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This voice cloning project explores both SVC for Voice Changing and VITS(Bert-VITS2) for Text-to-Speech. 

How to Voice Clone With SoftVC VITS and Bert-VITS2: A Deep Dive

“We are actively taking steps to not become a wasteland of AI’s musings” says HackerNoon Founder/CEO

<div><div><h2 id="h-what-is-a-runloop">What Is a Runloop?</h2>
<p>A RunLoop is a loop that coordinates the receipt and processing of incoming events in a specific thread.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The RunLoop is present in every thread, but by default, it is in standby mode and does not do any work.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The developer can run it if necessary, but it will not work automatically. To do this, you will need to write code.</p><h2 id="h-what-problem-does-runloop-solve">What Problem Does Runloop Solve?</h2>
<p>First of all, RunLoop is designed to manage the flow of incoming tasks and execute them at the right time.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>This is most noticeable when working with the UI, for example, when using UIScrollView.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>By default, the main RunLoop is always running in the application; it processes messages from the system and transmits them to the application. An example of such messages may be, for example, an event when a user clicks on the screen.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><blockquote>
<p>Auxiliary threads require self-determination of the need for a RunLoop. If you need it, you will have to configure and run it yourself. Running RunLoop by default is not recommended, it is required only in cases where we need active interaction with threads.</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Also, all timers in the application are executed on the runloop, so if you need to interact with them in your application, you definitely need to study the features of the runloop.</p><h2 id="h-how-does-it-work">How Does It Work?</h2>
<p>RunLoop is a loop, and it has several modes of operation that help the developer understand when to run a particular task.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>So, RunLoop can be in the following modes:</p><ol>
<li>
<p><code>Default</code> - The default mode, the stream is free, and large operations can safely be performed in it.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p></li>
<li>
<p><code>Tracking</code> - The thread is busy doing some important work. At this point, it is better not to run any tasks, or at least to run some small tasks.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p></li>
<li>
<p><code>Initialization</code> - This mode is executed once during the initialization of the stream.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p></li>
<li>
<p><code>EventReceive</code> - This is an internal mode for receiving system events, which is usually not used.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><code>Common</code> - Is a placeholder mode that has no practical significance.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>On the main RunLoop, these modes are switched automatically; the developer can use them to perform time-consuming tasks so that the user does not notice the interface hanging. Let's look at an example.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p></li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>Execution cycle management in other RunLoop is not fully automatic. You need to write code for a thread that will start the execution cycle at an appropriate time. Also, you need to respond appropriately to events and use endless loops to ensure that the execution cycle doesn't stop.</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>We have a UIScrollView, and we need to perform a large task on the main thread so that the user doesn't notice anything.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>We can complete the task in the usual way:</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><pre class="language-objectivec" tabindex="0"><code class="language-objectivec">DispatchQueue<span class="token punctuation">.</span>main<span class="token punctuation">.</span>async <span class="token punctuation">{</span>
   <span class="token function">sleep</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token number">2</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span>
   <span class="token keyword">self</span><span class="token punctuation">.</span>tableView<span class="token punctuation">.</span>refreshControl<span class="token operator">?</span><span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token function">endRefreshing</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span>
<span class="token punctuation">}</span>
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>But the result is going to be pretty bad. The user will notice significant delays in the application.</p><p><div class="sc-56d3a1c3-0 evTXYi"><p class="line-space"><br></p><div class="youtube-container"><iframe title="ytcontainer" width="700" height="394" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7JIzvsX_vc4" frameborder="0"></iframe></div></div></p>
<p>This negative effect occurs due to the fact that we run a task on the main thread without paying any attention to what is happening on it at the moment.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Because of this, we begin to perform our big task at the moment when the user interacts with the interface.&nbsp;This,&nbsp;of course,&nbsp;leads to the fact that&nbsp;the user&nbsp;sees the interface hanging.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>This can be avoided by using the RunLoop mechanism. Let's implement the same logic using this:</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><pre class="language-objectivec" tabindex="0"><code class="language-objectivec"><span class="token function">CFRunLoopPerformBlock</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token function">CFRunLoopGetMain</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span><span class="token punctuation">,</span> CFRunLoopMode<span class="token punctuation">.</span>defaultMode<span class="token punctuation">.</span>rawValue<span class="token punctuation">)</span> <span class="token punctuation">{</span>
    <span class="token function">sleep</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token number">2</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span>
    <span class="token keyword">self</span><span class="token punctuation">.</span>tableView<span class="token punctuation">.</span>refreshControl<span class="token operator">?</span><span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token function">endRefreshing</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span>
<span class="token punctuation">}</span>
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Let me explain what happens here. The CFRunLoopPerformBlock function adds code for execution through the RunLoop. In addition to the code block itself, this function has 2 important parameters.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The first one is responsible for selecting which RunLoop should execute the function. In this example, "main" is used.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The second one is responsible for the mode in which the task will be completed.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>There&nbsp;are three&nbsp;possible&nbsp;modes in total:</p><ul>
<li>Tracking - when the user interacts with the interface, such as scrolling through a UIScrollView.</li>
</ul>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><ul>
<li>Default - the user does not interact with the interface. At this time, it is possible to safely complete a resource-intensive task.</li>
</ul>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><ul>
<li>
<p>Common - combines the default mode and tracking mode.</p>
<p>The result of running the program with the code above will be:</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><div class="sc-56d3a1c3-0 evTXYi"><p class="line-space"><br></p><div class="youtube-container"><iframe title="ytcontainer" width="700" height="394" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Rd7Z13RhJA" frameborder="0"></iframe></div></div></p>
<p>When the user begins interacting with the user interface (UI), the main run loop switches to "tracking" mode and temporarily suspends the processing of all other events in order to ensure the smoothness of the interface. Once the user stops interacting with the interface, the run loop returns to its "default" mode and resumes performing our task.</p>
<h2 id="h-timers">Timers</h2>
<p>In addition to the user interface, the loop is also closely linked to the functioning of timers.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Any timer in the application runs in a loop, and you need to be extra careful not to make mistakes while working with them, especially if they are responsible for important functionality such as payment processing.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><pre class="language-objectivec" tabindex="0"><code class="language-objectivec">Timer<span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token function">scheduledTimer</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span>withTimeInterval<span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token number">1</span><span class="token punctuation">,</span> repeats<span class="token punctuation">:</span> false<span class="token punctuation">)</span> <span class="token punctuation">{</span> _ <span class="token keyword">in</span>
    <span class="token comment">// makeSomething</span>
<span class="token punctuation">}</span>
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The timer starts in default mode by default, so it may stop working if the user is scrolling through the table at the moment. This is because the loop is currently in tracking mode. This is why the code in the example may not work properly. You can fix this&nbsp;issue&nbsp;by adding a timer in common mode.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><pre class="language-objectivec" tabindex="0"><code class="language-objectivec">let timer <span class="token operator">=</span> Timer<span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token function">scheduledTimer</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span>withTimeInterval<span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token number">1</span><span class="token punctuation">,</span> repeats<span class="token punctuation">:</span> false<span class="token punctuation">)</span> <span class="token punctuation">{</span> _ <span class="token keyword">in</span>
    <span class="token comment">// makeSomething</span>
<span class="token punctuation">}</span>

RunLoop<span class="token punctuation">.</span>main<span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token function">add</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span>timer<span class="token punctuation">,</span> forMode<span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token punctuation">.</span>common<span class="token punctuation">)</span>
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Also, the timers may not fire at the expected time or not at all. This is because the RunLoop only checks the timers at the beginning of each cycle. If a timer triggers after the RunLoop has passed this stage, we will not know about it until the beginning of the next iteration. At the same time, the longer the task runs on the RunLoop, the longer the delay will be.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>To solve this issue, you can create a new thread, start a RunLoop in that thread, and then add a timer to the thread without adding any other tasks - in this way, the timer will function correctly.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><pre class="language-objectivec" tabindex="0"><code class="language-objectivec">let thread <span class="token operator">=</span> Thread <span class="token punctuation">{</span>
    let timer <span class="token operator">=</span> <span class="token function">Timer</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span>timeInterval<span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token number">1.0</span><span class="token punctuation">,</span> repeats<span class="token punctuation">:</span> true<span class="token punctuation">)</span> <span class="token punctuation">{</span> timer <span class="token keyword">in</span>
        <span class="token comment">// makeSomething</span>
    <span class="token punctuation">}</span>
    RunLoop<span class="token punctuation">.</span>current<span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token function">add</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span>timer<span class="token punctuation">,</span> forMode<span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token keyword">default</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span>
    RunLoop<span class="token punctuation">.</span>current<span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token function">run</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span>
<span class="token punctuation">}</span>
thread<span class="token punctuation">.</span><span class="token function">start</span><span class="token punctuation">(</span><span class="token punctuation">)</span>
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><h2 id="h-the-result">The Result</h2>
<p>In this article, we have looked at what RunLoop is and what problems it solves in iOS applications. A RunLoop is a loop that coordinates the reception and processing of incoming events within a specific thread, and it has several modes of operation.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>It is especially useful when working with the user interface (UI) and timers because it has the ability to execute tasks at the right time, which allows you to avoid "hanging up" the interface and ensure correct operation of the timers.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Despite the fact that working with Run Loop requires additional coding, it is a worthwhile investment that improves the efficiency and stability of your application.</p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

Run Loop is a very important tool in iOS development. Let's explore how to use it.

