When Hurricane Harvey struck southeast Texas in 2017, it caused $125 billion in economic damages. A recent assessment of local businesses in the area found that 90% lost revenue in the five figure range due to employee disruptions, lower customer demand, utility outages, and/or supply chain issues. Those that suffered property damage experienced compounded losses with parts of the business being shuttered for weeks and months at a time until repairs could be made....

If you want a job in tech, then learn the skills that will get you hired. And if you check out the job listing for tech-based employment, you’ll see three little letters appear in listing after listing after listing. SQL. In fact, a check of over 25,000 data jobs listed on Indeed found more than 1 in 3 included SQL (Structured Query Language) database management language mastery as the most important skill that prospective employee could offer....

According to court documents, starting in May 2017, Stephen P. Langlois, Jr. used Bitcoin to subscribe to an overseas child pornography website from which he downloaded over 100 child pornography videos. Langlois, who aside from the prison sentence will be subject to a subsequent supervision of 10 years after he’s released, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in US District Court in Providence on January 2, 2019. He will also have to pay a mandatory assessment of $5,000 as provided for in the Justice for Victims Trafficking Act....

The military research agency’s algorithms took down an Air Force pilot in a virtual dogfight last year. In February, the Pentagon’s “mad science” unit tested how they’d perform as a team. The battle pitted two friendly F-16s against a single enemy aircraft. Each fighter jet was equipped with a gun for short-range engagements and a missile for more distant targets. Colonel Dan “Animal” Javorsek, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said testing multiple weapons and aircraft introduced new dynamics to the trials: DARPA is also assessing how much pilots trust the systems....

While there’s been huge investment in developing vehicular autonomous driving technology, there’s been little by cities in the infrastructure necessary for vehicles to communicate with each other (vehicle-to-vehicle), or their surroundings (vehicle-to-vehicle infrastructure). For example, digital signage and traffic signals that can communicate with vehicles — or pedestrian detection systems — can “teach” a road to warn a driver when a pedestrian is at risk and feed data into a vehicle....

However, since basing on the right trends while adjusting your business strategy is crucial for ensuring economic recovery, the key question is: what’s next? While no one can be sure of what exactly will happen in terms of the pandemic, it’s still possible to make a number of informative assumptions to build on. Hopes up on the sell side for Q4, 2020 A few weeks ago, IAB released its “Coronavirus Ad Revenue Impact” survey results, which included several essential observations....

With an apology to all of you Luddites and serious old-timers out there, technology has improved on virtually everything. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to think of any aspect of modern society that hasn’t been made smarter, faster, or just outright better thanks to the innovation of our technologically advanced age. That being said…we could be doing better with note-taking. While there are all sorts of notation apps and other methods for typing notes into a laptop or mobile device, none can beat the simplicity of an actual pen and paper to capture the information you need your way....

So…exactly how long should it take to put together a digital slide presentation, anyway? That’s obviously a wide-ranging answer that depends on a creator’s command of their subject matter, their ability with the digital creation tool of choice, and the length of the presentation itself. But if you’re hunkering down to build one and it’s not something you do regularly…well, you could be there a while. In fact, some experts say it takes a full 40-hour work week to generate one solid 1-hour presentation....

This plan, effective from September 1, will cost you ₹499 ($6.70) per year, and let you watch shows, movies, and live sports on your phone in HD resolution. Disney+ Hotstar’s content catalog involves indigenous original shows, content from networks such as HBO, FX, and Showtime, and live sports coverage of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, English Premier League, and F1 racing. The streaming service also offers some live TV channels of the Star Network and its partners on the platform....

(You read that right, by the way. The new model is called the Mini 2, not the Mavic Mini 2). As with the original Mavic Mini, the Mavic 2 is light enough that it doesn’t need to be registered with the FAA in the US — it’s 249 grams, just 1 gram under the requirement. The biggest improvement this time around is that rather than connecting via Wi-Fi, which could lead to unstable connections over large distances, the drone uses DJI’s much more reliable OcuSync 2....

