Tech Guides

The ongoing World Economic Forum meeting 2019 has seen a vast array of discussions on political, technological and other industrial agendas. The meeting brings together the world’s foremost CEOs, government officials, policy-makers, experts and academics, international organizations, youth, technology innovators and representatives of civil society with an aim to drive positive change in the world on multiple facets. This article will focus on the talk ‘Computing Technology at a Tipping Point’ that was moderated by Nicholas Carlson from Business Insider with a panel consisting of Antonio Neri, president and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Jeremy O’Brien, CEO of PsiQuantum  and Amy Webb, Adjunct Assistant Professor of NYU Stern School of Business. Their discussion explored questions of today's age, ranging from- why this is an important time for technology, the role of governments in encouraging a technological revolution, role of the community and business in optimizing tech and the challenges faced as we set out to utilize the next generation computing technologies like quantum computing and AI. Quantum Computing - The necessity of the future The discussion kicked off with the importance of Quantum computing at the present as well as the future. O’Brien defined Quantum computing as “Nothing short of a necessary tool that humans need to build their future”. According to him, QC is a “genuinely exponentially powerful technology”, due to the varied applications that quantum computing can impact if put to use in the correct way - from human health, energy, to molecular chemistry among others. Webb calls the year 2019 as the year of divergence, where we will move from the classic Von Neumann architecture to a more diversified Quantum age. Neri believes we are now at the end of Moore’s law that states overall processing power for computers will double every two years. He says that two years from now we will generate twice the amount of data as generated today and there will be a major divergence between the data generated and the computation power. This is why we need to focus on solving architectural problems of processing algorithms and computing data rather than focussing on the amount of data. Why is this an exciting time for tech? O’Brien: Quantum Computing, Molecular simulation for Techno-Optimism O’Brien expresses his excitement in the Quantum Computing and molecular simulation field where developers are just touching the waters with both these concepts. He has been in the QC field for the past 20 years and says that he has faith in Quantum computing and even though it's the next big thing to watch out for, he assures developers that it will not replace conventional computing.  Quantum computers can be used in fact to improve the performance of classical computing systems to handle the huge amounts of data and information that we are faced with today. In addition to QC, another concept he believes that ‘will transform lives’ is molecular simulation. Molecular simulation will design new pharmaceuticals, new chemicals and help build really sophisticated computers to solve exponentially large problems. Webb: The beginning of the end of smartphones “We are in the midst of a great transformation. This is an explosion happening in slow motion”. Based on data-driven models she says this is the beginning of the end of smartphones. 10 years from now, as our phones retrieve biometric information to information derived from what we wear and we use, the computing environments will look different. Citing an example of MagicLeap who creates spatial glasses, she mentions how computable devices we wear will turn our environment into a computable space to visualize data in a whole different way. She advises business' to rethink how they function;  even between the current cloud V/s edge and computer architectures change. Companies should start thinking in terms of 10 years rather than short term, since decisions made today will have long term consequences. While this is the positive side, Webb is pessimistic that there is no global alignment on the use of data. On the basis of GDPR and other data laws, systems have to be trained. Neri: continuous re-skilling to stay relevant Humans should continuously re-skill themselves with changing times and technologies to avoid an exclusion from new jobs as and when they arrive. He further states that, in the field of Artificial intelligence, there should not be a concentration of power in a few entities like Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and others. While these companies are at the foremost while deciding the future of AI, innovation should happen at all levels. We need guidelines and policy  for the same- not to regulate but to guide the revolution. Business, community and Government should start thinking about ethical and moral codes. Government’s role in Technological Optimism The speakers emphasized on the importance of the government's’ involvement in these ‘exciting times’ and how they can work towards making citizens feel safe against the possible abuse of technology. Webb: Regulation of AI doesn't make sense We need to have conversations on optimizing Artificial Intelligence using available data. She expresses her opinion that the regulation of AI doesn't make sense. This is because we shift from a group of people understanding and implementing optimization to lawmakers who do not understand technical know-how. Nowadays, people focus on regulating tech instead of optimizing it because most don’t understand the nitty-gritties of a system, nor do they understand a system’s limitations. Governments play a huge role in this optimization or regulation decision making. She emphasizes on the need to get hold of the right people to come to an agreement ,“ where companies are a hero to their shareholders and the government to their citizens” . Governments should start talking about and exploring Quantum computing such that its benefits are distributed equitably in a shortest amount of time. Neri: Human centered future of computing He adds that for a human centered future of computing, it is we who need to decide what is good or bad for us. He agrees with Webb’s point that since technology evolves in a way we cannot think of, we need to come to reasonable conclusions before a crisis arrives. Further, he adds that governments should inculcate moral ethics while adopting and implementing technology and innovation. Role of Politicians in technology During the discussion, a member of the European Parliament stated that people have a common notion that politicians do not understand technology and cannot keep up with changing times. Stating that many companies do not think about governance, human rights, democracy and possible abuse of their products; the questioner says that we need a minimum threshold to protect human rights and safeguard humans against abuse. Her question was centered around ways to invite politicians to understand tech better before it's too late. Expressing her gratitude that the European Parliament is asking such a thoughtful question, Webb suggested that creating some kind of framework that the key people on all sides of the spectrum can agree to and a mechanism that incentivises everyone to play fairly- will help parliaments and other law making bodies to feel inclusive in understanding technology. Neri also suggested a guiding principle to think ethically before using any technology without stopping innovation. Technological progress in China and its implications on the U.S. Another question that caught our attention was the progress of technology in China and its implications on the US. Webb says that the development of tools, technologies, frameworks and  data gathering mechanisms to mine, refine and monetize data have different approaches in US and China. In China, the activities related to AI and activities of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are under the leadership of the Chinese communist Party. She says that it is hard to overlook what is happening in Chain with the BRI (Belt to Road Initiative), 5G, digital transformation, expansion in fibre and expansion in e-commerce  and a new world order is being formed because of the same. She is worried that the US and its allies will be locked out economically from the BRI countries and AI will be one of the factors propelling the same . Role of the Military in technology The last question pointed out that some of the worst abuses of technology can be done by governments and the military has the potential to misuse technology. We need to have conversations on the ethical use of technology and how to design technology to fit ethical morals. Neri says that corporations do have a point of view on the military using technology for various reasons and the governments are consulting them on the impacts of technology on the world as well. This is a hard topic and the debate is ongoing even though it is not visible to the people. Webb says that the US always had ties with the government. We live in a world of social media where conversations spiral out of control because of the same.  She advises companies to meet quarterly to have conversations along this line and understanding how their work with the military/ government align with the core values of their company. Sustainability and Technology Neri states that 6% of the global power is used to power data centers. It is important to determine how to address this problem. The solutions proposed for the same are: Innovate in different ways. Be mindful the entire supply chain--->from the time you procure minerals to build the system and recycle it. We need to think of a circular economy. Consider if systems can be re-used by other companies, check parts to be re-cycled and reused. We can use synthetic DNA to back up data - this could potentially use less energy. To sustain human life on this planet, we need to optimise how we ruse resources- physical and virtual, QC tool will invent the future. Materials can be built using QC. You can listen to the entire talk at the World Economic Forum’s official page. What the US-China tech and AI arms race means for the world – Frederick Kempe at Davos 2019 Microsoft’s Bing ‘back to normal’ in China Facebook’s outgoing Head of communications and policy takes the blame for hiring PR firm ‘Definers’ and reveals more

Earlier this month, Logic Magazine, a print magazine about technology, hosted a discussion about the past, present, and future of the tech worker movement. This event was co-sponsored by solidarity groups like the Tech Worker Coalition, Coworker.org, NYC-DSA Tech Action Working Group, and Science for the people. Among the panelists were Joan Greenbaum, who was involved in organizing tech workers in the mainframe era and was part of Computer People for Peace. Meredith Whittaker is a research scientist at New York University and co-founder of the AI Now Institute, Google Open Research group, and one of the organizers of Google Walkout. Liz Fong-Jones, the Developer Advocate at Google Cloud Platform was also present, who recently tweeted that she will be leaving the company in February, because of Google’s lack of leadership in response to the demands made by employees during the Google walkout in November 2018. Also in the attendance were Emma Quail representing Unite Here and Patricia Rosa, a Facebook food service worker, who was inspired to fight for the union after watching a pregnant friend lose her job because she took one day off for a doctor’s appointment. The discussion was held in New York, hosted by Ben Tarnoff, the co-founder of Logic Magazine. It lasted for almost an hour, after which the Q&A session started. You can see the full discussion at Logic’s Facebook page. The rise of tech workers organizing In recent years, we have seen tech workers coming together to stand against any unjust decision taken by their companies. We saw tech workers at companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft raising their voices against contracts, with government agencies like ICE and Pentagon, which are just “profit-oriented” and can prove harmful to humanity. For instance, there was a huge controversy around Google’s Project Maven, which was focused on analyzing drone footage and could have been eventually used to improve drone strikes on the battlefield. More than 3,000 Google employees signed a petition against this project that led to Google deciding not to renew its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense in 2019. In December 2018, Google workers launched an industry-wide effort focusing on the end of forced arbitration, which affects at least 60 million workers in the US alone. In June, Amazon employees demanded Jeff Bezos to stop selling Rekognition, Amazon's facial recognition technology, to law enforcement agencies and to discontinue partnerships with companies that work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). We also saw workers organizing campaigns demanding safer workplaces, free from sexual harassment and gender discrimination, better working conditions, retirement plans, professionalism standards, and fairness in equity compensation. In November, there was a massive Google Walkout with 20,000 Google employees from all over the world to protest against how Google handled sexual harassment cases. This backlash was triggered when it came into light that Google paid millions of dollars as exit packaged to its male executives who were accused of sexual misconduct. Let’s look at some of the highlights from this discussion: What do these issues ranging from controversial contracts, workplace issues, better benefits, a safe equitable workplace have to do with one another? Most companies today are motivated by profits they make, which also shows in the technology they produce. These technologies benefit a small fraction of users while affecting a larger predictable demographic of people, for instance, black and brown people. Meredith Whittaker remarks, “These companies are acting like parallel states right now.” The technologies that they produce have a significant impact over a number of domains that we are not even aware of. Liz Fong-Jones feels that it is also about us as tech workers taking responsibility for what we build. We are feeding into the profit motive these companies have if we keep participating in building systems that can have bad implications for users or not speaking up for the workers working alongside us. To hold these companies accountable and to ensure that all workers are being used for good and people are treated fairly, we all need to come together no matter in what part of the company we are working in. Joan Greenbaum also believes that these types of movement cannot be successful without forming alliances. Any alliance work between tech workers and different roles? Emma Quail shared that there have been many collaborations between engineers, tech employees, cafeteria workers, and other service workers in the fights against companies treating their employees differently. These collaborations are important as tech workers and engineers are much more privileged in these companies. “They have more voice, their job is taken more seriously,” said Emma Quail. Patricia Rosa sharing her experience said, “When some of the tech workers came to one of our negotiations and spoke on our behalf, the company got nervous, and they finally gave them the contract.” Liz Fong-Jones mentions that the main challenge to eliminate this discrimination is that employers want to keep their workers separate. As an example to this, she added, “Google prohibits its cafeteria workers from being on campus when they are not on shift, it prohibits them from holding leadership positions and employee resource groups.” These companies resort to these policies because they do not want their “valuable employees” to find out about the working conditions of other workers. In the last few years, the tech worker movement saw a huge boost in catching the attention of society, but this did not happen overnight. How did we get to this moment? Liz Fong-Jones attributes the Me Too movement as one of the turning points. This movement made workers realize that they are not alone and there are people who share the same concerns. Another thing that Liz Fong-Jones thinks led us to this movement was, management coming with proposals that can have negative implications on people and asked employees to keep secrets. But now tech workers are more informed about what exactly they are building. In the last few years,  tech companies have come under the attention and scrutiny of the public because of the many tech scandals whether it is related to data, software, or workplace, rights. One of the root cause of this was an endless growth requirement. Meredith Whittaker shares, “Over the last few years, we saw series of relentless embarrassing answers to substantially serious questions. They cannot keep going like this.” What’s in the future? Joan Greenbaum rightly mentions that tech companies should actually, “look to work with people what the industry calls users.” They should adopt participatory design instead of user-centered design. Participatory design is basically an approach in which all stakeholders, from employees, partners to local business owners, customers are involved in the design process. Meredith Whittaker remarks, “The people who are getting harmed by these technologies are not the people who are going to get a paycheck from these companies. They are not going to check tech power or tech culture unless we learn how to know each other and form alliances that also connect corporate.” Once we all come together and form alliances, we will be able to pinpoint these companies about the updates and products these companies are building to know about their implications. So, the future basically is in doing our homework, knowing how these companies work, building relationships and coming together against any unjust decisions by these companies. Liz Fong-Jones adds, “The Google Walkout was just the beginning. The labor movement will spread into other companies and also having more visible effects beyond a walkout.” Emma Quail believes that companies will need to address issues related to housing, immigration, rights for people. Patricia Rosa shared that for the future we need to work towards spreading awareness among other workers that there are people who care about their rights and how they are being treated at the workplace. If they are aware that there are people to support them they will not be scared to speak up as Patricia was when she started her journey. Some of the questions asked in the Q&A session were: What's different politically about tech than any other industry? How was the Google walkout organized?  I was a tech contractor and didn't hear about it until it happened. Are there any possibilities of creating a single union of all tech workers no matter what their roles are? Is that a desirable far goal? How tech workers working in one state can relate to the workers working internationally? Watch the full discussion at Logic’s Facebook page. Tech Workers Coalition volunteers talk unionization and solidarity in Silicon Valley Sally Hubbard on why tech monopolies are bad for everyone: Amazon, Google, and Facebook in focus How far will Facebook go to fix what it broke: Democracy, Trust, Reality

