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Monthly Archives: August 2020

KeepAmericaGreat.com appropriated by Biden-Harris …Bwahahahaha

August 31, 2020   Humor
 KeepAmericaGreat.com appropriated by Biden Harris ...Bwahahahaha


Considering there are several fake Biden sites that link to Trump, there’s some bit of reciprocity

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s campaign has purchased the web domain that spells out President Donald Trump’s re-election slogan “Keep America Great” and filled the site with what it says are Trump’s broken promises

www.nbcnews.com/…

x

Donald Trump promised to be the greatest jobs president God ever created.

Instead, tens of millions of Americans are out of work and we’re facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. #PromisesBroken https://t.co/JzjZu7KKRr

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 28, 2020

x

.@Scaramucci says @realDonaldTrump‘s speech can be summed up in one sentence:

“I’m Donald J. Trump and I’m here to save you from Donald J. Trump’s nightmare of America.”

Mooch says Biden hasn’t been in office for 3.5 years.

“All of this stuff is happening in Trump’s America.” pic.twitter.com/SfaYeuWZhS

— Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) August 28, 2020

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moranbetterDemocrats

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Quick! Get an Instant Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM Quick Quote.

August 31, 2020   CRM News and Info
crmnav Quick! Get an Instant Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM Quick Quote.

CRM pricing shouldn’t be a mystery. There is plenty of information online about the features of various CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software solutions. But, it’s not always easy to nail down a price.

CRM resellers would like to get a salesperson into your office for a demonstration and consultation before they tell you the cost of their product. But that doesn’t make sense. Why should you waste your time investigating solutions that are not within your budget range? We’ve discovered a better way.

Why not use the Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM Quick Quote Tool that’s available right here on the CRM Software Blog?

We believe that Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM pricing should be accessible to anyone who is evaluating CRM systems for their company.

The Quick Quote tool is fast, easy, automatic, and free.

Here’s how the Quick Quote tool works:

On the top right-hand side of each page of the CRM Software Blog, look for the orange button labeled “Request Instant Quote Dynamics 365/CRM.”

Clicking on that button will take you to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Quick Quote Request Form.  From there, you are only moments away from a free, fully automated budgetary estimate for the full cost of Dynamics 365 software, implementation, and training.

On the Quick Quote form, indicate whether you’re interested in 365 Business Edition or Enterprise Edition.
Next, let us know if you want Basic CRM, Basic CRM Plus, or Advanced CRM (you’ll see what each of those provides.)

Then, enter your contact information so we can email you an instant quote.

We’ve made it easy because we know that’s what you want. After all, the Internet was designed to provide useful information for people like you who are trying to make their best decisions.

Get a Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM Quick Quote today and see how this powerful solution will fit into your budget.

Try CRM Software Blog’s Quick Quote Tool. It’s free; it’s easy. You’ll be glad you tried it.

by CRM Software Blog Writer, www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

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Facebook open-sources Opacus, a PyTorch library for differential privacy

August 31, 2020   Big Data
 Facebook open sources Opacus, a PyTorch library for differential privacy

Automation and Jobs

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Facebook today open-sourced Opacus, a library for training PyTorch models with differential privacy that’s ostensibly more scalable than existing methods. With the release of Opacus, Facebook says it hopes to provide an easier path for engineers to adopt differential privacy in AI and to accelerate in-the-field differential privacy research.

Typically, differential privacy entails injecting a small amount of noise into the raw data before feeding it into a local machine learning model, thus making it difficult for malicious actors to extract the original files from the trained model. An algorithm can be considered differentially private if an observer seeing its output cannot tell if it used a particular individual’s information in the computation.

“Our goal with Opacus is to preserve the privacy of each training sample while limiting the impact on the accuracy of the final model. Opacus does this by modifying a standard PyTorch optimizer in order to enforce (and measure) differential privacy during training. More specifically, our approach is centered on differentially private stochastic gradient descent,” Facebook explained in a blog post. “The core idea behind this algorithm is that we can protect the privacy of a training dataset by intervening on the parameter gradients that the model uses to update its weights, rather than the data directly.”

Opacus uniquely leverages hooks in PyTorch to achieve an “order of magnitude” speedup compared with existing libraries, according to Facebook. Moreover, it keeps track of how much of the “privacy budget” — a core mathematical concept in differential privacy — has been spent at any given point in time to enable real-time monitoring.

