Category Archives: Technology

Microsoft and SAS, the privately held enterprise data management and analytics company (and not the airline), today announced a far-reaching partnership that will see Microsofts Azure become SASs preferred cloud, and deep integrations of SASs various products into Microsofts cloud portfolio, ranging from Azure to Dynamics 365 and PowerBI. The two companies also plan to launch new joint solutions for their customers.

While you may not necessarily be familiar with 44-year-old SAS, the North Carolina-based company counts more than 90 of the top 100 Fortune 1000 companies among its customers. Marquee customers include the likes of Allianz, Discover, Honda, HSBC, Lockheed Martin, Lufthansa and Nestl. While it provides tools and services for companies across a wide range of verticals, they all focus on helping these companies better manage their data and turn it into actionable analytics. Like similar data-centric companies, these days, that includes a lot of work on machine learning, too.

SAS COO and CTO Oliver Schabenberger

It is a technology partnership, SAS COO and CTO Oliver Schabenberger told me ahead of todays announcement. Our customers are increasingly moving to the cloud. I have something that I call the principles of analytics. The first principle is: analytics follows the data and increasingly, data is moving to the cloud. We have our own cloud operation at SAS. We have done enterprise hosting for over 20 years and have a lot of experience in that. So one of the strategic questions that I asked myself is how do we combine what we love so much about our own cloud and managed services and working directly with a customer with the scale, the agility and the reach of a public cloud?

The answer to that for SAS was a partnership with Microsoft. Both companies, Schabenberger said, are looking at how to democratize access to technologies like machine learning and analytics, he noted, but are also trying to build data visualization tools and other services that make it easier for anybody within a company to work with the increasingly large data sets that most enterprises now gather.

The technologies of SAS and Microsoft to me go hand in hand, said Schabenberger. They really complement each other. What Microsofts doing with Dynamics, with Power Platform, I can envision a new class of business applications all low-code, no-code where data and analytics drive logic and drive decisioning. And so for us, whats really interesting, fascinating and innovative about this relationship is that this is not about bringing a service to Azure, or an integration into Synapse. It is really looking at the entire Microsoft Cloud estate, if you will, from Azure to integrating with AD, with AKS, with [Azure] Database for PostgreSQL. These are obvious things, but then looking at Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, how can we be part of this ecosystem? I think thats a very powerful integration.

Its important to note that this is not an exclusive agreement and Schabenberger stressed that SAS will continue to offer support for customers who choose a different public cloud provider.

Scott Guthrie, Microsoft executive VP of its Cloud and AI group, echoed this. We couldnt be more excited on the Microsoft side for this partnership. If you look at pretty much any business out there, theyre using SAS for analytics and theyre using Microsoft software as well. And the thing that Oliver called out and what we really look for in strategic partnerships like this is, where can we help our mutual customers do more and achieve more? And I think both from a technology alignment perspective and then also from a mission statement and culture perspective, thats where were so aligned.

Both Guthrie and Schabenberger stressed how deep the integrations here are. As an example, Guthrie noted that users will be able to take SAS models and embed them into SQL Server statements and there will be similar integrations for Microsoft products into SASs tools, too. Guthrie also noted that the two companies will go to market together in a deep way, too, leveraging the existing sales forces of both companies. So its a little different from what we might do with a startup, which tends to not have a big sales force. But as part of this partnership, youll definitely see our go-to-market deep alignment and Microsoft sellers will be heavily incented to promote and push the SAS integration and likewise, SAS is going to be highly incented to drive this integration from their perspective as well.

One interesting aspect here is that both companies offer competing products, be that around data management and analytics, as well as data visualization. Guthrie and Schabenberger were quite open about this, though. Im perfectly comfortable with that, said Schabenberger. Ive recognized for a long time that our customers have choices and they exercise those choices. And if we bring the right technology to bear and offer it to them, then Im proud of the technology we built. Were not the best at everything and I am really looking forward actually to focusing on our core competency, where were strongest and Im happy to have customers make other choices. [] We have an existing customer base that wants to make use of their existing investment in SAS technology, but also wants to modernize, wants to be part of a cloud ecosystem, wants to operate with agility and speed and we can combine all that.

