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tastydregs · 4 years ago

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The Pentagon Inches Toward Letting AI Control Weapons

Last August, several dozen military drones and tank-like robots took to the skies and roads 40 miles south of Seattle. Their mission: Find terrorists suspected of hiding among several buildings.

So many robots were involved in the operation that no human operator could keep a close eye on all of them. So they were given instructions to find—and eliminate—enemy combatants when necessary.

The mission was just an exercise, organized by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a blue-sky research division of the Pentagon; the robots were armed with nothing more lethal than radio transmitters designed to simulate interactions with both friendly and enemy robots.

The drill was one of several conducted last summer to test how artificial intelligence could help expand the use of automation in military systems, including in scenarios that are too complex and fast-moving for humans to make every critical decision. The demonstrations also reflect a subtle shift in the Pentagon’s thinking about autonomous weapons, as it becomes clearer that machines can outperform humans at parsing complex situations or operating at high speed.

US Army Futures Command General John Murray told an audience at the US Military Academy last month that swarms of robots will force military planners, policymakers, and society to think about whether a person should make every decision about using lethal force in new autonomous systems. “Is it within a human's ability to pick out which ones have to be engaged,” and then make 100 individual decisions, Murray asked. “Is it even necessary to have a human in the loop?”

Other comments from military commanders suggest interest in giving autonomous weapons systems more agency. At a conference on AI in the Air Force last week, Michael Kanaan, director of operations for the Air Force Artificial Intelligence Accelerator at MIT and a leading voice on AI within the US military, said thinking is evolving. He says AI should perform more identifying and distinguishing potential targets while humans make high-level decisions. “I think that's where we're going,” Kanaan says.

At the same event, Lieutenant General Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements at the Pentagon, says that whether a person can be removed from the loop of a lethal autonomous system is “one of the most interesting debates that is coming, [and] has not been settled yet.”

This May, a report from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), an advisory group created by Congress, recommended, among other things, that the US resist calls for an international ban on the development of autonomous weapons.

Timothy Chung, the DARPA program manager in charge of the swarming project, says last summer’s exercises were designed to explore when a human drone operator should, and should not, make decisions for the autonomous systems. For example, when faced with attacks on several fronts, human control can sometimes get in the way of a mission because people are unable to react quickly enough. “Actually, the systems can do better from not having someone intervene,” Chung says.

The drones and the wheeled robots, each about the size of a large backpack, were given an overall objective, then tapped AI algorithms to devise a plan to achieve it. Some of them surrounded buildings while others carried out surveillance sweeps. A few were destroyed by simulated explosives; some identified beacons representing enemy combatants and chose to attack.

The US and other nations have used autonomy in weapons systems for decades. Some missiles can, for instance, autonomously identify and attack enemies within a given area. But rapid advances in AI algorithms will change how the military uses such systems. Off-the-shelf AI code capable of controlling robots and identifying landmarks and targets, often with high reliability, will make it possible to deploy more systems in a wider range of situations.

But as the drone demonstrations highlight, more widespread use of AI will sometimes make it more difficult to keep a human in the loop. This might prove problematic, because AI technology can harbor biases or behave unpredictably. A vision algorithm trained to recognize a particular uniform might mistakenly target someone wearing similar clothing. Chung says the swarm project presumes that AI algorithms will improve to a point where they can identify enemies with enough reliability to be trusted.

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legit-scam-review · 7 years ago

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Monero Dodges Yet Another Attack With Community’s Help

This week, the developers of Monero (XMR) patched a bug that could allow an attacker to ‘burn’ the funds of an organization’s wallet. The breach was initially revealed by a community member, and XMR developers were quick enough to fix it before any damage was done.

Anonymity above all: How Monero works

Simply put, Monero (XMR) is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin (BTC), but with an additional focus on anonymity. It was established in 2014, when bitcointalk.org user thankful_for_today forked the codebase of Bytecoin into the name BitMonero. To establish the new coin, he used ideas that were first outlined in a 2013 white paper called ‘Cryptonote’ that was written by an anonymous personality Nicolas van Saberhagen. Ironically, BitMonero was soon forked itself by open-source developers, and titled ‘Monero’ (which means ‘coin’ in Esperanto). It has remained to be an open-source project ever since.

XMR has considerably more privacy properties than BTC: Instead of just being a decentralized coin, Monero is designed to be fully anonymous and virtually untraceable. Thus, XMR is based on the CryptoNight proof-of-work (PoW) hash algorithm, which allows it to use ‘ring signatures’ (which mix the spender’s address with a group of others, making it more difficult to trace transactions), ‘stealth addresses’ (which are generated for each transaction and make it impossible to discover the actual destination of a transaction by anyone else other than the sender and the receiver), and ‘ring confidential transactions’ (which hide the transferred amount).

