Tag: Robots

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Supplier Report: 1/17/2020


Photo by inbal marilli on Unsplash

Privacy will continue to be a major issue for technology companies in 2020.  We are a few weeks into the new year and Amazon already suffered a breach, but at least they weren’t hacked… employees just gave the data away.

Facebook got their collective teeth kicked in last year, but Mark Zuckerberg’s tone during his “2030 statement” makes me think has hasn’t learned from the experience and he thinks perhaps this will all blow over. Meanwhile there is a sentiment of “techlash” growing with students at college campuses.

Finally… the rumors of Google buying SalesForce continue.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • On CRM: This Is What Google Should Consider Before Buying Salesforce

    It’s no secret that Google’s cloud division – which is trailing far behind its rivals Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) – is looking to make a big acquisition in order to play catch-up ball. Now a new report from Business Insider claims that the company may be considering a purchase of Salesforce.com to fulfill this ambition.

    Also:

    Does Google understand that, like the fans of a baseball team that come to watch great players, swallowing up Salesforce and prioritizing cloud over CRM would – over time – ultimately sabotage the very reason that attracted them? How long would it take for Google to start watering down Salesforce’s brand and neglecting CRM as it brings other, unrelated applications and its own search and advertising tools to the cloud platform it acquires? If this happens Benioff, an iconic entrepreneur and philanthropist, would likely not stick around very long under a Google regime. Neither would the passionate community that he built which underscores the success of Salesforce’s cloud platform.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2020/01/09/on-crm-this-is-what-google-should-consider-before-buying-salesforce/#29aa04b4ff7f

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • The “Robot Tax” Debate Heats Up

    Bill Gates has called for a robot tax, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio detailed a plan for one in his short-lived presidential campaign. If the future means far fewer workers and far more machines, tax revenue could drop and the daily rhythms of steady employment could become erratic.

    A robot tax could serve multiple purposes, slowing job-destroying automation while raising revenue to supplement shrinking taxes paid by human workers. It could take a few different forms. Lawmakers could limit or slow down deductions for businesses that replace humans with robots, or they could hit businesses with levies equivalent to the payroll taxes paid by employers and employees.

    For the moment, massive job losses from automation and artificial intelligence are a largely theoretical worry. But tax economists and lawyers are thinking through the economic circumstances in which robot taxes might make sense and the tricky legal decisions and definitions needed to implement them.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-robot-tax-debate-heats-up-11578495608

  • Medical Robotics Company Names Former Google Cloud COO As CEO

    Bryant joins Neural Analytics after six months as Google Cloud’s chief operating officer, where she focused on scaling its Cloud platform against fierce competition from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. She worked at chip giant Intel for over thirty years, departing the company as a president of the company’s data center group.

    Neural Analytics has developed a robotically assisted ultrasound system for the assessment of brain health, which is designed to measure and display information about brain blood flow, under the guidance of a healthcare professional.

    In an email, Bryant said she had received three offers to serve as the CEO of companies in different industries, but was ultimately intrigued by the promise of Neural Analytics’ technology.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/johanmoreno/2020/01/10/medical-robotics-company-names-former-google-cloud-coo-as-ceo/#6126a20a50cf

    That headline should be less about her time at Google and more about her time at Intel

Security/Privacy

  • Amazon fires employees for leaking customer email addresses and phone numbers

    The email to customers sent Friday afternoon, seen by TechCrunch, said an employee was “terminated” for sharing the data, and that the company is supporting law enforcement in their prosecution.

    Amazon confirmed the incident in an email to TechCrunch. A spokesperson said a number of employees were fired. But little else is known about the employees, when the information was shared and with whom, and how many customers are affected.

    “No other information related to your account was shared. This is not a result of anything you have done, and there is no need for you to take any action,” the email read to customers.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/10/amazon-employees-email-address/

Software/SaaS

  • If you thought Zuckerberg would ever rein in rightwing demagogues, think again

    Three of the five areas of focus are simply to continue working on Facebook’s major business aims (private messaging, e-commerce, and VR/AR); the personal challenge version of deciding that, screw the diet-book industrial complex, you’re beautiful just as you are. A fourth, entitled “New forms of governance” is to continue working on the “supreme court” of Facebook content moderation, another project already long in the works.

    The fifth, which Zuckerberg entitled “generational change”, appears to encapsulate his desire to see more millennials take positions of power in institutions over the next decade. Considering that many millennials will be approaching their mid-40s by 2030, this is the equivalent of resolving to experience the passage of time.

    So no, if you thought that Zuckerberg was going to spend the next decade grappling with the question of what Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte have in common, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Please join me instead in imagining Zuck in his bathroom, crooning to himself in the mirror: “You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, it’s true.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/10/2020-fixing-facebook-zuckerberg-election

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • For Memory-Chip Makers, the Worst Appears to Be Over

    The latest positive sign came from Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest memory-chip maker, which this week issued financial guidance that topped analysts’ estimates. That followed a declaration from rival producer Micron Technology Co. in December that its business was passing through a ”cyclical bottom.”