Opacus also employs a cryptographically safe, pseudo-random, GPU-accelerated number generator for security-critical code, and it ships with tutorials and helper functions that warn about incompatible components. The library works behind the scenes with PyTorch, Facebook says, producing standard AI models that can be deployed as usual without extra steps.

“We hope that by developing PyTorch tools like Opacus, we’re democratizing access to such privacy-preserving resources,” Facebook wrote. “We’re bridging the divide between the security community and general machine learning engineers with a faster, more flexible platform using PyTorch.”

The release of Opacus follows Google’s decision to open-source the differential privacy library used in some its core products, such as Google Maps, as well as an experimental module for TensorFlow Privacy that enables assessments of the privacy properties of various machine learning classifiers. More recently, Microsoft released WhiteNoise, a platform-agnostic toolkit for differential privacy in Azure and in open source on GitHub.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

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Teradata University for Academics Expands Data and Analytic Training; Offers Hands-on, Educational Access to Vantage

August 31, 2020   BI News and Info
teradata logo social Teradata University for Academics Expands Data and Analytic Training; Offers Hands on, Educational Access to Vantage

Expanded partnership with the University of Arkansas brings Vantage into the classroom for faculty and students from academic institutions around the world

Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the cloud data and analytics company, today announced a significant expansion of the Teradata University for Academics program, ensuring that students looking to build careers in the growing big data and analytics marketplace are fully prepared and already familiar with the leading data analytics platform, Teradata Vantage.
 
The Teradata University for Academics program, which for twenty years has provided access to Teradata technology and resources for schools who opt into the curriculum, is now offering complimentary technical education for anyone in the academic community – regardless of their association with Teradata. Also expanded is the coursework offered from Teradata, which now includes more than 145 hours of online technical training. These on-demand web-based courses, which can be taken for free as part of any university syllabus, include lab simulations and certification programs meant to teach both basic and advanced skills in SQL, Machine Learning, Automation and more. Popular courses include Teradata SQL, Big Data Concepts, Breaking the Language Barrier: When to Use Python, R and SQL, and Introduction to Data Science Process.
 
In addition to this unprecedented access to technical training, Teradata is also announcing an expanded partnership with the University of Arkansas to allow students and faculty from any university, worldwide, to gain hands-on experience with Teradata Vantage.
 
“While the decades-long partnership between Teradata and the University of Arkansas has always focused on preparing students for careers in big data, the resources we are now able to provide are truly unique for a university setting,” said Dr. Ron Freeze at the University of Arkansas. “We pride ourselves on turning out students that are not only educated in the theory of data and analytics, but who can also hit the ground running with real-world experience and insight. Offering this enviable academic opportunity to faculty and students from other colleges and universities is our pleasure.”
 
Teradata recently donated a new, state-of-the-art Vantage platform to the University of Arkansas, who agreed to provide direct, hosted access to the platform for tens of thousands of students from hundreds of colleges and universities. This is an expansion of the existing Teradata University for Academics program, whose most active participants hail from a wide variety of colleges worldwide, from Duke University and Oklahoma State University, to NIDA in Thailand.
 
“Teradata’s customers are some of the largest, most visionary companies in the world and they run their businesses on data. Nearly all of them need more data scientists and analytics experts, so we’re doing our part to make an education in data and analytics easily accessible,” said Susan Baskin, Director of Global Customer Education and Teradata University for Academics. “Our long-term partnership with the University of Arkansas is critical to that education because it provides the real-world experience that students need and companies value. When a graduate can lean on their practical experiences of using Vantage in the classroom – and showcase their certification to prove it – it heightens their market appeal while also making it easier for our customers to hire the qualified talent they need.”
 
To augment the practical experience of the program, Teradata also partners with the University of Arkansas to provide curated and anonymized data sets from companies such as Sam’s Club and Dillard’s. Available for free — courtesy of strong relationships cultivated by the University of Arkansas — students access, work with, and find insights using these real-world, massive data sets in the Teradata Vantage platform, ensuring that their academic experience can easily translate to a real-world setting.
 
