Friday, December 21, 2018

Aweekstweets November 4 to December 21 2018: the weeks before and after silence


 6m6 minutes ago

New jk blogpost: "Kobielus thought leadership posts in 2018" (http://ow.ly/fPTz30n4wzi )


New jk LinkedIn Pulse blog: "Predictions for Edge Computing in 2019" (http://ow.ly/D2PF30n4w7X )


Reading Simmons' Leonard Cohen bio. Mentions him by chance meeting Nico and her "pretty-boy guitar player" in a Greenwich Village bar in 1967. That was almost certainly a young Jackson Browne, whom I met by chance in Midtown 50 years later.

New jk #SiliconANGLE article: " turbulence is coming in the big-data analytics market in 2019" (https://siliconangle.com/2018/12/20/turbulence-coming-big-data-analytics-market-2019/ …)


"HEXstream Unveils Koios, a New Analytics Solution Powered by Naveego's Complete Data Accuracy [blah blah blah]" (http://ow.ly/1QRA30n3FUn  ) JK--PR comes from Traverse City MI. They have hi-tech (Naveego) in the northern Lower Peninsula? Wow. Michigan's economy is evolving.


"Curiosity-Driven Data Science" (http://ow.ly/1XYX30n3EUa ) JK--What's with the "cat popping bubbles" photo? Did curiosity-driven data science kill the cat? Schrodinger's Cat wasn't particularly curious, but that's cold comfort in her/his perilous state.


"3 top cybersecurity predictions for 2019" (http://ow.ly/F0C230n3EzS ) JK--Really? Your predictions are 1) "attacks on industrial plants," 2) "confirmed use of adversarial AI," & 3) "a new attack vector"? Why not just summarize them all with one master prediction: "we're screwed"?


"Managing risk in machine learning" (http://ow.ly/V8UE30n3Ek2 ) JK--Ben Lorica mentions Google "federated learning" for building centralized model without sharing private data. I wrote an article about it in April 2017 re AI in edge computing. Here that is:


"In Memoriam: The Tech That Died in 2018" (http://ow.ly/WbLt30n3DC0 ) JK--Of these, I once used Google+, StumbleUpon, Canon film cameras, & Yahoo Messenger. I had a Klout account but found all that "influencer score" crap laughable from the start. Too many nobodies with "influence"


I scratch my head when some tech vendor sends a Merry Xmas greeting to my work email, but addresses me by my wife's name. Apparently, they're squandering the money they've paid for bulk email addresses, or data cleansing solutions, or outbound targeting software, or all of that.


"Computer Science For Babies" (http://ow.ly/LTqn30n3Cud ) JK--Thanks, but I'm not going to imagine that my 1-year-old grandson gets into the same stuff I do. I never made that assumption with his daddy or auntie. And I was right. We already got his Xmas presents.


"6 Cool AI Toys For Kids" (http://ow.ly/iUe530n3Cmd ) JK--Perhaps there'll be a Cabbage Patch Kids or Teddy Ruxpin equivalent mania for one of these come future Christmases. Nothing seems to jump out yet into "gotta have it mommy/daddy" status this year.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Princess Chelsea "I Love My Boyfriend" from The Loneliest Girl JK--2018. Very nice retro-pop. Sounds  early 60s teenage-girl puppy-love anthem.


"The 10 Coolest New Hyper-Converged Systems Of 2018" (http://ow.ly/GWqZ30n3BKk ) JK--Good roundup of fiercely competitive segment of the enterprise hardware market. Reduce complexity of data centers that underpin clouds of every type. The clouds themselves are growing very complex


"Automation Anywhere and DataRobot Partner on AI Solutions for Digital Transformation" (http://ow.ly/SOv730n3AVE ) JK--Net-net: partner provides a data-science DevOps pipeline tool to speed deployment of AI models into robotic process automation (RPA) bots built with AA's tooling


"Edge-chips could render some networks unnecessary" (http://ow.ly/vUxa30n3AEE ) JK--But only if "brain-replicating" neuristor chips overcome serious engineering hurdles, such as much lower-power activation & less complex fabrication. One must always read deeper than the headline.


"North Korea rejects denuclearization unless U.S. ‘nuclear threat’ is eliminated" (http://ow.ly/mluR30n3zQb ) JK--I assume that Trump will negotiate a deal on this in the same expert way he convinced Congress that we need to build wall along the border with Mexico.


"How Much Can Technology Be Trusted?" (http://ow.ly/llnT30n3zzD ) JK--When writing blogs, I  to start from a premise that is a bit  actionable than just a projection of my anxieties onto a single-word abstraction of some vast, amorphous subject matter. Just saying.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp This Mortal Coil "Kangaroo" from It'll End in Tears JK--1984. UK-based collective known for its gothic, dream pop sound. This one sounds  a fever dream set to the "Twin Peaks" theme. 


"Finally, a Machine That Can Finish Your Sentence" (http://ow.ly/yPrs30n37W6 ) JK--Reminds me of this "Portlandia" bit:


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp The Decemberists "Once in My Life" from I’ll Be Your Girl JK--2018. Another great one from their latest. This one has arena-rock bombast behind it. Actually, that's kind of refreshing for their sound.


"Tech legends honor Doug Engelbart, ‘mother of all demos’ — but has his vision come true?" (http://ow.ly/ap2130n37be ) JK--Possibly, but I doubt that Engelbart's vision was to ultimately be referred as the "mother" of something.


"Nvidia AI research points to an evolution of the chip business" (http://ow.ly/I1O830n35eP ) JK--AI-accelerator chips optimized for generative/automated model-driven video/image/graphics rendering without need for manual sketching etc to kickstart the process.


"How Significant Is Blockchain in Internet of Things?" (http://ow.ly/XKhE30n34Wo ) JK--Radically decentralized trust, identity, metadata, transaction, and audit log shared amongst things.


"Microsoft Spotlights Partner IoT Efforts Around 'Smart Cities'" (http://ow.ly/W9O030n34m4 ) JK--"Dynamic glass...senses when broken, invisibly sending notification about the location of the broken window and the time of the incident."


RIP Penny Marshall. People tend to overlook the fact that she was an excellent movie director. Remember "Awakenings," for example. And that she was always the most amusing sitcom actor in frame. Remember Oscar Madison's secretary?


"Microsoft Uses Neural Networks to Design Neural Networks" (http://ow.ly/HFOZ30n2ca7 ) JK--AI will recursively self-spawn. "Microsoft’s Neural Architecture Optimization...maps a neural network architecture into a continuous vector space and optimizes it via a gradient based method"


"AI software can dream up an entire digital world from a simple sketch" (http://ow.ly/fM7h30n2bWY ) JK--In other words, a declarative specification of the intended AI outcome can be generatively auto-compiled into a deliverable that leverages library of pre-trained modules.


"Kubernetes’ sprawling ecosystem offers lots of choice – and risk" (http://ow.ly/Py3I30n276E ) JK--Interviews me and many others in the community.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp David Bowie "Sound and Vision" from Low JK--1977. This reference dates me, but this is one of many songs where David's singing sounds to me  the late Anthony Newley. Anthony who?  the late Mr. Bowie, he was an English actor, singer and songwriter.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Yo La Tengo "Ohm" from Fade JK--2013. Music is exactly one chord. Lyric is a double-entendre of "om" (the meditative exhalation) over "ohm" (the electrical resistance metric), though neither word is anywhere in the lyric. Just the title. One syllable. Wow


New jk #InformationWeek column: "Predictions for Artificial Intelligence in 2019" (http://ow.ly/C9zK30n1TPf )


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Toadies "Possum Kingdom" from Rubberneck JK--1994. Grunge golden oldie. I have an odd musical nostalgia for the '90s. I was already in my 30s & obviously too old to get into what teenagers of that day were getting off on. But I enjoyed it on FM radio.


