William Mapp – Page 10

Do Virtual Chicken Wings Taste Good, Facebook Pays to Disrupt TikTok, Dyson Announces Air Purifying Headphones

March 30, 2022 by William Mapp Leave a Comment

It’s Thursday again, TTN readers! It’s a new week, and I’ll be home alone this weekend! I’m on with Mark Starling, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: WingStop sells NFT chicken wings in metaverse, Facebook paid for hit contracts on TikTok, and Dyson has announced new air purifying headphones. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

WINGSTOP FILES TRADEMARK TO SELL DIGITAL CHICKEN WINGS

Stop the world, I want to get off. NFTs have jumped the proverbial shark. Earlier this month, WingStop filed a trademark to sell digital chicken wings at their met averse locations. According to WingStop, “the filing signifies an exciting step to serve the world flavor in a virtual space.” That word, flavor. What do virtual chicken wings taste like. The first thing my 11-year old asked was, “are virtual chicken wings, consumable?” It was at that moment I asked my 11 and 14 year old girls to come up with something we can hock in the NFT metaverse. To which they replied, “why? NFTs are stupid?” Where did I go wrong, I thought this whole virtual world was theirs. Well, WingStop isn’t the only company selling NFT products. McDonald’s and Panera are offering NFTs that can be purchased for real world redeemable products. We’ll see what happens next.

FACEBOOK PAID POLITICAL FIRM TO MALIGN TIKTOK

Yup. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported Facebook hiring a political firm called Targeted Victory to use traditional political campaign tactics to turn public opinion negatively for TikTok. The firm used editorial comment in media, elevated detractors, and planted false data swaying people to believe the app is improperly abusing information from young Americans (probably true) and that the app is generally a bad option for people. Facebook hired the firm after it was trying to overcome the Cambridge Analytica scandal as well as the ‘Facebook caused mental anguish’ scandal. Meanwhile, Facebook or Meta, has reported that it has lost users for the first time in its 18 year history. TikTok has acquired many more young users on its platform as the Big Blue apps users have grown older. Remember, Facebook was originally only available for college students, and then opened up to other users. Those colleges students are now in their 30s and 40s and have more important things to do.

DYSON ANNOUNCES NEW AIR PURIFYING HEADPHONES

I had to end this week’s top tech news on a funny note. I love gadgets and gadget makers. Someone is always trying to come up with some creative way to get people to wear tech and Dyson tickled my fancy. The Dyson Zone is the vacuum company’s first foray in wearable technology. The headphones specs don’t matter, what does is that the headphones come with an over-the-mouth air purification system. Dyson says the headphones are great for rising air pollution. Each pair comes with a fan and air filters that suck in air from the ear cups, purifies air, and channels clean air in the nose and mouth. You’ll probably look ridiculous, but will breathing free. The headphones are expected to be expensive and go on sale in the fall.

AI, Community, and Collaboration Big Themes at AWS IMAGINE: NONPROFIT Conference

March 24, 2022 by William Mapp Leave a Comment

Nonprofits are a critical element of our nation’s infrastructure. In many cases, nonprofits and NGOs bridge the gap between government support agencies and the people who need special services. Some nonprofits make a direct impact on citizens in times of dire need. Others augment the capabilities of government agencies by providing expertise those agencies can’t acquire. I spent the last two days learning more about how nonprofits are leveraging technology to make a difference at the IMAGINE: NONPROFIT Conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in Washington, DC.

We live in an exciting time and in a dynamic era. The IMAGINE conference’s aim was to share information on the positive possibilities technology can bring to nonprofits as well as educate their leaders on AWS technology and support. AWS delivered. This conference wasn’t what I was expecting even as an attendee who is leading my company’s AWS partnership efforts. I was expecting more of the same techno-babble and cheerleading you’d expect from a technology provider, but what was really shared were the ways technology can bring about positive change in our world. With nonprofits being a leading driver using technology to bring about that change.

I often think about what we can do, and think about how we can accomplish the possible versus dwelling on what we can’t do. This conference didn’t disappoint.

My Day 1 started with me having a one-on-one with my AWS rep — now two reps — about our product roadmap. AWS has been extremely helpful with getting our current architecture from on-premises to the cloud, and have provided a superior level of support.