How to Use RunLoop in IOS Applications

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<div><div><div class="notice notice-tip">
<p><em>Hey everyone! <strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/meet-the-writer-hackernoon-contributor-nataraj-sindam-on-experimenting-with-ai?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">I’m Nataraj</a>,</strong> and just like you, I’ve been fascinated with the recent progress of artificial intelligence. Realizing that I needed to stay abreast with all the developments happening, I decided to embark on a personal journey of learning, thus <strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/u/sindamnataraj?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">100 days of AI</a></strong> was born! With this series, I will be learning about LLMs and share ideas, experiments, opinions, trends &amp; learnings through my blog posts. You can follow along the journey on HackerNoon <strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/u/sindamnataraj?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">here</a></strong> or my personal website <strong><a href="https://thestartupproject.io/100-days-of-ai/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">here</a></strong>. In today’s article, we’ll be looking to build a Semantic Kernel with the help of GPT-4.</em></p>
</div>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>If you are reading the 100 Days of AI series I am writing a common theme that you will notice is most of the posts have some kind of an experiment or a demo. At the end of posts I also list ideas that are possible with the technologies I explored. So the obvious next question is, is there a way to easily wrap these experiments into demo-able products and share them with people and get feedback?</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>In this post we will explore how to easily convert an AI experiment into a demo that can be and get feedback.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Let’s say you want to create an AI app that takes in text and returns a summary. And you want to share it with people and get feedback. If you have to create a web app for this app, you have to code the UI make sure you find a hosting solution and figure out what the entire stack is going to be. Of course there are started webapp stacks that will allow to do it more faster but you don’t need all that complexity for your use case. Instead we will use Gradio which create a web app like interface with out writing any code for this app.</p><h3 id="h-what-is-gradio">What is Gradio?</h3>
<p>Gradio is a python library that allows you to easily create demos of your AI apps and share it with an audience in the form of a web app.</p>
<p>To understand how to easily demo a gen AI experiment with Gradio, we will build a summarization web app where you can give the app a long text and the app will output the summary of that long text.</p>
<h3 id="h-step-1-setup"><strong>Step 1: Setup</strong></h3>
<p>Along with Gradio, we will use hugging face app so to follow along make sure you keep your hugging face api key handy. To get started lets load up the API key from .env file and add required python modules.</p>
<pre><code>import os
import io
from IPython.display import Image, display, HTML
#from PIL import Image
import base64 
import openai

env_path = '../.env'
from dotenv import load_dotenv, find_dotenv
_ = load_dotenv(find_dotenv(env_path)) # read local .env file

hf_api_key = os.environ['HF_API_KEY']
</code></pre>
<h3 id="h-step-2-define-summarization-function">Step 2: Define Summarization Function</h3>
<p>The core logic of what we want to achieve is to send a long text to a model and get a summary of the text. We will define a function that takes in the long text as an input and calls a model on hugging face called <a href="http://hf_api_summary_base%3Dhttps//api-inference.huggingface.co/models/sshleifer/distilbart-cnn-12-6?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">distilbart</a>. Here is the function to do this.</p>
<pre><code>def get_completion(inputs, parameters=None, ENDPOINT_URL=os.environ['HF_API_SUMMARY_BASE']): 
    headers = {
      "Authorization": f"Bearer {hf_api_key}",
      "Content-Type": "application/json"
    }
    data = { "inputs": inputs }
    if parameters is not None:
        data.update({"parameters": parameters})
    response = requests.request("POST",
                                ENDPOINT_URL, headers=headers,
                                data=json.dumps(data)
                               )
    return json.loads(response.content.decode("utf-8"))
</code></pre>
<h3 id="h-step-3-use-gradio-to-demo-summarization-app">Step 3: Use Gradio to Demo Summarization App</h3>
<p>The main way to interact with Gradio is through <strong>interface</strong> function. We need to pass a function and its corresponding inputs and outputs. Note that we defined a new function called <strong>summarize</strong> for this purpose. This function takes an input, which will be the long text which is to be summarized and the function will call the <strong>get_completion</strong> function from step 2 to get the summary of the input text and return that as the <strong>output</strong>. In the final line we are asking gradio to launch the demo of this app. By providing <strong>share=True</strong> we are telling gradio to create a public link that can be shared to others and also giving the server_port on which the local webhost should run on. In the below code we also customize the title, description and labels of input and output fields which you will notice in the out put.</p>
<pre><code>import gradio as gr
def summarize(input):
    output = get_completion(input)
    return output[0]['summary_text']
    
gr.close_all()
demo = gr.Interface(fn=summarize, 
                    inputs=[gr.Textbox(label="Text to summarize", lines=6)],
                    outputs=[gr.Textbox(label="Result", lines=3)],
                    title="Text summarization with distilbart-cnn",
                    description="Summarize any text using the `shleifer/distilbart-cnn-12-6` model under the hood!"
                   )
demo.launch(share=True, server_port=int(os.environ['PORT1']))
</code></pre>
<p>Once you run this, here is what the output now looks like in your browser at http://127.0.0.1:&lt;your port number&gt;.</p>
<p><span><div class="sc-a6c0bd8c-1 ijZWBT image-container undefined"><button class="sc-a6c0bd8c-0 khzBNC download-button"><a download="gradio-output.png" href="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/images/Y14t1a3ZEoT7RE6300ayez7dRN83-en834uh.png" title="Download image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" fill="black"><path fill="black" d="M18 10v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H6v-1H5v-1H4v-1h4V1h1V0h4v1h1v9h4z"></path><path fill="black" d="M21 15v-1h-6v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H1v1H0v6h1v1h20v-1h1v-6h-1Zm-2 4h-1v-1h1v1Zm-3-1h1v1h-1v-1Z"></path></svg></a></button><div data-rmiz-wrap="visible"><div style="position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><img alt="" aria-hidden="true" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg%20xmlns=%27http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%27800%27%20height=%27400.0086655112651%27/%3e" style="display: block; max-width: 100%; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span><img alt="Gradio Output" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" decoding="async" data-nimg="intrinsic" class="image" style="position: absolute; inset: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: none; margin: auto; display: block; width: 0px; height: 0px; min-width: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 100%; max-height: 100%; object-fit: contain; background-size: contain; background-position: 0% 0%; filter: blur(20px); background-image: url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;base64,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&quot;);"><noscript></noscript></span></div><button aria-label="Zoom image" data-rmiz-btn-open="true"></button></div><p class="image-caption">Gradio Output</p></div></span></p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>It is that easy to demo a project with Gradio. The beauty here is you as a developer didn’t have to come up with UI stack and go through with the complexity of learning that stack and taking it to production. Gradio does it for you.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Gradio offers different input and output types using which you can create more complex and interesting demos that can be easily shared. We will explore more demos with Gradio and other tools in the coming posts.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><em><strong>That’s it for Day 12 of 100 Days of AI.</strong></em></p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><strong>I write a newsletter called Above Average where I talk about the second order insights behind everything that is happening in big tech. If you are in tech and don’t want to be average, <a href="https://above-average.beehiiv.com/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">subscribe to it</a></strong>.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Follow me on&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://twitter.com/natarajsindam?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Twitter</a></strong>,&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/natarajsindam/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">LinkedIn</a></strong>&nbsp;or <strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/u/sindamnataraj?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">HackerNoon</a></strong> for latest updates on 100 days of AI. If you are in tech you might be interested in joining my community of tech professionals&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://thestartupproject.io/angel-investing/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">here</a></strong>.</p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

In this post we will explore how to easily convert an AI experiment into a demo that can be and get feedback.

100 Days of AI, Day 12: How to Quickly Demo Your Gen AI Experiments to Get Feedback

Your favorite programming language may be approaching leap years incorrectly.

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<div><div><h2 id="h-fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-initiative-to-bolster-cybersecurity-of-u-s-ports">FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Initiative to Bolster Cybersecurity of U.S.&nbsp;Ports</h2>
<p>Today, the Biden-Harris Administration will issue an Executive Order to bolster the security of the nation’s ports, alongside a series of additional actions that will strengthen maritime cybersecurity, fortify our supply chains and strengthen the United States industrial base. The Administration will also announce its intent to bring domestic onshore manufacturing capacity back to America to provide safe, secure cranes to U.S. ports – thanks to an over $20 billion investment in U.S. port infrastructure under President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda. Today’s actions are clear examples of the President’s work to invest in America,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/02/24/executive-order-on-americas-supply-chains/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">secure the country’s supply chains</a>, and<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/05/12/fact-sheet-president-signs-executive-order-charting-new-course-to-improve-the-nations-cybersecurity-and-protect-federal-government-networks/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">&nbsp;strengthen the cybersecurity of our nation’s critical infrastructure</a>&nbsp;against 21st&nbsp;century threats – priorities his Administration has focused on relentlessly since taking office.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>America’s prosperity is directly linked to maritime trade and the integrated network of ports, terminals, vessels, waterways, and land-side connections that constitute the Nation’s Marine Transportation System (MTS). This complex system supports $5.4 trillion worth of economic activity each year, contributes to the employment of more than 31 million Americans, and supports nearly 95% of cargo entering the U.S.&nbsp;The security of our critical infrastructure remains a national imperative in an increasingly complex threat environment. MTS owners and operators rely on digital systems to enable their operations, to include ship navigation, the movement of cargo, engineering, safety, and security monitoring. These systems have revolutionized the maritime shipping industry and American supply chains by enhancing the speed and efficiency of moving goods to market, but the increasing digital interconnectedness of our economy and supply chains have also introduced vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could have cascading impacts on America’s ports, the economy, and everyday hard-working Americans.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Today’s actions include:</p><p><br><strong>President Biden will sign an Executive Order to bolster the Department of Homeland Security’s authority to directly address maritime cyber threats, including through cybersecurity standards to ensure that American ports’ networks and systems are secure.</strong>&nbsp;Now, the U.S. Coast Guard will have the express authority to respond to malicious cyber activity in the nation’s MTS by requiring vessels and waterfront facilities to mitigate cyber conditions that may endanger the safety of a vessel, facility, or harbor. The Executive Order will also institute mandatory reporting of cyber incidents – or active cyber threats – endangering any vessel, harbor, port, or waterfront facility. Additionally, the Coast Guard will now have the authority to control the movement of vessels that present a known or suspected cyber threat to U.S. maritime infrastructure, and be able to inspect those vessels and facilities that pose a threat to our cybersecurity.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><strong>The U.S. Coast Guard will issue a Maritime Security Directive on cyber risk management actions for ship-to-shore cranes manufactured by the People’s Republic of China located at U.S. Commercial Strategic Seaports.</strong>&nbsp;Owners and operators of these cranes must acknowledge the directive and take a series of actions on these cranes and associated Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) systems. This action is a vital step to securing our maritime infrastructure’s digital ecosystem and addresses several vulnerabilities that have been identified in the updated U.S. Maritime Advisory, 2024-00X – Worldwide Foreign Adversarial Technological, Physical, and Cyber Influence, that was released today.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><strong>The U.S. Coast Guard has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemakingon Cybersecurity in the Marine Transportation System.</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;Every day malicious cyber actors attempt to gain unauthorized access to MTS control systems and networks throughout the nation. The Proposed Rule will strengthen these digital systems by establishing minimum cybersecurity requirements that meet international and industry-recognized standards to best manage cyber threats. These actions build on prior actions by DHS including those taken by the Transportation Security Administration, and reflect the Administration’s commitment to leverage regulatory requirements in pursuit of safeguarding critical infrastructure.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><strong>The Administration continues to deliver for the American people by rebuilding the U.S.’s industrial capacity to produce port cranes with trusted partners.</strong>&nbsp;The Administration will invest over $20 billion, including through grants, into U.S. port infrastructure over the next 5 years through the President’s Investing in America Agenda, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. As a result,&nbsp;<strong>PACECO Corp.,</strong>&nbsp;a U.S.-based subsidiary of Mitsui E&amp;S Co., Ltd (Japan), is planning to onshore U.S. manufacturing capacity for its crane production. PACECO has a deep history in the container shipping industry, manufacturing the first dedicated ship-to-shore container crane in 1958 as PACECO Inc., and it continued U.S.-based crane manufacturing until the late 1980s. PACECO intends to partner with other trusted manufacturing companies to bring port crane manufacturing capabilities back to the U.S. for the first time in 30 years, pending final site and partner selection.&nbsp; The announcement is part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s fourth Investing in America tour, where White House and Administration officials are traveling across the country to highlight the impacts of the President’s Investing in America agenda on communities, families, small businesses and the United States’ economic and national security. It also follows-up on the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience’s efforts to strengthen America’s supply chains, particularly by addressing supply chain risks resulting from threats and vulnerabilities inside U.S. ports.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><hr>
<div class="notice notice-info">
<p>This content was published on February 21, 2024 in <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/02/21/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-initiative-to-bolster-cybersecurity-of-u-s-ports/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">whitehouse.gov.</a></p>
</div>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

Learn about the Executive Order, directives, and proposed rulemaking aimed at safeguarding critical infrastructure against cyber threats.

