Microsoft news – Page 151

Posted on November 11, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Nov. 19 Microsoft Education TweetMeet to focus on computer science and future-ready skills

Announcing the November 19 TweetMeet

When you think of the Class of 2030, their future jobs will be significantly different from the ones we know today. Microsoft Education research shows that to be life-ready, today’s students need to acquire different skills. Of all future jobs, an estimated 70% will require skills in the field of STEM, coding, computer science, data analytics, artificial intelligence and computational thinking. In addition to these, students also need the types of skill that focus on communication, collaboration, creativity, critical and analytical thinking, in addition to social-emotional well-being, self-regulation, resilience and empathic awareness.

That’s why it’s important to rethink education and empower students as they prepare for their future.

TweetMeet on Future-Ready Skills & Computer Science starting at 10 a.m. PST

This month’s TweetMeet is all about the future of teaching and learning. Why do today’s students need STEM, coding and other computer science skills to align to the workforce? What role do social-emotional well-being and self-awareness play?

Hosted by 15 educators who are extremely passionate and experienced in the topic, this Twitter conversation invites you to share and learn from the best ideas, tips and resources. Our hosts will provide you with ideas how you can bring Future-Ready Skills & Computer Science into your classrooms while keeping your students inspired and engaged.

With all this in mind, we welcome you to a 75-minute TweetMeet on Tuesday, November 19 at 10am PST.

TweetMeet Fan? Show it off on your Twitter profile!

Show your passion for this month’s Future-Ready Skills & Computer Science-themed TweetMeet by uploading this month’s #MSFTEduChat Twitter Header Photo as a banner on your own Twitter profile.

Twitter Header Photos are available in many languages and time zones.

Create your own TweetMeet Friend Card

Another way to share your enthusiasm about Future-Ready Skills, Computer Science and the TweetMeets in general is to create a TweetMeet Friend Card. Share your own version of this image anytime anywhere, for example when introducing yourself at the start of a TweetMeet. Just follow the steps in the TweetMeet Friend Card PowerPoint.

Here’s an example:

Looking back on the October MSFTEduChat on STEM and NASA

We captured highlights for this TweetMeet event in a new @MicrosoftEDU Twitter Moment. There’s even a comprehensive collection of all tweets from this event in this Wakelet Collection.

Welcoming TweetMeet newcomers

Do you know someone who’s new to the TweetMeets? Our brand-new You can join a #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet video is especially created for newcomers, so please share it with friends and colleagues who might be interested to join:

Video for Future-Ready Skills & Computer Science – #MSFTEduChat TweetMeet on November 19

For educators who are totally new to Twitter and who could use an introduction, we recommend the Twitter EDU tutorial ebook by David Truss @datruss.

Why join the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeets?

TweetMeets are monthly recurring Twitter conversations about themes relevant to educators, facilitated by Microsoft Education. The purpose of these events is to help professionals in education to learn from each other and inspire their students while they are preparing for their future. The TweetMeets also nurture personal learning networks among educators from across the globe.

Former host James Kieft wrote the following blog post describing why educators should consider participating in Twitter chats, and how to get started: Twitter chats explained.

When and how can I join?

Join us Tuesday, November 19 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. PST on Twitter using the hashtags #FutureReadySkills, #CS, #MSFTEduChat and #MicrosoftEDU. Be sure to double-check your own local event time. You can find the event time for 215 countries with this time zone announcer.

Our next recommendation for you is to set up Twitter dashboard TweetDeck and add columns for the hashtags and for your favorite educators. If you are new to TweetDeck, then check out this brief TweetDeck tutorial by Marjolein Hoekstra.

When a tweet appears that you want to respond to, press the retweet button and type your comments.

Additional tips are offered in this animated GIF that you’re most welcome to share with newcomers:

Too busy to join at event time? No problem!

From our monthly surveys we know that you may be in class at event time, busy doing other things or may even be asleep – well, no problem! All educators are most welcome to join any time after the event. Simply look at the questions below and respond to these at a day and time that suit you best.

You can also schedule your tweets in advance. In that case, be sure to include the entire question in your tweet and always mention the hashtag #MSFTEduChat so that everyone knows to which question in which conversation you are responding.

To allow everyone to prepare for the event, from now on we provide the question timings as a text table:

PST	#	#MSFTEduChat TweetMeet question timings
10:00am	Event begins	Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Use #MSFTEduChat.
10:04	1	What do Future-Ready Skills mean to you and your students? Why are they important?
10:18	2	How do you design learning experiences to promote Future-Ready Skills in your subject?
10:32	3	What place do Computer Science and Future-Ready Skills have in your curriculum?
10:46	4	How can any teacher get started with Future-Ready Skills and Computer Science? Share ideas, tools and resources.
11:00	5	What are you willing to do tomorrow to prepare your students for the future?
11:15	Event closes	Announcing the next event and Participant Survey.

SuperWakelet: resources curated by this month’s hosts

Wakelet is a useful web service to bookmark, curate and annotate resources, images, tweets and other content.

We’ve invited our hosts to share their personal favorite resources and introduce their resource collections with a Flipgrid video. Find all of these resources in our new Future-Ready Skills & Computer Science SuperWakelet, live-embedded here:

Introducing our hosts

Please meet the 15 hosts for this month’s TweetMeet. After going through weeks of preparation for this TweetMeet, they are thrilled to engage with you on their favorite topic: Future-Ready Skills & Computer Science.

