Is The Fintech Industry The Next Tech Bubble?
Many experts believe that since banks offered such a wide multitude of services, they have lost their focus and have over extended themselves. This is why many Fintech startups started in the last decade are starting to give banks a run for their money. Most of these fintech startups specialize in one particular field and focus on customer experience and convenience. For instance, PayPal started offering online payments as a service for merchants when checks were becoming irrelevant for e-commerce transactions. This immediately made PayPal a household name and the company was able to gain significant market shares in a sector that was gravely neglected by banks. DealSunny, a company that specializes in special offers and coupons, devised a neat infographic exposing some of the facts about the amazingly fast growing Fintech industry.
The End Of IT: More Questions, Some Answers
Companies will not become digital until the employees, including the executives, adopt digital-age attitudes and techniques. The question is, "How?" In many instances, this will be a Darwinian process. Those CEOs who think digitally and who understand disruption will naturally lead their organizations to better places. In other cases, boards and directors will select new CEOs, perhaps those who have demonstrated an understanding of both business and the new digital age. ... Too frequently, the consultant doesn't take into account the business environment, or the consultant doesn't spend adequate time assessing conditions before applying the framework. This process is a little like a painter who shows up and doesn't clean the existing painted surface or apply primer. That new coat of paint is going to peel off sooner rather than later.
Courting the Internet of Things: Legal issues to weigh
Take the most basic question: Who owns the data smart devices produce and send forth over the Internet? Right now it depends on the contractual relationship between the parties. So if someone is buying, say, a refrigerator that can monitor its contents and send out orders to replenish dwindling supplies of milk, eggs or Pop Tarts, "there ought to be fine print in that purchasing agreement which talks about the data and the right of the manufacturer of the product to use that data and their ability to disseminate it," Foley said. Some data, like healthcare, finance and student aid information, is regulated, so there are rules limiting what organizations can do with it.
How to define the evolving role of data scientist
Businesses should also avoid being data-greedy -- because the idea of too much of a good thing, certainly can apply to data. "They may be collecting more data than they have the capacity to explore and assess the value of. One way to solve this problem -- is to be more selective about what data you analyze," says Rattenbury. And because data is such a new concept in business, Rattenbury recommends a flexible approach to a data strategy -- one that considers what should change as you move along with a new data initiative. This way, businesses can consider what's working, what's not working, who the key players are and the value tied to specific data points. However, prioritizing data this way isn't just a task for data scientists, he says, it's a task that needs to include everyone in the company.
The reality of android soldiers and why laws for robots are doomed to failure
One reason for the unreasonable level of expectation around autonomous weapons is the belief that AI is far more capable than it really is, or what Sharkey describes as the "cultural myth of artificial intelligence that has come out of science fiction." Researchers working in the field assert that AI is working on projects that are far more mundane (if useful) than building thinking humanoid robots. "Every decade, within 20 years we are going to have sentient robots and there is always somebody saying it, but if you look at the people on the ground working [on AI] they don't say this. They get on with the work. AI is mostly a practical subject developing things that you don't even know are AI — in your phone, in your car, that's the way we work."
Outsourcing Software Development to a Global Talent Pool: World of Help or World of Hurt?
Client success requires that your vendor understand the politics, administration, paperwork, red tape, tax and banking systems of the countries where they have established dev centers. For an outsource vendor, this if often the biggest challenge to overcome. Does your vendor employ someone on-site at their offshore dev center(s) to ensure they are able to successfully meet this challenge? The role of an on-site international business manager has the primary function to manage and navigate the processes specific to countries outside the U.S. Your vendor needs to ensure their employees, their facilities, and your code is safe, accessible, and stable. Regardless of outsource destination, your vendor needs to have a plan to address potential issues with electrical outages and other unpredictable factors related to utilities.
Google Ending Automatic Chrome Support For Flash
"While Flash historically has been critical for rich media on the web, today in many cases HTML5 provides a more integrated media experience with faster load times and lower power consumption," Anthony LaForge, technical program manager for Chrome at Google, wrote in an online posting explaining the switch. "This change reflects the maturity of HTML5 and its ability to deliver an excellent user experience." LaForge also noted that Google would continue to work closely with Adobe and other browser vendors to keep moving the Web platform forward, in particular paying close attention to Web gaming. Flash has been widely criticized for its security holes and susceptibility to new vulnerabilities. The late Steve Jobs published a 1,500-word letter in 2010, essentially calling the platform a relic from the bygone era of PCs and mice.
Identity Startup Netki to Launch SSL Certificate for Blockchain
Netki will seek to act as a certificate authority similar to how Symantec sells SSL certificates to domain name holders. When a MSB acquires a digital identity certificate for itself and its users, the name, address and verification level (aligned to the risk or value of the transactions) is built into the certificate. When a transaction is made, the MSBs on both sides send identity certificates and compare the information through their own AML checks. If both sides have a small green lock, the transaction is secure and compliant. Newton explained that one certificate would contain both the MSB and client information, but in the future, there would be a separate certificate for the MSB and client. But not storing information on a public ledger is also necessary for the world that Newton believes is coming.
Centralizing Security for Decentralized Environments
Both DDoS and web application security are important in today’s high-stakes, high volume game of “protect the application.” Bringing both together in a single, cloud-based solution addresses the need to centralize security whilst establishing appropriate app-centric perimeters regardless of where that app may be deployed. It’s infeasible to establish those app-centric perimeters on-premises. The architectural drawbacks of doing so outweigh the operational advantages. But moving that same concept to the cloud, as a cloud-based service, not only affords the same operational advantages innate to centralization but is an architecturally sound principle, as well. A cloud-based solution has access to greater bandwidth, which means it can withstand a deluge of network and application attack floods.
7 Deadly Career Mistakes Developers Make
Your expertise in one stack may make you invaluable to your current workplace -- but is it helping your career? Can it hurt to be too focused on only one stack? MediaMath’s Donohue doesn’t pull any punches on this one: “Of course it is -- there’s no modern software engineering role in which you will use only one technology for the length of your career. If you take a Java developer that has been working in Java for 10 years, and all of a sudden they start working on a JavaScript application, they’ll write it differently than someone with similar years of experience as a Python developer. Each technology that you learn influences your decisions. Some would argue that isn’t a good thing -- if you take a Java object-oriented approach to a loosely typed language like JavaScript, you’ll try to make it do things that it isn’t supposed to do.”
Quote for the day:
"Great effort springs naturally from a great attitude." -- Pat Riley
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