Hashtag Trending

Employees are embracing BYOAI – Bring Your Own AI to work, with or without employer approval. Employers still suffering from a lack of skills. Dell Plans to colour code employees based on office attendance. And the story continues about that mysterious GPT-2 chat bot. All this and more on the “rumours and research reports” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Microsoft executives may lose bonuses if the company is hacked, Apple unveils its M4 chip in the iPad Pro, a new company leverages AI to reportedly find millions in savings on Software as a Service and Elon Musk tells you how much AI is used at Starlink and Space-X. Spoiler alert? None. All this and more on the “ups and downs of AI” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Half of internet traffic may be generated by bots. Data Centres are facing a backlash as they fail to deliver enough jobs and place strain on energy infrastructure. 11 Labs struggles to defend against deep fake voices. An almost unstoppable spyware targets IoS devices. All this and more on the “is anything we can count on” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love. We had a probelme with our podcast feed this morning and it's taking forever to get any tech support. So I'm posting a second episode to see if that works any better. If you get two today, my apologies.

Half of internet traffic may be generated by bots. Data Centres are facing a backlash as they fail to deliver enough jobs and place strain on energy infrastructure. 11 Labs struggles to defend against deep fake voices. An almost unstoppable spyware targets IoS devices. All this and more on the “is anything we can count on” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

A new and powerful AI Model appears and disappears in a few days. Microsoft tells Windows 10 users they are on their own to fix a problem from a recent Microsoft update. Chinese researchers say that their infrastructure has a host of vulnerabilities. And was TikTok user time in decline as the new US legislation was announced? All this and more on the “Schadenfreude” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

And today from the we have a person who has moved from a career in technology and in this case, cybersecurity to run for the U S house of Representatives. Her name is Madison Horn and her decision to run for office was in her words, "born out of a deep frustration. With the conduct of current politicians, the continued polarization of our country and the lack of qualified individuals with technological expertise in Congress." While somewhere around 7 percent of women hold leadership positions and less than 1 percent lead global practices, Madison has broken those barriers by leading Siemens Energy's global cybersecurity practice with a focus on protecting critical infrastructure. She now serves as the CEO of a cybersecurity firm in Oklahoma city and now she's going to take on another challenge and try to bring her unique expertise to the US Congress.

“Insider” Jimmy Apples says OpenAI is going to launch a search engine to compete with Google, Intel is losing billions of dollars a year. Hackers Stole Data on Up To A Third of Americans,Things are wrapping up in what might be the trial of the century. No not that one. We’re talking about the Google Antitrust Trial All this and more on the “how do you like them Apples” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Security firm Okta warns of an unprecendented password stuffing attack that is piggybacking on regular user’s mobile and home devices, the UK is banning obvious passwords, Chrome has moved to “post quantum” encryption and maybe the cure for password issues is to finally get rid of passwords. All this and more on the “QuertyUIOP” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

The US federal government relaxes the requirement for university degrees for cyber security professionals, a new study finds that AI may have more empathy that human therapists, Elon Musk lays off an employee who slept in his car near the plant so he could work longer hours and if you think that cancelling that credit card is the way to end all of those online subscriptions – think again. All this and more on the “some days, you can’t make this stuff up” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

The TikTok battle may be just beginning. A major European cloud company makes its simplified cooling system open source. Microsoft Xbox sales continue to tank. Meta gets hammered by the European Union for not tacking Russian disinformation and the sheer scale of disinformation and misinformation my blow your mind. All this and more on the “truth or consequences” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

93% of first responders experience issues with their mobile devices, New York state mandates $15.00 a month internet for those with low incomes, Google issues a warning to update Chrome for Windows, a new study that indicates Canadians are increasingly demanding better online government services and is the “dumb-phone” making a comeback? All this and more on the “mobile love and hate” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Summary Canada is facing a productivity gap and a lack of innovation despite significant investments by government in research and development. The Council of Canadian Innovators has released a report titled 'Buying Ideas: Procuring Public Sector Innovation in Canada' that highlights the need to leverage government procurement to drive innovation and productivity. The report identifies several problems with the current procurement system, including over-specification, risk aversion, and a lack of focus on the demand side of innovation. The report makes six recommendations to address these issues, including implementing an SME procurement target for innovation and creating an innovative public procurement program. The conversation explores the importance of innovative procurement in government and the need for improved procurement practices in Canada. Laurent highlights the Finnish model of procurement, which provides funding and expertise to government departments and agencies to pursue innovative projects. Our guest also emphasizes the need for innovative procurement standards and the role of standards in governance. The conversation touches on the challenges in the Canadian healthcare system and the potential for innovation in healthcare procurement. He also emphasizes the importance of spending public money well and the need for more collaboration between government, business, and academia. Some of the takeaways: Takeaways

