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President Obama Announces Plan to Boost Middle-Class Economics Through TechHire Initiative

Middle-class economics have always been promoted as a key focus for President Barack Obama and his administration. With that focus in mind, the president is honing in on the tech sector in hopes to drive major economic success for middle-class Americans and prepare them for the high-tech jobs that are not only readily available, but also pay extremely well.

In the midst of the country’s economic resurgence, it always seemed like the middle class, particularly the Black community, was being left behind.

The president hopes to change that by getting more middle-class Americans into well-paying high-tech careers through his new TechHire initiative.

The president will announce more details about the program during a National League of Cities conference in Washington on Monday.

A statement about the program published on the White House website assured citizens that at least $100 million in grants would be made available to help the TechHire initiative’s cause.

“TechHire is a bold multi-sector effort and call to action to empower Americans with the skills they need, through universities and community colleges but also nontraditional approaches like ‘coding bootcamps,’ and high-quality online courses that can rapidly train workers for a well-paying job, often in just a few months,” the White House’s statement explains. “Employers across the United States are in critical need of talent with these skills. Many of these programs do not require a four-year degree.”

In addition to boosting efforts to train more middle-class Americans in tech-related skills, the initiative will also be dedicated to getting Americans connected to the right tech jobs for them.

So far, more than 20 cities have stepped forward to participate in the initiative by helping to provide a network of resources and employment opportunities for middle-class Americans in the tech space.

The list of cities includes New York City, Salt Lake City, Portland, San Francisco, Memphis, St. Louis, Nashville and more.

The statement explained that the initiative will be reliant on “local leadership” that can “connect people to jobs with hiring on ramp programs.”

With more than 500,000 job openings in the tech field, according to the White House statement, it could be a great opportunity to give middle-class economics a much-needed boost.

The unconventional training programs are also a major benefit to Black communities where people are often not wealthy enough to obtain quality training in the tech field otherwise.

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Virtual Reality Still Just Around the Corner as Developers Try to Eliminate the Final Kinks

For years now virtual reality headsets for gaming and movie-watching have been just around the corner.

For years now….

Tech lovers have long been strapping clunky early models of virtual reality sets to their faces and forgetting in the midst of their excitement that their neck is screaming in agony and that a red rectangular mark was stuck on their face by the time they removed the headset.

This all goes without mentioning the fact that for many consumers, the headset was ripped off in a mad dash to the bathroom to vomit after motion sickness settled in.

Game enthusiasts never needed a special headset to spot the empty promises that were constantly fueling their hopes that virtual reality would finally actually come around the world’s largest corner.

The dominating presence of virtual reality developments at the Game Developers Conferences in San Francisco, however, sparked a new wave of hope that the wait for virtual reality sets would soon be over.

This was mainly because it seemed like every major tech giant in the virtual reality race had stunning new developments to demo for the anxious public.

Oculus, Sony, and Valve all had virtual reality sets on display at the conferences, and the industry’s power players were happy to discuss the new technologies on the way.

“There is a legitimate opportunity,” said Oculus CTO John Carmack. “Make something great, and there will be opportunities there to move a number of units, to be the breakout ‘thing.’ To look back and say, ‘Well, clearly that was the obvious thing to do’ when it wasn’t the obvious thing to do.”

With a new wave of buzz around virtual reality, it’s no surprise that developers are already working on some of the first games that consumers will get to play with the headsets.

Serious Parody CEO Daniel Hinkle has been eagerly working on games for the Oculus Rift, but other developers were hesitant to hop on board.

While the tech giants did unveil impressive advances at the conferences, there are still serious concerns about the actual functionality surrounding the devices.

For one, the devices are still making some people sick.

In the midst of assuring tech lovers that virtual reality was on the way and praising the daring pioneers of the technology, Carmack also pointed to the current downfalls and obstacles that are plaguing the devices.

Carmack laid out his “nightmare scenario.”

“People like the demo, they take it home, and they start throwing up,” Carmack said.

It’s a very real reality.

For those who managed to get their hands on Ocular prototypes in the past, the motion sickness struggle was proven to be very real.

“The fear is if a really bad V.R. product comes out, it could send the industry back to the ’90s,” he said.

Carmack wasn’t the only one to discuss this fear.

Gabe Newell, the president and co-founder of Valve, described the VR demonstrations as “the world’s best motion sickness inducers,” the NY Times reported.