In 2016, XMR experienced more growth in market capitalization and transaction volume than any other cryptocurrency (almost a 2800 percent increase, as per CoinMarketCap). A lot of that growth came from the underground economy. Being an altcoin that is tailor-made for fully private transactions, Monero eventually became accepted as a form of currency on darknet markets like Alphabay and Oasis. Specifically, after being integrated on the darknet in the summer of 2016, its value “immediately increased around sixfold,” according to Wired.

“That uptick among people who really need to be private is interesting,” Riccardo Spagni, one of the Monero core developers, told the publication in January 2017. “If it’s good enough for a drug dealer, it’s good enough for everyone else.”

Monero’s alleged privacy remains to be a controversial topic, as some suggest that the coin is not in fact fully anonymous. In an August interview with Bloomberg, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent Lilita Infante noted that although privacy-focused currencies are less liquid and more anonymous than BTC, the DEA “still has ways of tracking” altcoins such as Monero and Zcash. Infante concluded:

“The blockchain actually gives us a lot of tools to be able to identify people. I actually want them to keep using [cryptocurrencies].”

Interestingly, while Europol’s latest cybercrime report suggests that BTC remains the most popular cryptocurrency for criminal activities, it also predicts a rise in the demand for anonymity-focused altcoins, including Monero (XMR).

The privacy-focused nature of Monero also prevents it from being listed on some compliant crypto exchanges. For instance, in June, Japan-based Coincheck delisted XMR and three other anonymity-focused altcoins to follow Counter-Terrorist Financing (CFT) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures issued by the local financial regulator.

The burning bug: Potential threat to Monero’s ecosystem

On Sept. 18, user u/s_c_m_l described a hypothetical attack within the XMR ecosystem on the Monero official subreddit:

“I can imagine an attack where ‘A’ procures [a] large amount of XMR and [sends] it to ‘Exchange B’ in many transactions with the same stealth address. ‘A’ then exchanges that XMR for other currency and cashes out, leaving the exchange paralyzed [and] unable to use that XMR.”

Importantly, the Monero blockchain ‘burns’ XMR transactions between identical stealth addresses, seeing them as illegitimate. Instead, just one single ‘correct’ transaction could go through. Burned XMR, in turn, are fully unusable, as they cannot be replaced.

More specific details on the attack were described in a Monero blog post:

“An attacker first generates a random private transaction key. Thereafter, they modify the code to merely use this particular private transaction key, which ensures multiple transactions to the same public address (e.g., an exchange’s hot wallet) are sent to the same stealth address. Subsequently, they send, say, a thousand transactions of 1 XMR to an exchange. Because the exchange’s wallet does not warn for this particular abnormality (i.e., funds being received on the same stealth address), the exchange will, as usual, credit the attacker with 1000 XMR.

“The attacker then sells his XMR for BTC and lastly withdraws this BTC. The result of the hacker’s action(s) is that the exchange is left with 999 unspendable/burned outputs of 1 XMR.”

Simply put, the bug basically allowed hackers to burn the funds of an organization’s wallet — such as that of an exchange — while only having to pay the network transaction fees. Although they wouldn’t obtain any money from doing so, “there are probably means to indirectly benefit,” as Monero team suggested. For instance, the attackers could manipulate the market, as they would have the control over the coin supply of XMR.

Monero handled the breach calmly

The Redditor’s theory became widely discussed within the Monero subreddit, and the developers reached out with a public announcement only after fixing the issue. On Sept. 25, Monero team declared that a private patch was “promptly created and later included in the code” after discovering the potential vulnerability. After that, they reportedly notified “as many exchanges, services and merchants as possible,” explaining that the patch had to be applied on top of the v0.12.3.0 release branch.

In an accompanying blog post, Monero developers argued that this was “clearly not the preferred method” because some parts of the Monero ecosystem were still left out, but there was limited time to eliminate the bug. After that, the glitch was announced via public mailing, as it is “imperative to be subscribed to the public mailing list” for any organization that deals with Monero, developers argued.

Finally, Monero claims that the bug “did not affect the protocol and thus the coin supply was not affected,” hence no attackers were quick enough to actually exploit the bug.

XMR community stays on guard

This was not the first security concern regarding Monero within the past month. In early September, Twitter and Reddit users started to point out that the MEGA Chrome extension was compromised. The MEGA Chrome extension is a tool that claims to improve browser performance by reducing page loading times, as well as providing a cloud storage service.

Redditor u/gattacus posted on Monero’s official subreddit that the MEGA Chrome extension version 3.39.4 seemed conspicuous:

“There was an update to the extension and Chrome asked for new permission (read data on all websites). That made me suspicious and I checked the extension code locally (which is mostly javascript anyways). MEGA also has the source code of the extension on github […] There was no commit recently. To me it looks either their Google webstore account was hacked or someone inside MEGA did this. Pure speculation though.”

