There is a new Web 3.0 trend among crypto companies to issue their own crypto tokens as Esops to their employees. Read below to find out what exactly they are and how they will be taxed in India.
An employee stock option (ESOP) is a popular method that companies use for rewarding their deserving employees. But following the Web 3.0 trend, several global and Indian crypto companies are also issuing Esops to their employees, but with a slight difference. The Esops issued by them are on the Blockchain and are governed by smart contracts. 
MuffinPay ($MFIN) is one such Crypto Fintech Start-up that recently reserved $6 million worth of Blockchain-based Esop for its employees. In addition, many other global crypto companies, including crypto exchanges like Binance (BNB), have their own crypto tokens and have allocated Blockchain-based Esops to their employees in the past. 
Hitesh Malviya, founder of itsblockchain.com, India’s oldest cryptocurrency and Blockchain media publication website, says: “Similar to start-ups and companies in the Web 2.0 era, these days, crypto companies and others are issuing Web 3.0 enabled Blockchain-based Esops to their employees. Like Web 2.0 based Esops, these new Web 3.0 Blockchain-based Esops too have a cliff period, wherein it can’t be claimed or sold, and they also follow a vesting period schedule, i.e., the time period between the Esop grant date and vesting date, which varies from company to company.” 
Continue reading: https://www.outlookindia.com/business/the-latest-web-3-0-trend-blockchain-based-esops-read-here-to-know-more-about-it-news-198388

The lawn and garden market is projected to reach $26.3 billion by 2020, according to Allied Market Research. Gardening can lift your spirits and help make you feel peaceful and content. Yet, something good for you mentally isn't necessarily good for the environment. The non-organic chemicals in pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers can be toxic to the environment.
Through her capital and deal flow pipeline for early-stage female tech founders, Vinetta Project, Vanessa Dawson started working with consumer packaged goods (CPG) corporations like P&G. Because smaller CPG brands are often better able to address millennial and generation Z consumer demands, established companies are accelerating investment in emerging brands.
Farmers and researchers have been developing sustainable ingredients in pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Dawson saw using sustainable ingredients as an opportunity and launched Arber on Earth Day 2021.
Dawson's interest in gardening corresponded to where she was in her lifecycle. Four or five years ago, she moved from New York City to Los Angeles, bought a home, and had a baby. Whether it was for skincare, baby care, or home care, she was using products that were healthy for the planet. But she couldn't find organic, environmentally safe gardening products. There was a void in the market.
"It was shocking to see that I could transform my skincare, baby care, and even clothes washing [using environmentally safe products], but not garden care," sighed Dawson. "Garden and [plant] care products were about quick growth regardless of whether it degraded the soil and killed beneficial insects." Further complicating the picture was that some products labeled "natural ingredients" are harmful to the environment. "There is a lot of 'green washing' in the industry."
Continue reading: nhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2022/05/25/how-a-female-tech-founder-leveraged-her-skills-in-the-organic-biological-garden-market/?sh=2aee93651aab

The number of women in technology and leadership roles has increased. Still, there has been little growth in the representation of women in terms of percentage in jobs like programmers and executives in the world’s top digital companies. These findings emerged from a recent Huawei seminar, ‘Addressing the gender gap’.
“One of the key things we have learned is that radical transformation is possible and that it is possible for all of us,” said Alaina Percival, CEO and co-founder of Women Who Code, a non-governmental organization based in the United States.
Additionally, Percival said that companies, industries and governments should continue to build for inclusion and think about how we can design inclusion by increasing opportunities for women across the industry. “Inclusion is not by desire. It’s by design,” Percival said.
Afke Schaart, senior vice-president of public affairs at Huawei, said that 75 per cent of the jobs are expected to be related to STEMs by 2050, citing UNESCO figures. Schaart noted that her company has rolled out several initiatives globally to groom young talents in the digital sector, such as Seeds for the Future, ICT Academy and the Global ICT Contest. “We see ourselves playing an important role in enabling and inspiring more women to join the technology sector, given that we are an important partner for going digital in this region,” Schaart said. “The good thing is that we have been committed to the initiatives, some of which have been there for a long time. We started the Seeds for the Future program in 2008, and it is still growing,” Schaart said.
Continue reading: https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/women-in-tech-up-but-not-enough/