Check out all the hosts, see what they are tweeting about and consider following them:

https://twitter.com/TweetMeet/lists/msfteduchat-2019-11/members

List of host names and their profiles

Adrien Rouxel @Adrien_Rouxel (Development Manager at Epitech, MIE Expert, passionate about technology and education. Developing creativity and digital literacy among students – Montpellier, France)
Aedamar Frawley @aedamar_frawley (MIE Expert, Mathematics Advisor, Mathematics, English & Coding Teacher, Designer and Facilitator of CPD – Sligo, Ireland)
Becca Gratz @regratz87 (Computer Science Facilitator (Elementary), MIE Expert, Integrator of MinecraftEdu & Scratch, Driven to change education through Computer Science – Loudoun County, VA, USA)
Daniela Bunea @DanielaArghir (Teacher of English as a Foreign Language, MIE Expert, National Geographic Certified Educator, eTwinning and Scientix Ambassador, passionate about STEAM – Sibiu, Romania)
Eli Sheldon @elisheldon (Computational Thinking Specialist, HS Computer Science Teacher, Founder @ShowcaseEdu student portfolio platform, formerly @Microsoft – Seattle WA, USA)
Fatma Bouaziz @hadoulti (Computer Science Teacher, Europe Code Week Ambassador, European Robotic Week Coordinator, CoSpaces Edu Ambassador, Flipgrid Ambassador, MIE Expert, Minecraft Global Mentor, Skype Master Teacher – Sfax, Tunisia)
Henar Lanchas @turtleforward50 (Computer Science Teacher & IT Coordinator. MIE Expert. STEM (STEAM) passionate. Teaching my students to be good problem solvers. – Madrid, Spain)
Jennifer Brown @Techisforgirls (Technology Resource Teacher, NCCE Professional Learning Specialist, MIE Expert, Skype Master Teacher, Code.org CSD Facilitator, Wonder Workshop Wonder Squad member – Hillsborough County, FL, USA)
Kimberly Mecham @kimberlymecham (School leader, MIE Expert, World Affairs Council Fellow. Obsessed with the intersection of education, leadership, and innovation. Passionate about equity in education – Bellevue, WA, USA)
Maria Sorrentino @MraSorrentino (STEM Teacher, MIE Expert, MIE Trainer, MIE, Expert ICT trainer, Educator Community Influencer, eTwinner, Digital Animator, ThingLink Certified Educator, Code.org Teacher – Naples, Italy)
Marianna Tarné Éder @TarMarianna (Primary school teacher, MIE Expert, MIE Trainer, Codeweek leading teacher; I love using Teams, Minecraft, Micro:bit, and Scratch in my projects – Budapest, Hungary)
Melissa Dandy Walker @APSITMelissa (@APSUpdate @APSInstructTech Digital Learning Specialist, MIE Expert, MIE Trainer, Minecraft Global Mentor. Believer in touching hearts & empowering minds. – Atlanta, GA USA)
Mohammed Abo Hassan @mabohassan781 (English Teacher, MIE Expert, MIE Fellow, Minecraft Global Mentor, Skype Master Teacher and an EU Code Week Ambassador – Manama, Bahrain)
Phill Ruffell @phillr (Enthusiastic and passionate about the power of technology, creativity and accessibility to empower all for current and future skills. MIE Expert, Master Trainer, Skype Master Teacher, OneNote Avenger and Surface Classroom Pro. – Hertfordshire, UK)
Steve Sherman @livingmaths (MIE Expert, Skype Master Teacher, run a STEM-based NGO, coordinator of International Math Olympiad, host of online STEM interviews, take Astronauts to schools and show students why STEM is Awesome – Cape Town, South Africa)

Next month’s event: Best of 2019

The theme of December 17 will be Best of 2019. We’re very much looking forward to this event and hope you’ll spread the word!

Got questions about the #MSFTEduChat TweetMeets?

Please connect with TweetMeet organizer Marjolein Hoekstra @TweetMeet on Twitter if you have any questions about the TweetMeets or about what it takes to be a host on a future event.

Posted on November 8, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Standing up for every Dreamer

They came to the United States as children, brought into the country undocumented by parents with dreams of a better life. Many were so young when they arrived that they have no recollection of their place of birth. We call these young people Dreamers – students, employees and military soldiers who aspire to make the country where they have lived most of their lives a permanent home.

In 2012, the United States created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to protect these young people from being deported. Yet just five years later, the program was rescinded, putting close to 700,000 DACA recipients at risk of being banished from the only home they’ve ever known.

More than five dozen of these DACA recipients at risk are Microsoft employees. These young people contribute to our company and serve our customers. They help create our products, secure our services, and manage our finances. And like so many young people across our nation, they dream of making an honest living and a real difference in the communities in which they reside. Yet they now live in uncertainty.

We’ve told our Microsoft Dreamers that we will stand up for them along with all the nation’s DACA recipients. We’ll represent them in court and litigate on their behalf. That’s why we joined Princeton University and Princeton student Maria De La Cruz Perales Sanchez to file one of the three cases challenging the DACA rescission that will be heard on Nov. 12 by the United States Supreme Court. We will be there in person, along with a group of our employees, to show our support for DACA recipients.

