips in your pocket, your purse, in the glove box of your car, and in a slew of other places. Little did you know the danger you face. There is a paperclips apocalypse heading our way. Locking your doors won’t stop it. Tossing out the paperclips you have in-hand won’t help. Moving to a remote island will not particularly increase your chances of survival. Face the facts and get ready for the dawning of the paperclips war and the end of mankind. What am I talking about? Have I gone plain loco? I’m referring to the everyday-person obscure but also semi-popular in AI “paperclip maximizer” p

Earlier this year, a shockwave landed in the artificial intelligence space with  the news  that Udi Manber, who used to run search engineering at Google, was joining the health insurer, Anthem to head up its AI group. After all, it’s not every day that industries with  reputations for spurning tech and collecting reams of paper land a preeminent technologist in a burgeoning field. But the move by Anthem could be a sign of the shift in how companies and industries think about artificial intelligence and whether it is relevant to their businesses. While in the past, AI may have been considered the province of large tech companies, increasingly non-tech firms are embracing how it can improve their performance. In this article, we look at the artificial intelligence market and analyze which industries are investing in AI and what that means exactly in terms of useful applications that are being implemented today, and what this means for the AI talent market. We found that much AI inve

By the time someone clicks “buy” on Amazon, Jenny Freshwater’s team has probably expected it. Freshwater is a software director in Amazon’s Supply Chain Optimization Technologies group. Her team forecasts demand for everything sold by Amazon worldwide. This task, into which NPR got exclusive insight, underlies the entire Amazon retail operation. And it’s central to Amazon’s wooing of some 100 million people who shell out up to $119 a year for a Prime subscription, which guarantees two-day shipping. Inside Amazon, corporate executives like to evoke magic when they talk about fast delivery. For months, they used the code name Houdini before launching their fastest service, Prime Now, which delivers household basics within hours. But a lot of it is thanks to artificial intelligence. With AI, computers analyze reams of data, making decisions and performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. AI is key to Amazon’s retail forecasting on steroids and its push to shave off mi

For years, the tech industry followed a move-fast-and-break-things approach, and few people seemed to mind as a wave of astonishing new tools for communicating and navigating the world appeared on the market. Now, amid rising concerns about the spread of fake news, the misuse of personal data, and the potential for machine-learning algorithms to discriminate at scale, people are taking stock of what the industry broke. Into this moment of reckoning come three MIT students,  Irene Chen ,  Leilani Gilpin , and  Harini Suresh , who are the founders of the new  MIT AI Ethics Reading Group . All three are graduate students in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) who had done stints in Silicon Valley, where they saw firsthand how technology developed with good intentions could go horribly wrong. “AI is so cool,” said Chen during a chat in Lobby 7 on a recent morning. “It’s so powerful. But sometimes it scares me.” The founders had debated the promise and

If you plan to live another 10 years, you should expect to live in a world with machines doing things you don’t like doing today. Shooting for another 20? Even more will be done without your lifting the proverbial finger. It’s not only menial tasks such as cleaning, laundry and dishes. High-end services previously not accessible to you will now be in your economic grasp. Your personal robot will know you better than you know yourself. This almost unimaginable lifestyle could become routine for the masses, given the tangible achievements of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to date and the low-latency-coupled-with-high-bandwidth-connectivity that 5G is on track to provide. Despite the excitement of the likely new reality, however, AI, robots and big companies are three things a lot of people are afraid of. While the last one has been around for a long time, the former are things we’ll have to learn to live with. The imminent rollout of 5G infrastructure could usher in a techno

This article is brought to you by Gaurav Sharma, Forbes contributor and author of Oilholics Synonymous.​ Visiting oil and gas sites in the United States these days would reveal a palpable shift toward operational digital tools and automated kit across the production chain. Head downstream, and you’ll find ‘digital twins’ of Honeywell’s old workhorse of a plant control system – the TDC 3000 – improving productivity by as much as 10 times over. Head midstream and ABB’s Mobile Leak Detection system and drones would offer precision “3000 times” greater than legacy systems. Look upstream and oilfield service giant Halliburton’s Integrated Asset Management system might be hard at work gathering copious amounts of site drilling data and feeding it to project managers like never before, leading to a halving of well drilling times. These are just some of the ‘Industry 4.0’ or the fourth industrial wave technologies currently in play stateside, and rivals of the aforementioned companies ar

Anyone familiar with the mobile app market will tell you that the competition is cut-throat. A business could have a high-quality offering along with a plethora of optimized features for its app and yet, the project could fail to make an impact unless backed by a suitable technology stack and a novel idea among other things. Picking the right mobile technology stack is crucial to ensure the mobile application development project's success since it not only galvanizes the project but also makes it easy to maintain and scale while ensuring it remains in sync with the business' needs. In addition to that, the right technology stack also helps cut down costs and requires considerably less time when it comes to mobile app development. Moreover, that's not all, a well-qualified technology stack for Java development can also influence the ease of future updates and releases for the company's app. Let's review some technology stacks for mobile app development that have

