Innovation vs. execution: You have to have both
Innovation requires a major marketing commitment. Humans don’t like change, but
there’s no way to innovate without introducing change. You have to convince
potential buyers that the benefits of the change are worthwhile. If you don’t,
you could have the best product around and still falter in the market. Take the
Microsoft Zune, for example. It was far more innovative than the iPod at the
time. It was more robust, played video, allowed for legal music sharing, and it
came in colors. But Microsoft didn’t market those differences, the design
was less attractive, The Zune required a subscription, and getting video to work
was … problematic. Microsoft fixed the execution problems made the Zune better
looking, got video to work, and even made the subscription more compelling. But
it cut back on marketing and lost even the fans it had. Innovation needs
both execution and marketing to make a difference – and that the most innovative
products have the highest execution and marketing needs. Tesla is popular
because it hit a niche otherc armakers didn’t take seriously, the ecologically
conscious buyer. And its unique vehicle (and strong customer advocacy) allowed
it to take market leadership.
The Key Role of Citizen Developers in Creating Digital Transformation
Citizen developers have the potential to create meaningful DX without any of
these burdens. They are only interested in the core definition of DX, making
things work better, faster, less expensively to help people do a better job and
enjoy doing it much more. Since they always start from the processes already in
use, citizen developers can be more targeted more accurately than their
code-cutting counterparts. New hardware, software, or infrastructure are only
considered part of the initiative occasionally. In many cases, the end-product
from an IDE may ideally suit the need and be used as-is. In worst case, the
resulting program is given to the professionals to expand upon, meaning they get
a head-start on development. It's based on deep knowledge of the user community,
and it's already partially baked! Developers need spend much less time in
discovery and development. Forrester suggests that this partnership approach,
first citizen developer then professional developer, has "the potential to make
software development as much as 10-times faster than traditional methods."
Why Employee-Targeted Digital Risks Are The Next Frontier Of Enterprise Cybersecurity
Employee-Targeted Digital Risk represents the threat surface of attacks that
come to the enterprise via the team’s personal devices, personal accounts and
digital lives. These attacks take a variety of forms, but what they have in
common is that they circumvent the extensive cybersecurity controls companies
have in place by targeting accounts and devices outside the company’s purview
and then using that access to move laterally to company systems and data.
Sometimes these incidents start with a specific target company, and bad actors
will identify a vulnerable employee. In other cases, these incidents start with
vulnerable or exposed personal data, and target companies are chosen
opportunistically. We in the industry have been speaking on this extensively for
several years—for example, Martin Casado of Andressen Horowitz dug into this
problem in 2019 in The New Attack Surface is Your Life, and my company and
Strategy of Security collaborated on a recent whitepaper—but only recently has
the threat surface become more talked about.
Microservices Deployment Patterns
In many cases, microservices need their own space and a clearly separated
deployment environment. In such cases, they can’t share the deployment
environment with other services or service instances. There may be a chance of
resource conflict or scarcity. There might be issues when services written in
the same language or framework but with different versions can’t be
co-located.In such cases, a service instance could be deployed on its own host.
The host could either be a physical or virtual machine. In such cases, there
wouldn’t be any conflict with other services. The service remains entirely
isolated. All the resources of the VM are available for consumption by the
service. It can be easily monitored. ... In many cases, microservices need
their own, self-contained deployment environment. The microservice must be
robust and must start and stop quickly. Again, it also needs quick upscaling and
downscaling. It can’t share any resources with any other service. It can’t
afford to have conflicts with other services. It needs more resources, and the
resources must be properly allocated to the service.
Are robots too insecure for lethal use by law enforcement?
The law enforcement agency argued that the robots would only be used in extreme
circumstances, and only a few high-ranking officers could authorize their use as
a deadly force. SFPD also stressed that the robots would not be autonomous and
would be operated remotely by officers trained to do just that. The proposal
came about after the SFPD struck language from a policy proposal related to the
city’s use of its military-style weapons. The excised language, proposed by
Board of Supervisors Rules Committee Chair Aaron Peskin, said, “Robots shall not
be used as a use of force against any person.” The removal of this language
cleared the path for the SFPD to retrofit any of the department’s 17 robots to
engage in lethal force actions. Following public furor over the prospects of
“murder” robots, the Board of Supervisors reversed itself a week later and voted
8-3 to prohibit police from using remote-controlled robots with lethal force.
The supervisors separately sent the original lethal robot provision of the
policy back to the Board’s Rules Committee for further review, which means it
could be brought back again for future approval.
