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Looks like Diddy won't be going in on that NFL dream. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/diddy-and-steph-curry-have-reportedly-dropped-out-of-bid-for-carolina-panthers-news.46422.htmlView the full article

Birdman and Mannie Fresh aren't holding back on "Desiigner Caskets." https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/birdman-and-mannie-fresh-are-back-as-big-tymers-on-desiigner-caskets-new-song.1977893.htmlView the full article

Yung Bleu delivers on visuals for the opener of his "Investments 5" tape. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/yung-bleu-and-lil-durk-drops-visuals-for-smooth-operator-new-video.43449.htmlView the full article

Nick Grant doubles down with a new clip for "'96 Bulls." https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/nick-grant-follows-up-96-bulls-with-black-and-white-visuals-new-video.43448.htmlView the full article

Hundreds of thousands of people showed up in Washington, D.C. to attend Saturday's March For Our Lives. As you might expect, that kind of turnout makes for some pretty impressive photos — even from space. New images from DigitalGlobe's Worldview-2 satellite show the sea of people — and their signs — gathered to march and rally for common-sense gun reform. They're an astounding reminder of the sheer size of this movement. Isn't that right, NRA? SEE ALSO: Emma Gonzalez's March For Our Lives speech will go down in history See for yourself. Image: satellite image ©2018 DigitalGlobe Image: satellite image ©2018 DigitalGlobe Read more... More about March For Our Lives, Culture, Activism, and SpaceView the full article

Facts don't lie. That's as true now as it was at Donald Trump's January 2017 inauguration. The estimated turnout at the March For Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C. falls at around 800,000. That data point comes from official connected to the demonstration's organizers, speaking to NBC. SEE ALSO: Emma Gonzalez's March For Our Lives speech will go down in history It's also a significantly higher number than earlier forecasts had predicted. Officials connected with today’s #MarchForOurLives here in D.C. tell @NBCNews that they are estimating a crowd size of *800,000* after forecasts of 500,000 Sure feels likes that from our vantage point on the ground. — Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) March 24, 2018 Read more... More about Culture, Donald Trump, Activism, Inauguration 2017, and March For Our LivesView the full article

Auris Health (née Auris Surgical Robots) has done a pretty good job flying under the radar, in spite of raising a massive amount of capital and listing one of the key people behind the da Vinci surgical robot among its founders. With FDA clearance finally out of the way, however, the Redwood City-based startup medical startup is ready to start talking. This week, Auris revealed the Monarch Platform, which swaps the da Vinci’s surgical approach for something far less invasive. The system utilizes the common endoscopy procedure to a insert a flexible robot into hard to reach places inside the human body. A doctor trained on the system uses a video game-style controller to navigate inside, with help from 3D models. Monarch’s first target is lung cancer, the which tops the list of deadliest cancers. More deaths could be stopped, if doctors were able to catch the disease in its early stages, but the lung’s complex structures, combined with current techniques, make the process difficult. According to the company, “More than 90-percent of people diagnosed with lung cancer do not survive, in part because it is often found at an advanced stage.” “A CT scan shows a mass or a lesion,” CEO Frederic Moll tells TechCrunch. “It doesn’t tell you what it is. Then you have to get a piece of lung, and if it’s a small lesion. It isn’t that easy — it can be quite a traumatic procedure. So you’d like to do it a very systematic and minimally invasive fashion. Currently it’s difficult with manual techniques and 40-percent of the time, there is no diagnosis. This is has been a problem for many years and [inhibits] the ability of a clinician to diagnose and treat early-stage cancer. Auris was founded half a dozen years ago, in which time the company has managed to raise a jaw-dropping $500 million, courtesy of Mithril Capital Management, Lux Capital, Coatue Management and Highland Capital. The company says the large VC raise and long runway were necessary factors in building its robust platform. “We are incredibly fortunate to have an investor base that is supportive of our vision and committed to us for the long-term,” CSO Josh DeFonzo tells TechCrunch. “The investments that have been made in Auris are to support both the development of a very robust product pipeline, as well as successful clinical adoption of our technology to improve patient outcomes.” With that funding and FDA approval for Monarch out of the way, the company has an aggressive timeline. Moll says Auris is hoping to bring the system to hospitals and outpatient centers by the end of the year. And once it’s out in the wild, Monarch’s disease detecting capabilities will eventually extend beyond lung cancer. “We have developed what we call a platform technology,” says Moll. “Bronchoscopy is the first application, but this platform will do other robotic endoscopies.” View the full article