In addition to motion sickness, some users are still unhappy with the size and weight of many VR headsets, which ultimately prohibits them from being focused on the exciting digital realm before them for too long.

This comes along with serious concerns about the price point.

Khaled Helioui, CEO of European game studio Bigpoint, was unhappy with the fact that the headsets will cost $200 or more.

Samsung’s Gear VR is currently priced at $200.

Other tech giants haven’t announced their prices, but it isn’t likely that the $200 price tag will get slashed by competitors.

“The message that sends is, ‘Hey, you need to be wealthy to play our games,’ and I have a big problem with that,” Helioui told Mashable.

For that reason, consumers shouldn’t expect to see any Bigpoint games coming out for the VR sets just yet.

Helioui hinted that he won’t allow it until the price points come down.

Consumers, on the other hand, don’t see the big deal.

“I wouldn’t mind spending up to $300 for a VR headset,” one reader commented.

The Mashable reader also suggested he wouldn’t be willing to go much higher than that but as the tech world has already shown in the past —if the device catches on, people will be willing to dish out an extra hundred bucks or so to make sure they don’t miss the initial wave of a gaming revolution.

 

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Innovative or Insensitive? Video Game Simulating US Slave Experience Leaves Educators Divided

controversial game simulates slavery

Educators are in the midst of a debate over a digital simulation game that attempts to recreate a life of slavery for students. While supporters of the simulation insist it is an innovative way to educate students about slavery, critics say the simulation is an insensitive and misleading portrayal of slavery that will not actually help advance conversations about race and improve students’ understanding of America’s dark history.

Lately, more innovative and technology-driven tech tools have been welcomed into classrooms in order to make learning more interactive for students.

This means it is far from unusual to see students diving into video games and digital simulations that have historical contexts or serve a variety of different educational purposes.

What is more unusual, however, is to realize that students are playing a simulation that forces them to take on the role of a 14-year-old enslaved Black girl by the name of Lucy King.

While it seems like an unusual technical aid for the classroom, the Mission US: Flight to Freedom game is already an award-winning, publicly funded educational tool.

Middle school students log on to the game and are given a series of challenges and “missions” that would ultimately help guide them on their journey as they attempt to escape from a Kentucky plantation.

Some argue that the free, Web-based game is a great way to get kids engaged in learning about slavery, while others believe the game is a serious misstep.

One K-12 instructional technology specialist, Rafranz Davis, is now leading a social media campaign to get the game pulled from schools.

Davis argues that it is impossible to get students to really understand the atrocities of slavery through a video game and, even if it was, she isn’t sure that that would be the type of experience children need to learn about through realistic simulations.

“I don’t know that you can really channel the rape, murder, and mutilation of slavery into a game,” Davis said, according to Education Week. “I’m not against gaming. I’m against the way this was done.”

So far, close to 1 million students have already been registered to play the game, according to WNET, the New York City public-television station that produces and distributes the online game.

Common Sense Media’s own review of the game warned educators and parents that the game was a “realistic depiction” of slavery and forced children to “make difficult decisions” that could be very “intense” for the child.

“Parents need to know that Mission US: Flight to Freedom is an age-appropriate, but realistic depiction of life for an African American teenage girl living in the pre-Civil War period,” the review read. “Kids will experience what it’s like to be ordered around by a master, leave family behind to run for freedom, and have to make difficult decisions. Some children might find the game experience to be intense.”

The review added that there is “emotional trauma” throughout the game’s story.

The review has since been removed in the midst of the current debate and backlash online.

That type of review, however, is exactly why Davis believes the game isn’t right for an educational setting and shouldn’t be in the hands of young people.

“I felt the pit of my stomach drop,” Davis said as she recalled reading about the game for the first time. “The idea of putting children in that place, thinking of my children. … I just said: ‘This is where I draw the line. This is not OK.’ ”

Other educators actually believe the game is headed in the right direction.

Director of the Africana studies department at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, James Braxton Peterson, said he supports the idea of using new technology to education children about slavery.

“We’re already teaching slavery in a way that’s inaccurate, insensitive, and ahistorical,” he told Education Week. “I’m actually in favor of a more sophisticated, enhanced version of this game.”

Educators like Peterson believe that the emotional journey for children could be a good thing and force them to truly understand what it was like for Black people to be enslaved and, in some cases, leave their families behind in order to obtain freedom.