By 2025, the World Economic Forum estimates that 97 million new jobs may emerge as artificial intelligence (AI) changes the nature of work and influences the new division of labor between humans, machines and algorithms. Specifically in banking, a recent McKinsey survey found that AI technologies could deliver up to $1 trillion of additional value each year. AI is continuing its steady rise and starting to have a sweeping impact on the financial services industry, but its potential is still far from fully realized.
The transformative power of AI is already impacting a range of functions in financial services including risk management, personalization, fraud detection and ESG analytics. The problem is that advances in AI are slowed down by a global shortage of workers with the skills and experience in areas such as deep learning, natural language processing and robotic process automation. So with AI technology opening new opportunities, financial services workers are eager to gain the skills they need in order to leverage AI tools and advance their careers. 
Today, 87% of employees consider retraining and upskilling options at workplaces very important, and at the same time, more companies ranked upskilling their workforce as a top-5 business priority now than pre-pandemic. Companies that don’t focus on powering AI training will fall behind in a tight hiring market. Below are some key takeaways for business leaders looking to prioritize reskilling efforts at their organization.
Build data literacy with customizable learning paths
Any digital transformation requires leaders to focus their investments on two modern sources of competitive advantage: data and people. First, boosting data literacy across the organization helps line of business and domain experts (Sales, HR, Marketing, Financial Analysts, etc.) collaborate with AI and machine learning experts, which is critical to move beyond proof of concepts and experimentation.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/2022/05/24/ai-reskilling-a-solution-to-the-worker-crisis/

Artificial intelligence isn’t this looming technological revolution waiting to happen. It’s here, and it’s already making life easier, simpler, and more productive in small and surprising ways.
“It’s not a future technology. Pretty much every industry I can think of is already using AI or is already being disrupted by AI,” Professor Jon Whittle, director of CSIRO’s Data61, says.
However, AI isn’t upending business or the consumer experience. There’s no ceding of control. Instead, AI makes enhancements – sometimes small ones – to functions we perform or challenges we face every day.
Whittle points to several projects Data61 is currently working on to apply AI to real-world problems.
Data61’s recently publicized partnership with Google is helping to tackle the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef by teaching robots to identify the invasive crown-of-thorns starfish. The implications extend beyond the reef.
“You can get insights that you wouldn’t have had before that can go into policy documents, or into documents ocean industries need for their operations and so forth,” Whittle says.
Data61 is also working with industry partners on applying machine learning to identify defects in the manufacturing sector, and thinking about how AI and robotics can transform the agricultural sector from monoculture to polyculture.
Another project directly responds to the billions of dollars spent each year on preventing, managing or recovering from workplace injuries. “We’ve got a tool that we’ve developed that can use cameras in a privacy preserving way that can monitor people moving around – say on a factory floor – and it can identify, for example, if people over a period of time have got bad posture that could potentially lead to an injury down the road,” Whittle says.
Continue reading: https://www.afr.com/technology/artificial-intelligence-is-making-big-changes-look-easy-20220520-p5an2y

When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing, there’s something big that I’ve learned: You’ve got to take an "all-of-the-above" approach. What I mean is that AI typically can help marketers in three ways: improving decision-making, systems and broader transformation. But marketers only tackle one or two at a time. It’s when you do all three at once that AI can really pay off. That can be hard (AI is hard) but the results can be magnificent
AI In Marketing
As a CMO who works hard to keep up with the latest MarTech developments, I see three main ways to use AI. The first is to make better decisions. Trying to decide on channels? How much to invest in a campaign? Which demographics to target? AI can ingest the relevant data and then produce forecasts and analyses to help you make the right choice.
The second way is to allow AI to simplify your everyday tasks for you or help you do them better. Is your team tired of putting together reports? Let a data-AI pipeline do the work, with real-time results and analysis. Are creatives spending time searching for information or just figuring out what they need to do next? Allow AI to organize their workflow and desktop.
The third way is to make digital transformation come to life. Do you want a marketing function of the future that constantly iterates campaigns as data comes in by forming, dispersing and reforming as challenges arise? You’ll need AI (supported by cloud and data) to make it happen.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/05/24/how-to-make-ai-marketing-initiatives-actually-deliver/?sh=1fc3345210a5

Artificial intelligence might not play an important role in your company yet, but A.I. and machine learning are rapidly transforming our modern-day business environment. According to a year-end 2021 survey by McKinsey, 56 percent of respondents said they had implemented A.I. technology in at least one function, up from 50 percent the previous year.
Still, it can be difficult to determine if implementing A.I. in your business is a smart investment or an unnecessary expense. Here are three questions every business owner should ask before diving headfirst into the world of A.I. 
1. How can A.I. improve my business?
The first question to ask yourself when considering A.I. is what problems might be solved with the technology. An e-commerce company might use A.I. to market and recommend specific products to consumers based on their data, while a financial services company could use A.I. to better predict shifts in the market and get their clients out of risky investments before it's too late. 
According to the McKinsey survey, the most commonly adopted use for A.I. by businesses in 2021 was in service operations, such as chatbots and virtual assistants. Other widely adopted uses of the technology include risk modeling, A.I.-based product enhancement, and customer service analytics. Ask yourself if automating part of your business has an easily identifiable benefit, or whether you have routine tasks that could easily be automated.
Continue reading: https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/ai-artificial-intelligence-questions-mckinsey.html

A small algae-powered computer has now run for more than a year solely on the energy produced through photosynthesis — demonstrating an alternative way to power some of our billions of internet-connected devices.
The challenge: The Internet of Things (IoT) — the network of physical devices now connected to the internet — currently includes billions of items, and by 2035, experts predict one trillion phones, smart gadgets, and other devices will be online.
Today, many IoT devices are powered by lithium-ion batteries, but those have significant shortcomings — they’re expensive, their energy doesn’t last very long, and eventually they die altogether, turning into e-waste.

