These last few months have presented some complicated security stories, and this week we took steps to untangle them. We looked at the many, many ways in which the FBI hacks people, revelations of which have been trickling out for decades. And we broke down just how hackers were able to lift 81 million from a Bangladeshi bank in a matter of hours--well short of their billion-dollar goal, but still a hefty sum, cleverly obtained. In the world of software, Google has finally offered end-to-end encryption in its messaging products. It's Allo and Duo, new chat and video apps that use the stalwart end-to-end encryption known as Signal. On Allo, end-to-end kicks in only when you're in incognito mode, which we guess is better than nothing.

Google is announcing a new messaging app today. It's called Allo and its main feature is a Google assistant that's built right in. Google says it'll be available later this summer -- for free -- on both iOS and Android. Allo (pronounced like "Aloe" and not like "'allo, guv'nor!") is a mobile-only app that you might think is meant to replace Google's other messaging app, Hangouts. Allo is explicitly meant to be a fresh start for Google's new communication's division (which also runs Hangouts and Project Fi). "It's really liberating to start from scratch sometimes," says Erik Kay, director of engineering, communications products.

In my last post, I discussed how human agents and human assisted virtual agents (HAVAs) can work together when machine learning and artificial intelligence are applied to customer care systems. Now let's take it a step further. In machine learning you often need to compare or "match" things. For example, when you are looking for the right answer in a database, you compare the question to the possible answers stored there. If you want to sort intents into buckets (so-called clustering) you need to compare them with each other and see how similar they are.

An early Google employee tests different apps in his recently remodeled San Francisco home. The home's automation system can be accessed by smart phone; the front door has an automated video doorbell. Facebook founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg created the world's largest media owner, with 1.6 billion users, but it does not produce content. DIGITAL technology has quickly knocked some of the world's biggest businesses off their perches and will soon make more radical changes to our everyday lives. Tech experts have been surprised by the speed that consumers have flocked to global online platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, and believe it's only the beginning -- with artificial intelligence and internet-connected homes among the next big growth areas.

Spring XD addresses the new demands of big data and real-time data pipelining, but it sets a foundation for much more. Data Science, Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics are becoming more common across industries. The most successful and innovative companies are currently exploring live data streaming scenarios instead of the traditional batch collection, storage, ETL-like transformations and offline analytical solutions. Two main reasons are demanding this change. First, some data is really only valuable in the moment it's connected--as the half-life of its business value degrades quickly.

Businesspeople need to demand more from machine learning so they can connect data scientists' work to relevant action. This requires basic machine learning literacy -- what kinds of problems can machine learning solve, and how to talk about those problems with data scientists. Linear regression and feature selection are two such foundational topics. Linear regression is a powerful technique for predicting numbers from other data. Imagine you have an imperative to predict basketball scores from game statistics, and you miraculously know absolutely nothing about basketball. The fact that a hoop is involved is news to you.

Global services juggernaut Accenture is partnering with IT and business process automation specialist IPsoft to build a new Accenture practice dedicated to bringing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to global enterprises. Earlier this week, the partners announced the creation of an Accenture Amelia practice built around IPsoft's Amelia cognitive agent, an AI that emulates human intelligence and can communicate with natural language. IPsoft has positioned Amelia as "your first digital employee" -- one that can take on a wide range of service desk roles. "This cutting-edge new practice is going to give our clients more artificial intelligence firepower by accelerating their ability to apply AI to significantly improve their operations and create new growth opportunities for their business," says Paul Daugherty, CTO, Accenture. "One of the ways Accenture is going to do this is by using IPsoft's Amelia Platform to develop artificial intelligence strategies, solutions and consulting services for our clients in the banking, insurance and travel industries."

With over 500 companies developing cognitive systems, we're seeing patterns emerge around the creation of cognitive systems at the business unit, business process, and application levels. By selecting a subset of these companies to compare, we can see a few of the leading business units and processes that are going cognitive. We also discover how various Watson services are combined to create to address these business needs. These topics and more were covered in the recent Emerging Cognitive Patterns webinar. A few highlights are discussed briefly below but refer to the full webinar slide deck for complete details.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI can also be used to analyze the data produced by IoT, social media, mobile phones and other sources to provide active learning analytics that can create a virtuous circle. Not too long ago, A.I. seemed a distant dream for many. Today, it is all around us. We carry A.I. in our pockets, in our cars, and in many of the web services we use throughout the day.

Google wants to play an even bigger role in managing people's daily lives, while also nudging them into an alternate reality, as the Internet company responds to competitive threats posed by Facebook, Amazon and Apple. As part of an onslaught of upcoming products, Google will implant a more personable form of artificial intelligence into an Internet-connected device called Home, which echoes the Echo, Amazon.com's Meanwhile, Google will also delve deeper into the still-nascent realm of virtual reality with a system called Daydream that's meant to challenge Facebook-owned Oculus's early lead in fabricating artificial worlds. In an attempt to outshine Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system, including the ability to run apps without actually installing them on a device. That feature, called Instant Apps, might have been the biggest breakthrough that Google announced Wednesday at its annual developers conference held in an amphitheater located a few blocks from its Mountain View, California, headquarters.