"Black Panther" moves past "The Avengers" to become the highest-grossing superhero film of all time. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/black-panther-becomes-top-grossing-superhero-film-of-all-time-in-us-news.46421.htmlView the full article

Make no mistake: March For Our Lives is about curbing gun violence, and the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School made it happen. But having a few famous faces around never hurts. It wasn't just "a few," however. Celebrities were out in full force, and in a variety of locations, to support stricter gun controls and other legislative efforts meant to ensure that incidents like the school shooting in Parkland never occur again. SEE ALSO: Emma Gonzalez's March For Our Lives speech will go down in history To their credit, attending celebrities didn't try to steal the moment or make it about themselves. Some showed up to put their familiar face behind a powerful movement. Others pointed back at the brave teens who turned their grief into something positive. Read more... More about Celebrities, Culture, Social Good, March For Our Lives, and Social Good View the full article

It's one of a few reasons she's no longer Snapping. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/chrissy-teigen-leaves-snapchat-following-tone-deaf-rihanna-ad-news.46420.htmlView the full article

Hip Hop's finest come out almost unanimously in support of the #MarchForOurLives Movement. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/snoop-dogg-mariah-carey-ty-dolla-sign-and-other-artists-show-support-for-marchforourlives-news.46419.htmlView the full article

A seemingly endless variety of signs were on display at the March For Our Lives this weekend, but look closely and you may have noticed a few common trends emerging. One is the bright red sign with bold black text, sometimes accompanied by others like it and usually calling out specific individuals or institutions for their inaction in the face of tragedy. Like so: Six billboards#MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/MudG0YLwTk — Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) March 24, 2018 Four Billboards Outside Washington D.Cpic.twitter.com/4jNq6iSjvT — Kat Gluesenkamp (@katgluesenkamp) March 23, 2018 Read more... The origins of these billboards and Three Billboards More about Movies, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, March For Our Lives, Entertainment, and Movies Tv ShowsView the full article

Andra Day, Vic Mensa, Demi Lovato, and others also took the stage at the Washington, D.C. demonstration View the full article

You're going to remember this speech for a long time. At Saturday's March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., Parkland activist Emma Gonzalez stood silently crying at the podium for six minutes and 20 seconds — the amount of time it took for a shooter to steal the lives of 17 of her classmates. "In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone, was forever altered," she said. "Everyone who was there understands. Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands." Read more... More about Emma Gonzalez, March For Our Lives, Culture, and Activism View the full article

Tim Cook looks at Facebook's messy Cambridge Analytica affair as something of a wake-up call. The Apple CEO has largely kept quiet on privacy issues since Facebook's troubles sprung up last week. That's when we learned that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica quietly, deceptively gathered data belonging to more than 50 million Facebook users in 2014. SEE ALSO: Senators demand Mark Zuckerberg testify on Cambridge Analytica scandal Cook's silence ended abruptly on Saturday when he fielded a question about the Facebook situation and how it affects his views on data privacy. Speaking at the China Development Forum in Beijing, Cook voiced his support for government regulation (h/t Bloomberg). Read more... More about Tech, Facebook, Apple, Tim Cook, and Data PrivacyView the full article

A play-by-play of the (mostly one-sided) feud. https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/joyner-lucas-vs-logic-beef-a-timeline-news.46408.htmlView the full article