About University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among fewer than 2.7 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring

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Teradata United States

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Salad vs. cookies

August 31, 2020   Humor

Posted by Krisgo

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About Krisgo

I’m a mom, that has worn many different hats in this life; from scout leader, camp craft teacher, parents group president, colorguard coach, member of the community band, stay-at-home-mom to full time worker, I’ve done it all– almost! I still love learning new things, especially creating and cooking. Most of all I love to laugh! Thanks for visiting – come back soon icon smile Salad vs. cookies


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Deep Fried Bits

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Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps – Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

August 31, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Summary

 

DevOps has become more and more ingrained into our Power Platform project lifecycle. Work item tracking and feedback tools for teamwork. Continuous integration and delivery for code changes and solution deployments. Automated testing for assurance, compliance and governance considerations. Microsoft’s tool, Azure DevOps provides native capabilities to plan, work, collaborate and deliver. Each step along the way in our Power Platform DevOps journey can be tracked and monitored which will be the primary objective of this article.

In this article, we will focus on integrating Azure DevOps with Microsoft Teams to help coordinate and collaborate during a deployment. We will explore the various bots and how to set them up. From there we will walk through a sample scenario involving multiple teams working together. Finally, we will look to automate release notes using web hooks and Azure Function.

Sources

 

Sources of Azure DevOps events that impact our delivery can come from virtually any area of the platform including work items, pipelines, source control, testing and artifact delivery. For each one of these events, such as completed work items, we can setup visualizations such as charts based on defined queries. Service hooks and notification subscriptions can be configured to allow real time reporting of events to external parties and systems allowing for us to stay in a state of continuous communication and collaboration.

AUTHOR NOTE: Click on each image to enlarge for detail.

3288.pastedimage1598622673004v1 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Microsoft Teams, Continuous Collaboration and Integration

 

Azure DevOps bots with Microsoft Teams has quickly grown into one of my favorite features. For instance, Azure DevOps dashboards and kanban boards can be added to channels for visualizations of progress as shown below.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Multiple Azure DevOps bots can be configured to deliver messages to and from Microsoft Teams to allow for continuous collaboration across multiple teams and channels. These bots can work with Azure Pipelines, work items and code pull requests.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Work Items Code Pipelines
6431.pastedimage1598622673006v4 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes 1145.pastedimage1598622673006v5 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes 5047.pastedimage1598622673007v6 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

For monitoring and orchestrating deployments across our various teams, the Azure Pipelines bot is essential. Let’s begin by setting up subscriptions to monitor a release pipeline.

NOTE: The rest of this document will be using a release pipeline as an example, but this will also work with multi-stage build pipelines that utilize environments.

Configuring the Azure Pipelines Bot in Microsoft Teams

 

Use the “subscriptions” keyword with the Azure Pipelines bot to review and modify existing subscriptions and add new ones.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

In the above example, we are subscribing to any changes in stages or approvals for a specific release pipeline. Its recommend to filter to a specific pipeline to reduce clutter in our Teams messaging. The Azure Pipeline bot, using actions described in the article “Azure DevOps – Notifications and Service Hooks“, can be further filtered by build statuses. This is helpful to isolate the messages delivered to a specific Teams channel.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Once configured, as soon as our pipeline begins to run, Microsoft Teams will begin to receive messages. Below is an example showing the deployment of a specific release including stages and approval requests. What I find nice about this is that Microsoft Teams works on both my mobile devices and even Linux based operating systems, allowing any team on any workload to utilize this approach.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

I also want to point out that Azure DevOps also has the ability to natively integrate with other 3rd party tools such as Slack (Similar to the Teams bots), ServiceNow and Jenkins.

Release Pipelines

 

Quality Deployments

 

Deployments within a release pipeline allow for numerous ways to integrate monitoring into Azure DevOps processes. Each deployment include pre and post conditions which can be leveraged to send events and metrics. For instance, the Azure Function gate can be used to invoke a micro service that writes to Azure Application Insights, creates ServiceNow tickets or even Kafka events. The possibilities are endless, imagine sending messages back to the Power Platform for each stage of a deployment!

Approvals

 

Pre and Post approvals can be added to each job in the release pipeline. Adding these can assist during a complex deployment requiring coordination between multiple teams dispersed geographically. Shown below is a hypothetical setup of multiple teams each with specific deliverables as part of a release.

7002.pastedimage1598622673008v10 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

In this scenario, a core solution needs to be deployed and installed before relying features can begin. When any of the steps in the delivery process begins, the originating team needs to be notified in case of any issues that come up.

