Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Interview with AMD CTO Mark Papermaster on AMD's release schedule and future products, partnerships with TSMC and Samsung, driving industry standards, and more — On the back of a very busy 2019, AMD is gaining market share and is now a performance leader in a lot of CPU segments.
Politico:
A look at the increasing prevalence of facial recognition and AI tech across the globe, as the US and EU governments' efforts to limit their use have stalled — The result is an impasse that has left tech companies largely in control of where and how to deploy facial recognition.
InsightFinder, a startup from North Carolina based on 15 years of academic research, wants to bring machine learning to system monitoring to automatically identify and fix common issues. Today, the company announced a $2 million seed round.
IDEA Fund Partners, a VC out of Durham, North Carolina, led the round with participation from Eight Roads Ventures and Acadia Woods Partners. The company was founded by North Carolina State professor Helen Gu, who spent 15 years researching this problem before launching the startup in 2015.
Gu also announced that she had brought on former Distil Networks co-founder and CEO Rami Essaid to be Chief Operating Officer. Essaid, who sold his company earlier this year, says his new company focuses on taking a proactive approach to application and infrastructure monitoring.
“We found that these problems happen to be repeatable, and the signals are there. We use artificial intelligence to predict and get out ahead of these issues,” he said. He adds that it’s about using technology to be proactive, and he says that today the software can prevent about half of the issues before they even become problems.
If you’re thinking that this sounds a lot like what Splunk, New Relic and DataDog are doing, you wouldn’t be wrong, but Essaid says that these products take a siloed look at one part of the company technology stack, whereas InsightFinder can act as a layer on top of these solutions to help companies reduce alert noise, track a problem when there are multiple alerts flashing, and completely automate issue resolution when possible.
“It’s the only company that can actually take a lot of signals and use them to predict when something’s going to go bad. It doesn’t just help you reduce the alerts and help you find the problem faster, it actually takes all of that data and can crunch it using artificial intelligence to predict and prevent [problems], which nobody else right now is able to do,” Essaid said.
For now, the software is installed on-prem at its current set of customers, but the startup plans to create a SaaS version of the product in 2020 to make it accessible to more customers.
The company launched in 2015, and has been building out the product using a couple of National Science Foundation grants before this investment. Essaid says the product is in use today in 10 large companies (which he can’t name yet), but it doesn’t have any true go-to-market motion. The startup intends to use this investment to begin to develop that in 2020.
Shipfix, a relatively new startup aiming to drag the dry cargo shipping industry into the digital age, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding.
Leading the round is Idinvest Partners, with participation from Kima Ventures, The Family, Bpifrance and strategic business angels. The company was founded in December 2018 by Serge Alleyne (CEO) and Antoine Grisay (COO), and launched just two months ago.
“We’re trying to fix the email overload for everybody involved in the process of fixing a dry cargo ship by providing a comprehensive market monitor,” Alleyne tells TechCrunch.
“We’re also producing data-driven insights that are profoundly missing in the bulk/break-bulk space. Actually the last revolution of the dry cargo industry was email, and so far people still rely on indices based on a panel of brokers while all the data is available in emails”.
To solve this, Alleyne says that Shipfix connects to its clients’ email to extract and anonymously aggregate “billions of data points using deep learning technology”.
The idea is that, rather than spending hours scrolling through your inbox every morning to take the pulse of the market, you can search and filter structured market offers instantly via Shipfix.
In addition, you can browse what Alleyne calls “augmented directories” (ships, ports, companies and people available within emails and signatures — information that isn’t typically available on LinkedIn), and access data-driven benchmarks and indices.
Shipfix customers are primarily anyone chartering/fixing a ship, such as charterers, ship owners, ship operators, freight forwarders and “lots of brokers”.
However, longer term, the startup plans yo onboard commodity traders, insurers, banks, governments and investment firms, based on the granular benchmarks and indices it is building.
“We cover 430 cargo categories from salt, sand, iron ore, fertilizers, grain, steel, etc., and forecasting market pressures around the globe… [is useful] for everybody involved within the commodities space,” adds the Shipfix co-founder.
Meanwhile, the company currently employs 15 people, including senior engineers, shipping professionals, data scientists and analysts. The team is mostly remote-based and spread across 7 cities, with offices in London, Paris and Toulouse.
