Author: Ashley McDonald

During my visit to General Electric’s Global Research Centers in San Ramon, California, and Niskayuna, New York, last month, I got what amounts to an end-to-end tour of what GE calls the “Industrial Internet.” The phrase refers to the technologies of cloud computing and the “Internet of Things” applied across a broad swath of GE’s … Continue reading Machine consciousness: Big data analytics and the Internet of Things

It’s a simple enough question: how long does a typical business have to live? Economists have been thinking about that one for decades without a particularly clear answer, but new research by SFI scientists reveals a surprising insight: publicly-traded firms die off at the same rate regardless of their age or economic sector. Continue reading Company mortality: Researchers find patterns in the life and death of firms

… the point of today’s posting is the long, long awaited release of a public version of the Integrated Conflict Early Warning System (ICEWS) dataset, which appeared without fanfare on Dataverse late in the afternoon on Friday, 27 March, with Jay Ulfelder probably responsible for first spotting it. This is a massive resource—the investment in … Continue reading Seven observations on the newly released ICEWS data

Apple has quietly—and not so quietly—been buying up Big Datacompanies over the past few years, most recently acquiring FoundationDB but in 2013 also purchasing Acunu, maker of a real-time analytics platform. The intent seems to be to purchase data infrastructure talent—and very particular talent at that. Basically, Apple needed to get into NoSQL database technology in a bad … Continue reading Why Apple Had To Take The NoSQL Plunge

Calling all Technologists! The FTC has job opportunities available in its newly formed Office of Technology Research and Investigation (OTRI), an office designed to expand the FTC’s capacity to protect consumers in an age of rapid technological innovation. Continue reading Booting up a new research office at the Federal Trade Commission

… Among the provocative views he shared with me is that current database technology from Oracle and others is “obsolete,” and that Facebook is grappling with “the biggest database problem in the world.” Continue reading Michael Stonebraker Explains Oracle’s Obsolescence, Facebook’s Enormous Challenge

Stewart Collis, CTO and co-founder of AWhere, recently tweeted a link to a video by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, Big Question: Feast or Famine? The video highlights the increasing complexity of feeding our rapidly growing population, and Collis noted its relation to his work at AWhere. I recently caught up with … Continue reading Big data’s impact on global agriculture

The MIT Climate CoLab has announced 22 contests that seek high-impact ideas on how to tackle climate change. A project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Collective Intelligence, the Climate CoLab seeks to harness the knowledge and expertise of thousands of experts and non-experts across the world to help solve this massive, complex … Continue reading MIT Climate CoLab seeks high-impact ideas on how to tackle climate change

University of Pittsburgh chancellor Patrick Gallagher calls the volume of healthcare data in the United States “staggering.” “(It is) fast approaching a zettabyte,” Gallagher said, referencing the equivalent of one trillion gigabytes. “Even the terminology doesn’t make sense to many of us.” Gallagher made the comments Monday at a joint news conference with Carnegie Mellon University and … Continue reading Pitt, CMU and UPMC Announce Multimillion Dollar Health Care Data Research Initiative