The TSA found a record number of firearms at airport screening checkpoints in a single day last Thursday, discovering 21 firearms in carry-on bags nationwide. That broke the previous record of 18 set in 2014. The news comes as the TSA expects to screen the highest number of travelers in a decade during the spring break travel period.

Around 62 million people are expected to go through airport security this month alone. To help speed things up, the TSA is considering new scanners for carry-on bags that produce 3-D images, similar to CT scans.

The machines the TSA is using at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to scan carry-ons at checkpoints are nearly a decade old, and the practice of X-raying a bag goes back far longer. The future may be taking technology that revolutionized medicine and using it to give screeners a better view of whats in your bag, which could mean less time in line when you fly, reports CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave.

Can you spot the knife hidden in this bag? This is the view a screener would have on machines like the ones in use today.

View from a TSA scanner used today

But suddenly that knife is impossible to miss with new 3-D CT technology, providing side-by-side images on a touch screen that can zoom and spin a bag for a true 360-degree view.

Analogic is one of about five companies developing CT scanners for airport checkpoints.

CBS News

Mark Laustra is a vice president at Analogic, one of about five companies developing CT scanners for airport checkpoints. A CT machine to people means radiation, and I dont want to get radiated on my way to my flight, Van Cleave said.

So these produce the same amount of radiation as the system thats at the checkpoint now, theres no difference. And we use all kinds of radiation shielding inside the machine to make sure theres no leakage, Laustra said. The machines can detect explosives in laptops, liquids and gels, which means the days of having to take things out of your carry-on bag could be numbered. As the bag goes through the system, its taking millions of data sets and using powerful algorithms that gives us the information we need to determine whether or not its explosive material or its innocent, Laustra said.

The clearer picture of whats inside should reduce the need for secondary bag checks, and when paired with new automated lanes already being tested at airports, Analogic believes the CT scanners should increase productivity at checkpoints by as much as 50 percent. This is going to be a much faster process for passengers. Its going to make travel fun again, Laustra said.

Passenger patience wore thin last year as security wait times stretched for hours. Safety has also been a concern.

A 2015 internal review revealed TSA officers failed to detect 95 percent of fake explosives and weapons smuggled through checkpoints by undercover investigators.

Steve Karoly, acting chief technology officer at TSA, thinks the CT technology will be tremendously better, but while it has promise, more testing is needed before it can be rolled out.

It may look good, just well say specific portions of it, but these technologies have to meet not just the technical requirements, but safety requirements, operational requirements, ergonomics, those kinds of things. And so we have to go assess that to go forward in the future, Karoly said.

The TSA already uses much larger CT scanners to see into checked bags, but the new ones have to be smaller and quieter in order to work at a checkpoint like this. The TSA and American Airlines expect to test the new scanners in major airports over the summer.

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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TSA considers using scanners with CT technology for checkpoints - CBS News

Lets be honest our generation is highly dependent on technology.

Advancements, particularly in handheld devices, such as smartphones, iPads and smart-watches, have made our lives more efficient by making everything we need accessible at the tap of a screen or a swipe to the left. Our lifestyles have dramatically changed over the past decade because now, instead of face-to-face conversation, we have messaging apps with emojis to express ourselves. Instead of flipping through page after page of text, we read and scroll through material on a screen. Instead of using mental math to calculate tip, we open the calculator app on our phones.

Essentially, technology has taken the hard work of talking to someone in person, of physically reading a book and of using our minds to do some mental math and replaced it with a device. The small satisfaction of doing these simple tasks without the use of technology has been cast aside with instant gratification from attaining what we want when we want it.

Has technology become so advanced that we, as a generation of Millennials, cannot physically or mentally live without it? Think about it: if all the technology today were to run out of battery or disintegrate for some odd reason, would we still be able to successfully accomplish the same tasks at the same speed as with technology?

I, for one, would struggle. I depend on my laptop to complete assignments because most, if not all of my professors post homework and reading online. I depend on my phone to communicate with my friends and family. Especially at Tech, when everyone is busy with his or her own schedules, communication is best by email or text. Living without the use of my phone or laptop would make studying at Tech and communicating with anyone extremely difficult.

However, I have noticed that technology, ironically, disconnects us from living in the present moment. Even though we try our hardest to communicate what we mean over text, there is still a possibility for miscommunication or misinterpretation of what was written. If, instead, a conversation was held in person, facial expressions, changes in tone, and hand gestures are some ways that miscommunication can be avoided.

With constant focus on a screen in reading and using phone applications, we limit ourselves to a brightly lit screen and forget to appreciate the physicality of turning each page or handwriting calculations on a sheet of paper. These daily little things are what truly matter.

It is great that technology catalyzes our lifestyle by making simple tasks fast and easy to complete. However, at the same time, we should be aware that it also can isolate us, from one another. So take time to disconnect and appreciate the present. Technology will always be here, but will each precious moment of your life always be here?

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Has technology devalued the human experience? - Technique

Foreign Policy (blog)

Trump White House Shopping For Technology to Plug Leaks Foreign Policy (blog) The White House is searching for technology to shut off the leaks that have roiled the Trump administration in its first weeks and already caused the resignation of one top aide and a political firestorm for another. White House IT officials met with ... and more »

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Trump White House Shopping For Technology to Plug Leaks - Foreign Policy (blog)

It's nice to have the right estimate. It's nicer to have it for the right reasons. Most military campaigns these days undergo an "after action analysis." On Thursday March 2, Micron Technology's (NASDAQ:MU) CFO went into battle at a Morgan Stanley conference. We need an after action analysis after yesterday's pre-release, as this article's title implies. What are the lessons learned? Where were we right? Where were we wrong? What new information can we employ next time around? Not only did the sell side analysts do an abysmally poor job with their consensus estimates of 66 cents, vs. the 86 cents now guided. But they haven't told us where their analysis went off the rails or given us confidence they're going to do a better job next time around.

For my part, I'm delighted to average my 77-cent base case estimate and my 95-cent high side estimate and announce that I was spot on. But it would be better to have the right estimate for the right reasons. Here's a little synopsis:

As with most of the analysts cited below, my revenue forecast was off significantly. In my case it is almost certainly bits for both NAND and DRAM, but it is also almost certainly price. This will be a key detail to look at after the formal earnings call on March 23. If the ASP increase was significantly below the 15%/1% I used for DRAM/NAND, I will be looking to see if this will then bleed over to the next quarter, with a lagged positive ASP effect from this February quarter. What has the company done to so significantly increase their gross margins? Rather than some of the inane and unanswerable questions analysts ask on the earnings call, this is the sort of thing the analysts should be drilling in on. If Micron has been able to carve out a sustainable margin improvement, god forbid, this might entitle the company to a healthier price earnings ratio than our maximum 10x.

