Blockchain Technology

The term blockchain is also referred to as a digital ledger; that is, it is a continuously increasing list of records/ distributed database with a semi-public record of digital transaction shared among different computers which are unalterable, linked and secured using cryptography. The list of records is also referred to as a block, which typically has a timestamped batch which is to be included in the blockchain. Also, it contains a harsh pointer which is a link to a previous block (Hayen, 2017). With the fact that the blocks are back-linked, this ensures that a block signature can be traced back to the original block created.

Blockchain provides a secure online transaction, and it is used to record every transaction across many computers so that the transaction records cannot be retroactively altered without altering all the other subsequent blocks and compromise on the network. Every transaction on the blockchain is signed digitally with a public key cryptography; this makes altering very difficult because they are authenticated by miners with collective self-interest. Since blockchain database is continuously distributed, every transaction data must be propagated to all nodes so that the blockchain is synchronized as one ledger(Laurence, T 2017). It also aids in securing the transactions because each copy contains same version and no duplication.

A new block in the blockchain is created by a process referred to as, mining. Mining validates and adds a new transaction to the chain. Example, in Bitcoin which is a product of blockchain technology, a new block is mined in every 10 minutes. The rate of mining is different for different cryptocurrencies blockchain (Laurence, 2017). The miner, i.e., the machine used to mine the block, is rewarded financially, e.g., 25/block. Mining entails ‘proof of work, ’ i.e., miners in the network solve unique and difficult mathematical puzzle, the solution is included in the block header as “proof of work” for authenticity check of the block.

Blockchain technology goes mainstream, anyone who can access the internet can make transactions. This technology has a high potential to transform the business sector operating model with a lower cost solution (Reed, 2016). It can be integrated into different areas to meet different needs, e.g., to facilitate crowdsales, payment systems digital currency, etc. According to a survey conducted by the WEFGAC (World Economic Forums Global Council) shows that small and increasing proportion of global GDP is held in the blockchain. Banking and manufacturing companies such as Bank of Canada, IBM, UBS, Microsoft, PwC have opened research labs to experiment on how blockchain can be applied in the financial sector to increase efficiency and reduce cost.

References

Hayen, R. (2017). Blockchain & FinTech: A comprehensive blueprint to understanding blockchain & financial technology : 2-book bundle.

Laurence, T. (2017). Blockchain.

Reed, J. (2016). Blockchain.

Mozilla releases dataset to lower voice-recognition barriers

Mozilla recently released a data set called Common Voice collection, which contains almost 40,000 voice recordings from 20,000 people, making it the second-largest public voice dataset. This is the result of Mozilla's Common Voice project which allowed iOS and Android users to donate utterings through an app. This would help provide voice-enabled systems better data to learn from and provide improved service through devices. Recently, Microsoft claimed that they reached a voice-recognition error rate of 5.1% on the Switchboard corpus, which is the same average rate as a professional human transcriber. However, there is still a lot for these machine humans to learn. This dataset would improve those applications greatly. More information about this specific dataset can be found at http://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-releases-dataset-and-model-to-lower-voice-recognition-barriers/.

On a similar topic, I recently was talking to a professional from Humana this past weekend and was able to learn some interesting things about voice-enabled technologies (although the company doesn't really specialize in that certain kid of technology). According to him, voice-enabled technologies such as Alexa, Siri, Cortana, etc. are constantly learning and trying to prove better user experience by the minute. They are trying to learn from every question being asked and provide improved answers each time by learning from the experience of the user. For example, if I ask Alexa a question and she gives me an answer that is inaccurate, she would make note of that inaccuracy if I let her know. If this happens a few times, she will now know what not to answer for that question. Additionally, these technologies try to gather questions that are asked differently, but mean the same, into the same bucket and provide the same answer to those different questions in the future. For example, if Alexa is asked, "How old are you?" , "What is your age?" and "How long ago were you born?", it is going to process this as the same question and that it can asked differently, in spoken language. This is called Natural Language Processing and voice-enabled technologies are trying everyday to get better at this. Mozilla's new data set is trying, in some fashion, to help do the same.

Cryptocurrency Value?

Cryptocurrency Value?