Who’s to blame for the leaking of 50 million Facebook users’ data? Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke several days of silence in the face of a raging privacy storm to go on CNN this week to say he was sorry. He also admitted the company had made mistakes; said it had breached the trust of users; and said he regretted not telling Facebookers at the time their information had been misappropriated. Meanwhile, shares in the company have been taking a battering. And Facebook is now facing multiple shareholder and user lawsuits. Pressed on why he didn’t inform users, in 2015, when Facebook says it found out about this policy breach, Zuckerberg avoided a direct answer — instead fixing on what the company did (asked Cambridge Analytica and the developer whose app was used to suck out data to delete the data) — rather than explaining the thinking behind the thing it did not do (tell affected Facebook users their personal information had been misappropriated). Essentially Facebook’s line is that it believed the data had been deleted — and presumably, therefore, it calculated (wrongly) that it didn’t need to inform users because it had made the leak problem go away via its own backchannels. Except of course it hadn’t. Because people who want to do nefarious things with data rarely play exactly by your rules just because you ask them to. There’s an interesting parallel here with Uber’s response to a 2016 data breach of its systems. In that case, instead of informing the ~57M affected users and drivers that their personal data had been compromised, Uber’s senior management also decided to try and make the problem go away — by asking (and in their case paying) hackers to delete the data. Aka the trigger response for both tech companies to massive data protection fuck-ups was: Cover up; don’t disclose. Facebook denies the Cambridge Analytica instance is a data breach — because, well, its systems were so laxly designed as to actively encourage vast amounts of data to be sucked out, via API, without the check and balance of those third parties having to gain individual level consent. So in that sense Facebook is entirely right; technically what Cambridge Analytica did wasn’t a breach at all. It was a feature, not a bug. Clearly that’s also the opposite of reassuring. Yet Facebook and Uber are companies whose businesses rely entirely on users trusting them to safeguard personal data. The disconnect here is gapingly obvious. What’s also crystal clear is that rules and systems designed to protect and control personal data, combined with active enforcement of those rules and robust security to safeguard systems, are absolutely essential to prevent people’s information being misused at scale in today’s hyperconnected era. But before you say hindsight is 20/20 vision, the history of this epic Facebook privacy fail is even longer than the under-disclosed events of 2015 suggest — i.e. when Facebook claims it found out about the breach as a result of investigations by journalists. What the company very clearly turned a blind eye to is the risk posed by its own system of loose app permissions that in turn enabled developers to suck out vast amounts of data without having to worry about pesky user consent. And, ultimately, for Cambridge Analytica to get its hands on the profiles of ~50M US Facebookers for dark ad political targeting purposes. European privacy campaigner and lawyer Max Schrems — a long time critic of Facebook — was actually raising concerns about the Facebook’s lax attitude to data protection and app permissions as long ago as 2011. Indeed, in August 2011 Schrems filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission exactly flagging the app permissions data sinkhole (Ireland being the focal point for the complaint because that’s where Facebook’s European HQ is based). “[T]his means that not the data subject but “friends” of the data subject are consenting to the use of personal data,” wrote Schrems in the 2011 complaint, fleshing out consent concerns with Facebook’s friends’ data API. “Since an average facebook user has 130 friends, it is very likely that only one of the user’s friends is installing some kind of spam or phishing application and is consenting to the use of all data of the data subject. There are many applications that do not need to access the users’ friends personal data (e.g. games, quizzes, apps that only post things on the user’s page) but Facebook Ireland does not offer a more limited level of access than “all the basic information of all friends”. “The data subject is not given an unambiguous consent to the processing of personal data by applications (no opt-in). Even if a data subject is aware of this entire process, the data subject cannot foresee which application of which developer will be using which personal data in the future. Any form of consent can therefore never be specific,” he added. As a result of Schrems’ complaint, the Irish DPC audited and re-audited Facebook’s systems in 2011 and 2012. The result of those data audits included a recommendation that Facebook tighten app permissions on its platform, according to a spokesman for the Irish DPC, who we spoke to this week. The spokesman said the DPC’s recommendation formed the basis of the major platform change Facebook announced in 2014 — aka shutting down the Friends data API — albeit too late to prevent Cambridge Analytica from being able to harvest millions of profiles’ worth of personal data via a survey app because Facebook only made the change gradually, finally closing the door in May 2015. “Following the re-audit… one