What about inventory? Readers of my estimate articles know that I'm interested in the effect inventory is having on reported EPS. Much of the $2.75 billion in inventory that was on the books as of the end of the first quarter was put there at a much lower price. When it is sold, that difference in price will flow to the earnings per share. Plus, Ernie warned us he is planning to do inventory liquidations in this analyst day slide:

And here's what the analysts that bother to show inventory showed in their post pre-release notes:

Billions:

Cowen and Credit Suisse: You get an A+ for listening during analyst day. Goldman, Needham and Citi: please write us a report telling us why you don't believe Ernie when he tells us he's going to do inventory liquidations - you may have very good reasons and we'd like to hear them. And Citi, as the high entry you should get prepared for detention. Goldman and Citi: please follow course instructions and deliver your models on a quarterly and not just an annual basis. Thank you.

And what about revised estimates? I grade Investor Relations very hard. If I were Ivan Donaldson, VP IR for Micron, I would be giving myself failing grades looking at the estimate dispersions below, coming on the heels of a pre-release guide and a recent analyst day:

Earnings per share estimates:

Wells Fargo and Citi: Do you really think Ernie is not going to deliver at least the 86 cents from the pre-release guide? Are you aware that the last two quarters, the actual was even better than the pre-release?

And how about revised revenue estimates? Here again, there's a big dispersion:

Charts! What about some charts? Readers know I like charts and even that I try to keep them updated roughly weekly on Instablog. And indeed there are some doozies in this bunch of analyst upgrades.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so here's one from Credit Suisse I found flattering:

Memo to John Pitzer & Co at Credit Suisse. Try normalizing the data as my two charts below do. I think it helps. Also, as my Instablog update link above says, its no longer just about DDR3 as more and more bits are moving to DDR4. Ernie made this very clear in his remarks during the pre-release. In fact, most of the flat to down move since February 10 has been in DDR3. Here are my two charts attacking basically the same data:

And finally, here are two I found a bit bizarre on the same topic. First from Goldman Sachs:

And second, in the same vein, from Cowen:

I guess conceptually I'm scratching my head. I'm delighted with the implication that with a new-found robust gross margin the stock is about to fly. But it doesn't make much predictive sense. For a company that is just qualifying and rolling out a 1x node in DRAM, a 64 layer NAND, and the brand new 3DXpoint, initial margins on all of those should be expected to be poor. And yet the stock could be flying on expectations. Also in the news, management could elect to do a bonehead deal with Toshiba on a solo basis, instead of joining with Silverlake/Dell/EMC, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) as I would prefer. And in that case, even with soaring gross margins, the stock could plummet. I would submit that gross margin is a flawed predictor of stock price despite the tight tango the two lines on the charts above are dancing.

Conclusions: To the sell side analysts: excuse my snarky tone. I know full well how difficult it is to parse through the Micron information. It would be helpful if you could provide a bit of introspection on where your consensus estimates of 66 cents went afoul.

To the SA readers: Thanks for the many positive comments on my aggressive earnings predictions. I consider myself lucky and foolish for having listed both a number and a date for pre-release. And, as stated upfront, it's nice to be correct on the number, but it would be nicer still to have all the underpinnings correct - they weren't. The process of forecasting the next quarter can't begin until we have the detail customarily unveiled during an earnings call.

To Ernie: Everything is not a secret. You can tell us poor shareholders things your customers, vendors and competitors know within a gnat's eyelash of accuracy. Please tell us on earnings day how long your average contract is, what percentage of your production is presently under contract, and the percentage of production going into the spot market vis a vis a long term average of selling on spot. Please tell us how you are doing on your inventory liquidations you said were being undertaken. And if they haven't begun, why? Oh, and I'm sure you will have some pre-payments for product as in years past. Are these all non interest bearing? Are they non concealable? How many customers have done this? What's the average duration? You said on 3/2/2017 that DDR3 was increasingly unimportant. What's the percentage of DDR3 compared to DDR4? I don't think revealing any of this would put you at a competitive disadvantage. Treat your analysts and shareholders better and they will reward you with a higher peak PE than the measly 10X we've seen recently.

I'm feeling we will publish $1+ in EPS and $5 billion-plus in sales for the May quarter. But we can't begin that star gazing until we have more spot and price action, and the data from the earnings call on March 23. Good luck to all!

Disclosure: I am/we are long MU.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Micron Technology Pre-Release, After Action Report - Seeking Alpha

Memory specialist Micron (NASDAQ:MU) derived 61% of its total revenue last quarter from sales of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, a type of memory that's a necessary part of today's computing devices -- from smartphones to supercomputers.

Micron says that of its DRAM revenue, "mid-20s" percent of it came from what it refers to as "Specialty DRAM," which the company says "includes networking, graphics, automotive, and other embedded technologies."

Image source: Micron.

In a previous article, I went over how Micron has done a solid job of executing in the graphics portion of its specialty DRAM business. In a nutshell, the top high-performance gaming and workstation graphics processors from graphics processor leader NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) use a type of memory called GDDR5X that, today, only Micron provides.

Today, I'd like to go over why NVIDIA's recent product announcements represent a positive for Micron.

Standalone gaming graphics processors generally require a good deal of specialized, high-performance graphics memory to be included with them. That memory has, in recent years, been a technology known as GDDR5.

However, in May of 2016, NVIDIA announced a new graphics processor known as the GeForce GTX 1080 that used a new type of memory known as GDDR5X. GDDR5X is essentially a souped-up version of GDDR5 that enables greater memory bandwidth (the rate at which the graphics processor can read/write data to the memory).

There are multiple vendors of vanilla GDDR5 memory, but only Micron builds GDDR5X today. So, to the extent that NVIDIA increases its mix of GDDR5X-equipped products, Micron should benefit from both market share gains (no opportunity for multisourcing) as well as potential average selling price increases (no competition and higher delivered value should mean Micron can command more for GDDR5X than it can for GDDR5).

Image source: NVIDIA.

NVIDIA recently announced the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, which includes 11 gigabytes of GDDR5X memory and carries an MSRP of $699. NVIDIA also announced that it would push the MSRP of its GeForce GTX 1080 to $499 (down from $599).

And, finally, NVIDIA announced that it would allow its add-in-board partners to offer optional variants of the GeForce GTX 1080 equipped with the slightly faster GDDR5X chips used in the 1080 Ti compared to those used in the original 1080.

