Monthly Archives: July 2017

Most perceive automation in accountingas automated software, but in reality, automation-driven accounting software actually helps accountants automate all of their processes.

Accounting is a combination of work you do as a human being and the work the software does (storage, defined algorithms validating data and performing defined computations, and so on).

Let us say at your practice the current human-to-machine ratio is 3:1 (the time taken by humans to perform a process from start to end to the time taken by the software to perform its part in that process). Moreover, 75 percentof your particular process involves manual work and the software does 25 percentof it.

What automation does is that it keeps moving this ratio more and more from humans to the software. Let us say it becomes 2:1, so 66 percentby humans and 33 percentby the software. Automation, in effect, identifies the work only humans can do, and that, in essence, is the work you should be doing in any case.

Humans Should Do the Work That Only Humans Can Do

The real impact of automation is life-liberating. As a child, when you were asked, What will you be when you grow up? I am sure that you did not reply, I will take data from A and put it into B. Unfortunately, accounting software made you do exactly that, until now that is. Butautomation is making things different now.

Let us take an example: Write-up work is one of the services provided by a majority of accounting firms. It used to be (and still is for many firms) one of the most manual processes at any accounting firm. Automation started changing that. It is interesting to take a quick snapshot of the progress of automation in the write-up work.

Automation Today

Now, automation technologies are more advanced. They bring in not only the bank transactions, but also the check images and bank statement PDFs. Gone are the manual efforts to follow up with clients to obtain this information. The only manual effort is to code the transactions to correct accounts and to seek clarification if the payee is an individual (as most businesses info can be Googled to identify type of expense).

Even bank feed automation is getting smarter. It remembers which vendor/payee transaction was classified to which account, and the next time accounting software imports the bank transactions, transactions get automatically coded to the correct account.

What remains manual is to classify NEW vendor and payee transactions,and to quickly review if you need to re-classify any transactions. The automated software does most of the work; very less manual work.

Thats not the end. Technologies are getting smarter. Artificial intelligence and machine learning, combined with the ability cloud gives, can (and will) generate accurate, crowd-sourced intelligence to code the transactions to the correct account.

For example, if several other businesses and accountants have a coded transaction for a particular vendor to a particular account, the software will suggest the account to use and it will be based on the type of business. And with secure digital checks, the accounting software can email out several digital checks in just one click, with no need to print or mail checks at all.

All that you need is vendors/payees email addresses; very less manual work.

Use this formula: In the points mentioned above, wherever you see the words manual work,think of it as time and cost and loss of profit. Manual Work = Time, Cost, Loss of Profit

Several research studies prove that humans are more driven by loss aversion than by gains.

Soinstead of having a growth target,reframe it as a loss reduction target. Instead of saying, We will grow our revenue by 20 percentthis year,say, We are losing 20 percentof revenue to our manual process inefficiencies (which, in fact, is a fact if you are not embracing and leveraging automation).

The real impact: Life-liberating. The sheer productivity growth will mean that your firm can service far more number of clients without adding any more overhead and staff.

More and more of your staff will use their knowledge and experience, rather than just using their hands and fingers. It will give them more job satisfaction because they will get an increasing sense of meaningful contribution to your firms success, as well as that of your clients.

And yes, the profitability will increase to levels you never thought was possible. With automation, you can make much more, if you choose to automate your processes.

Originally posted here:

Why Automation Will Liberate You - Accountingweb.com

How, exactly, are people supposed to talk to each other online? For Facebook, this is as much an operational question as it is a philosophical one.

Last week, Facebook announced it has two billion users, which means roughly 27 percent of the worlds 7.5 billion people use the social media network. In a post at Facebooks Hard Questions blog, the company offered a look at the internal logic behind how the company manages hate speech, the day before ProPublica broke a story about apparently hypocritical ways in which those standards are applied. Taken together, they make Facebooks attempt to regulate speech look impossible.

Language is hard. AI trained on human language, for example, will replicate the same biases of the users, just by seeing how words are used in relation to each other. And the same word, in the same sentence, can mean different things depending on the identity of the speaker, the identity of the person to which its addressed, and even the manner of conversation. And thats not even considering the multiple definitions of a given word.

What does the statement 'burn flags not fags' mean?, writes Richard Allan, Facebooks VP of Public Policy for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. While this is clearly a provocative statement on its face, should it be considered hate speech? For example, is it an attack on gay people, or an attempt to 'reclaim' the slur? Is it an incitement of political protest through flag burning? Or, if the speaker or audience is British, is it an effort to discourage people from smoking cigarettes (fag being a common British term for cigarette)? To know whether its a hate speech violation, more context is needed.

Reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the Hard Questions post wasnt representative of any new policy. Instead, its simply transparency into the logic of how Facebook polices speech.

People want certain things taken down, they want the right to say things, says Kate Klonick, a resident fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale, they want there to be a perfect filter that takes down the things that are hate speech or racist or sexist or hugely offensive.

One reason that Facebook may be parsing how it regulates speech in public is that, thanks to a trove of internal documents leaked to the Guardian, others are reporting on how Facebooks internal guidance for what speech to take down and what speech to leave up.

"According to one document, migrants can be referred to as 'filthy' but not called filth,'" reports ProPublica, "They cannot be likened to filth or disease 'when the comparison is in the noun form,' the document explains."

Klonick studies how Facebook governs its users, and while the kinds off moderation discussed in the Hard Questions post arent new, the transparency is. Says Klonick, "It's not secret anymore that this happens and that your voice is being moderated, your feed is being moderated behind the scenes."

To Klonicks eye, by starting to disclose more of what goes on in the sausage factory, Facebook is trying to preempt criticism of how, exactly, Facebook chooses to moderate speech.

Theres nothing, though, that says Facebook has to regulate all the speech it does, beyond what's required by the law in the countries where Facebook operates. Several examples in the Hard Questions post hinge on context: Is the person reclaiming a former slur, or is it a joke among friends or an attack by a stranger against a member of a protected group? But what happens when war suddenly changes a term from casual use to something reported as hate speech?

One example from Hard Questions is how Facebook choose to handle the word "moskal," a Ukranian slang term for Russians, and "khokhol," a Russian slang term for Ukrainians. When a conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out in 2014, people in both countries started reporting the terms used by the opposing side as hate speech. In response, says Allan, "We did an internal review and concluded that they were right. We began taking both terms down, a decision that was initially unpopular on both sides because it seemed restrictive, but in the context of the conflict felt important to us."

One common use of reporting features on websites is for people to simply report others with whom they disagree, invoking the ability of the site to censor their ideological foes. With the conversion of regular language to slurs in the midst of a war, Facebook appears to have chosen to try and calm tensions itself, by removing posts with the offending words.

"I thought that example was really interesting because he says explicitly that the decision to censor those words was unpopular on both sides," says Jillian York, the EFF's Director for International Freedom of Expression. "Thats very much a value judgement. Its not saying 'people were killing themselves because of this term, and so were protecting ourselves from liability;' which is one thing that they do, one thats a little more understandable. This is Facebook saying, 'the people didnt want this, but we decided it was right for them anyway.'"

And while Facebook ultimately sets policy about what to take down and what to leave up, the work of moderation is done by people, and like with Facebooks moderation of video, this work will continue to be done by people for the foreseeable future.

"People think that its easy to automate this, and I think that that blogpost is why its so difficult right now, how far we are from automating it," says Klonick. "Those are difficult human judgements to make, were years away from that. These types of examples that Richard Allen talked about in his blog post are exactly why were so far from automating this process."

Again, Facebook is deciding the rules and standards for speech for over a quarter of the worlds population, something few governments in history have ever come close to or exceeded. (Ancient Persia is a rare exception). With the enormity of the task, its worth looking at not just how Facebook chooses to regulate speech, but why it chooses to do so.

"On scale, moderating content for 2 billion people is impossible," says York, "so why choose to be restrictive beyond the law? Why is Facebook trying to be the worlds regulator?"

Read more here:

Facebook can't solve its hate speech problem with automation - Popular Science

When it comes to continuous monitoring for cybersecurity and its companion strategy of continuous diagnostics and mitigation federal agency practitioners need to be realistic about how they apply the words monitoring and continuous.

Thats according to Peter Schawacker, Director of Security Intelligence Solutions at Optiv, a cybersecurity products reseller.

Too often, he says, management presumes there will be eyes on glass and people watching stuff. In reality, that mode is really only operative during the hunting phase, after the network instrumentation signals something is wrong and its time to use human intervention.

That model is too slow for todays threat perpetrators, Schawacker says. He says agencies must move more aggressively into automation of the kill-chain monitoring, detection, evaluation and action, and free up more time for people to do predictive analysis.

Host

Tom Temin, Federal News Radio

Tom Temin has been the host of the Federal Drive since 2006. Tom has been reporting on and providing insight to technology markets for more than 30 years. Prior to joining Federal News Radio, Tom was a long-serving editor-in-chief of Government Computer News and Washington Technology magazines. Tom also contributes a regular column on government information technology.