Recently, cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) has reached a price of US$10,000 on 11/29/17. Like many others interested in making a buck, I’ve been intrigued in how cryptocurrency prices, specifically BTC, can keep increasing; and how I can jump onto this money train. Early investors could have gotten BTC for pennies, and some of us are kicking ourselves wondering: why didn’t I invest? Knowing the true value of a stock or other financial instrument can be difficult to predict, but people make their livelihoods from it! Cryptocurrency is even more troublesome to predict the value of. With stocks for example, you can look at the company behind them, calculate a cost benefit analysis, or current events. Value can be seen pretty quickly, where as with cryptocurrency-there is not a centralized force behind them. No company that gives cryptocurrency its value, or money back if you are ripped off. Although, cryptocurrencies “were designed as a unit of exchange and as a place to store assets without relying on a central bank” (https://bitconnect.co/bitcoin-information/10/how-is-the-price-of-cryptocurrency-defined).

Based off of this description of cryptocurrency, we can start to see its true value: as a decentralized unit of exchange. With an innovative idea like this you can extend the uses of cryptocurrency from beyond a simple EURO to USD, currency exchange, into some more diverse applications. Not only can cryptocurrency be used as a unit of exchange to buy a hotdog from a vendor, but it can be used to skip over traditional wire transfers-trading peer to peer regardless of distance.  

If you look at the trending price of BTC, as well as the trending number of users/purchasers of BTC, you can see that as the number of users increase-so does the price of BTC. This insight can be seen as one of the ‘main drivers’ of cryptocurrency price defined by bitconnect: “perceptions on its value by the public”. If the public did not perceive value, they would not become users/purchasers and BTC would not have hit such a historic high. UofA’s very own Rachael Dunn, https://ai.arizona.edu/people/rachael-dunn, furthers this by saying “The value of bitcoin is essentially dependent upon the trust of its community that it will succeed”. BTC is a tool, and its value is defined by those who use/buy it. Once a tool becomes irrelevant, the value it once had plummets.

I ask you now, what is cryptocurrencies value?

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Rachael’s Full Response:

I've struggled to understand this myself [how do cryptocurrencies create value] but have come up with a few reasons the Bitcoin community has been able to justify the value of bitcoins. I'll try to condense it for the sake of time.

Historically, the value of anything has depended on the value a society is willing to place on an object.

Gold for example, is considered precious and limited and therefore valuable. Let's say someone was to stumble upon a large gold mine, for examples sake we'll assume the mine was so large that it would more than double the amount of gold in circulation. If this discovery were to be publicized the value of gold would decrease tremendously as a result of the increased availability of it.

Another example would be the value of diamonds. In first world countries, jewelers are able to market a diamond for thousands of dollars based on cut, color and clarity. Another price factor is the jeweler itself. Just like shoes and cars, people are willing to pay more for a brand name product. I chalk this up to equal parts good marketing and ignorance. In some areas of the world, diamonds are mined in large quantities but the companies who control their distribution have historically restricted their availability, thus creating the illusion that they are rare and valuable.

People buy both gold and diamonds because they trust that their value is timeless. Gold is advertised as an investment technique and grandparents often pass down jewelry they consider to be valuable mementos. Just like a sales rake in a store, when people stop buying something for its "accepted" price, the distributers of that product will lower the price and thus decrease the values of the products.

The value of bitcoin is essentially dependent upon the trust of its community that it will succeed. As I'm sure you're researched, the currency value of bitcoin only really began to increase after the amount of users began to increase. Even more recently, retailers have started to accept bitcoin as a form of payment, creating material value for the cryptocurrency.

I believe this essential trust is derived from a combination of the innovation and curiosity surrounding cryptocurrencies, the security of using a decentralized network structure, transaction anonymity, and the network of people using it from corporations to cybercriminals.

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I ask you now, what is cryptocurrencies value?

White House Plans to Ban Cellphones on Property

Over the past few years, the number and severity of large-scale hacks have increased significantly. It seems as if every other week a company announces that millions of customers have had their confidential data stolen or leaked. As criminal hackers gain more of the public’s attention, policymakers are starting to take the issue seriously.

Top levels of the government are high priority targets for cybercriminals and it seems that officials are beginning to realize this. The White House has announced plans to completely ban all personal cell phones from the property. These talks have come about after the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had his smartphone breached by foreign operatives. Since it was discovered that Kelly’s phone had been hacked an administrative ban was placed on all cell phones inside of the West Wing.