The Internet of Things is predicted to include one trillion devices by 2035.

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An algae-powered computer: Researchers from the University of Cambridge and British tech company Arm have now demonstrated a different source of power for IoT devices: algae.
For their study, published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, the team built a container about the size of a AA battery out of aluminum and clear plastic. They then filled it with water and algae that use photosynthesis to harvest energy from sunlight.
Continue reading: https://www.freethink.com/technology/algae-powered-computer

Image alphaspirit.it/Shutterstock
Data governance has had more than its fair share of spins through the hype cycle. It burst on the scene in the late 90s with metadata management as a seemingly silver bullet for making data actionable and trustworthy.
A decade and a half later, the industry was littered with failed, C-suite driven initiatives to try and manually catalog every data asset. So many data teams drowned it was unfathomable any would ever dare again set sail on such a hubristic odyssey.
And yet, many data teams are convinced that today the tides have turned!
Data governance remains vital, perhaps even more so as data volume levels rise and disruptive tidal waves of data regulation such as GDPR wash across the industry.
Driven by these outside forces, data teams have started to convince themselves that maybe, just maybe, machine learning automation can tame the storm and make cataloging data assets possible this time around.
Unfortunately, many of these new data governance initiatives are destined to sink by focusing on technology to the detriment of culture and process.
The reality is for teams to improve their data governance posture they need to not only have visibility into their data, but also treat it like a product, be domain-first, and establish data quality as a prerequisite.
Treat Data Governance Like a Product — Don’t Treat a Product Like its Data Governance
Data governance is a big challenge, and so it’s tempting to try and tackle it with a big solution.
Typically, data governance initiatives will start with a data leader decreeing the seemingly agreeable objective, “We will catalog all the things and assign owners for all of our data assets end-to-end so it is accessible, meaningful, compliant, and reliable.”
The first problem with this initiative is how it originated. Just as successful companies are customer focused, data teams must focus on their data consumers and internal customers, too.
I guarantee no one in the marketing department asked you for a data catalog. They asked for useful reports and more reliable dashboards.
No one in the compliance department asked for a data catalog either. They asked for visibility into the location of regulated and personally identifiable information and who has access.
Continue reading: https://www.datanami.com/2022/05/24/the-rise-and-fall-of-data-governance-again/

As organizations continue to create and collect mountains of data, many are quick to discover that they have too much -- maybe much too much -- of a good thing. It's a big challenge to identify all of the data in their systems, decide which users should have access to what data, ensure that the data is used properly and figure out how to derive real business value from those data assets. That's why a strong data governance program is critical.
Data governance is the process of creating internal data standards, along with policies that control who can access data and how data is used in business operations and analytics applications. It often incorporates data quality improvement initiatives, as well as master data management (MDM) ones. A successful data governance program ensures that data is consistent, trustworthy and available and that its use complies with data privacy laws and other regulations.
Data governance tools can help organizations automate various aspects of managing a governance program. This kind of software provides functionality that aids in the creation of data catalogs and business glossaries, data mapping and classification, workflow management, collaboration, process documentation and development of data governance policies. Data governance software can also be used in tandem with data quality, MDM and metadata management tools.
Here's a look at 15 prominent data governance tools, listed in alphabetical order with a summary of their key features and capabilities.

1. Alation Data Governance App
Alation was founded in 2012 and initially offered a data catalog platform to help organizations inventory and provide access to their data. Alation Data Catalog remains its flagship product, but the company released a companion data governance tool in September 2021. The Alation Data Governance App software is designed to simplify the process of providing secure access to reliable data in IT systems, including ones in both hybrid cloud and multi-cloud computing environments.
Alation Data Governance App's Policy Center feature can be used to create governance policies and view how they're mapped to specific data assets. The governance tool also includes a data stewardship workbench that provides automated data curation functions and uses AI and machine learning to identify potential data stewards based on their data usage.
In addition, the data governance tool includes the following features:

• support for creating and configuring data governance workflows without any coding required;
• a dashboard that the leaders of a data governance program can use to track its progress; and
• an associated data governance service offering through Alation's professional services unit.