The following news story was reported by the Nine Network just a week after New Year's Day: an English teacher from Sydney was surprised when she found that her Facebook account was changing in strange ways. Jennifer Howell first noticed that her profile photo had changed, thus prompting her to change her password; however, she was abruptly logged out and locked out of her account upon attempting to do so. Later, she noticed that her profile had been hijacked by someone from the Middle East for the purpose of spreading radical propaganda. Nine Network journalists tracked down another Facebook user in Melbourne whose account had been similarly hijacked by hackers in the Middle East, and the goal was essentially the same. Even though both cases were reported to the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network, nothing could be done about the hijacking, which may have been facilitated by password sniffing over unsecured connections. The Need for VPN Protection [Image courtesy of CNET.com] Seeing such worrisome reports about hacking is prompting many people to use virtual private networking (VPN) technology to secure their internet connections; however, these connections must be checked for potential leaks or they could be a waste of money. In essence, VPN connections protect online privacy by creating a secure tunnel between the client (who typically uses a personal computing device to connect to the internet) and the internet. A reliable VPN connection masks the user's geographical location by means of providing a different internet protocol (IP) address, which is the calling card of every online connection. Moreover, these connections encrypt data transmitted during sessions and provide a form of anonymous browsing. Like with almost all internet tools, VPN connections can also be subjected to certain vulnerabilities that weaken their reliability. Data leaks are a concern amongst information security researchers who focus on VPN technology, and they have identified the following issues: WebRTC Leaks Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) is an evolution of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for online communications. VoIP is the technology that powers popular mobile apps such as Skype and WhatsApp; it has also replaced the legacy PBX telephone systems at many businesses. Let's say a company is looking to hire a new personnel. With WebRTC enabled on their end, they can direct applicants to a website they can access on their desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone to conduct job interviews without having to install Skype. The problem with WebRTC is that it can leak the IP address of users even when a VPN connection is established. DNS Hijacking The hijacking of domain name system (DNS) servers is an old malicious hacking strategy that has been appropriated by authoritarian regimes to enact internet censorship. The biggest DNS hijacking operation in the world is conducted by Chinese telecom regulators through the Great Firewall, which restricts access to certain websites and internet services. DNS hijacking is a broad name for a series of attacks on DNS servers, a common one involves taking over a router, server or even an internet connection for the purpose of redirecting traffic. In other words, hackers can impersonate websites, so that when you intend to check ABC News you will instead be directed to a page that resembles it, but in reality has been coded to steal passwords, compromise your identity or install malware. Some attacks are even more sophisticated than others. There is a connection between WebRTC and DNS hijacking: a malware attack known as DNS changer that can be injected into a system by means of JavaScript execution followed by a WebRTC call that you will not be aware of. This call can be used to determine your IP address even if you have connected through a VPN. This attack may be enhanced by a change of your DNS settings for the purpose of enlisting your computer or mobile device into a botnet to distribute spam, launch denial-of-service attacks or simply hijack your system without your knowledge. Testing for Leaks [Image courtesy of HowToGeek.com] In addition to WebRTC leaks and DNS queries, there are a few other ways your VPN can betray you: public IP address, torrents, and geolocation. The easiest way to assess if you’ve got a leakage is to visit IPLeak.net with your VPN turned off. Let this nifty site work its magic and make note of the information it offers. Leave the site, then turn your VPN on, and repeat the tests. Now compare the results. The torrents and geolocation tests are interesting but probably not as useful or as likely a culprit as the DNS. Your device navigates the internet by communicating with DNS servers that translate web URLs into numeric IP addresses. Most of the time, you’ll have defaulted through your ISP servers, which often leak like cheesecloth. The bad news is that, even with a VPN in place, leakage through your local servers can give up your physical location to spying eyes. To combat this, VPN services route their customers through servers separate from their ISP. Now that you’ve proven your data is leaking, what can you do about it? Preventing Leaks and Choosing the Right VPN Something you can do even before installing a VPN solution is to disable WebRTC in your browser. Some developers have already made this a default configuration, but many still ship with this option enabled. If you search for "WebRTC" within the help file of your browser, you may be able to find instructions on how to modify the flags or .config file. However, proceed with caution. Take the time to read and understand reliable guides such as this one from security researcher Paolo Stagno. Here are other preventative measures: When configuring your VPN, go with the servers it suggests, which will likely not be those of your ISP but rather servers maintained by the VPN company. Not all VPN companies have their own servers, so be aware of that when considering your options.  Be aware that the internet is transitioning its IP address naming system from IPv4 to IPv6. Without diving too deep into this topic, just be aware that if your VPN has not upgraded its protocols, then any site with a new IPv6 address will leak. Look for a VPN service compatible with the new format.  Make sure your VPN uses the newest version of the OpenVPN protocol.  Windows 10 has an almost impossible to change default setting that chooses the fastest DNS server, resulting in the chance it might ignore your VPN server and revert back to the ISP. The OpenVPN plugin is a good way to fight this. Final Thoughts In the end, using a leaky VPN defeats the security purpose of tunneled connections. It is certainly worth your while to evaluate VPN products, read their guides and learn to secure your system against accidental leaks. Keep in mind this is not a ‘set it and forget it’ problem. You should check for leakage periodically to make sure nothing has changed with your system. The winds of change blow constantly online and what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. As a final suggestion, make sure the VPN you use has a kill-switch feature that breaks your connection in the event it detects a data leak. Author Bio Gary Stevens is a front-end developer. He’s a full-time blockchain geek and a volunteer working for the Ethereum foundation as well as an active Github contributor. Dark Web Phishing Kits: Cheap, plentiful and ready to trick you How to stop hackers from messing with your home network (IoT) Privacy Australia - can you be tracked if you use a VPN? What you need to know about VPNFilter Malware Attack

