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Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the Russian government's Security Council during which cyber attacks were a focus. Apparently the number of attacks targeting state-owned companies, financial institutions, medical providers, and news websites in the country have increased several-fold.

Putin said, "Targeted attempts are being made to disable the internet resources of Russia's critical information infrastructure," and that "Serious attacks have been launched against the official sites of government agencies. Attempts to illegally penetrate the corporate networks of leading Russian companies are much more frequent as well."

Notable targets for these attacks include Russia's second largest bank VTB, online marketplace Avito, e-commerce company Wildberries, tech company Yandex, food delivery company Delivery Club, and video hosting website RuTube. Putin believes the best countermeasure is a focus on domestic technology and equipment, while also acknowledging sanctions have meant technical support for foreign software and products has stopped.

Focusing on domestic technology to make IT systems more resilient may prove much more difficult than Putin realizes. With access to the latest PC hardware disappearing, it seems Russia's IT future relies on a slow Chinese x86 CPU and legalizing software piracy. And who is going to carry out the work required to improve the protection of state-owned systems, prisoners with IT skills?

"Google "Machine Learning Fairness" Whistleblower Goes Public, says: "burden lifted off of my soul"" (Watch on YouTube)

More details: https://www.projectveritas.com/google-document-dump

Business PCs went mainstream in the 1990s. At the beginning of the decade, most people didn’t use PCs in offices. By 2000, pretty much all office work involved PCs. The use of mice and keyboards and the necessity of sitting and using a PC all day caused a pandemic of repetitive stress injuries, including carpal tunnel syndrome. It seems as if everybody got injured by their PCs at some point. It was common back then to see people wearing wrist braces. Companies invested in wrist pads, ergonomic mice and keyboards, and special foot rests. Insurance claims for medical treatment for carpal tunnel exploded. Then the 2000s hit. Mobile devices took off. Business technology use was diversified into laptops, BlackBerry pagers, PDAs and cellphones. We stopped hearing about carpal tunnel and starting hearing about “texting thumb” and other repetitive stress injuries related to typing on a phone or pager. Around ten years ago, the technology health problems shifted from the physical to the mental. Employees started suffering from all kinds of psychological syndromes, from nomophobia (fear of being without a phone) to phantom vibration syndrome (where you think you feel your phone vibrating even though your phone isn’t there) to screen insomnia to smartphone addiction. In recent years, our smartphones have begun harming health by giving us social media all day and all night, with notifications and alerts telling us something is happening. Millions of people are now suffering from smartphone addiction, which is really social media addiction, and, as I detailed in this space, it’s harming productivity, health and happiness.

And now management science has identified a collection of problems caused by the accumulated effect of all our technology, called “technostress.”

Technostress is actually not the latest malady in a series of technology-induced syndromes. In fact, it’s an umbrella term that encompasses all negative psychological effects that result from changes in technology.

Nomophobia, phantom vibration syndrome, screen insomnia, smartphone addiction, information overload, facebook fatigue, selfitis (the compulsive need to post selfies), social media distraction and the rest are all covered by the umbrella of “technostress.”

While ergonomics covers the physical effects of technology, technostress covers the mental effects.

Over time, technostress is increasingly related to compulsion. People now feel powerful anxiety when they’re not looking at their phones, fearing unseen important emails and work messages and a general sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) with the social networks.

While connected, people compulsively check all the incoming communications streams and feel compelled to respond. Time seems to stop, and the work hours spent on compulsive messaging and social media is usually considered to take far less time than it actually does.

By the end of the workday, employees are exhausted, feeling that they worked hard all day. But much of that fatigue is caused by the constant mental shifting from one communications medium to the next, and the anxiety and stress are caused by nonstop communication.

A survey of 20,000 European workers conducted by Microsoft and published this week found that technology causes stress, which lowers job satisfaction, organizational commitment and productivity.

Specifically, the survey found, the volume and relentlessness of email, text messages and social media posts distract and distress.

Microsoft makes the very good point that IT leaders readily accept the competitive necessity of digital disruption, as well as the need to do it right. But they also point out that doing it right means not only implementing new ways to work, but also helping employees with the stress of digital disruption.

