Interesting
Reads – 2018-10-21
Contents
Articles
- 21 Lessons From Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letters To Shareholders
- BYOD or COPE: Which enterprise mobility strategy is right for you?
- India: Why collecting water turns millions of women into second-class citizens
- An eco-friendly way to make smartphones
- The world's most prolific writer is a Chinese algorithm
- History of the Internet Part 11: Apple and Steve Jobs
- 12 new tech terms you need to understand the future
- MIT has just announced a $1 billion plan to create a new college for AI
- A cyber-skills shortage means students are being recruited to fight off hackers
- Developing Countries Losing Out To Digital Giants
Events /
Announcements
- YES BANK – DATATHON
- CONFLUENCE-2019, 9th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering
- GIAN Course on “Digital Business: The Innovation Challenge of the Next Decade” at IIT Madras
- CSI-2018: 53rd Annual Convention of Computer Society of India 2018 at Udaipur during 14-16 Dec 2018
- INDICON 2018: Theme “Harnessing Technology For Humanity” at Coimbatore during 16-18 Dec 2018
========================================================
Articles
21
Lessons From Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letters To Shareholders
Each
year, Jeff Bezos writes an open letter to Amazon's shareholders. Over the last
two decades, these letters have become an unparalleled source of insight into
how the world's richest man — and his company — think about customers, innovation,
building products, and more.
BYOD
or COPE: Which enterprise mobility strategy is right for you?
The
corporate-owned, personally enabled (COPE) model provides an alternative for
organizations in which the bring your own device (BYOD) trend hasn't lived up
to the hype. COPE aims to provide a user-friendly mobile experience that's a
little more manageable for IT. The key difference is the device ownership;
unlike with BYOD, where users purchase their own, COPE relies on company-issued
phones and tablets that employees can use for work and personal tasks.
India: Why collecting water
turns millions of women into second-class citizens
A family in India needs fresh water. But this family
can’t just turn on a tap. Instead, the women in the household must walk to
fetch it, sometimes travelling miles carrying plastic or earthenware pots,
possibly with a child or two in tow, to the nearest safe source – regularly
repeating the journey up to three times a day. In the scorching summer months
of April and May, when temperatures regularly exceed 40C, it is a particularly
gruelling daily ritual – and when they get home they must complete their other
household chores: cooking, washing, bringing up the children, even helping on
the family farm.
These women are reminiscent of the many-armed Hindu
goddess, Durga – they have so many daily tasks, they could doubtless do with an
extra set of hands. But they aren’t the exception. This is the reality for
millions of women in India. From the Western Ghats and the mountainous
north-east to the arid desert state of Rajasthan, women across the country act
as water collectors. And this gender specific role has a severe impact on every
aspect of their lives, from their health and social life to education and their
ability to have a real say in the community.
It is estimated that 163m Indians still don’t have
access to clean, running water. Until that’s fixed, this significant national
problem will prevail, with women paying the biggest price.
An eco-friendly way to make smartphones
Our devices are made of rare minerals – but they
come at a cost to the planet. However, scientists might have a solution to
build the smartphones of the near-future.
A team of researchers at Cambridge may have found a
safer way to extract rare earth elements (REEs) – the vital material in our
smartphones – that could end up saving the planet.
The world's most prolific writer is a Chinese algorithm
“Inflatable duck baby pool with canopy.” “Hot
selling colourful temporary full arm tattoo for men.” “Splendid reusable dog
pee pad (minimum order: 500).”
Load up the homepage for e-commerce giant, Alibaba –
a wholesale shopping site that’s more or less China’s answer to eBay – and
you’ll find images and descriptions of anything you could wish to buy, from
kitchen sinks to luxury yachts. Every item has a short headline, but most are
little more than lists of keywords: hand-picked search terms to ensure this USB
phone charger or that pair of flame-resistant overalls float to the top in a
sea of thousands upon thousands of similar items.
It sounds simple, but there’s an art to this
copywriting. Yet Alibaba recently revealed that it is training an artificial
intelligence to generate these item descriptions automatically – and they’re
not the only ones. Over the last few decades AIs have been taught to compose
music, paint pictures and write (bad) poems. Now they’re writing advertising
copy, 20,000 lines of it a second.
“Generative bots are the new chatbot,” says Jun Wang
at University College London. “Generating copy is just one of the applications
that can be done.”
History
of the Internet Part 11: Apple and Steve Jobs
Welcome
to Part Eleven of our journey through time, learning how the Internet has
evolved and studying the effect it has had on our lives.
In
the series so far, we have focused on the Internet innovations that have come
from Microsoft, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, MySpace, Yahoo, Facebook, and
Google. This has largely missed the contributions of one of our industry’s
greatest companies, Apple Computers, and so we must redress that right now.
It
is impossible to cover the history of Apple Computers without mentioning Steve
Jobs, the savior of the company that he co-founded and loved dearly. This
article discusses how he spectacularly turned the company around, from an aimless
enterprise free-falling toward bankruptcy to one of the most highly motivated
and successful companies in the world.