Weve been around long enough and were big enough and we have enough customers to also realize, what really matters is making your customers successful, noted Guthrie. And the complementary capabilities that were bringing together by partnering is so powerful that, yes, there might be some overlap in a few places, but for the most part, this is such a powerful accelerant for our customers and were going to both benefit from that.

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Microsoft and SAS announce deep technology partnership - TechCrunch

In the US, manufacturing jobs dropped by almost a third between 2000 and 2010 and have barely recovered since. Manufacturing productivity has been particularly poor in recent years (chart 5). What has been lost is not only jobs but also the knowledge embedded in a strong manufacturing base, and with it the ability to create new products and find advanced and flexible ways of making them. Over the years, the country ceded to China and other countries the expertise in competitively making many things, including solar panels and advanced batteriesand, it now turns out, swabs and diagnostic tests too.

No country should aim to make everything, says Fuchs, but the US needs to develop the capacity to identify the technologiesas well as the physical and human resourcesthat are critical for national, economic, and health security, and to invest strategically in those technologies and assets.

Regardless of where products are made, Fuchs says, manufacturers need more coordination and flexibility in global supply chains, in part so they arent tied to a few sources of production. That quickly became evident in the pandemic; for example, US mask makers scrambled to procure the limited supply of melt-blown fiber required to make the N95 masks that protect against the virus.

The problem was made worse because manufacturers keep inventories razor-thin to save money, often relying on timely shipments from a sole provider. The great lesson from the pandemic, says Suzanne Berger, a political scientist at MIT and an expert on advanced manufacturing, is how we traded resilience for low-cost and just-in-time production.

Berger says the government should encourage a more flexible manufacturing sector and support domestic production by investing in workforce training, basic and applied research, and facilities like the advanced manufacturing institutes that were created in the early 2010s to provide companies with access to the latest production technologies. We need to support manufacturing not only [to make] critical products like masks and respirators but to recognize that the connection between manufacturing and innovation is critical for productivity growth and, out of increases in productivity, for economic growth, she says.

The good news is that the US has had this discussion during previous crises. The playbook exists.

In June 1940, Vannevar Bush, then the director of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, went to the White House to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The war was under way in Europe, and Roosevelt knew the US would soon be drawn into it. As Simon Johnson and Jonathan Gruber, both economists at MIT, write in their recent book Jump-Starting America, the country was woefully unprepared, barely able to make a tank.

Bush presented the president with a plan to gear up the war effort, led by scientists and engineers. That gave rise to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC); during the war, Bush directed some 30,000 people, including 6,000 scientists, to steer the countrys technological development.

The inventions that resulted are well known, from radar to the atomic bomb. But as Johnson and Gruber write, the investment in science and engineering continued well after the war ended. The majorand now mostly forgottenlesson of the post-1945 period is that modern private enterprise proves much more effective when government provides strong underlying support for basic and applied science and for the commercialization of the resulting innovations, they write.

A similar push to ramp up government investment in science and technology is clearly what we need now, says Johnson. It could have immediate payoffs both in technologies crucial to handling the current crisis, such as tests and vaccines, and in new jobs and economic revival. Many of the jobs created will be for scientists, Johnson acknowledges, but many will also go to trained technicians and others whose work is needed to build and maintain an enlarged scientific infrastructure.

This matters especially, he says, because with an administration that is pulling back from globalization and with consumer spending weak, innovation will be one of the few options for driving economic growth. Scientific investment needs to be a strategic priority again, says Johnson. Weve lost that. It has become a residual. Thats got to stop.

