Discover how mastering email communication can boost business efficiency, avoid common pitfalls, and ensure secure, respectful online interactions.
Turkey Revenge
The turkeys are pissed this Thanksgiving they are seeking revenge.
Germs Infest 60% of Americas Phones
60% of Americans sleep with their phones, harboring germs. Cleaning regularly with UV sanitizer or alcohol wipes can help keep your phone and bed germ-free.
Smartphone Sanitizing: A Practical Guide
Securely erase personal data from your old smartphone before recycling. Protect your identity from hackers—easy steps to follow.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Today’s Job Market
Boost your career with essential soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence. Learn why they’re crucial for workplace success.
Blue Front Closing
The 90-year-old Blue Front store is closing. The store at the corner of Packard Street and Arbor Street in Ann Arbor is shutting down for good Saturday. When I was on campus in the mid-’80s, Blue Front at 701 Packard Street sold beer, wine, newspapers, sundries, and snacks. In 2014 the campus tradition was converted to a craft beer store.
rb-
I remember the Blue Front. It was the place I would stop to get batteries for my Walkman, an extra roll of TP, beer, and munchies going to or from campus.
This is not surprising to me. Combine campus being deserted due to COVID-19 lockdowns with the decision to move to a $20.00 a bottle craft beer model in a student area with no parking.
Related article
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2020, Ann Arbor, Blue Front, COVID-19, Michigan, University of Michigan
VR You Can Taste
During the COIVD-19 lockdowns and social distancing, every generation has increased the use of their devices to inform and distract more than ever before. Wouldn’t it be great if our devices could encompass all of our senses? Well, that time is coming. Homei Miyashita a researcher at Meiji University in Japan has developed the Norimaki Synthesizer which can make the tongue sense taste without eating anything.
It was once thought that the tongue had different regions with concentrations of specific taste buds for each taste. Now we know that there are five basic tastes are sweet, sour (or acidic), salty, bitter, and umami. Bitter flavors are sharp, like coffee, unsweetened chocolate, or the peel of an orange or lemon. Umami is derived from the Japanese word for a pleasant savory taste, was added to the basic tastes group in 1990.
Taste buds have a chemical reaction to food
Taste buds have tiny openings that take in very small amounts of whatever we’re eating. Special “receptor cells” in the taste buds can then have a chemical reaction to the food, creating one of five basic tastes. The way these basic tastes combine creates the overall flavor of the food we’re eating.
SVCOnline explains a better understanding of how the tongue works is crucial to the new device. In order to trick your tongue, the device uses electrolytes inserted into five gels that trigger the five different tastes when they make contact with the human tongue. Gizmodo reports the color-coded gels, made from agar formed in the shape of long tubes to create tastes. The device uses:
Glycine to create the taste of sweet,- Citric acid for acidic,
- Sodium chloride for salty,
- Magnesium chloride for bitter, and
- Glutamic sodium for savory umami.
The taste device
When the device is pressed against the tongue, the user experiences all five tastes at the same time. But, by using a small box with sliding controls the amount of different tastes can be lowered, creating different flavors. Sadly, it can’t produce the effect of spicy foods.
To create the different flavors the device is wrapped in copper foil so that when it’s held in hand and touched to the surface of the tongue, it forms an electrical circuit through the human body, facilitating a technique known as electrophoresis.
Electrophoresis is a process that moves molecules in a gel when an electrical current is applied. In this case, this process causes the ingredients in the agar tubes to move away from the tongue end of the tube, reducing the ability to taste them. It’s a subtractive process that selectively removes tastes to create a specific flavor profile – from gummy bears to sushi.
The device’s creator, Homei Miyashita, was inspired to create his “taste display” by experiments that proved our eyes can be tricked into seeing something that technically doesn’t exist. He wondered if the red, green, or blue pixels that make up the screens on your smartphone, PC, and TV could fool the eye, could he create something that could fool the tongue? Mr. Miyashita used a similar “pixel” approach o trick the tongue.
In his abstract, Professor Miyashita acknowledged the 2011 research of Hiromi Nakamura, who achieved “augmented gustation” by sending electrical charges through chopsticks, forks, and straws to create tastes humans could not perceive solely with their tongues.