2. ASG Data Intelligence
ASG Technologies, a subsidiary of Rocket Software, describes ASG Data Intelligence as a fix for "data distrust." As the company notes, much of the wealth of data that's created and collected often goes unused because business managers, data scientists and other end users either can't find it or don't understand and trust it. ASG DI, as the tool is known for short, aims to help organizations address those issues through a set of metadata management, data lineage and data governance capabilities.
Continue reading: https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatamanagement/feature/15-top-data-governance-tools-to-know-about

The possibilities with Artificial intelligence (AI) keep shooting past the ceiling as Dr. Kai-Fu Lee posits it will change the world more than anything in the history of mankind, even electricity. AI focuses on the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that humans usually do because they require human intelligence and discernment. Whereas, an IoT ecosystem consists of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded systems, such as processors, sensors, and communication hardware, to collect, send and act on data they acquire from their environments. Imagine what the fusion of both technologies will make possible about life enhancement, multiplied options, and superior intelligence.
It is about mid-year 2022, as I mused over the first half of a thoroughly demanding year when it suddenly dawned on me that I needed to prepare for a full tech blast soon filled with knowledge. Alas! It is here with us as Oyinade powers on to optimized capacity in one click of a button or from a 100-meter range voice activation. This is the beauty of my smart fully-furnished home with the extra luxury buffer from IoT and AI. Within her is a myriad of other smart gadgets and smart spaces, all of which deliver for me smart experiences that add color and fun to life.
My waking moments begin at Yeside, the fond friend that welcomes me every morning in a warm embrace driven by the so many unique features she brings along to manage my excesses efficiently. These days, I realize that hours go unnoticed anytime I am in her company, especially with my smartphone due to myriads of missed messages and social media engagements. She is AI-enabled and knows all my family members, a few of my friends on Facebook and Twitter, and helps to reply to some of their chats and tweets. You may wonder how all of these becomes possible in only ten years of continuous improvement in technology.
Moreover, the need for hygiene requirements heightens my need for better cleaning and disinfecting, as prolonged usage occurs, as I do with Yeside. She is connected to a self-managed cleaning system that ensures complete disinfection alongside notifications on the need for supplies replenishment. She notifies my home manager, Sola (a hubot), if and when there is a faulty knob, leaking tap, or even broken mirror within her space. Yeside does a great job at maintaining best hygiene practices for me, as she discusses topics that are of interest to me and my hygiene. How amazing that she welcomes me with a smile on a first-name basis and a “see you soon” or an “I’d miss you Femi, have a great day” as I walk out through her door. This happens on some of my mornings as I get a different experience in the afternoons and evenings when I need to be in her company. What a barrage of possibilities Yeside brings to the table to give more meaning to my existence as my smart restroom internet of space (IoS) ally. Our paths crossed only two months ago, and she knows so much already about me like lifetime friends.
Continue reading: https://www.thecable.ng/ai-and-iots-a-haven-of-possibilities

A Russian IoT botnet known as Fronton can use inauthentic coordinated behaviour to launch disinformation trends on social media.
“Trends” on social media platforms are how many people keep updated with what’s going on in the world. There’s growing awareness of not believing everything that’s posted under a trend – especially around developing events like terror attacks – but there’s often an acceptance that it’s trending because enough real people are posting about it.
IoT devices have become the perfect targets for botnets due to their rapid proliferation, often poor security, global distribution, and always-on nature. Such IoT botnets have launched record-breaking DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.
Hacktivist group Digital Revolution uncovered the Fronton botnet in March 2020. The group released documents about the botnet after claiming to have hacked a subcontractor of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.
Initial details about the botnet focused on its serious DDoS abilities and resulted in headlines saying that it could “Disconnect the internet in a small country”. However, many missed the release of further documents, images, and a video that revealed its other big capability.
Virginia-based computer security firm Nisos delved deeper into this additional information and found that Fronton includes a web-based dashboard called SANA.
In a blog post, Nisos explained:

“SANA creates social media persona accounts, including provisioning of an email and phone number. In addition, the system provides facilities for creating these newsbreaks on a schedule or a reactive basis.”

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The creation of fake social accounts from around the world and using them in a coordinated manner to start trends would be difficult for any social media platform to detect. However, the implications are huge.
We’ve seen disinformation campaigns launched to stoke divisions around topics like COVID-19 and immigration. There are also credible reports they’ve been used to influence democratic processes like elections.
Russia’s unwarranted, barbaric, and illegal invasion of Ukraine has led Sweden and Finland to drop their historic stance of military neutrality and apply to join NATO—fearing they could otherwise be left unprotected if Russia decides to invade other neighbouring countries.
“Russia has said that it will take countermeasures if we join NATO,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told reporters on May 16. “We cannot rule out that Sweden will be exposed to, for instance, disinformation and attempts to intimidate and divide us.”
 