It's not hard to see how these developments could help Micron:

In a nutshell, NVIDIA is using GDDR5X across more of its gaming products, those gaming products now span a wider range of price points, and it is even using faster (and potentially higher value) GDDR5X chips in some cards today compared to what it used a year ago.

Ashraf Eassa has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Some Good News for Micron Technology, Inc.'s Graphics Memory Biz - Motley Fool

Amazon Web Services outlined its post mortem on its S3 outage and the cause boils down to one word: Typo. A typo?!? That's crazy right? Not really. In fact, typos plague software, code and have cost companies billions of dollars.

The cloud giant offered the following when explaining its outage.

Folks say misery loves company and the good news for AWS is that the typo club is pretty extensive. Here's a look at some of the pain caused by a simple typo. Consider:

ZCoin, which allows for private financial transactions, had a "typographical error on a single additional character in code (that) allowed an attacker to create Zerocoin spend transactions without a corresponding mint." The attacker created about 370,000 Zcoins and made a profit of about $400,000. Zcoin is similar to Bitcoin in that it's a digital currency based on cryptography.

Back in 2014 the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug was blamed on four bytes, roughly four characters. That typo left much of the Web vulnerable.

In 2013, Fortune recapped the greatest Excel disasters of all time. The common theme? Damn humans added items, changed models and lost billions of dollars. The recap includes J.P. Morgan, which lost $6.2 billion in 2012 with a few bad trades. J.P. Morgan employees added a measure when it should have been averaged.

Turns out typos have been around as long as code. Priceonomics, a site for data junkies, gave a history lesson on NASA's Venus rocket, which exploded in 1962. What happened? One extra hyphen in the code led to the disaster.

It doesn't take long to realize that typos have been around as long as code. We can move onto new technologies, but it's likely that the typo will endure.

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AWS typo gaffe isn't the first, or last in technology - ZDNet

CHICAGO McDonald's Corp (MCD.N) on Wednesday announced a push to embrace apps aimed at speeding up service at drive-thrus, which account for about 70 percent of its U.S. business, as the fast-food chain looks to woo back diners.

The company's U.S. restaurants have suffered four straight years of traffic declines, resulting in 500 million lost transactions since 2012. As part of the push for greater convenience in the United States, which contributes more operating income than any other global market, McDonald's will also offer curbside pickup of orders to reduce wait time at drive-thrus.

McDonald's will start to roll out "mobile order and pay" in the fourth quarter and have it available at all of its roughly 14,000 U.S. restaurants by year-end, Chris Kempczinski, president of McDonald's USA, said at the company's investor meeting in Chicago on Wednesday.

Customers who use the app will have the option to pick up orders at drive-thru windows or in designated curbside delivery parking spots, where a restaurant worker will hand off orders. Customers could also choose to pick up orders at restaurant counters.

Service times at McDonald's have recently slowed, and the new initiatives are expected to cut wait times, shorten drive-thru lines and prevent customers from skipping visits due to long delays, said Jim Sappington, McDonald's executive vice president of operations, digital and technology.

McDonald's has lagged other fast-food restaurants such as Domino's Pizza Inc (DPZ.N), Panera Bread Co (PNRA.O) and Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) in its use of digital technology.

The goal is "progress over perfection," said Sappington, who added that McDonald's will also debut "mobile order and pay" in about 6,000 international locations by year-end as it works to add a loyalty program and customization.

Mobile ordering should reduce errors and significantly cut the time it takes to handle large, complex orders. The new initiatives could shift some 20 percent of drive-thru orders to curbside delivery and another 20 percent to drive-thru pickup only, executives said.

"Decongesting" the drive-thru in such a way could result in 20 more cars per hour and incremental sales, said Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook. McDonald's also plans to expand delivery in the United States, which it is testing with UberEATS in Florida, and begin trying it in other countries.

McDonald's said it would use a part of the savings from refranchising restaurants outside the United States to get to 2,500 "Experience of the Future" restaurant revamps by the end of 2017. Those restaurants include self-service kiosks, table service and reconfigured kitchens designed to slash the distance a restaurant's workers walk on a given day by as much as seven miles.

Shares of McDonald's closed up 1.1 percent at $129.05 after hitting a nine-month high of $129.99.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Chicago; Additional reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis)

WASHINGTON A coalition of 53 companies on Thursday backed transgender rights at the U.S. Supreme Court, signing on to a brief supporting a Virginia student who is fighting to use the school bathroom that corresponds with his gender identity.

RIYADH Drivers from ride-hailing services Uber and Careem are barred from picking up passengers from Saudi Arabia's airports, Al Madina newspaper reported, quoting a spokesman from the kingdom's General Directorate of Traffic.

Elon Musk, an active Twitter user, has been Tesla's mouthpiece to the public, informing them about the electric car maker's upcoming products and plans.

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McDonald's US turnaround shifts to technology, speedier service - Reuters

If youve played a recent Forza or Gran Turismo video game, you already know: These virtual cars are almost indistinguishable from their real life counterparts, with all the curves and light reflections that make them look like theyve driven straight out of a car commercial and into the game. But unlike films made by companies like Pixar, these game cars arent rendered over the course of months. They render 60 times every second.

Now Epic Gamesa company known for making the Unreal Engine which powers many big budget video game on the marketand VFX studio The Mill are showing just how far the realtime rendering of photorealistic graphics can go. In their new short called The Human Race, you can actually choose the car you want to star in a short Chevy commercial, then watch as it instantly appears within the video.

The end product is basically a choose-your-own-adventure The Fast & The Furious short. And technology like this is about to change the way movies, games, and everything in between are made forever.

"We created a virtual production toolkit to visualize what you see in the filma virtual car," says Boo Wong, global director of emerging technology at The Mill. "But that can be extended to any character, prop, etc. From a visual effects point of view, thats super exciting."

To film the demo, the Mill used a pseudo-car called the Blackbird. The Blackbird is basically a physical placeholder for a CGI car that will be added in post-production. (Thats right! Many cars you see in car commercials are fake!) This vehicle is like a dune buggy, fit with visually trackable markers and filled with 4K RED cameras that shoot outward. Usually, the Mill's team shoots a commercial with the Blackbird because they need to film the spot before a cars final design is readyor because the car is so secretive they dont want to publicize it. But the ensuing post-production, in which the CGI car is added to real footage, takes months. Single frames can take hours, even days, to render.