In the past, employees were able to focus on work while at work and personal lives while not at work. Today, smartphones and communication and social apps keep a constant stream of work and personal messages coming in 24 hours a day, and it’s taking a toll.

Smartphone notifications interrupt, and those red circles with the numbers in them showing waiting messages draw people into those apps to check the messages.

Just a tiny fraction of those surveyed by Microsoft — only 11.4% — said they felt highly productive.

Technology, and the way it’s deployed, is not having the intended effect. It’s causing technostress, and lowering, rather than raising, productivity.

The main solution is a strong digital culture within an enterprise, according to Microsoft.

Surveyed workers employed by companies with a strong digital culture expressed a 22% rate of feeling highly productive, roughly double the average.

Here are examples of good digital culture practices:

* Put limits on email; no sending or replying to email after work hours.

* Measure employee happiness with technology with surveys of your own, and take action on the results.

* Focus on constructing the workday to enable flow, or concentrated deep work.

* Consider banning phones from meetings.

* Train employees on the causes and cures for technostress, including the management of social media usage.

* Encourage staff to take breaks, avoid work after hours and communicate more in person, rather than digitally.

Most importantly, take this seriously. It’s the kind of thing managers, especially in IT, tend to dismiss. (Microsoft’s survey points out that the most technical people are the least likely to suffer from technostress, and may therefore believe it’s not a big problem).

Technostress sounds like a fad disorder, a frothy buzzword without import. In fact, it’s probably the most costly problem in your organization.

Technostress is caused by changes in technology, and the pace of change will keep accelerating. Artificial intelligence, data analytics, robotics, the internet of things, virtual reality, augmented and artificial reality — these changes will bring technostress to a whole new level.

2017 was a year with a lot of bad behavior going on. People were randomly clicking, other people where hacking, others were mistreating the disadvantaged. Perhaps more dismaying was the constant string of stories about the age discrimination and the mistreatment of women and minorities in technology.

The corporate misogyny at Uber is perhaps the best example of horrifyingly bad behavior in tech companies, but it’s far from the only one. The multi-page manifesto written by a former Google engineer presenting reasons why women can’t succeed in the technology industry is another. But the fact is the “bro” culture in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in tech robs their businesses and all of society of the talent and productive potential of half the population.

Facebook is known for being one of the best places in the world to work, receiving annual accolades about its perks and benefits. But two new lawsuits are arguing that the social media giant is not an inclusive, great place to work if you’re above a certain age. 61-year-old Stephen Cohen, who lives in Manhattan, says he was approached by Facebook’s vice president of global marketing and director of sales and marketing staff about a job in communications. But when he sent them his resume, which listed his graduation date as 1978, they suddenly told him the position had been filled, according to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court. This is the second age discrimination lawsuit to be filed against Facebook in recent days. According to City News Service, former Facebook employee Gary Glouner, 52, filed a suit in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging that he was fired in 2015 over his age and disability. Glouner claims that Facebook, whose motto was once “move fast and break things,” discriminated against older employees, including himself, for “not moving fast enough.” Glouner said he witnessed several other older employees get fired after being told that they were a “poor cultural fit,” or that they “didn’t get it” or that they “didn’t move fast enough,” according to the suit. Both lawsuits reference Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s speech to a tech gathering in 2007 as an examples of Facebook’s ageist culture. Back then, Zuckerberg was a 22-year-old unpolished Facebook CEO. In a Y Combinator speech, he made his generational preferences clear. “Young people are just smarter,” he said. “I want to stress the importance of being young and technical….Why are most chess masters under 30?…I don’t know…Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family.” Those words may come back to haunt Zuckerberg.