of the recommendations we made was in the area of the ability to use friends data through social media,” the DPC spokesman told us. “And that recommendation that we made in 2012, that was implemented by Facebook in 2014 as part of a wider platform change that they made. It’s that change that they made that means that the Cambridge Analytica thing cannot happen today. “They made the platform change in 2014, their change was for anybody new coming onto the platform from 1st May 2014 they couldn’t do this. They gave a 12 month period for existing users to migrate across to their new platform… and it was in that period that… Cambridge Analytica’s use of the information for their data emerged. “But from 2015 — for absolutely everybody — this issue with CA cannot happen now. And that was following our recommendation that we made in 2012.” Given his 2011 complaint about Facebook’s expansive and abusive historical app permissions, Schrems has this week raised an eyebrow and expressed surprise at Zuckerberg’s claim to be “outraged” by the Cambridge Analytica revelations — now snowballing into a massive privacy scandal. In a statement reflecting on developments he writes: “Facebook has millions of times illegally distributed data of its users to various dodgy apps — without the consent of those affected. In 2011 we sent a legal complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner on this. Facebook argued that this data transfer is perfectly legal and no changes were made. Now after the outrage surrounding Cambridge Analytica the Internet giant suddenly feels betrayed seven years later. Our records show: Facebook knew about this betrayal for years and previously argues that these practices are perfectly legal.” So why did it take Facebook from September 2012 — when the DPC made its recommendations — until May 2014 and May 2015 to implement the changes and tighten app permissions? The regulator’s spokesman told us it was “engaging” with Facebook over that period of time “to ensure that the change was made”. But he also said Facebook spent some time pushing back — questioning why changes to app permissions were necessary and dragging its feet on shuttering the friends’ data API. “I think the reality is Facebook had questions as to whether they felt there was a need for them to make the changes that we were recommending,” said the spokesman. “And that was, I suppose, the level of engagement that we had with them. Because we were relatively strong that we felt yes we made the recommendation because we felt the change needed to be made. And that was the nature of the discussion. And as I say ultimately, ultimately the reality is that the change has been made. And it’s been made to an extent that such an issue couldn’t occur today.” “That is a matter for Facebook themselves to answer as to why they took that period of time,” he added. Of course we asked Facebook why it pushed back against the DPC’s recommendation in September 2012 — and whether it regrets not acting more swiftly to implement the changes to its APIs, given the crisis its business is now faced having breached user trust by failing to safeguard people’s data. We also asked why Facebook users should trust Zuckerberg’s claim, also made in the CNN interview, that it’s now ‘open to being regulated’ — when its historical playbook is packed with examples of the polar opposite behavior, including ongoing attempts to circumvent existing EU privacy rules. A Facebook spokeswoman acknowledged receipt of our questions this week — but the company has not responded to any of them. The Irish DPC chief, Helen Dixon, also went on CNN this week to give her response to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data misuse crisis — calling for assurances from Facebook that it will properly police its own data protection policies in future. “Even where Facebook have terms and policies in place for app developers, it doesn’t necessarily give us the assurance that those app developers are abiding by the policies Facebook have set, and that Facebook is active in terms of overseeing that there’s no leakage of personal data. And that conditions, such as the prohibition on selling on data to further third parties is being adhered to by app developers,” said Dixon. “So I suppose what we want to see change and what we want to oversee with Facebook now and what we’re demanding answers from Facebook in relation to, is first of all what pre-clearance and what pre-authorization do they do before permitting app developers onto their platform. And secondly, once those app developers are operative and have apps collecting personal data what kind of follow up and active oversight steps does Facebook take to give us all reassurance that the type of issue that appears to have occurred in relation to Cambridge Analytica won’t happen again.” Firefighting the raging privacy crisis, Zuckerberg has committed to conducting a historical audit of every app that had access to “a large amount” of user data around the time that Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest so much data. So it remains to be seen what other data misuses Facebook will unearth — and have to confess to now, long after the fact. But any other embarrassing data leaks will sit within the same unfortunate context — which is to say that Facebook could have prevented these problems if it had listened to the very valid concerns data protection experts were raising more than six years ago. Instead, it chose to drag its feet. And the list of awkward questions for the Facebook CEO keeps getting longer. View the full article