Smell-O-Vision
Other inventors have tried to expand the senses for the media. In 1959, Charles Weiss, a public relations executive, created AromaRama. AromaRama distributed scents of horses, grass, exploding firecrackers, incense, and burning torches through the theater’s air-conditioning system during the first showing of “Behind the Great Wall.” But the NYT panned the movie, “Check off the novel experience as… a stunt. The artistic benefit of it is here demonstrated to be nil.”
The next year, inventor Hans Laube introduced an improved Smell-O-Vision with the movie “Scent of Mystery” which was augmented by smells such as freshly baked bread, wine, an ocean breeze, or a skunk delivered through beneath-the-seat tubes. Certain smells offered clues to imminent activity on the screen. But viewers complained of uneven or delayed distribution of smells, and the distracting noises of viewers struggling to sniff each scent. For fans and critics, the movie was a stinker. Famed comedian Henry Youngman quipped, “I didn’t understand the picture. I had a cold.”
rb-
It’s called a taste display because it was inspired by the way RGB pixels accumulate on a screen form an image of something that isn’t there. These electronic “taste pixels” can be manipulated to simulate any taste. Why? No idea. – But there will be an app for that too!
Related article
- Discover the Virtual Reality Cocktail Bar: The Place For The Drinks of the Future (Interesting Engineering)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Artificial ntelligence |
Tags: 2020, AI, AR, AromaRama, Augmented gustation, Augmented reality, Electrophoresis, Food, Homei Miyashita, LED, Norimaki Synthesizer, Smell-O-Vision, Virtual reality, VR
5G in the D
During the COVID-19 lockdowns work from home saw a 34% growth. Gartner reports that in the post-COVID “new normal” (whenever that is) era 74% of businesses will move some of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions. These signals problems for many Detroiters who live in one of America’s worst connected areas.
Verizon may be one part of Detroit moving forward in the “new normal.” FireceWirless is reporting that Verizon (VZ) is now offering its fixed wireless access (FWA) 5G Home Internet service in the D. The telco will offer the 5G Ultra-Wideband Network in the following areas: Detroit, Dearborn, Livonia, and Troy.
 |  |
 |  |
The Detroit 5G Home service will use millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum and is expected to deliver speeds of about 300 Mbps. There are several factors that affect the speed of 5G networks. Notably, the more people that are connected to a network, the slower speeds will be. Not only that, but your distance to a 5G node may impact speeds too. It also uses the same network the operator is building for mobile 5G which means the FWA product is dependent on mobile 5G being available in your area.
5G fixed wireless access
Verizon is working on higher-powered customer premises equipment for 5G Home that’s expected to expand the coverage area supported by the fixed wireless service. But the improved CPE is not part of the initial 5G Home rollout in Motown.
Detroiters will get a new “enhanced” form of the product which uses industry standard 5G-NR transmission standard that, among others things, supports a customer self-install model (cost savings for VZ). Detroiters signing up for 5G Home will get the new router. The router supports the Wi-Fi 6 standard, promising peak speeds up to 1 Gbps and allowing multiple devices to run at the same time. It also features Amazon Alexa built-in, so customers can control their smart home devices and ask questions, hands-free.
5G Home service perks
The no-contract 5G Home service starts at $50 per month for Verizon customers and $70 per month for everybody else. The operator is sweetening the deal with an offer of no cost content options to get customers to sign up. Among the perks being used to entice consumers to 5G Home, Verizon is offering:
- One month of YouTube TV,
- One year of Disney+
- Three months of Google Stadia (Google’s new cloud gaming service).
New customers can also get a free Stream TV device. The device is an Android TV-based, 4K-capable streaming product from Verizon. The device is also integrated with the Google Assistant platform and Chromecast “built-in,” which enables users to cast video from the smartphone to the TV screen. The Stream TV device gets subscribers access to a library of OTT channels, apps, and entertainment, including Netflix and Amazon Prime.
rb-
Verizon has said it plans to expand 5G Home Internet to have coverage for 30 million households. Verizon predicts that by 2035, 5G will enable more than $12 trillion in global economic revenue, and support 22 million jobs worldwide driven by the digitalization of industries such as transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing.
Not everyone is convinced that these new attempts at delivering fixed wireless broadband will be a success. Lynnette Luna, principal analyst with GlobalData, told FierceWireless that Verizon needs to provide some clarity on its strategy. “They don’t want to deploy it in places with a lot of broadband competition so they look for markets where they have an advantage but I don’t understand their formula.”