"Harvard researchers want to school Congress about AI" (http://ow.ly/WSa130n1Rvc ) JK--It is painful to listen to these legislators speak from sheer uninformed ignorance. Years ago as a freelance tech journalist, I met Al Gore when he was still a senator. He actually knew his stuff


"Tech predictions for 2019"? Which tech? Can you scope that down? Suffice it to say that "this stuff will get even  complex" applies year after year to it all. So does "it will be hyped with the latest and greatest cliches." Beyond that, it's hard to generalize. 


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Jessica Pratt "Poly Blue" from Quiet Signs JK--2019. Wow. This tickles me all over. Light, bright, and winsome.


"Dependency injection"? I'm curious if the computer scientists who coined this technical programming term intended it as a pun suggesting mainlining of a controlled substance. It's all about "inversion of control" (http://ow.ly/LR3330n0Vgp ). Kicks keep getting harder to find.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Whitney Mongé "Day N Nite" from Carry On JK--2018. Seattle. It's not everybody's box of rain.


New jk #InfoWorld column: "Key enterprise cloud trends for 2019" (http://ow.ly/CxwK30n0S4C )


"Dressbarn." Odd nomenclature for a woman's clothing store. "Where'd you learn to dress? In a barn?"


Reading Sylvie Simmons' "I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen." Already, I've learned surprising things about him. His poetic impulse from the start was  libidinal than spiritual. He thought his writing would help his chances with the ladies.


Watched "The Hours" from a DVD we checked out from the public library. Meh. Couldn't stop noticing Nicole Kidman's fake nose and thinking about all the great performers giving their all for this unconvincing tearjerker.


FROCKS OF AGE Now that the fallen have reanimated the soil, a curtain drops. We venture out in raincoats streaked filthy from last Spring's solemnities. Sweating inside their removable linings and seams unraveling. --James Kobielus


Wife says following instructions in exercise class is better way to work my mind than doing the elliptical. I'll multitask pondering that advice while composing and posting yet another poem while working my cardio on that machine.


Washington DC area is top move-to destination in the USA, Alexandria is tops in the DC area, and that's even before legions Amazonians come to town. Holy cow!


Think I'll put up the tree and trimmings this weekend. I've given our household the requisite two-week post-Thanksgiving basting in Yule juice. Stick a fork in it.


"I Used Gmail Auto-Complete, and Now I Know I’m Worthless" (http://ow.ly/N3GY30mZt63 ) JK--That's a dumb attitude. I  and frequently rely on that feature to auto-gen the right stock phrase to stick rapidly into a message. I'm not authoring original works of literature there.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Simon & Garfunkel "The Only Living Boy in New York" from Bridge Over Troubled Water JK--1970. Simon wrote this while Garfunkel was filming Catch-22 in Mexico. Addresses Garfunkel by the pseudonym "Tom" from their 1950s teeny-bopper act "Tom & Jerry" 



New jk #SiliconANGLE article: "At KubeCon, the Kubernetes community discusses its growing pains" (https://siliconangle.com/2018/12/13/kubecon-kubernetes-community-discusses-growing-pains/ …)


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Roberta Flack "The Closer I Get To You" JK--1977. Flack hails from northern Virginia. Arlington, specifically. Shirlington, even  specifically. Cut her musical chops at Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, just off I-395 & Glebe Rd.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Ralph Carney & Patrick Carney "BoJack's Theme" from BoJack's Theme JK--2014. RIP Ralph. @loserboy did a great job of summarizing Carney's career as a go-to musical collaborator across a huge spectrum of artists. Also, by all accounts, he was a great guy.


"Hey Google, What’s The Point Of Silicon Valley’s Tech Hearings?" (http://ow.ly/jF6230mYkyE ) JK--Boneheaded legislators forcing tech execs to cough up deterministic "yes or no" answers to questions about behavior of statistical algorithms that are driven by 100s of variables.


Wife & I agree that we don't care for Jackson 5's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." I've never been all that fond of Bruce Springsteen's either. The Crystals' is the only one I actually enjoy: http://ow.ly/FxQN30mYjD9 . It set the standard.


National Enquirer run by cynical scumbags who pander to brain-dead reactionaries? Didn’t see that one coming.


New jk #SiliconANGLE article: "At KubeCon, serverless, mesh and DevOps announcements dominate" (http://ow.ly/b1Zn30mXPGh )


"Google hearing previews House Dems' plans to rein in Big Tech" (http://ow.ly/CWnU30mXOos ) JK--Privacy legislation, not "entirely fictitious allegations of...anti-conservative bias of internet companies [that] waste time/money & elevate well-worn right-wing conspiracy theories"


 invitations to be prebriefed on data announcements under embargo. If there's a "data is oil" pitch anywhere in it, I'd  to request a permanent oil embargo. Leave OPEC out of it.


ESPN. Some NFL head coach states they’re going to “actively seek victory.” Thanks for the clarification. I thought they pay you to passively invite defeat


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Cat Power "Free" from You Are Free JK--2003. I love this song. It's Chan-as-hippie while the band snaps that tight beat around her. The "free" chorus at the end sounds  it could be Henry Rollins hanging out in the studio.


New jk #SiliconANGLE article: "Kubernetes open-source project matures as commercialization accelerates" (http://ow.ly/tcku30mWU42 )


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Sly & The Family Stone "Stand!" from Stand! JK--1969. Righteously great chorus on this. The band sounds  they're doing a fast-march up the victory podium.


"Evelyn Berezin, 93, Dies; Built the First True Word Processor" (http://ow.ly/dWOk30mWSSw ) JK--An innovator in the computer industry whose contributions had been unfairly overlooked. Perhaps because she was a woman. You decide.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Phosphorescent "Christmas Down Under" from C’est La Vie JK--2018. Wow, that's a great new Christmas song, in the melancholy tradition.


I'm leery of these ratings of "tech giant with the best company culture," based on employee reports. None controls for key variable: the degree to which the firm is currently making money hand over fist. Show us those whose "employee kumbaya" factors endure thru red ink & layoffs


"Google moves up Google+ consumer shutdown to April 2019" (http://ow.ly/d5pM30mWz3V ) JK--Why not sooner? The only consumer I recall using Google+ was the Obama White House early in his first term. And they only used it once for some long-forgotten event. It's a rank failure.


"Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again" (http://ow.ly/f14n30mWwHH ) JK--Only Trump has received it so far. Repeatedly. I suggest Washington Post create a Bottomless Geppetto & give it to Fox News. They built & maintain this dummy


"Who Will Be Trump’s Next Chief Of Staff? It Doesn’t Really Matter" (http://ow.ly/pRDc30mWwzm ) JK--Plenty of people can do the job, so just pick a name out of a hat. It's just a matter of reminding the president that he hasn't lied and slandered enough to fulfill his daily quota.


Thank you "digital transformation partner" who wants to have coffee while he's "in the neighborhood." You've indicated that the neighborhood is "Germany." I accept your offer if you'll fly me all expenses paid to a posh chalet in the Bavarian Alps with my good friend Rick Steves.


Thoroughly enjoyed Pentatonix’ Christmas special. Damn good acapella.


I’ve started reading the comments in YouTube for kicks. On popsongs, there’s usually lots of dumb “love this” comments followed by a snarky one, followed by somebody saying something to the effect of “what asshat wouldn’t  this song?” That one always cracks me up.


New jk #SiliconANGLE article: “The intensifying battle between AWS and Oracle for enterprise database supremacy” (https://siliconangle.com/2018/12/10/intensifying-battle-aws-oracle-enterprise-database-supremacy/ …)


New jk #Datanami column: "The Smart Object Ecosystem Is The New AI Workbench" (http://ow.ly/Sx7V30mVO05 )


"Robot Economy: Ready or Not, Here It Comes" (http://ow.ly/4zfs30mVGqg ) JK--Key principle (of 3) they lay out: "Robots should not have property rights and will have to operate only on the basis of contractual responsibility, so that people control the economy."


"IBM Guns for 8-bit AI Breakthroughs" (http://ow.ly/QZKM30mVG5p ) JK--One of many vendors making strategic bets on AI hardware accelerator techs that are lower-power edge-facing alternatives to GPUs.


