Microsoft’s Dream of Decentralized IDs Enters the Real World

For years, tech companies have touted blockchain technology as a means to develop identity systems that are secure and decentralized. The goal is to build a platform that could store information about official data without holding the actual documents or details themselves. Instead of just storing a scan of your birth certificate, for example, a decentralized ID platform might store a…

As VS Code Gains in Popularity, Microsoft Praises ‘Inner Source’ Development

It’s been estimated that there are 24 million developers in the world. 14 million of them now use Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code (VS Code) as their IDE, reports ZDNet, with five million new users arriving in 2020. Julia Liuson, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s developer division, tells them why: “The strategy for VS Code is really to support our any, any,…

Get inspiration and advice from Paulina’s story—and see how she’s using AI to improve healthcare in Ghana!

Meet Paulina, a final-year medical student exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to solve healthcare delivery problems in West Africa. Read on to see how she’s using what she’s learned from her courses to not only expand educational opportunities in her community, but tackle community health projects through programming and data analysis. I […]
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Nintendo Leak Reveals Extreme Measures Taken To Track Hackers

An internal Nintendo leak has revealed measures the company took when approaching a 3DS homebrew hacker. The measures are rather extreme and apparently include surveillance of the individual in question, as well as internal presentations and instructions on how to approach him. From a report: This comes courtesy of prominent Twitter Nintendo leaker Eclipse. According to documents unearthed by Eclipse –…

Leading Companies Partner with Coursera to Tackle Pandemic Disruption and Upskill for a New Economy

By Leah Belsky, Chief Enterprise Officer, Coursera The pandemic has made the need for workforce upskilling an urgent priority for companies worldwide. On Coursera, we are seeing companies across global regions and industry verticals grow their investment in enterprise learning. Amidst the pandemic, many of them are using Coursera to accelerate digital transformation, manage the […]
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Microsoft Productivity Score Feature Criticised as Workplace Surveillance

Microsoft has been criticised for enabling “workplace surveillance” after privacy campaigners warned that the company’s “productivity score” feature allows managers to use Microsoft 365 to track their employees’ activity at an individual level. From a report: The tools, first released in 2019, are designed to “provide you visibility into how your organisation works,” according to a Microsoft blogpost, and aggregate information…

Google’s Internal Data Suggests Employees Feel Less Productive At Home

The Information reports:
Google’s engineering directors are grappling with a worrisome trend: internal data that indicate productivity during the coronavirus shutdowns deteriorated among engineers, particularly newly hired ones. One internal survey viewed by The Information found that in the three months ended in June, only 31% of the company’s engineers polled felt they had been highly productive, down 8 percentage points from…

Q3 2020 Coursera for Business Quarterly Product Release

By Shwetabh Mittal, Senior Director, Product Management The great lockdown caused by COVID-19 has accelerated the need for digital skills. Companies are reallocating their digital talent to stay competitive and dedicating more time and resources to helping their employees learn about digital technologies. The pandemic has had an even bigger impact on higher education: around 1.6 […]
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Nvidia Unveils Jetson Nano 2GB, a Single Board Computer

Nvidia has debuted the Jetson Nano 2GB, a new developer kit for students and hobbyists with an interest in robotics. ZDNet reports: The Jetson Nano 2GB is geared towards robotics enthusiasts, students, and educators that want to enter the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Nvidia says the entry-level Jetson Nano 2GB has been priced at $59 — including online…

51% of Developers Say They’re Managing 100 Times More Code Than a Decade Ago

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: Sourcegraph, a company specializing in universal code search, polled more than 500 North American software developers to identify issues in code complexity and management. Its general findings are probably no surprise to most Ars readers — software has gotten bigger, more complex, and much more important in the past ten years — but the sheer…