Johnson is not alone. In the middle of May, a bipartisan group of congressmen proposed what they called the Endless Frontier Act to expand funding for the discovery, creation, and commercialization of technology fields of the future. They argued that the US was inadequately prepared for covid-19 and that the pandemic exposed the consequences of a long-term failure to invest in scientific research. The legislators called for $100 billion over five years to support a technology directorate that would fund AI, robotics, automation, advanced manufacturing, and other critical technologies.

Around the same time, a pair of economists, Northwesterns Ben Jones and MITs Pierre Azoulay, published an article in Science calling for a massive government-led Pandemic R&D Program to fund and coordinate work in everything from vaccines to materials science. The potential economic and health benefits are so large, Jones argues, that even huge investments to accelerate vaccine development and other technologies will pay for themselves.

Vannevar Bushs approach during the war tells us its possible, though the funding needs to be substantial, says Jones. But increased funding is just part of what is required, he says. The initiative will need a central authority like Bushs NDRC to identify a varied portfolio of new technologies to supporta function that is missing from current efforts to tackle covid-19.

The thing to note about all these proposals is that they are aimed at both short- and long-term problems: they are calling for an immediate ramp-up of public investment in technology, but also for a bigger government role in guiding the direction of technologists work. The key will be to spend at least some of the cash in the gigantic US fiscal stimulus bills not just on juicing the economy but on reviving innovation in neglected sectors like advanced manufacturing and boosting the development of promising areas like AI. Were going to be spending a great deal of money, so can we use this in a productive way? Without diminishing the enormous suffering that has happened, can we use this as a wake-up call? asks Harvards Henderson.

Historically, it has been done a bunch of times, she says. Besides the World War II effort, examples include Sematech, the 1980s consortium that revived the ailing US semiconductor industry in the face of Japans increasing dominance, by sharing technological innovations and boosting investment in the sector.

Can we do it again? Henderson says she is hopeful, though not necessarily optimistic.

The test of the countrys innovation system will be whether over the coming months it can invent vaccines, treatments, and tests, and then produce them at the massive scale needed to defeat covid-19. The problem hasnt gone away, says CMUs Fuchs. The global pandemic will be a fact of lifethe next 15 months, 30 monthsand offers an incredible opportunity for us to rethink the resiliency of our supply chains, our domestic manufacturing capacity, and the innovation around it.

It will also take some rethinking of how the US uses AI and other new technologies to address urgent problems. But for that to happen, the government has to take on a leading role in directing innovation to meet the publics most pressing needs. That doesnt sound like the government the US has now.

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Why tech didnt save us from covid-19 - MIT Technology Review

The ongoing risks to businesses and governments from cybersecurity threats was highlighted again last week, when the federal government announced Australia was the target of a sophisticated state-based cyber actor.

While no key government or business networks had been breached, the number of attacks had been steadily increasing, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

To get some on-the-ground perspective, Stockhead took the opportunity to speak with Rob van Es Asia Pacific vice president of cybersecurity firm Illumio.

The main takeaways were that while Australian companies are increasingly taking the threat of attacks more seriously, rapid improvements in technology pose complex challenges of their own in the months and years ahead.

What weve seen is thefrequency has gone up and with that, the chance that yourenext is increasing so its a concerning situation for a lot of companies, van Es said.

Its really something were seeing around the world, with more sophisticated attacks. So I think what were seeing now such as this the governments announcement is the effects of these attacks are becoming more public and so everyones getting an education very quickly.

van Es said the overriding challenge for companies in 2020 was a catch-22; cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated, in an environment where technology is increasingly used.

He pointed to the rapid adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in industries such as mining and manufacturing, where companies rely on sophisticated sensor networks to transmit key data.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also created material risks of its own, as businesses move to secure their networks from a higher number of remote locations.

Trying to defend a parameter that is constantly changing thats what makes it really hard, van Es said.

Companies want open network communications and the latest technology, but the downside is that from a security perspective, in effect you want nothing to be connected.

So you have those opposing forces where companies need to stay connected, but they also run the risk of being held to ransom.

In view of that, van Es said a key theme he noticed on the ground was a definite uptick in interest about solutions to fit this new paradigm.