I
hope that this gives you inspiration for one of the most important rules in
business: sharply focusing on the essential needs of your business and your
customers.
Related posts:
Earlier parts (4 to 10 and 12 & 13) of the History of Internet
Related post:
History of Internet – Part 3
Related post:
History of Internet – Part 2
Related post:
History of Internet – Part 1
12 new
tech terms you need to understand the future
From crowdturfing to brainjacking, BBC Future Now explores the unusual and intriguing vocabulary emerging from technology advances this year.
MIT
has just announced a $1 billion plan to create a new college for AI
One
of the birthplaces of artificial intelligence, MIT, has announced a bold plan
to reshape its academic program around the technology. With $1 billion in
funding, MIT will create a new college that combines AI, machine learning, and
data science with other academic disciplines. It is the largest financial
investment in AI by any US academic institution to date.
Related story: Quest for Intelligence – an initiative
that aims to make breakthroughs in AI by bringing together researchers from
cognitive science and neuroscience as well as computer science.
Related story: Presentations made at
the launch of Quest for Intelligence
A
cyber-skills shortage means students are being recruited to fight off hackers
There
aren’t enough cybersecurity workers out there—and things are getting worse.
According to one estimate, by 2021 an estimated 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs
will be unfilled. And of the candidates who apply, fewer than one in four are
even qualified.
Students
with little or no cybersecurity knowledge are being paired with easy-to-use AI
software that lets them protect their campus from attack.
Related post:
The Life And Times Of Cybersecurity Professionals -- ESG and ISSA have once
again partnered to examine the experiences of cybersecurity professionals as
they navigate the modern threat landscape and the effects it has on their
careers.
Developing
Countries Losing Out To Digital Giants
A new United Nations report warns that the potential benefits to developing countries of digital technologies are likely to be lost to a small number of successful first movers who have established digital monopolies.
Related report:
Trade and Development Report 2018 (TDR 2018) that states while developing
countries need to invest more in digital infrastructure, they must also address
the ownership and control of data and their use.
Events
/ Announcements
YES BANK –
DATATHON
YES
BANK has launched DATATHON, which invites participants from across the world,
who will join us in our quest of Data driven Innovation and develop models for
the appropriate sourcing and usage of data across businesses.
For
more details pl. visit http://www.yesfintech.com/Datathon
CONFLUENCE-2019,
9th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering
Department
of Computer Science & Engineering, Amity School of Engineering and
Technology , Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Noida , India is organizing CONFLUENCE-2019, 9th
International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science &
Engineering technically Co-Sponsored by
IEEE UP Section to be held on 10th and 11th
January 2019 at Amity University , Noida, India.
Last
date for paper submission: 30th Oct 2018
Contact:
Dr. Ankur Choudhary, Organizing Chair - Confluence -2019. Mobile: 9811285334
Email: achoudhary@amity.edu
For More Details on Conference visit: http://amity.edu/aset/confluence2019/index.html
GIAN Course on
“Digital Business: The Innovation Challenge of the Next Decade” at IIT Madras
The GIAN Course on “Digital Business:
The Innovation Challenge of the Next Decade” hosted by Indian Institute of
Technology, Madras from 26th to
30th November, 2018. The sessions will
be handled by Prof. Richard Watson, University of Georgia in coordination with
Prof. Saji K. Mathew, DoMS, IIT Madras.
Course Brochure at https://goo.gl/5KfKxP
Please follow the following steps for
the registration:
1. Go to GIAN website (http://www.gian.iitkgp.ac.in/GREGN/index).
First time
users need to register and pay a
one-time fee of INR 500.
2. Enroll for the course: Digital
Business: The Innovation Challenge of the Next
Decade. Once you enroll for the course,
an Enrollment/Application number will be
generated, and the course coordinators
will be notified.
For clarifications pl. contact: Dr.
Saji K. Mathew, Professor, DoMS, IIT Madras.
Tel: +91 44 2257 4573; Cell: +91
8056078251; Email: saji@iitm.ac.in
CSI-2018: 53rd Annual
Convention of Computer Society of India 2018 at Udaipur during 14-16 Dec 2018
The
53rd Annual Convention of CSI will be held at Hotel Inder Residency. Udaipur,
Rajasthan, India during 14-16 Dec 2018.
For
details visit the convention website at http://www.csi-2018.org
INDICON 2018:
Theme “Harnessing Technology For Humanity” at Coimbatore during 16-18 Dec 2018
With
the theme of “Harnessing Technology for Humanity”, the 15th IEEE India Council
International Conference (INDICON 2018), being organized by the IEEE Madras
Section during December 15-18, 2018, at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore,
with technical support from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, promises
to be bigger and better than before. With plenary sessions, keynote addresses
by reputed academicians, tutorials, workshops, Student Paper contests, industry
exhibits and stalls and most importantly, high quality presentations from the
best of the researchers in India, no effort is being spared to make INDICON
2018, the best so far.
For
details visit the website at http://indicon2018.in/
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