Dan Sabbagh / The Guardian:
UK surveillance watchdog: public bodies have insufficient government guidance on when it's appropriate to use facial recognition, lip-reading tech, and more — CCTV commissioner says he gets many queries about facial recognition and other tools — Police forces, hospitals and councils struggle …
With the New Year fast approaching, now is a good time to reflect on the previous 12 months and plan ahead. If you want to switch jobs or climb the career ladder in 2020, Stone River eLearning can help. This online platform offers unlimited access to over 300 certified courses on code, design, animation, and many more skills. Right now, you can get lifetime membership for only $59 via MakeUseOf Deals.
In times past, recruiters would only consider candidates with a degree. But in many careers, skills and talent are now valued more than certificates.
Whether you want to develop iOS apps for a living or become a graphic designer, Stone River can help you get started. This platform has over 3,500 hours of video training, covering a wide range of topics and skill levels.
Aspiring web designers can master HTML, CSS, node.js, and Bootstrap. Programmers can dive into Java and Python, while graphic designers can master Photoshop. You can also learn about cybersecurity, cryptocurrencies, business insights, and more.
Along with unlimited access to this training, members get downloadable eBooks, personal guidance, free entry to certification exams, and one year of membership to CodeMag.
Lifetime access to Stone River is worth $11,500, but you can become a member now for just $59 with this deal.
Prices subject to change
Read the full article: Launch a New Tech Career in the New Year With Stone River eLearning
Online learning is bigger than ever before, with top universities offering free courses on the internet. In fact, there are so many of these massive open online courses (MOOCs) that you need to rely on websites to help you figure out the best education for you.
From MIT to Coursera, there are some amazing websites that offer free college courses online. But go to any and you’ll be overwhelmed by the choices on offer. Plus, these sites limit themselves to courses available on their own platform.
So how do you search for or discover the best MOOC? These websites offer robust search engines, filters, reviews, and guided paths for free online courses.
Class Central is all about free online courses but it also lists paid courses. It includes a variety of universities, including MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. It neatly categorizes all these courses into subjects like computer science, business, humanities, engineering, etc.
The website has a powerful search engine to find any type of online course you’re looking for. You can also browse MOOCs by providers, universities, institutions, careers, and languages.
Class Central’s best feature is the regularly updated lists they provide. At any time, you can check the list of the top 100 free online courses of all time. The website also creates annual lists of the best MOOCs of the year, so if you want to know what’s new and awesome in 2019, there’s a ready reckoner available.
Course Root is one of the most comprehensive databases of MOOCs, both free and paid. It is an aggregator that lists everything from Khan Academy and Coursera to those made by smaller universities from around the world. And it simplifies the process of finding the right course for you.
At Course Root, you can choose a subject and then add filters to find the type of course that’s best for you. The three main filters are Difficulty (beginner, intermediate, expert), price (free or paid), and certificate (okay, good, excellent). The certificate filter is especially useful if you’re taking a course so that you can add accomplishments to your CV.
You can further filter the results by the number of hours it takes to complete the course, and choose from one of the eight most popular online course platforms. For each course, you’ll get a brief description, as well as find out whether it’s self-paced or an in-session course.
If you want to search or filter your results by various parameters, then it doesn’t get better than MOOC-List. The website has a multiple criteria search that lets you find any online course based on:
As you start looking at more and more MOOCs, you will find that many of these criteria are extremely useful in figuring out the right type of course for you. For example, peer assessments can play a major role in how much you understand a course, as can subtitles if you’re having trouble picking up accents.
MOOC-List also notifies you of upcoming MOOCs and free online courses for the next 30 days, sorted by date. All of these features combine to make it one of the best sites for beginners to online courses.
Given how big the MOOCs industry is, there is naturally a lot of people who are gaming the system through search engines and ads. If you prefer to rely on word of mouth for your recommendations, Course Talk lets you find courses based on reviews by students.
People who take a course rate it on different aspects on the website. Course Talk also encourages them to write detailed reviews so you can figure out what you’re getting into, from someone who has already done the course. Based on ratings, there are also leaderboards for the top course providers.
Meanwhile, try the Course Advisor by clicking Recommendations. Course Talk will ask you different questions about your interests and recommend a few of the best-reviewed courses that you’re likely to find interesting.