In October that an estimated 400 to 700 Tesla employees were dismissed, many of whom said the dismissals came with little or no warning. Tesla told that these cuts were made following the company’s annual performance review process. The United Auto Workers filed a complaint against Tesla on Oct. 25 2017, claiming the company fired workers who were trying to unionize. Also, Tesla said 17% of its employees were promoted, and almost half of those promotions were within its factory in Fremont. A quick look at Tesla’s career page shows a different, yet related problem: lots of job openings. It’s an issue the Musk later addressed in the earnings call, noting that the company is “sucking the labor pool dry” to fill positions at its factory in Fremont, Calif., and battery factory near Reno, Nevada. Tesla reported that it lost $619 million in the third quarter, its biggest-ever quarterly loss. Those losses were bigger than usual as Tesla tried to speed up production of its more affordable Model 3 sedan.

What the culture in these companies does is no better than the discrimination that takes place in many levels of society because of a person’s age, skin color or their place of origin. Sadly, because nobody wants to mess with the cool guys in tech, the theoretically progressive governments in California and elsewhere are slow to enforce discrimination laws.

When 2017 is remembered in the technology industry, it will be known as much for a general failure to invest in people. If a general realization began to grow in 2018 that money does not forgive evil. Despite the fact that some Silicon Valley companies, such as Uber, have grown rich mostly on venture funding, that does not give them license to abuse and repress employees in quest of a blockbuster initial public stock offering with a get-rich-at-all-costs mentality that beggars the usual corporate objectives of giving customers a good service at a fair price and employees a decent place to work.

Margaret C. Whitman. the board chairman and chief executive officer of HP revealed that she will be stepping away in February from the lightning-rod job she has had for the last six-plus years. She will be replaced by 23-year HP veteran Antonio Fabio Neri, the current president of HPE.

HPE's stock has risen from $9.88 on its first day, Nov. 1, 2015, to $13.95 on Nov. 30, 2017. HP Inc.'s has fared even better; on Dec. 3 2012, it was $5.90; it was $21.45 on Nov. 30, 2017. Investors should have no complaints, but critics say Whitman raised the value of the stock by cutting costs at HP, and they have a point. But the company has been managed by her and her team to stay in the financial black while revenues have leveled off and declined--mostly due to competition from smaller, more nimble new-gen software and hardware companies.

In her six-year tenure, Whitman had to do what managers universally hate to do: oversee the layoffs of employees. At last count, the number of those let go amounted to nearly 85,000. HPE and HP Inc. together still employ about 250,000 people worldwide. Eighty-five thousand! That's more than too much displacement for anybody to have to handle. Firing even one person is difficult.

Whitman's tenure at Hewlett-Packard was marked by a major split, a big spinout-merger, numerous acquisitions and several division sales that changed the legendary 78-year-old Silicon Valley company forever. The company was forced to evolve all through the first decade of the 2000s, when it made a $25 billion acquisition of Compaq in 2002 under then-CEO Carly Fiorina and a subsequent $11 billion acquisition of British analytics firm Autonomy that turned out to be a huge mistake. HP spent billions acquiring some promising companies during Whitman's time on the board and as CEO. They include 3COM (networking, 2010), 3PAR (data storage, 2010), Vertica (database analytics, 2011), Eucalyptus (cloud management software, 2014), Aruba Networks (mobile networking, 2015), Simplivity (hyperconverged data center equipment, 2017), Cloud Cruiser (cloud cost management and optimization, 2017) and Nimble Storage (flash and hybrid data storage, 2017). The spinout-merger of HPE's software business into Micro Focus, which became official Sept. 1, was another major milestone in Whitman's time at the helm.

The Autonomy deal was not a high point. It made under short-term CEO Léo Apotheker, who came from SAP and turned out to be ill-suited for the job. He lasted less than one year (2010-2011) before being replaced by Whitman. At the time, HP had fired its previous CEO (Mark Hurd, now at Oracle) for expenses irregularities, and appointed Apotheker as CEO and president. At the time, HP was seen as problematic by the market, with margins falling and having failed to redirect and establish itself in major new markets, such as cloud and mobile services. Apotheker's strategy was to dispose of hardware businesses like Palm and move into the more profitable software services sector, a strategy competitor IBM was also enacting at the time. As part of this strategy, Autonomy and its analytics franchise was acquired by HP in October 2011. HP paid $10.3 billion for 87.3 percent of the shares, valuing Autonomy at around $11.7 billion (£7.4 billion) overall, a premium of around 79 percent over market price. The deal was widely criticized as chaotic attempt to rapidly reposition HP and enhance earnings, and had been objected to even by HP's own CFO. Other problems eventually surfaced surrounding Autonomy, including allegations that it oversold its capabilities to Apotheker and other HP executives. After Apotheker was fired in September 2011, HP had to write off $8.8 billion of Autonomy's value. Litigation surrounding the ill-fated deal continues to this day. This is the unsettled scenario in which Whitman arrived in the CEO chair, although as a board member she certainly had to see some of the problems coming. Repercussions of these problems are still being felt today.