Developing artificial intelligence expertise is a challenge. There’s a huge global demand for practitioners with the right skills and knowledge and a lack of people who can actually deliver what’s needed. It’s difficult because many of the most talented engineers are being hired by the planet’s leading tech companies on salaries that simply aren’t realistic for many organizations. Ultimately, you have two options: form an in-house artificial intelligence development team or choose an external software development team or consultant with proven artificial intelligence expertise. Let’s take a closer look at each strategy. Building an in-house AI development team If you want to develop your own AI capabilities, you will need to bring in strong technical skills in machine learning. Since recruiting experts in this area isn’t an easy task, upskilling your current in-house development team may be an option. However, you will need to be confident that your team has the knowledge and attitude to develop those skills. Of course, it’s also important to remember that a team building artificial intelligence is comprised of a range of skills and areas of expertise. If you can see how your team could evolve in that way, you’re halfway to solving your problem. AI experts you need for building a project  Big Data engineers: Before analyzing data, you need you collect, organize, and process it. AI is usually based on big data, so you need the engineers who have experience working with structured and unstructured data, and can build a secure data platform. They should have sound knowledge of Hadoop, Spark, R, Hive, Pig, and other Big Data technologies.  Data scientists: Data scientists are a vital part of your AI team. They work their magic with data, building the models, investigating, analyzing, and interpreting it. They leverage data mining and other techniques to surface hidden insights and solve business problems. NLP specialists: A lot of AI projects involve Natural Language Processing, so you will probably need NLP specialists. NLP allows computers to understand and translate human language serving as a bridge between human communication and machine interpretation. Machine learning engineers: These specialists utilize machine learning libraries, deploying ML solutions into production. They take care of the maintainability and scalability of data science code. Computer vision engineers: They specialize in imagery recognition, correlating image to a particular metric instead of correlating metrics to metrics. For example, computer vision is used for modeling objects or environments (medical image analysis), identification tasks (a species identification system), and processes controlling (industrial robots).  Speech recognition engineers: You will need these experts if you want to build your speech recognition system. Speech recognition can be very useful in telecommunication services, in-car systems, medical documentation, and education. For instance, it is used in language learning for practicing pronunciation. Partnering with an AI solution provider If you realize that recruiting and building your own in-house AI team is too difficult and expensive, you can engage with an external AI provider. Such an approach helps companies keep the focus on their core expertise and avoid the headache of recruiting the engineers and setting up the team. Also, it allows them to kick off the project much faster and thus gain a competitive advantage. Factors to consider when choosing an artificial intelligence solution provider AI engineering experience Due to the huge popularity of AI these days, many companies claim to be professional AI development providers without practical experience. Hence it’s extremely important to do extensive research. Firstly, you should study the portfolio and case studies of the company. Find out which AI, machine learning or data science projects your potential vendor worked on and what kind of artificial intelligence solutions the company has delivered. For instance, you may check out these European AI development companies and the products they developed. Also, make sure a provider has experience in the types of machine learning algorithms (supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement), data structures and algorithms, computer vision, NLP, etc that are relevant to your project needs. Expertise in AI technologies Artificial Intelligence covers a multitude of different technologies, frameworks, and tools. Make sure your external engineering team consists of professional data scientists and data engineers who can solve your business problems. Building the AI team and selecting the necessary skill set might be challenging for businesses that have no internal AI expertise. Therefore, ask a vendor to provide tech experts or delivery managers who will advise you on the team composition and help you hire the right people. Capacities to scale a team When choosing a team, you should consider not only your primary needs but also the potential growth of your business. If you expect your company to scale up, you’ll need more engineering capacities. Therefore, take into account your partner’s ability to ramp up the team in the future. Also, consider factors such as the vendor’s employer image and retention rate since your ability to attract top AI talent and keep them on your project will largely depend on it. Suitable cooperation model It is essential to choose the AI company with a cooperation model that fits your business requirements. The most popular cooperation models are Fixed Price, Time and Material, and Dedicated Development Team. Within the fixed price model all the requirements and the scope of work are set from the start, and you as a customer need to have them described to the smallest detail as it will be extremely difficult to make change requests during the project. However, it is not the best option for AI projects since they involve a lot of R&D and it is difficult to define everything at the initial stage. Time and material model is the best for small projects when you don’t need the specialists to be fully dedicated to your project. This is not the best choice for AI development as the hourly rates of AI engineers are extremely high and the whole project would cost you a fortune with this type of contract. In order to add more flexibility yet keep control over the project budget, it is better to choose a dedicated development team model or staff augmentation. It will allow you to change the requirements when needed and have control over your team. With this type of engagement, you will be able to keep the knowledge within your team and develop your AI expertise as developers will work exclusively for you. Conclusion If you have to deal with the challenge of building AI expertise in your company, there are two possible ways to go. First off, you can attract local AI talent and build the expertise in-house. Then you have to assemble the team of data scientists, data engineers, and other specialists depending on your needs. However, developing AI expertise in-house is always time- and cost-consuming taking into account the shortage of well-qualified machine learning specialists and superlative salary expectations. The other option is to partner with an AI development vendor and hire an extended team of engineers. In this case, you have to consider a number of factors such as the company’s experience in delivering AI solutions, the ability to allocate the necessary resources, the technological expertise, and its capabilities to satisfy your business requirements. Author Bio Romana Gnatyk is Content Marketing Manager at N-IX passionate about software development. Writing insightful content on various IT topics, including software product development, mobile app development, artificial intelligence, the blockchain, and different technologies. Researchers introduce a machine learning model where the learning cannot be proved “All of my engineering teams have a machine learning feature on their roadmap” – Will Ballard talks artificial intelligence in 2019 [Interview] Apple ups it’s AI game; promotes John Giannandrea as SVP of machine learning

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when we say “mobile app”? If you are a user, you are probably thinking of, it is something that’s convenient, and eases your life. However, in a business context, an idea that can be converted into an app model and helps boost your profitability. When successful entrepreneurs launch their original idea, they do not just design and develop it for the market; they research, understand the market minutely and more importantly study the users in-depth. One part that leads you to success is the complete understanding of the user. Here, we will try to understand why user behavior analysis is important and how you can best deliver it. Why analyze user behavior? Instead of asking this question, let’s ask the most important question- who are you designing the app for? The users of the app will be members of the target audience, and technically it is for them that you are planning the app layout and coding the all new idea for. In this case, you need to ensure it is usable for them, and they find the app convenient. You need to understand every aspect of user behavior, ranging from an understanding of how they use the app to what engages them. Analysis of user behavior will help you design the UX accordingly, and allows you to deliver effective app solutions. For this, we need to identify the different ways in which you can identify user behavior and what you need to consider, in order to deliver a perfect app solution. 4 Effective ways to analyze user behavior data Here’re four effective ways that will help you to analyze user behavior data to design and develop a mobile app accordingly. The app goal: Whenever the user uses an app, they do it with a specific goal in mind. For instance, when you use Uber, you are choosing travel convenience and avoiding haggling with the driver over the fare. The Uber app allows its users to book their ride with ease and know the amount for the ride beforehand. When you are designing for the user, you need to understand the goal they are attempting to achieve with the app, and how best you can help them achieve it, in the simplest way possible. The mobile usage: While designing an app for the users, you need to understand how they use the mobile phone. What is most convenient for them? For instance, 79% people use their left hand instead of the right hand to cradle their phone or use the apps. Have you considered them while designing the app? Most people prefer the portrait mode for certain apps; however, when they are viewing videos, they prefer to hold it in the landscape mode. If your app does not change the view according to the preferences stated, then you are likely to lose out on the customers. Do users use the thumb to access the buttons on the screen or, do they use their finger? How do they navigate through the screens? Do they hold the phone in one hand or cradle the phone? When you are able to answer these questions, then you have nailed the design strategy You would know just where to place the buttons and how to design the interaction? There are places within the mobile screen which have been marked as inaccessible. If you place the buttons or other clickable elements in that part of the screen, then you are halting the access to the mobile app. Acknowledge feedback: What do users like the most about the mobile app in general, and what are the aspects that frustrate them? For instance, there are mobile app designs that don’t connect well with the user. An app that takes more than 3 seconds to load can be frustrating. If the images don’t load faster, then the app can be discarded immediately. This is true for e-commerce apps, as there are lots of images, and people tend to expect an immediate response from these apps. When the users give you their feedback, make sure you incorporate that into the app. The motivations: Finally, you need to take into account the motivations of the user towards using the app and completing an action. What makes them want to click on the buy now or, the action button in your app? Study your users. For some users, safety plays the predominant motivator while for others, the motivation factor is the value for money the app delivers. Along with the motivators, there are barriers too, which you need to consider in order to design the best user-centric app for the business idea. After identifying different ways to identify user behavior, now, let’s talk about two simple methods that can be used to analyze user behavior data: Questionnaire: Prepare a questionnaire including questions like what do you like the best about our app? Which other apps would you use as our alternative? What do you want us to improve? The questions are endless, but make sure these questions give you insights on your users. Spread this questionnaire among a group of people and based on their answers, you can drive user-behavior data and develop a mobile app accordingly. Mobile App Analytics Platforms: Another method is mobile app analytics platforms. Prepare navigation flow, a flowchart of all the app screens, to submit it on mobile app analytics platforms and identify how users are going from one screen to another. Through this navigation flow of your app, you can identify how users are interacting with screens and how they move through your app. This data will help you to know user behavior. This data helps you make data-driven changes. Conclusion Analyzing user behavior always must be a high priority for businesses who want to make a successful app and grow over time. When it comes to analyzing user behavior, top companies and brands like Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest, and Starbucks are using AI (Artificial Intelligence) to provide a personalized experience to their users. Through AI and machine learning, businesses will learn about customer or user behaviors on a deeper level and get help in delivering a better application. The possibilities are endless. The point is - are you utilizing already existing data to optimize the overall process? Author Bio Yuvrajsinh is a Marketing Manager at Space-O Technologies, a firm having expertise in developing Uber-like apps. He spends most of his time researching on the mobile app and startup trends. He is a regular contributor to popular publications like Entrepreneur, Yourstory, and Upwork. If you have any confusion, or question, or need any consultation regarding the mobile app development process, feel free to contact him. 5 UX design tips for building a great e-commerce mobile app 4 key benefits of using Firebase for mobile app development 9 reasons to choose Agile Methodology for Mobile App Development  

Mobile App Development has taken over and completely re-written the healthcare industry. According to Healthcare Mobility Solutions reports, the Mobile healthcare application market is expected to be worth more than $84 million by the year 2020. These mobile applications are not just limited to use by patients but are also massively used by doctors and nurses. As technology evolves, it simultaneously opens up the possibility of being used in multiple ways. Similar has been the journey of healthcare mobile app development that has originated from the latest trends in technology and has made its way to being an industry in itself. The technological trends that have helped build mobile apps for the healthcare industry are Blockchain You probably know blockchain technology, thanks to all the cryptocurrency rage in recent years. The blockchain is basically a peer-to-peer database that keeps a verified record of all transactions, or any other information that one needs to track and have it accessible to a large community. The healthcare industry can use a technology that allows it to record the medical history of patients, and store it electronically, in an encrypted form, that cannot be altered or hacked into. Blockchain succeeds where a lot of health applications fail, in the secure retention of patient data. The Internet of Things The Internet of Things (IoT) is all about connectivity. It is a way of interconnecting electronic devices, software, applications, etc., to ensure easy access and management across platforms. The loT will assist medical professionals in gaining access to valuable patient information so that doctors can monitor the progress of their patients. This makes treatment of the patient easier, and more closely monitored, as doctors can access the patient’s current profile anywhere and suggest treatment, medicine, and dosages. Augmented Reality From the video gaming industry, Augmented Reality has made its way to the medical sector. AR refers to the creation of an interactive experience of a real-world environment through superimposition of computer-generated perceptual information. AR is increasingly used to develop mobile applications that can be used by doctors and surgeons as a training experience. It stimulates a real-world experience of diagnosis and surgery, and by doing so, enhances the knowledge and its practical application that all doctors must necessarily possess. This form of training is not limited in nature, and can, therefore, simultaneously train a large number of medical practitioners. Big Data Analytics Big Data has the potential to provide comprehensive statistical information, only accessed and processed through sophisticated software. Big Data Analytics becomes extremely useful when it comes to managing the hospital’s resources and records in an efficient manner. Aside from this, it is used in the development of mobile applications that store all patient data, thus again, eliminating the need for excessive paperwork. This allows medical professionals to focus more on attending and treating the patients, rather than managing database. These technological trends have led to the development of a diverse variety of mobile applications to be used for multiple purposes in the healthcare industry. Listed below are the benefits of the mobile apps deploying these technological trends, for the professionals and the patients alike. Telemedicine Mobile applications can potentially play a crucial role in making medical services available to the masses. An example is an on-call physician on telemedicine duty. A mobile application will allow the physician to be available for a patient consult without having to operate via  PC. This will make the doctors more accessible and will bring quality treatment to the patients quickly. Enhanced Patient Engagement There are mobile applications that place all patient data – from past medical history to performance metrics, patient feedback, changes in the treatment patterns and schedules, at the push of a button on the smartphone application for the medical professional to consider and make a decision on the go. Since all data is recorded in real-time, it makes it easy for doctors to change shifts without having to explain to the next doctor the condition of the patient in person. The mobile application has all the data the supervisors or nurses need. Easy Access to Medical Facilities There are a number of mobile applications that allow patients to search for medical professionals in their area, read their reviews and feedback by other patients, and then make an online appointment if they are satisfied with the information that they find. Apart from these, they can also download and store their medical lab reports, and order medicines online at affordable prices. Easy Payment of Bills Like in every other sector, mobile applications in healthcare have made monetary transactions extremely easy. Patients or their family members, no longer need to spend hours waiting in the line to pay the bills. They can instantly pick a payment plan and pay bills immediately or add reminders to be notified when a bill is due. Therefore, it can be safely said that the revolution that the healthcare industry is undergoing and has worked in the favor of all the parties involved – Medical Professionals, Patients, Hospital Management and the Mobile App Developers. Author's Bio Ritesh Patil is the co-founder of Mobisoft Infotech that helps startups and enterprises in mobile technology. He’s an avid blogger and writes on mobile application development. He has developed innovative mobile applications across various fields such as Finance, Insurance, Health, Entertainment, Productivity, Social Causes, Education and many more and has bagged numerous awards for the same. Social Media – Twitter, LinkedIn Healthcare Analytics: Logistic Regression to Reduce Patient Readmissions How IBM Watson is paving the road for Healthcare 3.0 7 Popular Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