DC chef, Jose’ Andres was supposed to be in-person to deliver the keynote address, but wasn’t present for the conference. Instead, his address recorded from Ukrainian-Polish border was more emotional and powerfully inspirational. Andres founded World Central Kitchen, a non-profit devoted to providing meals to people in the wake of disasters. He implored non-profit leaders to work together and that the world needs more collaboration and fewer siloed efforts to deal with global problems. Jose Andres is known for his warm heart, philanthropy, and service and he’s just a solidly, decent dude. I left his keynote with new vigor as I think about how the technology we build can better impact people’s lives. I connected with the founder of Do Right Enterprises, Danna Lennon-Thomas, and Hope One Source’s, Tim Underwood. We discussed social determinants of health (SDOH) and how data science can bring better health outcomes.

The rest of my Day 1 afternoon was filled with meetings, and listening to how the American Red Cross bridges the gap between government and individuals when agencies can’t provide immediate needs like supplying houses after the California wild fires. The first day was capped up with a dynamic and amazing presentation on Emotional Intelligence by Richard Hua. Non-profits deal in messy business and it can be difficult to keep on going and avoiding burnout. Rich provided actionable information and insights into working with people and maintaining grit in a difficult time. Tips for managing teams, accepting criticism, and communicating ideas effectively were shared with the crowd. After, a block breathing exercise I opened my eyes and exclaimed to the audience I felt, frisky!

I finished the night off an exec dinner hosted by AWS and sponsored by Salesforce at the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building. Arts and Industries sits right next to the castle and it’s an amazing place. If you’re ever on the Mall and haven’t been there, go now. AI-powered mood detectors, and living sculptures were part of the exhibits on the floor. The building reopened on Smithsonian’s 175th anniversary in 2021 and served as the launch pad for the Smithsonian’s exhibits for decades. It’s a great visit, you should go. Drinking way too much wine, and talking way too much trash I met Donor Source’s Nathan Chappell, a badass custom pen-making data scientist. Which leads me into Day 2.

Out of all of the presentations given on Day 2, Nathan Chappell’s presentation on transforming how the world perceives philanthropy was the most impactful for me. Donor Source is using data science and AI to change people’s ideas about data science. Currently, the world approaches the same white guys again and again, over and over…again seeking donations for non-profit programs and projects. American generosity is trending downward and Nathan’s work is trying to reverse that trend. He’s using data and sophisticated modeling to understand donor behavior, and help all of us participate in philanthropic pursuits. His work operates with the idea that we all want to give and contribute for causes, but we’re not always inclined to. He’s using data science to understand who, where, and how much to ask potential donors expanding the donor population. I think it’s great stuff. And, he makes awesome pens and I’m going to put in a request.

Harmony Labs’ Brian Waniewski delivered a great talk on media and their work on building media systems and tools to promote democratic culture. Little ‘d’. Brian and his team are modeling sentiment and attitudes of the content we all consume. We’ve all come to understand that algorithms and software have allowed us to create filter bubbles. Harmony’s tools are trying to change that course and allow more cross pollination of ideas through awareness. Intuitively, we all know media has skewed more negative. Harmony Labs’ Narrative Observatory is trying to change that push.

It wouldn’t be an AWS conference if AWS didn’t promote their AI stack and tools like Sagemaker. A series of quick presentations rounded out the mid-day session. A company called Rallypoint to identify early signs of self-harm and suicide risk among veterans. Their software has led to many successful interventions. WWD-Indonesia is using satellite, GPS, and image data to predict the migratory patterns of orangutans to preserve their habitats. The space geek in me appreciated the work AWS is doing to help construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope. The CETI project is working with cryptographers, mathematicians, biologists, and AWS to understand and communicate whale song. And in a mission after my own heart, PATH is using data analytics to pattern match early signs of family homelessness to drive better SDOH outcomes.

AWS are masters of the quick hit conference. In two days, they packed a plethora of how-tos, talks, and inspirational sessions for a captive, majority non-technical audience. I was feted, amazed, and inspired to take this information back to the non-profit I work for and pursue better human outcomes. If you work for a non-profit and know you need a technical strategy, but don’t know where to start, slide over to AWS for Nonprofits and start a conversation today.

New Mac Studio Locks Users In, Video Game History Lost, It’s Time to Digitally Lock Your Doors

March 23, 2022 by William Mapp Leave a Comment

Happy Thursday, TTN readers! Kiss me, I’m Irish! I’m on with Mark Starling, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: Apple prevents upgrades for Mac Studios, video game history has come under threat, and hide your wife, hide your kids, and lock your digital stuff. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

APPLE LOCKS OUT USER UPGRADES ON NEW MAC STUDIO

Apple has been crushing it these last few years. Every iPhone, iPad, aWatch, and iMachine have delivered crushing revenues for the company. With every new success it appears Apple is more and more inclined to lock out users from doing…anything. The latest Mac Studio desktop computer has impressive specs. Apple’s new M1 chip delivers spectacular performance. All of that performance needs storage to make things run and Apple has always been stingy with disk storage. The latest Mac Studio ships with a removable solid state drive. Fans rejoiced thinking they could cheaply upgrade the machine by buying a drive with greater storage off the shelf. #Nope! The SSD in new Mac Studios are software locked to the machine. Meaning that you will have to go to Apple for more space and pay hundred more than an off the shelf drive.