The application was removed from Chrome webstore after roughly four hours. Later, the MEGA team clarified that version 3.39.4 was a malicious update performed by unknown hackers with the aim of compromising users’ private information. Soon, it became clear that the attack didn’t center around Monero specifically, as the malicious code was reportedly activated on websites such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, GitHub and MyEtherWallet along with Monero XMR web wallet services. This time, the fault wasn’t on Monero’s end.

The ‘burning bug,’ in turn, was possible due to a flaw in XMR’s code, but the developers were quick to react to the warning signal raised by the altcoin’s community.

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lucyariablog · 7 years ago

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Content Tech Overload? 3 Questions to Ask Before You Buy

“Ever want to throw your computer across the room?”

When Cathy McKnight asks hundreds of tech-savvy marketers this question at the Intelligent Content Conference, many heads nod. And there’s a good reason.

“We’re expected to be content superstars,” Cathy explains. “We’re caught between automation and the human touch. How do we use AI? Where do we draw the line in automation? How do we keep our hands in the mix and not let technology take us over?”

As a one-time SAP coder who co-founded and now helps lead the enterprise consulting practice Digital Clarity Group, Cathy understands the content-technology overload marketers face. She knows large organizations’ content-tech stacks have many parts: marketing automation, analytics, content management systems, digital asset management, and so on.

And yet many organizations often lack a clear strategy for building those stacks. “A good strategy helps you get more use out of your technology and helps the tech last longer,” she says. “You don’t want to replace technology when you don’t need to.”

A good strategy helps you get more use of your technology & helps the tech last longer. @CathyMcKnight Click To Tweet

Yet, when she asks the ICC audience, “How many of you have a martech-stack strategy that talks about integration and team and training?” only one hand raises.

Would you have raised your hand? If your hand is still at your side (or even if it isn’t), stop asking for or accepting new content tools or technology until you answer these questions, derived from Cathy’s ICC talk, Content Tech Overload: Four Pillars and Five Tenets of a Successful Content Technology Strategy.

1. Do I understand what’s available in the content part of our martech stack?

You may have seen this image, which shows the ever-growing landscape of marketing technology.

Image source

Here’s a close-up of the 2017 Martech 5000 chart, which shows over 5,000 logos grouped into categories. Cathy highlights in orange all the categories that affect content professionals – nearly the whole chart.

“You may look at those 5,000 logos (3,500 of which are unique) and say, ‘I work with content. Most of that doesn’t apply to me.’ You might think that only the section labeled Content & Experience Management applies to us,” Cathy says. “In fact, most of these areas do apply to us as people responsible for content that delivers the experiences that our customers and our contacts want to have.”

Even marketers who “never want to get any closer to a piece of technology than the keyboard in front of them to enter content” need to understand which pieces of technology affect the content. If you don’t understand how content experiences are getting delivered to customers, you can’t make strategic decisions.

You probably have much more technology in your organization that impacts content than you’re aware of. Most importantly, Cathy says, “Find out which parts of the content stack your company most relies on and take care of those pieces.”

TIP: Form partnerships with other teams

Reaching across department lines and working regularly with people on other teams that relate to content technology can help make sure you’re getting the most value from existing and new technology investments.

Cathy says, “Get on a first-name basis with people on your IT team. Set up a time – maybe every other week or every month – to talk about things that are coming up, things you’re thinking about, things you wish you could do with your technology.”

Marketers, get on a first-name basis with people on your IT team, says @CathyMcKnight. Click To Tweet

2. Does the team have the skills to use the tools?

To make your content sing, Cathy says, you may not need new or top-of-the-line technology. You need top-of-the-line teams, including marketing, editorial, IT, and maybe business intelligence, administrative, and others. Those teams need the skills to use, support, and integrate your content technologies with other parts of the business.

“Skills aren’t just about learning the user interface. They’re not just about understanding how to send a campaign or how to post a blog post. They’re also about understanding how the content works within the technologies: where it’s transferred, where it sits,” Cathy says.

Some team members, for example, may need training to gather and use data to make their lives as content providers easier and to enable your content to reach more prospective customers.

The point is, companies can’t just drop technology in people’s laps. Though that happens all the time, Cathy says. Somebody buys a tool, points everyone to an hour-long training video, and says, “Now go! Make a return on that investment! We just spent a half-million dollars on this technology; make it work!”

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Building Your Content Marketing Team? 14 Skills for New, Growing, and Mature Programs

TIP: Audit team skills

Do a skill-set audit to find out what people know how to do and their comfort level in using each technology. What training is missing? What would they like to learn to do?

“You may discover that someone in an analytics role or other technical role is super creative and would like to help generate some of the social content,” Cathy says.