For Microsoft, the decision to bring this case was straightforward. We believe Dreamers are worth protecting. The case speaks to the impact the rescission has on our business, company, employees and the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers across the country. It also has a broader impact on the country’s flow of talent and innovation economy, a perspective that we share with Princeton. Like all research- and innovation-focused organizations, both Microsoft and Princeton depend on the ability to attract talent from around the world. It’s essential not just to us, but also to our country’s ability to compete on the world stage.

Amidst this broader discussion, we also need to remember the individual stories of Dreamers and the contributions that they make. While the number of Dreamers is large, every number is a person and each person is an individual. In short, behind each number there is a unique and important story.

For example, one of the nation’s Dreamers is a young woman, a Microsoft service and security engineer, who was born in Mexico and brought to the U.S. at the age of 4. She thought she was an American citizen until the day, years later, when she asked her mother to sign a permission slip for a school experience in Japan. That was the day that, with tears in her eyes, her mother told her she could never leave the country because she would not be allowed to come back. Inspired by her mother’s sacrifices for her and her siblings, in 2012 she followed her passion for technology through DigiGirlz, a program supported by Microsoft YouthSpark that gives girls the opportunity to learn about careers in technology. After years of commitment, further coursework, and unending grit, she is now building the next chapter of her story at our headquarters in Redmond with our Microsoft 365 team, thanks to DACA. At a time when cyber-attacks are increasing, she is using her skills and experience to help protect our customers across the country and around the world.

Another one of our employees is a Dreamer and software engineer who was born in Tepic, Mexico, and brought to the U.S. when he was only four months old. Growing up in Los Angeles, he and his family lived close to the poverty line for most of his childhood. He excelled in school and earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic State University. His talents led to multiple offers for engineering roles at top technology companies, and we are thrilled that he is now part of our software development team near Seattle. Today he works to enhance productivity and performance for Azure, the cloud platform that is empowering customers of all sizes across the country – including government agencies – to transform their work. He is part of the team that helps make this transformation possible.

There are so many more stories like those, within and beyond Microsoft. For us, this fight is not just about our employees. It’s also about the potential impact of DACA rescission on the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, on businesses across the country, and on the innovation economy that is central to the nation’s prosperity. Roughly three-quarters of the top 25 Fortune 500 companies have confirmed that they employ Dreamers.

While we are the only company among the plaintiffs of the consolidated cases now before the Supreme Court, we know we represent employers of all sizes in making the case to uphold DACA. Last month, more than 140 companies and associations showed their support in a brief filed before the Court. They wrote about the serious harm that would be inflicted on the economy if we were to lose the contributions of Dreamers.

While the case before the Supreme Court is of fundamental importance, we also appreciate that it is insufficient in addressing the permanent needs of the nation’s Dreamer population. The only path to stability for Dreamers is a pathway to citizenship. And citizenship in this case can only come from Congress.

We also recognize that the Dreamers are one part of the broader immigration challenges we face as a nation. We are committed to constructive steps to attract and retain talent that helps fuel innovation and grow our economy for the benefit of every American. This includes reducing the green card backlog and constraints on high skilled visas. Innovation has been vital to the nation’s history. It needs to be equally fundamental to the country’s future – a future that requires creating more opportunities for those born in the United States as well as long-lasting solutions that support individuals like the Dreamers that have come as children from other nations

To read our merits brief on the case, click here.

Posted on November 8, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Shannan and Ashe became best friends in the US Army. Find out how their unlikely friendship continues at Microsoft

Just one month into her job at Microsoft, Ashe actively looked to get involved with the company’s LGBTQI+ community. That’s how she came to organize the company’s presence in the Chicago Pride parade and is helping get a GLEAM (Microsoft’s employee-led LGBTQI+ group) chapter off the ground there.

Shannan volunteers as the communications lead for another employee-led group called Military at Microsoft, which supports and creates a sense of belonging for current and former military members and their families who now work at Microsoft.

This calling to help and to be a part of a team is what drew them both to Microsoft, too.

“My manager now at Microsoft—you’d think I’d have known him my entire life,” Ashe says. “He literally said to me, ‘You don’t work for me. I work for you. You tell me what you need and how to make your job easy.’ And I was like, ‘Where am I? Like where am I?’” she laughs.

*****

We pack up our stuff and head to a park to grab a few photographs outside of the two doing what they usually do together—laughing hysterically and generally enjoying each other’s company. Shannan lingers back to talk to me as Ashe cracks a joke with the photographer.

“Honestly, I didn’t know if Ashe was going to make it,” Shannan says, choosing her words slowly now and dabbing her eyes. “I was really worried. She was just so depressed.”

“Are you crying?” Ashe yells from up ahead where she’s scouted a good location overlooking Seattle. “Dude, stop bawling—you said you’d kill me if I let you cry.”

Shannan laughs and wipes her eyes.

“I’m not!” she hollers back.

We catch up with Ashe, and I ask her if the interview was torture.

“Absolutely,” she smirks, tossing her tattooed arm across Shannan’s shoulder. “Hated every minute.”

Posted on November 8, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft works with researchers to detect and protect against new RDP exploits

On November 2, 2019, security researcher Kevin Beaumont reported that his BlueKeep honeypot experienced crashes and was likely being exploited. Microsoft security researchers collaborated with Beaumont as well as another researcher, Marcus Hutchins, to investigate and analyze the crashes and confirm that they were caused by a BlueKeep exploit module for the Metasploit penetration testing framework.

BlueKeep is what researchers and the media call CVE-2019-0708, an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Remote Desktop Services on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft released a security fix for the vulnerability on May 14, 2019.