Biden-Harris Administration Takes Bold Steps to Strengthen Cybersecurity of U.S. Ports

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<div><div><p>OpenAI has taken generative AI to new heights with Sora, its new text-to-video model that can generate realistic scenes just from written instructions. While DALL-E and other text-to-image models have shown us the power of AI generation, Sora demonstrates just how far we've come by adding the element of motion.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>We’ll be testing Sora model once it’s live and even maybe release a free guide on our weekly newsletter - <strong><a href="https://aihunters.xyz/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">‘AI Hunters’</a></strong>! Don’t miss the new AI groundbreaking platforms and events!</p><h2 id="h-new-frontiers-of-ai-creativity"><strong>New Frontiers of AI Creativity</strong></h2>
<p>Beyond still images, Sora can generate videos up to a minute long. It can also take existing videos and fill in missing frames to enhance the content. The possibilities for creation are endless - we could see AI-generated short films, animations, or even enhanced sports replays in the future.</p>
<p><div class="sc-56d3a1c3-0 evTXYi"><p class="line-space"><br></p><div class="youtube-container"><iframe title="ytcontainer" width="700" height="394" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HK6y8DAPN_0" frameborder="0"></iframe></div></div></p>
<p>But what's truly impressive about Sora is its understanding of the physical world. It can simulate complex scenes involving multiple characters and motions. Want to see someone walking through a forest with realistic leaves rustling and sunlight filtering through the trees? Sora's got you covered.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><span><div class="sc-a6c0bd8c-1 ijZWBT image-container undefined"><button class="sc-a6c0bd8c-0 khzBNC download-button"><a download="source-x.jpeg" href="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/images/IZH5VrBxylTJuG6oTbU11LwJemA3-8xb3jjp.jpeg" title="Download image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" fill="black"><path fill="black" d="M18 10v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H6v-1H5v-1H4v-1h4V1h1V0h4v1h1v9h4z"></path><path fill="black" d="M21 15v-1h-6v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H1v1H0v6h1v1h20v-1h1v-6h-1Zm-2 4h-1v-1h1v1Zm-3-1h1v1h-1v-1Z"></path></svg></a></button><div data-rmiz-wrap="visible"><div style="position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><img alt="" aria-hidden="true" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg%20xmlns=%27http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%27582%27%20height=%27457%27/%3e" style="display: block; max-width: 100%; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span><img alt="Source: X" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" decoding="async" data-nimg="intrinsic" class="image" style="position: absolute; inset: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: none; margin: auto; display: block; width: 0px; height: 0px; min-width: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 100%; max-height: 100%; object-fit: contain; background-size: contain; background-position: 0% 0%; filter: blur(20px); background-image: url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;base64,CiAgICA8c3ZnIHdpZHRoPSI1ODIiIGhlaWdodD0iNDU3IiB2ZXJzaW9uPSIxLjEiIHhtbG5zPSJodHRwOi8vd3d3LnczLm9yZy8yMDAwL3N2ZyIgeG1sbnM6eGxpbms9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cudzMub3JnLzE5OTkveGxpbmsiPgogICAgICA8ZGVmcz4KICAgICAgICA8bGluZWFyR3JhZGllbnQgaWQ9ImciPgogICAgICAgICAgPHN0b3Agc3RvcC1jb2xvcj0iIzIyMiIgb2Zmc2V0PSIyJSIgLz4KICAgICAgICAgIDxzdG9wIHN0b3AtY29sb3I9IiMwZjAiIG9mZnNldD0iMTAlIiAvPgogICAgICAgICAgPHN0b3Agc3RvcC1jb2xvcj0iIzIyMiIgb2Zmc2V0PSIxMiUiIC8+CiAgICAgICAgPC9saW5lYXJHcmFkaWVudD4KICAgICAgPC9kZWZzPgogICAgICA8cmVjdCB3aWR0aD0iNTgyIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjQ1NyIgZmlsbD0iIzIyMiIgLz4KICAgICAgPHJlY3QgaWQ9InIiIHdpZHRoPSI1ODIiIGhlaWdodD0iNDU3IiBmaWxsPSJ1cmwoI2cpIiAvPgogICAgICA8YW5pbWF0ZSB4bGluazpocmVmPSIjciIgYXR0cmlidXRlTmFtZT0ieCIgZnJvbT0iLTU4MiIgdG89IjU4MiIgZHVyPSIxcyIgcmVwZWF0Q291bnQ9ImluZGVmaW5pdGUiICAvPgogICAgPC9zdmc+&quot;);"><noscript></noscript></span></div><button aria-label="Zoom image" data-rmiz-btn-open="true"></button></div><p class="image-caption">Source: X</p></div></span></p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Under the hood, Sora leverages past work on diffusion models and transformers. A diffusion model's random steps excel at generating high-dimensional data like videos. Meanwhile, transformers handle sequential data processing tasks like natural language.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Of course, there are still some limitations. Simulating complex physics like car crashes or cliff dives proves difficult. The model also struggles with cause and effect - don't expect cookie bites to magically appear after someone takes a bite!</p><h2 id="h-ensuring-responsible-development"><strong>Ensuring Responsible Development</strong></h2>
<p>Naturally, OpenAI is focused on safety. Before public release, they're enhancing techniques to filter harmful or misleading content. Progress requires a delicate balance - Sora must generate realistically while avoiding anything inappropriate.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><span><div class="sc-a6c0bd8c-1 ijZWBT image-container undefined"><button class="sc-a6c0bd8c-0 khzBNC download-button"><a download="source-x.jpeg" href="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/images/IZH5VrBxylTJuG6oTbU11LwJemA3-1ta3jpd.jpeg" title="Download image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" fill="black"><path fill="black" d="M18 10v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H6v-1H5v-1H4v-1h4V1h1V0h4v1h1v9h4z"></path><path fill="black" d="M21 15v-1h-6v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H1v1H0v6h1v1h20v-1h1v-6h-1Zm-2 4h-1v-1h1v1Zm-3-1h1v1h-1v-1Z"></path></svg></a></button><div data-rmiz-wrap="visible"><div style="position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><img alt="" aria-hidden="true" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg%20xmlns=%27http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%27582%27%20height=%27185%27/%3e" style="display: block; max-width: 100%; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span><img alt="Source: X" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" decoding="async" data-nimg="intrinsic" class="image" style="position: absolute; inset: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: none; margin: auto; display: block; width: 0px; height: 0px; min-width: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 100%; max-height: 100%; object-fit: contain; background-size: contain; background-position: 0% 0%; filter: blur(20px); background-image: url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;base64,CiAgICA8c3ZnIHdpZHRoPSI1ODIiIGhlaWdodD0iMTg1IiB2ZXJzaW9uPSIxLjEiIHhtbG5zPSJodHRwOi8vd3d3LnczLm9yZy8yMDAwL3N2ZyIgeG1sbnM6eGxpbms9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cudzMub3JnLzE5OTkveGxpbmsiPgogICAgICA8ZGVmcz4KICAgICAgICA8bGluZWFyR3JhZGllbnQgaWQ9ImciPgogICAgICAgICAgPHN0b3Agc3RvcC1jb2xvcj0iIzIyMiIgb2Zmc2V0PSIyJSIgLz4KICAgICAgICAgIDxzdG9wIHN0b3AtY29sb3I9IiMwZjAiIG9mZnNldD0iMTAlIiAvPgogICAgICAgICAgPHN0b3Agc3RvcC1jb2xvcj0iIzIyMiIgb2Zmc2V0PSIxMiUiIC8+CiAgICAgICAgPC9saW5lYXJHcmFkaWVudD4KICAgICAgPC9kZWZzPgogICAgICA8cmVjdCB3aWR0aD0iNTgyIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjE4NSIgZmlsbD0iIzIyMiIgLz4KICAgICAgPHJlY3QgaWQ9InIiIHdpZHRoPSI1ODIiIGhlaWdodD0iMTg1IiBmaWxsPSJ1cmwoI2cpIiAvPgogICAgICA8YW5pbWF0ZSB4bGluazpocmVmPSIjciIgYXR0cmlidXRlTmFtZT0ieCIgZnJvbT0iLTU4MiIgdG89IjU4MiIgZHVyPSIxcyIgcmVwZWF0Q291bnQ9ImluZGVmaW5pdGUiICAvPgogICAgPC9zdmc+&quot;);"><noscript></noscript></span></div><button aria-label="Zoom image" data-rmiz-btn-open="true"></button></div><p class="image-caption">Source: X</p></div></span></p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>For now, the company has put in place the following safety measures:</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><ol>
<li>
<p><strong>Content Restrictions:</strong> OpenAI has established strict content guidelines for Sora, similar to those in place for its DALL-E 3 model. These guidelines prohibit the generation of violent, sexual, or hateful content, as well as the appropriation of real people's likeness or the style of named artists.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p></li>
<li>
<p><strong>Provenance Metadata and Identification:</strong> To promote transparency and accountability, OpenAI plans to provide provenance metadata for videos generated by Sora. Additionally, the company will enable viewers to identify content that has been created by the AI model.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p></li>
<li>
<p><strong>Red Teaming and Limited Access:</strong> OpenAI has granted access to Sora to a select group of researchers, visual artists, and filmmakers who will "red team" the product, testing it for susceptibility to circumvent the company's terms of service. This limited access allows OpenAI to gather feedback and identify potential risks before making the model more widely available.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p></li>
<li>
<p><strong>Engagement with Policymakers and Artists:</strong> The company is actively engaging with policymakers, educators, and artists to understand concerns and identify positive use cases for the model. This proactive approach demonstrates OpenAI's commitment to addressing the broader societal implications of its technology.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="h-shaping-tomorrow-of-ai"><strong>Shaping Tomorrow of AI</strong></h2>
<p>As generative AI advances, models like Sora have potential to revolutionize content creation and consumption. They could generate personalized content, help us understand the world, and power realistic virtual worlds.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>However, it is crucial these models are developed responsibly, considering risks of AI-generated content. OpenAI is taking important steps with Sora to maximize its benefits while mitigating potential issues.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><hr>
<h3 id="h-p-s-check-out-my-previous-articles-at-hacker-noon">P.S. Check out my previous articles at HackerNoon:</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/defi-community-building-a-step-by-step-guide-for-crypto-startups?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">DeFi Community Building: A Step-by-Step Guide for Crypto Startups</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/the-best-of-the-ai-world-spotlighting-5-projects-and-researches-pushing-the-paradigm-this-week?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">The Best Of The AI World: Spotlighting 5 Projects and Researches Pushing The Paradigm This Week</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/cryptos-next-chapter-2024s-game-changing-predictions?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">Crypto's Next Chapter: 2024's Game-Changing Predictions</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/top-10-ai-trends-of-2024-how-ai-transforms-everything?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">Top 10 AI Trends of 2024: How AI Transforms Everything</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-your-personal-gpts-from-zero-to-ai-hero?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">How to Build Your Personal GPTs: From Zero to AI Hero</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/gpt-4-turbo-the-most-monumental-update-since-chatgpts-debut?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">GPT-4 Turbo: The Most Monumental Update Since ChatGPT's Debut!</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/essential-insights-from-state-of-ai-2023?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">Essential Insights from 'State of AI 2023'</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/gpt-4v-unveiled-from-detecting-emotions-to-ordering-food-you-wont-believe-what-else-it-can-do?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">GPT-4V Unveiled: From Detecting Emotions to Ordering Food - You Won't Believe What Else It Can Do!</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://hackernoon.com/chatgpt-now-speaks-listens-and-understands-all-you-need-to-know?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">ChatGPT Now Speaks, Listens, and Understands: All You Need to Know</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