In addition to helping with planning for tools and technology, a skill-set audit provides a strategic benefit when it’s time to hire someone. “Wouldn’t it be great to understand the gaps on your team so that you could bring in people who can fill those gaps?” Cathy says.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: New Tech Friends on the Marketing Block

3. What’s our content-tech strategy?

“Oooh, we want that. We need that!” New technology – whether it’s right for you or not – can be tantalizing. Vendors may want you to believe that without some shiny new thing you will fail.

But is that shiny new thing for you? Without a road map, it’s hard to say. To take stock and create a strategic road map, Cathy suggests asking these questions:

If we bought that functionality or tool, could we adopt it?

Are we in a position to use it the way it’s intended?

Do we have the processes?

Do we have the skill sets?

What are our capabilities?

What direction are we heading in?

Is now the right time to acquire it?

Can our technology already do those things?

Will it help us meet our corporate goals?

After you answer these questions and others like them, plot a technology road map. Maybe you’ll map your way to buying a shiny object or maybe you won’t. You may find you can achieve what you want to achieve by adopting new features, functions, and innovations within your existing stack.

Plot a content-tech road map to be strategic about your tech use and purchases, says @CathyMcKnight. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: What to Consider When It’s Time for New Marketing Technology

TIP: Make friends with content technology

To create the most useful road map, get over your fears or insecurity around technology. “Be the one who can go to your IT department and say, ‘I heard that our CMS in the next release is going to have x functionality. I think we could use that. Are we in a position to adopt that?’” Cathy advises.

When you can envision the impact the content technology will have on the company and how it will help the organization succeed, you’ll have what you need to get buy-in from senior leadership

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Road Map to Success: Content Marketing Strategy Essentials

How to Persuade the Naysayers to Embrace New Marketing Technology

Take control of content-tech decisions

Frazzled. Frustrated. Confused. Those are the words Cathy uses to describe today’s marketer in relationship to technology. Tools hamper us even as they enable us.

Stepping back and thinking strategically about all those tools can make all the difference.

Cathy offers some ways to do just that:

Get to know the parts of your martech stack that relate to content.

Audit your teams’ skills – and address the gaps.

Form partnerships with other teams.

Help create a content-tech road map.

Measure before you act (and think before you measure).

As you do these things, you’ll be well on your way to developing a content-technology strategy that could inform your company’s technology purchases for years to come.

Here’s an excerpt from Cathy’s talk:

youtube

Create your road map and then learn about the shiny new objects (and a lot more about content marketing) at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today using code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Content Tech Overload? 3 Questions to Ask Before You Buy appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/05/content-tech-overload/

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mobilenamic · 8 years ago

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Decentralized Autonomous Organization – Organizations on the Blockchain

Classical organizations are known to us in all dimensions: From small to gigantic, from non-profit to capitalist, the global organizational landscape is composed of various forms and structures. However, the most frequent commonality between these manifestations is that all organizations have a central authority that executes most of the control.

With increasing distribution of the blockchain technology (What is blockchain?), the first decentralized autonomous organizations have emerged. They aim to manage themselves in self governance by cutting out middlemen and providing trust and transparency by using a blockchain.

But what exactly is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) about?

What is a DAO?

A Decentralized Autonomous Organization is an organization defined by Smart Contracts (distributed computer programs). These contracts are kept alive by a blockchain. The code is therefore executed in a decentralized manner and the state is maintained by a consensus in the system.

These contracts, which are often referred to as “programmable money”, use source code to implement all available transactions, cash flows, rules and rights of the organization. The members of the organization could, for example, be recorded and managed on the basis of these smart contracts. They are then able to interact with the organization internally. From then on, they are permanently listed in the history of the blockchain, which can be imagined as a database. Their affiliation with the organization can always be demonstrated by the blockchain history.

To achieve this, the necessary Smart Contracts must be deployed and expanded over time. This means that an already existing group of people creates the basis for the actual DAO and ensures that it can be built on it. The modification of the organization thus takes place through changes to its code. This must therefore be implemented again, tested, reviewed and deployed. The state (members, finances, decisions, etc.) is changed by transactions on the blockchain in connection with the existing smart contracts.

This all sounds very abstract and futuristic, so we’ll next look at a few examples and use cases for DAOs.

Examples and Use Cases

So far, DAOs are mainly found in the FinTech sector. The main focus here is on the digital currencies, which can benefit from a sophisticated and fast organizational structure in a volatile and fast-moving market.

A well-known and quite purist example is “Dash” (Digital Cash). Dash aims to be the perfect digital cryptocurrency: it is fast, secure, fully digital and it avoids double spending. The further development of the project and its funding are publicly proposed and decided by the community. Proposals can be submitted and voted by the community. Those who run master nodes to keep up the network have a special role in those votings. The operator must freeze a lot capital in Dash to prove his interest in the system. Thus, within a relatively short time, decisions that often take projects and classical organizations months or even years, are made within a relatively short time. This seems to work great for Dash because of its good incorporation of external contractors who are even paid in the Dash currency.

