Today’s Tech Sightings: Symantec: Cyber Extortion Demands Surge as Victims Keep Paying Hackers are getting bolder as more of their victims are willing to pay hefty sums to free their computers from malicious software, according to cybersecurity firm Symantec. The trend is encouraging cybercriminals to demand increasingly hefty sums from users. The average amount tripled […]
Ransomware Payouts on the Rise; STEM Stigmas Start as Early as Age 6
Posted April 26th, 2017 at 12:55 pm (UTC-5)
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Emojis Tackle Language Disorders; Parsing Future Tech From Fiction
Posted April 25th, 2017 at 1:52 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Samsung Develops Emoji-based Chat App for Language Disorders More often than not, people use emojis for fun when they chat. But for those with language disorders like aphasia, which makes reading, writing and talking difficult, emojis might be just the thing to help facilitate communication. To address the gap, Samsung’s Italian subsidiary […]
Blockchain? What’s Blockchain?
Posted April 20th, 2017 at 1:47 am (UTC-5)
“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-5)
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 […]
‘Let Girls Learn’ Brings Education Tech to Rural Ghana
Posted April 14th, 2017 at 11:35 am (UTC-5)
More than 62 million girls around the world are not attending school. But through the U.S. government’s ‘Let Girls Learn’ initiative, a multilateral effort is putting education technology and a future at their fingertips. In parts of the developing world, girls are expected to do house chores, care for siblings, and fetch water. But they […]
Kids Lose Sleep With Touchscreen Use; an Argument for Editing Tweets
Posted April 13th, 2017 at 12:03 pm (UTC-5)
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-5)
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-5)
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. […]