Imagine a world where you only ever met anybody once. Where every encounter lasted no longer than a few hours and no matter how well you got on with that person, you never spoke to them again. This would be a very sad world to live in. Now take this world and compare it to a business which only ever meets its customer once. No meaningful relationship is ever developed, there is no way of knowing what the market wants and there is no feedback to provide you with that satisfying feeling that you have delivered something truly valuable. Luckily, we do not live in a world like this, however, it is shocking how many businesses discard good customers by not maintaining contact and nurturing a good customer relationship. Developing and Maintaining a good customer relationship is crucial for a variety of reasons: Firstly, it is easier and cheaper to market to existing customers Helps maintain a good brand image which prevents customers from switching to competitors Opens doors to ne

Check out our recently published customer case study! This story gives a look at how TechnipFMC is enabling data analysts and data scientists to gain insights the come from the edge and quickly produce results. TechnipFMC is a global leader in oil and gas projects, technologies, systems, and services to provide their clients with deep expertise […] The post How TechnipFMC is Empowering Data Scientists with Insights from the Edge appeared first on Hortonworks .

This is the second in a series of data science blogs that we plan to publish. The first blog outlined the data science and data engineering capabilities of Hortonworks Data Platform. In this blog we highlight how the latest release of Apache Hive 3 can work with Apache Spark Motivation As enterprises embrace the value […] The post One Size Does Not Fit All appeared first on Hortonworks .

For the last few years, businesses all over the globe have been racing to incorporate big data systems and solutions into their processes and operations. That has increased demand for workers with the skills to operate, maintain, and expand those systems to levels not seen in other professions in decades, if ever. All the while, the global education system has been slow to adapt to the growing need, creating a severe shortage of qualified workers in the labor pool. Part of the problem is that the field of big data encompasses so many skills that it's difficult for today's students to decide which subset offers them the best chance for a long and rewarding career, and which will be phased out as newer technology continues to emerge. For businesses, that reality means that it's not going to be possible to rely on the general labor pool to supply them with the talented individuals they will need to power their businesses into the future. Instead, they're going to have to

Everybody in this day and age is well-familiar with the power of big data and contemporary machine learning operations, but few business owners and working professionals seem to have a solid grasp on how to use data to monitor the competition. This is unfortunate, as recent digital innovations have made keeping an eye on your competition easier and cheaper than ever before. Here’s how you can harness the power of data to monitor your competition, and what your company will need to do to guarantee that it maintains a competitive advantage in the market. Start on social media There are many ways to use data to monitor your competition, but by far the easiest is to tap into popular social media platforms, which possess reams of lucrative data just waiting to be exploited by savvy companies. You should seriously be asking yourself what kind of social media strategy your competitors are using from the get-go; first and foremost, which platforms are they on, and which do they dedicate

This blog was co authored by Simon K. Lutzenberger, Manager Strategic Partnerships at PTC Today, PTC and Hortonworks announce a strategic partnership to “fast-forward” the realization of Industry 4.0 benefits including improved manufacturing quality and yield, enhanced asset and plant uptime, and optimized production flexibility and throughput. This collaboration is directed at a state-of-the art solution […] The post “Fast Forward” Industry 4.0 with Enterprise Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning with PTC and Hortonworks appeared first on Hortonworks .

The AWS S3 protocol is the defacto interface for modern object stores. Ozone-0.3.0-Alpha release adds S3 protocol as a first-class notion to Ozone. For all practical purposes, a user of S3 can start using Ozone without any change to code or tools. A Bit of History When we started building Ozone, there were a lot […] The post An S3 Gateway to Apache Hadoop Ozone appeared first on Hortonworks .

By nature, we are a consumer-driven society. We are fast-paced, with fast apps, and ultimately we make fast friends. The question is, though, how do we transition those friendships into relationships that stick? How do we bridge the gap from a prospective buyer, consumer, and user – to a customer that keeps coming back, when there is plenty of other fish in the sea, so to speak? The baseline of any relationship is communication and how you choose to engage in that conversation actively. Most importantly, when the focus is on flipping a passerby to a patron, your website and marketing should be your focus. Essentially, you want to date the consumer. But how do you get there? The answer is that you first have to “date the data”. Just as dating has evolved from a mere 15 years ago, so has the process of analysing data. We now can form an integral bond and trust by using resources that simply help you know your customer better. You are now able to grow those roots by identifying thei

By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider During my daily commute on the hectic freeways of Southern California (SoCal), there are drivers that seem to believe that if they aggressively tailgate the car ahead of them (dangerously so!), such an effort will somehow make the traffic go faster. I am sure that these hostile drivers would gladly push or shove the car ahead of them as though they were at a child’s bumper cars ride at an amusement park, if they could do so legally. I’m not quite convinced that their riding on the tail of the car ahead of them is really achieving what they hope for. Yes, there are some drivers that upon noticing they are being tailgated will speed-up, but a casual observation suggests it is not as many as perhaps the belligerent drivers assume will do so. There are even some drivers that once they spot a tailgater will actually pump their brakes lightly and tend to slow down, apparently believing that this will warn the other nosy driver to back-away and not be