A rather bitterly remembered example is “The DAO”, a venture capital fund implemented through an Ethereum Smart Contract. During the then token sale in 2016, in which investors were able to buy shares, a vulnerability in the code was exploited. About a third of the totally funded investments were stolen by the attackers. This incident is still being discussed controversially and it led to a hardfork of the Ethereum Blockchain resulting in two different projects, blockchains and currencies: Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

The social media platform Steemit is also run by a DAO (steem.io). The aim is to reward the creation of good social media content and to draw attention to them. Bloggers, entrepreneurs and readers are brought together and rewarded for their work. Rewards are transferred in their own currency and can be paid out or used to reward others. The required infrastructure for the platform is also deployed decentrally and is stated to be more scaleable than Reddit.

Based on the listed examples and the generic nature of the blockchain and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, it becomes clear that there are no limits to possible uses. DAOs can map processes, money flow, decisions, shares and many other aspects on the blockchain. The next big projects could already be organized in this way.

However, we are talking about something completely new, the potential and risk of which is not yet fully known. Therefore, we should take a look at current discussions and shed light on advantages and disadvantages.

Components and properties of a DAO

A bunch of contracts does not constitute a meaningful organization on its own. An organization must be able to make decisions, be liquid and communicate with internal and external bodies. After all, money must get into the organization, employees and service providers have to be paid and interaction with the rest of the world must be possible. The following components are taken from today’s DAOs and synergies with the Blockchain technology. What additions the future of the blockchain world provides for us remains to be seen.

Autonomy

All components must be implemented via a blockchain and its mechanisms. Source code is common property and can be seen by everyone. There is no central administrative body. Despite the fact that the organization has to be created by someone (without the DAO components already being in place), it must be guaranteed that there is no central instance in the system that can be seen as a “backdoor”. Given this autonomy, the influence of the outside world on the organization can be kept as minimal as possible.

Currency

In order not to tie itself completely to a central currency, the DAO’s ecosystem should best be given its own currency, also called “tokens”. This is used for payment, external investments and finally the building of assets within the organization. The DAO is therefore at least internally liquid. Financial interactions with the outside world that uses fiat currencies, are done through exchanges. An indirect point of contact with classic currencies like dollar or euro seems unavoidable.

Proposals

In order for the organization to develop further, decisions about its future must be made. But first, there must be a place where the community can discuss it and submit ideas. This can be implemented quite democratically using proposals that any member of the organization (or a particular role) can submit and vote on.

Transparency

For members of the organization, all processes and mechanisms must be completely transparent, so everyone can participate and work together on a proposal. By capturing all aspects and processes on the blockchain, this is also given and manipulation is made impossible, at least in theory. The result is trust within the entire organisation.

Vote and consensus

Members are also allowed to vote democratically on budget, implementation, and ideas from the community. Members must reach a consensus. They may be of different opinions, but ultimately have to agree on a consensus to determine the state of the blockchain. At Bitcoin, for example, the miners must have the same understanding about which payment history is valid and is accepted as the truth. If this is the case, the organization is already in a position to make decisions and to operate in the world

External Contractor

Members of the organization can influence the development of the organization and, of course, be involved in the implementation of the accepted proposals. According to implemented rules, they may even be rewarded. Nevertheless, it is likely that the organization needs help with the implementation of software development, marketing and other areas in their business. External service providers from the “central world” are probably unavoidable. Payment may be made either in its own currency or by partial liquidation into fiat currencies.

Advantages, disadvantages and the future

A lot of this sounds unusual. However, some advantages are obvious: maximum automation, minimal costs and fast decisions. No employees are needed for the administration, which is necessary for the mere existence of a DAO. Human work is automated and greatly reduces the complexity and inertia of classical companies. Moreover, no single branch is needed. Contributors from the community and contractors can therefore work from all over the world.

A DAO dissolves from any central aspect and can still be anywhere in the world. In addition, it is theoretically not bound to any state or government – if there is no registered organization, where is it officially located? The simplest answer is probably: nowhere.

For a DAO, this sounds very beneficial: All the complex laws and taxes that companies have to take care of are eliminated. It is, however, doubtful whether it will remain like this in the future. It seems unfair to usual economy and many governments and corporations are likely to see this as an attack. The risk of strict regulation or even boycotting at the threshold between a DAO and the “real world” is a big unresolved issue.

Another controversial point is trust. Blockchains are supposed to bring about confidence, DAOs are thus trustworthy organizations, as each participant relies on the system being implemented fairly and constantly improved. For example, since the system is implemented by Smart Contracts, which are essentially distributed code, the entire organization trusts a program. Programs are still being developed by humans who are prone to errors. A large risk is thus vulnerabilities in the respective blockchain software and the Smart Contracts executed on it. “The DAO” showed that a small mistake can cause the card house to collapse. When this happens, there is no rescue or legal barrier that can help shareholders. All trust lies in the code.