A lot of the better reviews on the site are pretty old now, but they’re still beneficial. After all, education doesn’t have to be new or change every year for it to be an engaging lesson.
MOOCLab believes that if you combine the right courses from different online learning resources, you can get an education that is close to a traditional bachelor’s degree course. It calls these learning playlists Degree Paths.
Currently, MOOCLab has 272 degree paths, divided into four main categories: computer science, business administration, health science, and general education. Click any for further options, like a core business course or a business specialization course. The website estimates that if you commit to 15 hours of study time per week, you can finish a degree path in two to three years.
Before you ask, no, you won’t get a certified bachelor’s degree by doing any of these. Upon completion, you can get a certificate for a small fee. MOOCLab’s degree paths are a great way to learn about a subject in detail, but potential employers are not going to see it as actual academic qualifications.
Apart from educational institutions, Google has jumped into the MOOC game. The internet giant offers a variety of online courses through its own portals or through other platforms like Udacity. But don’t worry, you don’t have to go hunting for them, we rounded up the best Google online courses for you.
Read the full article: 5 Sites to Search and Find the Best Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for You
It’s the mid-’90s, and this pilot fish is the sole IT employee for a barebones operation. It’s a small agricultural nonprofit, and his job includes networking, user support, IT purchasing and application development — the kind of job where you learn a ton but work your butt off.
There’s a remote rural location, and fish manages an upgrade of sorts of its hand-me-down hardware: two refurbished desktops, one for a small quality lab and another for the receptionist/bookkeeper, and a server running Netware 3.12 that’s no longer needed in the main office. Fish tells the remote users to be sure to store all the accounting files, documents and quality records on the server and not their workstations. He also installs an external tape backup unit on the laboratory computer so it can do double duty at night as the server backup workstation. And there’s an ancient 80286 laptop sitting in a spare room running a dialup email gateway to the organization’s ISP.
One of the new chips in this year’s crop of iPhones is the U1; it provides Ultra Wideband (UWB) connectivity that, in conjunction with Internet of Things (IoT) technology, could offer a myriad of new services for enterprises and consumers.
As Apple puts it, UWB technology offers “spatial awareness" – the ability for your phone to recognize its surroundings and the objects in it. Essentially, one iPhone 11 user can point his or her phone at another and transfer a file or photo.
While the technology isn't new, Apple’s implementation marks the first time UWB has been used in a modern smartphone.
UWB is a short-range, wireless communication protocol that – like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi – uses radio waves. But it differs substantially in that IT operates at a very high frequency. As its name denotes, it also uses a wide spectrum of several GHz. One way to think of it is as a radar that can continuously scan an entire room and precisely lock onto an object like a laser beam to discover its location and communicate data.
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Celia Chen / South China Morning Post:
Research shows Tencent participated in 108 investment deals this year, compared to 162 in 2018, spending ~$4.9B in total, less than half of its 2018's total — Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings, one of the most active investors in the tech world, put money into 108 deals this year compared …
As Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart scramble for ways to make a dent in India’s retail market, the two companies have stumbled upon a new challenge: Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man.
Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio, two subsidiaries of Ambani’s Reliance Industries, said they have soft launched JioMart, their e-commerce venture, in parts of the state of Maharashtra — Mumbai, Kalyan and Thane.
The e-commerce venture, which is being marketed as “Desh Ki Nayi Dukaan” (Hindi for new store for the country), currently offers a catalog of 50,000 grocery items and promises “free and express delivery.”
In an email to employees, accessed by TechCrunch, the two aforementioned subsidiaries that are working together on the e-commerce venture, said they plan to expand the service to many parts of India in coming months. A Reliance spokesperson declined to comment.
The soft launch this week comes months after Ambani, who runs Reliance Industries — India’s largest industrial house — said that he wants to service tens of millions of retailers and store owners across the country.
If there is anyone in India who is positioned to compete with Amazon and Walmart, it is him. Reliance Retail, which was founded in 2006, is the largest retailer in the country by revenue. It serves more than 3.5 million customers each week through its nearly 10,000 physical stores in more than 6,500 Indian cities and towns.
