Interesting Reads –
2018-07-06
23 Sentences Our
Grandchildren Won't Believe We Said In 2018
Even though there are always things that one generation can’t fathom from the realities of the generation who came before them, the rate of technological change occurring now just might make our grandchildren wonder how we ever survived.
Robot companions are coming
into our homes – so how human should they be?
What
would your ideal robot be like? One that can change nappies and tell bedtime
stories to your child? Perhaps you’d prefer a butler that can polish silver and
mix the perfect cocktail? Or maybe you’d prefer a companion that just happened
to be a robot? Certainly, some see robots as a hypothetical future replacement
for human carers. But a question roboticists are asking is: how human should
these future robot companions be?
A
companion robot is one that is capable of providing useful assistance in a
socially acceptable manner. This means that a robot companion’s first goal is
to assist humans. Robot companions are mainly developed to help people with
special needs such as older people, autistic children or the disabled. They
usually aim to help in a specific environment: a house, a care home or a
hospital.
State of Cryptocurrencies: Summer 2018
This article will provide a
comprehensive overview of the current state of the cryptocurrency ecosystem as
of Summer 2018. This includes high-level introductions and discussions on top
current and upcoming projects: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Chia, Decred, smart
contract platforms (Ethereum, DFINITY, Cosmos, EOS, Filecoin, Rchain, Tezos,
Algorand), privacy coins (Zcash, Monero, Grin/MimbleWimble, Mobilecoin), and
stablecoin projects (Basis, MakerDAO).
Universities must prepare for a technology-enabled
future
Automation and artificial
intelligence technologies are transforming manufacturing, corporate work and
the retail business, providing new opportunities for companies to explore and
posing major threats to those that don’t adapt to the times. Equally daunting
challenges confront colleges and universities, but they’ve been slower to
acknowledge them.
At present, colleges and universities
are most worried about competition from schools or training systems using
online learning technology. But that is just one aspect of the technological
changes already under way. For example, some companies are moving toward
requiring workers have specific skills trainings and certifications – as
opposed to college degrees.
As a professor who researches
artificial intelligence and offers distance learning courses, I can say that
online education is a disruptive challenge for which colleges are ill-prepared.
Lack of student demand is already closing 800 out of roughly 10,000 engineering
colleges in India. And online learning has put as many as half the colleges and
universities in the U.S. at risk of shutting down in the next couple decades as
remote students get comparable educations over the internet – without living on
campus or taking classes in person. Unless universities move quickly to
transform themselves into educational institutions for a technology-assisted
future, they risk becoming obsolete.
Cybersecurity Jobs Report 2018-2021
Cybersecurity Ventures has reviewed
and synthesized dozens of employment figures from the media, analysts, job
boards, vendors, governments, and organizations globally, in order to estimate
the number of cybersecurity job openings over the next 5 years.
We predict there will be 3.5 million
unfilled cybersecurity positions by 2021.
The cybersecurity jobs forecasts have
been unable to keep pace with the dramatic rise in cybercrime, which is
predicted to cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion
in 2015.
Presenting the India Startup Report: a YourStory overview on our start-up
ecosystem
YourStory has been chronicling the
evolution of the Indian startup ecosystem before it became an ecosystem, and
before the word ‘startup’ was commonly understood and used. We made it our
mission to tell the stories of entrepreneurs who were taking massive risks –
personally and professionally – to do what they believed would bring about
significant change in the country.
Ten years down the line, our interactions
have not only resulted in close to 80,000 stories, but also a database of
India’s new-age companies. More than that, we have had an insider’s view of the
ecosystem like no other because we aren’t looking outside-in.
Many of you have been asking us to
put together all our data, learning and observations in a much more cohesive
manner. And we hear you. As YourStory celebrates its tenth year of chronicling
entrepreneurship stories, we have decided to bring out every quarter a status
report on the ecosystem. This is the first edition of the India Startup Report.
We plan to update this with fresh, relevant content and information every
quarter.
While there are many different
figures about how many startups we have in the country, our internal trackers
show that India is home to 40,000 startups. These are not just product startups
but ventures that are effectively leveraging technology to push scale.
How Social Networks Set The Limits Of
What We Can Say Online
Content moderation is hard. This
should be obvious, but it’s easily forgotten. It is resource intensive and
relentless; it requires making difficult and often untenable distinctions; it
is wholly unclear what the standards should be, especially on a global scale;
and one failure can incur enough public outrage to overshadow a million quiet
successes. We as a society are partly to blame for having put platforms in this
situation. We sometimes decry the intrusions of moderators, and sometimes decry
their absence.
Even so, we have handed to private
companies the power to set and enforce the boundaries of appropriate public
speech. That is an enormous cultural power to be held by so few, and it is
largely wielded behind closed doors, making it difficult for outsiders to
inspect or challenge. Platforms frequently, and conspicuously, fail to live up
to our expectations. In fact, given the enormity of the undertaking, most
platforms’ own definition of success includes failing users on a regular basis.
2018 trends in software testing
Testing was once a rather
straightforward process that happened all at once right before an application
was released. That’s certainly changed today, with testers needing to consider
multiple platforms, devices, browsers, versions of browsers, and more, plus
compressed release schedules and more frequent test iterations.
How are testing professionals dealing
with this increased demand and pressure? Take a look at these survey results to
see how your peers have responded to questions such as:
How extensively has your organization
adopted agile?
How quickly are bugs that are found
during testing fixed?
How often does your team typically
deploy a new build?
And more
The leadership journey of Abraham Lincoln
Many years ago, I made a short film for the Harvard Business School about the lessons that Abraham Lincoln’s life offered for modern leaders. I interviewed a range of CEOs, asking them what they’d learned from the 16th president. Their responses were wide-ranging and profound; many continue to influence my work on leadership.
I was
particularly struck by what A. G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble at the
time, said about how leaders are made. He pointed to three main ingredients.
The first is an individual’s strengths and weaknesses and the cumulative
experience a person acquires walking his or her path. The second is that an
individual recognizes a moment has arrived that demands his or her
leadership. The third is that the individual has to consciously decide “to
embrace the cause and get in the game.”
Making
oneself into a courageous leader, in the way Lafley describes, is perilous,
compelling, and exhausting work. It also is some of the most satisfying one can
do, and it could not be more important today. Like the turbulent Civil War that
Lincoln found himself at the center of, the early 21st century cries out for
effective, decent leaders. People of purpose and commitment who want to make a
positive difference and who choose to rise: first within themselves, by
claiming their better selves, and then on the larger stage, by staking out the
higher ground.
Abraham
Lincoln has something to offer each of us right now as we try to craft lives of
purpose, dignity, and impact. Are you ready to hear the call to action
contained in his story?
Top 10 Fears That Hold
People Back In Their Careers
What’s
holding you back from landing your dream job or advancing in your career? Are
you afraid of failure? Of the stress of more responsibility? Of letting someone
down?
Many
times the reasons we give ourselves for not going after that new job, not asking
for the raise, or not sending in a resume seem legitimate in the moment but
they actually all boil down to fears.
What
they all have in common is that they masquerade as something useful: these
fears pretend to be protecting you, when in reality, they are holding you back.
Archives of Interesting
Reads at
http://infoforuse.blogspot.in/2018/05/interesting-reads-archives.html
http://infoforuse.blogspot.in/2018/05/interesting-reads-archives.html
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