A glimpse into the crystal ball does not reveal whether software can ever be error-resistant. Likewise, we do not know whether and how governments will regulate DAOs and how the rest of the world will deal with them. How does it go on from here? We must once again content ourselves with not being able to see into the future.

Summary

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are an interesting development which, with the interest in the blockchain technology, is moving into the spectrum of digital products. Basically, it describes an organizational form that is fully manifested in software and not bound to any location, state, and government. Participants and external contractors are in charge of implementation and further development, since a DAO itself usually does not have any employees. It promises to be a flexible, favorable and transparent form of organization.

Despite the interesting advantages and lively examples sprouting from the ground with the boom of cryptocurrencies, there are still some unexplained questions. This includes statelessness and legal certainty. On the threshold between DAO and “normal” economy, there is a risk of regulation and boycotting from classical parties (governments, banks, corporations). Also the deep vulnerability of a DAO due to faulty source code or technical risks like the 51% attack is controversially discussed and still raises many questions.

For a world and economy with more confidence, transparency, fairness and progress it is certainly interesting to follow and support the developments around blockchain. There are surely organizations, projects and companies that could find a better home in a DAO.

The post Decentralized Autonomous Organization – Organizations on the Blockchain appeared first on codecentric AG Blog.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization – Organizations on the Blockchain published first on http://ift.tt/2vCN0WJ

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iyarpage · 8 years ago

Text

Decentralized Autonomous Organization – Organizations on the Blockchain

But what exactly is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) about?

What is a DAO?

This all sounds very abstract and futuristic, so we’ll next look at a few examples and use cases for DAOs.

Examples and Use Cases

Components and properties of a DAO

Autonomy

Currency

Proposals

Transparency

Vote and consensus

External Contractor

Advantages, disadvantages and the future

Summary

The post Decentralized Autonomous Organization – Organizations on the Blockchain appeared first on codecentric AG Blog.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization – Organizations on the Blockchain published first on http://ift.tt/2fA8nUr

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thecloudlight-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Cloudlight

New Post has been published on https://cloudlight.biz/microsoft-now-lets-ios-developers-deploy/

Microsoft now lets iOS developers deploy

If you’re an iOS developer, then Microsoft’s Xamarin already allowed you to increase your iOS applications in C# with the help of equipment like Xamarin.IOS for Visual Studio. Until now, although, you still wished a Mac to construct and check your apps. As the organization introduced today, that’s no longer vital anymore. With the new Xamarin Live Player, you can set up, run, take a look at and debug iOS apps immediately from a Windows PC that runs Visual Studio.

With this, Microsoft is last the loop for maximum builders and is getting a step

Closer to its aim of positioning Windows 10 as the preferred working gadget for cross-platform improvement.

To enable this new functionality, builders should install the Xamarin Live Player app on their iOS device and then pair it to their PC by using scanning a QR code on their display. Because this is fully baked into Virtual Studio, you also get admission to all of the same old functionality you would assume for your IDE. You can, for example, make stay edits on your code while it’s far jogging and straight away see the end result of a shade change, for instance, for your cell phone.

Microsoft tells us that it talked to Apple approximately this functionality and that it has its rival’s blessing and that the Live Player application complies with all of Apple’s common rules.

Microsoft Project in the Workplace – How MS Project Is Utilised Across a Vast Number of Roles

Project Planning is a critical talent for lots varieties of jobs. Microsoft Project is a planning device that produces an assignment timeline outlining the work to be finished for a mission. It is used to plot the collection of labor, control assets, music development and control the task price range. Jobs require Microsoft Project skills for lots reasons.

A Scheduler will use Microsoft Project to develop, improve and preserve schedules

Linking statistics again to the master schedule. The grasp schedule will consist of large amounts of facts which include timelines, required sources, the order of wanted duties and the obligations of every crew member. Schedulers will need to produce reports, get worried in forecasting and help the group with records and variance analysis as well as often updating the each day schedule. Many jobs in challenge scheduling are within the fields of creation, software program development or engineering. The project manager will often paintings intently with the scheduler to ensure that the desired milestones are met within prescribed price range constraints. Schedulers are closely reliable on software consisting of Microsoft Project to effectively meet their jobs requirements.

A Contracts Administrator or a Project Coordinator will need to manage contracts and variations and convey diverse reviews which include histograms, targeted progress tables, and appearance ahead schedules. They play an important function to guide the Site Supervisor and Project Manager with information, getting ready and enforcing the assignment timetable for evaluation.

Planning involves determining how to finish a hard and fast of duties inside a given timeframe with a set of described tiers.