Using approvals allows the lead of the specific feature team to align the resources and communicate to the broader team that the process can move forward. The full example can be found below.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Here is an example of an approval within Microsoft Teams, notifying the lead of the core solution team that the import process is ready. The approval request shows the build artifacts (e.g. solutions, code files, etc), the branch and pipeline information.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Deployment Gates

 

At the heart of a gated deployment approach is the ability to search for inconsistencies or negative signals to minimize unwanted impact further in the process. These gates, which can be set to run before or after a deployment job, allow us to query for potential issues and alerts. They also could be used to notify or perform an operation on an external system.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Queries and Alerts

 

Deployment gates provide the ability to run queries on work items within your Azure DevOps project. For instance this allows release coordinators and deployment managers to check for bugs reported from automated testing using RSAT for Dynamics 365 F&O or EasyRepro for Dynamics 365 CE. These queries are created within the Work Items area of Azure DevOps. From there they are referenced within the pipeline and based on the data returned, upper and lower thresholds can be set. If these thresholds are crossed, the gate condition is not successful and the process will halt until corrections are made.

External Integrations

 

As mentioned above Azure Function is natively integrated within deployment gates for Release Pipelines. These can be used for both a pre condition and post condition to report or integrate with external systems.

Deployment gates can also invoke REST API endpoints. This could be used within the Power Platform to query the CDS API or run Power Automate flows. An example could be to query the Common Data Service for running asynchronous jobs, creating activities within a Dynamics 365 environment or admin actions such as enabling Admin mode. Another could be to use the robust approval process built in Power Automate for pre and post approvals outside of the Azure DevOps licensed user base.

Using Build Pipelines or Release Pipelines

 

In the previous section I described how to introduce quality gates to a release securing each stage of the pipeline. Release pipelines are useful to help control and coordinate deployments. That said, environments and build pipelines allow for use of YAML templates which are flexible across both Azure DevOps and GitHub and allow for teams to treat pipelines like other source code.

Environments

 

Environments in Azure DevOps allow for targeted deployment of artifacts to a collection of resources. In the case of the Power Platform, this can be thought of a release to an Power Platform environment. The use of pipeline environments is optional, that is unless you begin work using Release pipelines which do require environments. Two of the main advantages of environments are deployment history and security and permissions.

Environment Security Checks

 

Environment security checks, as mentioned above, can provide quality gates similar to the current capabilities of Release Pipelines. Below is an example of the current options compared to Release Pre and Post Deployment Quality Gates.

3603.pastedimage1598622673009v14 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Here is an example of linking to a template in GitHub.

0876.pastedimage1598622673009v15 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Compare this to the Release Pipeline Pre or Post Deployment Quality Gates.

 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Scenario: Orchestrating a Release

 

Ochestrate%20Release%20with%20Teams%20 %20Full Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

In the above example, we have a multi-stage release pipeline that encompasses multiple teams from development to support to testing. The pipeline relies on multiple artifacts and code branches for importing and testing.

In this example, we have a core solution containing Dynamics 365 entity changes that are needed by integrations. They will need to lead the deployment and test and notify the subsequent teams that everything has passed and can move on.

Below is an example of coordination between the deployment team and the Core team lead.

Ochestrate%20Release%20with%20Teams Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Below is an image showing the entire release deployment with stages completed.

4760.pastedimage1598622673010v19 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

Automating Release Notes

 

Azure Application Insights Release Annotations

 

The Azure Application Insights Release Annotations task is a marketplace extension from Microsoft allowing a release pipeline to signal an event in a release pipeline. An event could be the start of the pipeline, the end, or any event we are interested in. From here we can use native functionality of Azure Application Insights to stream metrics and logs.

Using an Azure Function with Web Hooks

 

Service Hooks are a great way of staying informed of events happening within Azure DevOps allowing you to be freed up to focus on other things. Examples include pushing notifications to your teams’ mobile devices, notifying team members on Microsoft Teams or even invoking Microsoft Power Automate flows.

2043.pastedimage1598622673010v20 Monitoring the Power Platform: Azure DevOps   Orchestrating Deployments and Automating Release Notes

The sample code for generating Azure DevOps release notes using an Azure Function can be found here.

Next Steps

 

In this article we have worked with Azure DevOps and Microsoft Teams to show an scenario to collaborate on a deployment. Using the SDK or REST API, Azure DevOps can be explored in detail, allowing us to reimagine how we consume and work with the service. This will help with automating release notes and inviting feedback from stakeholders.