OpenAI wants you to think about them as critical infrastructure. Meta’s stock tanks as Zuckerberg delivers his future vision to investors. IBM acquires infrastructure management firm HashiCorp for 6.4 billion dollars and their stock drops. Spotify misses targets and confesses to struggling after layoffs – and their stock goes up. All this and more on the “who said life was fair” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Times up for TikTok – or is it? A whirlwind of news in AI this week. And an incredible story of the creativity of those who keep legacy tech alive. All this and more on the “firehose” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Pushing back against rising cloud costs – one CEO make big savings, Microsoft makes it clear that it doesn’t want Windows 11 on older hardware, Apple’s Vision Pro is showing disappointing early results and Google makes it clear that it needs to up its game. All this and more on the “we’re not gonna take it” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Deutche Telekom is using what they call “digital humans” for customer service and claiming great results. Mark Zuckerberg gives some insight into Meta’s different approach to AI strategy in recent interviews and Elon Musk suffers quality issues on two offerings which may have been rushed to market.” All this and more on the “Murphy was an optimist” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

Capital Gains tax in Canada gets criticized by tech sector. Amazon drops 100,000 jobs while vastly increasing its use of robots. Tesla’s luxury Cyber Truck faces a huge recall. AI Rapidly Catching Up to Humans Across Benchmarks, AI Hallucinations Could Be Solved Within a Year, Was the AI incident with Air Canada’s chat bot really AI? All this and more on the “take the money and run” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

We’ve heard a lot about Quantum computing and somehow it seems like it’s nuclear fusion - there’s all of these great advances that make the news, but the idea of actual use in business seems a long way off. For me, it seems… I understand it conceptually. I just can’t figure out why its possible. Maybe its’ because I grew up being able to see transistors and how they work and so even though the ability to put thousands and possibly millions of transistors on a silicon chip is a feat of engineering, I still sort of know how it works. But quantum. It’s seems more like magic. Things that exist as probabilities, that can be linked over potentially vast distances and affect each other even without a know connection. Things that only truly exist in their state of uncertainty until you observe them. How does that work? Why does it work? So you hear about it, but it doesn’t seem real somehow. I go back to my nuclear fusion parallel. Great idea. You can sustain it in some big lab for a couple of seconds but that’s it. But lately, there are signs that quantum might be more real than we think. While we’ve heard of these quantum processors in large laboratories, IBM just announced that a US university will be getting an IBM quantum computer for research and teaching - and that they are going to do the same for several other universities in the US. Suddenly it seems a little more real. And as always, I’m interested in what’s happening out in the big world, but I’m also wondering what is happening in Canada. And it turns out that there is some work being done here, advancing the idea of Quantum Computing in commercial usage. Quantum Algorithms Institute is a collaboration between government, the academic community, and Canada’s growing sector of quantum computing companies. We work with companies across industries to build experience in the real-world application of quantum solutions. My guest today might make that even more real - she’s with a program that is planning on teaching students to program for quantum computers. She’s a professor at Wilfred Laurier University and the Chief Technology Officer of the Quantum Algorithms Institute My guest is Dr. Shohini Ghose...... Note: The link to the Quantum Algorithms Institute

Meta’s new AI release sparks a debate about open versus closed source AI, major legislation expanding US government surveillance capabilities goes largely unnoticed, big questions about how accurate these AI launch videos are, and before you book that next business trip, a former Boeing manager says he won’t fly on some Boeing planes. All this and more on the “flying under the radar” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.

More Windows PCs previously blocked are now able to upgrade to Windows 11. Apple has fallen to number two in terms of iPhone market share. Salesforce makes news with a possible acquisition of Informatica. And a new AI wearable device gets savage reviews. All this and more on the “winners and losers” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love.