Continue reading: https://www.iottechnews.com/news/2022/may/23/fronton-botnet-launch-trending-disinformation-campaigns/

Many top vulnerabilities are in software libraries that have been used for years. Observability offers a better way (vs. traditional security approaches) to find and protect against them.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released its 2021 report outlining the most exploited vulnerabilities for that year. The findings highlight the need for more proactive, more sophisticated security approaches based on artificial intelligence and more.
Number one on the list is a vulnerability within the very popular Apache Log4j product. Known as Log4shell, this vulnerability is exploited most commonly using a specially crafted code string that led to threat actors taking over entire systems.
The vulnerability in Apache’s Log4j software library should be a main reason to adopt observability. According to CISA, “Log4j is very broadly used in a variety of consumer and enterprise services, websites, and applications—as well as in operational technology products—to log security and performance information.”
See also: Log4j Vulnerability Highlights the Need for Observability
Other notable vulnerabilities include ProxyShell and ProxyLogon, which are present on the Microsoft Exchange server. Both allow threat actors to escalate privileges and eventually take over mailboxes, files, and other credentialed products.
Some vulnerabilities from 2020, such as ZeroLogon, demonstrate the continued vulnerabilities for companies who use products no longer supported by vendors or get behind on updates to their systems.
Companies must act proactively to stay ahead of vulnerabilities.
Releasing proof of code within two weeks provides a baseline reaction time for companies affected by these attacks. However, CISA recommends comprehensive security protocols such as updating end-of-life software and identity and access management policies. In addition, segmenting networks to limit the attack surface is also recommended.
Continue reading: https://www.rtinsights.com/2021-cybersecurity-report-ids-top-15-vulnerabilities/

Australia and its ever-booming economy are being hampered by its construction sector suffering from continued pandemic fallout, supply chain disruption, rising material prices, and a deepening shortage of skilled labor. As a remedy to that latter problem, a national education business is using drone technology in classroom-level instruction to encourage students to navigate those aerial assets into surveying careers.
Though education company She Maps supports the teaching of wider STEM learning in schools, its focus on drones has made its programs particularly appealing to students, teachers, and parents seeing employment opportunities in Australia’s surveying and geospatial labor shortage. With thousands of new positions opening up as aging skilled construction employees retire, She Maps is urging schools and pupils to turn the resulting shortfall hampering the building sector to their advantage by placing drone, mapping, surveying, and related data tech in the midst of curricula.
“There is a looming crisis in the construction industry, but She Maps is already ahead of the curve by running our programs in primary and secondary schools for several years,” said She Maps Chief executive officer Paul Mead , who cofounded the company in 2017 with his wife, Karen Joyce. “The aim of our programs is to capture the hearts and minds of students by demonstrating the power of drones and potential career pathways.”
As an effort to accelerate its drone education efforts, She Maps has unveiled its “Partnering for Purpose Model” – a multi-pronged approach with the intention of inspiring future generations of surveying and geospatial experts. 
Continue reading: https://dronedj.com/2022/05/23/aussie-company-teaches-drones-in-school-to-remedy-a-worsening-surveyor-shortage/

Skydio and Axon’s strategic partnership is coming along rather nicely. Public safety agencies flying Skydio drones and using Axon Respond real-time operations platform can now access live video feeds from their Skydio 2 and Skydio X2 aircraft for better situational awareness.
Drones can be an incredible asset for emergency responders, enabling greater safety, quicker response time, and better decision-making. At the same time, videos and images captured by drones help contribute to the accuracy of evidence reporting, while increasing transparency and ensuring accountability across public safety organizations.
As such, this critical new integration of Skydio drones into Axon Respond is the next logical step in the partnership which has previously enabled Skydio operators to automatically upload photos and video captured on their aircraft to the Axon Evidence platform.
Future plans include bringing integration with Axon Air so that Skydio users can closely monitor drone hardware, pilots, mission logs, etc. Currently, the Axon Air program supports DJI, Parrot, and Autel drones only.
Also read: Aloft launches new tool to connect FAA airspace with local drone rules
Axon Air general manager, Aydin Ghajar, explains that the goal behind joining forces with Skydio is to provide first responders with “increased flexibility” in how they utilize situational awareness. Here’s Ghajar:

This partnership reaffirms Axon’s commitment to ensuring everyone gets home safe by offering first responders a more effective method of gaining situational awareness and gathering evidence.

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Continue reading: https://dronedj.com/2022/05/23/skydio-drones-axon-respond/

RALEIGH – The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce is hosting a women’s leadership conference on Tuesday, featuring keynote speaker Rebecca Ryan. And she’s coming to the capital city ready to talk the future and women’s roles in it. 
Ryan is one of a few hundred people in the world who holds the APF designation, a designation from the Association of Professional Futurists. In an exclusive interview with WRAL TechWire, Ryan shared that her talk will discuss “why the future is women”. 
“As a futurist, I’ve got some long-range perspective,” said Ryan. “I’m going to really wear my futurist hat, and I want to talk about the signals of the future that I’m seeing and why the long bet is on women in the future,” said Ryan. 
Ryan also said that the talk will be designed for both men and women leaders because gender diversity affects all companies. 
“Basically, everyone gets a pay increase when there are more women,” said Ryan. “And so, if you had to have a canary in the coal mine, this is one to watch and one to take care of and nurture. Because as go your women in the workplace, so will go your workplace.” 
As a futurist, Ryan helps companies and organizations apply long-range thinking to challenges and opportunities.
“We are living between two worlds: the familiar pre-COVID world and the unfamiliar, still-emerging post-COVID world,” wrote Ryan in a recent blog post. “This can be unsettling for folks who prefer stability. Which is all of us.”
Continue reading: https://wraltechwire.com/2022/05/23/the-future-is-women-so-says-futurist-coming-to-raleigh-heres-why/

