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Zapier: Automation helped small businesses survive the pandemic
Businesses to support remote workforce even after offices reopen
Divorce fallout: What happens to Gates Foundation when Bill and Melinda are no longer married?
Billionaire commander and future space crewmates bond during Mount Rainier trek
iPad Pro’s exciting display upgrade might be coming to the 2021 MacBook Pro
Apple hires ex-Google AI scientist who resigned after researcher firings
Exciting new battery technology could extend the life of your next phone
Apple reports 2 iOS 0-days that let hackers compromise fully patched devices
What Wildfires Taught Me About Data Ops
Apple v. Epic Games opening statements highlight tech antitrust arguments

Zapier: Automation helped small businesses survive the pandemic

Posted: 03 May 2021 05:39 PM PDT

Automation and removing repetitive tasks reduced worker stress and boost productivity over the past year, Zapier found in its latest report.Read More

Businesses to support remote workforce even after offices reopen

Posted: 03 May 2021 05:39 PM PDT

Tech spending data suggests many businesses will continue to invest in connectivity to support the remote workforce even after offices reopen.Read More

Divorce fallout: What happens to Gates Foundation when Bill and Melinda are no longer married?

Posted: 03 May 2021 05:39 PM PDT

Bill and Melinda Gates visiting women in Jamsaut village in Bihar, India. (Gates Foundation Photo)

Created more than 20 years ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been a global leader in philanthropy. So what happens when it's "Bill and Melinda" no more?

With news breaking Monday of the divorce between Bill and Melinda Gates, questions are swirling about the future of their foundation.

In terms of assets and influence, the foundation "is the most important philanthropic foundation in the world," said Benjamin Soskis, co-founder and editor of HistPhil, a site dedicated to the history of philanthropy. "To the extent that this will have an effect on the foundation itself, it's of immense consequence."

The Seattle-based organization has an endowment worth nearly $50 billion, and has issued close to $55 billion in grants over the years.

The couple said in their shared tweet on Monday that they believe in the mission of the foundation and will continue their work together there.

Their organization echoed the sentiment in its statement: "Bill and Melinda will remain co-chairs and trustees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. No changes to their roles or the organization are planned. They will continue to work together to shape and approve foundation strategies, advocate for the foundation's issues, and set the organization's overall direction."

The foundation provides grants in wide-ranging areas, including global health and vaccines, gender equality programs, economic development and agriculture in lower-income countries, and improving education in the U.S. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the organization invested at least $1.75 billion in battling the virus, helping pay for the production and purchase of medical supplies.

The Gateses predictably asked for "space and privacy" in their tweet. But their tremendous wealth — Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft and is worth an estimated $130.5 billion — combined with the significance of the philanthropic work in which they have played such central, public roles makes that difficult if not impossible.

While it's a personal crisis, "by definition they're public events, in a way that is uncomfortable," said Soskis, who is also a research associate at the Urban Institute think tank, which receives funding from the Gates Foundation.

In 2010, the couple joined Warren Buffett in creating the Giving Pledge, an effort that asks billionaires to vow to give away the majority of their wealth while alive or in their will — instead of bestowing their estates to descendants. Bill Gates is 65 and Melinda Gates is 56 years old. Bill Gates Sr., formerly the third co-chair of the organization, died in September 2020.

The focus and approach of the foundation has shifted over time from a more technocratic-style emphasizing data, testing and research — a strategy that aligns with Bill — to a more humanistic, community-engaged approach that hews more closely with Melinda, said experts in philanthropy.

Melinda's "not the business person in the family. She's not the capitalist that was sued by the Justice Department [for antitrust behavior] and built the global corporation," said David Callahan, editor of Inside Philanthropy, a charity watchdog site.

Bill and Melinda Gates announce decision to end marriage after 27 years

While the couple says they'll keep working together, some wonder if Melinda would create her own foundation to direct increased attention to efforts such as women's empowerment — the focus of her 2019 book, "The Moment of Lift" — and possibly more political actions that impact courts or elections.

"If you really care about gender equity, there's a good chance you'll go down a more robust, progressive giving path," Callahan said.