At industry conferences for example, theres an increased focus on the zero trust framework a cybersecurity buzzword coined by Forrester Research analyst John Kindervag.

In effect, the idea questions existing security mechanisms which work on the assumption that all networks within an organisation can be trusted.

In the current era, that leaves companies vulnerable to modern-day cybersecurity attacks which typically move laterally breaching an individual computer or network and using that as an entry point to the wider information system.

Traditional systems where people only program standardised firewalls, in an environment that could be changing every minute or every day theyre not going to work anymore, van Es said.

Thats how ransomware attacks happen move very quickly. They dial into companies networks, get an understanding of what they have access to and control the blast radius.

From our perspective, the most important thing right now is visibility. You need visibility across your network to as, what are the paths that people could attack me from and if theres connections that shouldnt be there, we have to close the door.

The bottom line is, dont trust anything unless you can explicitly and simply explain why you should communicate with this particular device or server.

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Expert view: Technology is a blessing and a curse when it comes to global cybersecurity threats - Stockhead

Emboldened by their success with the coronavirus, scientists the world over are debating which disease to spread with 6G technology.

A new report has surfaced which shows the worlds scientists and engineers are already hard at work on producing 6G technology. With 5G already rolling out around the world and causing the current COVID-19 pandemic, the teams are currently considering which disease to encode into 6G.

A respiratory virus is the easiest type of disease to cause with these low-frequency waves, explained Dr David Thoms. But thats been done to death (pardon the pun) so we would really like to try something different this time.

According to the report, the team is spit-balling several ideas including an ARO (antibiotic-resistant organism), a blood-born infection, or even a deadly prion disease similar to CreutzfeldtJakob disease (CJD/mad cow).

The world is really our oyster here so to speak, says Thoms. The idea of a prion is very exciting. CJD is a great disease, but unfortunately not very contagious. We have also looked at a modified form of measles, just a much deadlier version.

6G will not be available until at least 2022 and may be pushed back as far as 2024 depending on how the US political landscape is looking at the time.

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Scientists split over which disease to put in 6G technology - The Big Smoke Australia

As the NBA heads to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, the league is making available a host of technological bells and whistles to both players and staff.

According to the NBA's health and safetymemo for the restart of the season, which was obtained by CNBC, residents will receive a "smart" ring, a Disney MagicBand, individual pulse oximeter and a smart thermometer to help monitor and reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The league is also investigating the implementation of a wearable alarm to help players and staff adhere to social distancing.

Here's a breakdown of the key health and safety protocols the NBA plans to adopt when players head to Orlando later this month in preparation for the restarted season.

A globe stands at the entrance to the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

Phelan M. Ebenhack via AP

The NBA's Disney plan includes 22 teams traveling to Orlando to play games in what is being described as "a bubble," at Disney's Wide World of Sports complex. Players that decide to participate will be subject to extensive testing, quarantines from their families and strict rules pertaining to social behavior. The league memo, which is more than 100 pages long, outlines its plan to keep players safe and the tools it will be utilizing in order to do so.

"I think we are going to be able to pull this off," Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. "We are doing everything possible to keep people safe and I think it will work."

The Oura smart ring is capable of predicting COVID-19 symptoms up to 3 days in advance with 90% accuracy.

Source: Oura

One of the tools the NBA will use with players is a "smart ring" that players will wear during their time at Disney World. The ring can measure body temperature, respiratory functions and heart rate, which are all things that can signal whether or not someone is sick. All players and essential staff members will be given the option to participate in health monitoring using the ring. The titanium rings, reportedly made by Oura, are capable of predicting COVID-19 symptoms up to three days in advance with 90% accuracy, according to the company.

The data will be studied and assessed by the University of Michigan to help generate an overall wellness assessment of each person. The memo said that players will have full access to all data collected on them, but team staff will only have access in circumstances where the player's illness probability score indicates he may be at higher risk or is showing signs of coronavirus.