He says he discouraged his children from participating in gun protest walkouts View the full article

The “repeat infringer” issue is a hot topic in US Courts, leading to much uncertainty among various Internet services. Under the DMCA, companies are required to implement a reasonable policy to deal with frequent offenders. This not only applies to commercial Internet providers, as Cox found out the hard way, but also to websites that host user-uploaded content, such as video and image hosting services. Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an order that provides some further clarification on how a repeat infringer policy should be documented. The case in question was filed by adult content producer Ventura Content, which accused the adult-themed site Motherless of copyright infringement. While Motherless relies on user-uploaded content, the adult producer argued that it is liable for pirated content on its site. In a majority ruling, the Court found that Motherless did not know about the alleged infringements before the lawsuit was filed and removed them within a day of being properly alerted. This means that the site is entitled to safe harbor protection if it implemented a reasonable repeat infringer policy, which brings us to the crux of the case. The operator of the site, Joshua Lange, is the sole employee who single-handedly deals with all takedown requests. The site also has a page informing users that there is a repeat infringer policy, without providing specific details. The adult content producer argued that the site had failed to reasonably implement such a policy, but the Court disagreed, noting that the DMCA doesn’t prescribe a written policy. “The details of the termination policy are not written down. However, the statute does not say that the policy details must be written, just that the site must inform subscribers of ‘a policy’ of terminating repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances,” the Court states. In this case, the details of the policy were in the mind of the operator, who made his decisions based on a case-by-case evaluation. “Lange uses his judgment, not a mechanical test, to terminate infringers based on the volume, history, severity, and intentions behind a user’s infringing content uploads.” The fact that the details of the policy were not spelled out doesn’t mean that Motherless has no safe harbor protection, although this may be different for large companies. “A company might need a written policy to tell its employees or independent contractors what to do if there were a significant number of them, but Motherless is not such a firm. “So the lack of a detailed written policy is not by itself fatal to safe harbor eligibility. Neither is the fact that Motherless did not publicize its internal criteria,” the Court adds. Surprisingly, the site’s operator didn’t keep any written logs of repeat infringers either. He simply kept track of them in his head and terminated more than a thousand accounts this way. This didn’t work flawlessly, as a few repeat infringers slipped through, but the Court believes it was good enough. “It is tempting, perhaps, to say that a policy is not ‘reasonably’ implemented if it does not include both a database of users whose uploads have generated DMCA notices and some automated means of catching them if they do it again. But the statute does not require that,” the order reads. Overall, the Court sides with Motherless and its operator and affirmed the summary judgment in its favor. This case is unique in many ways. Among other things, it shows that written details or logs are not always required for a “reasonable” repeat infringer policy. While this could be different for large companies, it is likely to be referenced frequently in related cases. This week, hosting provider Steadfast was quick to use the ruling to argue that it sufficiently adopted and informed users of its repeat infringer policy. —- A copy of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling is available here (pdf). Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons. View the full article