They may also be required to display and update projects, making sure that they each run easily and efficaciously. Planners also have the position of monitoring pastime for capacity problems which could arise down the street in order that they may be prevented. In instances in which this can now not be viable, the planner will need to devise a healing and contingency plan. A Planner will need to broaden plans and schedules to a high degree of the element, tune progress for time and cost and draft task popularity reports. Strong competency with Microsoft Project will help with the transport of the project on time, on budget and assembly consumer expectancies.

A Project Manager is needed to evaluate initiatives throughout the organization and make effective selections approximately useful resource control, value control and effective delivery of tasks in time crucial environments. They are liable for supervising and coordinating the group and contractors on site, financial management, useful resource control, and protection. All of which may be organized in Microsoft Project to assist them plan and organize effectively.

My First 10 Minutes With IOS 7

When the primary photograph the iOS7 suggests me after the preliminary load is “hi there “in each language besides English until the final; My first idea is “Wow! Putting America closing? What type of declaration is that purported to make?” But then I turn it off and I realize that it Started with the English Hello, I simply ignored that half second window. Now I feel sufficiently rebuked…

Then I see the spark off to swipe to complete the setup. Setup? Ah crap! I should input all my stuff again! And actual enough you go through all of the settings… Looks like every my tune and stuff is toast.

The spotlight has moved, it tells me. Yeah-yeah, so swiping down in preference to the

Left is not precisely earth shattering. Right away I observe the entirety is a mix of sickly pastels and vibrant hues now too, just like the latest remake of Microsoft’s… Well, the whole lot. The message, telephone, and Facetime icons are now day-glow green; I suppose someway those had to be highlighted due to the fact someone might pass over them?

OK, Bluetooth is off by way of default, so in case you had that on you need to permit it again. Interesting, my Bluetooth device remains connected… Perhaps everything is not wiped out like last time…

Passbook has been turned on, I don’t like that so I grew to become that off once more as before. It looks as if various things, but no longer the whole thing have had their defaults reset, so it is in all likelihood a great idea to go over all of your settings once more and make certain they fit what you assume them to be.

My wifi settings and logins also are intact! So I’m heading over to music to anticipate the best news… YES! Nothing erased! OK, now I’m intrigued; closing main update the whole lot were given tossed out, however, this time, it looks as if maximum of my personal stuff turned into left intact, which includes my current notes on the measurements I took last week for an upcoming venture which I had forgotten to shop before the update. The happiest situation for me.

I do not know that I like the new mango-on-white topic right here in some of the menus, however, I think I do not have a preference *sigh.*

A Lot of the icons have misplaced their former color in choose a black & white theme; ah well, once more no longer something I experience personally, but I think it is yet some other exchange I have no manipulate over. At least it’s on their own icons that got the funky makeover, so the whole lot else appears the same. I’ll truly have to exchange the background even though, due to the fact the gray-on-grey icons/history aspect is giving me a headache.

A call got here in, interrupting my excursion, however that gave me a danger to look at the brand new call interface monitors,

Equal trendy subject matter, a bit greater pastel than before, but the buttons are larger, so I’m sure some oldsters will appreciate that those are simpler to see.

Overall I’m noticing that quite a few the assessment, which used to help things stand out is now gone in prefer of the entire web-rashness of the whites and faded greys, but this is making it harder to become aware of matters along with the bar down at the lowest of the phone menu, which used to stand out and now melds into the history with simplest a faint color of off-white differentiating it from the primary call-list display I’m presently viewing. I’m certainly going to must get used to this, some of these whites with off-whites and grays in opposition to faded grays are extra than a piece annoying.

Oracle Apex Services for the Amateur Developers

Developers are always on the prowl to make something new to automate the guide effort and decrease human blunders. But this development wishes a number of coding information which no longer all developers own. This can be a street block for the human beings keen to broaden programs and software program. However, Oracle has given you a solution for this trouble. They have constructed software that could increase programs with out using the coding language with the help of Oracle Apex improvement carrier. This software program is an internet primarily based software that could make packages by way of the use of the various current centers which the phone customers are used to. This consists of the drag and drops facility for starters.

How does it paintings?

The web services have a database driven programs which have an internet browser as the base and the utility interface is developed. These packages assist in creating software that can make the technique of work quicker and preserve the nice intact. The software developer being on line can be accessed from any part of the sector and facilitates in clean improvement. There are several alternatives available that could assist the developer to create an internet based totally application for the procedure. Everything is computerized and may be used to create a tool so one can do wonders to your paintings surroundings. You can take professional advice from companies that paintings on Oracle Apex development carrier every time you experience the want.

Originally posted 2016-08-27 05:57:36.

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johnattaway · 8 years ago

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Preventing WordPress From Brute Force Attacks

When you are the world’s leading CMS platform and the online publishing platform of choice used by millions of websites and loved by thousands of web developers and website designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to large-scale brute force attacks.

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable computers).

Brute-Force Attacks

A brute-force attack is a technique used to break an encryption or authentication system by trying all possibilities.