Toluwani Ijogun never really gave being in the tech space a thought, having worked in a number of market sectors, ranging from banking, FMCG, food and beverage and electronics. Now, she leads the team responsible for branding and communications at Nomba (the fintech company, formerly known as Kudi).
While she didn’t actively go seeking a job in the fintech space when she was approached for a position in a popular fintech brand, she said yes to exploring new vistas, that decision would mark the beginning of her foray into tech and her journey as a woman in tech.
How it started
Toluwani who earned a master’s in advertising had always wanted to work in a company where she could bring value to the table, a company that offered real value to the country and its customers and gave her room to grow she explains while talking about why she joined Nomba on her tech journey,

“I was with Kuda Bank, another fintech for about 8 months after working in several sectors, I was approached by that fintech and was there before moving to Nomba where I work as the Vice President of communications. I was looking for a company where I could bring value to the table, a company that had a long-term strategy and was impacting and giving value to its customers. This is because, being in this field, a lot of fintech companies exist, really great ones but I wanted to be a company that would challenge me and one that had a strategy to not only impact its customers but its staff as well”. She said.

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Having been at Nomba for 9 months, Toluwani seems to have found all she has been searching for at Nomba especially as she got the opportunity to lead the movement for the rebranding of the company formerly known as Kudi to Nomba. 
Bringing value to the table
Toluwani took up the challenge of rebranding the company formerly known as Kudi to Nomba because she loved challenges. And, she shares some insights into the hard work and strategy that went into that process.
Continue reading: https://technext.ng/2022/05/23/toluwani-ijogun-nomba-woman-tech-experience/

When you make a transaction using a fiat currency, say INR, a third party is responsible for verifying and recording the details of that transaction. This third party could be a bank or other transaction facilitator such as Visa, and Mastercard, among others. We know and trust these entities to store our money and maintain records of our transactions.
The entire finance industry is based on trust. You invest in the stock market, trusting your money will not disappear overnight. If you were not to trust the system, you could never invest anything in the market. Also, in this system, we have some idea of the person or entity managing our finances.
That, however, is not the case with blockchain. This is because most blockchains employ a trustless mechanism wherein no parties know or trust one another. This trustless system was first introduced in 2010 when Bitcoin came into existence. Since then, it has become the foundation of the cryptocurrency industry.
But what does trustless mean?
In general parlance, we all know that trustless means someone or something that is not worthy of trust or is unreliable. However, in blockchain terminology, trustless refers to a system wherein we do not have to depend on one stranger, institution, or third party for a network or payment system to function.
Continue reading: https://www.cnbctv18.com/cryptocurrency/what-does-trustless-mean-in-cryptocurrency-13582012.htm

The Web may feel like a familiar space to businesses, but like everything else in tech, it’s evolving. What may now seem like a series of buzzwords— “Web3,” “blockchain,” the “metaverse” and more—will soon be the everyday technologies and concepts that dominate how businesses operate online.
Understanding what’s coming can help businesses plan a strategy and be among the vanguard of organizations thriving in a fresh online world. Below, 16 members of Forbes Technology Council share revolutionary changes that are coming to the Web in the next few years, and how they will affect businesses.
1. User Ownership Of Data
There will be a move toward privacy and data centricity. “Web3,” the term coined to describe the new internet, will revolve around user ownership of data, decentralization and permissionless access. Rather than gaining access in exchange for companies monetizing our data (the Web2 model), users will be able to access the internet while maintaining ownership over their data and how it’s used. For businesses, this means a focus on accountability and transparency. - Iman Bashir, Craftly.AI
2. A Better Balance Of Power Between Users And Platforms
Today, the Web is centralized. Tremendous wealth and power have been generated for corporations such as Facebook and Amazon that own and control content, instead of for users. Now, a transformation is taking place with the advent of Web3. Over the next decade, the Web will be built on permissionless blockchains with open standards. This will allow for a fair balance of power between users and platforms. - Balaji Sreenivasan, Aurigo Software Technologies Inc.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/05/23/16-changes-coming-to-the-web-that-businesses-need-to-prepare-for/?sh=1da531667eae