    A big accelerant is the rollout of 5G mobile networks. The global deployment of the next-generation technology should re-energize smartphone sales and juice corporate investments in artificial intelligence, computing and data storage—all areas requiring significant memory capacity.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-memory-chip-makers-the-worst-appears-to-be-over-11578487758

  • HP Wins $439 Million As Judge Triples Jury Price-Fix Award

    HP Inc. was awarded $439 million in damages against Quanta Storage Inc. and its U.S. subsidiary after a federal judge tripled a jury’s 2019 award for damages caused by a widespread scheme to inflate the price of optical disk drives.

    In October, a Houston jury ordered Quanta to pay HP $176 million in damages. U.S. District Judge David Hittner said Friday that Quanta hadn’t shown any reason why the jury’s findings should be set aside. He tripled the damages award, as authorized under antitrust law, to $528 million before deducting the $89 million in settlements paid by the other companies HP accused of participating in the price-fixing scheme.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-03/hp-wins-438-million-after-judge-triples-jury-price-fixing-award

Other

  • With immigration under fire, visa uncertainty and wait times for foreign-born advertising employees

    I was job hunting and talked to a bunch of really great creative shops. One that I really wanted to work at told me the visa is a really big hurdle for them because I’m mid-level and that they weren’t sure if it was worth it to sponsor someone who isn’t super senior. There’s no right time to bring up the visa. We typically don’t bring it up until after the interview and when there’s a follow up. There’s a sense that you’ll wow them so much in the interview that they’ll want to hire you even if you have the visa. Most people wait.

    Also:

    I’ve talked to multiple people and recruiters are telling me that it’s harder to get approval now. Timelines are getting extended, it’s taking longer and there’s more scrutiny. [Overall, the immigration and visa approval process] completely messes with how agencies are today with project-work. No one is anticipating work needs eight months in advance so it’s hard to get those timelines to mesh with each other. Visas just don’t jibe well with flexible work models or project-work.

    https://outline.com/4NxuWE

  • Lime is laying off about 100 people and ceasing operations in 12 markets

    “Financial independence is our goal for 2020, and we are confident that Lime will be the first next-generation mobility company to reach profitability,” Lime CEO Brad Bao said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We are immensely grateful for our team members, riders, Juicers and cities who supported us, and we hope to reintroduce Lime back into these communities when the time is right.”

    That means Lime is shutting down in Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio, Linz, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Lima, Puerto Vallarta, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/09/lime-is-laying-off-about-100-people-and-ceasing-operations-in-12-markets/

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News You Can Use: 2/28/2018

  • Report: Messenger Kids advocates were Facebook-funded

    Messenger Kids, Facebook said, had been designed to serve as a “fun, safer solution” for family communications. It would be available for children as young as 6, the company said. To forestall criticism, Facebook asserted that the app had been developed alongside thousands of parents and a dozen expert advisors.

    But it looks like many of those outside experts were funded with Facebook dollars. According to Wired, “At least seven members of Facebook 13-person advisory board have some kind of financial tie to the company.” Those advisors include the National PTA, Blue Star Families, Connect Safely, and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40530927/report-messenger-kids-advocates-were-facebook-funded

  • Fake news is an existential crisis for social media

    Elections don’t take place in a vacuum. And if people are angry and divided in their daily lives then that will naturally be reflected in the choices made at the ballot box, whenever there’s an election.

    Russia knows this. And that’s why the Kremlin has been playing such a long propaganda game. Why it’s not just targeting elections. Its targets are fault lines in the fabric of society — be it gun control vs gun owners or conservatives vs liberals or people of color vs white supremacists — whatever issues it can seize on to stir up trouble and rip away at the social fabric.

    That’s what makes digitally amplified disinformation an existential threat to democracy and to civilized societies. Nothing on this scale has been possible before.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/18/fake-news-is-an-existential-crisis-for-social-media/?ncid=rss

  • Why Iceland is Perfect for Crypto Mining
  • Engineering against all odds, or how NYC’s subway will get wireless in the tunnels

    The company faced a number of challenges in building out the system. The first challenge was that the installation could not disrupt transit customers. Bayne said, “We had to figure out how to deploy network and equipment while minimizing disruption of the transit system itself.” That meant working overnight when labor costs are higher, and also placed the company at the mercy of the MTA’s maintenance windows to install network equipment.

    Even more challenging was securing the right equipment. The NYC subway “is a 110-year-old system with low ceilings and lots of water, and it wasn’t designed to embrace a lot of electronics,” Bayne said. Wireless equipment “had to withstand all of these changes in environmental conditions: cold, heat, water, brake dust. Everything had to be passively cooled and fully-enclosed so it didn’t ingest any of the environment into the equipment.” That specialized, “mil-spec” equipment doesn’t come cheap.

