February 17, 2023
Security: City of Oakland declares state of emergency after ransomware attack
BleepingComputer
Oakland has declared a local state of emergency because of the impact of a ransomware attack that forced the City to take all its IT systems offline on February 8th.

Interim City Administrator G. Harold Duffey declared a state of emergency to allow the City of Oakland, California, to expedite orders, materials and equipment procurement, and activate emergency workers when needed. The incident did not affect core services, with the 911 dispatch and fire and emergency resources all working as expected. Read More
Healthcare IT: Top five opportunities and challenges of AI in healthcare
Forbes
Unless you have been in a commune in the Himalayas the past couple of months, I am certain you have heard of ChatGPT and its use as a form of artificial intelligence (AI). The reality is that AI, or certainly the concept, has been around for a very long time, and until recently, it’s been much less actual intelligence and more number crunching in that it goes through every permutation and combination of responses until it finds one that fits. As opposed to what conventionally is thought of AI, as true intelligence and reasoning. That all said, AI has now leapt into popular and mainstream culture and how we look at innovation and our world going forward. And certainly, healthcare is one industry where this has been an ongoing discussion and raging debate. Read More
Homeland Security: Breakthrough alert messaging for a mobile public
Homeland Security Today
he Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) refers to the rapidly growing areas of land that lie between the urban sprawl of cities and towns, and the undeveloped more rural and forested countryside and mountains. It is in the WUI that the danger and damage from the growing risk of wildfires is most prevalent. Of paramount importance is alerting people in the path of fires and enabling their safe evacuation from the area. That’s why the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is leading the charge to help provide innovative communication solutions that are pushed directly to the public.

With this in mind, S&T partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Corner Alliance, and other industry collaborators to develop the WUI Integration Model. It functions as an enhancement to existing emergency alerting capabilities by sending critical information to the public over a new medium—the infotainment consoles in their vehicles. Read More
Transportation: Tesla recalls 363,000 vehicles equipped with "Full Self-Driving" tech
CBS News
Tesla is recalling nearly 363,000 vehicles with its "Full Self-Driving" system to fix problems with the way it ignores posted speed limits and behaves around street intersections.

Tesla's recall covers some 2016-2023 Model S and Model X vehicles, as well as 2013 through 2017 Model 3s, and 2020l through 2023 Model Y vehicles. The recall came after U.S. safety regulators expressed concerns about the way Tesla's system responds in four areas along roads. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday that Tesla will address the concerns with an online software update in the coming weeks. Read More
Human Resources: HR less satisfied with software vendors: 4 reasons why
HRMorning
HR teams in many companies are growing increasingly dissatisfied with their current HR software vendors, despite the many benefits they provide. This is according to Sapient Insights Group’s annual 2022-2023 HR Systems survey that asked over 2,500 small, medium and large-sized companies for their satisfaction with HR platforms. 

Customer expectations have changed in 2022 over prior years because “organizations are dealing with a new set of challenges with high expectations from vendors to help them respond,” the survey reported. In 2020 and 2021, companies were satisfied with their vendor, but in 2022, there was a 7% decline in Overall Vendor Satisfaction and a 6% decline in User Experience. The survey also mentioned that those declines are prominent for Learning, Compensation and Analytics features (declined by as much as 15%). Why are companies becoming more dissatisfied? The survey delves into these four key reasons:  Read More
Business & Technology: Generative AI can help you tailor messaging to specific audiences
Harvard Business Review
Can generative AI tools like ChatGPT help us communicate more effectively — and more empathically? Successful communication often relies on speaking to personality traits, cognitive styles, and identity-linked worldviews. With the right prompts, and familiarity with the right behavioral science concepts, leaders can use generative AI tools to speak more directly to specific audiences. Specifically, it’s possible to prompt these tools to consider loose culture vs. tight culture, psychological capital, framing, regulatory focus, locus of control, personality traits, and worldview. Read More