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The Wirecutter, a popular gadget site run by former Gizmodo head Brian Lam, was under attack on March 19 and 20 from a source that should have been trusted. The advertising agency that handles that site and many others like The Awl, The Hairpin, The Splitsider and more, came under attack thanks to an exploited flaw in the code.

The Wirecutter reports that “the cause was an exploit on an OpenX advertising server run by the guys who handle ads for The Wirecutter”. The attack reportedly lasted for 10 hours and allowed for the insertion of malicious code onto an advertising server that could be inserted into the ads displayed on The Awl network.

The site is warning its users that this means “that, if you visited an Awl network site (including The Wirecutter) Tuesday or Wednesday, you may have been exposed to malware”. The site goes on to explain that to fix the problem “We nuked our existing ad server and are moving to a different ad serving platform entirely in the near future”.

The site’s Kevin Purdy, formerly of Lifehacker, wrote a question and answer section included in the announcement and intended to help users understand what happened and what the risks are — and most importantly, what to do if you visited the site during the affected time frame.

For those who were using Google’s Chrome, the web browser was actually blocking access to the site during this period so, unless you bypassed the warning, you should have no worries. The editor was left with nothing much that he could say other than “I apologize for putting you and your computer at risk”.

Photo Credit: Photosani/Shutterstock

Some people say big data is wallowing in the trough of disillusionment, but that’s a limited worldview. If you only look at it like an IT issue it might be easy to see big data as little more than business intelligence on steroids. If you only see data science as a means to serving better ads, it might be easy to ask yourself what all the fuss is about.

If you’re like me, though, all you see are the bright lights ahead. They might be some sort of data nirvana, or they might be a privacy-destroying 18-wheeler bearing down on us. They might be both. But we’re going to find out, and we’re we’re going to find out sooner rather than later.

This is because there are small pockets of technologists who are letting their imaginations lead the way. In a suddenly cliché way of saying it, they’re aiming for 10x improvement rather than 10 percent improvement. They can do that because they now have a base set of analytic technologies and techniques that are well positioned to solve, with relatively little effort, whatever data problems are thrown their way.

Here are some themes from our just-concluded Structure: Data conference that I think highlight the promise of data, but also the challenges that lie ahead.

Man and machine unite

Machine learning is already infiltrating nearly every aspect of our digital lives, but its ultimate promise will only be realized when it becomes more human. That doesn’t necessarily mean making machines think like human brains (although, granted, that’s a vision currently driving billions of research dollars), but just letting people better interact with the systems and models trying to discover the hidden patterns in everything around us.

Whatever shape it takes, the results will be revolutionary. We’ll treat diseases once thought untreatable, tackle difficult socio-economic and cultural issues, and learn to experience the world around in entirely new ways. Maybe that consumer-experience scourge known as advertising might actually become helpful rather than annoying.

That would really be something.

Data science, or data intelligence?

I’m not sure there needs to be a distinction between data science and data intelligence, but the latter does connote a grander goal. It’s about trying to solve meaningful problems rather than just serving ads; about trying to understand why things happen just as well as when they’ll happen. This means learning to work with smaller, messier data than we might like — certainly smaller and messier than the data sets underneath most of the massive web-company data science undertakings.

But just think about being able to go beyond predictive models and into a world of preventative — or even professorial — models. If you know what I like, where I go and who my friends are, it might be fairly easy to predict what I want to buy. Figuring out how my decision to buy something might affect my overall well-being and then telling me why? That’s a little more difficult and a lot more beneficial.

Telling stories with data

Have you ever looked at a chart and wondered what the heck it was supposed to be telling you? Or downloaded a report of your Facebook activity only to ask yourself if all the disparate data points come together to paint a bigger picture? Or tried — and failed — to stop a terrorist before his movement to recruit an army of followers gained critical mass?

A big problem with a lot data analysis right now is that it still treats data points as entities unto themselves, largely disconnected from those around them. However, data needs context in order to be really useful; it’s context that turns disparate data points into a story. Don’t just tell me how many steps I took today or the time of day I’m most active on Facebook, but tell me how that relates to the rest of my life.