Reliance Jio is the largest telecom operator in India with more than 350 million subscribers. The 4G-only carrier, which launched commercial operations in the second half of 2016, disrupted the incumbent telecom operation in the country by offering bulk of data and voice calls at little to no charge for an extended period of time
In a speech in January, Ambani, an ally of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, invoked Mahatama Gandhi and said like Gandhi, who led a movement against political colonization of India, “we have to collectively launch a new movement against data colonization. For India to succeed in this data-driven revolution, we will have to migrate the control and ownership of Indian data back to India – in other words, Indian wealth back to every Indian.” Modi was among the attendees.
More to follow…
Postmates and Uber have filed a complaint in California federal district court, alleging that a bill limiting how companies can label workers as independent contractors is unconstitutional. The complaint, which includes two gig workers as co-plaintiffs, was filed in U.S. District Court on Monday, days before Assembly Bill 5 (AB-5) is due to go into effect on Jan. 1. It asks for a preliminary injunction against AB-5 while the lawsuit is under consideration.
The complaint argues that AB-5 violates several clauses in the U.S. and California constitutions, including equal protection because of how it classifies gig workers for ride-sharing and on-demand delivery companies compared to the exemptions it grants to workers who do “substantively identical work” in more than twenty other industries.
AB-5 was authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat representing the 80th Assembly District in southern California and signed into law in September by Governor Gavin Newsom. It is intended to uphold the ruling in Dynamex Operations West Inc. v Superior Court of Los Angeles, a landmark 2018 decision by the California Supreme Court about how employees and independent contractors should be classified, and ensure that gig economy workers are entitled to benefits like minimum wage, health insurance and workers’ compensation.
But the suit’s opponents, which includes tech companies whose business models rely on the gig economy, as well as groups of gig workers and freelance journalists, argue that it restricts their work opportunities and ability to earn money.
In addition to Uber and Postmates, the complaints’ plaintiffs also include Lydia Olson and Miguel Perez, drivers for on-demand companies. In a post on Postmates’ blog, Perez wrote that he joined the suit because AB5 “is threatening the freedom and flexibility I have relied on in recent years to support my family.”
A statement from Postmates said “AB5 is a blunt instrument, which is why lawmakers exempted 24 industries, seemingly at random, from its requirements.”
The company added that does not want to be exempted from AB-5 or reverse the Dynamex standard, but “call for industry and labor talks with the California legislature to modernize a robust safety net designed specifically for the needs of on-demand workers, that establishes a new portable benefits model, creates earnings guarantees higher than minimum age, and gives all workers both the strong voice they need and flexibility they demand—a framework not currently contemplated under state and federal law.”
As proof that AB-5 violates the equal protection clause, the complaint argues that “the vast majority of the statute is a list of exemptions that carve out of the statutory scope dozens of occupations, including direct salespeople, travel agents, grant writers, construction truck drivers, commercial fisherman, and many more. There is no rhyme or reason to these nonsensical exemptions, and some are so ill-defined or entirely undefined that it is impossible to discern what they include or exclude.”
The complaint also alleges that AB-5 violates due process by preventing people from choosing to work for gig companies, and the contracts clause because mandating companies like Uber and Postmates to reclassify contractors as employees will either invalidate or substantially change their existing contracts.
In statement about the lawsuit, Gonzalez said “the one clear thing we know about Uber is they will do anything to try to exempt themselves from state regulations that make us all safer and their driver employees self-sufficient. In the meantime, Uber chief executives will continue to become billionaires while too many of their drivers are forced to sleep in their cars.”
The lawsuit follows several efforts to stop or limit AB-5. In October, a group of drivers for Lyft, Uber and DoorDash announced they had submitted a California ballet initiative for the November 2020 ballot in response to AB-5. The measure which received substantial financial support from those companies, seeks to enable drivers and couriers can continue to be independent contractors while guaranteeing benefits like a minimum wage, expenses, healthcare and insurances.
Earlier this month, several organizations representing freelancer writers filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles alleging AB5 places unconstitutional restrictions on free speech, the day after Vox Media announced it will cut hundreds of freelance positions in California as it prepares for the bill.
Eric Feng:
Analysis of PitchBook data since 2005 shows that in 2019, the number of enterprise-focused seed deals overtook consumer-focused seed deals for the first time — I recently wrote a recommendation letter for a former coworker who wanted to change careers by going back to school.
