We want to highlight Great Boston's most beloved businesses and entrepreneurs. Share your recommendations on Boston.com.

Readers: What are the best small businesses in the Boston area?

A bipedal humanoid robot named Digit has taken center stage in an Amazon warehouse south of Seattle. Developed by Agility … Continue reading "Digit, The Humanoid Robot Taking Over Amazon Warehouses" The post Digit,

Digit, The Humanoid Robot Taking Over Amazon Warehouses

Food delivery robots, or personal delivery devices, are all over the University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus. However, we could start to see them in other parts of the city.

Food delivery robots in Knoxville may be blocked while city policy is developed

iRobot and Roomba are almost synonymous with robot vacuums at this point; they aren’t ideal for hacking because they lack the processor overhead to run Valetudo. The most commonly used models for installing Valetudo are from Roborock and Dreame.

The best robot vacuum for me is the one I hacked

Amazon.com announced introducing an array of new artificial intelligence and robotics capabilities into its warehouse operations that will reduce delivery times and help identify inventory more quickly.

Amazon Introduces AI-Powered Robots to Increase Delivery Speed

The rise in SBA lending to women-owned businesses reflects the leading role of women entrepreneurs in small-business growth, noted SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman.

1 in 5 SBA-backed small-business loans now go to women

To cope with this challenge, many small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Germany are turning to automation as a way to survive and compete in the global market. Germany is the world’s

How robots are filling the labour gap in Germany’s SMEs

Imagine a factory that can make humanoid robots that can walk, run, and work like us. Sounds like a sci-fi movie, right? Well, it’s not. It’s RoboFab, and it’s opening soon here in the U.S. CLICK TO GET KURT’S FREE CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH SECURITY ALERTS,

First humanoid robot factory in the U.S. can crank out 10,000 robots a year

Electric Sheep Robotics' Nag Murty dives into some of the challenges startups face when looking to scale their operations.

Building a full-stack robotics company in the age of large AI models

Get the most recent info and news about The Small Robot Company on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

We are revolutionising farming with an easy, low-cost, service of autonomous, precision agri-robotics for a healthier, more efficient and sustainable future. The UN says that the world must produce 70% more food by 2050, without using more land or destroying more ecosystems. Operating a farm with tractors is no longer the best way to address this challenge. The raw technology already exists which could produce food more cheaply, more accurately and with less waste. To address this challenge we have brought together a team of farmers, professors, service designers and engineers to create an autonomous robotic farming system we call Farming as a Service (FaaS).

The Small Robot Company

The Internet-connected fridge is the typical example of mundane technology that might soon be online. Getting sex toys online makes the problematic sides of IoT more evident. In plain English, the Internet of Things (IoT), means that our things will be connected to the Internet. In its , Gartner estimated that IoT would reach most people within two to five years. 2017 hype cycle analysis Until now, IoT has primarily been embraced by the There are Internet-connected light bulbs, door locks, heaters, coffee makers, bathroom scales, robot vacuum cleaners and burglary alarms. But since IoT devices are often pricier than their unconnected competitors, they won’t reach the mainstream until people who aren’t as tech-savvy . keenest nerds. find the IoT devices superior Sometimes the spread of needs help from our more basic urges. technology The cliché of porn spreading technology The story of how human desires in general, and the porn industry in particular, has contributed to the spread of new technologies : Super 8 cameras enabled amateur porn. With Polaroid cameras, you could take daring photos without fearing the development process. The porn industry chose the cheaper VHS format over Betamax and has been pushing for pay per view-solutions and innovations in online payment. has become a cliché The porn industry didn’t invent these technologies but have often found uses that had a broader appeal than technology just for technology’s sake. Sex + IoT = ? If you were already wondering why your coffee machine should be online, you might be asking the same question about . sex toys There are sex-related IoT-gadgets that have nothing to do with porn. The kGoal helps women correctly. The gadget is inserted into the vagina and provides feedback on the way you do the exercises. The vibrator Lioness on the use and orgasms, to help the owner figure out what affects her desire and orgasms. do Kegel exercises collects data So many iPhones next so to many sex devices. This is kGoal. Sex toy producers that are directing themselves towards the general market package their sales pitch into a romantic tale of the long-distance relationship. Wouldn’t it be delightful, if your partner could control your toy from the other side of the planet? Remotely controlled vibrators have been around for a while, but there are also paired vibrators and artificial vaginas (“Fleshlights”) that can be used simultaneously and send signals to each other, mutually controlling each other’s movements. Enter porn industry The use of pair sex toys quickly moved outside the romantic spheres, as camgirls and camboys . As long as webcams have been around, people have been doing more or less explicit things on camera. Around the world, you’ll find people who do webcam shows for a living, in a digital gray area between striptease, pornography, and prostitution. began using them Viewers can chat with performers and tip them. For a certain tip, you get to see this or that action. The prices, however, are being pushed down. With the Internet-connected sex toys, camgirls and camboys could offer their viewers to control the sex toys at a distance, and for a short while . stand out from the crowd The porn industry has also found its twist on IoT. Artificial vaginas (“fleshlights”) are connected to a small robot which moves vagina up and down. When the vagina robot is put online, the movement you see in the porn movie. Some porn movies are shot specifically for this purpose, often in POV. Combined with virtual reality glasses, the porn industry hopes to create porn that is immersive enough that people will bother to pay for it. can be synchronized with the movements first person (Staying clear of the porn industry, you could go for the vibrator Vibease, which synchronizes its movements with .) audiobook porn What happens when your device gets hacked? IoT-gadgets has a lot of problematic aspects, but with the sex involved, the problematic aspects become more evident. Everything that is connected to the Internet How would you feel if it’s not your girlfriend that is remotely controlling the sex toy, but someone else, that has hacked into it? Or what if someone would get the hold of the audio and video broadcasted from the sex toy? (Yep, there are vibrators with integrated camera). can be hacked. There are a number examples of how sex toys Last year Standard Innovation had to pay plaintiffs after it became clear that their We-Vibe vibrator could be hacked, and was about temperature and vibration settings back to the company’s servers. In other words, it was possible to glean when and how the vibrator was used. have been hacked. 3.75 million US dollars sending data You don’t really own your IoT device Secondly, it is unclear what you when you buy an IoT device. Even if you have paid hundreds of dollars, you don’t get to decide precisely how it or how will be used. The manufacturer may send software updates that change functionality. are really buying can be used the data When people are just paying once, instead of subscribing to a service, how will they be able to fund running costs and further development? When the company goes bankrupt, will your vibrator (or fridge, or light bulb) stop working? Additionally, if the business model isn’t that solid, but the gadget has it may be tempting to sell the data or at least the analysis of the data. IoT isn’t explicitly held to any or access to a lot of data, legal requirements standards. Taking control of the devices — in a good way Luckily, the Internet is big enough that there are of course people that are working to take bring our sex toys back! Around the world, there have been several (which are far more than the name would suggest). Enthusiasts from different fields put together and use technology to build gadgets that can solve needs linked to intimacy and sexuality in new ways. With the framework it becomes easier for people to take control of their sex toys, and reprogram them to work in new ways. sex hackathons innocent programming buttplug.io, Make sure to check out . the suggested principles for IoT There’s also a movement fighting for better regulation of IoT. Designer and IoT enthusiast Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino was in Oslo last fall and gave an eye-opening talk on the topic. Their goal is to get manufacturers to follow covering issues such as privacy, security, open source and the possibility to manage and control a gadget you have purchased. 30 principles Here in Norway, the has done an exemplary with their critique of IoT, shedding light on and . Norwegian Consumer Council fitness bracelets internet-connected children’s toys In other words, the technology is ready, use cases are increasing, but the safety and regulation are not in place. I’ll be passing on IoT devices for few more years.