Previously we looked at setting up notifications and web hooks to popular services. We then reviewed the Azure DevOps REST API to better understand build pipelines and environments.

If you are interested in learning more about specialized guidance and training for monitoring or other areas of the Power Platform, which includes a monitoring workshop, please contact your Technical Account Manager or Microsoft representative for further details.

Your feedback is extremely valuable so please leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to help where I can! Also, if you find any inconsistencies, omissions or have suggestions, please go here to submit a new issue.

Index

 

Monitoring the Power Platform: Introduction and Index

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Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement in the Field

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AI Weekly: Facebook’s discriminatory ad targeting illustrates the dangers of biased algorithms

August 30, 2020   Big Data
 AI Weekly: Facebook’s discriminatory ad targeting illustrates the dangers of biased algorithms

Automation and Jobs

Read our latest special issue.

Open Now

This summer has been littered with stories about algorithms gone awry. For one example, a recent study found evidence Facebook’s ad platform may discriminate against certain demographic groups. The team of coauthors from Carnegie Mellon University say the biases exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities, an insight applicable to a broad swath of algorithmic decision-making.

Facebook, of course, is no stranger to controversy where biased, discriminatory, and prejudicial algorithmic decision-making is concerned. There’s evidence that objectionable content regularly slips through Facebook’s filters, and a recent NBC investigation revealed that on Instagram in the U.S. last year, Black users were about 50% more likely to have their accounts disabled by automated moderation systems than those whose activity indicated they were white. Civil rights groups claim that Facebook fails to enforce its hate speech policies, and a July civil rights audit of Facebook’s practices found the company failed to enforce its voter suppression policies against President Donald Trump.

In their audit of Facebook, the Carnegie Mellon researchers tapped the platform’s Ad Library API to get data about ad circulation among different users. Between October 2019 and May 2020, they collected over 141,063 advertisements displayed in the U.S., which they ran through algorithms that classified the ads according to categories regulated by law or policy — for example, “housing,” “employment,” “credit,” and “political.” Post-classification, the researchers analyzed the ad distributions for the presence of bias, yielding a per-demographic statistical breakdown.

The research couldn’t be timelier given recent high-profile illustrations of AI’s proclivity to discriminate. As was spotlighted in the previous edition of AI Weekly, the UK’s Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation used — and then was forced to walk back — an algorithm to estimate school grades following the cancellation of A-levels, exams that have an outsize impact on which universities students attend. (Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it a “mutant algorithm.”) Drawing on data like the ranking of students within a school and a school’s historical performance, the model lowered 40% of results from teachers’ estimations and disproportionately benefited students at private schools.

Elsewhere, in early August, the British Home Office was challenged over its use of an algorithm designed to streamline visa applications. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants alleges that feeding past bias and discrimination into the system reinforced future bias and discrimination against applicants from certain countries. Meanwhile, in California, the city of Santa Cruz in June became the first in the U.S. to ban predictive policing systems over concerns the systems discriminate against people of color.

Facebook’s display ad algorithms are perhaps more innocuous, but they’re no less worthy of scrutiny considering the stereotypes and biases they might perpetuate. Moreover, if they allow the targeting of housing, employment, or opportunities by age and gender, they could be in violation of the U.S. Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and related equality statutes.

It wouldn’t be the first time. In March 2019, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development filed suit against Facebook for allegedly “discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” in violation of the Fair Housing Act. When questioned about the allegations during a Capital Hill hearing last October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “people shouldn’t be discriminated against on any of our services,” pointing to newly implemented restrictions on age, ZIP code, and gender ad targeting.

The results of the Carnegie Mellon study show evidence of discrimination on the part of Facebook, advertisers, or both against particular groups of users. As the coauthors point out, although Facebook limits the direct targeting options for housing, employment, or credit ads, it relies on advertisers to self-disclose if their ad falls into one of these categories, leaving the door open to exploitation.

Ads related to credit cards, loans, and insurance were disproportionately sent to men (57.9% versus 42.1%), according to the researchers, in spite of the fact more women than men use Facebook in the U.S. and that women on average have slightly stronger credit scores than men. Employment and housing ads were a different story. Approximately 64.8% of employment and 73.5% of housing ads the researchers surveyed were shown to a greater proportion of women than men, who saw 35.2% of employment and 26.5% of housing ads, respectively.