Guest

Peter Schawacker, Director of Security Intelligence Solutions, Optiv

Peter Schawacker (pronounced like shaw-walker) serves as the Director of Security Intelligence Solutions for Optivs Services Center of Excellence. He is an intrapreneneur who mines Optiv for opportunities to solve client problems and grow the company. A veteran of the Information Security industry, as part of the early days of EarthLink in the mid-1990s. Later, he ran Citigroups SOC, before taking on technical, sales and marketing roles with ISS, NFR, McAfee and Tenable. Prior to his current role at Optiv, he built SIEM consulting services for Alchemy Security and Accuvant. Mr. Schawacker resides in Mexico City.

Peter Schawacker, Director of Security Intelligence Solutions, Optiv Peter Schawacker (pronounced like shaw-walker) serves as the Director of Security Intelligence Solutions for Optivs Services Center of Excellence. He is an intrapreneneur who mines Optiv for opportunities to solve client problems and grow the company. A veteran of the Information Security industry, as part of the early days of EarthLink in the mid-1990s. Later, he ran Citigroups SOC, before taking on technical, sales and marketing roles with ISS, NFR, McAfee and Tenable. Prior to his current role at Optiv, he built SIEM consulting services for Alchemy Security and Accuvant. Mr. Schawacker resides in Mexico City.

Read this article:

Optiv's Schawacker says automation must be future of continuous monitoring - FederalNewsRadio.com

My evenings tend to be rather dull and uneventful, but I was excited on that particular night. I locked my door, dimmed the lights, turned off my phones notifications and giddily pulled out my new toy: the Fleshlight Launch.

Disclaimer: This review contains inappropriate language. Please find something else to readunless youre 18 or older.

For those unfamiliar: the Fleshlight Launch is a fully automated masturbation robot that can make your head spin at 180 strokes per minute figuratively and literally. It is also threateningly large and happens to resemble the sort of contraption aliens in movies give to male abductees theyve selected for reproduction.

Credit: Fleshlight

The device is the latest collaboration between seasoned adult toy makers Kiiroo and Fleshlight, which have previously worked together on other high-tech teledildonic solutions for long distance dalliances like the Onyx and the Pearl.

As with their previous team efforts, Kiiroo handled the technology side of things, while Fleshlight provided high quality materials for the actual masturbatory accessories. This also means that the Launch is fully compatible with practically any Fleshlight toys for men.

The Fleshlight Launch comes with two modes: manual and interactive. Unlike the manual option which puts you in control of the speed and frequency of strokes at which the device operates, the interactive mode is entirely hands-free and fully synced up with the videos you watch so you wont even have to lift a finger.

You would usually be expected to fully charge the device before using it which could be a nuisance for users yearning immediate satisfaction but I made sure I was adequately prepared for my first time.

I had comfortably settled into my couch, stocked up on lube and lined up several windows of raunchy videos to choose between.

Setting up the Launch for first-time usage was fairly straightforward. Once youve locked in the Fleshlight into the Launch by gently applying clockwise rotating moves, youll hear a brief clicking noise this should be your cue that the device is ready to use.

After youve made sure the Fleshlight is properly screwed into the Launch, you can lube up the device and proceed to turn it on by pressing the button at the front.

Kiiroo and Fleshlight offer their own lubing solutions, but the toy works with practically any water-based lubricants though be warned that denser lubricants could make it difficult for the device to perform strokes as intended.

While it was the interactive mode that initially piqued my curiosity, one thing I had forgotten to prep up in advance was connecting the Launch to the corresponding FeelMe app the platform that actually powers the fully automated experience.

But since my impatience was growing stronger, I ultimately decided to put off testing the interactive mode for next time and swiftly inserted my baldheaded eagle into the Fleshlight Launch.

As an absolute newbie to adult accessories, the sensation felt oddly defamiliarizing though by no means unpleasant and I hadnt even turned on the device yet.

Once things get to that point, the first thing you will notice is the steady mechanical rhythm of the strokes.

Unlike a real human being, the movements the Launch performs are awkwardly machine-like and methodical; and while you can manually modify the speed and distance of the strokes, it takes a while to get the hang of the touch sensitive strip.

The good thing is that once you master the controls, playing with the toy gets exponentially more fun. While I found using the touch strip somewhat distracting at the beginning, I eventually got accustomed to the sensation and gradually began to luxuriate in the activity.

Not only did the distraction aspect vanish with continuous practice, but it also made switching between the whole range of stroke motions much more intuitive and natural. Perhaps you will like the sensation from certain modes more than others, but this is up to you to figure out along the way.

Credit: Fleshlight

In fact, by the time I got to mess around with the interactive feature, I had grown so accustomed to the manual option that I found it difficult to take pleasure in the fully automated mode.