He pointed to the fallout from the 2019 divorce of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott. Following their separation, Scott has established herself as a major philanthropic donor, giving away $5.7 billion last year to wide-ranging social causes with a more liberal bent. Until recent years, Bezos and Amazon were criticized for their limited philanthropic giving.

"It could be that Melinda Gates has been waiting for the freedom to do her own thing, that it's going to be a big, blazing story of a new and independent Melinda Gates philanthropy that looks different than what came before, which is what we saw with MacKenzie Scott," Callahan said. "Or it could be status quo with some tweaks."

Over the years, Bill and Melinda Gates have staked out their own focus areas in giving and investing.

Bill Gates in 2015 launched Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a $2 billion fund to support carbon-cutting startups. That initiative has evolved into Breakthrough Energy, an umbrella organization that spans six programs working to battle climate change. Bill Gates recently published a climate book and has spent months doing interviews and discussing climate challenges and solutions.

Also in 2015, Melinda Gates established an organization called Pivotal Ventures, an independent executive office that gave her the opportunity to pursue ideas, projects and investments that might not fit within the structure of the Gates Foundation. Melinda, who met Gates while herself a Microsoft employee, published her book in 2019, which shared her firsthand encounters with women worldwide who are working to improve theirs and their family's lives.

While the Gates Foundation is the largest, there are other philanthropies that are jointly led by ultra wealthy couples, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie, and hedge-fund founder John and Laura Arnold. The private organizations are largely beholden only to their founders, and sometimes criticized for their lack of accountability and transparency.

"With these couples, these ongoing enterprises, it's always hard to know who is pulling for what priorities," Callahan said.

The big takeaway, Callahan and Soskis agreed, is the Gates' divorce demonstrates the outsized, unpredictable repercussions that follow the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people. All of a sudden news of a divorce isn't a gossip column curiosity, but a significant event with potential societal ramifications.

"It's another illustration of a universe in which individuals and not institutions are a defining player on the landscape," Soskis said.

Billionaire commander and future space crewmates bond during Mount Rainier trek

Posted: 03 May 2021 04:43 PM PDT

Inspiration4 crewmates Christopher Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux revel in their visit to Mount Rainier. (Inspiration4 Photo / John Kraus)

The road to space runs through … Mount Rainier?

Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, who's paying for a trip to orbit as a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, thinks a three-day expedition on Washington state's highest mountain with his future crewmates is a good way to prepare for three days of being cooped up in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

"We're going to get comfortable getting uncomfortable," he was quoted as saying in an Instagram post by John Kraus, the official photographer for Isaacman's Inspiration4 space campaign.

Over the weekend, Isaacman and the three other members of the Inspiration4 Dragon crew — Lockheed Martin engineer Christopher Sembroski, Arizona geoscientist Sian Proctor and St. Jude physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux — were part of a team that took on the miles-long trek to Camp Muir, a way station at the mountain's 10,080-foot elevation.

Isaacman and a subset of the team went even higher and reached the 14,411-foot-tall mountain's summit during this trip — a stretch goal that the billionaire businessman missed out on during a preparatory climb earlier this month.

If all goes according to plan, the Inspiration4 foursome will climb into the same Crew Dragon spaceship that brought four astronauts back from the International Space Station over the weekend. SpaceX will refurbish the craft, christened Resilience, for a mission set for liftoff as early as September.

Unlike Resilience's previous crew, the Inspiration4 spacefliers won't be going to the space station. Instead, Isaacman will serve as the commander of a free-flying mission that could provide further insights into the effects of spaceflight on non-professionals — and provide great pictures for the crew and folks watching at home. Resilience will be fitted with a giant cupola window to maximize the view.

Isaacman, who's a trained jet pilot, hopes the project will raise $200 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Contributions are still being taken via St. Jude's website, and you can bet there'll be opportunities during and after the flight for the Inspiration4 crew to highlight the work being done at the hospital.

Arceneaux, a cancer survivor, told CBS News that the crew plans to call patients from space. "They're going to see that somebody who was in their shoes, who also fought childhood cancer, can go to space," she said. "And I think it's really going to show them what they're capable of."

Sembroski, who lives in Everett, Wash., is looking forward to gaining a perspective from space that's likely to be even broader than the view from Mount Rainier.