MagicBands at Disney Resorts

Source: Walt Disney Resorts

Players will also be given access to a MagicBand that they will be required to wear at all times, except during workouts and games. The Disney MagicBand will act as a hotel room key and let players check in at security checkpoints and coronavirus screenings. It's similar to the device of the same name that Disney World guests can use for access to hotels and payments for food and gifts inside the park.

The MagicBands can also help the league with contact tracing. The league is investigating a way to use the bands to know if a player diagnosed with Covid-19 has come into contact with another player. Disney will be prohibited from accessing health information of players, but Disney will be alerted to a player's health status for the purposes of enforcing these protocols.

For further safety assurance, the league said it is investigating the use of an access control software that utilizes the MagicBand to provide them access and entry into campus facilities. For example, when a player arrives at a security checkpoint, their MagicBand would display green or red depending on their health status to allow or deny them entry.

All residents will be also givenan individual pulse oximeter to take blood oxygen saturation levels daily and a smart thermometer that can take and record the individual's temperature. Players will be given detailed information on how to analyze the results.

Physical distancing is another key area the NBA is focusing on. The league said that to "help promote adherence to physical distancing rules," all team and league staff will be required to wear a small device on their credential that will serve as an alarm that will set off an audio alert when within six feet of another person for a period longer than five seconds. The memo said the alarm can detect allowable pairs of people, such as teammates, a physician or patient, and it won't set off the alarm. Players will be given the option to wear this alarm, but it's not a requirement.

With so much data being collected, players may have concerns about the use of this data. The league said that information collected will be deleted within four weeks following the 2019-2020 season. Opting out isn't an option with the memo saying that any player of staffer who refuses to undergo such daily health monitoring, "will be prohibited from engaging in group activities until the monitoring is accomplished and/or may be required to leave the campus permanently." It's important to note that this plan was also approved by the NBA Players Association.

In recent days, there has been a public and private conversation taking place among players about this plan and its benefits and drawbacks. Many acknowledging the challenges it will involve.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said he's sympathetic and that players will not be punished if they choose not to attend.

"It will entail enormous sacrifice for everyone involved," he said in an interview with ESPN on Monday. "Listen, It's not an ideal situation trying to find our new normal in the middle of a pandemic... I can understand how some players feel it's not for them."

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Inside the NBA's plan to use smart technology and big data to keep players safe from coronavirus - CNBC

The world is sliding into a new cold war.

Once again, it pits a dictatorial political system against democracy, but now it is China against the West. This looming struggle is very different to the tense tussle that overshadowed the first half of my life. The Communists in Beijing offer much greater challenge than their counterparts ever did in the Kremlin. The giant Asian nation is many times stronger economically, allowing it to almost double military spending in a decade, while its leadership is far more sophisticated having seen the fall of the Soviet Union and how to exploit globalisation.

Last week this conflict erupted in medieval style when Chinese and Indian troops fought in hand-to-hand combat on a freezing Himalayan mountainside. They used stones and studded clubs as weapons since banned from firing guns in the border zone under a previous accord, yet with 20 Indian soldiers dying this was still their most lethal such conflict for half a century. It was another sign of Beijings growing aggression under President Xi Jinping, alongside the crushing of freedom in Hong Kong and creation of militarised islands in the South China Sea.

Slowly but surely, the challenge is being seen across the political divide. At the core of this struggle that will dominate the coming decades lies the fight for technological superiority. If one side triumphs, they control the lifeblood of the digital age. Even the rush to find a pandemic vaccine plays into the contest, since leadership in the field of biosciences is a central part of the equation. We should support Australia when it comes under state-based cyber attacks after calling for proper inquiry into origins of the coronavirus. And heed warnings from former Google chief Eric Schmidt, now chair of the Pentagons Defence Innovation Board, when he tells us to prioritise the creation and exploitation of new technologies.