(Source: Chinese University Of Hong Kong)

One of the many ways hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is achieved with software tools that can guess hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious login details, your website could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” attack.

Botnets

A botnet is a number of Internet-connected computers communicating with other similar machines in an effort to complete repetitive tasks and objectives. This can be as mundane as keeping control of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks. The word botnet is a combination of the words robot and network.

(Source: Wikipedia/botnet)

“Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is going on.

Botnets are regularly used to send mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas. The worldwide brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked each day.

Coverage of this mass brute-force attack was reported by all of the major webhosting companiesand leading technology publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, BBC News, PC Magazine, Tech Crunch, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress an obvious target for hacker attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are lots of very good reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your online presence.

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: Are Open Source CMS Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the brute force attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other web applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, said this about the botnet attacks:

It is a “simple” script that attempts to login using the admin login and a generated password. So if your password is too short or based on dictionary words it will be guessed and then the script can login legitimately and do whatever it wants including installing scripts (as plugins) or editing files. The attack tries to guess your password, if it succeeds, the most secure site in the world is wide open because they have your password.

(MikeLittle.org)

How To Protect Your WordPress Blog From Being Brute-Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

You may think that your site has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that every website has value to a malicious user.

If a hacker can find a software security flaw, your web site can then be used as part of a larger network of “bots” to target larger and more valued sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your site hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are most likely trying to break into your website at this very moment. Whether they will break in or not, depends on how challenging you have made things for them to keep trying until they can work out a way to get access, or give up and go look for a less protected target.

How Much Information Are You Broadcasting To Hackers About Your WordPress Site?

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security scan …

(WP Security Check Image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will display a number of results and information about your website setup …

(WP security scan results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you are able to see all of this information, then so can hackers.

(Product image: BlogDefender website)

The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories in your site are all valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about any potential holes or weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not preventive steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a website or blog gets broken into, blog owners can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that a breach has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache (and significant financial loss) of discovering that your web site has been hacked into, below are ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: Some of the recommended measures shown below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then contact us, or ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for help.

***

Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Service Provider

Get in touch with your hosting company and ask them exactly what security measures have been put in place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to ensure that your files and data get regularly backed up.

Check that your host backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Frequently Updated

Never rely on your host for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and develop a habit of performing a complete site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

All unnecessary data and files are deleted,

All WordPress data and files are free of errors, optimized and backed up,

All WordPress software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,

etc …

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website frequently backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP website or blog frequently backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress site maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website or blog. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Duplicate And Keep Your WordPress Websites Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

Security Measure #3 – Do Not Use “Admin” As Your Admin Username

The large scale brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP installations that used “admin” as the account name.

For reasons of website security, never set up sites with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s user name is admin, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress admin users that shows you how to change your username, go here: How To Change Your Admin User Name In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a username and password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right login combination that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to prevent the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password to something that is at least eight or nine characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (e.g. %, $, *, etc).

Roboform is a password management program you can use to help you generate different secure login passwords …

(Roboform is a password software that lets you create different strong login passwords)

For a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress users on how to change your login password, go here: How To Change WordPress Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Deny Access To Your WP Config File

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will search for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database information, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow someone to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people from being able to easily find your wp-config.php file. This requires knowing how to edit database information, move files around in your server and changing access permissions.

Security Measure #6 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Website Installation Files

Rename or delete the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

These files are not required after installation and can be removed. If you don’t want to delete these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Files, Themes And Plugins Up-To-Date

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in earlier versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of themes and plugins.

Ensure that all of your software files, plugins, themes, etc. are always up to date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that lets the administrator edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard area.

In WordPress, you can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from the dashboard menu …

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible via the dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your blog view and change your theme templates, and create mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from being able to access the WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect The Site’s Uploads Folder

The WordPress “uploads” folder contains all the media files that get uploaded to your WordPress site.

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All a person needs to do to view all of the contents in the “uploads” folder is visit the directory using their web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, anyone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from viewing your ‘uploads’ folder and other important directories. This can be done using plugins, setting file permissions, adding a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask for assistance from someone with experience if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

Some great security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your website from malicious software, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One security plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security software for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another great plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin

(Blog Defender Security Suite)

Blog Defender is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.

BlogDefender shows you where potential security holes in your web site are …

And lets you easily fix these …

If you don’t want to buy a security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, you can use various free plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes up-to-date, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your sites.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a website security expert to all WordPress users following the large-scale brute-force attacks by botnets on WordPress in 2013 …

Owners of websites based on WordPress CMS must improve at least basic security settings and implement best practices such as the use of robust passwords and the accurate management of “admin” accounts.

Pierluigi Paganini, Chief Information Security Officer, Security Affairs

***

As you can see, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully this information will help prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please contact us or consult a professional WordPress security specialist.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to this site to receive notifications via email whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and reviews about WordPress security plugins.

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