How Internet-connected sex toys make it clear that we need to worry about the Internet of Things

And why we are doomed (again) #femtothoughts Bill Gates is a tech-billionaire turned philanthropist with a proven track record of being on the side of the small guys. He recently a tax as a potential solution to job displacement by (aka automation). I actually love the idea of taxing robots or , however the idea seems to be not well thought out! proposed robot technology synthetic intellects that Here’s an list of the reasons : under-construction why a robot tax couldn’t possibly work IRL Case study Robo-lawyers: could do the job of thousands of lawyers in a matter of seconds (depending on compute power). How would we quantify the negative externality of COIN on all those redundant law interns and lawyers? How do we tax an AI or robot with 100x higher productivity than its poor human competitors? You might say That’s only good news to government employees who are gonna count those hours (robot tax hunters?). COIN based on the equivalent time/effort that it would take a non-augmented human to accomplish the same task! There’s a loophole (for AIs not humans, more on that in a moment) in German tax code that exempts individuals from paying income tax if they make under 450 Euros! What if … (you guessed it right!) companies decide to pay a max of 450 Euros (or whatever the local equivalent of that is in a country) to their law abiding, taxpaying roboworkers? We already addressed the issue with quantifying -and subsequently putting a value on- work done by AIs or robots. There’s another even larger issue here. What counts as an individual when dealing with AIs which most certainly are connected and distributed? Does a fully automated factory count as one big X-manufacturing robot? Let’s say we do manage to draw a line around individual robots/AIs. Before they start counting as real members of the society, they need to be assigned some kind of legal status that obliges them to pay taxes (or their owners for the time being). Do they get any rights on top of their obligations? Who will carry the responsibility in case of an accident involving the robot? Is the owner (most likely a corporation) shielded from the robots’ punishments? [developing] The list goes on and on. The alternative, the old system where the company pays taxes, doesn’t look that good, either! If things don’t change , we are going to have a whole bunch of trillion dollar mega corporations in tiny tax havens running their super efficient businesses on the back of armies of ultra-productive robot slaves. dramatically The solution: , a natural resource. Nationalize it and share the benefits with everyone. Although I don’t believe this will ever happen ! Treat AI like oil peacefully Andrew Ng rightly believes that AI is like electricity, it will/should empower and benefit everyone. The problem is that most humans won’t have the means of utilizing AI to reap the benefits of it. On the contrary, AI will render majority of us redundant and useless. This is already happening around us right now on a smaller scale. Smartphones are a gazillion times faster and cheaper than mainframes were few decades ago. We all have tiny supercomputers in our pockets, true, but these computers have only made very few of us rich. Only those who have tapped into this opportunity! The rest of us get the breadcrumbs … ! super super super OK Google snooze the alarm The story doesn’t end here, the same force that has made compute power “democratized” has also commoditized it. We are only a few steps away from brainpower becoming a commodity just like muscle power. The average taxi driver today (compared to 20 years ago) has much easier and more direct access to customers through platforms like UBER, but the revolution that has liberated taxi drivers has also disrupted the taxi business in a race to bottom where drivers face more competition for lower pay. This gloomy story doesn’t end here, the same force that has made compute power “democratized” has also commoditized it. We are only a few steps away from brainpower becoming a commodity just like muscle power. Perhaps we were not meant to stay the dominant lifeform for that long. The story of could be just a humble beginning for something much bigger than us. Homo sapiens

Why a robot tax won’t work!

