Sunday 21 October 2018

Interesting Reads – 2018-10-21



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/

Archives of Interesting Reads 

To access the past posts of Interesting Reads, pl. visit

Feedback

We will be pleased to have your feedback on the “Interesting Reads” posts being sent once in five days. 

Pl. share the links of any interesting things you come across so that we can include them in these email posts. 

Also, pl. share the email ids of your colleagues, friends, peers and contacts, if you want them to be included in the google group to get regular posts.  

Pl. send all your communications to hrmohan.ieee@gmail.com  

With regards
HR Mohan