Enter Epic, on the software end. Its new technology is called Project Raven. An extension of its Unreal Engine 4 used in video games, Raven has been customized to support augmented reality applicationsin fact, the platform is built to support systems like Googles Project Tango.

With Project Raven connected to the Blackbird, visual insanity ensues. The Unreal Engine gets all this real-time information from the real environment simultaneously. Footage from those 4K cameras onboard the Blackbird is mapped onto the curves of the CGI car, rendering a super-realistic reflective shell on its surface. Software analyzes this footage, too, spots the sun, and infers where its position must be in the sky, creating a realistic lighting system.

On set, the director can look through a preview monitor to see the dune buggy prop car re-skinned in real time as the CGI car from any conceivable angle. Of course, preview systems like this exist in the special effects world already, but heres the twist: The director sees the final, photorealistic pixels that will be in the actual commercial, rendered at 24 frames per second. (Sure, thats a bit slower than a high-end video game, but it meets the traditional benchmark of Hollywood films just fine.)

So where does this technology go next? As weve pointed out here on Co.Design, the Unreal Engine is evolving, making its way into more mainstream entertainment. Nickelodeon shows now use Unreal to produce TV programming with a quicker turnaround. And the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One, actually used the Unreal Engine to render some shots of the movie's K-2SO droid.

For agencies like the Mill, this technology means it can shoot something for a client once, but easily repurpose it for multiple platforms and campaigns. In a world in which any asset within a film can be swapped out, it adds the immediate capability of customization and interactivity. Unreal Engine has also pledged to support Pixars Universal Scene Descriptions, meaning its verging toward compatibility with the Hollywood 3D machine.

"Were a games company. What we see happening is the gamification of everything in our lives," says Kim Libreri, CTO at Epic Games. "If youre watching an animated TV show, why shouldn't you be able to change the costume on princess, or change the location, have a personalized experienceand share your version with friends?"

Or, as I like to imagine: One day soon, you'll pause the NBA game youre watching, reach for the Xbox controller, and take over where the real players left off.

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This Crazy New Technology Transforms Movies Into Video Games - Co.Design (blog)

This past November, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter and floated the idea ofoffering a solar roof option for the Model 3. When asked outright if Tesla had plans to embed solar panels in the roof, Musk replied that they would probably offer that as an option.

Right off the bat, Musks tweet seemed overly optimistic, if not downright absurd.While a solar roof capable of harnessing the suns power and charging a car as it drives is certainly intriguing, such a design is far from practical given the current state of solar technology. At the core, the size of the Model 3s roof would only be big enough for a solar panel that would, at best, manage to tack on an extra mile or two of range per day. In effect, implementing a solar roof would be far more trouble than its worth.

Earlier this week, however, Panasonic unveiled a new a type of solar panel technology designed specifically for cars. Dubbed theHITPhotovoltaic Module for Automobile, the solar roof design is currently available for the Toyota Prius PHV exclusively, but that may change in the coming years.

What makes Panasonics work here so intriguing is that the design houses new technology which makes it possible to actually charge lithium-ion batteries, the very same which power Teslas fleet of vehicles.

Panasonics press release reads:

Panasonics solar cells have a unique structure that combines a crystalline silicon substrate and an amorphous silicon film, and feature high conversion efficiency and excellent temperature characteristics.

Conventional automotive solar cells can output up to several tens of watts and have been used only for the auxiliary charging of 12 V batteries and ventilation power sources for parked cars; however, the use of the features of Panasonics solar cells allow a high output (approx.180 W) in a limited area on a cars roof, enabling the charging of the drive lithium-ion batteries as well as 12 V batteries, resulting in a possible extension of an EVs travel distance and increased in fuel economy.

An added bonusis that Panasonics solar roof can be designed to match a cars existing design, thereby enabling an efficientinstallation process.

That said, a lot more work still needs to be done before solar roofs become an add-on worth paying for, or even considering. Even with Panasonics solar roof advancements, a parked car equipped with a solar roof panel might still only be able to eek out an additional 3-4 miles of range per day.While that could certainly add up over time, itshardly a game-changer. Additionally, consider this: the aforementioned Toyota Prius PHV would reportedly need about a full week to go from empty to full charge via a solar roof alone.

In the meantime, Tesla owners can look forward to next-gen Supercharger technology which Musk last year hinted would be a huge leap forward.

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New solar roof technology from Panasonic could eventually end up in Tesla's Model 3 - BGR

For years now school reformers have been touting the power of technology to transform education. Kids can learn better, faster and anywhere they want if only school districts would invest enough money in technology and allow teachers to learn how to integrate them into lessons.

But while educational technology has been extremely helpful for some populations of students, including some with disabilities, the overarching promise that enthusiasts predicted has not yet been borne out. There are a number of reasons for this, including poor training of teachers, poorly designed technology and technology that quickly becomes obsolete.

Here is a piece on this subject by Kathy Liu Sun, a former high school math teacher who is now an assistant professor of education at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley, California.

[The new magical thinking about high-tech in schools and why its a problem]

By Kathy Liu Sun

I live and work in Silicon Valley, so its not surprising that technology has found its way into our math classrooms here. But is technology really supporting our students to learn? Just because something is labeled as technology doesnt mean it supports good learning.

In my recent work in local schools, I have observed that teachers are having their students work on computers for the entire math lesson. Proponents argue that computer-based lessons allow students to go at their own pace and expose students to content they might not otherwise have an opportunity to see. But these benefits come at a high cost.

One of the most pressing problems is the content and focus of these digital lessons, which are often simply digital replications of traditional lecture based math lessons. (You remember these: teacher at board showing you example after example, followed by practicing a similar problem with different numbers twenty times over.)

Whether delivered digitally or in person, this type of instruction sends the wrong message about mathematics. It teaches students that mathematics is about mastering a set of procedures, rather than viewing mathematics as a creative subject that is about problem-solving and sense-making.

Research has shown that such an emphasis on mathematical procedures is not supportive of student learning and fails to help students to draw connections between key mathematical ideas, think critically, and problem-solve. These skills are particularly important for 21st Century citizenry and long-term achievement outcomes.

While your seventh grader engaging in digital math lessons might be learning pre-calculus procedures, she may not have any understanding of the underlying concepts that will be critical for future success.

Instead, lets consider how technology might genuinely support mathematical sense-making and problem-solving. A recent study conducted at Stanford University found that students who played a game that focused on the relationship between numbers, rather than memorized math facts, led to better learning outcomes.