Star Born by Andre Alice Norton, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . CIVILIZATION CIVILIZATION Raf surveyed the wide sweep of prairie where dawn gave a gray tinge to soften the distance and mark the rounded billows of the ever-rippling grass. He tried to analyze what it was about this world which made it seem so untouched, so fresh and new. There were large sections of his own Terra which had been aban doned after the Big Burn-Off and the atomic wars, or later after the counterrevolution which had defeated the empire of Pax, during which mankind had slipped far back on the road to civilization. But he had never experienced this same feeling when he had ventured into those wildernesses. Almost he could believe that the records Hobart had showed him were false, that this world had never known intelligent life herding together in cities. He walked slowly down the ramp, drawing deep breaths of the crisp air. The day would grow warmer with the rising sun. But now it was just the sort of morning which led him to be glad he was alive—and young! Maybe part of it was because he was free of the ship and at last not just excess baggage but a man with a definite job before him. Spacemen tended to be young. But until this moment Raf had never felt the real careless freedom of youth. Now he was moved by a desire to disobey orders—to take the flitter up by himself and head off into the blue of the brightening sky for more than just a test flight, not to explore Hobart's city but to cruise over the vast sea of grass and find out its wonders for himself. But the discipline which had shaped him almost since birth sent him now to check the flyer and wait, inwardly impatient, for Hobart, Lablet, and Soriki, the com-tech, to join him. The wait was not a long one since the three others, with equipment hung about, tramped down the ramp as Raf settled himself behind the control board of the flyer. He triggered the shield which snapped over them for a windbreak and brought the flitter up into the spreading color of the morning. Beside him Hobart pressed the button of the automatic recorder, and in the seat behind, Soriki had the headset of the com clamped over his ears. They were not only making a record of their trip, they were continuing in constant communication with the ship—now already a silver pencil far to the rear. It was some two hours later that they discovered what was perhaps one reason for the isolation of the district in which the RS 10 had set down. Rolling foothills rose beneath them and miles ahead the white-capped peaks of a mountain range made a broken outline against the turquoise sky. The broken lands would be a formidable barrier for any foot travelers: there were no easy roads through that series of sharp lifts and narrow valleys. And the one stream they followed for a short space descended from the heights in spectacular falls. Twice they skimmed thick growths of trees, so tightly packed that from the air they resembled a matted carpet of green-blue. And to cut through such a forest would be an impossible task. The four in the flitter seldom spoke. Raf kept his attention on the controls. Sudden currents of air were tricky here, and he had to be constantly alert to hold the small flyer on an even keel. His glimpses of what lay below were only snatched ones. At last it was necessary to zoom far above the vegetation of the lower slopes, to reach an altitude safe enough to clear the peaks ahead. Since the air supply within the windshield was constant they need not fear lack of oxygen. But Raf was privately convinced, as they soared, that the range might well compare in height with those Asian mountains which dominated all the upflung reaches of his native world. When they were over the sharp points of that chain disaster almost overtook them. A freakish air current caught the flitter as if in a giant hand, and Raf fought for control as they lost altitude past the margin of safety. Had he not allowed for just such a happening they might have been smashed against one of the rock tips over which they skimmed to a precarious safety. Raf, his mouth dry, his hands sweating on the controls, took them up—higher than was necessary—to coast above the last of that rocky spine to see below the beginning of the downslopes leading to the plains the range cut in half. He heard Hobart draw a hissing breath. "That was a close call." Lablet's precise, lecturer's voice cut through the drone of the motor. "Yeah," Soriki echoed, "looked like we might be sandwich meat there for a while. The kid knows his stuff after all." Raf grinned a little sourly, but he did not answer that. He ought to know his trade. Why else would he be along? They were each specialists in one or two fields. But he had good sense enough to keep his mouth shut. That way the less one had to regret minutes—or hours—later. The land on the south side of the mountains was different in character to the wild northern plains. "Fields!" It did not require that identification from Lablet to point out what they had already seen. The section below was artificially divided into long narrow strips. But the vegetation growing on those strips was no different from the northern grass they had seen about the spacer. "Not cultivated now," the scientist amended his first report. "It's reverting to grassland—" Raf brought the flitter closer to the ground so that when a domed structure arose out of a tangle of overgrown shrubs and trees they were not more than fifty feet above it. There was no sign of life about the dwelling, if dwelling it was, and the unkempt straggle of growing things suggested that it had been left to itself through more than one season. Lablet wanted to set down and explore, but the captain was intent upon reaching the city. A solitary farm was of little value compared with what they might learn from a metropolis. So, rather to Raf's relief, he was ordered on. He could not have explained why he shrank from such investigation. Where earlier that morning he had wanted to take the flitter and go off by himself to ex plore the world which seemed so bright and new, now he was glad that he was only the pilot of the flyer and that the others were not only in his company but ready to make the decisions. He had a queer distaste for the countryside, a disinclination to land near that dome. Beyond the first of the deserted farms they came to the highway and, since the buckled and half-buried roadway ran south, Hobart suggested that they use it as a visible guide. More isolated dome houses showed in the course of an hour. And their fields were easy to map from the air. But nowhere did the Terrans see any indication that those fields were in use. Nor were there any signs of animal or bird life. The weird desolation of the landscape began to work its spell on the men in the flitter. There was something unnatural about the country, and with every mile the flyer clocked off, Raf longed to be heading in the opposite direction. The domes drew closer together, made a cluster at crossroads, gathered into a town in which all the buildings were the same shape and size, like the cells of a wasp nest. Raf wondered if those who had built them had not been humanoid at all, but perhaps insects with a hive mind. And because that thought was unpleasant he resolutely turned his attention to the machine he piloted. They passed over four such towns, all marking intersections of roads running east and west, north and south, with precise exactness. The sun was at noon or a little past that mark when Captain Hobart gave the order to set down so that they could break out rations and eat. Raf brought the flitter down on the cracked surface of the road, mistrusting what might lie hidden in the field grass. They got out and walked for a space along pavement which had once been smooth. "High-powered traffic—" That was Lablet. He had gone down on one knee and was tracing a finger along the substance. "Straight—" Soriki squinted against the sun. "Nothing stopped them, did it? We want a road here and we'll get it! That sort of thing. Must have been master engineers." To Raf the straight highways suggested something else. Master engineering, certainly. But a ruthlessness too, as if the builders, who refused to accept any modifications of their original plans from nature, might be as arrogant and self-assured in other ways. He did not admire this relic of civilization; in fact it added to his vague uneasiness. The land was so still, under the whisper of the wind. He discovered that he was listening—listening for the buzz of an insect, the squeak of some grass dweller, anything which would mean that there was life about them. As he chewed on the ration concentrate and drank sparingly from his canteen, Raf continued to listen. Without result. Hobart and Lablet were engrossed in speculation about what might lie ahead. Soriki had gone back to the flitter to make his report to the ship. The pilot sat where he was, content to be forgotten, but eager to see an animal peering at him from cover, a bird winging through the air. "—if we don't hit it by nightfall—But we can't be that far away! I'll stay