WNET also pointed out that the content of the game was developed by a team of historians from the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

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Researchers Could Revolutionize Infrastructure Maintenance by Getting Walls to Talk

Proper maintenance of infrastructure like busy bridges or towering office buildings is key for any community and especially important for major metro areas.

Unfortunately, keeping up with such infrastructure is a daunting task that could allow many structural issues that need to be addressed to fall through the cracks.

This could ultimately lead to expensive repairs or catastrophic foundation failures that could have been prevented had the integrity of key infrastructure been maintained properly.

There is no arguing that it would all be much easier if walls could talk.

That’s exactly what the team of researchers behind the GENESI project is trying to accomplish.

Walls still wouldn’t be able to share the latest gossip or give you a conversational companion, but they would be able to give accurate reports about their status.

GENESI, which stands for Green Sensor Networks for Structural Monitoring, is a project funded by the European Union that aims to put these new sensors on various structures in order to keep better track of a city’s infrastructure.

“Vibrating strain gauges, displacement meters, pressure sensors, temperature sensors, [and] soil moisture sensors” would be some of the devices used to give buildings, bridges and tunnels a voice.

GENESI has already rolled out two pilot projects to test just how functional the new sensors would be.

So far, the sensors are giving impressive results, but the maintenance has shifted from the buildings to the sensors themselves.

The devices require batteries that still have to be replaced more often than researchers would like.

Popular Science pointed out that even the most energy-efficient sensors could still pose a serious problem when it comes time to monitor and replace the batteries.

While some sensors feature small wind turbines that help garner energy for the device, others rely on manual labor.

“For all other sensors, whether tucked away in tunnel walls or nestled in dark unlit crevices under bridges, replacing batteries isn’t always the easiest task for humans,” Popular Science contributor Kelsey D. Atherton explained. “So that might be a future job for drones.”

While sensor upkeep could be a bit of an annoyance, it’s still a far better option than playing guessing games with major infrastructure.

For that reason, researchers are hoping to perfect the technology and see the sensors popping up in cities all across the globe.

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IKEA Helps Consumers Cut the Cord With New Line of Wireless-Charging Furniture

wireless charging tables

More tech consumers have been adamantly looking for wireless alternatives to charging their mobile devices, and IKEA is now presenting them with a new option that is both stylish and functional.

IKEA made the announcement Sunday that its new Home Smart collection will be able to wirelessly charge consumers’ cellphones, tablets and other mobile devices through simple contact.

These days, cellphones take on an incredible amount of responsibility throughout the daily lives of their owners.

Today’s smartphones will typically have to operate GPS functions, stream live music or videos, run several active windows on the Internet, keep up with running apps, serve as a digital wallet and credit card, snap pictures, record videos, give consumers access to their favorite games, update calendars and decode the many random questions that consumers are often too lazy to type into the Google search bar all in one day. All of these responsibilities, of course, come along with the need to receive and send calls and text messages.

With mobile devices taking on so many functions, the batteries take a toll and it isn’t long before tech lovers hear the dreaded beeping noise of a battery that has officially slid under the 10 percent mark.

Rather than struggle to remember where the charger is when time is of the essence, people can now simply put their phones down and have confidence that their low battery nightmare will be over soon.

That’s the power of IKEA’s new line of furniture.

The Home Smart brand is launching with a collection of lamps, bedside tables and a coffee table, but there is already speculation that the furniture giant will be expanding the designs in the future.

Wireless charging furniture

All Home Smart pieces will be able to charge users’ cellphones as soon as they put the device down.

The furniture will use the wireless-charging standard Qi and is scheduled to be available throughout North America and the U.K. by April.

A discreet plus sign will be featured on the Home Smart pieces, letting buyers know where to place their devices when it comes time to give them a little charge.

The new line is a smart move on IKEA’s behalf as the tech trend of “cutting the cord” has been growing at an exponential rate.

As tech giants are working to figure out how to create devices with longer battery life, buyers are also looking for ways to charge their devices without scrambling for the cord and scurrying to the nearest outlet.

It’s important to note that the furniture will only be compatible with certain mobile devices, but the collection will also include charging pads that will be able to work with more Samsung and Apple models.