Much of the focus in Britain is on Huaweis involvement in the 5G network. It seems astonishing there is even debate on this issue. Beijing helped build the new African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, then every night for five years all the bodys data was downloaded in the middle of the night until the hacking was discovered. Another Chinese telecoms firm helped the repressive former regime in Ethiopia monitor activists and journalists. Huawei itself has worked with police in Xinjiang, where technology is central to the hideous control and detention of Uighur Muslims.

Yet the West has shown great naivety over China. First there was belief that trade and integration would corrode its autocracy. Then we thought the internet would destroy dictatorship. Now prominent names pocket cheques to promote Huaweis cause, helping the firm pretend to be independent from the state. Its billionaire boss Ren Zhengfei, a former engineer in the Peoples Liberation Army, denies they assist the security apparatus. Yet one executive was caught spying in Poland. Last week, two Canadians were charged with spying in China, assumed to be a reaction to Rens daughter the firms finance chief being detained in Canada for sanctions busting.

Yet these issues go far beyond Huawei. Since taking power eight years ago Xi has eliminated any slivers of space for free expression, placed the party firmly back at centre of public life, demanded total obedience and imposed his nationalist vision on the country. New laws demand support for the security services from all citizens and firms. Jack Ma, the telegenic boss of Alibaba Chinas version of Amazon is a top Communist Party member.

Along with the heads of other major technology firms such as Tencent and Baidu, he is also a vice-president of the China Federation of Internet Societies, a body set up two years ago to promote the party in their sector and, according to state media, implement Xis online vision.

For all the talk about the Great Firewall of China, their approach is smarter than simply erecting a barricade as shown by veteran German reporter Kai Strittmatter in We Have Been Harmonised, his superb book exposing their descent into Orwellian totalitarianism. China built up its own hardware and software systems, allowing it to embrace the digital world at high speed while ruthlessly controlling content.

These firms oversee citizens spending, their online thoughts, even their steps in the street as the country hurtles forward in facial and speech recognition technologies. They assist Chinas development of Social Credit, intended to protect against negative behaviour with those failing to follow state diktats excluded from best schools, jobs and even transport services.

We have seen all too often how Western firms seeking a share of the huge Chinese market shame themselves by capitulating to the Communist Party stance on issues such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. Meanwhile the state exports its digital Leninism to other dictatorships, aided by dire leadership and lack of confidence in democracies.

Beijing is pumping cash into winning the global battle of ideas in the arts, media and universities while also pouring vast sums into artificial intelligence with Xi demanding they occupy the commanding heights in this area. Here is the space race of this new cold war but China has been increasing spending on research four times faster than the United States.

These homegrown technology firms are in the vanguard of Xis drive to export his shuttered vision of society. Yet for all the fuss over Huawei, consider the lack of concern over Hikvision. The Chinese government is the controlling shareholder in this company, which began as a state research unit. Its boss attends the National Peoples Congress, the main body for rubber-stamping Communist Party decisions. It has been blacklisted by the United States for links to human rights violations.

Yet its surveillance systems are used by airports, councils and hospitals across Britain, with more than one millions of its cameras sucking up data and images across the country. How easily we let down our guard on the digital frontline.

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The West is being naive about China's use of technology in this looming cold war - iNews

]]> The Italian navy aircraft carrier ITS Cavour (CVH 550) in Civitavecchia, Italy. Credit: Gaetano56.

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Leonardo and Italian shipyard Intermarine have signed an agreement to research and develop new technologies and pursue business opportunities in the military, as well as para-military in the naval industry.

Under the research and development agreement, the companies will renew minesweeper fleets, fast patrol boats, and hydrographic vessels.

The ten-year collaboration will generate business opportunities while focusing on the development of new generation products.

With specialisations in different areas, the industrial integration will strengthen the programmes for the renewal of fleets of hunting vessels, fast patrol boats and hydrographic vessels.

The companies Italian research centre and production plants will invest in robotics, unmanned technology, and naval engineering.

It will also invest in necessary aspects for the production of multirole units for both coastal and offshore vehicles.

The developed systems will have the capability to fight to mine and control the sea, meeting all mission requirements. Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

The development will support defence forces on a national and international level.

