Posts By: David Firth

Wake up! Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook are running our lives

Posted by & filed under Amazon, Apple, Civil Liberties, Ethical Issues, FaceBook, Google.

Google Home wakes you up in the morning and later, Google recommends a lunch spot – it even gives you live information on how busy it is. It is partly responsible for your cab home, as Google is an investor in Uber. You checked in with friends on Facebook on that morning commute (you might have also used… Read more »

The most in-demand job title at companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon

Posted by & filed under Big Data, data analytics.

Jobs at tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook are the most sought-after roles around. But what type of employees are these companies looking to for? Data analysis site Paysa looked at over 8,200 job posting and over 70,000 resumes at tech companies worth $10 billion or more to find what roles they are hiring for the most. Source: CNBC Date: September… Read more »

What Amazon knows: ‘The war for retail will be won in groceries’

Posted by & filed under Amazon.

Amazon believes the future of grocery shopping is online. So why is the retail giant spending $13.7 billion to acquire 460 brick-and-mortar Whole Foods stores and lower prices on “organic bananas” and “responsibly-farmed salmon?” Answer: To dominate the grocery business like it has many others by increasing the number of customers while undercutting the competition. Source: CNN Technology… Read more »

Jon Snow: Facebook a threat to democracy

Posted by & filed under Ethical Issues, FaceBook, Fake News.

Facebook should do more to tackle the spread of “cancerous” fake news, and help fund original journalism, newsreader Jon Snow has said.  The journalist, who has presented the British Channel 4 News since 1989, gave the MacTaggart Lecture at the annual Edinburgh TV festival.  He said Facebook’s inaction was a “threat to democracy”. Facebook’s founder… Read more »

YouTube stars win fair use legal battle

Posted by & filed under IT and the law, YouTube.

Videomakers Ethan and Hila Klein, who run the YouTube channel h3h3 Productions, have won a legal battle over copyright in online video.  The pair were sued after making fun of a video by another film-maker, Matt Hosseinzadeh, in which he pursued a love interest using parkour.  They had used clips of his film, which he… Read more »

Tall poppy syndrome and the Canadian opportunity

Posted by & filed under Consumer Technology, Emerging Technologies, IT and Politics, IT Trends.

There’s an epidemic in Canada. That epidemic is a mentality that leaves top talent with no option but to flee the nation’s borders and take with them everything they’ve learned. It undervalues breakthroughs developed and paid for by Canadian taxpayers. It’s a mindset that resents the success of others. It’s a bad case of tall poppy syndrome…. Read more »

Would we have seen the proliferation of ‘stalkerware’ if there were more women in tech?

Posted by & filed under Careers, Women in Tech.

Stalkerware is on the rise in the consumer market, and its explosive growth is indicative of the troubling lack of diversity in the tech development world.  When development teams are homogeneous, we see the proliferation of online tools with dangerous consequences. Source: CBC Technology News Date: May 31st, 2017 Link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/stalkerware-goes-mainstream-1.4136640 Discussion 1) “Diversity on tech teams isn’t… Read more »

From cowboys to robots: truckers eye uncertain future

Posted by & filed under Automation, self driving cars.

Kings of the road are by turns dismissive and wary of the technology revolution that might one day remove them from their cabs. Source: Toronto Star / Washington Post Date: May 30th, 2017 Link: https://www.thestar.com/business/tech_news/2017/05/26/from-cowboys-to-robots-truckers-eye-uncertain-future.html Discussion 1) “Anything that’s run by a computer is going to get messed up,” Spell said. “They don’t have no bulletproof software.”   Do… Read more »

ReMarkable digital notepad ‘feels like real paper’

Posted by & filed under Consumer Technology, Emerging Technologies.

A Norwegian start-up is developing a digital paper tablet it hopes will appeal to “paper people”. The device – called ReMarkable – can be written on using a stylus and is textured to feel like real paper. Source: BBC Technology News Date: May 31st, 2017 Link to video: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-40107097/remarkable-digital-notepad-feels-like-real-paper Discussion 1) The idea and development of electronic paper… Read more »