"I really hope that once I'm up there … I am able to experience what it's like to look back down at Earth and see our beautiful blue ball sitting there, with no lines, no walls," he said a little more than a month ago when his selection for the crew was announced. Sembroski said sharing the experience could help others "realize what incredible opportunities we have if we just continue to show kindness to one another, and reach out and be generous with our talents."

iPad Pro’s exciting display upgrade might be coming to the 2021 MacBook Pro

Posted: 03 May 2021 04:43 PM PDT

Apple unveiled the new iPad Pro models at its Spring Loaded event. The new iPad Pros come in the same 11-inch and 12.9-inch options, but feature a few notable upgrades over their predecessors. Both devices run on the same M1 processor that powers several Macs, feature up to 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage. Also, the iPad Pros come with optional 5G support. But the best upgrade concerns the 12.9-inch model's display.

The larger iPad Pro features a mini-LED screen. That's the new Liquid Retina XDR display that offers the same performance as Apple's Pro Display XDR monitor that retails for $5,000. A new report says the same display technology might be available for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros that Apple will launch later this year.

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Reports last year said that Apple planned to bring mini-LED screen tech to iPad and MacBook lines, starting with the iPad Pro and some MacBook Pro versions.

iPad Pro Liquid Retina XDR display features. Image source: Apple Inc.

Sources familiar with Apple's supply chain have told Digitimes (via MacRumors) that TSMT has addressed technical challenges for the production of mini-LED screens for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.

Digitimes reported that "TSMT is the exclusive provider of SMT services for the recently launched 12.9-inch ‌iPad Pro‌'s mini-LED backlights and is expected to do the same for the two upcoming miniLED-backlit MacBook models, the sources said."

The Apple supplier has been dealing with various production yields for key mini-LED components, including the circuit board and adhesive materials in the mini-LED displays destined for the new MacBook notebooks. TSMT has adjusted its techniques, increasing production yield rates to over 95%.

iPad Pro's Liquid Retina XDR screen offers a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, 1000 nits of full-screen brightness, 1600 nits of peak brightness, P3 wide color gamut, and 120Hz ProMotion support. The screen features a layer made of 10,000 mini-LEDs groups into 2,500 local dimming zones, as seen below. This allows Apple to adjust the brightness accurately and reach that 1,000,000: 1 contrast ratio.

iPad Pro Liquid Retina XDR: Local dimming zones explained. Image source: Apple Inc.

The same technology should be available in this year's MacBook Pros if the report is accurate.

The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models will probably be unveiled much later this year. They'll succeed the current 13-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models that run on M1 and Intel chips, respectively. Both 2021 MacBook Pro laptops will feature an Apple M-series processor, likely the M1's successor.

The mini-LED display upgrade isn't the only change planned for the 2021 MacBook Pro models. Other reports claimed earlier this year that Apple plans a major redesign for its notebooks. The new MacBooks will bring back support for MagSafe chargers and include additional ports compared to previous versions. The Touch Bar might also go away, the same reports said.

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Apple hires ex-Google AI scientist who resigned after researcher firings

Posted: 03 May 2021 03:40 PM PDT

AI scientist Samy Bengio, who resigned from Google after the firings of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, has joined Apple.Read More

Exciting new battery technology could extend the life of your next phone

Posted: 03 May 2021 02:41 PM PDT

Launched in 2015, the iPhone 6s can run Apple's latest iOS release and benefit from all the new features Apple has developed in the years since. Some of the more recent iOS features might have been devised for newer models, but iPhone 6s users still get the same overall iOS experience. Androids that are nearly six years old do not get the latest Android features. Not even Pixel phones. Putting things differently, the iPhone 12 could easily last six years and run many new iOS releases, especially considering the massive power under the hood.

While Apple's processors that power each iPhone generation are more formidable and efficient than the previous models, and while Apple upgrades iOS in a way that ensures the best possible compatibility with existing devices, there is one thing that can impact one's desire to hang on to an iPhone several years: Battery life. No matter how great the hardware and software might be or one's willingness to use the same smartphone for several years, there will come a point when the battery will start to fade. Batteries age and can't hold the same charge after a certain number of cycles. This is true for Android phones, electric cars, and other electronics that are powered by batteries.