And don’t just tell me that someone said he wants to kill Americans. Rather, tell me a story about how much more frequently he’s saying it and how much more inciteful his words are becoming.

The internet of things knows all

The mobile phone in your pocket is tracking your every movement and can also monitor the sounds that are surrounding you. That fitness tracker you’re wearing is identifying you by how you walk. Your smart meter data shows when you’re home, when you’re away and when you’re in the shower. Sensors in everything from toothbrushes to cars are quantifying every aspect of our lives.

This volume of data can still be a lot to deal with in terms of its volume, velocity and variety, and we’re still not quite sure what to do with it even if the right tools were in place. But all sorts of entrepreneurs, powerful institutions and intelligence agents have ideas. The technological pieces are coming along nicely, too. Just sayin’ …

This semantic life

The semantic web lives on; only it’s spreading well beyond our search engines and even our web browsers. Soon enough, we’ll be able to surface relevant content and people simply by highlighting passage of text in whatever we’re reading — web page or not — on any type of device. When we speak to our devices, they’ll not only know what we’re saying, but also what we really want even without the help of specific commands or keywords.

That’s a powerful proposition in a world where we increasingly expect our interactions to be hands-free and our answers to come as fast as our questions. Of course, what’s powerful in the hands of consumers driving in their cars or sitting on their couches is even more powerful in the hands of doctors trying to diagnose difficult diseases or aid workers trying lend a helping hand in places where they don’t know the customs or even speak the language.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user GrandeDuc.

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After almost four years in the role, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Friday that he was stepping down.During his four years as the head of the FCC, he failed to stop a stunning loss of regulatory authority as a result of a court case started by his predecessor, and made minuscule strides in boosting broadband competition. To top it off he also oversaw regulations that may further diminish the FCC’s authority as we head into the IP age.

He did however, forge better connections between the tech industry and the FCC and managed to stop a merger that would have certainly hurt consumers. He also tried to make more wireless spectrum available — taking on the powerful broadcast industry to do so. But instead of listing his achievements and capitulations, I dug up a list that my colleague Om Malik and I wrote back in 2009 when he was named to the role.

In the post we told him what he needed to focus on during his tenure. Now, it’s time to look back and see what he has accomplished.

FCC Chairman Julis Genachowski

An internet bill of rights: While Genachowski did manage to pass a version of network neutrality regulations in 2010, he did so in a way that leaves those rules in doubt before a lawsuit that has been filed by Verizon and MetroPCS. Instead of addressing the idea that the FCC has no power to regulate things that occur on information services (basically anything that’s delivered via the internet) which surfaced after a court ruling in 2010, Genachowski’s FCC did nothing to try to strengthen its authority before passing those rules. Now, the case is before the same court of appeals that decided against it the first time around. Grade: C

A focus on one key metric for all FCC decisions — namely returning the U.S. to the global forefront of Internet and mobile technology: On the mobile side, the chairman focused on LTE deployments and getting more airwaves for mobile broadband. And U.S. carriers have already deployed LTE networks ahead of many other countries. On the wireline side, it’s a bit mixed. Broadband caps and a lack of wide scale fiber to the home projects are keeping the U.S. far from the top in international rankings. According to the most recent (June 2012) OECD reports, the U.S. isn’t tops in terms of average or median advertised speeds. We were No. 1 in terms of connections, however. Grade: C+

An emphasis on future technologies (mostly wireless) that boost marketplace competition: Here the FCC has done a lot, despite political and unexpected technical hindrances. Genachowski’s FCC attempted to create a wholesale 4G network using satellite airwaves only to see that idea flail as interference with GPS spectrum was discovered. He also stopped a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile that was not in consumers’ best interests while also pushing for more spectrum and setting in motion an incentive auction that could provide airwaves for the carriers as well as for unlicensed broadband. Grade: B

Special incentives to attract new players (and not older companies) that bring broadband to the masses : Genachowski hasn’t done much here except issue press releases, but others have stepped up including Google and Gigabit Squared to bring gigabit fiber broadband to a few cities. Grade: B-