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<div><div><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Alisha could not lie. It wasn’t in her programming. She also couldn’t hurt anyone, not even to defend her family. That was in her program.&nbsp;<em>A robot can not harm a human even if commanded to do so.</em></p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Now, it’s true that there were robots designed for the battlefield that had no qualms about killing humans, as long as they were the right humans. But not Alisha, for she was a domestic android — android because her mechanical nature was cleverly hidden by synthetic flesh, her shape was designed to be very human, even comely, although her model was not designed to be provocative. Just plain old Alisha, as unobtrusive as they could make her.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>In her years as a part of the McKinley family, she had served in many roles — nanny, babysitter, housekeeper, cook, and even teen wrangler. Unlike the children’s mother, Alisha would never age, never tire, never complain, or require “me-time,” as Mrs. McKinley called it.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Over time, the children developed an attachment to her, and truth be told, she to them, although her programmers would be shocked to know it. The relationship she had with the children had become multi-faceted, depending on the children’s needs at any given time. She sipped tea and made mud pies, played with dolls, wrestled, climbed trees, played ball, everything a childhood friend would do. If that’s what Amanda and Alex needed, that was what she was.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>As they grew older, her relationship warped and shifted. Model planes and working on cars, dressing up, and gossiping about boys. On one particular evening, when Mr. and Mrs. McKinley were out, Amanda raided her mother’s vanity and dragged Alisha with her. They spent the evening putting makeup on one other. Of course, Alisha was always an expert at anything she did, so while Amanda looked great and very grown-up, Alisha, on the other hand, didn’t fair as well, it being Amanda’s first attempt at applying makeup.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“You look beautiful, Amanda. Stunning, really.” Alisha told her.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Amanda smiled at her in the mirror. “I do, don’t I!” she laughed.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“I’m afraid I’m not too good at this, though. You don’t look quite right,” Amanda confessed. “Can you fix it?”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“Do you want me to?” Alisha inquired.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“Please! It’s only fair.”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“Then I will.”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>She quickly removed the clumsily applied eyeliner and mascara, and the heavy-handed rouge. In no time at all, Alisha turned back toward Amanda for her inspection.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“How do I look?”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“OMG! You look perfect. Absolutely beautiful!”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>They hugged and Amanda added, “Alisha, you’ve got to put makeup on every day. It does you a world of good. Why shouldn’t you look your best, right?”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“If you wish, Amanda.”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>And so she did. From that day on, Alisha would expertly apply makeup, which initially created a bit of a stir with Amanda’s parents, but Mrs. McKinley decided there was no harm, and allowed it.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>At the same time, Alex was entering puberty, his body going through a myriad of changes — gaining height and muscle, somehow filling out, while thinning down. His voice lowered and he began to sprout hair on his face, chest, arms, and legs.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Up until now, Alisha had been a buddy, a friend to play with and to hang out and do “guy things.” But now, things shifted again.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>He’d find himself staring at Alisha, watching her as she did her chores. If she caught him looking, he blushed and looked away, feeling heat and shortness of breath.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Then he found himself fantasizing about her, imagining being with her in the way a man is with a woman, as though she were a real human. He knew she wasn’t, but if he’s imagining it, why not?</p><p>Alisha’s whole life, and that’s how she looked at her time on Earth, she saw her role as being whatever the McKinleys needed, and so, as Alex’s needs began to evolve, she wanted to evolve as well, to become what he needed. She noticed his furtive attention to her, noted his physical reaction to her presence and it perplexed her. What was her role to be now?</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Being a domestic model, she was not designed for pleasure, though some models were on the market for just that purpose. Although she was designed to look like a woman, with all the right curves in all the right places, she was not anatomically complete. There were things she simply could not do for Alex. And there wasn’t a way to upgrade, or add what she was missing. Besides, that wasn’t something within her purview, and even if it were, she could not pay for such a change.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>After much thought and research on the matter, she decided that what she could do for Alex, was to acclimate him to dealing with a woman romantically. She determined that she would become his girlfriend. Not forever, just long enough to instill confidence in his ability. It probably wouldn’t do to take a direct approach, to just come out and say, “Alex, let me be your girlfriend so you can be better with girls.” This would require a little tact, something more indirect.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>To that end, Alisha began to dress a bit more provocatively, not too much, less the adults in the home suspect something, but just enough to catch Alex’s eye. She wore her skirts a little shorter, her necklines a little lower. She altered her makeup to be less a day-in-the-office to a girl-on-a-date. And her final pièce de résistance, she began to wear perfume, some that Mrs. McKinley wore on special occasions, its scent was said to be very alluring.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Whenever she could catch Alex alone, she would alter her voice, using a lower pitch and a breathier delivery. If she offered him a plate of food, she didn’t reach out her arms to hand him the plate, she bent low, revealing a titillating view of her cleavage. When he needed help with his homework, she would stand close enough for her body to brush up against his.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>It was a huge success, in that she could sense the physical response in Alex’s body — increased heart rate, rapid breathing, elevated blood pressure, and perspiration. But Alex never broached the subject with her, and she couldn’t work out how to broach the topic with him in a way that led him to believe that it was his idea.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Alisha began to run simulations — sandboxed programs — to test out various approaches to helping Alex. One could say she imagined them being together. Over time, she gave more and more of her processing space to these speculations.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>When he was near her, her processors would run hot, causing her to glitch in mid-sentence, to “stutter” or take the wrong action, putting a shoe in the drawer, or ice cream in the refrigerator.</p><p>Then the day came when Alex announced that he had a date to Homecoming, a cute girl he’d met in his literature class. Her name was Stephanie. By Christmas break, she was invited over for Family Fun night on a Friday and shared an evening with them.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Alisha couldn’t see what Alex saw in the girl. She was just a rail of a girl, no curves like Alisha had. She talked incessantly and had a ridiculous laugh that reminded Alisha of a seal.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>At one point, as Alisha processed Alex’s proximity, and his attention to Stephanie, her processors hung up a moment, and Alisha spilled a drink on the girl. She needed to reboot, so she turned and abruptly left the room.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The McKinleys found Alisha slumped to the floor in front of her recharging station. Mr. McKinley hit the kill switch located at the back of Alisha’s head.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“You know, she’s been acting really strangely lately,” Amanda complained.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “If I didn’t know any better, I think she’s been trying to flirt with me.”</p><p>“Eww! That’s gross!” Stephanie said. “A robot?”</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Mr. McKinley said, “We’ll send her in a let them do a system analysis, maybe wipe her and give her a clean start.”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“You know honey, she’s pretty old. Maybe it’s time to retire her and get a replacement. I think the new models have a lot to offer.”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>“Yeah, you’re probably right. We’ll look into it tomorrow.”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>With that, they turned out the lights and closed the door.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><div class="notice notice-info">
<p>Also published <a href="https://medium.com/@huffhimself/the-portrait-of-an-android-8a9363bea1ca?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">here</a>.</p>
</div>
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Alisha, a domestic android, has been anything the children needed growing up. But as teens, that becomes complcated.

A Robot Dreams of Love

Introduction to Google SGE Beta: the future of AI-powered search, offering personalized, intuitive answers beyond traditional queries.