The retail giant Amazon plans to reinvent in-store shopping in much the same way it revolutionized online shopping. Amazon’s cashierless stores (3000 of which you can expect by 2021) give a glimpse into what the future of eCommerce could look like with automation. eCommerce automation involves combining the right eCommerce software with the right processes and the right people to streamline and automate the order lifecycle. This reduces the complexity and redundancy of many tasks that an eCommerce retailer typically faces from the time a customer places her order until the time it is delivered to them. Let’s look at why eCommerce retailers should prioritize automation in 2019. 1. Augmented Customer Experience + Personalization A PwC study titled “Experience is Everything” suggests that 42% of consumers would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience. Way back in 2015, Gartner predicted that nearly 50% of companies would be implementing changes in their business model in order to augment customer experience. This is especially true for eCommerce, and automation in eCommerce certainly represents one of these changes. Customization and personalization of services are a huge boost for customer experience. A BCG report revealed that retailers who implemented personalization strategies saw a 6-10% boost in their sales. How can automation help? To start with, you can automate your email marketing campaigns and make them more personalized by adding recommendations, discount codes, and more. 2.  Fraud Prevention The scope for fraud on the Internet is huge. According to the October 2017 Global Fraud Index, Account Takeover fraud cost online retailers a whopping $3.3 billion dollars in Q2 2017 alone. Additionally, the average transaction rate for eCommerce fraud has also been on this rise. eCommerce retailers have been using a number of fraud prevention tools such as address verification service, CVN (card verification number), credit history check, and more to verify the buyer’s identity. An eCommerce tool equipped with Machine Learning capabilities such as Shuup, can detect fraudulent activity and effectively run through thousands of checks in the blink of an eye. Automating order handling can ensure that these preliminary checks are carried out without fail, in addition to carrying out specific checks to assess the riskiness of a particular order. Depending on the nature and scale of the enterprise, different retailers would want to set different thresholds for fraud detection, and eCommerce automation makes that possible. If a medium-risk transaction is detected, the system can be automated to notify the finance department for immediate review, whereas high-risk transactions can be canceled immediately. Automating your eCommerce software processes allows you to break the mold of one-size-fits-all coding and make the solution specific to the needs of your organization. 3. Better Customer Service Customer service and support is an essential part of the buying process. Automated customer support does not necessarily mean your customers will get canned responses to all their queries. However,  it means that common queries can be dealt with in a more efficient manner. Live chats and chatbots have become incredibly popular with eCommerce retailers because these features offer convenience to both the customer and the retailer. The retailer’s support staff will not be held up with routine inquiries and the customer can get their queries resolved quickly. Timely responses are a huge part of what constitutes positive customer experience. Live chat can even be used for shopping carts in order to decrease cart abandonment rates. Automating priority tickets as well as the follow-up on resolved and unresolved tickets is another way to automate customer service. With new generation automated CRM systems/ help desk software you can automate the tags that are used to filter tickets. It saves the customer service rep’s time and ensures that priority tickets are resolved quickly. Customer support/service can be made as a strategic asset in your overall strategy. The same Oracle study mentioned above suggests that back in 2011, 50% of customers would give a brand at most one week to respond to a query before they stopped doing business with them. You can imagine what those same numbers for 2018 would be. 4. Order Fulfillment Physical fulfillment of orders is prone to errors as it requires humans to oversee the warehouse selection. With an automated solution, you can set up an order fulfillment to match the warehouse requirements as closely as possible. This ensures that the closest warehouse which has the required item in stock is selected. This guarantees timely delivery of the order to the customer. It could also be set up to integrate with your billing software so as to calculate accurate billing/shipping charges, taxes (for out of state/overseas shipments), etc. Automation can also help manage your inventory effectively. Product availability is updated automatically with each transaction, be it a return or the addition of a new product. If the stock of a particular in-demand item was nearing danger levels, your eCommerce software would send an automated email to the supplier asking to replenish its stock ASAP. Automation ensures that your prerequisites to order fulfillment are fulfilled for successful processing and delivery of an order. Challenges with eCommerce automation The aforementioned benefits are not without some risks, just as any evolving concept tends to be. One of the most important challenges to making automation work for eCommerce smoothly is data accuracy. As eCommerce platforms gear up for greater multichannel/omnichannel retailing strategies, automation is certainly going to help them bolster and enhance their workflows, but only if the right checks are in place. Automation still has a long way to go, so for now, it might be best to focus on automating tasks that take up a lot of time such as updating inventory, reserving products for certain customers, updating customers on their orders, etc. Advanced applications such as fraud detection might still take a few years to be truly ‘automated’ and free from any need for human review. For now, eCommerce retailers still have a whole lot to look forward to. All things considered, automating the key tasks/functions of your eCommerce platform will impart flexibility, agility, and a scope for improved customer experience. Invest rightly in automation solutions for your eCommerce software to stay competitive in the dynamic, unpredictable eCommerce retail scenario. Author Bio Fretty Francis works as a Content Marketing Specialist at SoftwareSuggest, an online platform that recommends software solutions to businesses. Her areas of expertise include eCommerce platforms, hotel software, and project management software. In her spare time, she likes to travel and catch up on the latest technologies. Software developer tops the 100 Best Jobs of 2019 list by U.S. News and World Report IBM Q System One, IBM’s standalone quantum computer unveiled at CES 2019 Announcing ‘TypeScript Roadmap’ for January 2019- June 2019

Emerging technologies not only change the way users interact with their devices but they also improve the development process. One such tech where most features emerge is Google’s Android. The Android App Development platform is coming up with new features every year at a neck-breaking pace These are some of the safest Android predictions which can be made for Android development in the year 2019. #1 Voice Command and Virtual Assistants Voice command simply dictates the user’s voice into an electronic word processed document which allows users to operate the system by talking to it and also frees up cognitive working space. It also has some potential drawbacks - it requires a large amount of memory to store voice data files and is difficult to operate in crowded places due to noise interference. What does it have in store for 2019? In 2019, voice search is going to create a new user interface that would be a mandate to take into consideration when developing and designing applications in mobile apps. Voice Assistants are gaining much popularity and we can see every big player has the one such as Siri, Google Assistant, Bixby, Alexa, Cortana. This will continue to grow in 2019. Use Case App: Pingpong Board The use case for voice assistants is to create an application similar to the Ping Pong board. Inside the application, there are two screens: the First screen shows available players with the leaderboard and scores and the second screen displays two players who are playing the game along with their game points. #2 Chatbots Chatbots are trending as they support faster customer service at low labor costs by increasing customer satisfaction. However, simple chatbots are often limited to give a response to the customers which could frustrate them whereas complex chatbots cost more, inhibiting their widespread adoption. What Next? As per the technology experts, it is predicted the whole world is going to introduce their company by Chatbots. The customer support service will be provided efficiently and the customer feedbacks will also be responded quicker to get the better results. Chatbots are a takeaway in this digital world as every application or website wants to provide this facility for the improvised customer support. Chatbots can be taken as the small assistants which are integrated into our applications. We can create our one with the help of DialogFlow which is easy to develop without much coding. Nowadays, facebook messenger is used in spite of being a messaging app as many of the chatbots are integrated into it. Use Case: Allstate chatbot The largest P&C insurer in America developed its own 'ABle' chatbot to help their agents learn to sell commercial insurance products. The bot teaches agents through the commercial selling process and can extract documents and also understands which product an agent is working on and where are they in the process. #3 Virtual and Augmented Reality Augmented Reality systems are highly interactive in nature and operate simultaneously with the real-time environment by reducing the thin line between real and virtual world; enhancing the perceptions and interactions with the real world. It is expensive to develop AR based devices for the desired projects, lack privacy and low-performance level are few drawbacks for the AR compliant devices. What next? The hardware for VR is initially driven by the hardcore games and gadget freaks where the mobile hardware is been caught up in some instances excluding the traditional computing platforms. For the real-world uses with Augmented Reality and sensor into the mobile devices like never before, AR and VR are combined to get much better visibility of applications which seems that virtual reality revolution is finally arriving. Use Case App: MarXent + AR AR is helping professionals to visualize their final products during the creative process from interior design to architecture and construction. By using the headsets enabled by architects, engineers, and design professionals can step directly into their buildings and spaces to look at how their designs might look and can even make virtual spot changes. #4 Android App Architecture Google has finally introduced guidelines after many years to develop the best Android apps. Even you are not forced to use Android architecture components but it is considered a good starting point to build stable applications. The argument about the best pattern for Android - MVC, MVP, MVVM or anything else has turned off and we can trust the solutions from Google which are good enough for all majority of apps. What next? The developers always face confusion implementing the multithreading on Android and to solve these problems, tools like Async Task and EventBus are supporting it. Also, we can choose RxJava, Kotlin Coroutines or Android LiveData for multithreading management. This fetches more stability and less confusion in the developer community. Loads of applications are installed on our mobile devices but we hardly use some of them. For this, Progressive WebApps are becoming popular in e-commerce. #5 Hybrid Solutions Big companies like Facebook is leading in utilizing the cross platforms for most of the part, it is a pragmatic approach where the larger the audience the bigger the market share for advertising and subscription revenues. What Next? The hybrid mobile applications come with the unified development that can substantially save a good amount of money and provide fast deployment through offline support and bridges the gap between other two approaches providing all the extra functionality with very little overhead. The hybrid applications can possibly result in the loss of performance and make the developer rely on the framework itself to nicely play with the targeted operating system. So, escaping out of the traditional hardware and software solutions, the developers have approached the market aiming to offer a total solution or cross-platform solutions. #6 Machine Learning Google switched to AI first from mobile first strategy since some time. This is clearly seen in the TensorFlow and MLKit in the Firebase ecosystem which is gaining popularity for creating simple basic models that do not need expertise in data sciences to make your application intelligent. People are getting more aware of the capabilities of machine learning along with its implementation in Matlab or R for mobile development. What next? Machine learning is used in a variety of applications for banking and financial sector, healthcare, retail, publishing and social media etc. Also, used by Google and Facebook to push down relevant advertisements based on past user search. The major challenge is to implement machine learning by implementing different techniques and interpretation of results which is also complex but important not only for image and speech recognition but also for user behavior prediction and analysis. Machine learning will be utilized in the future for Quantum computing to manipulate and classify large numbers of vectors in high-dimensional spaces. We expect to have better-unsupervised algorithms in building smarter applications that will lead to faster and more accurate outcomes. #7 Rooting Android Rooting Android means to get root access or administrative rights for your device. No matter how much you pay for your device the internals of the device is still locked away. With the help of Rooting Android, several advantages are offered of removing the pre-installed OEM applications, ad-blocking for all the apps which is a great benefit to the user. What next? As the rooting android installs the incompatible application on your device it can brick your device and it is advised to always get your apps from reliable sources. It does not come with a warranty and a wrong setting can move the wrong item which can cause huge problems. The risk with the rooted devices is that the system might not get well updated later which can create errors. Still, It also provides more display options and internal storage along with the greater battery life and speed. It will also make full device backups and have access to root files. Conclusion The year 2019 is going to very interesting for Android app development. We will observe a lot of new technologies emerging that will change the face of mobile development for future use. The developers need to stay up to date with the emerging trends and learn quickly to implement them in designing new products. We can definitely see a bright future by more good quality apps with even more engaging user interactions. We also expect to have more stable solutions to develop applications which result in better products. It becomes important to observe closely the new trends and become a quick learner in mastering these skills that will be the most important in the future. Author Bio Rooney Reeves is a content strategist and a technical blogger associated with eTatvaSoft. An old hand writer by day and an avid reader by night, she has a vast experience in writing about new products, software design, and test-driven methodology. Read Next 8 programming languages to learn in 2019 18 people in tech every programmer and software engineer need to follow in 2019 Cloud computing trends in 2019