If this ban were to be implemented it would affect all White House staff members as well as anyone who tours the building. The fear is that allowing non-secured smartphones on the White House property puts confidential information at risk.

While the increased security benefits from this policy are obvious, not everyone is in support of the new rules. A lot of White House staff do not have access to classified information and use their personal phones to keep in touch with family while on the property. These individuals would be negatively affected by the cellphone ban.

I understand the arguments of those who don’t support this new policy but the confidential information contained on the White House network is too important to leave vulnerable. If foreign agents are able to remotely access this data by connecting to the White House network through their phones then these new policies should be implemented.

What are your thoughts on the issue? Should the White House ban personal cellphones on the property?

Does anyone have an idea for an alternative policy?

Source:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/28/the-white-house-wants-to-ban-cellphones-citing-security-risk/

Additional Articles:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-27/white-house-is-said-to-weigh-personal-mobile-phone-ban-for-staff

http://www.newsweek.com/white-house-may-ban-personal-cell-phone-use-even-though-trump-still-uses-his-723790

Pros and Cons of Crowdsourcing

For the past decade, the internet has enabled hyper connectivity through crowdsourcing. Apps like Airbnb, Uber, and Yelp have brought together crowds of people who were previously disconnected and allowed them to create business and gather ideas. Here are the pros and cons of crowdsourcing.

Pros:

Access to resources – Crowdsourcing allows people to bring together unique skills. Skilled work, such as photography, office work, and design can be sought. Since everyone has different skills, crowdsourcing lets more people to access a larger and universal set of resources.

Access to scale – Crowdsourcing gives a business the opportunity to access a large workforce for specific events with the flexibility to lower costs.

Transparency – Real world data allows for better user reviews and ratings, meaning the “bad eggs” will be weeded out quickly. People can now seek profiles, reviews, and company reputations for products and services before making a purchase.

Cons:

Cost of management – Outsourcers need to deal with workers directly which means buyer needs to spend time and money to manage resources effectively

Creating a fair marketplace – Processes and rules need to be continuously re-established to take into account unlimited possible user cases (example: concerns over the Waze app to avoid speed traps and police checkpoints)

Quality control – Trust and safety as well as quality of product/services can be challenging in an environment where people engage with each other directly

1. What are some of your concerns or personal experiences with crowdsourcing apps?

2. What can be done to improve or fix the cons of crowdsourcing?

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/the-pros-and-cons-of-crowdsourcing/news-story/9ec9c88a62137d0e425bdfecb2c623ff

Hyperloop!

Tech Briefing: Hyperloop

Companies are always driving to create or improve things towards efficiency. In the case of hyperloop, it would be to improve transportation. A hyperloop is a brand new mode of transportation that consists of a capsule within a pod that propels itself through a tube underground. The technology is based on magnetic levitation with very low air pressures. There are many players in the Hyperloop industry some of which include Tesla and SpaceX, Hyperloop transportation technologies (HTT), Arrivo, and Transpod. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this new technology.

Innovation of new concepts can lead to several advantages. The most obvious advantage of the hyperloop technology is the speed itself. The short distance travel will consist of journeys being over 700 mph which will ease transportation significantly between major cities. Because it is underground, there will be a decrease in the traffic for people traveling about and would not be disruptive to other modes of transportation. Another upside to this technology is the ability to withstand earthquakes because of the use of pylons. This would mean that the contraption would not be fixed to the ground and would be able to absorb any impact.

There are also disadvantages that come with developing the hyperloop. The first disadvantage is the initial cost required to invest in a project like hyperloop. There is an estimated overall cost of the tube, pillars, and vacuum pumps and station expected around $4.06 billion. Another disadvantage of the hyperloop would be environmental impact due to cutting down trees for the installation. Another disadvantage would be regarding its infrastructure. The hyperloop uses steels for its track meaning that if there are some extreme changes in temperature, this could affect the track and make render it unusable. The speed of the hyperloop can also be a disadvantage as some people may not be as comfortable with it and may fall sick or dizzy during the ride.

Here are interesting links about hyperloop technology for updates and information you can check out:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5113847/BMWs-hyperloop-BIKES-revealed.html

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/hyperloop_alpha3.pdf

 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/20/denver-arrivo-hyperloop-founder-brogan-bambrogan-on-regulation.html