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5 Reasons Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance and Privacy

surveillance in cyberspace

 

digital surveillance in the digital age

You Won’t Always Know When You Have Something to Hide

The unfortunate reality is that most people won’t actually know that they should have something to hide. Whether it’s a law they don’t know about or an ongoing investigation that people have no idea they are a suspect for, the mentality of “I have nothing to hide” can often lead people to incriminate themselves even when they are innocent. As Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer once explained, according to Wired, “The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just when a particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation.”

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SOLO Phone Could Eventually Dominate Nigeria’s Mobile Phone Market by Shifting Focus From Hardware to Experience

SOLO phone launch

A 30-year-old tech entrepreneur is hoping to dominate Nigeria’s mobile phone market by growing a company that places more focus on user experience rather than the actual hardware that many other tech giants compete over.

The Nigerian entrepreneur, Michael Akindele, is the director and co-founder of SOLO Phone, “an experience-driven digital content and smartphone company focused on delivering the best content and services on the mobile platform to African consumers,” Forbes reported.

While most mobile companies are already engaged in a grueling war over who has the best hardware specifications, the SOLO executives made a wise decision — find a different way to approach the market.

While Apple is the biggest tech giant in the mobile phone space that has also been focusing on user experience, the phone is often too expensive for Nigeria’s market.

That left an opportunity for SOLO to fill that void.

“SOLO is an emerging markets play,” Akindele told Forbes. “SOLO is an experience-driven device manufacturer with a vision to provide the best content and services to the African and emerging markets consumer at an affordable price that not only delivers tremendous value for money but also enriches their lives. The foundation of SOLO is built on delivering key value added services in critical enterprise verticals such as education, health care and commerce, to mention a few.”

With this type of business model, many would argue that SOLO’s partnerships are much more valuable to the brand than its hardware specs, although those are still important pieces of the package.

The difference, however, is the shift in focus. So while an emerging mobile phone company may find it hard to go head-to-head with Apple when it comes to screen resolution, camera quality or battery life, it may be more possible that an emerging company can hold its own when it comes to the type of apps and digital content that is already available on the devices.

“Today, SOLO offers affordable smartphones bundled with free music — up to 20 million songs licensed from Sony, Universal and Warner,” Akindele continued. “This innovation was possible because of partners that believe in the SOLO vision. We also recently launched a Video-On-Demand app available to all Android devices in Nigeria offering the latest Nollywood and Hollywood movies from global movie studies such as Disney, Universal Studios and Sony Pictures.”

Akindele said SOLO’s market approach has paid off so far with consumers receiving the “offerings relatively well.”

“In our first year, we established strong distribution network across Nigeria by partnering with key smartphone retailers,” he said. “Furthermore, we’ve also partnered with primary ecommerce platforms to drive adoption and sales of our device and services.”

The company is currently working on dominating Nigeria’s mobile market but has future plans of expanding all throughout the African continent.

With an affordable product and a new perspective on how to attract consumers to its mobile devices, SOLO’s dreams of an African takeover could very well become a reality as the continent’s tech market continues to develop.

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Scientists Turning to DNA to Try to Create Data Storage That Could Last for Thousands of Years

In today’s digitally driven society, many people are keeping their precious memories, years of research or other valuable information on hard drives or USB sticks rather than in hard copy journals or photo albums. In a matter of years, however, those digital means of data storage could be useless, and the data stored on the devices could vanish forever.

Scientists believe DNA has the potential to change that and lead the world into a new age of data storage where data can be saved for thousands of years.

A company called Backblaze is leading the efforts by running a massive test.

The company is running 25,000 hard drives all at the same time to figure out how long these devices can last.

CNN reported that the test results so far haven’t been too promising for our current data storage methods.

“While this census has only been running five years, the statistics show a 22 percent attrition rate over four years,” CNN reported.

Researchers in Switzerland are now looking to DNA to provide a permanent fix to this problem.

“So compact and complex are its strands that just 1 gram of DNA is theoretically capable of containing all the data of Internet giants such as Google and Facebook, with room to spare,” the CNN report added.

The hard part is figuring out how exactly to utilize DNA for data storing purposes.

The process will likely, according to researchers, reflect the natural processes of DNA storage that are already present with fossilization.

There is hope that if fossilization can store DNA for such incredible periods of time, the same can be replicated with modern data storage.

“The time limit with DNA in fossils is about 700,000 years but people speculate about finding one-million-year storage of genomic material in fossil bones,” Robert Grass, lecturer at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, told CNN. “We were able to show that decay of our DNA and store of information decays at the same rate as the fossil DNA so we get to similar time frames of close to a million years.”