While similar vulnerabilities have been abused by worm malware in the past, initial attempts at exploiting this vulnerability involved human operators aiming to penetrate networks via exposed RDP services.

Microsoft had already deployed a behavioral detection for the BlueKeep Metasploit module in early September, so Microsoft Defender ATP customers had protection from this Metasploit module by the time it was used against Beaumont’s honeypot. The module, which appears to be unstable as evidenced by numerous RDP-related crashes observed on the honeypot, triggered the behavioral detection in Microsoft Defender ATP, resulting in the collection of critical signals used during the investigation.

Microsoft security signals showed an increase in RDP-related crashes that are likely associated with the use of the unstable BlueKeep Metasploit module on certain sets of vulnerable machines. We saw:

An increase in RDP service crashes from 10 to 100 daily starting on September 6, 2019, when the Metasploit module was released
A similar increase in memory corruption crashes starting on October 9, 2019
Crashes on external researcher honeypots starting on October 23, 2019

Figure 1. Increase in RDP-related service crashes when the Metasploit module was released

Coin miner campaign using BlueKeep exploit

After extracting indicators of compromise and pivoting to various related signal intelligence, Microsoft security researchers found that an earlier coin mining campaign in September used a main implant that contacted the same command-and-control infrastructure used during the October BlueKeep Metasploit campaign, which, in cases where the exploit did not cause the system to crash, was also observed installing a coin miner. This indicated that the same attackers were likely responsible for both coin mining campaigns—they have been actively staging coin miner attacks and eventually incorporated the BlueKeep exploit into their arsenal.

Our machine learning models flagged the presence of the coin miner payload used in these attacks on machines in France, Russia, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, the United Kingdom, and many other countries.

Figure 2. Geographic distribution of coin miner encounters

These attacks were likely initiated as port scans for machines with vulnerable internet-facing RDP services. Once attackers found such machines, they used the BlueKeep Metasploit module to run a PowerShell script that eventually downloaded and launched several other encoded PowerShell scripts.

Figure 3. Techniques and components used in initial attempts to exploit BlueKeep

We pieced together the behaviors of the PowerShell scripts using mostly memory dumps. The following script activities have also been discussed in external researcher blogs:

Initial script downloaded another encoded PowerShell script from an attacker-controlled remote server (5.135.199.19) hosted somewhere in France via port 443.
The succeeding script downloaded and launched a series of three to four other encoded PowerShell scripts.
The final script eventually downloaded the coin miner payload from another attacker-controlled server (109.176.117.11) hosted in Great Britain.
Apart from downloading the payload, the final script also created a scheduled task to ensure the coin miner stayed persistent.

Figure 4. Memory dump of a PowerShell script used in the attacks

The final script saved the coin miner as the following file:

C:\Windows\System32\spool\svchost.exe

The coin miner connected to command-and-control infrastructure at 5.100.251.106 hosted in Israel. Other coin miners deployed in earlier campaigns that did not exploit BlueKeep also connected to this same IP address.

Defending enterprises against BlueKeep

Security signals and forensic analysis show that the BlueKeep Metasploit module caused crashes in some cases, but we cannot discount enhancements that will likely result in more effective attacks. In addition, while there have been no other verified attacks involving ransomware or other types of malware as of this writing, the BlueKeep exploit will likely be used to deliver payloads more impactful and damaging than coin miners.

The new exploit attacks show that BlueKeep will be a threat as long as systems remain unpatched, credential hygiene is not achieved, and overall security posture is not kept in check. Customers are encouraged to identify and update vulnerable systems immediately. Many of these unpatched devices could be unmonitored RDP appliances placed by suppliers and other third-parties to occasionally manage customer systems. Because BlueKeep can be exploited without leaving obvious traces, customers should also thoroughly inspect systems that might already be infected or compromised.

To this end, Microsoft customers can use the rich capabilities in Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Microsoft Defender ATP) to gain visibility on exploit activities and defend networks against attacks. On top of the behavior-based antivirus and endpoint detection and response (EDR) detections, we released a threat analytics report to help security operations teams to conduct investigations specific to this threat. We also wrote advanced hunting queries that customers can use to look for multiple components of the attack.

Talk to us

Questions, concerns, or insights on this story? Join discussions at the Microsoft Defender ATP community.

Read all Microsoft security intelligence blog posts.

Posted on November 8, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Less stress, less time: How a Brazilian startup is using Azure AI to make car repairs easier

SÃO PAOLO, Brazil – For most people, the worst part of getting into a minor car accident is figuring out how to get your car repaired.

There’s the trouble of figuring out who to call, the hassle of driving around to get estimates and the constant worry that whoever you work with will end up taking advantage of you.

That’s where Car10 comes in. The Brazilian startup has created an app that allows customers to take a picture of the damage, submit the photo and get three to five estimates from nearby car repair shops that Car10 has pre-screened for quality and reliability. The startup even guarantees it will make the repair for free if you aren’t satisfied.

“We take the fear out of the process, the worry that you’ll be taken advantage of,” said Jose Tafner, Car10’s chief financial officer.

Now, the São Paolo-based company is using artificial intelligence to make the process faster. The startup announced that it is using Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services Custom Vision Service to almost immediately give the user a rough sense of what they expect the repair to cost.

