NFTs, so called non fungible tokens that can represent digital art, music and videos, saw a huge increase in demand last year, reaching $44 billion. The blockchain network that most NFTs are traded on is Ethereum. The massive media coverage, however, drew attention to another issue: the huge energy wastefulness involved in cryptocurrency mining. This...
Category: Digital trends
Digital Trends in Retail 2022
It's clear that digital transformation in retail has been accelerated by the recent global events and that this trend won't slow down.
The Twitter Surveillance State
When Justine Sacco, who in 2013, before a flight to South Africa, tweeted a joke about getting AIDS on Twitter it blew up, as did her life.
Massive online surveillance by PenLink: Google is ‘best’, Apple ‘phenomenal’
A small Nebraska company called PenLink claims it does very good business with law enforcement agencies in the US and around the world. The company specializes in helping investigators monitor users of messenger services and social networks. Acting as an intermediate instance, they collect the data streams from Facebook, Google & Co. and passes them...
AirTags have serious Privacy Issues
When Apple released AirTags last spring, many marvelled at the effectiveness of the coin-shaped trackers in locating lost items. At the same time, many early reviewers raised concerns because the AirTag's remarkable accuracy makes it a powerful stalking tool. This was proven by several cases of stalking that got a larger media coverage. There is...
TikTok’s secret algorithm is its greatest strength – and could also be its undoing
I have a ten-year-old niece named Divya (not her real name) in rural northern India. Two years ago, I visited and she came running to hug me. I asked what was the best gift I could give her, and all she wanted was for me to follow her on TikTok. Divya posts videos of her...
A little bit of Consciousness
Ilya Sutskever is a senior scientist at OpenAI with a certain knack for PR. With a casual tweet, Sutskever revived a long-closed discussion: The question of whether artificial intelligence can ever possess a consciousness. Sutskever suggested that the large neural networks of today "have a little bit of consciousness". OpenAI, which Sutskever founded with Elon...
How AI is shaping the cybersecurity arms race
The average business receives 10,000 alerts every day from the various software tools it uses to monitor for intruders, malware and other threats. Cybersecurity staff often find themselves inundated with data they need to sort through to manage their cyber defenses. The stakes are high. Cyberattacks are increasing and affect thousands of organizations and millions...
A short History of Business Cards
Business cards are an integral part of how everyone does business. They provide the important first impression about a company.
Free Apps to Turn Your Business Idea into a Reality
You may have an amazing idea for a business or product, but you are not sure what step to take next. How can you turn this idea into something tangible. Where do you start? How do you share this idea with the world? This can be a daunting thing and is often the point where...