The ultimate goal, according to Grass, is to “get the high storage density of DNA and combine it with the archaeological aspects of DNA.”

As exciting as the premise is, however, there is still a ways to go and a lot more to learn about DNA.

“A lot of it is not really known,” Grass says of DNA’s mysterious capabilities. “What we’re trying to understand is how DNA decays and what the mechanisms are to get more insight into that.”

He also pointed out that the current process to store information on DNA is incredibly expensive, but he believes medical advances could soon change that.

“Already the prices for human genome sequences have dropped from several millions of dollars a few years ago to just hundreds of dollars now,” Grass said. “It makes sense to integrate these advances in medical and genome analysis into the world of IT.”

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Young Math Prodigy Enrolled in University at the Age of 10, Crushing Stereotypes About Black People in STEM

As science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers continue to struggle to become more diverse, a young Black math prodigy is demolishing every stereotype that this industry has held against Black women specifically and black people in general.

Past diversity reports from today’s biggest tech giants say it all — Black people and women are grossly underrepresented in STEM fields.

It’s a pattern that is reflected all throughout the STEM industry.

This means Black women in such fields are nearly impossible to come by, but as one 10-year-old math prodigy is proving, it’s not because Black women aren’t capable of filling these positions.

Esther Okade of Walsall, England, would likely be shocked to hear of the deficit of Black women in STEM, if she hasn’t heard about the serious shortage already.

While the general consensus and illegitimate stereotypes have led people to believe that Black girls just aren’t into math, Esther spends much of her time ripping through equations and formulas that would leave her college classmates stumped.

Yes. Her college classmates.

Before she even reached her teenage years, Esther managed to successfully enroll in the U.K.’s Open University, a distance learning and research university, where she will be working toward a mathematics degree, the Telegraph reported.

“I just love math,” Esther told the Daily Mail about her recent accomplishment and obsession with numbers. “All the numbers and the solving, it’s like a mystery.”

Math isn’t the only interest Esther has. Outside of being able to crunch numbers like a seasoned accountant, she has the same interests that any other 10-year-old would have.

Esther told the Telegraph that she enjoys playing with dolls and is in love with the movie Frozen.

But in the midst of watching her favorite talking snowman and playing with friends, she’s preparing to become a successful banker.

She estimates that she’ll be able to earn her degree in roughly two years before going on to earn her Ph.D.

“And then from there I’ll start running my own business,” she added, according to the Daily Mail. “I want to be a banker.”

For those who are concerned that this could be an overwhelming experience for the young math genius, her mother wants the world to know that this was all her daughter’s decision.

“From the age of 7, Esther has wanted to go to university,” the math prodigy’s mother told the Telegraph. “But I was afraid it was too soon.”

Eventually, she just couldn’t say no anymore.

Esther begged her mother to allow her to go to the university and finally receive a challenge in the classroom when it came to math — even though those challenges still haven’t left Esther struggling by any means.

On a recent exam, Esther received a perfect score.

Industry experts are hoping that the young aspiring banker will be enough to encourage other young Black girls to ignore messages that the STEM field isn’t for them.

Boys are far more likely to be encouraged to pursue such careers, which plants the necessary seeds of interest at a young age. Young Black girls are typically left out of that conversation and rarely discover their interest in STEM until they are much older, if even then.

But as young Esther has demonstrated to the world, it’s about time that more young Black girls are encouraged to give STEM careers a try.

After all, leaving more great minds like Esther’s out of the mix and away from STEM jobs in the future would only be cheating the entire world out of the possible innovations that their work could bring to the industry.

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5 Ways the Stages of the Moon Have Been Said to Affect Creativity

Full moon creativity

Moon and creativity

The Moon and the Zodiac

Many people believe that their zodiac signs have a major impact on their personality traits, but there are also spiritual religions that believe zodiac signs, when understood in relation to the moon, can give a major boost to a person’s creativity. Each sign is unique, and each would be impacted in small ways by different occurrences with the moon, according to Amy Herring’s Astrology of the Moon. In her book, Herring stresses that astrology is a science of “potential, trends, and likelihoods, not fact,” but she also explains the belief that “planetary energies” can impact human energy. For this reason, Herring says people can maximize creativity by learning about how their sign tends to react to the moon.

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