The amount of time and effort I spend on being efficient is… highly inefficient. I’ll spend more time thinking about how to efficiently plan meetings than the time I’m actually in them. I know it isn’t very pleasant for me and those around me — but the perfectionist in me won’t let go. I really need to learn to though, because of one simple truth… People don’t trust perfection. One great example of this is Coinstar....

It’s made me begin to wonder, is best practice actually a great strategic tool? Or is it simply a safe excuse to hide behind when there is a lack of drive to innovate? Relying on best practices does not guarantee success. As we saw in 2020, what used to be best practice in 2019 was pretty irrelevant. And this year is another new story yet again when it comes to customer behavior....

In this day and age, we’ve been blessed with several tools that allow us to create simple to-do lists to help us keep our lives on track. I appreciate that keeping track of tasks and duties is an intensely personal thing, and most people (myself included) will immediately reject any app or service that doesn’t quite feel right – basically, finding a good to-do app is as difficult as finding a good hairdresser, but fear not!...

30-year-old Alaa Mohammed Allawi allegedly distributed 245 kilograms of fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, oxycodone and Xanax, a court press release states. It’s believed he sold more than 850,000 pills on the dark web and took payment in cryptocurrency. According to the release, drugs that Allawi sold eventually led to the death of a US Marine who overdosed, and to the serious bodily injury of two residents of North Dakota. On top of the prison sentence, Allawi has been ordered to forfeit his $270,000 home, five firearms, $28,000 in US currency, $31,000 worth of jewelry, four vehicles, more than $21,000 worth of cryptocurrency, and all his rights in a Californian tea and coffee franchise....

Firms that offer services to exchange between cryptocurrency and “regular money” (fiat) are now forced to register with De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) before 10 January 2020, and are advised to contact DNB as soon as possible. “Cryptos are vulnerable to financial crime, which is why it is important to set up integrity supervision now,” said a DNB statement published today. In addition to demanding such cryptocurrency companies to register, the DNB will “assess” their board members and some shareholders, who must show their processes are robust enough to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing....

First, it’s been rumored the company will announce human trials are set to begin this year at the event and that’s a pretty big deal. I’ll get to why in a moment. And second: Musk’s confirmed the event will feature a live demonstration of neurons firing. This is what I’m referring to when I talk about an iPhone moment for brain surgery. Neuralink was founded with a single purpose, one Musk recently reiterated in an interview with Axios: “The long term aspiration for Neuralink would be to achieve symbiosis with artificial intelligence....

If you had any doubt about the position Cisco holds as the worldwide leader in networking hardware and technology, consider this stat from Global Knowledge’s 2019 IT Skills and Salary Report: one-third of North American IT professionals said they expect Cisco — not networking in general, but Cisco tech specifically — to be an emphasis for their organization in the next year. And with salary figures of over $100,000 a year for Cisco-certified security, routing and switching, and design associates, employers also recognize the importance of Cisco-trained personnel in their organizations....

In fact, the two most prominent ‘esports and gaming’ Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) on the market, HERO and ESPO, are respectively up 64% and 59% this year, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ 100 index has risen just 29%. Even Bitcoin, often pegged as a “safe haven” asset during times of global unrest, hasn’t benefitted quite so much from our new normal as esports and gaming stocks. ETFs work just like regular stocks, except they represent investment in an underlying portfolio of stocks rather than a company....

Police use of real-time biometric identification systems — such as facial recognition — will also be “prohibited in principle,” albeit with a rather vague list of exemptions. Judges can approve their use for finding victims of specific crimes, preventing terrorist attacks, and locating suspects or perpetrators of certain offenses. The rules follow “a risk-based approach” that categorizes AI systems as unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal risk. Companies who break the rules will face fines of up to 6% of their global revenue or €30 million ($36 million), whichever figure is higher....

Yves Mersch, Luxemborgian lawyer and ECB executive board member, even told attendees of the European System of Central Banks’ legal conference the Libra ecosystem will be “cartel-like.” After prefacing his concerns with a history lesson on trust (which unimaginatively centered on the notion that the only “trustworthy” money is the sort backed by the state), Mersch actually painted a realistic picture of Facebook’s intention for its funny-money: centralized governance, centralized issuance, centralized control....