Tax credits for widespread deployment of broadband speeds of upwards of 20 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up for less than $50 a month without caps: That’s not happening. Grade: F

Better and more connectivity to office buildings, especially from newer players: While companies like Webpass or Sonic.net continue to deploy faster services in more places, business broadband wasn’t an issue the FCC has touched. Grade: F

An IP-centric, rather than voice-centric, approach to reforming the Universal Service Fund: This is a thankless task, but the FCC has started on the road to an all-IP world first with universal service fund reforms as well as a current debate on how to make the transition to an all-IP world, as well as what rules the agency should enforce. Grade: B

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Policies that bring quality of service into the wireless agenda: Om envisioned this as something like penalties for dropped calls, but I’ll expand it to issues like Verizon’s phantom data charges and the fights between app makers, phone companies and carriers that tended to catch consumers in the middle. The FCC was actually pretty vocal in these cases, even if it only managed to draw attention to bad behavior. Grade: A

An understanding that Google, and other web companies, are not the consumer’s friend, so their agenda shouldn’t automatically be trusted: Politics is a sport for big boys and Genachowski’s FCC was pretty transparent in pitting Google and other tech companies against the cable guys and the telcos and assuming that the resulting middle ground was an okay place for consumers. Grade: D

Final summary

All in all, Genachowski spent a lot of time on wireless, believing that to be an area where the FCC had room and regulatory authority to add capacity and improve competition. He was utterly neglectful on the wireline side, not doing much to strengthen competition, or even address issues such as caps and the virtual standstill on investment in rural areas. He also exits an agency that is weaker on the regulatory front than when he started and may end up weakening it further depending on the rulings in the network neutrality case.

He did start the arduous process of reforming the telecommunications regulatory regime to reflect the IP-based future and tackled universal service fund reform. Without a successor named yet, it’s hard to say what the next priorities will be for the FCC, but bringing off a successful auction of airwaves taken from the broadcast industry will be on the agenda as will the issue of how to regulate (and transition to) an all-IP telecommunications network.

Meanwhile, consumer issues such as the high cost of broadband, data caps and the eventual fate of network neutrality are all issues that may or may not change regardless of the new chair. The more things change, the more things still manage to stay the same.

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President Barack Obama pauses after adjusting a wreath placed in the Hall of Remembrance during his visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, March 22, 2013. Standing behind the President, from left, are: Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau; Israeli President Shimon Peres; Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu; and Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate.

(Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

President Obama began the third day of his historic visit to the Middle East with a visit to Mount Herzl, Israel's national cemetery, where he honored the significant contributions of two Jewish heroes, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The President laid a stone from the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington on Mr. Rabin’s grave, highlighting the slain leader’s work to bring peace to the region.   

Next up was a tour of Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Complex, where President Obama honored the memory of Holocaust victims by laying a wreath and rekindling the eternal flame in the Hall of Remembrance. He also joined Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu on a tour that included the Hall of Names, a circular chamber that houses the original testimony documenting every Holocaust victim ever identified, and the art museum where the President heard the story of Charlotte Salomon, a Holocaust victim who was murdered in 1944 in Auschwitz, but whose memory is preserved in the autobiographical artwork she painted while in hiding from the Nazis.  The President ended the poignant visit with a walk through the Children’s Memorial, which memorializes the 1.5 million Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust with candles reflected in a series of mirrors.

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Lockheed Martin is looking at several challenging applications for the quantum-computing hardware it has purchased from from D-Wave Systems, the New York Times reported Friday. The use of quantum computing is a big deal because as we depend more on computing, we’re going to need different types of processors. Lockheed’s commercial use suggests that the probabilistic problem-solving approach and breakneck speed of quantum computing could be more widely adopted in the near future.

For the record, D-Wave and Lockheed formed their commercial relationship a couple of years ago, although at the time the defense contractor apparently didn’t discuss possible applications. Now there are some specifics on how Lockheed could employ its D-Wave computer, following projections on other types of applications.

Lockheed Martin will use its D-Wave computer “to create and test complex radar, space and aircraft systems,” the Times’ Quentin Hardy wrote. “It could be possible, for example, to tell instantly how the millions of lines of software running a network satellites would react to a solar burst or a pulse from a nuclear explosion — something that can now take weeks, if ever, to determine.”

