DPL Reading List – August 10, 2018
Here are some of the articles we found this week.
5 Things to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed by Your Workload – “A classic catch-22 in psychology is that people wait for their emotions to change before changing their behavior. However, changing your behavior is probably the best and fastest way to change your emotions (and thoughts). When you start tuning into it, you will probably notice the pattern cropping up again and again.”
Why Software Is Eating The World – “More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures.”
Technology is Reshaping the Creative World – “Will we ever come face-to-face with the 2011 world of Ernest Clive’s Ready Player One? At what point does the creation come to surpass the original? While the full extent is yet unknown, the evidence remains. While coding may be another tool, in the hands of the artist, it truly has no limits.”
The future is ear: Why “hearables” are finally tech’s next big thing – “Now, Fast Company has learned that Amazon, Apple, and Google each have high-priority projects to pick up where Doppler left off. All three are working on products that combine the utility of the hearing aid with the entertainment value of a pair of high-end headphones, and potentially much more, say sources. Since all three have announced plans to get into healthcare, they could easily add fitness and health monitoring sensors for everything from counting steps to measuring oxygen saturation.”
Algorithms Help Power Grids Survive GPS Spoofs – “To make the high-precision, high-resolution measurements they need in order to control power grids, electric companies employ phasor measurement units (PMUs), devices aligned with the atomic clocks used in GPS. As power grids rely less on centralized power plants and more on rooftop solar power and other distributed sources of energy, PMUs are growing increasingly more important. However, PMUs are vulnerable to GPS spoofing attacks, wherein a hacker would place transmitters near a station to broadcast counterfeit GPS signals, which would be picked up by the PMUs. Fooling the PMUs of one or more power stations could lead to disruptions that could cascade throughout an entire power grid.”
How a photographer built this DIY camera with wood, metal, and 3D printing – “Landers has been studying work by clockmakers and watchmakers to get this geared mechanism right. Another goal is make his own shutter to truly control his camera’s image. But with 50 to 100 moving parts, the shutter design is also demanding a great deal of research. Ultimately, Landers wants to build a camera that lasts, if not forever, then a very long time indeed, like the Leica M6.”
6 Skills for Jobs of the Future – “Yes, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning may sound very dangerous for our future jobs (thanks to the media for escalating it). Luckily, there are a significant number of jobs that require more than calculations and strict algorithms. If you read my previous articles (no pressure), you know that there are ‘hard skills’ which can be transferred to robots and AIs, and ‘soft skills’ — here’s where people can show their creativity, empathy, and dreaming.”