Earlier this month, Danish Defence Acquisition and Logistics Organisation (DALO) selected Leonardo for a potential future upgrade of gun mounts.

The possible upgrade work is part of a framework agreement signed by both parties. The scope of the 20-year deal may see the upgrade of 17 lightweight 76/62 Super Rapid gun mounts.

In June last year, the Italian Navy launched the lead vessel of a new class of multipurpose offshore patrol ships (PPA) at Fincantieris shipyard in Muggiano, La Spezia, Italy.

Known as Paolo Thaon di Revel, the vessel was the first of seven vessels planned to be acquired by the country.

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Leonardo and Intermarine to research and develop new technologies - Naval Technology

Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on June 9 about unemployment insurance during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Leah Millis/Reuters/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The enhanced unemployment benefits supporting household income for millions of jobless Americans will soon lapse.

Lawmakers, scrambling to address the problem, remain at odds over what to do. And a solution that would likely appease both sides seems out of reach due to outdated technology.

Democrats want to extend the federal aid, which tacks an extra $600 a week onto the unemployment checks paid by states, past their scheduled July 31 end date.

Republicans want the aid to expire due to concern that it allows some workers to get unemployment benefits that exceed their lost wages. Some have proposed replacing it with a cash bonus for those who find new jobs.

Their answer would affect a large chunk of the population amid the worst employment crisis since the Great Depression. Nearly 30 million people are collecting jobless benefits.

But some may wonder: Why implement a policy that permits people to earn more while unemployed in the first place?

The answer, according to lawmakers and economists: antiquated technology forced their hand.

Lawmakers alluded to the issue during a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing on unemployment benefits.

Outdated state administrative systems couldn't ensure benefits for unemployed Americans would be capped at 100% of pay from their prior job, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said.

"Throughout negotiations, Secretary [of Labor Eugene] Scalia said that couldn't be done because the states run unemployment programs on Bronze Age technology that cannot crunch the numbers for individual workers," Wyden said.

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That's why lawmakers agreed to the current policy in the CARES Act a flat $600 a week for everyone was administratively more feasible, Wyden said.

States generally replace less than half of lost wages for unemployed workers. The $600 supplement aimed at replacing 100% of wages for the average worker, who makes about $1,000 a week.

It was a "rough justice approach," Wyden said.

Importantly, states likely couldn't accommodate anything more complicated than a flat universal payment after July, said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

They've had enough trouble administering the $600 payments, according to Portman. Indeed, many jobless individuals have had to wait months to receive their benefits.

While states "have made progress from where we were in March," according to Scalia, he didn't offer assurance that states were in the position to ensure 100% wage replacement.

Unemployment offices have been overwhelmed by a flood of applicants to systems whose technology had been calibrated to pre-pandemic times, when joblessness was at lows not witnessed in half a century.

Many systems use a computer-programming language called COBOL that's more than 60 years old and is often used on big, old, mainframe computers.

"Literally, we have systems that are 40 years-plus old, and there'll be lots of postmortems. And one of them on our list will be how did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?" Chris Murphy, governor of New Jersey, said in April.

One state's system was "so arcane" that the governor had to hire computer programmers from Latvia, Scalia said, without mentioning the specific state.

A Labor Department spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment.

State technology may not even be the biggest road block, according to some experts.

The vast expansion of unemployment benefits to previously ineligible groups, like self-employed and gig workers offered by the CARES Act, complicates states' ability to administer a benefit formula beyond a flat weekly payment, said Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute.

Workers who had traditionally been eligible for unemployment insurance had their wages reported regularly to state unemployment offices by their employers. States use this wage information to gauge the weekly benefit amount workers receive in the event of a layoff.

However, self-employed workers don't provide this information to states like companies do for employees.

States have had to rely on self-reported earnings during the pandemic to pay benefits to self-employed and gig workers and have used a simpler formula in some cases to pay benefits.