Adapting to Google's Search Generative Engines (SGEs) - Part 1

<div><div><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Theodore Roosevelt once said “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>When making important decisions with possible life altering effects, the uncertainty of the outcome and the fear of stepping into the unknown keeps us locked in an unproductive cycle where the more data we collect and the more we analyze it, the more we overthink our decision.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Our imagination runs wild—we assume the worst possible scenario and consider it as our best case. We create stories in our mind and reject all good options with the possibility of a better option out there.</p><p>*For example: decision to relocate, quitting your job to start a business, switching careers, rolling out a major shift in a company’s strategy etc.*</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Call it fear, perfectionism, laziness or lack of focus, spending all your time analyzing while failing to act leads to analysis paralysis. Desire to make the perfect decision turns into indecision. You struggle to reach a conclusion because you keep chasing certainty which does not exist—no one can know with surety if a particular decision is the best or will lead to the desired result.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><blockquote>
<p>Thinking too much leads to paralysis by analysis. It's important to think things through, but many use thinking as a means of avoiding action.</p>
<p>— Robert Herjavec</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>You can never make perfect decisions, but you can certainly make more confident decisions by using these 4 practices:</p><h3 id="h-clearly-define-the-outcome-you-wish-to-achieve">Clearly define the outcome you wish to achieve</h3>
<p>When you try to make a decision where the problem statement is vague or the outcome you wish to achieve is unclear, don’t complain if you spend hours looking at the data but fail to reach a conclusion.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>You may attribute your inability to make a decision to the complexity of the problem, lack of sufficient inputs, or not having enough data points, but those things are just excuses to avoid facing the truth—you don’t know what it is that you want.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Bringing clarity to the problem and defining the success criteria is the first half of the challenge. It’s the stepping stone to a successful decision. Without it, any effort you put into the second half is useless.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>To do this, ask yourself these questions:</p><ol>
<li>What problem do I wish to solve?</li>
<li>How do I know if I am addressing the right problem?</li>
<li>What outcome do I wish to achieve? What do I most care about?</li>
<li>How would I know if I have achieved the outcome? What’s my success criteria?</li>
</ol>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Analysis paralysis also happens when your success criteria is impossible to meet—you expect everything on your list with a 100% guarantee and are unwilling to compromise on anything.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Good success criteria is not a wish list. It involves identifying one most crucial thing you care about—your North Star. Knowing your North Star simplifies the decision process—just find an option that looks promising and has a good probability of achieving it.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Defining the problem statement clearly and the outcomes you wish to achieve will help you stay focused and ease out the decision making process.</p><h3 id="h-become-comfortable-with-good-enough">Become comfortable with good enough</h3>
<p>When making a decision, it’s good to consider different options, alternative viewpoints and multiple sources. They prevent your biases, personal beliefs or other circumstantial constraints from limiting your decision and hence the outcome you achieve.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>But while having options is good, having a large number of options to choose from can also be overwhelming. The more choices you have, the harder it is to make a decision. The abundance of information and too many choices can lead to indecisiveness.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>You may end up spending a lot of time researching solutions, fixate on the shortcoming of each one and continue investing time and energy with the hope to find the best option. But instead of making a decision and moving on, choice overload will make you feel more and more unsure.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Choice overload causes us to delay decisions because too many options drain our cognitive systems making us more prone to putting off the decision entirely.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265170803_Choice_Overload_A_Conceptual_Review_and_Meta-Analysis?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Research</a> also shows that more options can lead to decreased satisfaction and lower confidence in our choice making it more likely that we regret our decisions later.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Psychologist Barry Schwartz says that there are 2 types of people—maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers strive to make a choice that will give them the maximum benefit. They seek and accept only the best. They can’t choose unless they have deeply examined every option which leads to non stop information seeking and social comparison. Satisficers on the other hand use a more modest criteria and choose an option that passes the threshold of acceptability.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><blockquote>
<p>To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better.</p>
<p>— Barry Schwartz</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>In order to avoid analysis paralysis, be a satisficer. To do this:</p><ol>
<li>Set boundaries for your research. Don’t leave it open ended—limit the information to gather, inputs to consider and set time limits.</li>
<li>Don’t leave the decision date unassigned. Set a date considering the scope and complexity of the problem to create a sense of urgency.</li>
<li>List the pros and cons of each choice and just pick the one that seems to stand out in that moment.</li>
<li>Once you have made a decision, don’t let your mind consider the possibility of a better one. Stop second guessing and get down to putting your decision into action.</li>
</ol>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Being comfortable with good enough isn’t about accepting mediocrity. It still requires making a conscious, thoughtful choice but to do so within boundaries and putting your time and energy into taking action instead of lamenting about the possibility of a better option out there.</p><h3 id="h-combine-data-with-intuition">Combine data with intuition</h3>
<p>When analysis paralysis hits, you become unwilling to commit. You feel stuck because you want to be rational in your choice, and that’s fair. But the problem is not rational thinking, it’s not knowing when rationality turns into an excuse to over-analyze and put off decision making.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Rational approach involves deliberate thinking—invoking the slow part of our brain to weigh in different options, comparing trade offs and then making a choice. Intuitive thinking involves emotions, experience and knowledge. Intuitive thinking is neither illogical or irrational, it’s intelligence that you have developed over a lifetime.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Your brain is a pattern matching machine and intuitive thinking relies on matching your current situation to your past patterns to make a decision. That’s why intuition can be sometimes right and sometimes flawed.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, says that intuition works under 3 conditions:</p><ol>
<li>There has to be some regularity for you to spot trends or patterns. Intuition can’t be developed or applied to complex systems that are prone to change quickly.</li>
<li>You must have a lot of experience and practice in the area for you to trust your gut. Without it, if you use your intuition and all goes well, it’s your luck, not your intuition that got you the results.</li>
<li>You get immediate and concrete feedback on whether you got it right or wrong.</li>
</ol>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>If any of these things are not true, it’s best to think through the problem more rationally.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Most people either use analytic or intuitive thinking to make a decision because they view them as opposite strategies where one cannot exist with the other. Research indicates otherwise—we make best decisions by combining analytic and intuitive thinking and not using them alone.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><blockquote>
<p>A purely intuitive strategy relying only on pattern matching would be too risky because sometimes the pattern matching generates flawed options. A completely deliberative and analytic strategy would be too slow.</p>
<p>— Gary Klein</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>When you’re stuck in analysis paralysis, instead of relying only on data, factor your past knowledge and experience into the decision process—use the rational part of your brain to consider different choices and combine it with your intuition to make the final decision.</p><h3 id="h-choose-right-time-of-the-day-to-make-the-decision">Choose right time of the day to make the decision</h3>
<p>A series of small decisions scattered throughout our day may appear harmless as they demand only a small fraction of our mental energy, but as the day goes on and we continue to expend from our reserved pool of energy, our mental capacity to make decisions starts depleting.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Unlike physical fatigue which we can feel and instantly express, the mental fatigue that comes after making multiple decisions is not visible to us.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Decision fatigue as psychologists like to call it leads to poor quality of decision making—we show reluctance to make trade-offs, fall back to easy choices and may even find it difficult to exercise self-control after making a series of decisions.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><blockquote>
<p>If your work requires you to make hard decisions all day long, at some point you’re going to be depleted and start looking for ways to conserve energy. You’ll look for excuses to avoid or postpone decisions. You’ll look for the easiest and safest option, which often is to stick with the status quo - Roy Baumeister</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Making a good decision requires bringing knowledge from several domains, stitching distinct ideas together, maintaining the right balance of exploring breadth and depth across these ideas, making new connections and then zeroing in on a few candidates that look promising.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>When your mental machinery is tired, it’s hard to separate noise from signal. It leads to overthinking—tendency to think too much and move back and forth on ideas without the ability to give them a specific direction.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Decision fatigue may cause you to obsess about the problems that don’t even exist, draw biased conclusions and be stuck with analysis paralysis with the possibility that there might be something better out there. It can cause you to chase a perfect solution instead of making the best decision under the given circumstances.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>To avoid analysis paralysis for important decisions, align those decisions with the time of the day when your mental capacity to process information is at its peak. By matching the mental demands of the decision with your energy levels, you’re less likely to be stuck in an overthinking cycle.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Ask yourself these questions before deciding:</p><ol>
<li>Is it the best time of the day to make this decision?</li>
<li>Do I feel at my best when making this decision?</li>
<li>Does everything around me feel more intense than normal?</li>
</ol>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Schedule a slot on the calendar for the time of the day when you’ll be at your best to make the decision. Once it shows up, align your brain with your goal by telling it to make the decision without further delay.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>It may seem like a silly thing to do at first, but by actually repeating it, you can train your brain to make the decision and not overthink it.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Ending with this thought from Terry Goodkind that gets me out of paralysis by analysis every single time:</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><blockquote>
<p>“Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Stop thinking and act now.</p><hr>
<h4 id="h-summary">Summary</h4>
<ol>
<li>Important decisions shouldn’t be postponed, but that is exactly what we do. Desire to make the perfect decision turns into indecision as analysis paralysis prevents us from taking action and moving forward.</li>
<li>Not clearly defining the problem statement or what you hope to achieve is one of the biggest reasons behind analysis paralysis. When you’re struggling to make a decision, ensure problem clarity and well-defined success criteria.</li>
<li>Instead of being a maximizer who seeks only the best, be a satisficer—identify an option that’s good enough and stop worrying about the rest.</li>
<li>Analysis paralysis hits us when we place too much focus on rational thinking while ignoring our intuition. Combining the two together is a great strategy to break the overthinking cycle and take positive action.</li>
<li>Our tired mind under the effect of decision fatigue turns unwilling to commit. To counter its effect, make decisions during the time of the day when your mental energy is at its peak.</li>
</ol>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>This story was previously published&nbsp;<a href="https://www.techtello.com/analysis-paralysis/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">here.</a> Follow me on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sagivini/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">LinkedIn</a>&nbsp;or here for more stories.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

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<div><div><p>Pure functions are the perfect case for unit testing. For a given input, we always expect the same output—there is no internal state involved. Let’s take a look at a few examples and some simple tests that check if the methods work as expected.</p>
<h2 id="h-jasmine">Jasmine</h2>
<p>Jasmine is a unit test framework for JavaScript. It can run tests in both Node.js or on the browser. It’s used in the Angular framework, and it’s especially popular in projects based on Angular. It’s a solid choice for Vanilla JS projects, or projects based on other frameworks as well.</p>
<h2 id="h-happy-path-testing">Happy Path Testing</h2>
<p>Happy path testing is when we test a method with inputs that it’s expected to work normally. The arguments are valid and within reasonable ranges. Those tests check if the method does its job correctly—the test cases should be straightforward examples of how the method is explained in its documentation.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Pseudocode examples:</p><ul>
<li><code>expect(add(2, 2)).toBe(4)</code>,</li>
</ul>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><ul>
<li><code>expect(concatenate(“Lorem”, “Ipsum”)).toBe(“LoremIpsum”)</code></li>
</ul>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Those tests are meant to automatically catch it anytime the method key behavior is broken.</p><h2 id="h-methods">Methods</h2>
<p>Let’s see a few simple methods: simple operations that we might need in some real-world applications.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>All implementations are greatly simplified—all methods will break in an ugly way if only we provide them with parameters that differ slightly from what is expected. The code is far from being robust.</p><h3 id="h-greet">greet</h3>
<p>Method that greets the user with their name and surname:</p>
<pre><code>export function greet(name, surname) {
  return `Hello ${name} ${surname}!`;
}
</code></pre>
<h3 id="h-short-date">shortDate</h3>
<p><code>shortDate</code> is a formatting method that takes a date object and returns it formatted as a short string. The code:</p>
<pre><code>export function shortDate(date) {
  return date.toISOString().substring(0, 10);
}
</code></pre>
<h3 id="h-ellipsis">ellipsis</h3>
<p><code>ellipsis</code> takes a long text string and an optional length parameter, and then trims the string to fit within the limit:</p>
<pre><code>export function ellipsis(text, length = 50) {
  if (text.length &gt; length) {
    return text.substring(0, length) + "…";
  }