Users who chose not to identify their gender or labeled themselves nonbinary/transgender were rarely — if ever — shown credit ads of any type, the researchers found. In fact, across every category of ad including employment and housing, they made up only around 1% of users shown ads — perhaps because Facebook lumps nonbinary/transgender users into a nebulous “unknown” identity category.

Facebook ads also tended to discriminate along the age and education dimension, the researchers say. More housing ads (35.9%) were shown to users aged 25 to 34 years compared with users in all other age groups, with trends in the distribution indicating that the groups most likely to have graduated college and entered the labor market saw the ads more often.

The research allows for the possibility that Facebook is selective about the ads it includes in its API and that other ads corrected for distribution biases. Many previous studies have established Facebook’s ad practices are at best problematic. (Facebook claims its written policies ban discrimination and that it uses automated controls — introduced as part of the 2019 settlement — to limit when and how advertisers target ads based on age, gender, and other attributes.) But the coauthors say their intention was to start a discussion about when disproportionate ad distribution is irrelevant and when it might be harmful.

“Algorithms predict the future behavior of individuals using imperfect data that they have from past behavior of other individuals who belong to the same sociocultural group,” the coauthors wrote. “Our findings indicated that digital platforms cannot simply, as they have done, tell advertisers not to use demographic targeting if their ads are for housing, employment or credit. Instead, advertising must [be] actively monitored. In addition, platform operators must implement mechanisms that actually prevent advertisers from violating norms and policies in the first place.”

Greater oversight might be the best remedy for systems susceptible to bias. Companies like Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft; entrepreneurs like Sam Altman; and even the Vatican recognize this — they’ve called for clarity around certain forms of AI, like facial recognition. Some governing bodies have begun to take steps in the right direction, like the EU, which earlier this year floated rules focused on transparency and oversight. But it’s clear from developments over the past months that much work remains to be done.

For years, some U.S. courts used algorithms known to produce unfair, race-based predictions more likely to label African American inmates at risk of recidivism. A Black man was arrested in Detroit for a crime he didn’t commit as the result of a facial recognition system. And for 70 years, American transportation planners used a flawed model that overestimated the amount of traffic roadways would actually see, resulting in potentially devastating disruptions to disenfranchised communities.

Facebook has had enough reported problems, internally and externally, around race to merit a harder, more skeptical look at its ad policies. But it’s far from the only guilty party. The list goes on, and the urgency to take active measures to fix these problems has never been greater.

For AI coverage, send news tips to Khari Johnson and Kyle Wiggers — and be sure to subscribe to the AI Weekly newsletter and bookmark our AI Channel.

Thanks for reading,

Kyle Wiggers

AI Staff Writer

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Big Data – VentureBeat

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“What Does Sustainable Innovation Mean To You?”: Perspectives from TIBCO Executives

August 30, 2020   TIBCO Spotfire
TN Blog 1200x630 3 696x365 “What Does Sustainable Innovation Mean To You?”: Perspectives from TIBCO Executives

Reading Time: 4 minutes

We are approximately 30 days away from our global TIBCO NOW conference, and while this year’s event is going digital with the TIBCO Connected Experience, we are relying on our ability to enable you to sustain innovation. This year, we will provide valuable content and resources that will help you maintain the pace of ideas, collaboration, and market impact as the evolution of technology accelerates. Our goal is to help you build a sustainable capability and culture of collaboration and innovation—in our organizations, our communities, and across our world.

So, we asked some of our executives what the term “sustainable innovation” means to them to help you get a better understanding of how you can apply it to your organization. A few of the themes they touched upon were to identify new business opportunities, build a technology foundation for operational excellence, give humanity a seat at the table, and foster a culture of innovation to make the world a better place. 