The 61-year-old Whitman, listed by Forbes as having $3 billion in assets, is stepping away from a hot-seat job that earns her about $20 million per year ($4.86 million of that in salary). She has served CEO tenures at both eBay (1998 to 2008) and HP (2011 to 2018), taking some time off from business in 2009 and 2010 in an unsuccessful run as a Republican for governor of California. In fiscal 2016, after the company split into two--HP Inc. and HP Enterprise, in 2015--she earned a cool $35.6 million, which included stock options worth $11.7 million alongside restricted shares worth $19 million if she meets certain performance requirements. Whitman, who will remain on the HPE board, has planned ahead, downsizing from her large Atherton estate to an apartment in Palo Alto, Calif. and a mountain home in Telluride, Colo.

In August, 2017 Google fired a software engineer(James Damore) who wrote an internal memo that questioned the company’s diversity efforts and argued that the low number of women in technical positions was a result of biological differences instead of discrimination.

Just in September, 2017 a lawsuit filed by three former employees claims Google is systematically and knowingly paying women employees less than comparable male workers. Google says allegations are untrue.

The complaint, filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco Thursday, September 14, 2017 accused Google of systematically and knowingly paying women lower wages and compensating them less overall than male employees with substantially similar skills and experience.

The three ex employees who filed the lawsuit are: Kelly Ellis, who worked as a software engineer at Google between 2010 and 2014; Holly Pease who left Google in 2016 as a senior manager of business system integration; and Kelli Wisuri, a brand evangelist for the company between 2012 and 2015.

In a statement, Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano said the company is reviewing the lawsuit, but disagrees with its central allegations. "We work really hard to create a great workplace for everyone, and to give everyone the chance to thrive here," she noted.

After the initial review the Labor Department asked Google for more compensation data, this time dating back to 2014. The agency says it is trying to find out if the wage gap it discovered during its first analysis is part of a broader pattern of discrimination against women at Google.

Watch on YouTube

10. Trinity, a Cray XC40 running at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has an incredible important job: replaced US nuclear test which last was conducted in September 1992. Speed: 8.1 petaflops.

9. Mira is an IBM BlueGene/Q system cranking away at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. System conducts scientific research in seismology, climatology, material science, transportation efficiency and computational chemistry. Speed: 8.59 petaflops.

8. The K computer is installed at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. It could perform advanced climate research, disaster prevention and medical research. Speed: 10.5 petaflops.

7. Oakforest-PACS is a Fujitsu PRIMERGY system operated by Japan’s Joint Center for Advanced High Performance Computing. It’s installed in the Information Technology Center at the University of Tokyo’s Kashiwa Campus, though its number crunching superpowers also benefit the University of Tsukuba. Speed: 13.5 petaflops.

6. Cori, Cray XC40 is named for Gerty Cori, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—and the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science. Cori the supercomputer does its best as the centerpiece of a new Big Data Center , a collaboration between the U.S. National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Intel and five Intel Parallel Computing Centers. Speed: 14 petaflops.

5. Sequoia, the IBM BlueGene/Q supercomputer, installed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It’s tapped to quantify uncertainties “in numerical simulations of nuclear weapons performance” and perform “advanced weapons science calculations". Speed: 17.1 petaflops.