The vastness and the innovativeness of today’s e-commerce websites are converting visitors into potential buyers and come back as returning visitors. Every e-commerce website is designed with high-quality UX (user experience) and the absence of it can hurt the revenue and sales in various stages. If not made simplistic and innovative, a bad UX may have an adverse effect on the website’s rankings as all search engines emphasize on portals that are easy to navigate. This makes e-commerce mobile app development services necessary for website owners. Almost 68% of users utilize smartphone devices in the US and the amount goes up to 88% in the UK. So, if seen from the advertising standpoint, websites need to be mobile-friendly at any cost as 62% of users will never suggest a business that has a poorly designed mobile website. Now if we take a look at the global population that buys online, the percentage comes to around 22.9% and by 2021, the number will hike to 3.15 billion. Hence keeping an up-to-date UX design for mobile apps is an absolute must. Some UX tips to keep in mind These are some UX design tips that an e-commerce website must utilize for making the buying experience worthwhile for the consumers. Horizontal filtering Most websites employ interfaces that carry left-hand vertical sidebar filtering. However, currently, horizontal filtering has gained prominence. Its benefits include: Horizontal filtering is a tablet and smartphone friendly. So, filters can be viewed while scrolling and the full width of a page can also be utilized. Utilizing paragraphs, sliders and tablets along with checkboxes are easier as horizontal filtering is flexible. Page width utilization: With this UX design, bigger visuals with better and useful information can be put in a page. No overloading of websites with CTAs and product information Making product descriptions crisp and understandable is necessary as any user or customer won’t like to go through massive texts. Clear CTAs – Having a clear and compelling call to action is important. Knowing the audience well – The aspects that attract your customers or the ones causing inconvenience to them must be well addressed.   Easy to understand descriptions - Top e-commerce app developers will always offer you with clear descriptions containing a crisp heading, bullet points, and subheadings. Fabricating a user-centric search The search experience that you offer to your customers can break or make your online sales. Your e-commerce businesses must implement these points for fabricating a client-centric search: Image recognition – Pictures or images are extremely important when it comes to e-commerce. Users will always want to see the items before buying. TImage recognition must be implemented in every website so that users can rely on the item they are purchasing. Voice search – As per mobile app design guidelines, voice recognition must also be implemented as it helps online retailers to improve the user experience. This is about ease, convenience, and speed. It makes consumers more comfortable which results in elevated customer engagement. Making the correct choice amid scrolling, loading more buttons and pagination When you engage in e-commerce shopping app development services, you must choose how the products are loading on your website.: Load more buttons – Websites that contain load button option is more favorable as users can discover more products offering them a feeling of control. Pagination – This is a process by which a small amount of information is offered to the customer so that he can emphasize on specific parts of a page. With pagination, users can overview entire results that will tell them how long the search is going to take. Endless scrolling - This technique can lead to seamless experiences for users. By enabling endless scrolling,  content loads continuously as a customer scrolls the page downwards. This works best for websites that contain an even content structure. It is not suitable for websites that need to fulfill goal-oriented jobs. Simple checkouts and signups required Among the various mobile app design elements, this point holds quite an importance. Making the procedures of checkouts and signups simple is paramount as website users are quick to run out of patience. Single-column structure – A user’s eye will move naturally from top to the bottom along a solitary line. Making on-boarding simple – Asking too many questions at the very beginning is not recommended. Registration simply calls for the user’s email and name. Later, personal information like, address and phone number can be asked. Colors Color is an often overlooked part of UI design. It is, in fact, hugely important - and it's beginning to become more important to designers. When you think about it, it seems obvious. Color is not only important from a branding perspective, allowing you to create a unified and consistent user experience within a single product (or, indeed, set of products). Color can also have consequences for hardware too. A white interface, for example, will use less battery power as the device won't require the resources that would otherwise be needed to load color. Accessibility and color in design Another important dimension to this is accessibility. With around 4.5% of the population estimated to suffer from color blindness (most of them male), it could be worth considering how the decisions you make about colors could impact these users. In a nutshell While implementing the entire e-commerce application development process, you have to make sure as a merchant that you are delivering experiences and products that fulfill real requirements. A lot of emphasis needs to be put on visual appeal as it marks as a vital element in fulfilling customer needs and is also an establishment of credibility. A customer’s first impression must be good no matter what. When talking about mobile user experience, credibility must be taken into account that can be ensured when you capture the attention of your users by informing them about what you exactly have to offer. The about page must be clear containing information like physical address, email address, phone number, etc. Following these UX tips is adequate for your E-commerce business to take flight and do wonders. Get hold of a professional team today and get started. Author Bio   Manan Ghadawala is the founder of 21Twelve Interactive which is a mobile app development company in India and the USA. You may follow him on @twitter. Why Motion and Interaction matter in a UX design? [Video] What UX designers can teach Machine Learning Engineers? To start with: Model Interpretability Align your product experience strategy with business needs

In 2018, Blockchain and cryptocurrency exploded across tech. We spoke to Packt author Harish Garg on what they see as the future of Blockchain in 2019 and beyond. Harish Garg, founder of BignumWorks Software LLP, is a data scientist and lead software developer with 17 years' software industry experience. BignumWorks is an India-based software consultancy that provides consultancy services in software development and technical training. Harish has worked for McAfee\Intel for 11+ years. He is an expert in creating data visualizations using R, Python, and web-based visualization libraries. Find all of Harish Garg's books for Packt here. From early adopters to the enterprise What do you think was the biggest development in blockchain during 2018? The biggest development in Blockchain during 2018 was the explosion of Blockchain based digital currencies. We have now thousands of different coins and projects supported by these coins. 2018 was also the year when Blockchain really captured the imagination of public at large, beyond just technical savvy early adopters. 2018 also saw first a dramatic rise in the price of digital currencies, especially Bitcoin and then a similar dramatic fall in the last half of the year. Do you think 2019 is the year that enterprise embraces blockchain? Why? Absolutely. Early adoption of Enterprise blockchain is already underway in 2018. Companies like IBM have already released and matured their Blockchain offerings for enterprises. 2018 also saw the big behemoth of Cloud Services, Amazon Web Services launching their own Blockchain solutions. We are on the cusp of wider adoption of Blockchain in enterprises in 2019. Key Blockchain challenges in 2019 What do you think the principle challenges in deploying blockchain technology are, and how might developers address them in 2019? There have been two schools that have been emerging about the way blockchain is perceived. One one side, there are people who are pitching Blockchain as some kind of ultimate Utopia, the last solution to solve all of humanity’s problems. And on the other end of the spectrum are people who dismiss Blockchain as another fading trend with nothing substantial to offer. These two kind of schools pose the biggest challenge to the success of Blockchain technology. The truth is somewhere lies in between these two. Developers need to take the job of Blockchain evangelism in their own hands and make sure the right kind of expectations are set up for policy makers and customers. Have the Bitcoin bubble and greater scrutiny from regulators made blockchain projects less feasible, or do they provide a more solid market footing for the technology? Why? Bitcoin has invited lot of scrutiny from regulators and governments, without the bubble too. Bitcoin upends the notion of a nation state controlling the supply of money. So obviously different governments are reacting to it with a wide range of actions, ranging from outright ban from using the existing banking systems to buy and sell Bitcoin and other digital currencies to some countries putting a legal framework in place to securely let their citizens trade in them. The biggest fear they have is the black money being pumped into digital currencies. With proper KYC procedures, these fears can be removed. However, governments and financial institutions are also realizing the advantages Blockchain offer in streamlining their banking and financial markets and are launching pilot projects to adopt Blockchain. Blockchain and disruption in 2019 Will Ethereum continue to dominate the industry or are there new platforms that you think present a serious challenge? Why? Ethereum do have an early mover advantage. However, we know that the early moved advantage is not such a big moat to cross for new competitors. There are likely to be competing and bigger platforms to emerge from the likes of Facebook, Amazon, and IBM that will solve the scalability issues Ethereum faces. What industries do you think blockchain technology is most likely to disrupt in 2019, and why? Finance and Banking are still the biggest industries that will see an explosion of creative products coming out due to the adoption of Blockchain technology. Products for Government use are going to be big especially wherever there is a need for immutable source of truth, like in the case of land records. Do you have any other thoughts on the future of blockchain you’d like to share? We are at a very early stage of Blockchain adoption. It’s very hard to predict right now what kind of killer apps will emerge few years down the line. Nobody predicted smartphones in 2007 will give rise to Apps like Uber. Important thing is to have the right mix of optimism and skepticism.