"Is IBM's Watson Still an AI Success Story?" (http://ow.ly/us6130mVFyK ) JK--Was it ever? For IBM, it was a strategic bet that hasn't ever been the big blow-out revenue-producing success they'd hoped for. Just look at their quarterlies going back to near the start of this decade.












"Japan Sniffing Out Its AI Niches" (http://ow.ly/eO9o30mVF9T ) JK--Something as seemingly humble as "printable sensors" can be hugely disruptive in feeding AI-powered nano-endpoints with streaming data of incredible granularity and very low cost.


"What machine learning means for software development" (http://ow.ly/Tc9430mVEgN ) JK--ML-driven auto-programming: "“the developer has to become a teacher, a curator of training data, and an analyst of results.” See my #Wikibon "augmented programming" study:


"Kubernetes security vulnerability reveals fractured market" (http://ow.ly/fJyR30mVDjU ) JK--Dozens of commercial distros and hosted implementations of this pervasive containerization/orchestration platform = hugely exposed attack surface.


Dear "The #1 Thing You Need To Know Before Implementing Any Of Your Six-Figure Business Ideas": The woman behind this campaign is someone I knew in my previous gig. She was/is a data scientist. What is she now? A general-purpose dispenser of "coaching recommendations"? WTF?!


Dear Usual Scam Come-On Emailer: Re "We have read your articles posted on various websites & are impressed by your insights in the industry." Which articles? Which websites? Which industry? I'd be impressed if you revealed even the slightest bit of actual familiarity with my work


"What You Think Is Existential Angst Might Actually Be a Lack of Sleep.” (http://ow.ly/62jQ30mVAF8 ) JK--Definitely. It might also be that interacting with the consequences of your poor diet, inability to set priorities, and tone-deaf manner of interacting with people. Just saying.


"After Getting FOSTA Turned Into Law, Facebook Tells Users To Stop Using Naughty Words" (http://ow.ly/vKiR30mVzM4 ) JK--That includes "expressing a sexual preference." OK. I'll cease&desist from implying that I'm married to a woman & that I in any way find her physically attractive


Mueller needs to give up his witch hunt. He's found lots of criminals in Trump's circle, but no witches. Trump should appoint a special prosecutor specifically to look for nasty cackling ladies on flying broomsticks who've got it in for Dorothy and her little dog too.


"How to Build a Car for Someone Who Can’t Drive" (http://ow.ly/gwI430mVxWZ ) JK--Autonomous vehicles will be the new road-ready wheelchair.


"Blockchain: What’s it good for? Absolutely nothing, report finds" (http://ow.ly/s9m130mVxj5 ) JK--It's a bit premature to declare that on tech that's very early in the adoption cycle. So far it hasn't shattered many a young man's dreams, made him disabled, bitter and mean.


Russian nationals interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the 2016 campaign. Rumor is that Putin was lobbying to open a branch of the Russian embassy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.


Read this morning that President William Howard Taft had a personal trainer while in the White House. Worked out first thing every morning, followed immediately and throughout the day by devouring boatloads of fattening food.


Nice Saturday of doing stuff. Exercise, yard work, chicken avocado sandwich, haircut, deep tissue massage, grocery shopping, redeeming a Groupon at a local bistro, lazily reading the paper under my electric blanket. Also ate 2 fists full of M&Ms. Indulgence.


My coverage areas as a tech industry analyst, author, columnist, and blogger have evolved so much over the past 33 years that I’m unrecognizable now. Except in how I put words together. I punch hard. That’s been there from day one.


“IBM selling Lotus Notes/Domino business to HCL for $1.8B” (https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/ibm-selling-lotus-notes-domino-business-to-hcl-for-1-8b/?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nuzzel …) JK--I’m surprised there’s that much of a business left to sell. I didn’t even enjoy using those tools when I was with IBM. BTW, that was my initial coverage focus 20 years ago with Burton Group.


Relistening to Ray Conniff Singers’ “Jingle Bells.” So happy, jaunty, & secular, until the part about the horse who “got into a drifted bank” & for whom “misfortune was his lot.” Who was this equine loser & how could the songwriters allow him to intrude on our yuletide merriment?


Rewatched “The Graduate” on TCM. I never tire of it. What I noticed this time are the constant shifts in tone. Also, the “what the hell do we do next?” look on Elaine’s face as she and Benjamin make their token getaway on a Santa Barbara municipal bus.


New jk #SiliconANGLE article: “Robots will rule the edge: At re:Invent, AWS drives a new AI paradigm” (https://siliconangle.com/2018/12/07/robots-will-rule-edge-reinvent-aws-drives-new-ai-paradigm/ …)


Another in a steady stream of great blood pressure readings. The older I get, the better I’m able to shake off stress. It’s ambient,  a stinging rain.


Saw “Searching” on DVD. Very well told mystery that pioneers a new narrative style in cinema. The entire story is told through the interfaces of digital devices and online media. John Cho and Debra Messing shine.


New jk #SiliconANGLE blog:”What’s missing from Outposts, AWS’ latest hybrid cloud announcement” (https://siliconangle.com/2018/12/06/whats-missing-outposts-aws-latest-hybrid-cloud-announcement/ …)


"Highlights from five years of Facebook AI Research" (http://ow.ly/LX5n30mT6EL ) JK--They've been doing innovative work in memory networks, self-supervised learning, generative models, scalable text classification & translation, & computer vision. Developed PyTorch, ONNX, & Caffe2.


RT @KEXPNowPlaying #kexp Warren Zevon "Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)" from My Ride's Here JK--2002. "What else can a farmboy from Canada do?"


"Sunny Day Real Estate's drummer says their greatest album is "buried in Dave Grohl's sock drawer"" (http://ow.ly/He7b30mT4yN ) JK--Pee-you! That means it probably stinks to high heaven!


"Tom Cruise wants you to change how you watch movies at home" (http://ow.ly/yO4V30mT4I8 ) JK--He wants us all to have "Dianetics" scrolling permanently in our picture-in-picture window.


The cliche is that at the moment of your death your life plays back before your eyes. That's actually what happens as you age. Much of it is kind of annoying. I'm hoping my final moments are simply a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon. You need a few laughs on your way out.

"The future is now"? How can that be, unless you discovered some sort of wormhole in the fabric of space-time? Was the future now way back in the day, when now and all that will ever be was then? If so, when was then?


The usual onslaught of year-end predictions and trends in tech. I expect to see trends in predictive analysis and predictions for trend analysis. Safe prediction is that I'd do them myself, if I were the trendy type.


My routine morning wrestling match with my email inboxes. They have me pinned, but I always manage to wriggle out and turn the tables. No damn electronic message crush puts the chokehold on Jimmy boy. You're goin' down, dawg, down to zero!


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Sharon Van Etten "Jupiter 4" from Remind Me Tomorrow JK--2019. This is a cool new one from her. KInd of a misty spooky one.


"In vino veritas"? Is there  truth in reds or whites? Will Château Mouton Rothschild Pauillac's authoritative testimony stand up in a court of law under cross-examination?


"Soon you can immortalize yourself as an A.I. chatbot. But should you?" (http://ow.ly/g0HX30mT2bO ) JK--Yeah sure. Your loved ones will interact with it about as much as they visit your tombstone. You don't want to encode in a chatbot everything about you that got on their nerves.


I suppress a silent scream every time I read into a supposed in-depth biz-tech article and it culminates in a call-to-action to make your enterprise  "agile," "data-driven," and "results-oriented." Those sound   lunchtime pep-talk bromides than useful pieces of advice


"How Amazon Web Services Reinvented the Internet and Became a Cash Cow" (http://ow.ly/CiGO30mSfBs ) JK--Ignore the dumb headline. This is Andy Jassy's oral history of when/how he, Jeff Bezos, and other Amazon principals created the cloud-computing service in the early 2000s.