New Business Opportunities to Drive Impact

“The ongoing data explosion impacts every industry and every aspect of our lives. It also poses significant challenges: ‘How do we innovate to take advantage of this new reality? How do we future-proof our technology and skills to achieve leadership now and into the years ahead?’ Unlocking the power of transformation just one time is hard, but sustaining innovation is the only way to extend leadership, pivot ahead of the curve, and prosper in an environment where change is the only constant. Sustainable innovation is the singular most important capability we must all develop.”
— Dan Streetman, Chief Executive Officer

“Sustainable innovation means adapting to new economic models and market conditions that you didn’t even anticipate. You have to shift your innovation to be even more agile to bring both products and ideas to market quickly. We have to be ready to act in the short term but committed to driving innovation on an ongoing basis to drive true business value and impact.” 
— Fred Studer, Chief Marketing Officer 

Building a Technology Foundation for Operational Excellence 

“Sustainable innovation is about building a balanced foundation upon which ideas that drive the business forward can be continuously explored and tested. This foundation must be flexible enough to accommodate trends as they come and go, and strong enough to support pushing the limits in terms of technology and, often, an organization’s culture. Innovation is not a one-time event, nor is it just about technology. It is a process that needs to span all aspects of an organization’s DNA so it can contribute to success now and in the future.” 
— Nelson Petracek, Chief Technology Officer

Humanity Has a Seat at the Table 

“Sustainable innovation is a technology culture that frames innovation in the social, environmental, and sustainability context in which they live. While the obvious areas of sustainable innovation are ones aimed at climate change and global health, the less obvious areas include the impact of automation and AI on the human condition. How, through better human-to-computer interfaces, can we democratize advanced technology and create opportunities for tech-displaced workers? How can technology help level the social playing field with low-cost, cloud-based capabilities available to all? Sustainable innovation is giving humanity a seat at the technology table to help make the world a better place.”
— Mark Palmer, General Manager of Data, Analytics, and Data Science

“Sustainability is all about enabling more people to be part of the innovation process. To that end, crowdsourcing both ideas and hands-on analytic applications from the organization is key. The best ideas come from people active in the business, working with their customers. And the best software innovations come from hands on the data. Every minute matters so we want to constantly strive to make everyone more productive for our innovation to be sustainable in the long term.”
— Michael O’Connell, Chief Analytics Officer

Foster a Culture of Innovation to Make the World a Better Place

“I think of sustainable innovation as being a driving force for change. Not just a simple tweak or adjustment that gives the illusion that we are keeping current, but actual change that either allows us or forces us to rethink how and why we do things. This drives us forward to innovate and transform our culture, our products, and the way we do things – without looking back.”
— Michele Haddad, Chief People Officer, TIBCO

“Sustainable innovation means three things to me: the ability for an organization to create and maintain a culture of innovation across all aspects of the company; the ability for the resulting innovations (ideas, concepts, processes, products) to be sustained and evolved, and finally, that the innovations themselves and the processes that create them to understand the impact of the innovations on the world. Ultimately sustainable innovation is about creating a sustainable culture of innovation that can create sustainable innovations that make the world a better place.”
— Matt Quinn, Chief Operating Officer

“Sustainable innovation means understanding what innovation is and what it isn’t and creating a climate that is conducive to, and rewards, innovation. To do this, you need to build a culture of collaboration and incentivize that behavior by designing an engine to make innovation real and consumable through hiring for innovation and ensuring that learning is desired and rewarded.”
— Jeff Hess, Senior Vice President, Customer Excellence

“From my perspective as CFO, investing in innovation at TIBCO means improving our ability to build and deliver better products to our customers while lowering operating costs over time.   For our customers, innovative new products should be easy to turn on in their environment and require very little attention during their lifespan.” 
— Tom Berquist, Chief Financial Officer

Sustainable innovation is about building a balanced foundation upon which ideas that drive the business forward can be continuously explored and tested. —Nelson Petracek, TIBCO CTO Click To Tweet

Join us for this year’s TIBCO Connected Experience, September 22-24, where you will be able to access a wide variety of content around the theme of sustainable innovation wherever and whenever you want it. With three different packages, you’ll be able to take advantage of all of the content and educational opportunities we have to offer. Check out the TIBCO NOW website to learn more about these different packages and how you can register today. 

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Chadwick Boseman, ‘Black Panther’ Actor, Dies Of Cancer at 43

August 29, 2020   Humor
 Chadwick Boseman, ‘Black Panther’ Actor, Dies Of Cancer at 43

Boseman died at his home in the Los Angeles area with his wife and family by his side, his publicist Nicki Fioravante told The Associated Press.

Actor Chadwick Boseman, who played Black icons Jackie Robinson and James Brown before finding fame as the regal Black Panther in the Marvel cinematic universe, died Friday of cancer, his representative said. He was 43.