out and try tomorrow." That was Hobart. And since he was captain what he said was probably what they would do. Raf shied away from the thought of spending the night in this haunted land. Though, on the other hand, he would be utterly opposed to lifting the flitter over those mountains again except in broad daylight. But the problem did not arise, for they found their city in the midafternoon, the road bringing them straight to an amazing collection of buildings, which appeared doubly alien to their eyes since it did not include any of the low domes they had seen heretofore. Here were towers of needle slimness, solid blocks of almost windowless masonry looking twice as bulky beside those same towers, archways stringing at dizzy heights above the ground from one skyscraper to the next. And here time and nature had been at work. Some of the towers were broken off, a causeway displayed a gap—Once it had been a breathtaking feat of engineering, far more impressive than the highway, now it was a slowly collapsing ruin. But before they had time to take it all in Soriki gave an exclamation. "Something coming through on our wave band, sir!" He leaned forward to dig fingers into Hobart's shoulder. "Message of some kind—I'd swear to it!" Hobart snapped into action. "Kurbi—set down—there!" His choice of a landing place was the flat top of a near-by building, one which stood a little apart from its neighbors and, as Raf could see, was not overlooked except by a ruined tower. He circled the flitter. The machine had been specially designed to land and take off in confined spaces, and he knew all there was possible to learn about its handling on his home world. But he had never tried to bring it down on a roof, and he was very sure that now he had no margin for error left him, not with Hobart breathing impatiently beside him, his hands moving as if, as a pilot of a spacer, he could well take over the controls here. Raf circled twice, eyeing the surface of the roof in search of any break which could mean a crack-up at landing. And then, though he refused to be hurried by the urgency of the men with him, he came in, cutting speed, bringing them down with only a slight jar. Hobart twisted around to face Soriki. "Still getting it?" The other, cupping his earphones to his head with his hands, nodded. "Give me a minute or two," he told them, "and I'll have a fix. They're excited about something—the way this jabber-jabber is coming through—" "About us," Raf thought. The ruined tower topped them to the south. And to the east and west there were buildings as high as the one they were perched on. But the town he had seen as he maneuvered for a landing had held no signs of life. Around them were only signs of decay. Lablet got out of the flitter and walked to the edge of the roof, leaning against the parapet to focus his vision glasses on what lay below. After a moment Raf followed his example. Silence and desolation, windows like the eye pits in bone-picked skulls. There were even some small patches of vegetation rooted and growing in pockets erosion had carved in the walls. To the pilot's uninformed eyes the city looked wholly dead. "Got it!" Soriki's exultant cry brought them back to the flitter. As if his body was the indicator, he had pivoted until his outstretched hand pointed southwest. "About a quarter of a mile that way." They shielded their eyes against the westering sun. A block of solid masonry loomed high in the sky, dwarfing not only the building they were standing on but all the towers around it. Its imposing lines made clear its one-time importance. "Palace," mused Lablet, "or capitol. I'd say it was just about the heart of the city." He dropped his glasses to swing on their cord, his eyes glistening as he spoke directly to Raf. "Can you set us down on that?" The pilot measured the curving roof of the structure. A crazy fool might try to make a landing there. But he was no crazy fool. "Not on that roof!" he spoke with decision. To his relief the captain confirmed his verdict with a slow nod. "Better find out more first." Hobart could be cautious when he wanted to. "Are they still broadcasting, Soriki?" The com-tech had stripped the earphones from his head and was rubbing one ear. "Are they!" he exploded. "I'd think you could hear them clear over there, sir!" And they could. The gabble-gabble which bore no resemblance to any language Terra knew boiled out of the phones. "Someone's excited," Lablet commented in his usual mild tone. "Maybe they've discovered us." Hobart's hand went to the weapon at his belt. "We must make peaceful contact—if we can." Lablet took off his helmet and ran his fingers through the scrappy ginger-and-gray fringe receding from his forehead. "Yes—contact will be necessary—" he said thoughtfully. Well, he was supposed to be their expert on that. Raf watched the older man with something akin to amusement. The pilot had a suspicion that none of the other three, Lablet included, was in any great hurry to push through contact with unknown aliens. It was a case of dancing along on shore before having to plunge into the chill of autumn sea waves. Terrans had explored their own solar system, and they had speculated learnedly for generations on the problem of intelligent alien life. There had been all kinds of reports by experts and would-be experts. But the stark fact remained that heretofore mankind as born on the third planet of Sol had not encountered intelligent alien life. And just how far did speculations, reports, and arguments go when one was faced with the problem to be solved practically—and speedily? Raf's own solution would have been to proceed with caution and yet more caution. Under his technical training he had far more imagination than any of his officers had ever realized. And now he was certain that the best course of action was swift retreat until they knew more about what was to be faced. But in the end the decision was taken out of their hands. A muffled exclamation from Lablet brought them all around to see that distant curving roof crack wide open. From the shadows within, a flyer spiraled up into the late afternoon sky. Raf reached the flitter in two leaps. Without orders he had the spray gun ready for action, on point and aimed at the bobbing machine heading toward them. From the earphones Soriki had left on the seat the gabble had risen to a screech and one part of Raf's brain noted that the sounds were repetitious: was an order to surrender being broadcast? His thumb was firm on the firing button of the gun and he was about to send a warning burst to the right of the alien when an order from Hobart stopped him cold. "Take it easy, Kurbi." Soriki said something about a "gun-happy flitter pilot," but, Raf noted with bleak eyes, the com-tech kept his own hand close to his belt arm. Only Lablet stood watching the oncoming alien ship with placidity. But then, as Raf had learned through the long voyage of the spacer, a period of time which had left few character traits of any of the crew hidden from their fellows, the xenobiologist was a fatalist and strictly averse to personal combat. The pilot did not leave his seat at the gun. But within seconds he knew that they had lost the initial advantage. As the tongue-shaped stranger thrust at them and then swept on to glide above their heads so that the weird shadow of the ship licked them from light to dark and then to light again, Raf was certain that his superiors had made the wrong decision. They should have left the city as soon as they picked up those signals—if they could have gone then. He studied the other flyer. Its lines suggested speed as well as mobility, and he began to doubt if they could have escaped with that craft trailing them. Well, what would they do now? The alien flyer could not land here, not without coming down flat upon the flitter. Maybe it would cruise overhead as a warning threat until the city dwellers were able to reach the Terrans in some other manner. Tense, the four spacemen stood watching the graceful movements of the flyer. There were no visible portholes or openings anywhere along its ovoid sides. It might be a robot-controlled ship, it might be anything, Raf thought, even a bomb of sorts. If it was being flown by some human—or nonhuman—flyer, he was a master pilot. "I don't understand," Soriki moved impatiently. "They're just shuttling around up there. What do we do now?" Lablet turned his head. He was smiling faintly. "We wait," he told the com-tech. "I should imagine it takes time to climb twenty flights of stairs—if they have stairs—" Soriki's attention fell from the flyer hovering over their heads to the surface of the roof. Raf had already looked that over without seeing any opening. But he did not doubt the truth of Lablet's surmise. Sooner or later the aliens were going to reappear. And it did not greatly matter to the marooned Terrans whether they would drop from the sky or rise from below. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Andre Alice Norton (2006). Star Born. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18458/pg18458-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