"Scalable agent alignment via reward modeling" (http://ow.ly/SgJm30mSf0I ) JK--DeepMind research into AI agents that discover the reinforcement-learning reward functions that users INTEND, not necessary how they specify. Learning a reward function from interaction with the user.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Junior Boys "In the Morning" from In The Morning / The Equalizer JK--2006. This song has the most wickedly perfect beat for fast walking.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Blondie "Rip Her to Shreds" from Blondie JK--1976. Harry co-wrote this with Chris Stein. If a man voiced a sentiment  that, it would be easily mistaken for misogyny. Just saying. Though a CBGBs band, this was about the closest they ever got to punk.


"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" (http://ow.ly/9HS530mSaW5 ) JK-"When studies & effect sizes smaller; greater number of tested relationships, flexibility in research designs, & financial interest; and  teams involved in chase of statistical significance.”


Took great briefing from NodeSource on their NodeSolid runtime for Node.js on AWS Lambda. Weren’t sitting very far apart at Vogels’ keynote at #reInvent last week. It’s now an open dev ecosystem for serverless in AWS cloud.


Going forward, AWS needs to pull back a bit to let its ISV partner ecosystem start to shine at re:Invent. This was an overwhelming blitz of very significant announcements, but it felt a bit  AWS trying to eclipse everybody, including par... #actionitem


(continued) and deep serverless developer focus: providing new open-source tools for serverless app dev, publishing an API and runtimes for sharing, discovering, and deploying libraries and serverless lambda functions, enabling application l... #actionitem


(continued) enhancing the manageability of apps in serverless, hybrid, and edge clouds, driving innovative AI into every cloud application, building and optimizing diverse data workloads in the cloud, managing rich cloud-native applications ... #actionitem


AWS had a blitz of announcements at re:Invent. Covered a wide range: boosting cloud storage efficiencies, simplifying cloud data movement, enforcing enterprise controls on cloud data workloads, accelerating the pipeline for high-performance ... #actionitem


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Animals "Sky Pilot" JK--Jan 1968. In May 1968 campus unrest, James Kunen confronted student radio station at Columbia Univ, asking why they didnt play this anti-war song. He wrote it up in his nonfiction "Strawberry Statement," which I read in highschool




I don't think I'm titling my blogs for full social-media impact. I need to frame each one as "10 things about [such-and-such] that everyone should read." I should be underlining the utter existential importance of all humanity hanging on my every last word.


"Google's Night Sight AI sees the light" (http://ow.ly/4FY830mRiLn ) JK--IMHO, AI-assisted cameras should embed into the image a trusted watermark of metadata that states the manipulations (eg lightening, contrast, etc.) performed at capture. Need photo verisimilitude veracity flag


"Microsoft Is Worth as Much as Apple. How Did That Happen?" (http://ow.ly/X60j30mRi9E ) JK--1st, Gates/Ballmer stepped away. 2nd, Nadella bet big on cloud/AI. 3rd, MSFT shifted Office to subscription revenues. 4th, Apple's device-centric go-to-market strategy has begun to plateau.


"Inside the world of AI that forges beautiful art and terrifying deepfakes" (http://ow.ly/7jRj30mRhQM ) JK--IMHO, verifying authenticity of digital photographs requires they be watermarked with unique trusted timestamps & digital signatures at the point/device of capture.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Courtney Barnett "Small Talk" from Small Talk JK--2018. Good one. Does anybody else think this sounds a wee bit  Steely Dan "Hey Nineteen"?


"Keeping AI Beneficial & Safe for Humanity" (http://ow.ly/9amW30mRgQE ) JK--UC-Berkeley Ctr for Human-Compatible AI proj on "AI alignment": ensure AI do what we mean, not what we say. Intentions. Mitigate impacts o "misspecified objective functions." See me


"Google’s AdaNet Uses Neural Networks to Build Better Neural Networks" (http://ow.ly/kj1D30mRgtf ) JK--TensorFlow-based library that uses AutoML for building/training ensemble learning as candidate subnetworks trade off performance improvement against number of parameters.


"AI a Focus as U.S. Preps Export Controls" (http://ow.ly/6oXT30mRg5G ) JK--See recent Datanami article (http://ow.ly/pupR30mRg8p ) for my perspective on why this is a stupid initiative.


"There Is An AI Robot On The International Space Station And It Just Threw A Tantrum In Its First Online Video" (http://ow.ly/1Uny30mRdSB ) JK--Was this before or after it terminated life support for the astronauts in suspended animation?


"Attention, Dialogue, and Learning Reusable Patterns" (http://ow.ly/Neyj30mRdpi ) JK--This article offers guidance for building chatbots that deal with "uncooperative" users and attempt to steer the chat back when it "strays from the happy path." Wasn't that a Philip K Dick story?


This morning in IT news: Robot overlords are coming to getcha! They're generating  big data myths, invading privacy, causing cancer, shortening attention spans, treating everybody  a number! ! They're folding, spindling, & mutilating! They're a tech-anxiety perfect storm!


"Data volumes set to hit 175ZB with a tectonic shift to the cloud" (http://ow.ly/Cg1F30mQxoH ) JK--Whew! I guess that's less disruptive than a tsnunamic shift. Or atomic, for that matter.


"A Comprehensive Summary and Categorization on Reinforcement Learning Papers at ICML 2018" (http://ow.ly/2q9130mQwKt ) JK--Index of how hot this topic is.


"GPipe: Efficient Training of Giant Neural Networks using Pipeline Parallelism" (http://ow.ly/LUWW30mQw4F ) JK--Training humungo-ginormous AI models across distributed hardware meshes with exceptionally high accuracy.


"AI Silicon Startups Report Traction" (http://ow.ly/A4OO30mQv3g  ) JK--" than 50 silicon startups are building accelerators for deep learning." And let's not forget that established firm--such as AWS--are jumping in as well:


"GAN, the Rise of Imagination in Machines" (http://ow.ly/o2GP30mQuIO ) JK--Generative adversarial networks are the new power tool for astonishingly realistic algorithmic creations. I even met a firm at AWS re:Invent using them to fabricate bite-perfect dental crowns, implants, etc


"4 Reasons to Distribute TensorFlow Processing Among Everyday Objects" (http://ow.ly/IXeV30mQsza ) JK--Things have  processing, memory, and storage capacity than we realize. Yoke them into powerful distributed AI edge-meshes.


"How DevOps will change in 2019 and beyond: 3 predictions" (http://ow.ly/7tFz30mQsl8 ) JK--"Coding automation will become the norm."


"Dell aims to stake a sizable claim in AI territory" (http://ow.ly/PLIW30mQqhE ) JK--Be that as it may, I doubt that Chicago, as host to their analyst summit, had "an icy wind blew into the city off Lake Michigan." I know Chicago. Prevailing winds there now are from the northwest.


"5 trends to expect for artificial intelligence in 2019" (http://ow.ly/s1X830mQpSR ) JK--Scratching my head at notion that "a fledgling supply-side market will surface for explainable AI." Sounds  "technology push," when the item indicates that users will demand it.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Bon Iver "Skinny Love" from For Emma, Forever Ago JK--2008. Hard to believe it's been 10 years since this was released. I definitely remember hearing it for the first time. One of those songs that just screams classic.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Phosphorescent "My Beautiful Boy" from C’est La Vie JK--2018. Nice one. Kind of a lazy country-western roll to this. Different from their usual.


Radio stations banning "Baby It's Cold Outside." Might as well ban "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow" and "Winter Wonderland" while we're at it. It's all about horny guys using inclement weather as a lame excuse to cozy up with defenseless women.


RT @KEXPNowPlaying #kexp The Decemberists "Traveling On" from Traveling On EP JK--2018. Brand new. I loved this one from the first note, or perhaps the moment Colin Meloy opened his mouth to sing.


Watched DVD of 1973 TV version of “The Glass Menagerie.” Good, but would have been better if Sam Waterston had played Tom as closeted and Joanna Miles had played Laura as autism spectrum. Michael Moriarty terrific as gentleman caller. Kate Hepburn in classic herself mode.


PBS showing Engelbert Humperdinck during fundraiser. Still sounds  a porn name. Perhaps they’re diversifying their programming.


Best party of the week was the private dinner at Bellagio with AWS and other analysts covering AI. The vendor’s blitz of significant AI announcements made for great fodder for my upcoming research. Food & drink were good too.


