Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for December 24, 2019

Apple moving to become a satellite based Internet Service Provider (ISP); FBI offers defensive data obfuscation service to government and corporate partners; Skills for companies to nurture in order to spur innovation; AI robots making an impact in experimental laboratories; and a Steem post with original photos of a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex tooth

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Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain

* Note that due to holiday activities, posting for this series may be irregular until the end of the year. *

Straight from my RSS feed

Whatever gets my attention

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

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1. Apple wants to bypass carriers and beam internet data directly to iPhones via satellites - According to a a report from Bloomberg, this is one of Apple CEO Tim Cook's priorities. The company plans to launch its own constellation of satellites and use them to connect iPhones to the Internet through the company's own infrastructure. Bloomberg adds that the company plans to deploy these satellites within five years. The article notes that Apple is also working on its own 5G modem, so presumably this service would be speed competitive with 5G offerings from other carriers. This could provide a more uniform experience for iPhone owners, and also infuse the company with a new monthly revenue stream.


2. Not so IDLE hands: FBI program offers companies data protection via deception - In a new program, the FBI is helping companies to play cybersecurity defense in its new Illicit Data Loss Exploitation (IDLE) program. An FBI spokesman says that the agency is taking a consultative approach and working with private and public sector enterprises to populate their networks with obfuscated data that would mislead or confuse an attacker. According to the article, "The data created through IDLE is then mingled with existing data in such a way that, while it doesn't affect legitimate applications, it would make it much more difficult for attackers to just dump databases or documents and make off with anything useful.". The FBI doesn't do active monitoring of the obfuscated data while it's still on the corporate network, and once the obfuscated data is created, the FBI discards its copies of the corporate data that may have been used in creation of the obfuscated data. The program is not classified, but the FBI is still keeping close to the vest with many details about the project. Some experts are skeptical that the program will interfere greatly with intrusion efforts.


3. 6 Skills That Wise Companies Harness for World-Changing Innovation - This essay by Kristen Senz covers concepts from a book by Harvard's Hirotaka Takeuchi and coauthor Ikujiro Nonaka. The book, The Wise Company: How Companies Create Continuous Innovation seeks to explain the principles that spur continuing innovation in 700 Japanese companies that have survived for more than 300 years. To do this, the authors studied 20 Japanese companies for commonalities. One of the things that came to light was a list of six skills that employers should seek and develop:

   (i) Learn to judge goodness, not only for the company but for society.; (ii) Rely on intuition to grasp the essence of people, things, and events.; (iii) Create informal and formal shared context—called ba in Japan—constantly in order to construct new meaning through human interactions.; (iv) Use metaphors and stories to help people with different experiences understand the essence of the business strategy.; (v) Use all possible means, including Machiavellian ones, if necessary, to bring together people with conflicting goals and spur them into action.; and (vi) Encourage the development of practical wisdom in others, especially employees on the front line, through apprenticeship and mentoring.

   The book builds on the authors' original idea that organizational knowledge is created when companies convert information between an individual's informal personal experiences and explicit knowledge that a company can document and codify. The authors refer to this process as, "socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization" (SECI). Another concept from the book is that of phronesis, which is a type of practical wisdom that benefits both the company and the larger society. The article concludes on the note that despite the rapid advances in technology, human wisdom is still at the center of innovation.


4. AI-driven robots are making new materials, improving solar cells and other technologies - After realizing that the scale of a particular effort was impractical for a human, Curtis Berlinguette and his materials science lab handed the work off to a single-armed robot with an AI driver. By doing this, the team reduced the trial and error experimental phase of solar cell design from 9 months to 5 days. This sort of closed loop system has also been responsible for gains by other researchers, including "Drug developers, geneticists, and investigators in other fields". The article notes that as-of yet these systems have yet to deliver many "blockbuster results", but also that it's still early in the history of their usage.
   
   Here is a video of an AI-driven robot conducting experiments:
   

h/t Communications of the ACM: Artificial Intelligence

STEEM Tyrannosaurus rex tooth i found - This post from @m-mfossils contains photos of a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex tooth that the author found in the South Dakota portion of the Hell Creek formation. As previously noted in Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for July 27, 2019, the states of North and South Dakota are well-known for their production of dinosaur fossils. The post doesn't give any usage permissions for the photos, so you'll have to click through to see them. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @m-mfossils.)

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