4. Titan, the Cray XK7 megamachine installed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A University of California, Santa Cruz, research team is on the case, using Titan’s massive compute powers to generate “nearly a trillion-cell simulation of an entire galaxy, which would be the largest simulation of a galaxy ever. Speed: 17.5 petaflops.

3. Piz Daint is a mountain in the Swiss Alps whose name translates roughly to “inner peak.” It’s also the name of the supercomputer, installed in Switzerland, at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. Climate scientists in Bern recently tapped Piz Daint to help them understand the causes of Europe’s destructive summer storms. Speed: 19.5 petaflops.

2. Tianhe-2, or as it’s known in English, Milky Way-2, which was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology and is deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, China. In April 2015, the U.S. government rejected Intel’s application for an export license that would have increased the power of Tianhe-2’s CPUs and coprocessor boards due to concerns about the supercomputer being used for “nuclear explosive activities.” Speed: 33.8 petaflops.

1. Sunway TaihuLight lives at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China, where its 10 million+ CPU cores have created the biggest, most detailed simulation of the universe. The simulation covers millions of years in the universe’s history, with the goal of helping scientists uncover new discoveries. And it’s “just a warm-up exercise,” says an author of the simulation study. Reportedly China is building “an even larger computer that will be capable of performing over ten times as many calculations as TaihuLight. Speed: 93 petaflops.

1. Apple
2. Facebook
3. Google
4. IBM
5. Intel
6. Microsoft
7. Netflix
8. Red Hat
9. Oracle

All these high-demand jobs come with signing bonuses, stock options, and the ability to work remotely, of course. More eyebrow-raising perks include college debt payoffs and planned sabbaticals. If you want to move to Silicon Valley to cash in, think again. because the top five states for job growth last year, in order: Utah, North Carolina, Michigan, Washington, and Montana. All five states saw growth of between 4.5 and 6 percent.

Happy hunting:

1. AI

As Artificial Intelligence(AI) speeds how we work with massive amounts of data and converts it into actionable insights, the area is starved for new talent. Corporate and consumer interest are on the rise in areas like automation and autonomous driving, which means engineers with deep learning experience are hard to find. And if you’re thinking of investing in a shift, rest assured. The demand for engineers with AI, machine learning, and deep learning chops doesn’t look to be slowing anytime soon. With the intense focus on predictive analytics, deep learning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, these positions should remain relevant for years to come.

2. VR/AR

Despite being one of the most in-demand fields, there were fewer than 5,000 potential candidates for Virtual Reality(VR) jobs as of the end of last year. You can expect that number to increase as more organizations embrace the virtual reality trend. While Augmented Reality(AR) and VR tech made a splash with a range of consumer products shown at this year, more promising opportunities will occur this year in the enterprise for simulation and training, which should mean more roles for AR and VR developers -- both in development and security. Companies will begin to realize incredible efficiencies and cost savings by leveraging immersive enterprise apps. In fact, by prediction that by 2020, augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality immersive solutions will be a part of 20 percent of enterprise’s digital transformation strategy.

3. Security analyst

With all the recent cybersecurity breaches and rise of advanced persistent threats, it should come as no surprise that security analysts are in high demand, marked by high starting salaries, potential for growth, and greater influence in the workplace these days. In the United States, more than 285,000 cybersecurity positions sat vacant in 2016, and an estimated 2 million positions will be left unfilled by 2020. With the struggle to hire in-house cybersecurity talent, organizations open themselves up to hacking, data breaches, and ransomware attacks. Security analysts need to be generalists with skills that are broader than deep, with the ability to work in various areas of the company doing the hiring. They should be able to think strategically and see the big picture regarding information security, and have the necessary interpersonal skills to deal with stakeholders and speak to board members.

4. Cloud integrator

The evolution of IT can be divided into three stages: the mainframe era, the PC/internet era, and now the cloud/mobile era, where new technologies built with the cloud in mind will gain more traction, including machine learning and blockchain. Companies facing tightening budgets are constantly forced to do more with less, and then cut costs all over again. Enter the cloud. And where cost-cutting closes one door, another opens. Consequently, developers and implementation specialists who specialize in cloud solutions roles are in high demand for those who are familiar with Microsoft 365, Workday, Salesforce.com, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Service Now, Oracle Cloud, and SAP. Contractors can make $150-250 an hour implementing cloud services, or as much as $175,00 a year, which is too much skin in the game for many companies. That opens up opportunities for “system integrators” who both install the cloud service and train up the IT department on how to use it.

