Evolutionary Algorithm Outperforms Deep-Learning Machines at Video Games

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August 10, 2018

With all the excitement over neural networks and deep-learning techniques, it’s easy to imagine that the world of computer science consists of little else. Neural networks, after all, have begun to outperform humans in tasks such as object and face recognition and in games such as chess, Go, and various arcade video games.

These networks are based on the way the human brain works. Nothing could have more potential than that, right?

Not quite. An entirely different type of computing has the potential to be significantly more powerful than neural networks and deep learning. This technique is based on the process that created the human brain—evolution. In other words, a sequence of iterative change and selection that produced the most complex and capable machines known to humankind—the eye, the wing, the brain, and so on. The power of evolution is a wonder to behold. …

Evolutionary computing works in an entirely different way than neural networks. The goal is to create computer code that solves a specific problem using an approach that is somewhat counterintuitive.

The conventional way to create code is to write it from first principles with a specific goal in mind.

Evolutionary computing uses a different approach. It starts with code generated entirely at random. And not just one version of it, but lots of versions, sometimes hundreds of thousands of randomly assembled pieces of code.

Hollywood Gets its Own Open Source Foundation

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TechCrunch

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August 10, 2018

Open source is everywhere now, so maybe it’s no surprise that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (yes, the organization behind the Oscars) today announced that it has partnered with the Linux Foundation to launch the Academy Software Foundation, a new open source foundation for developers in the motion picture and media space.

The founding members include a number of high-powered media and tech companies, including Animal Logic, Blue Sky Studios, Cisco, DreamWorks, Epic Games, Google, Intel, SideFX, Walt Disney Studios and Weta Digital.

According to a survey by the Academy, 84 percent of the industry uses open source software already, mostly for animation and visual effects. The group also found that what’s holding back open source development in the media industry is the siloed nature of the development teams across the different companies in this ecosystem.

DevSecOps: Security Automation in Enterprise DevOps

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The New Stack

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August 10, 2018

Another day, another portmanteau. DevSecOps — an expensive target on AdWords — tries to fit security into the DevOps process. It’s kind of silly because of course companies should be factoring security into their development, particularly when much of DevOps is about enterprises releasing applications faster.

Amazon Web Services’ Senior Solutions Architect Margo Cronin kicked off her talk at the European DevOps Enterprise Summit by saying how personally she doesn’t like the term DevSecOps.

The term DevSecOps “has always struck me like the last kid getting on the bus and there’s no seat available. We are treating security as an afterthought. Security has never been an afterthought with any customer I dealt with — in financial services or now at Amazon Web Services. I feel like the name doesn’t reflect the importance,” Cronin said.

In fact, with the new European regulations of GDPR, she says privacy by design and privacy by default are built right in.

“It nearly mandates you should be doing DevSecOps,” she said.

Linux Kernel Network TCP Bug Fixed

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ZDNet

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August 10, 2018

The denial of service bug had actually been patched in the Linux kernel weeks before news of it was ever announced.

Another day, another bit of security hysteria. This time around the usually reliable Carnegie Mellon University’s CERT/CC, claimed the Linux kernel’s TCP network stack could be “forced to make very expensive calls to tcp_collapse_ofo_queue() and tcp_prune_ofo_queue() for every incoming packet which can lead to a denial of service (DoS).”

True, this bug, already given the trendy name SegmentSmack, could cause DoS attacks. But it’s already been fixed.

Keynote Sneak Peek for Hyperledger Global Forum – See Who’s Speaking

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Hyperledger

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August 10, 2018

Check Out the Initial Lineup of Blockchain Leaders Speaking at Hyperledger Global Forum.

Attend Hyperledger Global Forum to see real uses of distributed ledger technologies for business and to learn how these innovative technologies run live in production networks across the globe today. Hyperledger Global Forum will cut through the hype and focus on adoption. Attendees will see first-hand how the largest organizations in the world go beyond experimentation to lead blockchain production applications with measurable impact. Make your plans now to attend the premier blockchain event of 2018.

Keynote Speakers Include:

Alexis Gauba, Co-Founder, Mechanism Labs and She(256); R&D, Blockchain at Berkeley; R&D, Thunder Token
Leanne Kemp, Founder & CEO, Everledger
Bruce Schneier, Fellow and Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School

Get Practical Advice for Enterprise Open Source in Free Ebook from The Linux Foundation

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The Linux Foundation

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August 9, 2018

When it comes to running and managing open source in the enterprise, experience-driven advice counts for a lot. It is very likely that your organization already runs open source, but many organizations make the mistake of reacting to the open source ecosystem instead of adopting a proactive strategy that is optimized for success. That’s where the free Enterprise Open Source ebook comes in.