But that's where a brand new innovation might help. Someone figured out how to build batteries that will hold 95% of the maximal charge after 1700 cycles. According to Apple, "a normal battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles when operating under normal conditions."

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Researchers from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have devised a method to improve the life of Li-ion batteries by preventing degradation, publishing their latest study on the matter in ACS Applied Energy Materials.

As EurekAlert explains, Li-ion batteries degrade because of the graphite anode or the negative terminal. The graphite requires a binder to prevent it from falling apart during use. That binder is called poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF), and it's because of PVDF that battery life drops after a number of charging cycles.

The JAIST scientists looked at a binder made from a bis-imino-acenaphthenequinone-paraphenylene (BP) copolymer. Unlike PVDF, the BP binder offers better mechanical stability and adherence to the anode. BP is also more conductive and forms a thinner conductive solid electrolyte interface with less resistance, according to EurekAlert. The copolymer doesn't react with the electrolyte, which further extends the battery life.

"Whereas a half-cell using PVDF as a binder exhibited only 65% of its original capacity after about 500 charge-discharge cycles, the half-cell using the BP copolymer as a binder showed a capacity retention of 95% after over 1700 such cycles," Professor Noriyoshi explains. The BP battery also showed a very high and stable coulombic efficiency. Electron microscope scans before and after the cycle showed only tiny cracks on the BP copolymer compared to large cracks on PVDF in less than a third of the total number of cycles.

Using BP copolymer in future batteries could extend the life of battery-powered devices significantly if the research is accurate. It's not just iPhones and Androids that could benefit from it, but also electric vehicles. Considering the various eco-friendly initiatives from various tech companies like Apple, BP batteries could significantly extend the life of iPhones and reduce waste. Usually, iPhones are resold or passed on to family members and friends once the original owner upgrades to a different version. Longer battery life would certainly come in handy, ensuring a great user experience for the new owner.

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Apple reports 2 iOS 0-days that let hackers compromise fully patched devices

Posted: 03 May 2021 01:40 PM PDT

Enlarge / The 2020 iPhone lineup. From left to right: iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12, iPhone SE, and iPhone 12 mini. (credit: Samuel Axon)

A week after Apple issued its biggest iOS and iPadOS update since last September's release of version 14.0, the company has released a new update to patch two zero-days that allowed attackers to execute malicious code on fully up-to-date devices. Monday's release of version 14.5.1 also fixes problems with a bug in the newly released App Tracking transparency feature rolled out in the previous version.

Both vulnerabilities reside in Webkit, a browser engine that renders Web content in Safari, Mail, App Store, and other select apps running on iOS, macOS, and Linux. CVE-2021-30663 and CVE-2021-30665, as the zero-days are tracked, have now been patched. Last week, Apple fixed CVE-2021-30661, another code-execution flaw in iOS Webkit, that also might have been actively exploited.

"Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution," Apple said in its security notes, referring to the flaws. "Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited."

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What Wildfires Taught Me About Data Ops

Posted: 03 May 2021 01:40 PM PDT

As my family evacuated in the face of the monster fires raging around us in the hills above Silicon Valley last year — part of my mind was on work. I couldn't help thinking as a newly minted CEO of a data ops fintech; this brings new meaning to the well-worn complaint of "constantly putting out fires."

What Wildfires Taught Me About Data Ops

In truth, maybe more of us should be learning lessons from what we're watching in the ecosystem around us. We do need new models. And we need perspectives to adapt to the fast-changing and unstable market conditions we've seen recently. We will undoubtedly see more destabilization in the markets in the near future.

Up in smoke

Consuming four million acres in California alone, the fires offer serious management lessons. Those lessons can be applied in the never-ending debate between executives who argue in favor of advance planning versus those who advocate for more flexible business models.

Common sense holds that businesses should plan for events and then act.

Your business shouldn't wait for an emergency to happen and then react. Firms and individuals make financial plans and projections that look years into the future, for example.

They want a sense of security, so they don't need to react to scarcity down the road. In this sense, planning is also synonymous with determination and perseverance. It's part of a work ethic. It's the responsible thing to do.

Data operations

You might say that monster fires fly in the face of planning, that nobody can predict them. A few years ago, that might have been true. But with modern data ops today, it's clear that the complex ecological system is on edge.