With the current system, users who submit a photo will get a quote within 30 minutes to an hour. With the new AI tools, Tafner said they can get a general sense of how much the repair will cost within about 30 seconds.

“It goes back to the customer need. When you have a small accident or crash, the thing you want to know is how much it’s going to cost,” Tafner said. “The first need is speed and some level of accuracy.”

The AI system uses a machine learning model to compare the damage to the customer’s car with other examples of similar damage to come up with a reasonably close estimate. Then, the company works with car repair shops to get firmer bids.

The AI system may speed up the quote process, but it doesn’t replace the hands-on involvement that Car10 has in ensuring customers feel comfortable throughout the process of getting their car repaired.

Tafner said Car10 works with customers on everything from providing the estimate to scheduling the visit and even paying through Car10’s digital platform. The customer then has the opportunity to rate the experience and the shop where the repair was made.

“The digital part of the journey is small. The largest part is analog,” Tafner said.

Focus on quality

Car10 has about 100,000 customers and works with about 4,000 auto body shops throughout Brazil, ranging from big businesses to small mom-and-pop shops. Tafner said the company initially focused only on larger shops, thinking that was what the customer would prefer. But they found that customers didn’t care whether the shop was being run out of someone’s garage or a fancy office.

“They care about the quality of the service,” he said.

Car10 was started in 2014 by three brothers who had previously worked for their father’s insurance adjustment business. When that business was sold, they decided to use their experience in the car repair industry to plunge into the startup world. Tafner joined a couple of years later, after decades of global experience in the corporate world. The service is designed for people who are paying for repairs themselves, instead of relying on insurance.

From the beginning, the four-person leadership team has been highly reliant on technology and data. They run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, use Power BI dashboards and built the app on the .NET framework.

“The four of us are data freaks. We’re constantly using it to improve the business,” Tafner said.

Still, Tafner said that like many businesses swimming in data, it can be challenging to figure out which pieces of data are useful.

One clear winner: The photos of car repairs. Car10 was able to use that data to train the machine learning model to automatically detect what kind of repair a person needs and what it would generally cost. Car10 doesn’t sell customer data, and it protects people’s personal information using Azure security protections.

Car10, which has received startup investment funds from Microsoft, first started building the AI solution when the company participated in an industry hackfest. Although it has an IT staff, none of the people who work for Car10 have a particular expertise in AI. Azure Cognitive Services are designed so that even people without any formal AI training can use them.

Future plans

Car10 is about five years old now, and it expects to break even within a quarter. Now, Tafner said the company is seeking more funding so that it can expand into other areas of business, and potentially other markets outside of Brazil.

“What we can do for car crashes we can do for a number of things,” he said.

For Tafner, the small team and fast pace is both invigorating and enlightening. Like any startup, he notes, the company is constantly trying new things, making mistakes and adjusting – all while trying to run the core business. He likens it to race car driving.

“We’re changing the tires while the car is running,” Tafner said. “There are no pit stops for us.”

Allison Linn writes about AI and innovation. Follow her on Twitter.

Posted on November 8, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

How tech inspired one man to transform businesses in Dubai

When Faisal Ali was a child, his schoolteacher would always encourage him to solve small problems while keeping an eye on the bigger picture. Fast-forward to the present, the now group CIO of the Garash Group in Dubai still follows that same philosophy.

Beginning from when he first played on an Atari 2600 console when he was just 11-years-old, Faisal knew that when he grew up, he had to do something which involved problem solving and technology.

Faisal now leads the Automotive, Financial Services and Real Estate sectors of the business enterprise, all with the main goal of enabling business growth through technology.

It is his passion for technology combined with this love of problem-solving which has and continued to inspire Faisal to be successful in his role today.

How has technology transformed how you work?

Faisal believes that technology has completely changed his approach to work. New innovations in the digital era allow him to connect and collaborate with co-workers at any time or from any place possible, which is hugely important for his job.

Summarizing how technology has developed over the course of his career, he said:

“Over the last 25 years of my professional life technology has changed my working lifestyle many times over. “

“I remember back in the 90s when dialing into work was almost impossible. The most I could do was send a few emails and upload a few excel files. “

“In the Noughties, broadband was in its early stages and mobility was becoming a reality, I could use a blackberry to stay connected to my mail and VPN to the office to do my work. “

“In the last 10 years’ workplace and systems are transforming from being on-premise to cloud and becoming more social. It’s a connected digital world and everyone is a citizen.”

Microsoft technologies have particularly benefited Faisal during his working life. He reflected on this, saying that Microsoft’s technology has inspired him to be as innovative as possible at work.

“You can’t make me switch back from my Microsoft Surface Pro”, he said. “It was truly love at first sight. The integration between desktop and mobile, wired and wireless, mouse and touch is seamless and natural.”

How do you use technology outside of work?

Outside of work, he recognizes that technology is just as useful and enjoyable in his everyday life.

“I am lucky in that way, as both my passion and my profession are technology”, he said.

“I love smart devices. I measure my physical activity, track my trips and can even message my 10-year-old son whenever I like. I guess you could say a good mobile phone is a man’s new best friend.”

He does admit that technology cannot be allowed to dictate our lives, however.

He believes connections between humans can never be replaced, and added:

“Technology is great but it simply does not replace the relationships and bonds you share with friends and family. Let technology augment those experience and not dictate them.”

What does the technology of the future look like to you?

Although believing that technology can never replace humans, he sees it as crucial for future developments in improving many aspects of our lives.