PRESERVATIONISTS AND LAWYERS FIGHT OVER VIDEO GAME HISTORY

Right now, you can download emulators for your favorite old school consoles of lore and download ROMs (read only memory) files of your favorite old games. If you wanted to play Sonic the Hedgehog, there’s an app and ROMs for you to download. If you wanted to play Super Mario Brothers 3, there’s an app and ROMs you can download. Preservationists at the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment and the Video Game History Foundation are battling over the legality of preserving digital games for the masses. What’s at issue is Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology used to prevent erroneous copies from leaking to would be players. The law is well established for making copies of copyrighted work for non-commercial and research purposes like displaying games at museums. This is usually called fair use. The problem is that Section 1201 of Copyright Law prevents people from circumventing piracy protection measures and is illegal to do so. Therefore, preservationists are running afoul of the law for every cracked CD or hacked digital download they preserve. Preservations are fighting back and testing the law so that people can view and enjoy games in a control setting for posterity.

COMMENTARY: US FEARFUL OF RUSSIAN CYBER ATTACKS

It hasn’t happened yet, but the signs are there. The US government has called for an increased cyber security precautions and for people and institutions to lock their digital doors by raising the alarm of potential cyber attacks from Russia. Russia of course is saying the US if Russophobic, but Russian cyber operators are some of the best in the world and well equipped. Russia has used Ukraine as a testing ground for its cyberwarfare operations by knocking out power inside the country and we’ve attacks on the Colonial Pipeline company’s operations, and the NotPetya attach causing $10 billion of damage.

On a sad note, Stephen Wilhite, creator of the GIF image, died yesterday. He was 74 years old and had died of COVID. GIFs were created for the old and venerable CompuServe network and is now used everywhere for animations, emojis, memes, and everywhere. He’s the authority on settling the longstanding controversy of how to pronounce GIF. He says it’s pronounced JIF.

March Madness: Data Science May Illuminate a Path, but It Can’t Always Show Us the Way

March 21, 2022 by William Mapp Leave a Comment

Update: Ultimately, data science prevailed. Kansas won the tournament by 3 points. Here’s the final bracket results:

Data lead to a 99 percentile showing ranking in the top 14 thousand brackets placed on CBSSports.com. In final analysis St. Pete was a force to be reckoned with. They started the tournament with a fantastic upset win and was on a tear for three rounds. Them beating Purdue effectively killed the left side of my bracket. I was playing for points on that side and that was it. UNC stunned Baylor in the second round effectively cutting off the bottom left side of my bracket. I rode Gonzaga as far as I could, but Arkansas halted them before they could play against #2 ranked Duke.

I had some stumbling blocks along the right side of the bracket, but my Final Four matchup of Kansas playing Villanova proved out. Furthermore, Kansas’ 16 point win insured I still had a chance to win the big game.

It was fun watching data play out game-by-game. In the end, humans; not machines, show up to play.

Data Science has served my bracket well, but human behavior always exceeds the margin for error.

It’s been a wild crazy weekend for college basketball fans. There’s a reason why they call it March Madness and we’ve seen it play out in full effect. I’ve made a lot of noise about “The Bracket Picked by Data Science” this year, and for the most part it’s working out, but not every scientific pick has worked out.

My bracket is not broken.

10 of my Sweet 16 picks are still sweet. 6 of my Elite 8 picks are still in. All of my Final Four picks are still in it. Hopefully, to win it.

Now, I did deviate from the math for a couple of picks. Upsets are staple of the Big Dance. My choices against the algorithm have been a mixed bag.

Now that the smoke has settled I’m going to stop and analyze what happened.

The Shocker

The Peacocks from St. Peter’s stunned everyone, including those who picked them, in their upset of Kentucky. 15 seeded teams have only beaten second seeds ten times in NCAA tournament history with a 9-135 record. I felt fine after witnessing this loss. The math has Kentucky losing to Purdue in the Sweet 16, but my points and rankings were compounded later by upsets.