This new 45-page ebook from The Linux Foundation provides a practical approach to establishing an open source strategy by outlining the actions your enterprise can take to accelerate its open source efforts. The information is based on more than two decades of professional, enterprise open source usage and development and will be most beneficial to software engineering executives, development managers, compliance experts, and senior engineers involved in enterprise open source activities.

“The availability of enterprise grade open source software is changing the way organizations develop and deliver products,” the book notes. “The combination of a transparent development community and access to public source code enables organizations to think differently about how they procure, implement, test, deploy, and maintain software. This has the potential to offer a wealth of benefits, including reduced development costs, faster product development, higher code quality standards, and more.”

Linux Deep Learning Expands: Answer Is Still 42

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ComputerWeekly

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August 9, 2018

The Linux Foundation Deep Learning Foundation (LF DLF) has announced five new members: Ciena, DiDi, Intel, Orange and Red Hat.

As an umbrella organization of The Linux Foundation itself, the LF DLF supports and sustains open source innovation in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL).

Deep Learning is defined as an aspect of AI that is concerned with emulating the learning approach that human beings use to gain certain types of knowledge. It can be thought of as a way to automate predictive analytics and is also sometimes known as deep structured learning or hierarchical learning.

It can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised and can be used to build architectures such as deep neural networks, deep belief networks and recurrent neural networks that have been used in fields including computer vision and speech recognition etc.Deep Learning concerns ‘learning data representations’ as opposed to ‘task-specific algorithms’.

WPA3: How and Why the Wi-Fi Standard Matters

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HPE Blog

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August 9, 2018

Wi-Fi Protected Access II, or WPA2, is the standard behind wireless security networking. It protects users everywhere, from coffee shops to college campuses to corporate headquarters. WPA2 may be the most widespread security standard in the world that ordinary people encounter.

With all that’s gone on since 2004, when the specification behind WPA2 was adopted, it must be considered a successful standard. But WPA2 does have some important limitations. A new version, WPA3, is a significant improvement. Products to use it are being built now, and certification for them will begin in the third quarter of 2018.

I spoke to Dan Harkins, distinguished technologist at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, and author of many of the basic standards behind WPA3 to gain insights on what really matters in WPA3.

Harkins says that most of what matters in WPA3 will affect consumer deployments rather than enterprises. The improvements to consumer Wi-Fi use will be substantial and, importantly, invisible to the user.

However, key new enterprise features will appeal to the federal government and organizations that work with government agencies.

Graduation Day for Prometheus, the Open-Source Container Monitoring System

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Silicon Angle

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August 9, 2018

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation today officially graduated Prometheus from incubation, opening a new chapter in the popular open-source project’s evolution.

Prometheus is one of the most widely used systems for monitoring software container deployments. As such, the project has taken on an important role in the rise of containers, which are increasingly used to deploy applications because they’re lightweight and can easily move between different kinds of infrastructure.

Prometheus is only the second CNCF project to have graduated so far. The first was Kubernetes, the go-to framework for managing container environments. Prometheus integrates with the framework and was ranked as the most popular monitoring tool among users of the technology in a 2017 survey.

Guy Martin: Open Source Strategy at Autodesk

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The Linux Foundation

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August 8, 2018

Companies today can’t get away with not using open source, says Guy Martin, Director, Open@Autodesk, who recently sat down with us for a deep dive into Autodesk’s engagement with and contributions to the open source community.

“Like any company… we consume a lot of open source,” said Martin, “I was brought in to help Autodesk’s open source strategy in terms of how we contribute back more effectively to open source, how we open source code within our environment, which we want to be a standard — code which is non-differentiating and not strategic IP.”

But it’s not easy for a large company like Autodesk to engage with the open source community. Because they also have industry-leading proprietary solutions, they need to be extra careful with consuming and contributing to open source. They need to understand various licenses to avoid legal complexity, and they must be aware that releasing some code may also expose company IP. These are areas where all companies must tread carefully, and developers need to be fully confident that they can use code efficiently without dealing with a heavyweight process to get permissions for using or contributing.

“There needs to be a process around what we are going to open source which involves legal at a very early stage,” Martin said.