Wrote a ton of stuff this week in Las Vegas. Didn’t miss a single meal or party. Sleep suffered, but I didn’t.


Nice rainy day. Read a week’s backlog of Washington Posts my wife had saved for me during my business trip. Bezos has kept it great. God forbid that a right-wing fool might have taken it over and destroyed it.


Saw limo driver holding up “Kennedy Center honors” sign last night at DCA baggage claim. Looked around, saw no one famous. I doubt Cher flies commercial. It’s either Reba, Wayne Shorter, Phillip Glass, or the “Hamilton” gang. I want to meet Glass.


Trump promises swift, ample federal disaster aid to largely white Republican Alaska, but has steadfastly heaped insult on injury to hispanic Democratic Puerto Rico.


New jk #SiliconANGLE #reinvent article: "As re:Invent conference wraps, AWS keeps getting stronger in the cloud" (http://ow.ly/gvza30mOfSh )


AWS' Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec discussing S3's evolution. Originally 8 separate microservices. Now  than 235 distributed microservices make S3 tick. #reinvent2018


Vogels is presenting a detailed technical discussion of why Aurora is superior to traditional enterprise RDBMSs (cough cough....Oracle) for hyperscale cloud workloads. #reinvent2018


Getting ready to hear Werner Vogels' keynote at AWS re:Invent 2018. #reinvent2018


Deeper into cloud data: AWS launches a blitz of innovative AI offerings at re:Invent: https://siliconangle.com/2018/11/29/deeper-cloud-data-aws-launches-blitz-innovative-ai-offerings-reinvent/ … #reinvent2018


New jk #SiliconANGLE #reinvent article: "Deeper into cloud data: AWS launches a blitz of innovative AI offerings at re:Invent" (http://ow.ly/s3ye30mNAje )


Every tech vendor announces a “plethora” of features. I think many products require an urgent plethorectomy.


Jassy: Announced AWS Inferentia. Machine learning inference chip. High throughput, low latency, hundreds of TOPS, multiple data types (INT8, FP16, mixed precision). Multiple ML frameworks (TF, MXNet, Pytorch, CAffee2, ONNX). Use with Elast... #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announced Amazon Elastic Inference: Amazon Elastic Inference. Reduce inference costs up to 75%; lower inference costs; match capacity to demand; availability between 1-32 TFLOPS per accelerator; integrate with Amazon EC2 and Amazon ... #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announced Amazon Managed Blockchain: fully managed blockchain service supporting both the Hyperledger Fabric or Ethereum. Scales to support thousands of applications running millions of transactions. Create blockchain networks with ... #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announced Amazon Quantum Ledger Database. Fully managed ledger database with a central trust authority. Not blockchain. Immutable: append-only, immutable journal tracks history of all changes. Cryptographically verifiable: all chang... #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announced Amazon Timestream, fast scalable fully managed time-series database. Multiple orders of magnitude improvement in query performance. Timestream in 1,000x faster and 1/10th the cost of relational database. Trillions of daily... #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announced DynamoDB Read/Write Capacity On Demand. No  capacity planning, pay only for what you use. No need to specify how much read/write throughput you expect to use. Ideal for unpredictable workloads: ramp from zero to tens o... #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announced AWS Lake Formation, a service that allows you to build a secure data lake in days. #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announced AWS Security Hub, centrally manage security and compliance across an AWS environment. #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announced AWS Control Tower: the easiest way to setup and govern a secure, compliant multi-account environment or landing zone with guardrails (prepackaged rules for security, control, and compliance). #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announcing Amazon FSx for Lustre, fully managed file system for compute-intensive workloads high throughput, low latency, 100s of GB/s and millions of IOPS, seamless integration with Amazon S3, secure and compliant including PCI-DSS... #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announcing Amazon FSx for Windows File Server: fully managed Windows file system built on native Windows file servers; Windows native for fully compatable Windows File System experience (compatibility with AD, Windows access control... #reinvent2018


Jassy: Announcing, available in 2019, Glacier Deep Archive: lowest cost storage available in the cloud, evren lower than on-premises tap; no tap ]e to manage, designed for 99.999999999% durability, recover data in hours vs days/weeks, $0.0... #reinvent2018


Jassy: databases, DevOps, analytics, app services, mobile services, IoT, blockchain, management tools, security, enterprise apps, marketplace, technical and business support, etc. #reinvent2018


Jassy: What do builders want? (cue the “AWS house band”): I want it all and I want it now. Right tool for the right job. Build anything you can imagine. Broadest and deepest platform for today’s builders, 140 services now. #reinvent2018


Jassy: AWS has $27B revenue run rate, 46% y/y growth, 51.80% worldwide market segment share globally in public cloud. #reinvent2018


Jassy: AWS business update: millions of active customers. Every vertical industry segment. Showing many logos of banner customers. Also in public sector: ~4,000 government agencies, ~9,000 educational institutions, & ~27,000 nonprofits wor... #reinvent2018




Waiting for the Andy Jassy keynote to begin at #reinvent. Enjoying the on-stage DJ. She knows how to pick them. #reinvent2018


New jk #InfoWorld column: "Reinforcement learning comes into AI’s mainstream" (http://ow.ly/8oGs30mMEkO )


Some parties are good for talking. Some are good for being left alone to drink your beer in peace. The current is the latter.


Good day of briefings and discussions at #reInvent. Amazon Web Services is delivering on every level. Exciting times for them. Innovation, energy, and dynamism.


All around the cloud: Here's everything AWS has announced so far at re:Invent: https://siliconangle.com/2018/11/27/around-cloud-heres-everything-aws-announced-far-reinvent/ … #reinvent2018


New jk #SiliconANGLE #reInvent article: "All around the cloud: Here's everything AWS has announced so far at re:Invent" (http://ow.ly/Yte830mM9JW )


New jk #InformationWeek column: "Using Blockchain to Support Trustworthy Transactions on the IoT" (http://ow.ly/emIh30mLGAK )




Oracle confronts growing challenge from AWS in the cloud: https://wikibon.com/oracle-confronts-growing-challenge-aws-cloud/ … #reinvent2018


On the cusp of AWS re:Invent, the public cloud continues to transform the public sector: https://wikibon.com/cusp-aws-reinvent-public-cloud-continues-transform-public-sector/ … #reinvent2018


As AWS re:Invent approaches, AI becomes the killer app for public cloud: https://wikibon.com/aws-reinvent-approaches-ai-becomes-killer-app-public-cloud/ … #reinvent2018


Looking ahead to AWS re:Invent, public clouds keep gaining momentum: https://wikibon.com/looking-ahead-aws-reinvent-public-clouds-keep-gaining-momentum/ … #reinvent2018


I rarely take shuttle buses at business conferences unless distances involved are > 1 mile. Walking is my primary exercise and I need that outdoor air in my lungs. The rest of the time I'm sitting inside, inert, cramped, & uncomfortable. Buses put that subpar experience on wheels


New jk #TechBeacon article: "How containerization brings AI to your DevOps pipeline" (http://ow.ly/qEmV30mKBUt )


Wynn Las Vegas is having an exclusive engagement by Robbie Willliams. Should do a double bill with Cliff Richard targeting that lucrative 70+ British expatriate demographic who never charted in the States.


Bringing the Cloud to High Value Traditional Applications https://wikibon.com/bringing-cloud-high-value-traditional-applications/ … via @wikibon @plburris


Now, cloud companies want to run the rest of your business https://siliconangle.com/2018/11/24/now-cloud-companies-want-run-rest-business/ … via @SiliconANGLE


Catch me at Amazon Web Services #reInvent all this week in Las Vegas. Expect detailed #SiliconANGLE #Wikibon blogs from me on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Expects lots of tweets and photos too. My usual.


Bought/downloaded Janelle Monáe's brilliant album "Dirty Computer." One of my favorites of the year. A tour de force of great messages, inventive songwriting, infectious beats, and some deliciously smutty good fun.