“This is a really interesting discussion point. I completed my Masters in IT Systems and am keen to learn how technology will continue to advance and benefit our lives.”

“I think that we’ll see a more natural integration of human technologies into our daily lives, meaning humans and AI will collaborate to improve society.”

“We’ll see devices that can help manage and monitor our health better, and systems which seamless keep us all connected online.”

“Technology isn’t just the present. It’s the future, and it’s going to help us act faster, think better and ultimately enhance the way we live.”

Posted on November 7, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

En garde! Wearable IoT and AI keep fencers on point

“I can immediately address weaknesses I didn’t even know that I had. I’m feeling more confident about performing my best.”

RaceFit’s solution has also been extended to other sports like high-intensity interval training (HIIT) training, cycling and tennis. Soon, RaceFit plans to expand the usability of its app to team sports, like football.

Beyond fencing

The technology is not just for coaches and high-end competitors. Anyone can use RaceFit in their regular lives. It comes with an exercise app with customizable routines. The app lets you know immediately if any of your movements need improvement, like if your hip position is too high while planking. It can keep track of your progress over time and prescribe new exercises to help you reach your fitness goals.

Additional sports, like cycling and running, are supported by downloadable modules.And more sports and exercises are being added to the list.

RaceFit co-founder and CEO Graham Mak says, “We are not limited to those exercises. We are only limited to human motion. If a customer says, ‘I’m in a canoe club and I want a canoe program,’ then we can do something like that.”

A handphone with an app displayed. — When a problem is identified, coaches can develop a training regimen to address it. They can also monitor an athlete’s progress remotely.

Mak also has plans to aid physical therapists. Wearing a simpler version of the sensor contained in a single band, patients can perform exercises as instructed by the therapists. The device will help the physical therapist determine if they do it correctly. “This will save a lot of time and it can be done with multiple patients at the same time.”

Dennis Poon, the company’s Chief Experience Officer, says physiotherapists who use the RaceFit system “can definitely take care of more patients and, more importantly, they will be able to monitor their recovery.”

A similar use is applicable to older people, especially those who live alone. According to the Hong Kong government, around 20% of adults over 65 have a fall at least once a year. Most of those report some kind of injury and nearly 10% break a bone. Since the RaceFit sensors give a complete picture of human movement, the system would know, for example, if a person has fallen down and needs assistance.

Two female fencers — The company has been able to change its business model by being nimble as it embraces new technologies.

“What is the active and inactive times in a day? And, what about the time walking or sitting or lying on the bed? What does it represent? And, how can it affect health outcomes?” Mak says.

A long way from the garment industry

RaceFit’s journey to understanding human movement began with a much more pedestrian goal. According to Mak, his team just wanted to make a smart garment to revitalize the traditional apparel industry.

After three years of R&D, they decided to change direction and were inspired by the kind of motion-capture suits you see used in a Hollywood special effects production.

That led Mak to ask: “What if we understand motion and make recommendations afterwards?” They realized that by using Microsoft Azure cloud, they could build their own AI solution to focus on fitness ability management. “For example, when you do a push-up, did you do it correctly or incorrectly?”

By being nimble, changing direction, and embracing new technologies, Mak and his team have created new business models that have transformed the company.

Poon sums it up this way, “We started our company focusing on Sports and Fitness, but we’ve gone way beyond that already.”

Posted on November 7, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

How Minecraft: Education Edition helps hospitalized kids continue to learn

This post comes to us from Evelina Hospital School in London. Their team is using Minecraft: Education Edition to teach students in treatment at Evelina London Children’s hospital. Read their inspiring story about using Minecraft to facilitate learning under challenging circumstances.

Evelina Hospital School is a hospital community school with the UK’s Department for Education that educates young people who are patients of the Evelina London Children’s Hospital. The school was established in 1949, and they’re celebrating their 70th Birthday this year! Located on the South Bank of the Thames river, the hospital is directly opposite the British Parliament.

Over the academic year, Evelina typically teaches 1,500–1,800 different pupils who are unable to attend their home schools because of their medical needs. Their students are taught in classrooms based in the hospital’s atrium, or even at their bedsides in the ward. The school aims to minimize the disruption to young people’s education caused by hospital treatment so that academic progress and an interest in learning will continue as far as medical circumstances permit.

The pupils at Evelina attend for a wide variety of reasons. As a school, they need to offer an enriching educational experience, facilitating learning and continuity in education while meeting the challenges present during a hospital stay. They offer bespoke lessons for each pupil and often seek to find a highly motivated activity to help the students with that initial engagement. The teachers at Evelina discovered that Minecraft: Education Edition was a common theme when discussing student interests. It was a great leveler across wide-ranging needs and age groups, affording accessibility while nurturing opportunities for peer learning. What they see with Minecraft: Education Edition is energy, enthusiasm, and excitement for learning.

Minecraft naturally evolved out of a desire for pupil-led learning and educational experiences. When the opportunity arose for Evelina Hospital School to apply to be Minecraft Champions, it was a golden opportunity to promote educational Minecraft within the hospital school. They were lucky to have Marquel, a staff member who has a background in multimedia and a great deal of experience with Minecraft itself, in addition to Benjamin Neasom, the lead teacher. Both became Minecraft Champions.

Marquel was able to take the lead on the project, and the results have been phenomenal, with a full replica of the hospital produced through pupil input. This replica has been further adapted into a virtual learning environment. As a result, students readily connect and identify with the context where the teachers set their challenges.