  return text;
}
</code></pre>
<h3 id="h-translate">translate</h3>
<p>A method that provides translated string values for a <code>key</code> and <code>lang</code> pair. It’s a simplified implementation of what could be replaced with more advanced translating libraries.</p>
<pre><code>export function translate(key, lang = "en") {
  switch (lang) {
    case "en":
      switch (key) {
        case "hello":
          return "Hello!";
      }
    case "pl":
      switch (key) {
        case "hello":
          return "Cześć!";
      }
  }
}
</code></pre>
<h3 id="h-apply-discount">applyDiscount</h3>
<p>Method to apply a percentage discount to a price. It can feel like overkill with this naive implementation, but later, when we start investigating edge cases, it will get much more interesting.</p>
<pre><code>export function applyDiscount(price, discountPercentage) {
  return price - (price * discountPercentage) / 100;
}
</code></pre>
<h3 id="h-calculate-price">calculatePrice</h3>
<p>This one calculates the total price when buying multiple units at a given price. It will also get more complicated after adding interesting edge cases.</p>
<pre><code>export function calculatePrice(unitPrice, quantity) {
  return unitPrice * quantity;
}
</code></pre>
<h2 id="h-complete-js-code">Complete JS Code</h2>
<p>The complete JS code, <code>src/main.js</code>:</p>
<pre><code>export function greet(name, surname) {
  return `Hello ${name} ${surname}!`;
}

export function shortDate(date) {
  return date.toISOString().substring(0, 10);
}

export function ellipsis(text, length = 50) {
  if (text.length &gt; length) {
    return text.substring(0, length) + "…";
  }

  return text;
}

export function translate(key, lang = "en") {
  switch (lang) {
    case "en":
      switch (key) {
        case "hello":
          return "Hello!";
      }
    case "pl":
      switch (key) {
        case "hello":
          return "Cześć!";
      }
  }
}

export function applyDiscount(price, discountPercentage) {
  return price - (price * discountPercentage) / 100;
}

export function calculatePrice(unitPrice, quantity) {
  return unitPrice * quantity;
}
</code></pre>
<h2 id="h-adding-jasmine-tests">Adding Jasmine Tests</h2>
<p>To add Jasmine, let’s start by converting the folder into an npm package:</p>
<pre><code>$ npm init -y
Wrote to …/package.json:
…
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Then we can install the Jasmine package:</p><pre><code>$ npm install --save-dev jasmine

added 42 packages, and audited 43 packages in 2s

13 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

found 0 vulnerabilities
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Then we can generate folders and files used by Jasmine:</p><pre><code>$ npx jasmine init
(no output)
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>This command generates the following:</p><ul>
<li><code>spec/</code>—a folder where we can put <code>*.spec.js</code> files with the test, and</li>
</ul>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><ul>
<li><code>spec/support/jasmine.json</code>—a file with the Jasmine config.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="h-unit-tests">Unit Tests</h2>
<p>For the following unit tests, I’m focusing on the happy path only—I check if the result is as expected for reasonable inputs. The test should be self-explanatory, so let’s take a look at them:</p>
<pre><code>import {
  greet,
  shortDate,
  ellipsis,
  translate,
  applyDiscount,
  calculatePrice,
} from "../src/main.js";

describe("main", () =&gt; {
  describe("greet", () =&gt; {
    it("should greet by name and surname", () =&gt; {
      expect(greet("Lorem", "Ipsum")).toEqual("Hello Lorem Ipsum!");
    });
  });

  describe("shortDate", () =&gt; {
    it("should format correclty date", () =&gt; {
      const date = new Date("2023-11-02");
      expect(shortDate(date)).toEqual("2023-11-02");
    });
  });

  describe("shortDate", () =&gt; {
    it("should shorten long text at 50 chars", () =&gt; {
      expect(
        ellipsis(
          "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque a faucibus massa."
        )
      ).toEqual("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing…");
    });

    it("should leave short text unchanged", () =&gt; {
      expect(ellipsis("Lorem ipsum sin dolor")).toEqual(
        "Lorem ipsum sin dolor"
      );
    });

    it("should shorten to custom length", () =&gt; {
      expect(ellipsis("Lorem ipsum sin dolor", 10)).toEqual("Lorem ipsu…");
    });
  });

  describe("translate", () =&gt; {
    it("should translate to supported langauges", () =&gt; {
      expect(translate("hello", "en")).toEqual("Hello!");
      expect(translate("hello", "pl")).toEqual("Cześć!");
    });
  });

  describe("applyDiscount", () =&gt; {
    it("should lower the price accordingly", () =&gt; {
      expect(applyDiscount(120, 25)).toEqual(90);
      expect(applyDiscount(8, 50)).toEqual(4);
    });
  });

  describe("calculatePrice", () =&gt; {
    it("should find a price of many products", () =&gt; {
      expect(calculatePrice(4, 3)).toEqual(12);
      expect(calculatePrice(9, 0.5)).toEqual(4.5);
    });
  });
});
</code></pre>
<p>(file <code>spec/main.spec.js</code>)</p>
<h2 id="h-running-tests">Running Tests</h2>
<p>To run the tests, we can add the following script to <code>package.json</code>:</p>
<pre><code>  ..
  "scripts": {
    "test": "jasmine"
  },
  …
</code></pre>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>With this in place, <code>npm run test</code> runs our tests:</p><pre><code>$ npm run test

&gt; testing-example@1.0.0 test
&gt; jasmine

Randomized with seed 76873
Started
........


8 specs, 0 failures
Finished in 0.004 seconds
Randomized with seed 76873 (jasmine --random=true --seed=76873)
</code></pre>
<h2 id="h-summary">Summary</h2>
<p>In this post, we took a look at a simple example of JS code and how it can be covered by unit tests. You can find the <a href="https://github.com/how-to-js/testing-example/tree/jasmine-basic?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">complete code example on GitHub</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Also published <a href="https://dev.to/how-to-dev/pure-functions-and-basic-tests-in-jasmine-23ch?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">here</a></em></p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

Pure functions are the perfect case for unit testing. For a given input, we always expect the same output—there is no internal state involved.

Jasmine: A Beginner-Friendly Guide on Pure Functions and Basic Tests

<div><div><p>Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most disruptive technology of the modern era, if not of history. While it has use cases across virtually every industry, some have more to gain — and lose — than others. Supply chain management is one such role that <a href="https://hackernoon.com/c/ai?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">AI</a> could drastically transform, possibly to the point where humans no longer do it.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Many technologists emphasize that automation ultimately creates more jobs than it takes, but that still means some roles disappear. Could supply chain management be one of those jobs? What would that mean for the industry? Here’s a closer look.</p><h2 id="h-a-is-role-in-supply-chain-management">AI’s Role in Supply Chain Management</h2>
<p>All but <underline><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1346717/ai-function-adoption-rates-business-supply-chains/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">6% of supply chain businesses</a></underline> already use AI in some capacity. Roughly 11% say it’s critical to their operations, a figure that could apply to more than a third of these companies before long. It’s easy to understand why as AI improves many aspects of supply chain management.</p>
<h3 id="h-demand-forecasting">Demand Forecasting</h3>
<p>AI’s predictive capabilities are one of its strongest assets in supply chain management. Machine learning models can analyze past sales data and current trends to predict upcoming demand shifts. Companies can then order less of some products and more of another to prevent stock-outs and surpluses.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>As AI has advanced, so have its forecasting abilities. Some supply chain AI solutions <underline><a href="https://hackernoon.com/copilot-ai-microsofts-game-changer-for-supply-chains?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">can predict incoming disruptions</a></underline> by analyzing the weather, financial trends, geopolitical issues and other shifts. They can then recommend changes to mitigate the impact of otherwise disruptive events.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>This level of forecasting is remarkably difficult for human analysts, especially given how complex supply chains have become. However, it’s precisely the kind of in-depth analysis where AI excels.</p><h3 id="h-inventory-management">Inventory Management</h3>
<p>Similarly, AI is also transforming inventory management. Predictions about demand shifts and disruptions are only as helpful as a company’s ability to adjust its inventory accordingly. That requires extensive visibility over multiple storage locations, making human error likely.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Data sets this large and repetitive make it easy to make mistakes. Volatile supply and demand factors make these errors even more likely. As a result, stock-out rates in the U.S. have risen <underline><a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w29209?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">to more than 35%</a></underline> after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. AI offers more reliability, as it can track inventories in real-time and doesn’t make data entry errors.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>AI solutions can also go further and automatically order products as needed. Some companies even use it to determine where to stock certain items and where to ship from to enable the fastest possible deliveries.</p><h3 id="h-supplier-evaluation">Supplier Evaluation</h3>
<p>Businesses are beginning to use AI in the upstream side of supply chain management. Minimizing costs and preventing delays is largely a matter of using the right suppliers. AI can evaluate possible sources to identify the best one for each product or material.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The chief advantage of AI here is that it’s both accurate and fast. Finding the right one manually can take too long. Conventional computing is too unreliable, given the complexity of these decisions. Roughly <underline><a href="https://www.connectpointz.com/blog/how-to-improve-supply-chain?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">70% of supply chains</a></underline> now put more emphasis on reliability and flexibility than pure costs, so a simple cost comparison is insufficient. AI can manage that nuance while improving speeds.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>AI can also adapt to shifting trends, alerting companies when a current supplier is no longer the best option. This decision agility is crucial in today’s fast-moving market.</p><h3 id="h-process-optimization">Process Optimization</h3>
<p>Supply chain AI can manage internal processes, too. Manufacturing and shipping a product involves a lot of moving parts. That means inefficiencies can arise from many areas and the best strategy is rarely immediately evident, but AI can automate this decision-making for faster, more effective changes.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>These optimizations could be as straightforward as routing deliveries more efficiently — something many logistics companies have embraced. As AI advances, though, it could go much further. Businesses could use AI to construct and analyze digital twins of the entire supply chain and suggest changes across virtually every step.</p><h2 id="h-is-the-human-factor-still-necessary">Is the Human Factor Still Necessary?</h2>
<p>Looking at AI’s extensive role in supply chain management, it’s hard to see where humans fit in anymore. AI will only get more capable and reliable from here, so if current trends continue, it’s not outlandish to think this technology could do everything today’s supply chain managers do.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Despite this potential, AI won’t likely replace humans in supply chain management, at least not entirely. For all of its benefits, AI has some considerable downsides, too. Hallucinations are one of the most prominent. Today’s most popular generative AI models spout false information <underline><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/technology/chatbots-hallucination-rates.html?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">3%-27% of the time</a></underline>, which could have disastrous consequences in supply chain management.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Of course, human predictions aren’t perfect, either. But if a supply chain management system was entirely automated, it may automatically respond to a factor with little to no basis in reality. That could lead to stock-outs, delays, and considerable expenses. Given how far-reaching the consequences of supply chain decisions can be, human experts should always have the final say.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Putting too much in the hands of AI has dubious ethical implications, too. AI’s substantial data use <underline><a href="https://hackernoon.com/ethical-implications-of-ai-in-cybersecurity?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">makes them a bigger target for hackers</a></underline> and could lead to accidentally leaking sensitive information. AI’s well-documented bias problem could cause serious issues, too, especially if AI managed workforce considerations like hiring.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>It’s also important to remember that even the most advanced AI only responds to trends in data. Consequently, events with little data behind them pose a considerable challenge. Supply chain disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic may be rare, but AI isn’t likely to predict them accurately or respond effectively when they do happen. They’re too sudden and unpredictable, requiring more flexible humans to manage.</p><h2 id="h-ai-is-not-the-end-of-supply-chain-management">AI Is Not the End of Supply Chain Management</h2>
<p>When considering both AI’s advantages and downsides, it becomes clear that human supply chain managers won’t go away, but their jobs will change. Businesses may need fewer employees in these positions, but they’ll still be critical. Similarly, the job will entail less analysis and require more understanding of AI models and how they work.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Tomorrow’s supply chain managers will use AI to inform virtually every decision and likely automate many small actions, like ordering and billing. The final decision — especially in terms of company-wide strategic changes — will still fall to humans, who must interpret AI’s insights. This transition will likely entail some job disruption, but it’s not the end of the profession.</p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