Rather than working with binary yes-or-no questions — ones and zeros — quantum computing is more probabilistic, also allowing a combination of zero and one to simultaneously answer many questions with quantum bits of information, or qubits, and tell users more about the likelihood of a situation. It’s not necessarily useful for all kinds of computing, but it could solve problems that current computers can’t.

It’s also a great way forward for computing to keep following the spirit of Moore’s Law, in the sense that it could permit more powerful computing than what’s possible today. The question is how soon it will become commercially viable. The quantum computer cost Lockheed $10 million, according to one report, so it will take some time and more commercial interest before the price can come down.

Commercial applications of quantum computing are a long time coming. In a 2010 GigaOM Research report on quantum computing (subscription required), my colleague Stacey Higginbotham wrote that commercial viability could take decades, not years.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user R.T. Wohlstadter.

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Many people considered this company irrelevant and dead years ago. Yet with nearly three million paying Internet service subscribers still, this provider is anything but dried up — yet. Internet access, among other subscription services, makes up a clear majority of its continuing sales and its greatest chunk of profits as a whole. Subscriber growth peaked off back in 2002, but for this aging Internet heirloom, at this point they will no doubt take what they can get. Who the heck am I referring to?

Don’t choke on your coffee, but it’s none other than AOL. Namely, their dialup Internet service division. It’s hard to believe that in the year 2013 any company has more than a trickle of subscribers left on dial up, but this attests to the sad state of broadband adoption in the United States. Of the estimated 74 percent of Americans who have internet access in their homes (2010 figures), a full 6 percent of those are still on dial-up service. There are a myriad of issues affecting broadband adoption, including things such as lack of access, pricing, reluctance to switch, etc.

A full 19 million Americans sadly don’t have access to any form of broadband. And in a comparison of adoption rate per capita, our country ranks a miserable 15th globally — behind United Kingdom and South Korea, to name just a few. Much of the Internet is abuzz about Kansas City’s recently completed rollout of Google Fiber, with its near gigabit speeds delivered directly to the home.

Even with  slow expansion into other small markets, like the recently announced Olathe, KS, the excitement over Google Fiber is premature by all reasonable measures. One giant (Google) is getting into the fiber game while another (Verizon) is slowly exiting after making similar market promises of “fiber to all” just a half decade ago.

While I’m all for nationwide fiber like the rest of us, as an IT consultant by day, I know the tough realities of broadband penetration in our diverse urban & rural mix that is the USA. Here are some of the roadblocks that the pure optimists continue to overlook.

Verizon’s Lesson with Fiber: a Messy, Messy Game to be in

Simple economics can explain much of the problem with fast-paced fiber rollout stateside. In many ways, Google could (and should) use Verizon’s failed attempt to take FiOS nationwide as a cue to what it can expect in its own forthcoming efforts. It was reported that as of mid last year, FiOS held a nominal subscription base of roughly 5.1 million households. In comparison, the largest cable (coax) broadband provider in the USA, Comcast, holds somewhere between 17-19 million subscribers right now. No wonder Wall Street held Verizon’s feet to the fire, and ultimately forced its arm on exiting this ‘wild west’ of a service buildout.

Most people clamoring for Google to expand Fiber don’t know the half of what goes into a fiber network build. Before Google or Verizon can even start taking pre-orders for such service from households, there is a nightmarish mix of legal, financial, and technical boundaries that need to be overcome. Franchise agreements generally have to be negotiated with each and every municipality that is up for consideration. If other providers have exclusivity contracts in a given area, let the legal wrangling begin. And the mess only continues, as a myriad of permits are generally needed to install fresh lines in a small urban area — including state and local permits, as needed, depending on which roadways and areas are controlled by a given authority.