There is a familiar trope in Hollywood cyberwarfare movies. A lone whiz kid hacker (often with blue, pink, or platinum hair) fights an evil government. Despite combatting dozens of cyber defenders, each of whom appears to be working around the clock and has very little need to use the facilities, the hacker is able to defeat all security and gain access to the secret weapon plans or whatever have you. The weapon stopped, the hacker becomes a hero. The real world of security operations centers (SOCs) couldn’t be further from this silver screen fiction. Today’s hackers (who are the bad guys, by the way) don’t have the time to custom hack a system and play cat-and-mouse with security professionals. Instead, they increasingly build a toolbox of automated scripts and simultaneously hit hundreds of targets using, say, a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability and trying to take advantage of it as much as possible before it is patched. Security analysts working in a SOC are increasingly overburdened and overwhelmed by the sheer number of attacks they have to process. Yet, despite the promises of automation, they are often still using manual processes to counter these attacks. Fighting automated attacks with manual actions is like fighting mechanized armor with horses: futile. Nonetheless, that’s the current state of things in the security operations world, but as V.Jay LaRosa, the VP of Global Security Architecture of payroll and HR company ADP explained to me, “The industry, in general from a SOC operations perspective, it is about to go through a massive revolution.” That revolution is automation. Many companies have claimed that they are bringing machine learning and artificial intelligence to security operations, and the buzzword has been a mainstay of security startup pitch decks for some times. Results in many cases have been nothing short of lackluster at best. But a new generation of startups is now replacing soaring claims with hard science, and focusing on the time-consuming low-hanging fruit of the security analyst’s work. One of those companies, as we will learn shortly, is JASK. The company, which is based in San Francisco and Austin, wants to create a new market for what it calls the “autonomous security operations center.” Our goal is to understand the current terrain for SOCs, and how such a platform might fit into the future of cybersecurity. Data wrangling and the challenge of automating security The security operations center is the central nervous system of corporate security departments today. Borrowing concepts from military organizational design, the modern SOC is designed to fuse streams of data into one place, giving security analysts a comprehensive overview of a company’s systems. Those data sources typically include network logs, an incident detection and response system, web application firewall data, internal reports, antivirus, and many more. Large companies can easily have dozens of data sources. Once all of that information has been ingested, it is up to a team of security analysts to evaluate that data and start to “connect the dots.” These professionals are often overworked since the growth of the security team is generally reactive to the threat environment. Startups might start with a single security professional, and slowly expand that team as new threats to the business are discovered. Given the scale and complexity of the data, investigating a single security alert can take significant time. An analyst might spend 50 minutes just pulling and cleaning the necessary data to be able to evaluate the likelihood of a threat to the company. Worse, alerts are sufficiently variable that the analyst often has to repeatedly perform this cleanup work for every alert. Data wrangling is one of the most fundamental problems that every SOC faces. All of those streams of data need to be constantly managed to ensure that they are processed properly. As LaRosa from ADP explained, “The biggest challenge we deal with in this space is that [data] is transformed at the time of collection, and when it is transformed, you lose the raw information.” The challenge then is that “If you don’t transform that data properly, then … all that information becomes garbage.” The challenges of data wrangling aren’t unique to security — teams across the enterprise struggle to design automated solutions. Nonetheless, just getting the right data to the right person is an incredible challenge. Many security teams still manually monitor data streams, and may even write their own ad-hoc batch processing scripts to get data ready for analysis. Managing that data inside the SOC is the job of a security information and event management system (SIEM), which acts as a system of record for the activities and data flowing through security operations. Originally focused on compliance, these systems allow analysts to access the data they need, and also log the outcome of any alert investigation. Products like ArcSight and Splunk and many others here have owned this space for years, and the market is not going anywhere. Due to their compliance focus though, security management systems often lack the kinds of automated features that would make analysts more efficient. One early response to this challenge was a market known as user entity behavior analytics (UEBA). These products, which include companies like Exabeam, analyze typical user behavior and search for anomalies. In this way, they are meant to integrate raw data together to highlight activities for security analysts, saving them time and attention. This market was originally standalone, but as Gartner has pointed out, these analytics products are increasingly migrating into the security information management space itself as a sort of “smarter SIEM.” These analytics products added value, but they didn’t solve the comprehensive challenge of data wrangling. Ideally, a system would ingest all of the security data and start to automatically detect correlations, grouping disparate data together into a cohesive security alert that could be rapidly evaluated by a security analyst. This sort of autonomous security has been a dream of security analysts for years, but that dream increasingly looks like it could become reality quite soon. LaRosa of ADP told me that “Organizationally, we have got to figure out how we help our humans to work smarter.” David Tsao, Global Information Security Officer of Veeva Systems, was more specific, asking “So how do you organize data in a way so that a security engineer … can see how these various events make sense?” JASK and the future of “autonomous security” That’s where a company like JASK comes in. Its goal, simply put, is to take all the disparate data streams entering the security operations center and automatically group them into attacks. From there, analysts can then evaluate each threat holistically, saving them time and allowing them to focus on the sophisticated analytical part of their work, instead of on monotonous data wrangling. The startup was founded by Greg Martin, a security veteran who previously founded threat intelligence platform ThreatStream (now branded Anomali). Before that, he worked as an executive at ArcSight, a company that is one of the incumbent behemoths in security information management. Martin explained to me that “we are now far and away past what we can do with just human-led SOCs.” The challenge is that every single security alert coming in has to go through manual review. “I really feel like the state of the art in security operations is really how we manufactured cars in the 1950s — hand-painting every car,” Martin said. “JASK was founded to just clean up the mess.” Machine learning is one of these abused terms in the startup world, and certainly that is no exception in cybersecurity. Visionary security professionals wax poetic about automated systems that instantly detect a hacker as they attempt to gain access to the system and immediately respond with tested actions designed to thwart them. The reality is much less exciting: just connecting data from disparate sources is a major hurdle for AI researchers in the security space. Martin’s philosophy with JASK is that the industry should walk before it runs. “We actually look to the autonomous car industry,” he said to me. “They broke the development roadmap into phases.” For JASK, “Phase one would be to collect all the data and prepare and identify it for machine learning,” he said. LaRosa of ADP, talking about the potential of this sort of automation, said that “you are taking forty to fifty minutes of busy work out of that process and allow [the security analysts] to get right to the root cause.” This doesn’t mean that security analysts are suddenly out of a job, indeed far from it. Analysts still have to interpret the information that has been compiled, and even more importantly, they have to decide on what is the best course of action. Today’s companies are moving from “runbooks” of static response procedures to automated security orchestration systems. Machine learning realistically is far from being able to accomplish the full lifecycle of an alert today, although Martin is hopeful that such automation is coming in later phases of the roadmap. Martin tells me that the technology is being used by twenty customers today. The company’s stack is built on technologies like Hadoop, allowing it to process significantly higher volumes of data compared to legacy security products. JASK is essentially carving out a unique niche in the security market today, and the company is currently in beta. The company raised a $2m seed from Battery in early 2016, and a $12m series A led by Dell Technologies Capital, which saw its investment in security startup Zscaler IPO last week. There are thousands of security products in the market, as any visit to the RSA conference will quickly convince you. Unfortunately though, SOCs can’t just be built with tech off the shelf. Every company has unique systems, processes, and threat concerns that security operations need to adapt to, and of course, hackers are not standing still. Products need to constantly change to adapt to those needs, which is why machine learning and its flexibility is so important. Martin said that “we have to bias our algorithms so that you never trust any one individual or any one team. It is a careful controlled dance to build these types of systems to produce general purpose, general results that applies across organizations.” The nuance around artificial intelligence is refreshing in a space that can see incredible hype. Now the hard part is to keep moving that roadmap forward. Maybe that blue-haired silver screen hacker needs some employment. View the full article