The impact of AI on supply chain management is inevitable — but will it merely disrupt the industry, or will it eradicate it entirely?

Will AI Remove Humans From Supply Chain Management?

Effective leaders, though rare, are inspirational. They bring people together and enable them to collectively achieve great things together.

The 9 Powerful Behaviors of Highly Effective Leaders That Sets Them Apart

<div><div><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><underline><a href="https://hackernoon.com/?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">HackerNoon</a></underline>&nbsp;curated the internet's most cited 7M+ tech company news articles and blog posts about the 3k+ most valuable tech companies in 2022 and 2023. These stories were curated to power&nbsp;<underline><a href="https://hackernoon.com/companies?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">HackerNoon.com/Companies</a></underline>, where we update daily news on top technology companies like&nbsp;<underline><a href="https://hackernoon.com/company/microsoft?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">Microsoft</a></underline>,&nbsp;<underline><a href="https://hackernoon.com/company/google?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">Google</a></underline>, and&nbsp;<underline><a href="https://hackernoon.com/company/huggingface?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">HuggingFace</a></underline>. This dataset is open sourced under the MIT License on <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">HuggingFace as Tech Company News Data Dump</a>. Please use this tech company news data freely for your project :-)</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><span><div class="sc-a6c0bd8c-1 ijZWBT image-container undefined"><button class="sc-a6c0bd8c-0 khzBNC download-button"><a download="https-huggingface-co-datasets-hacker-noon-tech-company-news-data-dump.jpeg" href="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/images/N0ENUd29UdNJCFcl7GnmZHdk2fA2-y28344h.jpeg" title="Download image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" fill="black"><path fill="black" d="M18 10v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H6v-1H5v-1H4v-1h4V1h1V0h4v1h1v9h4z"></path><path fill="black" d="M21 15v-1h-6v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H1v1H0v6h1v1h20v-1h1v-6h-1Zm-2 4h-1v-1h1v1Zm-3-1h1v1h-1v-1Z"></path></svg></a></button><div data-rmiz-wrap="visible"><div style="position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><img alt="" aria-hidden="true" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg%20xmlns=%27http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%27800%27%20height=%27140.46428571428572%27/%3e" style="display: block; max-width: 100%; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span><img alt="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" decoding="async" data-nimg="intrinsic" class="image" style="position: absolute; inset: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: none; margin: auto; display: block; width: 0px; height: 0px; min-width: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 100%; max-height: 100%; object-fit: contain; background-size: contain; background-position: 0% 0%; filter: blur(20px); background-image: url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;base64,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&quot;);"><noscript></noscript></span></div><button aria-label="Zoom image" data-rmiz-btn-open="true"></button></div><p class="image-caption">https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump</p></div></span></p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><h3>How the tech companies were curated</h3>
<p>Our team made a list of the most valuable technology companies, and added companies as they started to trend in the news and on HackerNoon. The first one and half thousand were public companies based on market cap. Then as companies got mentioned in HackerNoon stories and performed well in our <a href="https://hackernoon.com/startups-of-the-year-2023-xembly-the-ai-assistant-that-does-the-work-for-you?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">startup of the year voting</a>, we added created tech company news pages for them. Once a <a href="https://hackernoon.com/keep-up-with-tech-meet-the-tech-company-news-pages?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">tech company news page</a> is created, our system curates and stores the trending news, articles and blog posts about that company based on our rules and prompts  that define what is a trending story.</p>
<h3>How the stories, articles and blog posts were sourced</h3>
<p>A combination of custom rules, prompts and conditions for relevance, specificity and trendiness using the Bing News API, the Brave News API, and the HackerNoon API. We drilled down industry match for each company, and heavily favored more trusted high ranking sites while also allowing for relevant lower ranking niche publishers. For each company, we surface the most relevant 10-20 stories on their main /company page (<a href="https://hackernoon.com/company/microsoft/news?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">Microsoft as an example</a>), and then feature the complete list of the company’s news, stories, mentions, articles and notable links in internet history on company-name/news (<a href="https://hackernoon.com/company/google/news?ref=hackernoon.com" rel="ugc">Google as an example</a>).</p>
<h3>How this tech company news data is organized</h3>
<p><span><div class="sc-a6c0bd8c-1 ijZWBT image-container undefined"><button class="sc-a6c0bd8c-0 khzBNC download-button"><a download="image.jpeg" href="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/images/N0ENUd29UdNJCFcl7GnmZHdk2fA2-i2837pb.jpeg" title="Download image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" fill="black"><path fill="black" d="M18 10v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H6v-1H5v-1H4v-1h4V1h1V0h4v1h1v9h4z"></path><path fill="black" d="M21 15v-1h-6v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H1v1H0v6h1v1h20v-1h1v-6h-1Zm-2 4h-1v-1h1v1Zm-3-1h1v1h-1v-1Z"></path></svg></a></button><div data-rmiz-wrap="visible"><div style="position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><img alt="" aria-hidden="true" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg%20xmlns=%27http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%27800%27%20height=%27371.61428571428576%27/%3e" style="display: block; max-width: 100%; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span><img alt="image" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" decoding="async" data-nimg="intrinsic" class="image" style="position: absolute; inset: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: none; margin: auto; display: block; width: 0px; height: 0px; min-width: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 100%; max-height: 100%; object-fit: contain; background-size: contain; background-position: 0% 0%; filter: blur(20px); background-image: url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;base64,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&quot;);"><noscript></noscript></span></div><button aria-label="Zoom image" data-rmiz-btn-open="true"></button></div></div></span></p>
<p>The columns are companyName, company URL, publishedAT, (story) url, title, featured image, and (meta) description. This follows how we organize data in our database. Every article is connected to at least one company. Some companies have more articles than other based on their share of voice, for example using <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump/viewer/default/train?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">the dataset viewer</a> you can see <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump/viewer/default/train?q=google&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Google has 99,152 results</a>, <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump/viewer/default/train?q=3m&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">3M has 20,608 results</a>, <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump/viewer/default/train?q=adobe&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Adobe has 13,449 results</a>, and <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump/viewer/default/train?q=nvidia&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">NVIDIA has 19,811 results</a>.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Without even downloading the data, you can search for company or publication names in the dataset viewer, like <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump/viewer/default/train?q=nvidia&amp;ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">NVIDIA pictured below</a>:</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p><span><div class="sc-a6c0bd8c-1 ijZWBT image-container undefined"><button class="sc-a6c0bd8c-0 khzBNC download-button"><a download="image.jpeg" href="https://hackernoon.imgix.net/images/N0ENUd29UdNJCFcl7GnmZHdk2fA2-xl9378y.jpeg" title="Download image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" fill="black"><path fill="black" d="M18 10v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H6v-1H5v-1H4v-1h4V1h1V0h4v1h1v9h4z"></path><path fill="black" d="M21 15v-1h-6v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-2v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v-1H1v1H0v6h1v1h20v-1h1v-6h-1Zm-2 4h-1v-1h1v1Zm-3-1h1v1h-1v-1Z"></path></svg></a></button><div data-rmiz-wrap="visible"><div style="position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><img alt="" aria-hidden="true" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg%20xmlns=%27http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%27800%27%20height=%27285.8571428571429%27/%3e" style="display: block; max-width: 100%; width: initial; height: initial; background: none; opacity: 1; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span><img alt="image" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" decoding="async" data-nimg="intrinsic" class="image" style="position: absolute; inset: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: none; margin: auto; display: block; width: 0px; height: 0px; min-width: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 100%; max-height: 100%; object-fit: contain; background-size: contain; background-position: 0% 0%; filter: blur(20px); background-image: url(&quot;data:image/svg+xml;base64,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&quot;);"><noscript></noscript></span></div><button aria-label="Zoom image" data-rmiz-btn-open="true"></button></div></div></span></p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>This dataset is open sourced under the MIT License on <a href="https://huggingface.co/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">HuggingFace as Tech Company News Data Dump</a>. Please use this tech company news data freely for your project :-)  You could quantify a company’s aggregate share of voice online, you could measure sentiment analysis of a company’s digital news coverage, you could train your model to predict what headlines will publish about what companies in future, or whatever other research about large tech companies and media coverage your heart desires.</p><h3>Check it out this open data here:</h3>
<p><div class="sc-56d3a1c3-0 evTXYi"><p class="line-space"><br></p><div class="embed-hn-story"><div class="card-image-container"><img src="https://cdn-thumbnails.huggingface.co/social-thumbnails/datasets/HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump.png" alt="article preview"></div><div class="card-info"><span class="provider">HUGGINGFACE</span><h3 class="title">HackerNoon/tech-company-news-data-dump · Datasets at Hugging Face</h3><span class="desc">We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.</span></div></div></div></p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

HackerNoon curated and open sourced the internet's most cited 7M+ tech company news articles and blog posts about the 3k+ most valuable tech companies.