No better example is needed than the delays that Kansas City, Missouri is running into with rolling out its promised Google Fiber. Local cable providers there are up in arms over Google’s preferred treatment by local authorities. More importantly, there is a big rift on how these new fiber lines are to be installed in the community. The preferred, and cheapest, method happens to be utilizing existing cable-ways via electric poles, but this requires using (very) specially trained crews that are quite costly to hire. The current status page for the city shows the first neighborhoods to get service start this month, but that timeline can already be taken with a grain of salt in light of the lack of news on progress there.

Google Fiber promises gigabit speeds at lower prices than even high speed coax cable providers. But is Google the savior to reign in nationwide fiber for all? Possibly, but due to numerous challenges, I doubt it.

The level of paperwork and overhead required in fiber rollout pales in comparison to the cost complexities with actual installations. As seen above, while running fiber on electrical poles is ideal and logical, it is often met with fierce kickback from local municipal higher ups alongside the many others who share these infrastructure pathways — from electrical companies themselves, to cable providers, and telephone companies, to name a few.

Another option, and one which is less susceptible to weather and the elements, happens to be underground fiber, but this has numerous drawbacks of its own. Digging permits, existing utility lines, and costs related to reconstruction after installation all dog these endeavors to the point where rollout either slows down indefinitely or gets abandoned altogether.

Sprawling suburban areas like my own backyard of Park Ridge, IL provide enough  headache for companies like Wide Open West engaging in limited fiber expansion for key areas. I can only imagine what would happen if Google had to install underground fiber in the center of our next-door monster neighbor, Chicago.

Rural America is always an Afterthought

Over 14.5 million Americans, all located in rural areas, still have zero access to any form of broadband. Troubling indeed, and definitely the reason why AOL can still lay claim to nearly three million subscribers. But if you had to pinpoint one reason why broadband penetration in the sticks was so poor, there wouldn’t be a single culprit to point fingers at.

Cities and towns blame lack of provider willingness to expand; providers blame staggering costs to build out oodles of infrastructure for a scattering of residents; and rural Americans refuse to pay boatloads for sub-standard broadband when dial up is still relatively dirt cheap. In simple words, the entire situation has been anything but a win-win for any side.

The realities of expanding access in the vast heartland of America is mind boggling. Many small towns sit dozens, if not hundreds, of miles apart from one another and the cabling, manpower, and future upkeep for relatively limited return on investment is what keeps many providers from stretching their reach. The numbers just don’t make sense any way they look at it. Even if a small rural town was connected with full fiber access to each neighborhood, the provider would have to outlay nearly all of the capital expenditures necessary to get this in place.

Surely, Google could charge new customers for a fair share of their homes’ installation fees, but in order for customers to bite, the price would have to be right. There’s no way that Google’s fee schedule for Kansas City would hold true for any regular rural community. As opposed to larger urban and suburban centers that take advantage of the economies of scale that come with such locales, rural America would be forced to foot a larger sliver of the installation bill — or expect Google to do so. If Verizon’s FiOS is any lesson for us on fiber rollout, don’t expect the latter to hold true in the long term.

While the 2010 initiative under the moniker of the National Broadband Plan was devised to solve these dilemmas, the program has raised more questions then it has solved. Wild cost estimates have still to be hammered out (with some guesses putting such expansion at close to $350 billion USD) and numerous voices of opposition are claiming the NBP will only stifle  innovation, growth, and ultimately lead to higher prices for rural areas. A federally backed plan to address broadband is definitely desirable, but in its current form, the NBP is not living up to expectations.

The Chicken or the Egg Dilemma: Subscribers or Penetration First?

This is probably the trickiest aspect to any proposed fiber rollout. Does there have to be a minimum number of potential subscribers in a given area before a provider will promise a fiber expansion? Or does the provider take an educated gamble and just build out blindly? The real answer is one buried in a little bit of both angles to this reality.

ISPs (like Google) of course want to have a solid commitment from a given percentage of customers in a community. But most Americans won’t jump on the fiber bandwagon without letting the service(s) mature a bit and outgrow their first iteration bugs. This natural hesitation scares the likes of any potential fiber provider, as their success lays directly with pulling in as many first-generation customers as possible to sustain continued service growth.