Why Memory Allocation Resilience Matters in IoT
After all, modern computers, tablets, and servers count so much space that
memory often seems like an infinite resource. And, if there is any trouble, a
memory allocation failure or error is so unlikely that the system normally
defaults to program exit. This is very different, however, when it comes to the
Internet of Things (IoT). In these embedded connected devices, memory is a
limited resource and multiple programs fight over how much they can consume. The
system is smaller and so is the memory. Therefore, it is best viewed as a
limited resource and used conservatively. ... In modern connected embedded
systems, malloc is more frequently used and many embedded systems and platforms
have decent malloc implementation. The reason for the shift is that modern
connected embedded systems do more tasks and it is often not feasible to
statically allocate the maximum required resources for all possible executions
of the program. This shift to using malloc actively in modern connected embedded
systems requires more thorough and systematic software testing to uncover
errors.
Artificial Intelligence could steal your restaurant job. Here's how
AI-powered voice bots such as Tori will join other tech used in quick-service
restaurants. Tori is a front-of-house "employee," but other robotic restaurant
workers cook, clean, and serve food. Robotics and AIs in the food industry are a
direct result of a crippling labor shortage, as restaurants around the country
have hundreds of thousands of fewer employees than they did two years ago,
according to the US Labor Department. Other uses for AI in the restaurant
industry include leveraging AI-powered vision to monitor drive-thru efficiency.
Companies like Plainsight offer their services to help restaurants mitigate lost
revenue due to customers leaving the drive-thru because of long wait times. ...
AI can also help restaurants reduce waste, which helps decrease food costs and
the burden of food waste on the environment. Companies such as Winnow deliver
AI-powered software to help restaurants decrease their food waste. The
technology specialist created a kitchen tool called Winnow Vision, which
monitors what food is thrown in the trash and automatically collects that data.
It uses that information to notify kitchen staff about how much of what food is
being wasted throughout the day.
New AI Bot Could Take Phishing, Malware to a Whole New Level
Since the cybercrime market for ransomware as a service is already organized to
outsource malware development, tools such as ChatGPT could make the process even
easier for criminals entering the market. "I have no doubt that ChatGPT and
other tools like this will democratize cybercrime," says Suleyman Ozarslan,
security researcher and co-founder of Picus Security. "It's bad enough that
ransomware code is already available for people to buy off the shelf on the dark
web. Now virtually anyone can create it themselves." In testing ChatGPT,
Ozarslan instructed the bot to write a phishing email, and it spat out a perfect
mail within seconds. "Misspellings and poor grammar are often tell-tale signs of
phishing, especially when attackers are targeting people from another region.
Conversational AI eliminates these mistakes, making it quicker to scale and
harder to spot them," he says. While the terms of service for ChatGPT prohibit
individuals from using the software for nefarious purposes, Ozarslan prompted
the bot to write the phishing email by telling it the code would be used for a
simulated attack.
California’s finance department confirms breach as LockBit claims data theft
California’s Department of Finance has confirmed it’s investigating a
“cybersecurity incident” after the prolific LockBit ransomware group claims to
have stolen confidential data from the agency. The California Office of
Emergency Services (Cal OES) in a statement on Monday described the threat as an
“intrusion” that was “identified through coordination with state and federal
security partners.” The statement did not provide any specifics about the nature
of the incident, who was involved or whether any information had been stolen.
The California Department of Finance did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions
prior to publication. “While we cannot comment on specifics of the ongoing
investigation, we can share that no state funds have been compromised, and the
department of finance is continuing its work to prepare the governor’s budget
that will be released next month,” the statement said. While state officials
remain tight-lipped about the incident, the notorious LockBit ransomware gang on
Monday claimed responsibility for the attack.
Why diversity and inclusion matter for technology
There are ways in which technology firms can help improve their diversity and
inclusion. Jinny Mitchell-Kent, chief operating officer at digital agency Great
State, believes more needs to be done to encourage applications from different
groups in the first place. “Considering where we market roles, what language we
use in our job descriptions and what our hiring process is like can facilitate
receiving more diverse candidates,” she says. “For example, neurodivergent
people may be more receptive to an online job advert that is not on a hugely
colourful background with lots of moving components.” Training existing staff
can also help to ensure individuals avoid unconscious bias and become advocates
for change, believes Suki Sandhu OBE, CEO and founder of diversity consultancy
INvolve and executive recruiter Audeliss. “Training and workshops are critical
to contextualise issues surrounding race, gender and LGBTQ+ communities within a
workplace, and provide employees with a deeper understanding of diversity and
inclusion’s importance and their role in driving action,” he says.
Quote for the day:
"Leadership matters more in times of
uncertainty." -- Wayde Goodall
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