5. Full-stack engineers

Web users are increasingly demanding more robust, app-like consumer experiences, which has led to strong demand for front- and back-end web developers -- and even more for those who combine those skills as full-stack engineers. Familiarity with open-source platforms is key. While .Net and Java will continue their dominance in 2017, larger trends in open source development are growing. We’re seeing uptick in requests for IT professionals with PHP, Python, Node.JS, and HTML/CSS experience. This trend is driven by companies moving away from the traditional platforms that require licensing fees. The JavaScript ecosystem is maturing rapidly and ES2015 (formerly ES6) is the foundation of its future. While JavaScript is currently hot and the JavaScript frameworks rock, what will differentiate JavaScript developers going forward is their knowledge of ES2015 and associated tools. Openings for full-stack engineers grew more than 100 percent from 2015 to 2016, with salaries ranging from just over six figures to nearly $140,000. Certifications for application development and ScrumMaster may help boost your pay or expand your opportunities, once you have proven your mettle with a full-stack framework.

6. Data scientist

As AI becomes part of the business toolkit, making decisions quickly based on large amounts of data is increasingly important to firms hiring new developers. All developer roles are in high demand, but there is especially high demand for data scientists. Every company is looking to leverage data and analytics to improve their business and they need individuals who are experts at solving complex data questions. Predictive analytics and machine learning are the future of tech, so you would focus on math, statistics, and behavioral psychology. Regarding programming languages and back-end tech you would emphasize R, Python, Java, JavaScript, Julia, Scala, and Hadoop, among others. Data science has become more complex, broader and more involved as it’s difficult for a single individual to possess all of the required knowledge. Coders come in many forms, and the path to one’s dream role isn’t always linear. Understand what your ultimate goal is. Whether pursuing a career as a data analyst, a statistical modeler, or a data scientist -- which is a subset of the two -- there will be continuous career opportunities.

7. IoT engineer

Job postings for IoT (internet of things) architects spiked more than 40 percent in the last year, and the company predicts that growth is just the start. The internet of things is where the world of technology is going. Working as an IoT engineer has a lot of current and future opportunity, the position is often competitively compensated, and experience with IoT will prepare candidates to move forward within the information technology industry even if they choose to move away from working directly with the internet of things. IoT devices are overwhelming companies with data, much of it unstructured, and firms want to find ways to collect and make sense of that information in a timely way. Companies need more data to have better visibility into their assets, people, and transactions. Businesses will increasingly take advantage of sensors, beacons, and RFID tags in the enterprise environment, lending them a voice to communicate with [users] and producing data constantly and immediately. Decoding the data collected through IoT-enabled devices and wearables will help companies accelerate their decision-making processes, and make more informed business judgments.

A blockchain is simply a decentralized network with information. The innovation here is in the word "decentralized" - the blockhain has made it possible for us to have a centralized database of information that is not owned by any organization.

Instead, blockchains are really sitting on the computers of many, many computers on the internet (whose owners are called "miners").

This is a ground breaking innovation as this was never possible till the blockchain came about. This is thanks to a now iconic paper by a still mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. This innovation is significant because owning the data in that centralized database is what has given the likes of Facebook its awe inspiring power.

Bitcoin, very simply, allows you store value on the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin allows us to store information on how much value each account on the Bitcoin blockchain has and keep it synced across the Blockchain. Bitcoin's value has surged in the past few months. Some of the surge was explained by Japan's decision to treat Bitcoin like any other currency. Some of it might be explained by a rush to find a new store of value given the high global uncertainty of late.

But, the surge is definitely unusual and unnatural.

This has caused all sorts of issues around Bitcoin's blockchain as the network hasn't yet proved itself capable of handling this scale. For example, a transaction right now takes hours to get confirmed.