RT @KEXPNowPlaying #kexp Joanna Newsom "Sprout and the Bean" from The Milk-Eyed Mender JK--2004. Harpist's second cousin twice removed is governor-elect of California. Her husband is a comic actor best known for his SNL sketches such as "Dick in a Box."


Day after Thanksgiving. This is the day that feels  Saturday, just as Thanksgiving felt  Sunday. For those twisted feelings I give thanks. And it’s not even weekend yet.


Good Thanksgiving experience. Not even a speck of politics talk around the table. Everybody needs a break from this horror show.


The Andaman Islanders are well-known for their aggression and distrust of outsiders, including people from elsewhere in the nation that claims their territory. Calling the missionary who lost his life there a “martyr” is incredibly wrongheaded. “Reckless” is   it.


Wife insisted on going out to our bootcamp class this Thanksgiving morning. So now I’m all tight and toned for that turkey this afternoon. Lean meat through and through.


Saw “Crazy Rich Asians.” Loved it. Singaporeans are odd birds, for sure. Singa senang puranya emas.


Ah yes, a particular high-profile IT industry merger will usher in "tectonic changes." Fissures in the industry's surface will steam for millions of years while occasional jolts may move large plates of commercial crust several feet apart every few centuries. That's disruptive.


Another morning, another group of analysts declaring everything except their particular coverage area overhyped.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Art d’Ecco "Dark Days (Revisited)" from Trespasser JK--2018. Vancouver group. Nice one. Reminds me a bit of Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Blonde Redhead.


"Swimming in a Sea of Quantum Foam" (http://ow.ly/vnY730mFPlL ) JK--After 30 seconds of trying to wade through this stuff, I start to foam at the mouth.


"LF Deep Learning Delivers First Acumos AI Release Making it Easier to Deploy and Share Artificial Intelligence Models" (http://ow.ly/GXh130mFNhg ) JK--I'm curious if the Linux Foundation is squaring Acumos work with Kubeflow. Overlapping scopes re AI DevOps and containerization.


RT @KEXPNowPlaying #kexp Ice Cube "Arrest the President" JK--2018. "You got the evidence."


"Drones, data analytics, smart seeds: How to reforest 1,000 times faster after wildfires" (http://ow.ly/hKHC30mFLcL ) JK--I'm curious if this approach can be adapted to terraform Mars--after it's used to radically remake Earth's biosphere.


"Does Synthetic Data Hold The Secret To AI? " (http://ow.ly/AVwx30mFJJm ) JK--AI doesn't need gobs of the real thing if you can "artificially manufacture data....based on user-specified parameters so that it’s as close as possible to properties of data from real-world scenarios."


"How to Fit Large Neural Networks on the Edge" (http://ow.ly/q38Z30mFJzC ) JK--Nice discussion of the engineering trade-offs.


"China's application of AI should be a Sputnik moment for the U.S. But will it be? " (http://ow.ly/L3vK30mFJ0V ) JK--Even dumber than headline is this historical analogy in body: "“China is the OPEC of data." See my Datanami column debunking this nonsense:


New jk #SiliconANGLE #reInvent article: "On the cusp of AWS re:Invent, the public cloud continues to transform the public sector" (http://ow.ly/M6H330mFG6P )


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Active Child "Hanging On" from You Are All I See JK--2011. OMG, I love this album. I bought it when it came out. I always put it on as a sort of dreamy default massage rub for the mind.


Checking the headlines to see if the governor of New York has changed his name legally yet to "Amazon Cuomo." I heard that was part of their end of the deal. If he doesn't, we here in Northern Virginia can claim all 50,000 new HQ2 jobs. Governor Northam made no such promise.


"Once upon a time" & "and they all lived happily ever after." Clearly, those phrases came before the era of science fiction. Once upon a time, people only contemplated futures (heavenly or hellish) in the afterlife, not on the Earth or in space. http://ow.ly/Uhob30mFApw 


"AI must be scrutinized by regulators, top Fed official warns" (http://ow.ly/Uuwm30mFzpp ) JK--If they thought collateralized debt obligations were arcane, just wait till they wrap their Fed brains around convolutional neural networks and restricted Boltzmann machines.


"The Surprising Thing That Can Sap Your Motivation" (http://ow.ly/UPCZ30mFz4S ) JK--Does that thing have anything to do with being surrounded by idiots?


"Google Home and Amazon Echo Can Store Your Voice Recordings. Here's When They Could Be Used Against You" (http://ow.ly/lrIU30mFyXq ) JK--If it's in a court of law, I suggest that they be programmed to read you your Miranda rights.


Enough of this "data is oil" jazz, already. I just saw "data is jet fuel." How about we extend the metaphor to "data is all petroleum-based products, including the plastic straws that are found jammed down turtles' throats"?


Caught "The Children Act" on DVD. Another fine unshowy performance from the always superb Emma Thompson. A great legal thriller told from the judge's point of view, which is unusual. Also an excellent examination of when law comes into conflict with religious belief.


Geez. The local pop station has already begun their Christmas music assault. Crass. I’m going to suggest that they put randomly auto tuned versions of Mel Torme’s Christmas song on endless loop.  a yule log channel on radio


Wegman’s is supercrowded in advance of Thanksgiving. I’ve imbibed from three separate wine sampling stations. At least the wife can be my designated driver.


The unsettling persistence of cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the cloud https://siliconangle.com/2018/11/15/unsettling-persistence-cybersecurity-vulnerabilities-cloud/ … via @SiliconANGLE


New jk #Wikibon blog: "The Unsettling Persistence of Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities in the Cloud" (http://ow.ly/hP9E30mDoYI )


All for the best that Arlington/Alexandria didn't give into the dumb idea years ago to put Redskins stadium in Potomac Yard, site of th long-gone eyesore trainyard, just south of Crystal City. Stadium neighborhoods are a business turn-off. Very limited econ accelerator potential.


Crystal City VA has a long underground shopping mall. My sense is that this will be totally made over as Amazon's legions move in, hunker down, and start banging out code down there 24x7. Seems tailor-made for that. Underutilized by the federal contractors who once dominated CC.


To @loserboy : I totally relate to what your wife shared regarding loss of her sibling while she was a child. I lost my mother to cancer while I was in 5th grade. I had no emotional support resources other than my family, who were also in shock.


Enjoying hearing #kexp DJ @loserboy and his wife Amy discussing how to emotionally process losing a loved one. These are lessons no one wants to have to learn. But you're a strong person for recognizing the line when endless grief slips into emotional "pathology."


Being sexagenarian isn’t all that bad. At least there’s sex in it.


In potential win for AWS, Oracle loses protest against the Pentagon’s $10B cloud contract https://siliconangle.com/2018/11/14/potential-win-aws-oracle-loses-protest-pentagons-10b-cloud-contract/ … via @SiliconANGLE




New jk #SiliconANGLE article: "Oracle confronts growing challenge from AWS in the cloud" (http://ow.ly/92Qx30mCCZ0 )


New jk #Wikibon blog: "AI Drives Innovation in Next-Generation Cloud Business Intelligence" (https://wikibon.com/ai-drives-innovation-next-generation-business-intelligence-cloud/ …)


My guesses on neighborhoods that will become popular with Amazon millennials working in Crystal City: Old Town and Del Ray (in Alexandria), Shirlington and Clarendon (in Arlington), and Huntington (in Fairfax County). In DC: Georgetown and the Southwest Waterfront.


"Amazon picks new HQ: Split between Virginia suburb & New York" (http://ow.ly/i7PZ30mBB6t ) JK--It's not exactly accurate to call Crystal City--ie, east Arlington--a "suburb" of DC. It's an integral part of DC area urban core. That'd be  calling Oakland a "suburb" of San Fran


I want to thank Cognilytica for ""hyperpersonalizing this newsletter for YOU James Kobielus." Hey Ron, please don't factor into it the snarky asides that you and I have personally exchanged while sitting listening to AI vendors at industry events. That would truly be hyper.