Whether you work in the tech industry, a commercial sector that relies heavily upon it, or in a completely unrelated field, chances are you’ve heard the term, blockchain. From Twitter timelines to news reports to water-cooler conversations, it’s increasingly becoming a part of our global lexicon, right along with its cousins, cryptocurrency (crypto) and bitcoin.
If this emerging area of technology still seems a bit fuzzy and vague to you, take heart – you are not alone. But one thing is clear: blockchain technology is materially changing the tech industry. It is creating new opportunities – including increased demand for technical talent – based on new ways of doing business and how we transact, invest, store, secure, share and leverage digital data.
To get you up to speed, here’s a primer on how blockchain technology works and how it’s transforming the tech space.
What is a blockchain?
A blockchain in its simplest form is a distributed or decentralized database in which a set of data (a digital ledger of transactions) is stored among a network of computers making it more secure and difficult to hack or alter. In turn, this enables people to use the data to transact with one another more securely, without a third party, like a bank or government, being involved to control the transactions.
How do blockchains work?
Blockchains work by collecting data in groups called blocks. These blocks of information have certain storage capacities that once filled, are closed and linked to the previous block, forming a chronologically ordered data chain or blockchain. In this way, no single person has control over the data. Rather, all contributors to the chain collectively control it.
Continue reading: https://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/inno/stories/partner-content/2022/05/24/how-blockchain-technology-is-changing-the-tech.html

As Uncle Ben says in Spiderman, "With great power comes great responsibility." This is one of my favorite sayings because it holds true for every walk of life, especially as a leader in the workplace, where you are responsible for the success of the business you own and the people you work with.
Many technology applications are becoming more powerful, impactful and far-reaching than ever before, especially in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI), where systems can make life-altering decisions based on real-time data from sensors, remote inputs and existing (historical) data with minimal or no human intervention.
With this power, what should the responsibility be? Should these AI systems be held to the same accountability standards as humans?
Where is AI today?
To answer these questions, let's unpack a few of the current use cases for AI.
1. Finance: Robo-advisors create investment portfolios, and bots determine if loans can be granted or not based on a variety of attributes about the borrower. In high-frequency stock trading, for example, computers have replaced human decision making for matching buy/sell orders.
2. National security: AI plays a front and center role in national security, such as insights mined from the troves of surveillance data and videos that would profoundly impact intelligence analysis.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/05/24/the-future-of-ai-accountability/?sh=5f4fa02b5752

In recent years, there has been major technological progress in the safety and security of large, complex premises. For too long, life-safety systems integrators have faced the challenges of gaps in coverage and how to bridge them.
This applies to all aspects of on-site safety, but in an array of industrial and commercial environments, none pose a greater risk of harming onsite personnel, damaging property and disrupting business continuity than fires and combustion.
Frequent reports of devastating fires worldwide continue to demonstrate that standard detection, monitoring and alarm equipment is not effective or fast enough to deal with the rapid onset and spread of fires in hazardous settings, like factories or waste processing plants.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and Industry 4.0 — the fourth revolution that has occurred in manufacturing — in combination with video-based surveillance, has brought fire-safety provision to a whole new era.
Inadequate Protection
Before data analysts and technical developers could design and implement such cutting-edge solutions, they first assessed all issues and challenges that needed to be addressed and overcome.
A global exchange of professional knowledge and experience in the fire-safety industry outlined the pain points and hazards identified over past years.
For instance, classic smoke detectors fixed onto ceilings require smoke or vapor to reach the sensors in their immediate detection field before any alarm is sounded. A delayed response means precious time is lost while a fire takes hold and spreads across an area before the alarm is triggered.
Regular surveillance cameras often produce grainy imagery if they pick up movement in low-light conditions or overnight. Outdoors it is even worse. Raindrops and frost can blur or obscure a lens and prevent it from capturing any distinguishable footage.
Intruders leave a site unidentified, and even continual live surveillance projected over screens will unlikely alert security personnel of any heat buildup or imminent fires. So, whereas many industrial safety managers and systems integrators may have planned and equipped a facility for decent fire-safety coverage, the efficacy of these measures are severely lacking in the level of security they should provide.
Standard equipment can also be hypersensitive to any sign of fire and signal frequent false alarms that disrupt business continuity with site shutdowns. This can even create a dangerous “cry wolf ” effect, so real threats of fire are not taken seriously.
Continue reading: https://www.securitysales.com/news/ai-address-threat-industrial-fires/

How has business been for you since the start of 2022? Are you satisfied with how it has been moving? If not, then you should read until the end of this article to find out ways you can turn your business around.
It is no longer news that computers have the ability and the human intelligence to perform tasks that humans can do. It is what is referred to as artificial intelligence and it works with the help of artificial intelligence software tools which include the following:
 

• IBM Watson: this is a system that helps in answering questions.
• Infosys Nia: this system will break down complex tasks into smaller simple chunks. Its three components are data platform, knowledge platform, and automation platform.
• Salesforce Einstein: is a tool useful for Customer Relationship Management and is also for sales, marketing, commerce, and community analytics.
• Now, the question is: are you deploying these software tools for your business, and how are you doing it? If you're not, then you should be because there are a lot more and you can benefit from using artificial intelligence in running your business in 2022, Below are the top ways in which that can be achieved.
• Cortana: this tool is used as a virtual assistant. It can perform simple tasks like setting reminders, answering your calls, placing orders, and taking voice inputs.
• Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine: this a tool that can help in training and analyzing your model which will in turn be used to perform other tasks
• Amazon Alexa:  understands many languages from German, Spanish, and French to English and Italian. Its function is similar to Cortana.