So, these scalabilities issues have been at the heart of arguments around Bitcoin in recent years. The programmers who maintain the network can't agree on the best way to solve them and there is a sizeable section calling for a "fork" or the creation of a new blockchain that is designed for scalability.

That context about issues around Bitcoin sets the scene for Ethereum. While still in his teens, a Russian programmer called Vitalik Buterin was an early Bitcoin adopter, developer and writer. Having experienced the issues around the Bitcoin blockchain first hand, he decided to build a new blockchain called Ethereum with Ether, its own cryptocurrency.

So, what is Ethereum? Ethereum enables you to store value (à la Bitcoin) but also add "smart contracts." Smart contracts enable us to add conditions around sending value, for example. Or, put differently, it is programmable digital money.

Each blockchain is a network. We've so far talked about two networks - the Bitcoin blockchain and the Ethereum blockchain. As you can tell, both these networks exist to do different things. The Bitcoin blockchain is a store of value while Ethereum is all about smart contracts (that can also double as a store of value).

But, there will be other legitimate reasons to create blockchain based networks. In the past, however, building a network based business has proven really hard. Would you bet on taking on Amazon, Facebook and Google - giants by every way you want to measure success?

Imagine you want to start a new coin - ABCoin. You believe ABCoin is going to be great and worth $100M someday. You can now decide to do an "initial coin offering" or ICO to sell 10% of these coins. The buyers of the new offering pay up Bitcoins to get these tokens worth $10M in the hope of future return (much like the stock market). These tokens can be traded but don't confer ownership rights.

You now use $10M to fund the project and make ABCoins great again - while still maintaining ownership. But, now, you have $90M left. What do you do?

You might do is design systems that do the following:

* Pay your core developers and employees

* Rewards miners with tokens for mining

* Reward third-party developers for awesome applications they build on your network

* Return some money to your investors

* Pay all service providers who help you maintain this network

Most of these payments will decrease over time. So, early adopters get disproportionate value for taking the risk. And, assuming you are successful, the value of your token keeps increasing.

In the early stage, they ensure early adopters can fund the growth of the network. And, over time, the power of network effects kicks in.

There are 2 ways to interpret what is going on here - What we're seeing right now is a bubble. And, we'll see the bubble burst because people have incorrectly assumed that the blockchain is going to replace the internet instead of simply being the infrastructure that powers it (i.e. the linux analogy)

Second - What we're seeing is likely a bubble but, if that is the case, this is just the beginning of highs and lows before we build a blockchain based internet that is designed around decentralization.

Finally, blockchains powering the internet, is already happening. Governments around the world are experimenting with blockchain technology to maintain centralized registries. Sweden is testing a land registry, Dubai wants distributed ledgers to power the government by 2020 and Georgia has already moved its land registry to the blockchain. When you have governments among your early adopters, you know you are onto something.

Microsoft Founder Bill Gates took the top spot for the 21st year in a row on Forbes 400 richest Americans list with a net worth of $81 billion. Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway ranks second with a net worth of $67 billion, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is in third place with a $50 billion fortune.

In addition to these long-time heavyweights, 27 new names grace this year’s list. Lets take a look to just 3 new names in this list.

First of all it is 30-year old college dropout Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes reportedly “labored in secret” for almost a decade while developing a revolutionary new blood-testing technology. In 2003 she took her findings to the public and founded Theranos-- the company announced partnerships with Walgreens and other major drugstores to bring a new type of blood testing to consumers. The biotech founder is the youngest self-made woman on the Forbes 400 list with a net worth of $4.5 billion. Holmes dropped out of Stanford University her sophomore year as a chemical engineering major and used her tuition money to found her company.

Other new names of note on the 2014 list include video game king Jon Yarbrough, who got his start as a college kid in Tennessee by renting out his foosball table to a local bar for a 50-50 split of the profits. He expanded into video gaming machines and his business grew with the Tribal Casino business. Yarbrough’s current net worth is $1.66 billion and in June he announced plans to sell his company to an Australian firm for $1.28 billion.