The issues

We have drier forests. There are more developed residential areas. There seems to be more lightning somehow. We see fewer resources for prevention. There are sustained real estate losses. These are early signs of climate change that are not going away.

Ask some questions

Will we be at the mercy of these raging weather beasts? We can't wait for another climate shift. Can we become more effective in forestry management strategy? Can we ultimately predict where and when a fire may happen?

What do Fires Have to do With Business?

As in the case of fire prevention, businesses should be expecting more crises. There will be more market disruptions. Let's say there will be more metaphorical wildfires in the coming years.

We can't be sure whether we will be in the path of the blaze until we can't avoid it when it comes. The question is whether one approaches those fires in the same manner, we do today, or should we start looking now and find a better way? What will break us out of our complacency — or how can we predict the destructive cycles that appear to have a grip on us?

It starts with planning.

Plan for what?

Scientists have been predicting an increase in the instances of megafires for years.

Analogously, entrepreneurs must be current on the research and technology that should give them deep insights about former, current, and future trends. But never forget that the scientists underestimated the scale of the potential fire destruction in the West.

Hollywood produces films like Sharknado, but I can't remember seeing anything that included pyrocumulus clouds that trigger lightning storms and fire tornados.

Science and technology can offer solutions, as well as data ops.

Fire experts discuss how fires should be allowed to burn because putting them out too early preserves the underbrush, giving rise to more intense conflagrations later. Others say that officials should clear sections of the forest to prevent fires from growing out of control.

But it turns out that whether to let fires burn, clear underbrush, cut down trees, or engage in other forest management depends on the trees and landscape within the forest.

Data

Data ops are key.

The more data one has about an ecosystem – or business – the better and more tailored one can make a plan that addresses the ecosystem's current and future needs. The lesson is that data is central to all decisions, especially in a world where artificial intelligence is poised to take over more processes.

That said, research shows that forest manager models are often effective no more than 15 years out, a much shorter horizon than one might assume. When discussing trees that can live for centuries. Data only goes so far, and that's where the operations part comes in.

Distinguish between the essential costs that can mitigate challenges now while also identifying and targeting measures to address.

Your essential costs now must take care of long-term issues that might be the source of the present moment's challenge. For example, investors in the West are facing serious questions about funding properties that might withstand future fires.

A fireproof or more resilient home, office, or strip mall doesn't address the climate changes that are creating the fires in the first place, however.

You need effective operations to organize and understand what the data suggests is actionable.

The downside of planning

Planning has its limits, however. Complex systems can have increasingly visible components. In recent years, the Western U.S. wildfires of today are only one of several cause and effect issues. There is a web of causes and effects, such as the financial crisis in 2008 and the experience of COVID-19.

These should convince everyone that the cause-and-effect reasoning that humans have developed to make sense of the crazy world has its limitations. That doesn't mean planning is futile. It means planning needs to be put in perspective.

Businesses need to become more accustomed to the uncertainty of not knowing which stream in which complex system might wind up adversely affecting them.

At the same time, they need to develop plans that are management tools, roadmaps for investors and mandatory for owners. There is a difference between responsible planning that will prepare a venture for the unknown and wasting time.

The goal is not to prognosticate but be ready to adapt, identify potential risks with rapid out-of-the-box risk assessment, take control, and stay ahead.

Emergent strategy

Businesses will need to identify and demonstrate the courage to undertake risk in this chaotic environment. We must turn from what Henry Mintzberg called "deliberate strategy" in his 1994 landmark "The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning" to "emergent strategy."

Emergent strategy is leaning into the tactics that work to achieve the business's goals now rather than depending on a plan that doesn't necessarily reflect current disrupted conditions.

Risk-averse companies might continue to operate according to a chain-of-command model that sifts through data and sends top-down orders based on preexisting plans. They won't do so well as the challenges mount and upend markets.

Companies that operate more like networks, sending data and tools to their frontlines, will make more intelligent decisions and hopefully thrive.

Conclusion

Like phoenixes, forests regrow out of the ashes left after fires. Companies burned during unexpected crises can do the same with some planning and a willingness to adapt.

I've watched the communities around me react, adjust and take on new planning and resiliency efforts. There is a way forward.

The post What Wildfires Taught Me About Data Ops appeared first on ReadWrite.