This post will show you how to choose a robot chassis kit with wheels and motors, a motor controller, and some power for the robot, talking through the trade-offs and things to avoid. This article is an excerpt from a book written by Danny Staple titled Learn Robotics Programming. In this book, you will learn you'll gain experience of building a next-generation collaboration robot Choosing a robot chassis kit The chassis, like the controller, is a fundamental decision when making a robot. Although these can be self-made using 3D printing or toy hacking, the most simple place to start is with a robot chassis kit. These kits contain sets of parts to start off your robot build. A chassis can be changed, but it would mean rebuilding the robot. The internet has plenty of robot chassis kits around. Too many, so how do you choose one? Size Getting the size for a robot right matters too. Take a look at the following photos: Chassis 1 is 11 cm in and just about fits a controller in it, but is too tiny. This will make it hard to build your robot. Squeezing the controller, power, and all the sensors into this small space would need skill and experience beyond the scope of a first robot build. Chassis 2 is Armbot. This large robot is 33 cm by 30 cm, with an arm reach of another 300 mm. It needs eight AA batteries, big motors, and a big controller. These add to the expense and may cause issues around power handling for a new builder. It has lots of space, but issues around weight and rigidity. Armbot is one of my most expensive robots, excluding the cost of the arm! Chassis 3 in the preceding image will fit the Pi, batteries, and sensor, but without being large and bulky. It is around the right dimensions, being between 15-20 cm long and 10-15 cm wide. Those that have split levels might be great for this, but only one or two levels, as three or four will make a robot top heavy and may cause it to topple. This has enough space and is relatively easy to build. Wheel count Some robot chassis kits have elaborate movement methods, legs, tank tracks, and tri-star wheels, to name a few. While these are fun and I encourage experimenting with them, this is not the place to start at. So, I recommend a thoroughly sensible, if basic, wheels on motors version. There are kits with four-wheel drive and six-wheel drive. These can be quite powerful and will require larger motor controllers. They may also chew through batteries, and you are increasing the likelihood of overloading something. This also makes for trickier wiring, as seen in the following: Two-wheel drive is the simplest to wire in. It usually requires a third wheel for balance. This can be a castor wheel, roller ball, or just a Teflon sled for tiny robots. Two wheels are also the easiest to steer, avoiding some friction issues seen with robots using four or more wheels. Two wheels won't have the pulling power of four or six-wheel drive, but they are simple and will work. They are also less expensive: Wheels and motors A kit for a beginner should come with the wheels and the motors. The wheels should have simple non-pneumatic rubber tires. The most obvious style for inexpensive robots is shown in the following photo. There are many kits with these in them: The kit should also come with two motors, one for each wheel, and include the screws or parts to mount them onto the chassis. I recommend DC Gear motors, as the gearing will keep the speed usable while increasing the mechanical pushing power the robot has. Importantly, the motors should have the wires connected, like the first motor in the following photo: It is tricky to solder or attach these wires to the small tags on motors, and poorly attached ones do have a frustrating habit of coming off. The kits you will want to start with have these wires attached, as can be seen in the following: Another point to note is that where the motors are mounted, the kits should have some encoder wheels, and a slot to read them through. The encoder wheels are also known as odometry, tacho, or tachometer wheels. Simplicity You don't want to use a complex or hard-to-assemble kit for your first robot build. I've repeated this throughout with two-wheel drive, two motors with the wires soldered on and steering clear of large robots, or unusual and interesting locomotion systems, not because they are flawed, but because it's better to start simple. There is a limit to this, a robot kit that is a fully built and enclosed robot leaves little room for learning or experimentation and would actually require toy hacking skills to customize. Cost Related to simplicity is cost. Robot chassis kits can be brought from around $15, up to thousands of dollars. Larger and more complex robots tend to be far more costly. Here, I am aiming to keep to the less costly options or at least show where they are possible. Conclusion So, now you can choose a chassis kit, with two wheels and a castor, two motors with wires soldered on them, slots, and encoder wheels. These are not expensive, and widely available on popular internet shopping sites as "Smart Car Chassis," with terms like "2WD": The kit I'm working with looks like the preceding photo when assembled without the Raspberry Pi. Choosing a motor controller The next important part you'll need is a motor controller. Much like the motors, there are a number of trade-offs and considerations before buying one. Integration level Motor controllers can be as simple as motor power control driven from GPIO pins directly, such as the L298. This is the cheapest solution: a generic L298N motor controller can be connected to some of the IO pins on the Raspberry Pi. These are reasonably robust and have been easily available for a long time. They are flexible, but using parts like this will take up more space and need to be wired point to point, adding complexity to the build: Others are as complex as whole IO controller boards, many of which hide their own controller similar to an Arduino, along with motor control chips. Although the cheapest and most flexible ways are the most basic controllers, those with higher integration will reduce size, keep the pin usage count low (handy when you are connecting a lot to the robot), and may simplify your robot build. They often come integrated with a power supply too. Motor controllers can be bought as fully integrated Raspberry Pi hats, boards designed to fit exactly on top of a Raspberry Pi. These tend to have a high level of integration, as discussed before, but may come at the cost of flexibility, especially if you plan to use other accessories. Pin usage When buying a motor controller in Raspberry Pi hat form, pin usage is important. If we intend to use microphones (PCM/I2S), servo motors, and I2c and SPI devices with this robot, having boards that make use of these pins is less than ideal. Simply being plugged into pins doesn't mean they are all used, so only a subset of the pins is usually actually connected on a hat. To get an idea of how pins in different boards interact on the Raspberry Pi, take a look at https://pinout.xyz , which lets you select Raspberry Pi boards and see the pin configuration for them. Controllers that use the I2C or serial bus are great because they make efficient use of pins and that bus can be shared. At the time of writing, PiConZero, the Stepper Motor Hat, and ZeroBorg all use I2C pins. The Full Function Stepper Motor Hat is able to control DC motors and servo motors, is cheap, and is widely available. It also has the pins available straight through on the top and an I2C connector on the side. It's designed to work with other hats and allow more expansion. Size The choice of this depends on the chassis, specifically the size of the motors you have. In simple terms, the larger your chassis, the larger a controller you will need. The power handling capacity of a motor controller is specified in amps. For a robot like the The Robot Kit I'm Using image, around 1 to 1.5 amps per channel is good. The consequence of too low a rating can be disaster, resulting in a robot that barely moves, while the components cook themselves or violently go bang. Too large a controller has consequences for space, weight, and cost: The level of integration can also contribute to size. A tiny board that stacks on a Pi would take up less space than separate boards. Related to size is if the board keeps the camera port on the Raspberry Pi accessible. Soldering As you choose boards for a robot, you will note that some come as kits themselves, requiring parts to be soldered on. If you are already experienced with this, it may be an option. For experienced builders, this becomes a small cost in time depending on the complexity of the soldering. A small header is going to be a very quick and easy job, and a board that comes as a bag of components with a bare board will be a chunk of an evening. Here, I will recommend components that require the least soldering. Connectors Closely related to soldering are the connectors for the motors and batteries. I tend to prefer the screw type connectors. Other types may require matching motors or crimping skills: Conclusion Our robot is space constrained; for this reason, we will be looking at the Raspberry Pi hat type form factor. We are also looking to keep the number of pins it binds to really low. An I2C-based hat will let us do this. The Full Function Stepper Motor Hat (also known as the Full Function Robot Expansion Board) gets us access to all the Pi pins while being a powerful motor controller: It's available in most countries, has space for the ribbon for the camera, and controls servo motors. I recommend the 4tronix PiConZero hat, or assembling a stack of PiBorg hats. These may be harder to source outside of the UK. The reader will need to adapt the code, and consider a tiny shim to retain access to the GPIO pins if using a different board. In this article, we learned about selecting the parts needed to build a basic robot. We looked at the size, wheel, cost, and connectors for the robot chassis and a controller. To learn more about robotics and build your own robot check out this book Learn Robotics Programming. Real-time motion planning for robots made faster and efficient with RapidPlan processor Boston Dynamics adds military-grade mortor (parkour) skills to its popular humanoid Atlas Robot Sex robots, artificial intelligence, and ethics: How desire shapes and is shaped by algorithms

If black hats were sharks, then our emails would be a school of innocent, unsuspecting guppies nonchalantly drifting along. For black hats or malicious hackers, getting into the average person’s email is as challenging as overeating at a buffet. After all, e-mail is the most successful federated communication system ever built, with over 281 billion emails sent per day and growing. We’re helpless without email. Most people cannot imagine an hour going by without checking and answering emails, let alone a day. Over email, you send updates on your address and banking information to your service providers or clients, health information to your university or insurance agent, and more. Despite this, email traffic generally does not have end-to-end encryption, leaving it highly vulnerable. And 91% of cyber attacks are carried out through e-mail. Fish, meet barrel. And for whatever e-mail scanners or antivirus you have running, know that black hats are developing their own predatory tools at a much faster rate. Social engineering, baiting, and placing malicious links in places as seemingly harmless as unsubscribe buttons are just a few items from their arsenal of tricks. Cybersecurity companies are getting better at detecting threats and identifying suspicious emails or links, but most people are just not tech savvy enough to avoid these pitfalls. Many think that they don’t even need to bother, which you have to realize is like walking blindfolded through the Temple of Doom and expecting to get out of there unscathed. Don’t be that person. Don’t be in that school of fish just waiting to be a shark snack. It’s time to understand why protecting your email is so important and how black hats are plotting your demise. Data exploitation and ransom With the amount of conversation happening lately about the importance of having control over your data, it should be clear how valuable data can be. Data can be used for consumer and marketing purposes or misused to fraudulently conduct purchases on e-commerce sites. It can be sold to other parties who will use it for illicit or illegal purposes, or even just to steal even more data from your friends and family. Equifax was one of the more famous data breaches that occurred recently. It affected over 200,000 people and compromised their credit card information, social security numbers, credit scores, and other very sensitive information. Now if you’re not in the 1%, you probably think you’re not the type to be subject to be a ransom attack, but you’d be wrong. You don’t need to be famous or powerful for people to try to bleed you dry in this way. Ransomware attacks, or attacks that are meant to hold on to your data in return for ransom money, rose by 250% in 2017. WannaCry is an example of an infamous ransomware attack, which caused an estimated $1B in damage or more. Identity Theft The dangers of identity theft may be obvious, but many people don’t understand to what extent it can really affect their future. Identity theft may actually be the worst thing a hacker can do with your information. In 2017, the direct and indirect cost of identity theft in the US was estimated at $16.8 billion. Identity theft harmed 16.7 million people,  which is about 7% of American adults! And one weakness leads to another - back in 2014, the Department of Justice estimated that about ⅓ of Americans who suffered a data breach subsequently became victims of financial fraud. Now in 2018, this is only likely to have increased. Here are just a few things thieves can do with your identifying information: Open credit cards or take out loans Aside from your name, if black hats also obtain your Social Security number, birthdate, and address, they can open credit cards and apply for loans in your name. Intercept your tax refund The tax refund you are excited about may not come after all if you get hacked. People who wait until the last moment to declare are more vulnerable and thieves may counterfile a fake tax return using your identity. Use it to receive medical treatment By obtaining your SSN and health insurance account numbers, black hats can use or sell your information in order to receive medical treatment. According to a study from Michigan State University, there were nearly 1,800 incidents of medical data breaches with patients’ information from October 2009 to December 2016. These breaches can be used to receive treatments, prescriptions, and even put your own health at risk if the thief’s medical information is now mixed up with yours. Travel with your airline miles Airline miles can be exchanged for cash, gift cards, and products or upgrades. Millions of miles have been stolen easily through phishing emails and other simple email scams. Open utility accounts 13% of 2016’s fraud incidents were related to phone and utility accounts. Thieves can open an account with a gas, phone, or electric company using your stolen SSN and then run up huge bills in your name, right under your nose. Outsmarting the sharks The first and simplest step you can take to defend against email fraud is to learn to avoid phishing schemes. A phishing scheme is when someone emails you pretending to be someone they’re not. (Think Nigerian princes or friends who suddenly find themselves abroad without a wallet when you could have sworn they were at the bar Friday night.) They could also be pretending to be from your email or healthcare provider asking you to log in. These e-mails often include links to phishing sites that will collect your passwords and personal information. You may have heard that using passphrases instead of passwords can help protect you, and it’s true that they are more secure. They’re even stronger when you include special characters like quotation marks, and use languages other than English. This is the best known practice for generating strong passwords. But these passphrases can still be stolen through phishing, just like any password. So don’t let a clever passphrase lull you into a false sense of security. Phishing is extremely prevalent. About 1.4 million of these fake sites are created each month, and around 135 million phishing attempts are made via email every single day. Here are some main rules of thumb to avoid phishing, and all they take are common sense: Don’t follow any links that don’t have https in the URL. Avoid links that lack the S. Don’t enter your password after following any link from any e-mail. Even if it really looks legit. If it’s from your bank, for example, just enter your banking app normally to complete whatever the e-mail is asking you to do. Do not follow the e-mailed link. Chances are, you’ll discover your account is normal and requires no attention at all. Bullet dodged. Keep your accounts secure with two factor authentication - that means adding an extra step to your login process, like receiving a security code to your phone. This is annoying for sure, but it does help keep predators out until a better solution is offered to the masses. We’re looking at you, e-mail security industry! We’re in dangerous waters these days, and the hacker sharks are circling, but you’re not helpless if you pay attention. Treat your e-mail with the same careful consideration with which you’d (hopefully) treat your wallet or other tangible assets, and you’ll go a long way towards avoiding the worst. Good luck out there! Author Bio Georg Greve is the Co-founding Chairman and Head of Product Development at Vereign, an intuitive software platform on a mission to bring authenticity and privacy to day-to-day online communication. Georg is also a software developer, physicist, and entrepreneur, with two decades of experience working closely with Red Hat, IBM, and Google as well as the United Nations, European Commission and various countries. His interest in information security dates back even further. He previously worked on the secure messaging platform Kolab, and as Founding President of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), where he received the German Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon for his groundbreaking work on Open Standards and Free Software. Dark Web Phishing Kits: Cheap, plentiful and ready to trick you. Using machine learning for phishing domain detection [Tutorial] Meet ‘Gophish’, the open source Phishing Toolkit that simulates real-world phishing attacks