However, she added that she thinks it’s smart for Verizon to bundle the service with other things. In particular, the demo access to Google Stadia because it showcases one of 5G’s key use cases — cloud gaming.
Related article
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
No More Facial Recognition From IBM
Updated 06/19/2020 – Redmond is reporting that the ACLU has uncovered evidence (PDF) that Microsoft was pursuing sales of its facial recognition technology after its vow to stop selling the software. The ACLU says Microsoft continued to pursue sales to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) six days after the announcement. Microsoft president Brad Smith claimed the firm would stop selling facial recognition tech to U.S. police agencies until there is a national law in place that’s “grounded in human rights.”
The article calls MSFT’s Smith’s “stand” last week “as a bit hollow or misleadingly narrow” and “opaque transparency.”
—
Updated 06/12/2020 – CNN is reporting that Microsoft has fallen in line with IBM and Amazon. It has announced it will not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States, at least until there is a federal law to regulate the technology.
Following IBM’s stand, Amazon has announced it will stop providing its facial recognition technology to police forces for one year. TechCrunch makes the point that the Amazon announcement did not say if the moratorium would apply to the federal government. Amazon also did not say in the statement what action it would take after the yearlong moratorium expires.
Both firms are calling for national regulation of the tech. As I predicted below.
—
IBM has made a step in the right direction in the fight against structural racism. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna sent a letter to the U.S. Congress citing concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition software could be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling. As a result, IBM will no longer sell general-purpose facial recognition or analysis software.
IBM facial recognition changes
The company is not abandoning facial recognition. Reuters cites an IBM source that says, IBM will “no longer market, sell or update the products but will support clients as needed.” As Engadget points out, the move comes in the midst of protests over police brutality and discrimination capped by the apparent murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.
The use of AI and facial recognition has a history of privacy and bias problems. In 2019, Pew Research reported that 50% of U.S. adults said they did not trust tech companies to use facial recognition responsibly. 27% of the same group did not trust law enforcement agencies to use facial recognition responsibly. There are good reasons for the distrust of facial recognition. Many reports have found that facial recognition systems can be biased. They have systemic bias’ against non-whites and women. This is particularly true if the training data includes relatively few people from those groups.
The Verge documents some of the defacto bias’ in facial recognition. In 2018, AI researchers Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru, Gender Shades project was the first to reveal the extent to which many commercial facial recognition systems (including IBM’s) were biased. This work led to mainstream criticism of these algorithms and ongoing attempts to address bias.
Clearview AI Inc., facial recognition software identifies people by comparing their faces with 3 billion images many scraped from social media sites. Clearview took the images from Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo without notifying the people. The facial recognition tool is widely used by private sector companies and law enforcement agencies. Clearview has since been issued numerous cease and desist orders and is at the center of a number of privacy lawsuits. Facebook was also ordered in January 2020 to pay $550 million to settle a 2015 class-action lawsuit over its unlawful use of facial recognition technology.
The Verge points out that IBM is not without a share of the blame. IBM was found to be sharing a training data set of nearly one million photos in January 2019 taken from Flickr without the consent of the subjects. IBM told The Verge in a statement at the time that the data set would only be accessed by verified researchers and only included images that were publicly available. The company also said that individuals can opt out of the data set.
A December 2019 NIST study found:
empirical evidence for the existence of a wide range of accuracy across demographic differences in the majority of the current face recognition algorithms that were evaluated.”
Amazon’s facial recognition software
Notably, NIST’s study did not include Amazon’s facial recognition software Rekognition. Rekognition, has also been criticized for its accuracy. In 2018, the ACLU found that Rekognition incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress to faces picked from 25,000 mugshots.
Despite Amazon’s system providing what the ACLU called a disproportionate number of false matches of congress embers of color, Amazon posted a statement expressing concern over the “inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country.” But the richest man in the world Jeff Bezos and his company are part of the problem. Amazon is profiting off racial profiling of Black people by police.
Amazon has built a nationwide surveillance network. The surveillance network of our homes and communities uses Amazon Ring cameras and its Neighbors app. The company collects the images and then handed its data over to the police.
What Amazon does with the data:
- It aggressively sells its facial recognition software, Rekognition, to police departments and ICE.
They store footage from millions of Ring users and have over 1,330 surveillance partnerships with local police departments.- Through these surveillance partnerships, law enforcement, including the FBI and ICE can get unprecedented access to large swaths of footage and data without any oversight.