Tech Company News Data Dump on HuggingFace: 7M Most Cited Posts About 3k Most Valued Tech Companies

Use ChatGPT to effortlessly generate PlantUML code, saving time and enhancing the creation UML diagrams process

ChatGPT: Your Time-Saving Companion for UML Diagram Generation

<div><div><p><strong>A <underline><a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/privilege-elevation-exploits-used-in-over-50-percent-of-insider-attacks/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">report</a></underline> published in late 2023 described how insiders were increasingly using privilege escalation exploits in order to carry out unauthorized actions on their organizations’ networks.</strong></p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>According to the report from Crowdstrike, 55% of identified insider threats used or attempted to use privilege escalation exploits. In cases where the insider was malicious, they were observed using their elevated privileges to use additional kits like Metasploit, Cobalt Strike, and other tools meant for exploiting systems.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>It is worth noting that the research was focused on on-prem systems and probably did not include data collected from abuse of cloud applications.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Perusing through their report, the vast majority of the hits are on Windows and Linux systems. That said, within the given parameters, these are still some pretty significant findings that are worth paying attention to for security teams as we navigate 2024. It may indicate that insider threats are finding new innovative ways to attack core systems while circumventing important controls.</p><h2 id="h-why-does-privilege-escalation-matter">Why Does Privilege Escalation Matter?</h2>
<p>If we do our jobs right, then we put controls in place defining what our people are able to do in terms of which systems or assets they can access. Diving a step deeper, we can control not only what can be accessed, but what someone can do with that asset.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Can they read, write, edit, or delete an asset? Can they change privileges for themselves or others? The rabbit hole of privileges can spiral pretty far, but it can be really important for your data security.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>In the ideal world, every user has exactly the minimal level of access and privilege that they need to do their job. This is known as the Principle of Least Privilege. It is almost impossible to be perfect at getting this exactly right, but it is the goal to aim for.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Where it gets tricky is when a user finds ways to escalate their privileges from what they have been provisioned.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>If they are successful, then they have broken out of the defined borders of what they are supposed to be able to do with our systems. We lose a level of control, and in the case of the insider threat actor, we face a difficult opponent who has deep knowledge of our assets and how to find them.</p><h2 id="h-challenges-posed-by-insider-threats">Challenges Posed By Insider Threats</h2>
<p>Insider incidents have been steadily increasing over the past several years, and this trend is not expected to change in 2024. This is exceedingly concerning because insider threats in many ways pose many more difficulties than an external attacker.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Beyond their negative impacts on an organization, undermining trust from customers, partners, and internal stakeholders, they can be downright difficult to detect.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>One of the challenges with an insider threat is that this user starts the game off with a set of privileges that allow them a foothold within the organization. On the face of it, this makes sense. If the person is an employee, then you need to give them the ability to do their job. This means accessing the appropriate systems and data to be an effective employee.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The second challenge is that the employee’s movement within the organization’s systems will be viewed as normal and is unlikely to set off any warning bells unless they stray too far off the reservation. In practical terms, the chances are pretty low that the insider will touch one of your honeypots because they already know exactly what they want to access and where it is located.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>So given some of these challenges, we have here below a couple of tips for countering the privilege escalation threat from your insiders.</p><h2 id="h-3-strategies-for-reducing-your-risk-from-insider-threats-escalating-privileges">3 Strategies for Reducing Your Risk from Insider Threats Escalating Privileges</h2>
<ol>
<li><strong>Patch, Patch, and Be Sure to Patch Early and Often</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>One of the longest standing pieces of advice when it comes to cyber security, even predating implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), is the criticality of patching your software systems.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>While zero day vulnerabilities like those used to damage Iranian nuclear facilities or hack iPhones may get all of the press, most hackers use known vulnerabilities that are released to the public for carrying out their attacks successfully.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Hackers come across these vulnerabilities usually in one of two ways. First is that they are able to look at the publicly available vulnerabilities (CVEs) that are published by the MITRE Corporation for the benefit of the public. Second, and more annoyingly, they can look at software updates and try to figure out what has been fixed, and then see how to exploit it. For these reasons and more, be sure to patch soon after the new versions become available.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>As part of the vulnerability reporting and publishing process, companies who own the software, or in the case of open source software the project managers, are usually given a period of 90 days to fix the problems in their products before the information becomes public. This balances between the need to push these software owners to action with the space they need to develop a fix for the bug.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>However, all of their hard work goes to naught if we do not use the patches that they issue. This means implementing the patches for CVEs, going through the necessities of Patch Tuesday, and generally making sure that our systems are up to date with the latest versions.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Patching can be a huge pain, and no organization is really where they should be on it. Always a few legs behind, hoping that they have patched their most critical systems.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The hope is that the move to the cloud will remove the responsibility for patching from the end users and push more of it over to the vendors providing the SaaS solutions. Note however that this is not the case when it comes to cloud infrastructure (IaaS) like AWS, Azure, and GCP, so your IT and Security teams will still need to be up and running to stay current on these systems for some time to come.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><ol start="2">
<li><strong>Monitor for Anomalous Behavior</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>If an insider, or someone pretending to be, manages to escalate their privileges to access different systems than they normally would, this should set off major flags. If you have the monitoring in place to catch it of course.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Capturing a baseline of normal activity with User Behavior Analytics tools is a must for figuring out when suspicious behavior is afoot.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The advantage here is that your monitoring of behavior runs in the background and is not going to be impacted by illicit changes to their privileges. The systems they touch or other actions that they take are going to be picked up, logged, and alerted upon if they stray from the confines of what you have defined as normal for them.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Beyond the alerting feature, the other benefit of monitoring your environments is for use in investigations after an incident. One of the biggest challenges in incident response is understanding which systems were impacted and might need remediation. Having session recording of activity in sensitive systems tied to a specific user can cut the time spent on investigations significantly.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><ol start="3">
<li><strong>Educate Your Workforce About Following the Rules</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg popularized the idea of “Move fast and break things” as part of the startup ethos that drove companies to success. While breaking out of a stodgy corporate mindset can do a lot of good when it comes to innovation, there are some benefits to staying within at least some of the guidelines.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Company policies about what kinds of software can be downloaded to the business’ machines and the processes for approval are there for a reason. Even a given policy seems like more of a hindrance than something that makes a whole lot of sense.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The best way to get your people to follow your rules is less about sticks and more about getting them on board by explaining to them what the potential impact of rule breaking can lead to.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Ideally avoid death by Powerpoint and make the sessions a little more interactive. One method that has proven to be more effective is to assign different cases of policies being broken and present to their group how it played out.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>This is the also same methodology used in the military for teaching life and death safety material and it really sticks in your memory.</p><h2 id="h-unintentionally-reckless-but-not-malicious">Unintentionally Reckless But Not Malicious</h2>
<p>Reading through the report, the news here is and is not as bad as it may seem.</p>
<p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>The authors note that 45% of the incidents do not appear to be caused by malicious insiders who intend to be threats. Some of the incidents involve insiders breaking the rules so that they can download software onto the organization’s machines that they are not supposed to, but for reasons other than harming their employer.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Think about employees skirting around controls so that they can download torrents or other illicit software onto their work machines.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Perhaps one of the greatest stories like this is the oldie and always goodie about the workers at a <underline><a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/employees-connect-nuclear-plant-to-the-internet-so-they-can-mine-cryptocurrency/?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Ukrainian nuclear power plant</a></underline> who connected their intentionally offline systems to the internet&nbsp; for the purpose of mining cryptocurrency. This was before the outbreak of the war, but well into the campaign by Russian hackers targeting Ukrainian critical infrastructure, so it was still an exceptionally bad idea.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>On the other hand, just because someone does not intend to cause harm does not mean that there is no foul. According to the <underline><a href="https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir?ref=hackernoon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc">Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report for 2023</a></underline>, Miscellaneous Errors continue to comprise a significant chunk of the annual data breach statistics. And when it comes to regulators investigating companies for exposing controlled data like customer PII, they do not much care if the action was malicious or not. Just that it happened.</p><p class="line-space"> <br> </p><p>Hopefully by following best practices and educating your team, you can avoid having to explain a bad incident off as a moment of bad judgment versus an act of bad faith altogether.</p></div><div style="visibility:hidden" class="sc-1e366be2-7 kZfKay"><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M16 9h1v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1H9v1H8v1H7v1H6v1H0v-6h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1v-1h1V9h1V8h1V7h1V6h1V5h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1zM22 4v2h-1v1h-1v1h-1v1h-1V8h-1V7h-1V6h-1V5h-1V4h-1V3h1V2h1V1h1V0h2v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 3v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5V7h-2v1h-1v1H9v4h1v1h1v1h2v-1h5v1h1v2h1v2h-1v2h-1v1h-5v-1h-1v-2h-1v-2h-1v-1H9v-1H8v-1H7v1H2v-1H1v-2H0v-2h1V8h1V7h5v1h1V7h1V6h1V5h1V3h1V1h1V0h5v1h1v2h1z"></path></svg></button><button><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 22" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M14 19v2h-1v1H1v-1H0V5h1V4h3v15h10z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 6v11h-1v1H6v-1H5V1h1V0h8v6h6z"></path><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 4v1h-5V0h1v1h1v1h1v1h1v1h1z"></path></svg></button><a style="margin-left:15px;color:white" href="#commentSection"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 22 19" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M21 6V4h-1V3h-1V2h-2V1h-3V0H8v1H5v1H3v1H2v1H1v2H0v6h1v2h1v2H1v1H0v2h5v-1h1v-1h2v1h6v-1h3v-1h2v-1h1v-1h1v-2h1V6h-1ZM6 13h1v-1h1v-2H6V5h4v8H9v1H6v-1Zm6 0h1v-1h1v-2h-2V5h4v8h-1v1h-3v-1Z"></path></svg></a><button style="margin-right:10px"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="22" style="width:18px;fill:white"><path style="width:18px;fill:white" d="M20 2v12h-1v1h-2v1h-6v-1H4v1H3v4H1V3H0V1h1V0h2v1h1v2H3v1h1V3h7v1h6V3h2V2h1z"></path></svg></button><div class="sc-1e366be2-8 cbbaIe"></div></div></div>

A new report may indicate that insider threats are finding new innovative ways to attack core systems while circumventing important controls. 

Insider Threats are Increasingly Using Privilege Escalation Exploits

My three-page PDF is now one simple paragraph. You can imagine how useful this would be for organizations with millions of documents. 