[The overselling of educational technology]

Good educational technology, implemented at the appropriate time, can enhance math learning. Here are a few things to look for when examining technology to support mathematics learning:

When the latest technology-based learning program rolls out at our local schools, lets be sure to critically examine the type of mathematics learning it supports.

Link:

Silicon Valley teacher: Don't confuse educational technology that helps kids learn and doesn't - Washington Post

New York Times

On Khalid's 'American Teen,' Songs of Young Love and Technology New York Times This, like a few other songs here Khalid wrote almost all the lyrics on the album are worthy additions to the body of music about how technology and love overlap. Location is a prime example of that a song about begging for his lover to drop ... and more »

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On Khalid's 'American Teen,' Songs of Young Love and Technology - New York Times

Science Daily

New technology offers fast peptide synthesis Science Daily This technology could help researchers rapidly generate new peptide drugs to test on a variety of diseases, and it also raises the possibility of easily producing customized cancer vaccines for individual patients. Pentelute is the senior author of a ... and more »

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New technology offers fast peptide synthesis - Science Daily

Urban sprawl is the reality for two out of three people living in Europe. This edition of Real Economy comes from the Spanish city of Valencia.

As we move to urban economic powerhouses for jobs and opportunities we also have to deal with critical issues like economic hardships, such as housing, transport and pollution. And that is really forcing cities to start thinking of how to become smart cities.

Around 80 percent of Europes energy is used by us as city dwellers, but we contribute around 85 percent of the continents GDP. Now as the worlds urban population is set to double by 2050, it might be a good idea for us to understand what a smart city is.

Crash course: smart city

Everyday we connect lifes dots, to wake up, go to work, socialise and sleep.

Smart cities connect the dots as well. Between humans, society, information and communication technology.

Connections that know when your next bus to work will arrive, and is capable of controlling the traffic to decrease congestion. Finding you a parking space.

Sensors that light street lamps, call emergency services or warn about pollution levels in real time.

Smart cities take all the elements of urban life, creating a technological platform that allows citizens, businesses and governments to communicate and work together.

Smart cities have until recently been large ones like Barcelona or Amsterdam, but smaller cities are catching up, piloting or planning to implement smart city strategies.

Leading the way in Europe with the largest number of these smart cities are the UK, Spain and Italy.

Europe has put urban development at the heart of its plan for 2020. With a significant chunk of its European regional development fund earmarked to help smart cities, along with other funds that can be mixed and matched by cities and national governments.

The logic? Well it is quite simple: that smaller cities after the crisis are going to have a tough time raising the cheap funding they need to do the infrastructure transformation a smart city requires - municipal budgets have been cut and debt levels tend to be quite high.

Fanny Gauret set out to see how Valencia is starting ITS Smart transformation.

Inspired by Europes large smart cities, Valencia began its transformation in 2012. Im heading to the centre of urban innovation to find out how far theyve come.

Tools like AppValencia allow locals get real time information on buses and bikes, alerts about the city, and even pay bills online. This is integrated into the smart city management platform a first in Spain.

It is a horizontal platform, in the way that it integrates the information collated from all services and also the external information generated by companies, explained Rafael Monterde-Diaz, CEO, Las Naves Urban Innovation Centre, Valencia City Council. The citizens are able to use the data. The private sector in general can develop apps, solutions that the city can benefit from, because it gives us a solution for a service, but also it is a viable business model that allow them to generate profitability.

Valencia has budgeted over one billion euros for its transformation. More than half of that amount will be contributed by the European structural and investment funds.

An example of how the change will help Valencias residents is the traffic management control centre.

Basically we have real time control of what is happening in the principal avenues of the city, added Monterde-Diaz. The control of traffic lights, we can change the frequency to facilitate emergencies, for example, or avoid traffic jam.

The system reduces pollution and can lower costs for utilities so its getting another six million euros from the Spanish government and the EU. Companies such as Telefonica are helping it happen.

In the business world we have dedicated to themes around the Internet of Things, and amongst them, smart cities, Kim Faura, General Manager Catalonia, Valencian Community, Balearic Islands and Murcia Region, Telefonica Spain, told Euronews. We have in our pocket a sensor that gives a lot of information. It is said that by 2020, millions of things will be connected.

Our smart city strategy has allowed us to learn a lot about the resources we have in the city, said Monterde-Diaz.

Parking spots, street lamps, rubbish skips, they are in place, but now we need these objects to speak to us, and theyll communicate over the internet, allowing us to manage more efficiently.

It is now up to Valencia to communicate and interact with the citizens, universities and companies to fully develop its strategy.

Because that smart digitalization is critical to our booming urban population growth.

Conversation with Xiao Puig, President of the Valencian government.

A coherent strategy and building trust among citizens is imperative for a successful smart city. In a region like Valencia, that job falls on Xiao Puig. He is the president of the Valencian government.

Maithreyi Seetharaman, Euronews: How are you building trust for a smart vision for Valencia and what is that vision?

Ximo Puig: We came from a situation of mistrust in the public sector fundamentally because of problems from the past. It is still difficult but progressively results support the process and gradually there are more citizens, more companies that trust in this system of innovation that affects all of us and that most certainly is lead by the public sector together with the private sector.

Maithreyi Seetharaman, Euronews: What is the state of Valencias economy and how are you going to use technology to build on the strengths and curtail the weaknesses?

Ximo Puig: The Valencian economy has grown 3.9 percent in the past year. Valencian companies and workers are overcoming great challenges We have a problem in adapting education to new companies and this is a fundamental element. We also have an issue with language skills. We have a problem with everything related to the incorporation of education into an innovative society. For example, The Valencian community will be the first community in Spain to be connected on line. This is a fundamental element to finally bringing all citizens, all families, all companies together into a real information society.

Maithreyi Seetharaman, Euronews: How hard has it been for you to raise the money that you need from the capital markets or have you had to turn to grants and funding.. and in some ways do you think it sets some kind of precedent or example for other cities who are trying this strategy around Europe?

Ximo Puig: We have to combine funds. Private funds like banks, companies and there is also the non-profit sector. There are diverse possibilities of capital contribution from the private sector but of course we need European funds, we also need our own funds. It is a process.

We have the same problems as other different European regions. It is evident that there are more advanced regions and less advanced ones. In the end, this is about Europe having a project in favour of all of European regions facing this fundamental challenge which is an information society, a communication society.

Maithreyi Seetharaman, Euronews: Mr. Puig, on that note thank you for your time.

Excerpt from:

How 'smart city' technology is connecting Europeans - euronews

Jacksonville ISD will host a district-wide Technology Showcase Friday, March 3. Each campus will be open to parents and community members from 8:30 - 11:30 to observe the many technology tools used to support the learning environment in JISD. Campuses will have their own "brochures" available describing what areas are open and what tools are being used.

