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What China’s Tech Crackdown Means For IoT

The latest slew of regulation changes by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has had a profound effect on the status of IoT companies in China. The gaming industry was the first to feel the wrath of the new CCP legislation. After being torpedoed with penalties and regulatory changes to alter entire areas of business operation, gaming companies like Tencent and NetEase watched the government compare their industry to a type of digital drug addicting the Chinese youth.

Now, there is serious cause for concern for the Internet of Things (IoT). Foreign investors have already begun to pull out after seeing a collective $50 billion decrease in the market value of China’s biggest tech corporations. Likewise, the fractious political situation between the CCP and Hong Kong — an international hub for IoT products — has added yet more uncertainty.

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The Value of Machine Unlearning for Businesses, Fairness, and Freedom

Our work as data scientists is often focused on building predictive models. We work with vast quantities of data, and the more we have, the better our models and predictions can potentially become. When we have a high-performing model, we continue to retrain and iterate, introducing new data as required to keep our model fresh and free from degrading. The result is that the model’s performance level is largely retained and we, therefore, continue delivering value for users. 

But what happens if restrictions around a data set or individual data point are introduced? How then do we remove this information without compromising the model overall and without kicking off potentially intense retraining sessions? A potential answer that is gaining interest, and that we would like to explore, is machine unlearning. 

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Most Bitcoin Trades Are Fake, Study Concludes

While the price of Bitcoin has rallied quite a bit over the past month (up 36 percent to $5,243.72 as of April 8, noon EST), another recent headline is much less jubilant. According to a new study, almost 95 percent of all Bitcoin trades are actually fraudulent.

In their study, which looked at trading data across the top 81 exchanges (by volume) over four days in March, Bitwise Asset Management concluded that of the $6 billion in average daily Bitcoin trading they observed, only $273 million of this is real.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s New Privacy Initiative Needs to Be Seen as the Regulatory Dodge It Is

In a recent blog post on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg laid out his vision for “building a privacy-focused messaging and social network platform.” Too bad it’s a bunch of BS.

“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services,” he wrote, “where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever.” Zuckerberg acknowledged the company’s abysmal reputation for protecting users’ privacy, saying, “I understand that many people don’t think Facebook can or would even want to build this kind of privacy-focused platform.” He then set out to reassure the apparently gullible masses that Facebook has officially turned over a new leaf.

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What If ”Rules” Applied In Our Daily Efforts?

Being a casual fan of professional sports, I probably favor (United States) football and hockey over any other options available to me. At this point in the National Football League (NFL), the final teams are gearing up for the "big game" to determine who is the champion for the season. I hesitate to say "world champion" since this is a statement that I have never understood. I mean, what other countries are actually participating this season?

At the heart of any sport, is a collection of rules. A rule book. Albeit quite involved, the goal is to establish guidelines for the sport and provide a central point where competitors can comprehend what is considered legal play and what is considered an infraction.