People Making a Difference – Page 9

Big Problems, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News, Software Development

Tech giant brings software to a gun fight

June 8, 2019

Business-software giant Salesforce instituted a new policy barring retail customers from using its technology to sell semiautomatic weapons and some other firearms.

SAN FRANCISCO — On its website, Salesforce.com touts retailer Camping World as a leading customer of its business software, highlighting its use of products to help sales staff move product. A Camping World executive is even quoted calling Salesforce’s software “magic.”

But behind the scenes in recent weeks, the Silicon Valley tech giant has delivered a different message to gun-selling retailers such as Camping World: Stop selling military-style rifles, or stop using our software.

The pressure Salesforce is exerting on those retailers — barring them from using its technology to market products, manage customer service operations and fulfill orders — puts them in a difficult position. Camping World, for example, spends more than $1 million a year on Salesforce’s e-commerce software, according to one analyst estimate. Switching to another provider now could cost the company double that to migrate data, reconfigure systems and retrain employees.

Continue reading… “Tech giant brings software to a gun fight”

China, Crime Prevention, Farms, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

More tigers now live in cages than in the wild.

May 18, 2019

They’ve been farmed,butchered, sold — commodified.

We joined this man on his obsessive quest to expose the traffickers.

THA BAK, Laos — He was up there somewhere, at the top of the hill, the man Karl Ammann had come to see. It would soon be night. The forest was all shadows and sounds. Ammann had driven across the country to reach this remote river village, and now he was finally here, looking to the top of the hill, ready to confront the person he believed had murdered more tigers than anyone in Laos. In the distance, he could hear them: dozens of tigers roaring.

Continue reading… “More tigers now live in cages than in the wild.”

Crime Prevention, Inventions, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

German inventors develop bracelet to test drinks for date-rape drugs

April 17, 2019

Inventors in Germany have developed a bracelet aimed at combatting a fear of many clubbers — drink spiking.

Kim Eisenmann and Sven Häuser’s “Xantus” bracelet only needs a drop of liquid to be applied to tell if it contains traces of “date rape drugs” — substances put in a person’s drink to incapacitate them.

The band, which is already available at German healthcare shop dm-drogerie markt, is white and resembles the ribbon used to enter many clubs.

It has two green circles that turn blue if the wearer applies some of their drink and the result is positive for the drugs.

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Children, Healthcare, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

This 61-year-old woman just gave birth to her own granddaughter

April 8, 2019

Matthew Eledge and Elliot Dougherty of Omaha, Nebraska, needed a surrogate to carry their baby. They never expected she would turn out to be Matthew’s mother.

When Matthew Eledge and his husband, Elliot Dougherty, told Matthew’s mother, Cecile, that they were planning to start their family, Cecile thought fondly of her own parental journey. She’d loved being pregnant decades earlier with her three now-grown children.

“If you want me to be the gestational carrier,” she told Matthew, “I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Matthew, 32, and Elliot, 29, appreciated the gesture, but, they thought, let’s be real — it’s not like that would ever happen. A postmenopausal 61-year-old couldn’t possibly be equipped to carry and give birth to a baby. Right?

Continue reading… “This 61-year-old woman just gave birth to her own granddaughter”

Automobiles, Human Behavior, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Volvo’s next step in car safety: Intervening in dangerous driving

March 29, 2019

Volvo hopes to tackle speeding, distraction and intoxication with tech. Jake Holmes mugshot BY JAKE HOLMES MARCH 20, 2019 5:20 PM PDT 0 Twelve years ago, Volvo senior technical advisor for safety Jan Ivarsson announced Vision 2020. The bold plan dreamed of a world where, by 2020, nobody would be killed or seriously hurt in a new Volvo. Where do things stand today, with 2020 less than 12 months away? At a presentation in Gothenberg, Sweden, on Wednesday, Volvo Cars CEO Håkan Samuelsson said the limiting factor in any car maker reaching that ambitious dream is bad human behavior.