Hardware including interactive white boards, interactive pads, student response systems, digital microscopes, graphing calculators, touchscreen laptops, kindles, surface pro, and document cameras will be in use in classrooms and available in an "Exploration Room" allowing parents hands-on opportunities. Software used extensively in JISD will also be showcased such as Office 365/Microsoft Classroom, Safari Montage, Learning.com, Target Math, Relex Math, BrainPop, Istation, STEMscopes, Pearson Realize, Plickers, Kahoot, Quaver, Quizizz, and Virtual Labs.

Libraries will showcase the capabilities of their video conferencing equipment and Nichols and Middle School students will be video-conferencing with elementary students while reading to them. The Libraries will also have activites available for visitors to explore TexQuest tools, ebooks, and district and teacher websites.

The Career & Tech Department at JHS will also be open and available for tours and questions. From a plasma cutter to a 3-D printer, the CTE Building has interesting uses of technology in a variety of classes.

Director of Instructional Technology, Lynne Bullock and her team of Instructional Strategists stay hard at work making sure staff members receive the support and tools they need to use technology in their classroom instruction. "The students of JISD are so fortunate to be part of a district that provides a multitude of technology resources. We wanted to showcase these tools so the community and parents can see the wide use of technology used in every subject and in every grade level in JISD. We are so proud of the resources we have here," says Bullock. "We hope to have a good response from the community. The students as well as staff have planned and worked very hard to be ready for the big day".

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JISD slated to host Technology Showcase - Jacksonville Daily Progress

Forbes

Technology Hits The Fields Forbes During a recent blizzard in Massachusetts, Sonia Lo, CEO of FreshBox Farms, was in a grocery store suggesting to skeptical patrons that they sample her leafy greens. They were picked yesterday, is what she told tasters. She also told them no, they ...

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Technology Hits The Fields - Forbes

On the surface,a Google subsidiarys blistering accusation last week that Uber has stolen its driverless car technology looks like any of the thousands of patent lawsuits piling up in Silicon Valley court dockets.

This one is different, however. And its different in ways that could spell bad news for Uber.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court by Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. devoted to developing self-driving technology. (Alphabet is the new name for Google.) Waymo is responsible for those bug-shaped cars and other vehicles testing the technology around Northern California. Theyre equipped with sophisticated laser systems that create a 3-D picture of the landscape, allowing the vehicles to navigate around obstacles.

Waymo says that Anthony Levandowski, who was once Googles driverless-car guru, downloaded 14,000 proprietary company files onto his own computer and absconded with them when he left Google to found his own company in 2016. That company, Otto, was soon acquired by Uber for $680 million. Not long after that, Google says, it discovered that Ottos technology was largely identical to its own. The lawsuit seeks damages for alleged infringement of three Google patents and an injunction barring Uber from using any of the technology.

One aspect of the lawsuit that struck some Silicon Valley observers from the first was the extensive detail in the accusations.

Normally in a case like this, theres a lot of innuendo in the early stages, says Eric Goldman, a patent law expert at Santa Clara University law school. But Waymo specified how and when it alleges Levandowski downloaded the files, the breadth of his alleged theft and efforts to conceal his actions, and how it discovered them from an email a supplier sent to members of Levandowskis team and mistakenly copied to a Waymo employee.

Google spent a lot of time and money investigating before it filed the lawsuit, Goldman told me.

Of course, the lawsuit represents just one side of the story. Uber hasnt yet responded in court. In a statement, the company said it had reviewedWaymo's claims anddetermined them to be a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor. Uber added, We look forward to vigorously defending against them in court.

Another unusual aspect of the case, Goldman says, is that Google is bringing it at all. Intellectual property lawsuits are out of character for Google, he says, even though it has so many former employees that a large amount of its IP must be at large in the technology community. They just dont show up as a plaintiff, he says. Moreover, Google is an investor in Uber with a stake of at least $250 million; a Google executive sat on Ubers board until just after Uber acquired Otto.

Google hasnt said much about why this episode should be different from any others, beyond a Waymo blog post that implies it was just too gross an offense to ignore.

These actions were part of a concerted plan to steal Waymos trade secrets and intellectual property, the post reads. Given the overwhelming facts...we have no choice but to defend our investment and development of this unique technology.

I asked Google to elaborate, but havent heard back.

Goldman conjectures further that this might be an asset especially valuable to the Google family, something extra important.If thats so, it underscores the grand expectations for driverless technology, despite indications that it may be oversold. Google has been among the most enthusiastic developers in the field; just last year, Eric Schmidt, its executive chairman, crowed that "the technology worksbecause, frankly, the computer can see better than you can, even if you're not drunk in a car.

The lawsuit says the markets for self-driving cars are nascent and on the cusp of rapid development. It asserts that the companys fleet of self-driving cars has logged 2.5 million miles on public roads, which it says equates to over 300 years of human driving experience. Its arithmetic is murky, however, since Americans alone log more than 3 trillion miles everyyear. In any event, some experts believe that a transition to fully autonomous cars the ones you nap in, rather than paying at least some attention to the road could be decades away.

Obviously, theres a lot at stake in the case for big, brash Uber. The company has built its reputation as a juggernaut by flouting local car-hire regulations and bullying municipal officials who dare to stand in its way. Google may not be as inclined to back off as your city alderman.

As my colleague Tracey Lien observed Friday, the lawsuit capped a bad stretch for Uber. That started with a boycott of the firm after it was perceived to have taken advantage of a taxi drivers strike at New Yorks JFK airport to protest President Trumps immigrant ban. It was followed by a devastating picture of a sexual harassment culture at Uber headquarters posted online by a former engineer, Susan Fowler Rigetti. Now comes Waymos unusually detailed accusation of intellectual property thievery.

The case may also underscore the weakness of Ubers claim to a $70-billion valuation in the private venture market. That valuation had been based on the expectation that Uber was poised to radically reform the transportation-for-hire economy by shouldering vehicle-owning taxi companies and individuals out of the way, replacing them with independent drivers using their own cars. If Google is to be believed, Uber now puts such stake in owning its own capital assets that it waswilling to pay $680 million for the necessary (allegedly stolen)technology.