CIVILIZATION

SORTIE

Welcome to Hacker Noon Interview Series! See all other Interviews . Good-Company here HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your  background. Currently, it’s set to “blur.” Sorry, that was a Zoom joke. If we’re talking work background, I’m the co-founder and CEO of WorkPatterns, and before that, I was President and part of the founding team at AdRoll (which is now called NextRoll.) I was there for 10 years and helped build the company from 3 of us to around 700 employees with offices in SF, Dublin, London, Sydney, and Tokyo. What's your company called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do? WorkPatterns provides tools for managers to organize, motivate, and engage their teams. In short, we want to help every manager be their team’s favorite manager. We do this by providing software that guides 1:1s, team meetings, bi-directional feedback, recognition, and goal setting, all in a user-friendly package that people actually enjoy using. What is the origin story? I saw firsthand at AdRoll that a great company is all about the people, and the effect that great managers can have on the health of an organization is massive. Yet, we didn’t have anything that guided what managers should be doing on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. We cobbled together various docs and tried a few “HR tools,” but those all tended to fall flat. The founding idea behind WorkPatterns was to make frontline managers the focus and build them a toolkit that they’d actually choose (and buy) themselves to become better leaders. We’ve found that this focus on the end-user gives us a leg up vs. legacy “performance management” companies that have built up overly bureaucratic and hard to use products that are out of touch from how and where real work gets done. What do you love about your team? We’re low ego, we’re resilient, and we’ve kept pushing to improve our product bit by bit. It’s awesome to see how all the small things add up and compound over time, and suddenly you’re like, “wow, we’ve built something pretty awesome!” If you weren’t working at your company, what would you be doing? I love to surf, kiteboard, and rock climb. So probably one of those things. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics? We measure success by whether teams adopt us as a core tool for guiding their work cadences. We use metrics like the number of contributions (i.e., discussion topics and action items created), the volume of the feedback given and received, and the number of kudos given. What’s most exciting about your company traction to date? It’s gotta be around that last point. One of the key actions we optimize for is our users giving each other “kudos” in the product since we know that leads to greater engagement. So the action we try to drive as a business is people giving each other compliments. How cool is that? What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why? I’m excited about all the technologies focused on addressing climate change. Whether it’s data collection, mapping, or hard science around carbon capture, it feels like we’re hitting an inflection point in actually viable solutions that can chip away at the problem. I’m most worried about AI. Not because of the sci-fi killer robot scenarios but because of people outsourcing more and more decisions to blackbox algorithms that could have unintended, unjust, and undesirable consequences. What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform? Long-time reader, first-time writer! What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself? Power through that C++ class. What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing? Like a few folks out there, I built out a camper van this year. As a software person, it was incredibly fun and rewarding to learn about building physical stuff. Highly recommend!

