Cambridge Analytica may have become the byword for a scandal, but it's not entirely clear that anyone knows exactly what that scandal is. It's more like toxic word association: "Facebook", "data", "harvested", "weaponised", "Trump" and, in this country, most controversially, "Brexit". It was a media firestorm that's yet to be extinguished, a year on from whistleblower Christopher Wylie's revelations in the Observer and the New York Times about how the company acquired the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users in order to target them in political campaigns. This week sees the release of The Great Hack, a Netflix documentary that is the first feature-length attempt to gather all the strands of the affair into some sort of narrative – though it is one contested even by those appearing in the film. "This is not about one company," Julian Wheatland, the ex-chief operating officer of Cambridge Analytica, claims at one point. "This technology is going on unabated and will continue to go on unabated.[…] There was always going to be a Cambridge Analytica. It just sucks to me that it's Cambridge Analytica."

CEOs and CFOs are decidedly more nervous when fielding questions about China during earnings calls this year. What's more, they are more likely to be deceptive with their answers. "Deception associated with questions on China has skyrocketed this quarter, up about 50% from last quarter and more than double a year ago," according to a study by text analytics provider Amenity Analytics. Amenity Analytics is one of a handful of companies that are applying natural language processing (NLP), sentiment analysis and machine learning to the financial sector, evaluating earnings calls and other public meetings to unearth information of value to an investor. It is also rare technology that offers a clear path to ROI.

Japan's mtes Neural Networks and DTCO announced their partnership to promote the "CitiOS Project", combining structural health monitoring (SHM) and blockchain technology to monitor structural changes in infrastructures such as buildings, stations, railways, etc. CitiOS can significantly improve public safety for the areas that have suffered from earthquakes. Earthquakes has always been one of the biggest security issues facing Taiwan and Japan. The damage to infrastructures generated by earthquakes has often caused unacceptable casualties and an irreparable lost in property value. CitiOS will predict whether infrastructures changes in time and take necessary measures to overcome various defects. Moreover, with the aging of population in Japan, they can no longer rely entirely on manpower to manage urban infrastructures.

In the ever changing world of information technology, business organizations are left with humongous amount of data with them. This data includes very critical information for business use, but business organizations are only able to utilize 20% of whole data available with them with the use of traditional data analytics technology. To process and interpret the reaming 80% of the data that is in the form of videos, images, and human voice (also called as dark data), there is a need of cognitive computing systems. Cognitive computing systems are typical combination of hardware and software that constitute natural language processing (NLP) and machine language, and have capability to collect, process, and interpret the dark data available with business organizations. Cognitive computing systems works exactly the phenomena of how a human brain works.

In December 2014, I asked whether we were at the beginning of "the end of the Hadoop bubble." I kept updating my Hadoop bubble watch (here and here) through the much-hyped IPOs of Hortonworks and Cloudera. The question was whether an open-source distributed storage technology which Google invented (and quickly replaced with better tools) could survive as a business proposition at a time when enterprises have moved rapidly to adopting the cloud and "AI"--advanced machine learning or deep learning. In January 2019, perennially unprofitable Hortonworks closed an all-stock $5.2 billion merger with Cloudera. In May 2019, another Hadoop-based provider, MapR, announced that it would shut down if it were unable to find a buyer or a new source of funding.

Products/Services Visa agreed to acquire the token and electronic ticketing business of Rambus for $75 million in cash. The business involved is part of the Smart Card Software subsidiary of Rambus. It includes the former Bell ID mobile-payment businesses and the Ecebs smart-ticketing systems for transit providers. Meanwhile, Rambus expanded its CryptoManager Root of Trust product line. "Security is a mission-critical imperative for SoC designs serving virtually every application space," Neeraj Paliwal, vice president of products, cryptography at Rambus, said in a statement.

A woman uses her smartphone near a booth for the Chinese Internet company Tencent at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing. The company is now preparing to take a firm lead in AI practices. Yet in the midst of uproar and angst, China tech company, Tencent has decided to draw a firm line in the sand and took the opportunity while at the recent Cannes Lions Festival to outline a strategic approach that just may be a huge game-changer in corporate standards around AI practices now and in the future. Delivered onstage by Seng Yee Lau (known as S.Y.), Tencent's Senior Executive Vice President and Chairman, Tencent offered a bold strategy around Tech for Good that, if the company can fully execute, will continue to make it one-t0-watch as a massive global player in the technology space. While the company may have missed its most recent earnings target when it reported figures last month, Tencent still reported adjusted earnings of 32 cents per share on revenue of a whopping $12.69 billion, up 16 percent from a year ago.

Technology news website The Information reported earlier this month that the iPhone maker was considering acquiring the firm as a move to bring aboard some of its engineering talent to boost Apple's own self-driving efforts. One of hundreds of startups pursuing autonomous vehicles, Drive.ai had been running a small fleet of test shuttles in Texas, The Information reported. But the startup told California regulators that it plans to lay off 90 people in a permanent closure. The San Francisco Chronicle earlier reported the closure. In Silicon Valley, it is common for larger companies to acquire struggling startups primarily to hire their engineers, a move known in the industry as an "acqui-hire."

Blue Prism yesterday announced the acquisition of Thoughtonomy, a SaaS-based integrated automation platform with Blue Prism RPA baked into its core. After six years and much flirting with potential suitors, Terry Walby's Thoughtonomy successfully exits into the welcoming arms of Blue Prism. This was always the logical end-game for Terry's business, which he bootstrapped from day 1 and tirelessly pushed at the automation world. HFS was particularly inspired with the firms work at the UK's National Health Services (NHS) (which you can read here). Essentially Thoughtonomy is RPA cognitive capabilities cloud.

Healthcare Cognitive Computing market report is based on present industry situations, market demands, business strategies utilized by prominent players involved in this market along with their growth synopsis. This report has been segmented into types, applications and regions. The report also comprises major drivers boosting this market. Healthcare Cognitive Computing market worth about XX million USD in 2018 and it is expected to reach YY million USD in 2026 with a CAGR of AA% during the forecast period. Cognitive computing (CC) describes technology platforms that are based on the scientific disciplines of artificial intelligence and signal processing.