“We have done a lot with technical means, passive and active [safety] features in the car,” he said. “But really to come down to zero [deaths] you have to tackle some issues that are much more human-related.”

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City Planning, Culture, Economy, People Making a Difference

From coworking to a smart city.

January 2, 2019

This year is the 10th anniversary of my decision to devote myself to the creation of the models of social changes. After banging my head against the wall, trying to scale the default coworking business model, I realized that only city-wide catalyst models such as smart city can survive and are ones of the pillars of the future of coworking business as well as cities itself.

It took some time when I tried to persuade the atomized community of small coworking owners that our model will not sustain and will probably end up very, very soon, but they didn’t want to listen. Next year, the network of publicly financed spaces turned up into business, disrupting the co-working space in every major city.

Continue reading… “From coworking to a smart city.”

Google, Internet, People Making a Difference

Sundar Pichai of Google: ‘Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems’

November 18, 2018

Growing up in India, he slept on the floor of a house without a refrigerator. Today, the chief executive is steering Google through the most turbulent period in its history.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, last week.CreditCreditErik Tanner for The New York Times

Google is facing more challenges today than at any time in its 20-year history. Employees are outraged over sexual harassment. Executives are under scrutiny for an effort to secretly make a censored version of its search product for China. Google will shut down its social network next year after a security vulnerability was discovered. Political and social debates, including one over building military-grade artificial intelligence, are roiling the work force.

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Elon Musk, Hyperloop, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News, SpaceX, Tesla

We need Elon Musk much more than he needs us

November 5, 2018

Heroes are not created equal. Most people recognize the name Sully Sullenberger, but far fewer can tell you what Alan Turing did during World War II.

Fewer still could tell you that Turing was chemically castrated because he was gay, and committed suicide shortly thereafter. But thanks for bringing one of the most horrifying wars in history to an abrupt end, I guess?

Society isn’t always kind to its heroes. We ask for an ill-defined yet idealized sort of perfection, and when our heroes fall short, we make sure they fall twice as hard.

Some might write this phenomenon off as a minor inconvenience for the rich, successful or famous, but times have changed. The human costs of war pale in comparison to the battles humanity will face in the years to come.

Continue reading… “We need Elon Musk much more than he needs us”

Climate Change, Inventions, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

How a team of innovators overcame the odds to create water from thin air

October 28, 2018

Today, 790 million people — 11 percent of the world’s population — live without access to clean water.

Two years ago, XPrize, an international nonprofit organization, announced a global competition enticing innovators to find a sustainable and affordable way to bring potable water to those who aren’t privileged enough to have it now.

Skeptics told the competition organizers that it was impossible.

Nearly 100 submissions later, and XPrize found precisely what they were looking for — entrepreneurs who could design a minimalistic device that could reliably extract 2,000 liters of water from the atmosphere per day for no more than two cents per liter all using 100 percent renewable energy.

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Environment, Great New Product, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy, Solar Power

Amazing solar panel device is now open source

July 27, 2018

Anyone who has wanted to generate their own energy and filter their own water can now do so with an amazing open source device.

Speaking on stage at Inspirefest 2018, Chinese-Canadian mechanical and electrical engineer Eden Full Goh described what inspired her to develop a cheap, easy-to-build solar panel device called the SunSaluter.

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Big Problems, Business, Economy, People Making a Difference

A new way to think about solving the world’s biggest problems

July 12, 2018

How to build global cooperation. It’s SIMPOL!

A while back I received a book in the mail titled “The SIMPOL Solution: A New Way to Think About Solving the World’s Biggest Problems” by John Bunzl and Nick Duffell, who were unknown to me. I get sent a lot of books with grandiose titles and don’t get around to reading most of them. But something about this one intrigued me, along with an endorsement by Noam Chomsky, who wrote “It’s ambitious and provocative: Can it work? Certainly worth a serious try”.

Continue reading… “A new way to think about solving the world’s biggest problems”