Evelina Hospital School provided laptops to pupils across the hospital, allowing multiple participants within a Minecraft session. Now, pupils in the primary classroom can interact directly within Minecraft with those in the dialysis ward. This connectivity is particularly useful in a hospital setting, where learners are often not able to be present in the same room but benefit from peer interaction within a safe virtual space.

For the staff who are new to Minecraft: Education Edition, Marquel is offering one-to-one drop-in and group training sessions to help them get started and deliver Minecraft across their settings.

Any achievement is on a strictly individual basis since pupils are often dealing with a complex set of medical circumstances. Achievement could be as simple as engaging with the session. Evelina Hospital School encourages participation and peer work wherever possible. Achievement is recorded through Evelina’s own organization-specific Management Information System, based on teacher observation and demonstrated through finished challenges or the creation of Minecraft content.

Many of the incredible students at the hospital school have been inspired to think about the jobs of the future—jobs that might not even exist yet! Minecraft has expanded the horizons of students who are overcoming complex problems and has encouraged the building of self-esteem, inspiring creative thinking to prepare them for the challenges of the future.

To learn more about how Minecraft: Education Edition can inspire students in any setting, head to education.minecraft.net.

The post Minecraft: Education Edition at Evelina Hospital School appeared first on Minecraft: Education Edition.

This post was originally published on this site.

Posted on November 7, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

The making of the HoloLens 2: How advanced AI built Microsoft’s vision for ubiquitous computing

Cloud collaboration

A key advantage of intelligent cloud-powered holographic computing is the ability to share information with others who have a HoloLens or another device with similar capabilities, said Marc Pollefeys, the director of Microsoft’s Mixed Reality and AI Zurich Lab in Switzerland.

Pollefeys is leading a team that develops core computer vision algorithms for a mixed reality cloud service called Azure Spatial Anchors that allows holograms to persist, locked in the real world, for anyone with the appropriate level of access to view.

For example, spatial anchor technology allows a manager in a factory to place holograms next to equipment on an assembly line that contain vital, real-time operating and maintenance information that any credentialed worker with a mixed reality capable device can access.

“If I can only place information that I will see back on my device, it’s probably never worth placing holograms in the world, but if I can annotate the world and afterward anyone else in the company that has the right access can see all of the information, it is suddenly much more valuable,” Pollefeys said.

To create this capability, Pollefeys and his team developed AI computer vision algorithms that process data from sensors to extract 3D geometric information about the environment and piece it together in the cloud to create a digital twin, or map, of the area of interest.

HoloLens has always built up a 3D or spatial understanding of its environment to function. Azure Spatial Anchors creates, refines and shares these maps across devices, Pollefeys noted. That’s why the maps from individual devices are pieced together and stored in the cloud.

“It doesn’t make sense to have that data only on an individual device,” he said. “It is one of those things where I have a little piece of the puzzle, and somebody else has a little piece of the puzzle, and all of the devices together have covered the whole space of interest.”

These maps get denser, more precise and robust over time as different mixed reality capable devices – HoloLenses as well as properly equipped phones, tablets and laptops – map their environment and share the data with the cloud.

For example, the map of the factory floor where the manager left holograms floating over pieces of equipment on the assembly line is steadily refined as more and more credentialed workers view the holograms with their devices.

This capability also enables scenarios such as a meeting between architects and clients to view and interact with a holographic 3D blueprint of a building, each of them with mixed reality capable devices looking at the blueprint from their own point of view as they sit around a table.

Azure contains pre-built services to write applications for these types of experiences on HoloLens and any other mixed reality device, including smartphones and tablets running the iOS and Android operating systems, noted White.

“That collaboration experience isn’t just locked to HoloLens,” she said. “And, the cost and complexity and skillset required to make an application that does something amazing is far down.”

The cross-device and platform capability, for example, enables experiences such as Minecraft Earth, which merges the popular video game with mixed reality in a way that players can build and place virtual structures in the real world that persist so that other players can interact with them on their devices.

“We all get to participate because it is based on using cloud technology that can be understood and interpreted by all different devices,” said White.

Technology that is designed for people

For HoloLens to work as envisioned, the technology that underpins the experience needs to understand the world in ways that are similar to the way people do, Kipman noted.

That’s why he and his collaborators across Microsoft have developed, deployed and leveraged AI solutions throughout the ubiquitous computing fabric, from the silicon in the headset of HoloLens 2 to Azure AI and mixed reality services.

Back at his digital whiteboard, Kipman has now sketched out a vision for ubiquitous computing that is rife with words, boxes, arrows – and a stick-figure picture of two people locked in conversation next to an intelligent device.

That, he says, is the ultimate goal of ubiquitous computing – to get people to interact with other people in natural ways.

To drive home the point, he establishes a moment of intense, deliberate eye contact and says, “Hopefully, you are getting more out of this conversation because you are physically present with me.”

“We could have done this over the phone,” he continues. “We could have done it over Skype. I could have recorded it and sent you a tape. You didn’t choose to do that. You chose to be physically present with me. Why? Because that’s how we do human things.”

“The con is you have to be here at the same time I am here, and we have to be in the same location. The power of this technology is it gives us the ability to displace space and time.”

Top image: Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman models the HoloLens 2, a sensor-packed holographic computing headset. Photo by Microsoft.