Showing Up to Play

Picking down rank gets more involved and you have look at offensive power to make better picks. Sometimes things look good on paper, but you need the humans to show up and play. UConn lost to New Mexico State in a seven point game that was well played. Juwan Howard led his Michigan team to beat 6th ranked CSU in their corner of the bracket. Iowa State bested LSU by 5 in a close game. Miami beat favored USC by 2. By two points! All were well played games.

Upset Specials

My deviations were…mixed. I chose San Francisco to beat Murray State. It was a delightful game, but they couldn’t mete out a win. Not necessarily an upset, but I did pick #9 Memphis over Boise. I chose Creighton over San Diego, and Richmond to beat Iowa. My 8/9 picks were on, but uggh down rank not so much. In the end, I wound up scoring 52 upset points. UNC bested Baylor in the second round, something I wasn’t expected at all. I had Baylor getting beat by Purdue in the Elite 8.

There you have it.

Right now, I’m still ranked in the top 94% of the millions of brackets filed. We’ll see what happens this week.

You can cheer and cry along with me by checking out my bracket at NCAA.com.

It’s March! The James Webb Space Telescopes Sends First Images, Technology’s Impact on Ukraine-Russian War, Kaspersky Pledges Neutrality

March 16, 2022 by William Mapp Leave a Comment

Happy Thursday, TTN readers! Kiss me, I’m Irish! I’m on with Mark Starling, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: Read a brief commentary on the impact of technology on the Ukraine-Russian War, Kaspersky Wants to Remain Neutral, and the James Webb Space Telescope sends its first images. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

Yes, it’s March which means betting. This year, gambling experts are predicting $3.1 billion will be bet on March Madness, which is down from 2019’s $9.1 billion shifting hands. Experts are also saying that this year’s betting may represent the largest “legal betting” on the tournament. The number may actually trend downward due to the onslaught of legal sports book apps on the market. There’s just something exciting about getting in on a little wager without the middleman.

Behold, the bracket built using data science.

My Bracket: Data Science Will Win the Day

Anyway, onto this week’s real stories.

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN

Kaspersky, the Russian computer antivirus company has planned to open a data center in Switzerland to demonstrate they’re not a Russia spy factory. Kaspersky makes antivirus software that used to run everywhere, including the US government. Last year, the Biden administration banned the use of Kaspersky products at US government agencies accusing the company of being a Russian spy organization. Monday, the Dutch stopped using their products. And then, Germany. And so on. CEO, Eugene Kaspersky, is moving to Switzerland because of its policy of neutrality and data privacy laws. Kaspersky has over 400 million users. They have proclaimed they are not agents of Russian intelligence.

COMMENTARY: THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON THE WAR ON UKRAINE

The war in Ukraine is a tragedy and humanitarian crisis. The Ukrainian government and its people have been very strategic and savvy with their use of technology. Ukrainian president, Volodomyr Zelenskyy, a former actor who played Ukraine’s president on TV; has used the immediacy of mobile photo and video, social channels, and cryptocurrency networks effectively in pushing Russia into isolation. At times pleading, at other times graphic the Ukrainian government has put on a PR campaign that would envy many organizations. Live streams and TikTok were used to spread propaganda fronting Russian soldiers who were against the war and want to go home. Influencers have gone from frivolous topics like fashion and NFTs to showing bombs falling outside of their window. Americans have seen wars televised after the first and second Iraq Wars, and the war in Afghanistan. Those projections of war were polished coming from embedded journalists carrying high def cameras. Americans have never seen war from the first person, and for the first the true tragedy and loss of life is capture using a device all of us carry around for granted. I don’t think a more effective campaign of communicating your aims has been made since the Civil Rights era. Currently, it’s not possible to trade rubles for dollars, and Russia is losing its grip on containing information that doesn’t ride the party line.

JAMES WEBB SENDS FIRST IMAGES

After a long delay and much fanfare, NASA shared the first images coming from the James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb uses new technology to capture imagery on the infrared spectrum and can look farther at dimmer objects than the Hubble telescope. The mission launched on Christmas Day, 2021 and the second phase of the mission involved aligning the two sets of mirrors used for gazing into space. The telescope’s mirrors are a collection of many smaller mirrors that need to be in proper position for making clear photos. That day came yesterday and it’s an exciting time to view distant space.

Thanks for checking out Top Tech Stories of the week on First News 570. I truly enjoy providing insight for our audience. You can always get the Top Tech Stories by signing up for the newsletter.

Also, be on the lookout for a new podcast, The Cloud. Digital Technology. Decoded.

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