One thing that made things less user-friendly is that, while FeelMe offers a wide selection of pornographic content to choose from, the platform had made only a handful of synced videos available to stream for freeat the time of testing.

But since Pornhub recently launched its own section specifically curated with interactive content, diversity of choice will likely no longer be an issue in the near future.

Disregarding FeelMes limited catalogue, the interactive experience was no less delightful than the manual mode especially when the stroke motions aligned with the action on screen. To co-ordinate movements, Kiiroo uses a technology it calls subtitling which relays time-based signals to the Launch in order to instruct it when and how to perform strokes.

The interactive mode is also compatible with VR for a fully immersive experience, but Im yet to test out the functionality though I suspect it will make the sensation all the more potent (assuming synchronization is on point).

For those interested to learn more about the syncing tech that powers the device, you can take a peek at the chat our editor-in-chief Alejandro Tauber had with Kiiroo chief technology officer Maurice Op de Beek earlier this year at SXSW:

Sexual fulfilment is a very personal thing and this will significantly influence the way you experience the Fleshlight Launch. One way to think about this is in terms of what youre hoping to replace or spice up with the device.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Kiiroo has decided to offer the starter Launch kit without the Fleshlight included. The Launch currently retails at $200, but you can take advantage of the current promo deals and cop aFleshlight pre-packaged set for $250 now.

For those seeking to relieve sexual frustration, the Launch might fall short of providing the intimate and in-the-moment nature of sharing an experience with another human being; even though the interactive mode does elevate the sensation to something a little more unpredictable and exciting than an ordinary wank session.

Individuals seeking to diversify their masturbation habits are more likely to find the Launch a worthy addition to their at-home routine especially with the added capability for control that the touch sensitive strips enable.

But chances are the device will appeal the most to long-time Fleshlight users looking for new exciting ways to jazz up their masturbation habits.

The Fleshlight Launch fundamentally alters all three of these experiences: while it will noticeably dull certain sensations, it will also markedly augment other aspects that you have only felt marginally in the past.

As someone who has come to appreciate the single life, the Launch has made it easier for me to balance between my urges for instant gratification and prolonged physical intimacy.

Yes, I still find myself craving sex and an occasional hand-enabled rub: and chances are the device will never eliminate these desires. What it does though is make me experience these sensations much more viscerally when an opportunity presents itself; and this is perhaps the thing about the Launch I cherish the most.

But be advised that no matter the reason why youre buying the Fleshlight Launch you will need to give yourself some time before you realize the full potential of this quirky sex robot.

Once you do though, it will entirely change the way you masturbate.

The good folks at Kiiroo gave us one Fleshlight Launch to give away. Tag someone who you think deserves or needs one in the comments or send an email with the subject line This is why I need a dick-sucking robot to dimitar [at] thenextweb.com. Dont forget to let us know the reason why!

Fleshlight Launch on Kiiroo

Read next: EU funded InVID launches a fake video news debunker

Read the original:

Fleshlight Launch Hands-on: How I tried outsourcing masturbation to automation - TNW

ABB announced today that it has completed its acquisition of B&R (Bernecker + Rainer Industrie-Elektronik GmbH), a provider of product- and software-based open-architecture solutions for machine and factory automation.

B&Rs products, software and services in PLCs, industrial PCs and servo motion-based machine and factory automation will no doubt strengthen ABBs position in the market. The acquisition marks a milestone in its ABBs Next Level business strategy.

Following the acquisition of B&R, we are the only industrial automation provider offering customers in process and discrete industries the entire spectrum of technology and software solutions around measurement, control, actuation, robotics, digitalization and electrification, said ABB CEO Ulirch Spiesshofer.

B&R will become part of ABBs Industrial Automation division as a new global business unit called Machine & Factory Automation, implementing ABBs PLC activities. The unit is headquartered in Eggelsberg, Austria, ABBs new global center for machine and factory automation.

However, this doesnt mean B&Rs customers will lose support, as ABB has committed to investing in the expansion of B&Rs operations.

Our commitment to growing the business of B&R is demonstrated by our investment in a new R&D center, which is to be built next to its headquarters in upper Austria, Spiesshofer said.

The co-founders of B&R, Erwin Bernecker and Josef Rainer, will act as advisors during the integration process.

The B&R team is proud to be part of ABB and its leading Industrial Automation division, said Hans Wimmer, former managing director of B&R and now managing director of ABBs Machine & Factory Automation business unit. With our compatible cultures, complementary strengths and leading technologies, ABB and B&R will have an even more compelling value proposition to offer our customers in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

For more information, visit the ABB and B&R websites.

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ABB Completes Acquisition of B&R Automation - ENGINEERING.com