Moving from a business model in which the company essentially owns nothing but skims a vigorish of 25% or more off the fares paid to its independent contractors, to one in which it owns and must continue to develop a fleet of its own vehicles represents a major change of direction. As transportation expert Hubert Horan observed in a detailed critique of Uber last December, it is unclear why investors would wager billions on the prospect that it will eventually be able to design and build highly sophisticated vehicles more efficiently than competitors such as Google, Tesla, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Ford and General Motors.

The allegations in the lawsuit imply that Uber went to great lengths to obtain its driverless technology. The core allegation concerns its light detection and ranging system, orLiDAR, which coordinates and interprets in real timethe signals returned from laser beams bouncing off objects in the real world. Waymo says its LiDAR is the most advanced in the fieldanda trade secret.

According to the lawsuit, while Levandowski was managing Waymo, he was plotting to start his own competing company. Starting in December 2015, he downloaded 14,000 Waymo files, including specifications for its LiDAR system, from a company laptop, the lawsuit alleges,then he erased and reformatted the laptop to eliminate evidence of what he had done. Within weeks he resigned from Waymo and launched Otto. Other Waymo employees soon followed him out the door, taking other trade secrets, the lawsuit says.

Then, last December, a Waymo employee was sent a copy of an email destined for the Otto team. It happened, the lawsuit said,to include a rendering of an Otto circuit board that bore a striking resemblance to a circuit board design that Levandowski had downloaded.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow@hiltzikmon Twitter, see hisFacebook page, or emailmichael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltzik's blog.

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Facing a lawsuit from Google over driverless car technology, Uber may finally have met its match - Los Angeles Times

The United States shares 5,525 miles of land border with Canada and 1,989 miles with Mexico. Monitoring these borders, which is the responsibility of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), is an enormous task. Detecting, and responding to, illegal activity while facilitating lawful commerce and travel is made more difficult by the expansive, rugged, diverse, and thickly vegetated geography that spans both often-crossed borders. To help mitigate the challenges to border surveillance, a group of researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory is investigating whether an airborne ladar system capable of imaging objects under a canopy of foliage could aid in the maintenance of border security by remotely detecting illegal activities. Their work will be presented at the 16th Annual IEEE Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Security to be held April 25-26 in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Requisite for effective border protection is timely, actionable information on areas of interest. Leveraging the laboratorys long experience in building imaging systems that exploit microchip lasers and Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes, the research team developed and tested two concepts of operations (CONOPS) for using airborne ladar systems to detect human activity in wooded regions.

"For any new technology to be effectively used by CBP, an emerging sensor must bring with it a sensible deployment architecture and concept of operation," said John Aldridge, a technical staff member from the Laboratory's Homeland Protection Systems Group, who has been working with a multidisciplinary, cross-divisional team that includes Marius Albota, Brittany Baker, Daniel Dumanis, Rajan Gurjar, and Lily Lee. The CONOPS that the engineering team focused on were cued examination of a localized area and uncued surveillance of a large area. To demonstrate the approach, the engineering team conducted proof-of-concept experiments with the laboratory's Airborne Optical Systems Testbed (AOSTB), a Twin Otter aircraft outfitted with an onboard ladar sensor.

For cued surveillance, the use of an airborne ladar sensor platform (whether a piloted or unpiloted aircraft system) might be prompted by another persistent sensor that indicates the presence of activity in a localized area at or near the border. "The area of coverage for cued surveillance may be in the 1 km2 to 10km2 range, and the laboratory has already developed and demonstrated sensor technology that can achieve this coverage in minutes," Albota said.

Uncued wide-area surveillance sorties might be flown long distances and over timelines of days or weeks to establish typical activity patterns and to discover emerging paths and structures in high-interest regions. "The area coverage required under such a CONOPS may reach as high as 300 to 800 km of border, depending on the Border Patrol Sector and vegetation density," Aldridge explained, adding, "Although the current AOSTB's area coverage rate is limited by the aircraft's airspeed, the sensor can image such a region in a matter of hours in a single sortie."

As a start to their field tests to assess their CONOPS, the team flew data collection runs over several local sites identified as representative of the northern U.S. border environment. The sites contained a variety of low-growing brush, thin ground vegetation, very tall coniferous-trees, and leafy deciduous trees. For the tests, the team positioned vehicles, tents, and other camp equipment in the woods to serve as the targets of interest. "We made 40 passes at an altitude of 7,500 feet to allow for a spatial resolution of about 25 centimeters," Dumanis said. "In between each pass, we moved the concealed items so that we could perform post-process analysis for change and motion detection," Baker added.

In this post-processing stage, the team members enhanced the data captured during the flights so that human analysts could then inspect the ladar imagery. They digitally removed ground-height data to reveal the three-dimensional ladar point cloud above ground and then digitally thresholded the height (erased 3-D points above a certain height) to eliminate the foliage cover. The resulting images gave analysts Gurjar and Lee a starting point for approximating the locations of both the planted objects as well as objects that were already on scene.

Searching through vast quantities of ladar data to spot areas for careful inspection is a labor intensive task even for experienced analysts who can recognize subtle cues that direct them to the possible presence of objects in the imagery. For the ladar data to be efficiently mined, an automated method of identifying areas of interest is needed. "One of the ways to alert analysts to potential targets is to track changes in the 3-D temporal data," Lee explained. "Changes caused by vehicle movements or alterations in a customary scene can indicate uncharacteristic activity."

To begin a change detection approach to the discovery of potential targets of interest, the research team registered the before and after ladar data and then subtracted the before data from the after dataset. This process allowed some improvement in the visual identification of vehicles that appeared where there had been none before; however, even a skilled human analyst would find it difficult to spot the small changes that signaled the presence of a vehicle.

A change detection approach, therefore, must compensate for the challenge posed by clutter in the ladar data. This clutter comes from the nature of ladar collection in densely foliated environment. As light travels through gaps between foliage, it bounces off a surface of leaves, ground, or human-made objects. The returned light is collected by the ladar sensor to form the 3-D point cloud. Because the motion induced by a flying platform causes each ladar scan to travel through different configurations of gaps between leaves, different parts of the canopy and shrubbery are sensed by the ladar. "Much of the clutter in our change detection output is from the different levels of canopy detected from different ladar scans," explained Gurjar.

To make the ladar change detection data easier for analysts to search, the team looked to automated object detection, a well-established field in computer vision that has been applied to images and radar data. Since ladar data presents in three dimensions and has unique noise characteristics, the team had to enhance the established automated detection approach with a sum of absolute difference (SAD) technique that factors in the height differences used to construct 3-D ladar imagery. Trials of the SAD technique applied to simulated vehicles in a foliated environment demonstrated that the approach yielded high detection rates and has potential as an automated method for reducing the huge amount of ladar data analysts would have to scrutinize to discover objects of interest.

