- What do you think it takes for a 19 year old to travel her country and teach 20,000 young people how to code
- Is teaching young people how to code all that is needed?
Manmeet Maggu and Rahul Udasi didn’t know it when they met at the University of Waterloo eleven years ago, but the bond that the two forged in late night study sessions as roommates in the UW Place dorm has helped power their work building an exoskeleton that allows children with disabilities to walk.
The fruit of that labor is Trexo Robotics, which will graduate as part of the latest batch of Y Combinator’s winter 2019 cohort.
Source: Tech Crunch
Date: March 6th, 2019
Discussion
1) What is “Y Combinator” and why is it so useful to startups?
2) What other applications could there be for the Trexo Robot?
Microsoft Corp. unveiled two new cloud security services to help customers find and stop threats and manage their cyberdefenses by tapping experts from the software giant.
Azure Sentinel, available for customer preview Thursday, is what’s called a Security Information and Event management tool. Microsoft said it’s the first of its type based in the cloud. The product uses artificial intelligence to comb through data to find threats and lets customers rent computing power from the company rather than buy more of their own servers to crunch information.
Source: Bloomberg Technology News
Date: March 6th, 2019
Link (open using incognito mode to prevent article download tracker) : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-28/microsoft-unveils-azure-sentinel-cloud-security-program?srnd=technology-vp
Discussion
1) Why might companies not want Microsoft AI to “comb through [their] data”?
2) Why is it a good idea to hand off cybersecurity to “experts from the [Microsoft] software giant”?
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, many residents lost power for months — and some neighborhoods are still struggling to get electricity back up and running.
Puerto Rico had solar panel fields generating power before the hurricane, but much of it was inaccessible when the grid (or the network that delivers electricity to people) went down.
That’s one of the biggest challenges with solar energy, which provides an alternative way to power homes and businesses. The technology is still limited, not only because sunlight collection can be inconsistent on cloudy days and unavailable at night, but also because rural or remote areas often lack proper infrastructure.
Some companies are working on solutions to make solar energy technology more resilient and efficient.
Source: CNN Technology
Date: March 7th, 2019
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/06/tech/yotta-solar/index.html
Discussion
1) Data centers and cloud service provision centers consume enormous amounts of electricity. How could this technology help?
2) Most residential solar panels, the ones you see on house roofs, are “grid-tied”. Grid-tied means they only produce electricity when tied to the electricity grid. Why are they “grid-tied”?
“it’s hard to see how – given Huawei’s role in providing equipment and key ICT services to the AU building and specifically to the AU’s data centre – the company could have remained completely unaware of the apparent theft of large amounts of data, every day, for five years.”
Source: BBC Technology News
Date: March 6th, 2019
Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Huawei
Discussion
1) “Huawei was given the status of a Chinese “national champion”. In practice, this meant the government closed the market to foreign competition.” The Chinese government says that Huawei is independent of it. How likely is this?
2) Why does it matter to western companies and governments that Huawei is likely part of the Chinese government?
In a May study of 553 IT decision makers, 78% said they thought it was at least somewhat likely that their businesses would suffer data loss or theft enabled by IoT devices. Some 72% said the speed at which IoT is advancing makes it harder to keep up with evolving security requirements.
Source: Wired Magazine
Date: February 28th, 2019
Discussion
1) What sorts of things are included in IoT (Internet of Things)?
2) Why are IoT devices so useful to hackers and problematic for the rest of us?
Amazon recently won patents for wristbands that could be used as part of an inventory system, communicating with equipment in warehouses and nudging employees via vibrations if, for example, they were about to place items in the wrong bins. But in a world where the legal limits on gathering and using people’s data remain largely undefined, use of such devices could quickly turn nefarious, some experts say.
Source: Chicago Tribune
Date: February 28th, 2019
Link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-amazon-wristbands-privacy-20180215-story.html
Discussion
1) What sorts of other uses could this technology be put to other than tracking the people who work in the warehouses at Amazon?
2) Is this really an invasion of privacy or more an attempt by Amazon to improve workplace safety and efficiency?
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The top two digital advertisers in the United States — Google and Facebook — are expected to maintain their dominant hold on ad dollars, as the tech giants’ combined ad revenue will command about 59 per cent of the market, according to forecasts by eMarketer.
The increase in digital ad dollars will come, in part, from sharp declines in key print ad formats including directories such as the Yellow Pages, whose ad spending will fall by 19 per cent, and the print versions of newspapers and magazines where ad spending is expected to decrease by about 18 per cent, eMarketer said. Ad spending on TV will decline 2.2 per cent this year, to about $71 billion, eMarketer said.
Source: Washington Post
Date: February 22nd, 2019
Discussion
1) Want to be in marketing? What are you doing to prepare yourself to understand digital platforms?
2) Will digital marketing ever totally dominate print and TV advertising?
Every year tens of millions of people play FIFA, the world’s biggest soccer video game.
A 17-year-old from Regina is one of the very best.
Alex Gonzalez-Aldana, who goes by the in-game handle ExraaCA, is in Atlanta this weekend to compete in a 64-person tournament with a $50,000 top prize. A win, or even an impressive performance, could catapult him into a career in eSports as a professional FIFA player.
Source: CBC News
Date: February 22nd, 2019
Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/in-your-shoes-fifa-ea-sports-sean-trembath-1.5026917
Discusssion
1) Is eSports a sport?
2) What sort of business could you package around the growth in eSports?
Imagine being able to scroll through your memories like an Instagram feed, reliving with vivid details your favourite life moments and backing up the dearest ones.
Now imagine a dystopian version of the same future in which hackers hijack these memories and threaten to erase them if you don’t pay a ransom.
It might sound far-fetched, but this scenario could be closer than you think.
Source: BBC Technology News
Date: February 22nd, 2019
Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47277340
Discussion
1) “A hacker could also threaten to erase or overwrite someone’s memories if money is not paid to them” – if we have technology good enough to alter memories, why is it that we won’t have technology good enough to protect that technology from a cyberattack?
2) Should every business student have a more than rudimentary understanding of steps to take around cybersecurity?
Leading Titles
Introduction to Information Systems, 3rd Canadian Binder Ready Version Update Edition
R. Kelly Rainer, Casey G. Cegielski, Ingrid Splettstoesser-Hogeterp, Cristobal Sanchez-Rodriguez
ISBN: 978-1-119-13385-8
August 2015, © 2016
CDN $98.95; CDN $114.95