    As with the story of any infrastructure, particularly in New York, rolling out wireless connectivity to 282 active underground stations was anything but cheap. The final cost of the rollout was north of $300 million for Transit Wireless, a dramatic increase from early estimates which said that the project would cost “up to $200 million.” As a private entity spending private dollars, the company obviously had enormous incentives to hold down costs.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/engineering-against-all-odds/?ncid=rss

  • How Should Your Company Prepare For Robot Coworkers?

    A December 2017 survey by insurance and risk management advisory firm Willis Towers Watson in Arlington, Virginia, found that U.S. companies will nearly double the amount of work done by automation (to 17%) within the next three years. Ninety-four percent of companies that are already using robotics and AI will expand their use of automation by 2020.

    But are companies ready for those changes? Maybe not, the survey found. Less than 5% of respondents say their HR functions are fully prepared for the changing requirements of these new ways of working.

    “So we’re getting beyond the hyperbole of, ‘Robots are going to replace humans,’ and thinking about this in a more nuanced and practical way,” says Renee Smith, who leads the Future of Work consulting activities at Willis Towers Watson. Instead, employees will need to integrate the work that’s done through automation or algorithmic technologies and learn how these tools can enhance performance. Organizations need to start thinking about how the workplace changes when people work side by side with technology, and how to get them ready to do so successfully, she says.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40528265/how-should-your-company-prepare-for-robot-co-workers

Photo: Sean Thomas

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News You Can Use: 4/19/2017

  • Want to be Successful? Learn to Like Other People

    One of the biggest opportunities for growth at work comes from the way you solicit feedback and what you do with it afterward. Research demonstrates that while employees who speak up tend to improve how well teams function, many tend to be afraid to do so, worrying that their input won’t be well-received. Simply assuming the best in others can lay the foundation for managers and their team members alike to learn and improve without wounding egos.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40401630/want-to-be-happier-and-more-successful-learn-to-like-other-people

  • Why So Many Americans Are Saying Goodbye to Cities

    America’s largest cities have so much going for them. They are rich, productive, and pulsating with culture and life. So what happened to the great urban revival? “America’s cities have domestic net out-migration because they’re not affordable,” said E. J. McMahon, the founder of the Empire Center for Public Policy. “For many, New York City is a temporary portal. The Baby Boomers retire to Florida. The middle-class Millennials move to Long Island for a house. The woman from Slovakia comes to Queens, lives in her second-cousin’s basement, gets her feet on the ground, and gets a better apartment in West Orange, New Jersey.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/why-is-everyone-leaving-the-city/521844/?utm_source=feed

  • With robots on the job, it won’t be IT as usual

    “It’s very much a different mindset than traditional IT,” said Mike Gennert, a professor and director of the Robotics Engineering Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, Mass. “IT managers worry about how they manage information, how it’s used, how it’s stored and secured. But none of that has the ability to directly affect the physical world. Robots affect the real world. That brings issues IT managers have not had to confront.”

    For instance, It’s bad enough if a company computer is hacked and it becomes part of a zombie botnet. But what if someone hijacks a company robot and makes it do things, harmful things, in the real world?

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3188889/robotics/with-robots-on-the-job-its-not-going-to-be-it-as-usual.html

  • Does Silicon Valley Have a Contract-Worker Problem?

    But increasingly, critics argue that the freelance model is being abused, with workers being treated as if they were on payroll without getting any of the benefits afforded to payrolled employees. Some Silicon Valley insiders are beginning to worry that start-ups’ overreliance on contract workers could come back to haunt them if they run afoul of longstanding labor rules. If that happens, these high-flying disruptors could be facing serious disruption themselves.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/silicon-valleys-contract-worker-problem.html
    Also:

    Then, there is the problem of massive labor oversupply. Unlike for Uber or TaskRabbit, which operate in a given city with a constrained supply of workers, the pool of labor for such digital work is for all intents and purposes infinite. One contingent-work platform reported having nine times as many workers as necessary. A Filipino virtual assistant described the inevitable result: “I first set [my hourly rate] at $8, because that’s what my previous client was paying me,” the assistant told the researchers. “But I found it quite difficult to find jobs. So I set it at $4. And I think I even set it at $3.50 currently. So, I mean, if you don’t get a lot of invitations, you don’t have any other choice but to lower down your expectations, I guess.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/gig-economy-global/522954/?utm_source=feed

  • What “Personal Space” Means to the Rest of World

    Countries that greatly value their personal space include Romania, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Uganda. Participants from all five of those places would prefer it if you stood more than 120 cm away, or roughly four feet. But participants from Argentina, Peru, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Austria don’t mind if you chill about 90 cm away, or less than three feet. The U.S. isn’t too far off from that, expecting strangers to keep a cool 95 cm distance between them.

    That said, nobody likes any stranger standing two and half feet or less away. So stop it. Unless you’re on a cramped metro train or something and can’t help it. It’s also important to note that women and elderly participants of all cultures required more space.

    http://lifehacker.com/what-personal-space-means-to-the-rest-of-world-1794130182
    Certainly not the first time a reporter has addressed this topic, but always good to have a refresher.

Photo: Nina Strehl