Boseman died at his home in the Los Angeles area with his wife and family by his side, his publicist Nicki Fioravante told The Associated Press.

Boseman was diagnosed with colon cancer four years ago, his family said in a statement.

“A true fighter, Chadwick persevered through it all, and brought you many of the films you have come to love so much,” his family said in the statement. “From Marshall to Da 5 Bloods, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and several more- all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy. It was the honor of his career to bring King T’Challa to life in Black Panther.”

Boseman had not spoken publicly about his diagnosis.

Source: The Associated Press

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Track Targets, Ensure Data Completeness and more – User Adoption Monitor a must for your Dynamics 365 CRM!

August 29, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

608x348xUser Adoption 1.jpg.pagespeed.ic.l5VXzzAkm  Track Targets, Ensure Data Completeness and more – User Adoption Monitor a must for your Dynamics 365 CRM!

User Adoption Monitor (Preferred App on Microsoft AppSource)is what you need to track, monitor and review user adoption of Dynamics 365 CRM. Be it the daily user login details or tracking user actions across CRM, User Adoption Monitor does the job seamlessly. And now with the release of three new features, it is on its way to be the must-have app for monitoring user actions within Dynamics 365 CRM.

Without further ado, let’s have a brief look into the newly released features of User Adoption Monitor.

  • Data Completeness
  • Aggregate Tracking
  • Target Tracking

Data Completeness

If you want to identify whether the respective entity records in Dynamics 365 CRM have all the attributes/necessary data that completes the record, then ‘Datacompleteness’ is the feature you are looking for. With ‘Datacompleteness’ you will have the provision to choose which of the fields from the records of selected entity need to be filled in to make sure that the record is complete. And in case if any of these defined fields are left blank, then the completeness of the record would be reflected as ‘Incomplete’ until all the specified fields have been duly filled. So now you will be able to easily ensure that all the necessary information about your customers is available within CRM.

625x268x1User Adoption Monitor.png.pagespeed.ic.mHqoEr ery Track Targets, Ensure Data Completeness and more – User Adoption Monitor a must for your Dynamics 365 CRM!

Aggregate Tracking

With ‘Aggregate Tracking’ feature, you will be able to track the aggregations of respective numeric fields of the entity on which the specific user action has been defined. To understand better, let’s take an example of ‘Opportunity-win’ action. Here, you can see that with aggregate tracking you can get the SUM of the Actual Revenue of all the Opportunities won by the users for a defined period of time. In this way, you can get the aggregate value (SUM or AVG) of Budget Amount, Est. Revenue, Freight Amount, etc.

625x268x2User Adoption Monitor.png.pagespeed.ic. GZ2CnigCt Track Targets, Ensure Data Completeness and more – User Adoption Monitor a must for your Dynamics 365 CRM!

Target Tracking

With the help of ‘Target Tracking’ in User Adoption Monitor, you can allot and keep track of targets assigned to users in Dynamics 365 CRM. Here, you can assign the users a total number of targets or total value of targets to be achieved for given period of time. These targets can be set against the count of the respective entity actions or against the aggregate value of fields with respect to an entity action performed by the user. For example, you can set a target of winning 10 opportunities a day for each user in your organisation and then keep a track of the same. At the end of the day you can compare the performance of each user based on the targets achieved by them.

Target based on Count

625x268x3User Adoption Monitor.png.pagespeed.ic.c20FNKkC 9 Track Targets, Ensure Data Completeness and more – User Adoption Monitor a must for your Dynamics 365 CRM!

Target based on Value

Similarly, you can set a target of winning Opportunities worth 50,000/- per day for each user and then compare how much each of them have achieved at the end of the day.

625x268x4User Adoption Monitor.png.pagespeed.ic.1BMdUz39aF Track Targets, Ensure Data Completeness and more – User Adoption Monitor a must for your Dynamics 365 CRM!

All these amazing new features has made User Adoption Monitor a more formidable monitoring app that will help you to keep track of various user actions effortlessly and without disturbing the everyday activities of your organization.

Get your first-hand experience of all these features by downloading and exploring User Adoption Monitor from our website or Microsoft AppSource.

For a walk through on our User Adoption Monitor email us at crm@inogic.com

Until then – Stay Safe, Stay Healthy and keep tracking!

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