'The Action We Try to Drive as a Business Is People Giving Each Other Compliments': Adam Berke

Rick and Morty and the Meaning of Life

Rick y Morty y el sentido de la vida

07:00 am, the bus leaves in 15 minutes and you’ve got a chance to run to the nearest coffee shop to get your morning dose of excellent caffeine. You come into a café, happily recognizing that there are only two competitors in the queue, and already start to feel the energy of a double Americano in your hand. 5 minutes pass, the queue is suspiciously motionless. With eyes half-opened, you see how an equally sleepy employee is trying to write the name Caterinah for the third time. After the fifth attempt, you decide that the name of your daughter or son will be Li. 10 minutes, you notice the small pin "trainee" on the barista, but still do not lose hope. 15 minutes, the man in front of you complains that he’s got a cappuccino, but he asked for cocoa. You are ready to buy this cup of him just to get closer to your desired coffee sooner than the bus gets to the stop. You make an order. Along with the signal of the coffee machine «your coffee is ready», you hear the driver’s farewell horn. Another day, another attempt to cope with coffee time-management failed. Familiar situation? Coffee houses lose potential and even loyal customers every day because of time pressure. The world is changing, demands are growing. Having made an order, a client is waiting for it already yesterday. The HoReCa tries to adapt to these changes, but what are the perspectives for coffee houses? “Fast” machine coffee could claim for the "Golden Coffee Raspberry", but not for the love of visitors. A possible solution that was recently developed: robotic arms. The company Rozum Robotics has proposed a working solution for the HoReCa coffee segment: - an automated cafe with a robot barista. Rozum Café The movable robotic arm as a real human barista mills coffee beans, tampers it under verified pressure, whips ads perfect milk foam and reaches the cup to the client. Sounds futuristic? But such robo-cafes have already been launched in several  countries like Ukraine, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Such robotic coffee points in the most crowded places of the city could be an ideal solution to the problem. One robot performs up to 100 orders per hour, four times more as one employee. No more queues at airports, shopping malls, and business centers. No more furious clients. The taste of robot-made coffee is, in the literal sense of the word, programmed to the last drop. There are 7 types of drinks in the electronic barista menu, and it will even serve you three types of baking. Creators attracted an expert from the team of winners of the European Barista Championship as a consultant at the stage of setting up the manipulator. Therefore, this project could be anticipated as a collaboration of the best human experience and the consistent quality of electronics. The developers offer a franchise system for coffee shops and everyone who wants to start their own business. In fact, you become the employer of the robot. And perhaps it will be the fastest interview in your life. The standard barista requirements are wired into the robot. It works 24/7, with equally high quality at 7 am or 2 pm, all processes fully meet sanitary standards, and any human factor is excluded. Your employee will be the greatest polyglot: the order can be made in any of the chosen languages. It takes up to 2 weeks to make such an automated complex, and developers want to reduce the production cycle to 3-4 days. The idea of robotic personnel causes as always vague concerns absorbed with the films with young Schwarzenegger and books of H.Wells. This is it? Machine revolution is coming? Millions of people will lose their jobs? But let's look at the situation from the side of employers and visitors (they are human too, you know). In cafes mostly students are arranged for part-time work. Their training takes time and money, and most likely that the young barista will immediately leave on the search of a degree suitable place right after graduation. Actually, there are not so many highly professional baristas, and no robot can replace them. But they can teach a robot to make high-quality coffee free for all. So Rozum Café is a place where speed and quality meet. We live in a time when more and more monotonous work rests on the non-fragile metal shoulders of robots. Humanity is getting more time and opportunities for what robots are not yet capable of: arts, creativity and generating new visions. And to add a bit of soul and emotion to the robot coffee, perhaps the creators will add some emoticons to their barista interface? :)