Hip hop stars are taking their reputations to Wall Street and Sand Hill road. Unlike their rock star brethren, who’ve historically been disinterested in dabbling with startups, quite a few hip hop artists have amassed good-sized portfolios. They’ve seen a few big hits too, most recently including a massive up round for zero-commission stock trading platform Robinhood, which counted Jay-Z, Nas and Snoop Dogg among its earlier backers. But just how deep does the hip hop-startup relationship go and where is it headed? To shed some light on that question, we put together a review of Crunchbase data on the startup investment activity of famous musicians. We looked at both hip hop and pop stars, culling a list of 21 artists who are either active investors or have joined one or more rounds in recent years. The general conclusion: Artists are doing more deals, raising more funds and backing more companies that graduate to up rounds and exits. Here are a few examples: Besides getting a slice of Robinhood, Jay-Z and his entertainment company, Roc Nation, also saw an early portfolio company, flight club startup JetSmarter, go on to raise financing a year ago at a reported valuation more than $1.5 billion. Roc Nation also made headlines this week for investing in Promise, a startup providing alternatives to incarceration for people who can’t afford bail. QueensBridge Venture Partners, the investment fund co-founded by Nas, was an early-stage investor in video doorbell maker Ring, which Amazon just bought for $1.1 billion. The firm could also see some paper gains this week in the much-anticipated market debut of Dropbox, which it backed in a 2014 Series C round. In addition, QueensBridge participated in a $25 million Series B round for cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase back in 2013. Coinbase’s last reported valuation was around $1.6 billion. Casa Verde Capital, a cannabis-focused venture fund co-founded by Snoop Dogg, has closed its debut fund with $45 million. Just this week it backed a $3.5 million round for vape manufacturer Green Tank. That’s not to say everything a star touches turns multi-platinum. We found quite a few flops in their portfolios and assembled a list here of 10 startups now shuttered that counted a hip hop or pop star among their backers. Becoming and remaining famous requires many of the same skills and qualities as running an entrepreneurial venture, including an exceptional degree of tenacity. Of course, flops are part of life for early-stage investors, so there’s no reason we’d expect celebrities to be an exception. Moreover, most of the now-shuttered companies were not heavily capitalized by venture standards. However, there are some higher-profile or more heavily funded companies on the flop list. One is Washio, a laundry delivery service, which raised $17 million from Nas and 20 other investors before hanging itself out to dry in 2016. Another is Viddy, an app for shooting and sharing video clips backed by Roc Nation. Why the rich, hip and famous like startups A number of venture pundits and pop culture mavens have previously pontificated why celebrities, and hip hop stars in particular, are drawn to startups. One possibility is that rap music and startups resemble each other at the earliest stages, postulates Cam Houser, CEO of the 3 Day Startup Program. Rap music starts with a rapper and a producer. This duality, he says, is similar to the beginning stages of a startup, which commonly also brings together two people, a business and a technical co-founder. Rap and startup entrepreneurship are also both longshot career tracks that celebrate raw ambition and unabashed self-promotion. To make it, however, both require an excellent grasp of what sells in the real world. Branding is perhaps the most common rationale provided for the celebrity-startup connection. With their massive fan bases, swooning coverage and millions of social media followers, celebrities can certainly help get the word out about a new product or app. That said, the attention usually works only if said product also has compelling attributes of its own. One of the less controversial explanations is that becoming and remaining famous requires many of the same skills and qualities as running an entrepreneurial venture, including an exceptional degree of tenacity. It’s also true that in venture capital and the music business, it’s the hits that matter. It helps that we’re seeing plenty of those. View the full article

