June 24, 2022
Security: Apple and Android phones hacked by Italian spyware, Google says
CNN Business
An Italian company's hacking tools were used to spy on Apple and Android smartphones in Italy and Kazakhstan, Alphabet's Google said in a report on Thursday.

Milan-based RCS Lab, whose website claims European law enforcement agencies as clients, developed tools to spy on private messages and contacts of the targeted devices, the report said.

Google (GOOG)'s findings on RCS Lab come as European and American regulators weigh potential new rules over the sale and import of spyware. Read More
Healthcare IT: SERI researchers develop AI tools for screening kidney disease, predicting age using eye photos
MobiHealthNews
Researchers from the Singapore Eye Research Institute have developed two novel AI-powered tools for screening chronic kidney disease and predicting a person's biological age from retina photos.

The kidney disease screening tool called RetiKid was developed by SERI and the National University of Singapore's School of Computing in 2019. In a study, it was shown to have an accuracy of 91% in an internal test and 73% and 83% accuracy in two external test sets. Read More
Homeland Security: TSA unveils state-of-the-art scanners, photo ID verification units in security checkpoint at Lihue Airport
Homeland Security Today
Officials with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced today that it has begun installing four state-of-the-art, computed tomography (CT) X-ray scanners in the security checkpoint at Lihue Airport (LIH).

Installation of the four scanners began this week and will continue through late next week with the first unit becoming operational by the end of this week. The new CT scanners will be used to screen travelers’ carry-on luggage in the security checkpoints. CT units apply a sophisticated algorithm as they generate a 3-D image of the contents of the carry-on bag. A TSA officer can manipulate the 3-D X-ray image on-screen to allow for a better view of the bag’s contents, ultimately reducing the number of bag checks that are required. Read More
Transportation: Transport giant picks up Google Cloud AI to aid package delivery, tracking
The Register
Even in the waning days of the pandemic, extended lead times and delayed packages are an inescapable reality. Logistics giant XPO this week picked Google Cloud to try to change that.…

XPO is among the largest freight-transport brokers with more than 42,000 employees operating in 731 global locations. In a collaborative effort with Google, the company plans to deploy workloads on Google Cloud Platforms’s (GCP) AI/ML and data analytics platforms to mitigate supply-chain disruptions and improve package delivery and tracking services. Read More
Human Resources: IT skills are scarce, but employers are overlooking talent, report finds
HR Dive
Scarcity in the broader tech talent market may be exacerbated by a lack of training opportunities. A recent Coursera report found that technology and data science skills proficiency dropped “significantly” in the U.S. over the past year.

Still, research shows employers across industries are missing out on talent. Experis cited an Accenture report that detailed the presence of 27.4 million “hidden workers,” a group that includes employees who were inactive, on long-term unemployment or who missed hours due to economic reasons or child and family care reasons. Employers also frequently overlook other workers, such as those with disabilities, older workers and those with criminal records or who have been formerly incarcerated, according to speakers at a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission virtual event in May. Read More
Business & Technology: Where Web 3.0 is taking the software industry
CIO
Like many breakthroughs, the central idea behind blockchain is simple but obscured by the surrounding embellishments and hoopla. At its heart, the idea is a purely technical one, beguiling in its counterintuitiveness: by broadcasting information, it becomes more secure.

Ground zero for the blockchain idea is the Satoshi whitepaper, which presents a novel approach to avoiding the double spend problem in digital currencies. By cryptographically signing blocks of transactions and publishing them broadly, a record of who owns what is achieved that is resistant to tampering. Read More