Your Robocup, Sir

Hello, loyal readers! After republishing my first Women in Information series from last fall, I’m now ready to republish my second series from this spring. These interviews have proven to be really popular, and I’m honoured to bring them to Hacker Noon. Security I will do a third series for Fall 2017. If you’re a woman or non-male who works in , or you know someone who is, cybersecurity feel free to tweet me about it! This was originally published on Tripwire’s State of Security blog in May. Last time, I had , a security incident response team leader who also writes the cybersecurity blog. She’s a staff. I just so happen to be talking to one of the people who’s presenting there later this year, . the honor of speaking with Lesley Carhart tisiphone.net Circle City Con Cheryl Biswas Cheryl is currently a cybersecurity consultant for KPMG. She also writes an engaging blog, . Some of her work has been published , as well! CyberWatch here on The State of Security Unlike my other interview subjects, I’ve actually met Cheryl in person because we’re both based in the Toronto area. She’s just as sharp, warm, and enthusiastic in person as she is on the internet. I’ve also written about her . previously on Medium So, I was interviewing Lesley Carhart a few days ago. She’s on staff for Circle City Con and this year you’re giving a talk there! Kim Crawley: Yes I am! I’ll be talking about disaster recovery. People really don’t realize how little they care about it ’til it’s too late. It’s always been something near and dear to me. Cheryl Biswas: Would you say that the majority of enterprises with data centers are poorly prepared? KC: Enterprises with data centers rely on their third-party providers, usually the data center, to ensure DR is in place. Lots of regulations and contractual obligations involved. But unless you check on the third parties they rely on, you really aren’t secure. I don’t think people realize just how much they need to plan for. And the scariest reality is the small and medium business level CB: Do you think enterprises sometimes hire third parties with little to no research? KC: No. Enterprises are big entities that are answerable to boards and regulations. It’s the smaller guys. CB: Something I hear frequently is that corporate accountants get in the way of security hardening. KC: I haven’t come across that. But when it comes to spending money on security, then it’s always an uphill battle. Justification is harder than attribution, it would seem. CB: That’s a huge problem. Cybersecurity seen as a “nonprofit generator.” KC: Absolutely! The push is on for innovation. Money and resources go to getting products and services out. Business is the driver. Profits are lifeblood, right? And security takes time, money, manpower. It’s no surprise, therefore, that boards tend to look at things through cost justification. What would an incident cost? Will our cyber insurance cover that? Then that’s the risk we can accept. So insurance is a mitigator, taking the place of putting security in place. It meets an actual audit or regulatory requirement. Everything needs to be explained in terms of business risk. CB: Regulatory requirements are a must, but proper hardening goes beyond that. KC: Indeed. Insurance companies are aware of this and pushing back because they don’t want to pay out. They aren’t a safety cushion. It needs to be done right. It’s a necessary investment. And it goes in better early. CB: Have you been able to persuade accountants and executives in the past? KC: It’s really a give and take. So compromise happens. The end goal, in the case of a security audit, is for the company to establish its compliance. Some things get discovered, some things get fixed. In some cases, the client is open to suggestion, willing to learn, and accepts recommendations. That’s a great scenario and very encouraging. We want to celebrate those wins. CB: I guess sometimes it helps to see a half full glass. Now, the topic of your talk at interests me. KC: SecTor 2016 Oh! Banking insecurities. SWIFT and the bank heists. CB: Those events make me wonder: do you think that network admins often focus on uptime to the detriment of everything else? KC: I can only surmise. If you need to be competitive, then availability is key. Uptime is what gets monitored and reported. It’s measurable and paid for. It may be mistaken for security. CB: But there may be less immediate incentive with security-related metrics? KC: Hmm. Unless you can prove something earth-shattering. Take exploits, for example. I can say that when you explain in plain terms how a vulnerability will impact a business, it gets attention. That’ s why pentests are so valuable. CB: Unfortunately, more and more malware attacks on datacenters are fileless. Overall, more and more attacks don’t appear in the logs without good heuristics. KC: Yes! You find these in ways nobody expected. CB: And then there’s log overload in SIEMs. KC: The fact is we need to progress to the next level of technology to capture the new stuff out there. But we aren’t getting the basics in place yet. You can’t run before you walk but we need to be able to “see” this stuff**.** We need to be going the machine learning route. The shiny blinky boxes will always be a problem if we expect them to do the work. They are our tool to get to the answers. We are the ones who actually process the data. Threat intel ultimately resides with the humans not the machines. CB: I’ve heard of vendors dropping machine learning in favor of technologies like network behavioral analytics. In my opinion, only time will tell if that’s any good or not. Frankly, I haven’t worked directly with SIEMs. KC: I think EUBA/UBA has lots to offer. Especially from an insider threat perspective. And I agree only time will tell. There is no silver bullet. CB: Maybe some antimalware systems can employ all of that together? KC: If we aren’t prepared to accept we need to do the work and analyze what comes in, nothing we use really matters. KC: There are systems that do many things. I don’t believe in having something do all the things. Because I don’t believe you can do all the things well. There are strong recommendatons not to put all your eggs in one vendor’s basket for good reason. CB: I’ve seen different vendors combine their patented technologies in security products and services lately. KC: Actually, what I’ve heard is that layering different products works to catch things. So two AV products, multiple intel feeds, etc. Yes, the combinations of vendors. I like that. CB: And that doesn’t generate more false positives? Or there’s little conflict otherwise? KC: The more you data you input, the more false positives you get proportionately. It takes time and effort to tweak. CB: It sounds very complicated. KC: So, you are looking at getting vendors to do that for you. Customized intelligence. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing. The threat landscape has changed. There is so much more data out there. At risk. The attackers have had this time to up their game and skills. They know more about us than we know about ourselves. What we need is what’s not in scope. That’s where big data comes in– data analytics, machine learning. CB: Cybersecurity, in all facets, is an endless cat-and-mouse game. KC: It’s specialized skill sets and money. CB: As a woman in infosec, how can we attract more women and transgender people to our field? KC: I don’t like focusing on those as our differences. People are quite sensitive to it. I’d like it to be that we’re all on the same team, except maybe one side is red and the other is blue. CB: We all know that there’s a lack of women in IT and computer science in general. KC: Indeed there is. The numbers aren’t improving so far as I can tell. You know I am part of and our focus is on diversity. That’s our message, to encourage people to come to infosec and tech. CB: TiaraCon TiaraCon sounds like something that’s needed. Explain what you’ve been doing with TiaraCon. KC: Last year, we focused on women in tech. It was to address that need. To offer a space where everyone felt welcome, especially women, and to show both sexes how comfortable and easy working together could be. It was a huge success. People were so surprised and delighted, really. They want us back again for more. So we’re talking diversity because there are many people with skills, passion, talent who belong here. CB: I hear some women drop out of computer science in school after the first year. I know first hand as you do that it’s tough to be in a boy’s club sometimes. I’ve heard of matters like students being directly misogynistic or sexual harassment not being taken seriously. KC: I’ve heard first-hand accounts of shameful behavior toward women, and we can expect that has happened to others. CB: Was anything like that discussed at TiaraCon? KC: We talked about that more one on one. This year, we hope to have workshops around it. It’s a bigger issue than just women. We want to help offer constructive advice, approaches, where to get support. And there are men who have been hugely supportive in our careers. I know that for a fact. I owe so much to the guys who stand by me and teach me. They are my friends and colleagues. They’ve really gone the distance for me in some cases. CB: Fortunately, I have met many supportive men. One who writes for a publication that I also write for recently recommended me for a security analyst position. Fingers crossed! KC: Fingers crossed indeed! Yay! We’re talking about allies at TiaraCon this year. CB: Yes, allies are crucial, in my opinion. I understand that you’ve written reports for corporate clients before. In my experience so far, it’s even tougher than writing for magazines and blogs. But it’s been really rewarding. Doing it well builds confidence. KC: Reports are very hard work! And they matter because it’s about the client. CB: I find that there are even more guidelines involved. KC: Presentation. Wording. It’s all about how you say things. But what you want to deliver, it needs to be presented in a way that the client will understand. CB: I was advised to not use the word “solutions” when writing a report on third party SIEMs. Oops! If a teenager, regardless of gender, asked you how to get into cybersecurity, what advice would you have for them? KC: Ahhh. Code! And try the CTFs online, like . There are more out there. CB: Over the Wire Are there any programming languages you would recommend for them? Python is useful and easier to learn. KC: Absolutely! Python to start. CB: Nah! Start with x86 assembly! Ha. KC: I would have them watch Hackers and Wargames and Sneakers. I would let them see what social engineering is. I would like them to look at mainframes, where we need people desperately. Or ICS-SCADA. CB: Social engineering is so overlooked by laypeople. As are other human factors, like . KC: bad UX design Ha ha! Yes! CB: Last time I met you, you recommended because it features a more realistic portrayal of cybersecurity and “hacking.” What does Mr. Robot get right, compared to or ? KC: Mr. Robot Hackers Law and Order gets most things right. They had to deliberately make things wrong so that the exploits could not succeed if someone tried to do them in real life. CB: Mr. Robot How considerate of them. Or perhaps legal liability is the factor. KC: The people with their anxiety and depression were very reflective of our community. Brilliance comes at a price and is so often misunderstood. The natural curiosity of hackers. That’s why I think mentorship is hugely important here. And for those of us who are older to find ways to be nurturing and supportive if we can. CB: Do you spend time mentoring young tech professionals? KC: I do! It just happens. And I love it. CB: It’s amazing, but by helping others, we often help ourselves. KC: We teach each other. We both grow. Exactly that! Mutually rewarding. I have a wonderful mentee just now. It’s a privilege. CB: Before we finish, is there anything else you’d like to say? What do you think are some of the biggest problems in cybersecurity now? KC: I know our focus is on IoT and that’s good. We have a lot of work to do there. It really illustrates what happens when security isn’t baked in and isn’t even a consideration. At the same time, we need to be looking beyond the usual suspects. There are up-and-coming cyber crime zones. Threats and attacks will continue to evolve, after all. The playing field is fluid and dynamic. CB: As in, types of targets? Methods of attack? KC: Yes. Shifts in targets. Cyberwarfare is a reality, and the geopolitics at play will bear that out. Different methods as we get better at detection, they get better at obfuscation CB: A lot of the stuff of science fiction novels is coming true. KC: You are so right about that! CB: The cat-and-mouse game again. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! KC: I have eight who help to encourage my unpaid writing. If you enjoy pieces like this, my Patreon support helps make it possible. , even for only a couple of bucks per month, and I’ll greatly appreciate it. Patreon supporters Consider becoming a patron

THE SMALL ROBOT COMPANY

smallrobotcompany.com

51-200 employees

Since 2017

COMPANY RANKING

THE SMALL ROBOT COMPANY

EVERGREEN INDEX #10364

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

The Small Robot Company WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!

THE SMALL ROBOT COMPANY

smallrobotcompany.com

51-200 employees

Since 2017

COMPANY RANKING

THE SMALL ROBOT COMPANY

EVERGREEN INDEX #10364

RELATED COMPANIESRANK

STORIES ABOUT THE SMALL ROBOT COMPANY

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

The Small Robot Company WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!