After the remarkable string of weekends it’s been having, it was really just a matter of time before Black Panther wrestled the top spot from his fellow Avengers. As of today, the Ryan Coogler-directed film is North America’s highest grossing superhero film of all-time (not adjusted for inflation, mind). The news comes via The Hollywood Reporter, which notes that the film has pulled in $624 million on the continent, roaring past 2012’s The Avengers, which made $623.4 million. The film, which cost around $200 million, is now one of only seven movies to make more than $600 million, domestically. Black Panther has been pulling in money at a steady clip since opening, with a record-setting $218 million opening weekend. Worldwide, it’s pulled in $1.2 billion and is on-track to become the third highest-grossing superhero film internationally, behind the first two Avengers films. The third Avengers film, Infinity War, is due out on April 27. Even more so than those films, however, Black Panther has become a cultural touchstone for moviegoers, and, hopefully, a wake up call for Hollywood, which has traditionally shied away from diversity in film. Those who still haven’t seen it, can check out Anthony’s review here — or just take my word that it’s awesome. View the full article

Working with celebrities isn't all sunshine and roses. Take it from two Saturday Night Live alums. During a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Bill Hader and Jay Pharoah revealed the "worst-behaved" musical guest they'd ever encountered during their time on the show: Justin Bieber. SEE ALSO: 'SNL's Pete Davidson gets the 'Queer Eye' treatment from Tan France "He was in a bad place," Hader told Andy Cohen as Pharoah agreed. "Maybe he's in a better place, but then he was in a very – it was rough." As he recalled it, Bieber "just seemed exhausted or at the end of his rope." And while a hot young celebrity acting out is hardly shocking, Bieber stood out because most SNL guests don't act that way. "Everyone's usually on great behavior," said Hader. Read more... More about Justin Bieber, Saturday Night Live, Jay Pharoah, Bill Hader, and Entertainment View the full article

Millions of marchers gathered in cities across the country for Saturday's March For Our Lives — and they brought their best signs with them. Teens have spearheaded this movement for meaningful action on gun violence, and that age group turned out to be particularly creative with their slogans. (No surprise there.) Students from Parkland, Fla., wore price tags reading "$1.05" — the value of a human life, determined after dividing the amount of money Marco Rubio accepted from the NRA by the number of students in Florida. Even from the olds, there were plenty of witty, artful, and poignant messages to go around. Read more... More about March For Our Lives, Culture, Web Culture, and ActivismView the full article

“One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, so it’s important to me” View the full article