Bill Gates is quoted as saying that we tend to overestimate the pace of change over a period of 2 years, but underestimate change over a decade. It’s an astute observation: much of what will matter in 2019 actually looks a lot like what we said will be important in development this year. But if you look back 10 years, the change in the types of applications and websites we build - as well as how we build them - is astonishing. The web as we understood it in 2008 is almost unrecognisable. Today, we are in the midst of the app and API economy. Notions of surfing the web sound almost as archaic as a dial up tone. Similarly, the JavaScript framework boom now feels old hat - building for browsers just sounds weird... So, as we move into 2019, progressive web apps, artificial intelligence, and native app development remain at the top of development agenda. But this doesn’t mean these changes are to be ignored as empty hype. If anything, as adoption increases and new tools emerge, we will begin to see more radical shifts in ways of working. The cutting edge will need to sharpen itself elsewhere. What will it mean to be a web developer in 2019? But these changes are enforcing wider changes in the industry. Arguably, it’s transforming what it means to be a web developer. As applications become increasingly lightweight (thanks to libraries and frameworks like React and Vue), and data becomes more intensive, thanks to the range of services upon which applications and websites depend, developers need to expand across the stack. You can see this in some of the latest Packt titles - in Modern JavaScript Web Development Cookbook, for example, you’ll learn microservices and native app development - topics that have typically fallen outside of the strict remit of web development. The simplification of many aspects of development has, ironically, forced developers to look more closely at how these aspects fit together. As you move further into layers of abstraction, the way things interact and work alongside each other become vital. For the most part, it’s no longer a case of writing the requisite code to make something run on the specific part of the application you’re working on, it’s rather about understanding how the various pieces - from the backend to the front end - fit together. This means, in 2019, you need to dive deeper and get to know your software systems inside out. Get comfortable with the backend. Dive into cloud. Start playing with microservices. Rethink and revisit languages you thought you knew. Get to know your infrastructure: tackling the challenges of API development It might sound strange, but as the stack shrinks and the responsibilities of developers - web and otherwise - shift, understanding the architectural components within the software their building is essential. You could blame some of this on DevOps - essentially, it has made developers responsible for how their code runs once it hits production. Because of this important change, the requisite skills and toolchain for the modern developer is also expanding. There are a range of routes into software architecture, but exploring API design is a good place to begin. Hands on RESTful API Design offers a practical way into the topic. While REST is the standard for API design, the diverse range of tools and approaches is making managing the client a potentially complex but interesting area. GraphQL, a query language developed by Facebook is said to have killed off REST (although we wouldn’t be so hasty), while Redux and Relay, two libraries for managing data in React applications, have seen a lot of interest over the last 12 months as two key tools for working with APIs. Want to get started with GraphQL? Try Beginning GraphQL. Learn Redux with Learning Redux.       Microservices: take responsibility for your infrastructure The reason that we’re seeing so many tools offering ways of managing APIs is that microservices are becoming the dominant architectural mode. This requires developer attention too. That’s not to say that you need to implement microservices now (in fact, there are probably many reasons not to), but if you want to be building software in 5 years time, getting to grips with the principles behind microservices and the tools that can help you use them. Perhaps one of the central technologies driving microservices are containers. You could run microservices in a virtual machine, but because they’re harder to scale than containers, you probably wouldn’t be seeing the benefits you’d be expecting from a microservices architecture. This means getting to grips with core container technologies is vital. Docker is the obvious place to start. There are varying degrees to which developers need to understand it, but even if you don’t think you’ll be using it immediately it does give you a nice real-world foundation in containers if you don’t already have one. Watch and learn how to put Docker to work with the Hands on Docker for Microservices video.  But beyond Docker, Kubernetes is the go to tool that allows you to scale and orchestrate containers. This gives you control over how you scale application services in a way that you probably couldn’t have imagined a decade ago. Get a grounding in Kubernetes with Getting Started with Kubernetes - Third Edition, or follow a 7 day learning plan with Kubernetes in 7 Days. If you want to learn how Docker and Kubernetes come together as part of a fully integrated approach to development, check out Hands on Microservices with Node.js. It's time for developers to embrace cloud It should come as no surprise that, if the general trend is towards full stack, where everything is everyone’s problem, that developers simply can’t afford to ignore cloud. And why would you want to - the levels of abstraction it offers, and the various services and integrations that come with the leading cloud services can make many elements of the development process much easier. Issues surrounding scale, hardware, setup and maintenance almost disappear when you use cloud. That’s not to say that cloud platforms don’t bring their own set of challenges, but they do allow you to focus on more interesting problems. But more importantly, they open up new opportunities. Serverless becomes a possibility - allowing you to scale incredibly quickly by running everything on your cloud provider, but there are other advantages too. Want to get started with serverless? Check out some of these titles… JavaScript Cloud Native Development Cookbook Hands-on Serverless Architecture with AWS Lambda [Video] Serverless Computing with Azure [Video] For example, when you use cloud you can bring advanced features like artificial intelligence into your applications. AWS has a whole suite of machine learning tools - AWS Lex can help you build conversational interfaces, while AWS Polly turns text into speech. Similarly, Azure Cognitive Services has a diverse range of features for vision, speech, language, and search. What cloud brings you, as a developer, is a way of increasing the complexity of applications and processes, while maintaining agility. Adding in features and optimizations previously might have felt sluggish - maybe even impossible. But by leveraging AWS and Azure (among others), you can do much more than you previously realised. Back to basics: New languages, and fresh approaches With all of this ostensible complexity in contemporary software development, you’d be forgiven for thinking that languages simply don’t matter. That’s obviously nonsense. There’s an argument that gaining a deeper understanding of how languages work, what they offer, and where they may be weak, can make you a much more accomplished developer. Be prepared is sage advice for a world where everything is unpredictable - both in the real world and inside our software systems too. So, you have two options - and both are smart. Either go back to a language you know and explore a new paradigm or learn a new language from scratch. Learn a new language: Kotlin Quick Start Guide Hands-On Go Programming Mastering Go Learning TypeScript 2.x - Second Edition     Explore a new programming paradigm: Functional Programming in Go [Video] Mastering Functional Programming Hands-On Functional Programming in RUST Hands-On Object-Oriented Programming with Kotlin     2019: the same, but different, basically... It's not what you should be saying if you work for a tech publisher, but I'll be honest: software development in 2019 will look a lot like it has in 2018.  But that doesn't mean you have time to be complacent. In just a matter of years, much of what feels new or ‘emerging’ today will be the norm. You don’t have to look hard to see the set of skills many full stack developer job postings are asking for - the demands are so diverse that adaptability is clearly immensely valuable both for your immediate projects and future career prospects. So, as 2019 begins, commit to developing yourself sharpening your skill set.