Working. Over my shoulder is Game Show Network with "Match Game" rerun from 1977. My wife doesn't inquire into who Charles Nelson Reilly was. I don't volunteer the info. The word "blank" figures into Gene Rayburn's questions. I don't fill in the blanks. The '70s got on my nerves


Watched Michael Palin’s excellent travelogue from North Korea. Wondered how he kept a straight face wandering through a dead parrot of a country if there ever was one.


RIP Stan Lee. I was partial to DC Comics superheroes, but thought Spider-Man was cool. I wanted to shoot webs from my wrists and swing between skyscrapers.


I always enjoy the postgame ritual of the losing coach’s excuse of “we just didn’t have our A-game going today.” Just once, I’d  one of them to say “well, you can’t win ‘em all” as they hand him his walking papers.


New jk #Wikibon blog: "Mitigating AI’s Many Risks to Society" (http://ow.ly/PxtI30mAONf )


"‘Parts Unknown’ review: Anthony Bourdain’s final show is joyous journey into his past" (http://ow.ly/zVNj30mALw7 ) JK--I was mesmerized by his pre-demise lunch with Lydia Lunch, the poet-singer-screamer-songwriter from late '70s punk/no-wave outfit Teenage Jesus & the Jerks et al


Working. Over my shoulder the TV is tuned to the Hallmark Channel. They've begun their annual Christmas programming schmaltz assault. Hey, that's Turk from "Scrubs"! I wonder if Donald Faison gets sick of people over-identifying him with that role. Regardless, he's my TV bro!


"'Human brain' supercomputer with 1 million processors switched on for first time" (http://ow.ly/CwKz30mAveg ) JK--UK AI. The SpiNNaker machine (University of Manchester School of Computer Science) can model  biological neurons in real time than any other machine on the planet.


"Will GraphQL Become Standard for the New Data Economy? " (http://ow.ly/IXDG30mAtVK ) JK--"Sits on top of all your existing svcs & super-imposes a graph on all those cloud....resources so app devs can freely query that without having to create REST endpoint for every new use case"


New jk #SiliconANGLE #reInvent article: "As AWS re:Invent approaches, AI becomes the killer app for public cloud" (http://ow.ly/OwNX30mAo4P )


"Clarifai Partners with RichRelevance for Greater Personalization with Visual AI" (http://ow.ly/qIEA30mAnrW ) JK--E-commerce apps: visually similar product recommendations, image matching using current product catalog with external pix from mobile/social, and catalog enrichment.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Ty Segall "Class War" from Fudge Sandwich JK--2018. Great new one from this amazingly prolific and always bang-on brilliant rocker.


Incoming US House of Representatives' subpoena targets in the Trump administration:


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Sinéad O’Connor "Throw Down Your Arms" from Throw Down Your Arms JK--2005. Nice one from the Catholic-born now-Muslim Irish singer's then-Rastafarian/reggae period.


Kubeflow Pipelines: Google's contribution to machine learning DevOps. Reusable end-to-end workflows:


Dear infomercial: I’m half-inclined to take your advice about calling the number on my screen. But which screen? TV, laptop, tablet, smartphone, MP3 player....? Too many choices.


If Trump orders this new attorney general to fire Mueller, that’s clearly obstruction of justice, hence sufficient grounds for impeachment. The next speaker of the house needs to make that very clear.


As my birthday approaches, Facebook asks if I want to establish a charitable fundraiser. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t all my Facebook friends be chipping in to raise money for a huge cake and many candles to celebrate the historic occasion?




New jk #Wikibon blog: "Doing a Reality Check on GPU-Accelerated Databases" (http://ow.ly/GJ2930mz2UX )


"Ford Buys Dockless Scooter Company Spin" (http://ow.ly/z6iA30myKtC ) JK--OK. Just don't start calling their low-end model the "Spinto." Don't even think about it.


Just registered for the Google AI briefings next week. The registration form asked for country declaration. Alphabetically near top, it listed one option as "Aland Islands." I had to Google that. An "autonomous" region of Finland. When did this qualify as a "country"?


I'd  to see "customer experience" solutions that implant friendliness chips and courtesy actuators in employees' brains. That would be the most disruptive thing you could possibly do in digital transformation.


This just in: astronomers have discovered exoplanet WD-40, where it rains lubricant and there's not a squeaky hinge to be found anywhere on its surface.


"Exomoons could have 'moonmoons,' and they might support alien life" (http://ow.ly/90Au30myFBW ) JK--Wow! Our country needs to build a deep-space telescope able to detect the infinite regress of exomoonmoonmoonmoonmoons. We might find exoalienalienalienalienalienaliens living there




ESPN in-studio panel. Do they instruct all these guys to shout every sentence, no matter how banal? Or are all these ex-jocks hearing-impaired?


New jk #Wikibon blog: "Building the Hybrid Serverless Multiclouds of the Future" (http://ow.ly/6IYX30mybPl )


Looking forward to discussing multicloud data protection on this #ActionItem.  cloud means  distributed data.  distributed data in a digital business means data protection is  strategic. Join us now. #actionitem


"Google rolls out new tools to make AI  accessible" (http://ow.ly/VK5H30mxZte ) JK--AI Hub + Kubeflow Pipeline system. One-stop for ML pipelines, Jupyter notebooks, TensorFlow modules, etc. + open workbench to compose/deploy/manage reusable ML workflows on Kubernetes.


"Watch an AI Modeled After a Worm's Brain Park a Tiny Car  a Pro" (http://ow.ly/t3TV30mxRTx ) JK--Cool, but I'd be  impressed if a robotic AI worm could be engineered to win the Daytona 500 in that car.


"Best Practices and Anti-Patterns for Containerized Deployments" (http://ow.ly/3chV30mxRoY ) JK--"Best practices and anti-patterns"? Oh geez. Whatever happened to "do's and don't's"?


"7 tools that ease serverless adoption" (http://ow.ly/oUrT30mxQrH ) JK--"To create a function, developers can use a tool that works across different serverless clouds. Who's hybridizing serverless? I mention that possible pattern in this 2017 #Wikibon note:


"You need API management help: 11 open-source tools to consider" (http://ow.ly/J4eC30mxQdY ) JK--I'm still on the fence regarding whether API management is the most incredibly boring segment of the integration market. I'm torn between that and metadata management.


"Is an Internet Bill of Rights Necessary?" (http://ow.ly/5VTC30mxPxX ) JK--This list includes various concerns of compelling societal interest (privacy, neutrality, access), but this is  of a political agenda than anything I'd want to carve into an onerous regulatory regime.


Looking into the market for IT change management solutions. I hope somebody develops some "this incredibly disruptive IT will change everything" management solutions. I'd  to use that to the turn the screws on every other hyperventilating tech marketing pitch.


"Google’s hometown passes new business tax to cope with rise in tech commuters" (http://ow.ly/7OCH30mxNym ) JK--Mountain View prop will also fund affordable housing. Voters in SF--which has egregious homeless issue--approved proposition to fund housing & mental health services.


Caught "Loving Pablo" on DVD. Excellent true story of Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar seen through eyes of his former mistress, a journalist recruited by US DEA. Among the very best performances I've seen by Javier Bardem & Penelope Cruz (and that's saying a lot).


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Kurt Vile "One Trick Ponies" from Bottle It In JK--2018. Vile? Au contraire! I have yet to hear a song from this guy that's anything less than great.


 cloud means  distributed data and that requires strong enterprise data protection. Join me @davidchapa @sarbjeetjohal @plburris @stu @dfloyerhistoday 12noon EST on #Wikibon Community event in live chat Multicloud Data Protection https://www.crowdchat.net/actionitem  #backup #recovery


Kubeflow shows promise in standardizing the AI DevOps pipeline - SiliconANGLE


Nevadans elect dead pimp to state legislature. If he weren’t a Republican, I’d attribute this to the blue wave.


After they regress to the mean, what's the next step? Progressing to the nasty?


New jk #Wikibon blog: "Kubeflow Shows Promise in Standardizing the AI DevOps Pipeline" (http://ow.ly/Kbqa30mxin5 )


Michigan legalizes marijuana. Perhaps I was too hasty when I moved away from the Detroit area 36 years ago.