- The Neighbors App allows for the crowdsourced (mob) tracking of Black people.
rb-
Mr. Krishna should be applauded for his public stand. But call me cynical – this is also about business. Morgan Stanley predicts that AI and automation will be a one trillion dollar industry by 2050. Change is coming and big tech – IBM, MSFT, GOOG, FB are trying to get in front of it. The titans are pushing for reform – not abolition for two reasons.
First, they want to use new regulations as a barrier to entry into this market. They want to upstarts like Clearview AI and 45+ other small to multi-national firms who may have new ideas out of the $1T market.
Second – Big tech knows they can buy the politicians in DC cheaper than having to fight off regulations in 50 different states. Big business has done this time and again. they will sit in front of a congressional hearing – say mea culpa and maybe Congress will pass some lame regulation that the lobbyist wrote. Nothing will change because there is too much money on the table to do the right thing to stop the structural racism that led to George Floyd’s death.
Related article
- Black deaths at the hands of law enforcement are linked to historical lynchings (Economic Policy Institute)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2020, ACLU, AI, Amazon, AMZN, Artificial intelligence, Clearview AI, Facebook, Facial recognition, FB, IBM, Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, MSFT, Politics, Prejudice, Rekognition
9 Things To Do When You’re Slammed With Work
We have all been there – Work starts to stack-up – deadlines, assignments, meetings, reports, bosses, staff and COVID-19 are all demanding your attention. How the %$#&*! do you get anything done with all of these distractions?
When we have too much to do, we can freeze. Spinning without traction, we move fast but don’t make progress on the things that are creating our stress. Because when there’s so much competing for attention, we don’t know where to begin and so we don’t begin anywhere. 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed at work. Herding turtles as a former co-worker described it.
Having a lot to do and having too much to do are very different things. No matter how you define them, a lot can be motivating, but too much can make you freeze in your tracks, resulting in you doing a whole lot of nothing. No matter how well prioritized your tasks and projects might be, when you have too much to choose from, you often simply don’t know where to start. Here are nine tricks to calm your mind and dive into your herd of turtles when you feel overwhelmed.
Freak out
Try giving yourself some space to freak out. Set a timer for ten minutes and freak out, surf the Intertubes or stare out the window. It will help get the anxiety out of your system.
Stop beating yourself up
Your reaction is normal. Get strategic about how to chip away at your work.
Take five breaths
The military uses tactical breathing (PDF) when faced with critical situations, and this technique is proven to help people handle frightening work stress. Breathe in for a count of four, hold for four, breathe out for four, and repeat.
Write it down
The act of writing by hand also has proven stress-relieving properties. Handwrite everything that needs to get done. Some people find comfort in handwriting their to-do list and seeing their nonthreatening penmanship on a sheet of paper.
Prioritize your work
Start with prioritizing by deadlines. For tasks with shared deadlines, order them by magnitude, putting the bigger items on top. Once your priority list is final, step back and see if this gives you a sense of order and direction on where to start. If you still have a hard time getting motivated, pick the task you most want to do. It’s better to do something than nothing.
Start with the easy stuff
What can you knock off in the next 15 to 30 minutes? Make phone calls, answer emails, etc. Then, attempt one of your beefier tasks.
You’re not alone
Talk with a co-worker. People love to help others solve problems. Share your project challenges with a trusted colleague what do when they have too much on their plate> What can you delegate? Can someone be bribed with a coffee? Can you talk to your manager to gain some perspective and guidance about your workload and priorities.
Use Timers
Set a timer for 30 or 40 minutes – something you can commit to. Focusing your attention will increase your motivating stress and decrease your paralyzing stress. The contained time periods will also give you a framework that will help you chip away at the important work.
Harvard Business School explains that working against time keeps us focused. Using a short time frame actually increases the pressure but it keeps our effort specific, and particular to a single task. That increases good, motivating stress while reducing negative, disconcerting stress.
Take Twenty
Go for a walk or get a coffee. Take some time to truly disengage your brain from the work you’re doing. You’ll be surprised at the focus and brilliance you bring to your big list of tasks when you’re feeling refreshed.
Feeling overwhelmed and stressed doesn’t have to stop you from being productive. Instead, there are real steps we can take to make what we need to do more manageable, which will help us get more done.
Related article
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.