Keren Elazari, a world renowned cybersecurity analyst and senior researcher at the Tel Aviv University Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center, author and speaker spoke earlier this year at Six, about the future of cybersecurity and a range of real world attacks in recent years. She also dived into the consequences as well as possible motivations behind such attacks. The Six event covers various press conferences and hackathons. The Six event organizes around one billion security events on a daily basis. The cybersecurity events organized by Six has international experts who answer various questions and give insights on various topics. This article highlights few insights from this year’s Six on Cybersecurity talk by Keren Elazari on The Future of Cybersecurity from a hacker’s perspective. How hackers used Starbucks’ free WiFi to use customer CPU resources for crypto mining “What if I told you that in 10 seconds I could take over your computer, generate thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies all while you are drinking your morning coffee? You might think it’s impossible, by this is exactly what happened in Argentina earlier this year.” - Keren Elazari Earlier this year, the Starbucks customers  at Argentina experienced a slight delay of 10 seconds after logging into the website for free Wi-Fi. So what exactly happened? A security researcher discovered that the computer was running Coinhive, a type of distributed cryptocurrency mining software for those ten seconds. It was running on all the machines in Argentinian Starbucks that logged in for free Wi-Fi and the software generated a lot of  monero, the cryptocurrency (money). The hacker didn’t even have to code a JavaScript for this attack as he just had to buy the code from Coinhive. The business model of the company behind Coinhive allows anyone to monetize the user’s CPU. Cyber criminals can earn a lot of money from technologies like Coinhive. There are actually some news sites in the US that are looking at using such coinhiving solution as an alternative to paying for the news. This is an example of how creative technologies made by cybercriminals can even generate completely new business models. IoT brings a whole new set of vulnerabilities to your ecosystem “According to the Munich security conference report, they are expecting this year double the amount of devices than there are humans on this planet. This is not going to change. We definitely need an immune system for new digital universe because it is expanding without a stop.”   Devices like cameras, CCTVs, webcams etc could be used by potential hackers to spy of users. But even if measures such as blocking its vision with tape is taken, web cams can be hacked, not with an intention to steal pictures but to hack of other devices. How the Mirai DDoS attack used webcams to bring down the likes of Airbnb and Amazon This is what happened 2 years ago, when the massive internet DDoS attack - Mirai took place. Over the course of a weekend it took down websites all over the world. Websites like Amazon, Airbnb, and large news sites etc were down, due to which these companies faced losses. This attack was supercharged by the numerous devices in people’s homes. These devices where for DDoS attack because they were using basic internet protocols such as DNS which can be easily subverted. Even worse, many of the devices used default username password combinations. It’s important to change the passwords for the newly purchased devices. With shodan, a search engine, one can check the internet connected devices in their organizations or at home. This is helpful as it improves protection for the organizations from getting hacked. How hackers used a smart fish tank to steal data from a casino and an AI caught it “Hackers have found very creative, very fast automatic ways to identify devices that they can use and they will utilize any resource online. It would just become a part of their digital army. Speaking of which even an aquarium, a fish tank was hacked recently.” Recently, a smart fish tank in a US Casino was hacked. It had smart sensors that would check the temperature and the feeding schedule of the fish and the salinity of the water. While, hacking a fish tank does not appear to have any monetary incentive to a hacker, its connection to the internet make it a valuable access point.. The hackers, who already had access to the casino network, used the outgoing internet connection of the aquarium to send out 10 gigabytes of data from the casino. As the data was going of this connection, there was no firewall and it got noticed by none. The suspicious activity was flaggedby a self learning algorithm which realized that there was something fishy as the outgoing connection had no relation with the fish tank setup. How WannaCry used Ransomware attacks to target organizations “I don’t think we should shame organizations for having to deal with ransomware because it is a little bit like a flu in a sense that these attacks are designed to propagate and infect as many computers as they can.”- Keren Elazari In May 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm, affected the computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system by encrypting data and the criminals demanded ransom payments in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. This attack affected the UK National Health Service the most as according to NHS, 30% of that national health services were not functioning. 80 out of the 236 trusts got affected in England. As per the UK government, North Korea was behind this attack as they are need of money because they are under sanctions. The Lazarus Group, a cybercrime group from North Korea attacked the Swift infrastructure and also attacked the central bank of Bangladesh last year. NotPetya - The Wiper attack “Whoever was hacking the tax company in the Ukraine wanted to create an effective virus that would destroy the evidence of everything they have been doing for two years in a bunch of Ukrainian companies. It might have been an accident that it infected so many other companies in the world.” In June, 2017, NotPetya, a wiper attack affected enterprise networks across Europe. The Ukrainian companies got highly affected. This attack appeared like a ransomware attack as it demanded some payment but it actually was a wiper attack. This attack affected the data and wiped off the data stored for two years. Maersk, the world's largest container shipping company got highly affected by this attack. The company faced a heavy loss of amount $300 million and was a collateral damage. Out-of-life operation systems were most affected by this virus. The software vulnerability used in both of these attacks, ransomware and wiper was a code named, EternalBlue, a cyber weapon which was discovered and developed by National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA couldn’t keep a track of EternalBlue and the criminals took advantage of this and attacked using using this cyber weapon. Earlier this year, a cyber attack was made on the German government IT network. This attack affected the defence and interior ministries' private networks. Why might motivate nation state actors back cyber-attacks? “The story is never simple when it comes to cyber attackers. Sometimes the motivations of a nation or nation state actors can be hidden behind what seems like a financial or criminal activity.” One of the reasons behind a nation or state backing a cyber-attack could be the the financial aspect, they might be under sanctions and need money for developing nuclear weapons. Another reason could be that the state or country is in a state of chaos or confusion and it is trying to create a dynamic from which they could benefit. Lastly, it could be an accident, where the cyber attack sometimes gets more effective than what the state has ever imagined of. What can organizations do to safeguard themselves from such cyberattacks? Consider making hundreds of security decisions everyday while putting personal details like credit card on a website, downloading a software that cause trouble to the system, etc. Instead of using a recycled password, go for a new one. Educating employees in the organizations about penetration testing. Sharing details of the past experience with regards to hacking, will help in working towards it. Developing a cybersecurity culture in the organization will bring change. Invite a Red team to the organizations to review the system. Encourage Bug Bounty Programs for reporting bugs in organization. Security professionals can work in collaboration with programs like Mayhem. Mayhem is an automated system that helps in finding the bugs in a system. It won the hacking challenge in 2016 but beaten by humans the next year. “Just imagine you are in a big ball room and you are looking at the hacking competition between completely automated supercomputers  and this (Mayhem) ladies and gentlemen is the winner and I think is also the future.” Just two years ago, Mayhem, a machine won in a hacking competition organized by United  States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Las Vegas, where seven machines (supercomputers) competed against each other. Mayhem is the first non-human to win a hacking competition. In 2017, Mayhem competed against humans, though humans won it. But we can still imagine how smart are smart computers. What does the Future of Cybersecurity look like? “In the years to come, automation, machine learning, algorithms, AI will be an integral part, not just of every aspect of society, but [also an] integral part of cybersecurity. That’s why I believe we need more such technologies and more humans that know how to work alongside and together with these automated creatures. If you like me think that friendly hackers, technology, and building  an ecosystem will a good way to create a safer society, I hope you take the red pill and wake up to this reality,” concludes Elazari. As 2018 comes to a close plagued with security breaches across industries, Keren’s insightful talk on cybersecurity is a must watch for everyone entering 2019. Packt has put together a new cybersecurity bundle for Humble Bundle 5 lessons public wi-fi can teach us about cybersecurity Blackberry is acquiring AI & cybersecurity startup, Cylance, to expand its next-gen endpoint solutions like its autonomous cars’ software

Spam email is a part of daily life on the internet. Even the best junk mail filters will still allow through certain suspicious looking messages. If an illegitimate email tries to persuade you to click a link and enter personal information, then it is classified as a phishing attack. Phishing attackers send out email blasts to large groups of people with the messages designed to look like they come from a reputable company, such as Google, Apple, or a banking or credit card firm. The emails will typically try to warn you about an error with your account and then urge you to click a link and log in with your credentials. Doing so will bring you to an imitation website where the attacker will attempt to steal your password, social security number, or other private data. These days phishing attacks are becoming more widespread. One of the primary reasons is because of easy access to cybercrime kits on the dark web. With the hacker community growing, internet users need to take privacy seriously and remain vigilant against spam and other threats. Read on to learn more about this trend and how to protect yourself. Dark Web Basics The dark web, sometimes referred to as the deep web, operates as a separate environment on the internet. Normal web browsers, like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, connect to the world wide web using the HTTP protocol. The dark web requires a special browser tool known as the TOR browser, which is fully encrypted and anonymous. Image courtesy of Medium.com Sites on the dark web cannot be indexed by search engines, so you'll never stumble on that content through Google. When you connect through the TOR browser, all of your browsing traffic is sent through a global overlay network so that your location and identity cannot be tracked. Even IP addresses are masked on the dark web. Hacker Markets Much of what takes place in this cyber underworld is illegal or unethical in nature, and that includes the marketplaces that exist there. Think of these sites as blackmarket versions of eBay, where anonymous individuals can buy and sell illegal goods and services. Recently, dark web markets have seen a surge in demands for cybercrime tools and utilities. Entire phishing kits are sold to buyers, which include spoofed pages that imitate real companies and full guides on how to launch an email phishing scam. Image courtesy of Medium.com When a spam email is sent out as part of a phishing scam, the messages are typically delivered through dark web servers that make it hard for junk filters to identify. In addition, the "From" address in the emails may look legitimate and use a valid domain like @gmail.com. Phishing kits can be found for as less as two dollars, meaning that inexperienced hackers can launch a cybercrime effort with little funding or training. It’s interesting to note that personal data prices at the Dark Web supermarket range from a single dollar (Social Security card) to thousands (medical records). Cryptocurrency Scandal You should be on the lookout for phishing scandals related to any company or industry, but in particular, banking and financial attacks can be the most dangerous. If a hacker gains access to your credit card numbers or online banking password, then can commit fraud or even steal your identity. The growing popularity of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether have revolutionized the financial industry, but as a negative result of the trend, cybercriminals are now targeting these digital money systems. MyEtherWallet website, which allows users to store blockchain currency in a central location, has been victim to a number of phishing scams in recent months. Image courtesy ofMyEtherWallet.com Because cryptocurrencies do not operate with a central bank or financial authority, you may not know what a legitimate email alert for one looks like. Phishing messages for MyEtherWallet will usually claim that there is an issue with your cryptocurrency account, or sometimes even suggest that you have a payment pending that needs to be verified. Clicking on the link in the phishing email will launch your web browser and navigate to a spoofed page that looks like it is part of myetherwallet.com. However, the page is actually hosted on the hacker's network and will feed directly into their illegitimate database. If you enter your private wallet address, which is a unique string of letters and numbers, the hacker can gain access to all of the funds in your account. Preventative Measures Phishing attacks are a type of cybercrime that targets individuals, so it's up to you to be on guard for these messages and react appropriately. The first line of defense against phishing is to be skeptical of all emails that enter your inbox. Dark web hackers are getting better and better at imitating real companies with their spam and spoofing pages, so you need to look closely when examining the content. Always check the full URL of the links in email messages before you click one. If you do get tricked and end up navigating to a spoofed page in your web browser, you still have a chance to protect yourself. All browsers support secure sockets layer (SSL) functionality and will display a lock icon or a green status bar at the top of the window when a website has been confirmed as legitimate. If you navigate to a webpage from an email that does not have a valid SSL certificate, you should close the browser immediately and permanently delete the email message. The Bottom Line Keep this in mind. As prices for phishing kits drop and supply increases, the allure of engaging in this kind of bad behavior will be too much to resist for an increasing number of people. Expect incidents of phishing attempts will increase. The general internet-browsing public should stay on high alert at all times when navigating their email inbox. Think first, then click. Author Bio Gary Stevens is a front-end developer. He’s a full-time blockchain geek and a volunteer working for the Ethereum foundation as well as an active Github contributor. Packt has put together a new cybersecurity bundle for Humble Bundle Malicious code in npm ‘event-stream’ package targets a bitcoin wallet and causes 8 million downloads in two months Why scepticism is important in computer security: Watch James Mickens at USENIX 2018 argue for thinking over blindly shipping code