Use Free and Low-Cost Tools
In your AI decision-making, you have to identify the areas where your business needs the help of AI to grow. Discuss with your staff which of the AI software tools you're considering and ask for their opinions. Don't be scared to use AI because of cost - a couple of them are free while others are very affordable.
Continue reading: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/275791/20220523/top-ways-you-can-use-artificial-intelligence-for-your-business-in-2022.htm

In the course of the most recent wave of expectation and hype about “artificial intelligence” (AI) — let’s say the last 10 years — there have been repeated attempts to define what it is. Serious documents such as from academics, governments, or professional bodies typically say that there is no agreed definition and then propose their own or fall back on a well-known one (for example the UK Government used the phrasing: “AI can be defined as the use of digital technology to create systems capable of performing tasks commonly thought to require intelligence”). Popular articles tend not to agonize about it, but use the term to imply something technically advanced or futuristic.
Mostly this doesn‘t matter too much. But now that governments are crafting laws referring to AI (e.g. the EU’s AI Act and the UK National Security and Investment Act 2021) it is beginning to matter a lot. The scope of a law should include neither too much nor too little; be clear which cases fall within it and which do not; be understandable by anyone using it; anyone should be able to easily determine whether a case falls under it, and it should not need continual updating. Consequently, the debate on the scope of the EU AI Act (ongoing at the time of writing) is crucial to the impact of the eventual regulation.
Unfortunately, such debates about what “AI” is are probably unresolvable as they are based on a false premise. It is a semantic problem, but words matter, particularly in law.
We’ve gone down a blind alley
This seems like a roadblock for prospective legislators, but it should not be as it is irrelevant. The purpose of regulation is to protect one group of people from harm resulting from the actions of other people, such as those selling or using dangerous products. The focus of attention for regulators needs to be on the point at which people may be harmed by an action — intentionally or accidentally, directly or indirectly. Laboratory experiments and innovations need not generally be a regulatory concern until they leave the lab (beyond ethical considerations and the health and safety of the lab workers of course). The discovery that “E=mc2” didn’t immediately trouble lawmakers, but when people were able to utilize the energy released by nuclear fission, their attention was rightly grabbed.
Continue reading: https://www.themandarin.com.au/190364-defining-artificial-intelligence-for-regulation/

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The intent was to reduce the onset of global warming. This would be done by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to "a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system."
However, the past 25 years of progress (or lack thereof) is sharply brought into view in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report on the Mitigation of Climate Change (released on April 4, 2022). It is unequivocal in its conclusions: many of the impacts of climate change are now irreversible. The consolation is that some of the most severe impacts may still be avoided, if we can improve our performance.
Since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, there have been attempts to mitigate climate impacts. These have ranged from multilateral climate policy at the international level to highly localized community group action. Solutions have had mixed success; they are often deployed slowly and piecemeal. 
As we look forward to 2050 — our cut-off date for achieving Net Zero carbon emissions at the global level (against the pre-industrial baseline) — it is clear that action at scale must be the priority.
Mechanisms that leverage the market for climate action are of particular interest when the question of scalability is in focus. The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) is one such solution. The VCM looks to maximize the flow of finance to pro-climate projects across the globe. This will be achieved by using capital allocated by individuals and organizations who aim to compensate financially for their unavoidable carbon emissions.
The VCM issues carbon credits. These are tied to specific activities and projects that can demonstrably and verifiably mitigate carbon emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere. At the point where a carbon credit is allocated to an end-consumer, the emissions are considered offset. They are removed from the market and the credit for the investment into the planet is allocated to the actor that purchased it. 
However, even with the VCM’s objective of tapping into market mechanisms (arguably our most efficient way of allocating resources), the incentives for companies, governments and individuals to participate have remained misaligned with economic realities. In large part this is due to clear market failures associated with expensive and opaque administrative requirements. According to McKinsey, today’s carbon credit market is fragmented and complex. There are questionable credit sale practices and limited pricing data that “make it challenging for buyers to know whether they are paying a fair price, and for suppliers to manage the risk they take on.” 
Growth has continued in our global consumption of hydrocarbons for energy, manufacturing and materials. In turn, with global emissions continuing on a steep upward trend, the shortcomings of the VCM are particularly acute in 2022.  
Continue reading: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/425205