Verizon’s CFO made it pretty clear last year that the company was opting to raise prices in the face of limited adoption by customers. What choice did Verizon have? They have spent admirably since 2005 to get FiOS rolling in numerous markets (primarily situated on or near the East coast) and while they don’t have any new plans for fresh expansion, they do have existing market commitments to uphold.

Fiber isn’t something you can roll up and change in relatively short order, such as wireless cell networks moving from WiMAX and HSPA+ to LTE, for example. Fiber is a huge up front expense not unlike our crumbling copper telco network — once it’s here, someone needs to support it one way or another, high prices or not. Those who made the early move either bite the higher pricing, or switch off to older technologies they presumably left for the very same reason. Go figure.

Much of the opposition to fiber adoption could indirectly come from regular citizens who have no intention of switching service providers at all. Even in my broadband-plastered suburb of Park Ridge, our company FireLogic still has customers on dial up service who refuse to upgrade. They are under the illusion that “it just works” and they don’t need anything better.

In many cases, the service is either on par or cheaper than the lowest tiers of broadband, so the case against dial up becomes even harder for these individuals. The same goes for customers on sub-standard DSL who will not consider faster options like cable. To many, what they have is what they intend to have for the long term. Fiber won’t change their minds unless extreme price hikes made moving a necessity. A path of least resistance keeps services like AOL operating for a sizable minority of its subscriber base.

But if raising prices is Verizon’s way of battling limited uptake, doesn’t this defeat the goal of cheap fiber for the masses? It most definitely does. Subsequently, it further allows market pricing for competitive providers of cable and DSL service to stay artificially high. As if cable monsters like Comcast needed any more reason to keep prices inching upward. Premature “harvesting” of customers, as analysts are calling Verizon’s FiOS moves, is not the solution to establish and keep fiber expansion growing nationwide.

No one knows if Google will be forced into similar corners with its Google Fiber service if adoption doesn’t meet expected levels. But if so, those clamoring for the search giant to bring its Fiber service nationwide could start to rethink their wishes.

Google Fiber for All? Lofty, but unlikely

In a perfect world, Google Fiber would blanket America. But if the above roadblocks (and Verizon’s own troubles in fiber) are any indication, we need to tone down our expectations quite a bit. Even if Google had the motivation and financial backing to take the service across the USA, it would hit major urban markets first and then crawl outwards into the suburbs at a slow, painstaking pace. Our nation’s biggest coax providers started their cable buildouts in the 1960s, and today we are still struggling to extend those networks past suburban areas. History tells an obvious lesson — infrastructure growth in the United States is a tough-as-hell endeavor, and not for the faint of heart.

The most likely scenario for Google Fiber is a staggered introduction into new markets every few years. The biggest cities would act as the incubators, providing subscriber padding to back capital expenditures and to gauge capacity and upkeep needs for the longer term. Suburbs would then receive service capability once their neighboring saturated urban cities were solidly covered, and those out in rural America would likely be left out in the cold indefinitely.

Unless government subsidies make it financially feasible to bring above-ground fiber to these rural areas, I can foresee Google handling these customers just like Verizon is itching towards doing; cutting off fiber expansion at some point and merely pushing high speed cell coverage through some fashion of partnerships with the likes of Sprint, ATT, Verizon or T-Mobile.

So while it’s great to stay optimistic about Google’s Fiber plans for the rest of America, let’s keep our expectations in check. This entire discussion about nationwide fiber is a topic that feels more like a “been there, done that” style debate when it comes to American infrastructure. Everyone wants it, yet no one knows how to both pay for it and keep it sustainable for the long run. Here’s hoping that Google can pull off a miracle, but like many, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Derrick Wlodarz is an IT Specialist that owns Park Ridge, IL (USA) based technology consulting & service company FireLogic, with over 8+ years of IT experience in the private and public sectors. He holds numerous technical credentials from Microsoft, Google, and CompTIA and specializes in consulting customers on growing hot technologies such as Office 365, Google Apps, cloud hosted VoIP, among others. Derrick is an active member of CompTIA’s Subject Matter Expert Technical Advisory Council that shapes the future of CompTIA exams across the world. You can reach him at derrick at wlodarz dot net.