Abigail Spanberger defeats rightwing airhead incumbent Rep. Dave Brat in US House race from Virginia. Cue up the Ramones “Beat on the Brat.”


Wisconsin gives Walker his walking papers. I want to commend America’s dairyland on ending this guy’s ruinous run in Madison. My next-to-home state deserves better.


Good. Impeach him.


I voted prop tax relief for spouses of people who died defending the country, for local infra improvements, and to re-elect Sen Kaine and Rep Beyer. Soundly rejected odious racist confederacy lover Trumpster Corey Stewart.


At Boomi World, new accelerators for connected business in the cloud https://siliconangle.com/2018/11/06/boomi-world-new-accelerators-connected-business-cloud/ … via @SiliconANGLE


"Tim Berners-Lee Pushes for 'Contract' to Protect the Web" (http://ow.ly/fynC30mwfCh ) JK--That's highly Rousseau of you, Sir Tim. But we best let Hobbes' state of nature have the run of it till Calvin returns to the funny pages of cyberspace & the tiger goes cute & mute once


On this election day, I urge all Americans to vote for the candidate of my choice.


New jk #Datanami column: "How AI, IoT, and Other Technologies Will Need to Coalesce into Comprehensive Counterdrone Defenses" (http://ow.ly/BtIv30mwbEK )


New jk #Wikibon blog: "At Boomi World, New Accelerators for Connected Business in the Cloud" (http://ow.ly/TKPr30mwbet )


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Beck "I’m So Free" from Colors JK--2017. His performance the week before last at SF's AT&T Park was the greatest concert I've every seen (no charge to me) at a tech conference--or ever in any context. Love this guy.


"How Vertically Integrated AI Stacks Will Affect IT Organizations" (http://ow.ly/e6n230mw19P ) JK--Sketchy discussion that glosses over the fact there are open-source choices and abstraction layers up & down the "stack" (actually,  of an ecosystem) preventing "vertical" lock-in


"What Can We Expect From AI?" (http://ow.ly/Tvk430mw0VD ) JK--Don't worry. Killer robots will not strangle you in your sleep. They'll anesthetize you first & then dissolve your body in strong acid exuded from their mechanical glands. You won't feel a thing.




"F*cking Vote" (http://ow.ly/4enE30mw0yY ) JK--This is the funniest get-out-the-vote radio campaign ever. Tender ears may not want to hear #KEXP DJs screaming [bleeped-out] obscenities at the listeners and each other. My favorite is @DJMorganSeattle and @loserboy . Classic!


"Five Powerful Enterprise Agile Frameworks" (http://ow.ly/kZxM30mw0oZ ) JK--I need independent verification of whether "LeSS Huge - Large Scale Scrum" is a legitimate framework or just an elaborate put-on.


"Making Your Data Intelligent" (http://ow.ly/P4X530mw060 ) JK--Traces a 50+ year historical narrative grounded in heroic accomplishments by guys named Ted and Tim. I'm waiting for the new gospel of intelligent data to be revealed by a lady. I predict it will be a Tess this time.


OMG! It's "'Tis' the season" season again in commercial email solicitations. Next up:  seasonal e-greetings cards from tech startups I've never heard of thanking me for all the love and support I've given them over the past year.


"How to Create Robots That Can Deal With Unpredictable Humans" (http://ow.ly/qAvw30mvYeW ) JK--Now that's a practical application of robotics! Someone please sic one of those on Trump ASAP!


"Europe’s AI ethics chief: No rules yet, please" (http://ow.ly/Dn4c30mvXHu ) JK--Agreed. But EU needs to crack down on figures of speech such as "you eat the elephant by slicing it." But that could be a Finnish delicacy, so I'll try to show some cultural sensitivity on the matter.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Creedence Clearwater Revival "Fortunate Son" from Willy and the Poor Boys JK--1969. Swamp rock. Band got start in the swamps, bayous, & shotgun shacks of Contra Costa County, California, right next to some deeply rightwing one-horse town called Berkeley


"Requests for ML Research from East African Tech Scene" (http://ow.ly/HJg930mvWUp ) JK--"Handling Rapid Code–Switching with Models trained on Single Language Corpora: Many East Africans rapidly code–switch...multiple times per sentence...between English and another language.


"Facebook reorganizes Oculus for AR/VR’s long-haul" (http://ow.ly/4ZLR30mvWJl ) JK--"Whip Oculus into shape for its 10-year journey towards making virtual reality mainstream"? What is this? The Starship Enterprise?


"How to turn your writing into an obstacle course" (http://ow.ly/EZY630mvWoc ) JK--WashPost humorist @geneweingarten misses point of Gmail Smart Compose & predictive type-ahead in general. Writing emails isn't "creative process." Usually, it's dashing off unambiguous stock phrases


"IBM and Red Hat merger could impact the future of Ceph and Gluster" (http://ow.ly/rVXp30mvVAZ ) JK--Software-defined object & file storage techs, respectively. But I've always felt they sound  a hayseed comedy duo that plays the Grand Old Opry.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp LCD Soundsystem "North American Scum" JK--2007. Hey! I resemble that remark!


I did my civic duty already: I delivered my election-worker spouse to the polling place in the wee pre-dawn hours so they can get the electoral machinery up and working on time. I will do my civic duty again later: I'll vote after work at that same precinct. I'm voting Democratic


Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 in Two Locations https://nyti.ms/2D6vxvy  Crystal City and Long Island City. DC & NYC. Reagan & LaGuardia


Microsoft and IBM flock to the center of all things open source - SiliconANGLE




New jk #Wikibon blog: "Microsoft and IBM Come to the Center of All Things Open Source" (http://ow.ly/1Gfg30mvpzn )


"Who contributes most to open source? The answers will definitely surprise you" (http://ow.ly/MpRD30mvfDI ) JK--Microsoft. The vendors who used to boast of their number of software patents now fall all over themselves boasting of the volume of their open-source software contribs.


New jk #SiliconANGLE #reinvent article: "Looking ahead to AWS re:Invent, public clouds keep gaining momentum" (http://ow.ly/jocZ30mv9JR )


"Google says 'exponential' growth of AI is changing nature o compute" (http://ow.ly/TFV430mv5M0 ) JK--Dynamic feedforward/backpropagation weight computation: "Google's scientists are saying 'please give us a tera-weight machine," computers capable of computing a trillion weights.'"


"Learning Complex Goals w/Iterated Amplification for AI Safety" (http://ow.ly/LYtk30mv4eT ) JK--When reward signals & training data insufficient. Exceptionally complex challenges that humans can't do in entirety, but which they can break down into subtasks & perform specific tasks 


"Microsoft Roadmap Updated for Azure DevOps (Formerly VSTS)" (http://ow.ly/I49D30mv2HT ) JK--Microsoft's development ecosystem is wrapping around their recently acquired GitHub platform.


"Amazon in advanced talks about putting HQ2 in NoVa" (http://ow.ly/xnn930mv17w ) JK--Amazon econ dev director tweet: “Memo to genius leaking info about Crystal City VA as #HQ2 selection. You’re not doing Crystal City any favors. And stop treating NDA you signed  a used napkin”


"Do neural networks really work  neurons?" (http://ow.ly/Zqfu30mv0Hs ) JK--Sort of, brain neuronal connections are way  complex, robust, powerful, nuanced, and efficient that artificial neural networks. Brain is capable much  sophisticated non-linear computations.


"An AI Physicist Can Derive the Natural Laws of Imagined Universes" (http://ow.ly/mXVE30muZC3 ) JK--Derived by looking at the universe-specific movement of a ball over time: how gravitation, electromagnetism, harmonic oscillation, etc interact there.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Andrew Bird "Bloodless" JK--2018. Nice new one from Bird. His usual rich musical vibe. A political message on this one.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Tiny Topsy "Cha Cha Sue" JK--1958. Sounds  they're launching into "Tequila," but turn it into a big brassy riotous hip-shaking glory of song.


RT @kexpnowplaying #kexp Ray Sharpe "Kewpie Doll" JK--1959. This one has a quick-stepping country-blues snap to it. Very cool.