John Roach writes about Microsoft research and innovation. Follow him on Twitter.

Posted on November 6, 2019 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Bringing autonomous systems to engineers: Taking a leap from the digital world of games to the real world

Imagine an autonomous vehicle navigating a smoke-filled mine looking for survivors, personal belongings or any other clues to find anyone who might be alive. It identifies objects it sees and decides which paths to take first. As it reaches the limit of where it can explore, a drone sitting on the vehicle flies off to explore the hard-to-reach corners of the mine. All of this is done without any communication with the outside world. Believe it or not, this isn’t science fiction! Team Explorer from Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University did exactly this to win the first event of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean Challenge.

Today we live in the age of data-driven artificial intelligence (AI), where machine intelligence systems solve difficult problems by considering hundreds of millions of trials or training episodes. Hard problems in perception and decision making that were considered too tough by the community even in the recent past are today being successfully solved using techniques such as reinforcement learning (RL).

I’ve often thought about how advances like these in machine perception and automated decision-making could help us do things like build intelligent robots, and in particular tackle the challenges of optimal control of dynamical systems. And since my early days as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, I’ve been fascinated by the tight loop between perception — using computer intelligence to sense surroundings — and action — using this feedback and data to make decisions. Today, our work teaching computers to play games (e.g., mastering Ms. Pac-Man) has the ability to fundamentally change the way we will build control systems in the future. The potential applications could impact a wide range of industries with profound impact on safety and productivity — going well beyond just the self-driving cars that dominate today’s news cycles.

Today’s engineered devices and systems use rules-based logic to bring together the scientific principles, technology and mathematics which have been painstakingly discovered over time by subject matter experts and engineers. But what if our engineers of the future could build control systems infused with machine intelligence that go beyond rules-based logic, and respond in real-time to changing environments to accomplish their goal? Technologies such as RL that are seeing tremendous success in solving video games will be key to building real-world sequential decision-making mechanisms and will power our next generation of autonomous systems.

Helping engineers build action-perception loops for the real world
Translating the success of RL in video games to real-world autonomous systems carries big challenges — for example, no one loses a life making the wrong move in a video game! AI can’t learn from its failures as easily in the real world, where the potential cost of mistakes can be huge. Additionally, newer AI techniques are data hungry. For example, it takes hundreds of millions of tries before a seemingly respectable policy can be trained for many of these gaming tasks. So, operating physical systems like machines or chemical processes for millions of cycles to generate data to train AI can be a very expensive proposition.

Today, I’m excited to talk about how new breakthroughs in the world of machine teaching and creating high-fidelity simulations will enable you to tackle these challenges.

Machine teaching – a new paradigm to infuse domain knowledge to help improve learning
Our researchers have been hard at work on developing machine teaching, which infuses expert domain knowledge and harnesses human expertise to break a big problem into easier, smaller tasks. It also can give AI models important clues about how to find a solution faster, dramatically accelerating model training time. There’s still AI underneath the hood, but you as the expert provide examples, or lesson plans, to help the learning algorithms solve the task at hand. Since you are the one giving the lessons, describing the goals, desired behavior, and safety boundary conditions, the resulting AI models are also far more explainable and auditable once they are deployed. I know I wouldn’t want a “black-box” AI model running the control loop for my systems!

Borrowing a quote from Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman, “Computer Science is the science of abstraction, creating the right model for thinking about a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it.” I think of machine teaching as the abstraction we are creating, the right model for thinking about applying domain expertise to AI systems. It can help you to bridge between the model-first mindset of engineers and the code-first mindset practiced by software developers.

High-fidelity simulations – A critical path to gather experiences at scale
Similar to machine teaching, simulations offer a way to generate synthetic data that can train machine intelligence systems at scale and without taking unnecessary risks. Simulations are a safe and cost-efficient way to train AI models, if you can model the key elements like the devices, the sensors and the environment interacting with your system. That allows you to simulate all possible scenarios, including edge situations — such as when a certain sensor or actuator fails — to teach the AI how to adapt to those situations.

For example, we built an open source simulator for aerial and other robotic vehicles called Aerial Informatics and Robotics Simulation, or AirSim for short. AirSim allows the simulation of a wide variety of environments, lighting conditions, sensors and fusion of sensor data. AirSim’s ability to create near-realistic autonomy pipelines is how Team Explorer secured its win.

Most of our customers use highly specialized simulation software for their specific use cases. We’re working with leading simulation makers in the industry like MathWorks to bring these simulators to Azure. MathWorks is the leading developer of mathematical computing software, including MATLAB and Simulink, used by millions of engineers and scientists to design complex embedded and multidomain systems. These partnerships will enable you to easily produce the large volumes of synthetic data needed to quickly train AI models for your specific use case.

The possibilities are endless, and the time is now
We’re continuing to bring AI to engineers and designers that will harness their expertise and trustworthy autonomy as the foundation for accelerated innovation. Customers like Delta, Shell and Toyota are already starting to use and benefit from this approach. From industrial applications to search and rescue operations like in the DARPA challenge, the applications of this technology will be endless. We hope you will join us on this journey to start inventing the future!

Related:
Visit: Autonomous systems with Microsoft AI

Read: How autonomous systems use AI that learns from the world around it

Read: Helping first responders achieve more with autonomous systems and AirSim

Read: Machine teaching: How people’s expertise makes AI even more powerful

Learn more: Game of Drones Competition at NeurIPS 2019