Replacing the $600-a-week supplement with a formula capping benefits at 100% of prior wages would be incredibly challenging for these workers as a result, Vroman said.For one, states would need to somehow verify the veracity of their self-reported earnings, he said.

"Until there's reporting on those missing earnings, that's the biggest constraint that's caused problems for the state," Vroman said.

Continued here:

While Dems and GOP squabble over extending $600 unemployment benefits, outdated technology may slow any solution - CNBC

Mysore/Mysuru: ATME College of Engineering (ATMCE), Mysuru, had organised a two-day International Conference on Recent Trends in Science and Technology (ICRTST)-2020 through online meeting platform on June 17 and 18.

The Conference was inaugurated on June 17 by Prof. G. Hemantha Kumar, Vice-Chancellor (VC), University of Mysore in the presence of Dr. Syed Shakeeb Ur Rahman, Executive Council Member, VTU, Belagavi, Dr. Karisiddappa, VC, VTU, Belagavi, Dr. Chidananda Gowda, former VC, Kuvempu University and Management Committee Members.

Prof. Hemantha Kumar, during his address, mentioned that the researchers should get aligned by producing their research findings towards the benefits of the society, and the research works needs to be evaluated based on quality rather than quantity.

Dr. K. Chidananda Gowda stated: Science is the mother of all technology, and is a root for present technology. He further expressed his insights on Unhackable Internet, Quantum Computer, Artificial Intelligence and application in drugs discovery.

L. Arun Kumar, Chairman, ATMECE, in his presidential remarks, mentioned that COVID-19 pandemic has changed the lifestyle of every human being. We need to reorganise and re-orient ourselves in life and COVID-19 has set a reset button in our lives.

During this occasion, abstract of the conference proceeding were released by the dignitaries.

Keynote speaker, Dr. Md. Sultan Mohamed Ali, Professor, Control & Mechatronics Engg. Division, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, spoke on MEMS Actuators, Bio Medical Engineering, Micro Pumps and Micro Actuators.

Dr. Gopalan Jagdeesh, Professor, Department of Aero Space Engineering, IISc., Bengaluru, in his keynote address, spoke on jigsaw puzzles of hypersonic, shock waves and their applications in different field of science and reducing aerodynamic drag using smart coatings.

K. Shivashankar, Secretary, ATMECE, Mysuru, was present. Dr. L. Basavaraj, Principal, ATMECE, welcomed the gathering. Dr. L. Parthasarathy, Organising Chair, Professor and Head of EEE, delivered a report about the Conference. He mentioned that 194 articles out of 306 submissions are scheduled for presentation in the Conference.

The Conference was conducted observing the standard operating procedures mentioned by the Government of Karnataka during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Valedictory: The valedictory function of the Conference was held on June 18. K. Achutha Bachalli, Chairman, Unilog Solutions, was the chief guest. In his address, he spoke about the upcoming trends on technology specific to robotics, speech recognition and emphasised on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Dr. Syed Shakeeb Ur Rahman was the guest of honor. Authors received their presentation certificates on this occasion.

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Intl. Conference on Recent Trends in Science and Technology held - Star of Mysore

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COVID-19, the disease it causes, surfaced in late 2020, and now had become a full-blown crisis worldwide. Over fifty key countries had declared a national emergency to combat coronavirus. With cases spreading, and the epicentre of the outbreak shifting to Europe, North America, India and Latin America, life in these regions has been upended the way it had been in Asia earlier in the developing crisis. As the coronavirus pandemic has worsened, the entertainment industry has been upended along with most every other facet of life. As experts work toward a better understanding, the world shudders in fear of the unknown, a worry that has rocked global financial markets, leading to daily volatility in the U.S. stock markets.

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An outlook of the Methyl Glucose Industry market regional scope:

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Q.1. What are some of the most favorable, high-growth prospects for the global Methyl Glucose Industry market?

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Methyl Glucose Market by Technology, Application & Geography Analysis & Forecast to 2025 - 3rd Watch News