"Looking forward, we hope to improve the capabilities of automated 3-D change detection to be more robust to natural temporal changes in foliage, expand the number of automatically detected object classes, and extend automated detection capability to full 3-D point clouds," said Lee, with Aldridge adding that they are also interested in exploring alternative aircraft for hosting the ladar system.

In its strategic plan "Vision and Strategy 2020," the CBP has expressed the need to apply advanced technology solutions for border management. Continued development of Lincoln Laboratory's automated approach to using a low-cost ladar system for surveillance of foliated regions may in the future offer another tool that the Department of Homeland Security's CBP can deploy to monitor the growing volume of land border activity.

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Foliage-penetrating ladar technology may improve border surveillance - MIT News

Paul Mariner and Sebastian Salazar discuss Man United's capture of the EFL Cup trophy, and if Southampton deserved more. Claude Puel shares his disappointment and thoughts on video technology after Southampton's 3-2 loss in the EFL Cup final.

Southampton's Oriol Romeu has urged football's rule-makers to bring in video technology after the EFL Cup final was "dramatically'' altered by an erroneous offside decision.

Claude Puel's men flew out the blocks at Wembley and found the net after just 11 minutes as Manolo Gabbiadini turned home from close range, sending the success-starved Saints fans wild.

However, the goal was wrongly ruled off for offside on an afternoon that ended with United lifting the EFL Cup thanks to a 3-2 triumph at Wembley, where the International Football Association Board will convene this Friday.

Video technology is on the agenda for the 131st annual general meeting and Romeu hopes that changes can be made to cut out such crucial errors.

"I think that makes a massive difference in the game,'' the Spanish midfielder said.

"We all players will agree that we want the truth to be part and to be real in the game. If it's a goal, it has to count. If it's not, it can't count.

"Sometimes it can make a massive difference in a final because leading 1-0 will change dramatically the game in the other side.

"We all want to make it clear and to have it better for all the players and for all the referees and for everyone.''

Live video trials in football were given the go-ahead by the IFAB last March, with experimentation of technology that could assist officials with game-changing decisions beginning no later than the 2017-18 season.

Asked if he thinks every player would want it brought in, Romeu added: "Oh definitely, they will agree.

"Everyone wants if it's a goal or if it's not a goal it has to count or it doesn't have to count, it's as simple as that.

"The goal disallowed is something that happens and we cannot do anything about it.

"Also the referees play their part and sometimes make mistakes and sometimes they're all right, we cannot say anything, we all make mistakes.

"About the feelings, they are difficult, it's a difficult game to take because it's a final, you're so close to winning a trophy, it's hard to lose in the last two or three minutes of the game.''

Zlatan Ibrahimovic's last-gasp winner stole the headlines on a day when Gabbiadini underlined his potential at Wembley.

Having seen his opener get ruled out, the 25-year-old attacker cancelled out Ibrahimovic's free-kick and a Jesse Lingard strike with goals either side of half-time.

"Amazing, since he came to the club he's been very good, he scored a lot of goals,'' Romeu said of Gabbiadini.

"As a teammate of him we just want to make him happy to make him keep playing like that way and to keep scoring goals.

"To be fair I think not many had seen him play before. But now since he came here he's been very good, every time he has a chance he puts the ball in.

"That's what we want, that's what we need and we're very happy.''

Gabbiadini's displays certainly bode well for Saints, but they face a battle to stop this season petering out.

Puel's men sit 13th with 13 league matches remaining of a topsy-turvy campaign, which is set to end a run of bettering their finish every season since returning to the top-flight in 2012.

"It's hard [to pick ourselves up],'' Romeu said ahead of Saturday's trip to Watford.

"But we have now a week to come back and if we look into the game and the detail.

"The team has played amazingly and the way we did our jobs today we cannot say anything bad about how we played, how we came back into the game and we were so close.''

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Southampton's Oriol Romeu wants video technology after EFL Cup final - ESPN FC

8 hours ago Columns By Hebani Duggal | 8 hours ago

The worst news today is the news about how technology is killing us. The use of social media causes us to meet face-to-face with much less frequency resulting in a lack of social skills or technology creates the perfect recipe for depression with the lack of human contact, overeating, and lack of exercise or being constantly plugged in and connected causes an extra layer of stress that wasnt present before the overuse of technology I can keep going, but honestly Im sure you could type the words bad and technology, and Googles algorithm will be happy to oblige.

Its not so much that these news stories are fake as it is that technology seems to be pit against anything good that could occur in society. Fearing the inevitable shift towards technology accomplishes little else other than an unproductive discussion to which the only logical conclusion seems to be switching off all your devices and hiding in your house.

There seems to be a distinction people draw today of what is real and unreal. Real is what occurs in our everyday, face-to-face interactions while unreal is what apparently occurs online. There is, however, danger in drawing conclusions like this about the technology we engage with on an everyday basis. Technology tends to be a reflection of the kind of people we are and the interactions we engage in on an everyday basis. When we draw a line between technology and real life, however, we do ourselves a disservice in analyzing how technology impacts our everyday lives. Rather than looking at how we may turn away from the technology we employ in our lives, we must look to how we may better understand and benefit from the technologies we have and will continue to use in our lives. Painting the teenagers that spend time on their phones as being too obsessed with technology unfairly identifies technology as the problem, and fails to see the larger context at hand.

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DUGGAL | Big Bad Technology - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

The Government will grant more visas to technology workers in a major boost to the industrys attempts to secure access to overseas talent after the Brexit vote.

Tech City UK, the government organisation that processes applications for the special visa, has been granted the right to endorse 250 immigration visas this year, 50 more than it had originally been allocated.

The move comes after surging demand for the visas following the EU referendum and amid concerns in the technology industry that Britains exit from Europe will make it harder to hire talented foreign workers.

The Tech Nation visa was introduced in 2014 as a way to address a shortage of skilled coders among the UKs fast-growing technology company start-ups.

However, the original requirements were seen as onerous, and originally it only saw a trickle of applications. In late 2015 the rules were relaxed, leading to a leap in applications which has increased again since the referendum last year.

In the current fiscal year, which runs to April 6, the Home Office has granted more than 170 tech visas, so was likely to hit the previous ceiling of 200 in the coming weeks.

Gerard Grech, Tech City UKs chief executive, said raising the number to 250 showed that the Government had responded to the technology sectors call for greater access to foreign talent.

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More technology visas granted after fears of worker shortage - Telegraph.co.uk