“I don’t even know what blockchain is,” someone recently told Techtonics. So to demystify the latest buzzword in technology, blockchain is a secure, distributed digital ledger shared among all participants. For example, parties to a transaction agree to make blockchain the official source of record, say for a land deed. So they encode the deed […]
Murder, Graphic Content Haunt Facebook; Android Pay, PayPal Team Up
Posted April 18th, 2017 at 11:54 am (UTC-4)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Facebook Kicks Off F8 Developer Conference Amid Murder Controversy CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a lot to talk about at Tuesday’s F8 developer conference in San Jose, California. But his keynote speech comes at an inopportune time as the social media giant grapples with violent videos of murder, torture and rape. In the […]
Kids Lose Sleep With Touchscreen Use; an Argument for Editing Tweets
Posted April 13th, 2017 at 12:03 pm (UTC-4)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Study: Kids Who Use Touchscreen Devices Sleep Less at Night Earlier research has linked television and video games to sleep problems, but for the first time, a new study appearing in the Scientific Advances journal, looked at the use of mobile touchscreen devices among children. The study found that infants and toddlers […]
Social Media Use Skyrocketing; Google Denies Bias Against Women
Posted April 11th, 2017 at 12:57 pm (UTC-4)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Social Media Gains 14 New Users Every Second Internet users around the world have increased by one percent since January of 2017, accounting for more than 3.8 billion people. The percentage represents an increase of 28 million people. And in the past three months alone, nearly 110 million people started using social […]
Few Women in IT, Cloud Computing, but It’s Complicated
Posted April 7th, 2017 at 11:35 am (UTC-4)
Women comprise only about 11 percent of the information security workforce and are equally underrepresented in cloud technologies in some regions, according to two new studies. But as some experts point out, this is only one part of a much bigger picture. Despite growing demand for IT talent, the percentage has remained unchanged since 2013. […]
Twitter Eyes India Expansion; Facebook Goes After Fake News – Again
Posted April 6th, 2017 at 1:52 pm (UTC-4)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Twitter Pushes Into Countries With Poor Connectivity Twitter’s latest “Twitter Lite” mobile service, a faster, more data-efficient version of the microblogging service, will target parts of the world where connectivity is spotty in an effort to add new users. Twitter Lite will be rolled out globally, but is primarily aimed at India, […]
Window’s Data-collection Explained; Facebook Expands in Africa
Posted April 5th, 2017 at 11:53 am (UTC-4)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Microsoft Opens Up on Windows Data Collection It’s no secret that Windows 10 has been collecting all sorts of “analytics” data and raising privacy concerns in the process in the absence of clarity. Microsoft has now provided more details about the sort of data its Windows 10 Creators Update will be collecting […]
iOS Spyware Pegasus Returns for Android; Apple’s Mac Pro Faux-pas
Posted April 4th, 2017 at 12:43 pm (UTC-4)
Today’s Tech Sightings: State-backed Spyware Is Using Android Phones to Eavesdrop, Grab Data A new incarnation of spyware previously used to snoop on activists on iPhones now targets Android smartphones. Lookout and Google researchers announced the original strain, also known as Pegasus, last year, when it was being used by a state to monitor Middle […]