Rockstar Energy Drink creator Russ Weiner also made his debut into the 400 with a $2.5 billion net worth. He founded the Red Bull and Monster Beverage competitor after learning the beverage industry-ropes while working for the founder of Skyy Vodka and expects 2014 sales of his drink to reach $713 million.

In total, one from biotech and chemecal engineering, one from video gaming and gaming machine bussines and one from the beverage industry. No one from IT industry?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xQABbOQHino

Median manager compensation for Wall Street IT in the securities and investments sector comes at $175,000, 20% of it from bonuses, and typical IT staffer in that sector make $112,000. Biotech managers. now pull in 18% less than securities and investment managers. IT pros in state and local government, nonprofit and education get paid the least.

San Francisco reigns as the highest-paying city, with median IT manager pay of $134,000 and staff pay $111,000.

Washington, as the economy recovers, it's tied for No.1 in size of raise(1.6 %), No.2 in staff pay($108,000) and tied with New York for No.2 in manager pay($130,000).

In hard-hit Detroit, its median IT manager pay of $113,000 puts it ninth on our list of cities. Detroit's median IT staff pay is now at $85,000, on par with Minneapolis and close to Dallas and Chicago.

Baby boomers are reaching retirement age, with an average of 10,000 US citizens turning 65 on a daily basis for the next 18 years.

In additional, younger techies change job frequently averaging only a year or two in a position before switching.

Finally, job posting are 12% year-over-year in November, and November is a pretty slow month. However, the tech unemployment rate is 4.1%...

Every 10 years, Microsoft informs its programmer community that it's radically changing platforms. In the early 1990s, it moved developers from DOS-based APIs to Win32 by forcing them through a painful series of API subsets: Win16 to Win32s and Win32g to Win32. In the early 2000s came the push to migrate to .NET. Now comes a new migration to Windows 8's constellation of new technologies under name "Metro".

At least the migration from DOS to Win32 had compelling motivators: a GUI interface and a 32-bit operating system. The migration from Win32 to .NET had a less obvious benefit: so-called "managed code", which in theory eliminated a whole class of bugs and provided cross-language portability. It's not clear that the first benefit warranted rewriting applications, nor that the second one created lasting value.

The just-announced Window 8 technologies are for writing "Metro" apps. Metro apps have a wholly new UI derived from Microsoft's mobile offerings and intended to look like kiosk software with brightly colored boxy buttons and no complex, messy features like dialog boxes.

Bottom line, the costs of these past migrations have been enormous and continue to accumulate, especially for sites that, for one reason or another, can't migrate applications to the new platforms.

The EIU(Economist Intelligence Unit) study explores the proficiency of countries in six categories: overall business environment, IT infrastructure, human capital, R&D environment, legal environment, and support for IT industry development.
The U.S. is No. 1 in all but two of those categories: IT infrastructure, where Switzerland is ranked first and the U.S. ninth, and legal environment, where the U.S. is second to Australia.

Among the other leaders in IT infrastructure are Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Australia; in human capital, China, Australia,
South Korea, and the U.K.; in R&D environment, Israel, Taiwan, Finland, and Singapore; in legal environment, the Netherlands, Germany,
and Denmark; and in support for IT industry development, Canada, Ireland, Singapore, and Norway.

While countries move up and down the overall ranking in each successive IT Industry Competitive Index, the top 20 countries have been relatively stable since the study's inception in 2007 "because of the solid competitive foundations they have built up through years of investment," according to the report. Notes Prof. David Hsu of the Wharton Business School in one of the interviews the EIU conducted for the report: "Advantage begets advantage."

Only France and Belgium have fallen out of the top 20 since 2007, replaced by Austria and Hong Kong, says Robert Holleyman, CEO of the Business Software Alliance, a multinational IT industry group that commissions the EIU study. "There are no shortcuts to IT innovation," Holleyman said in an interview.

Unchanged from the 2009 report is the overall No. 1 ranking of the U.S. and No. 2 ranking of Finland, though the U.S. earned 1.6 more points to score an 80.5 while Finland dropped 1.6 points to 72. Rounding out the top 10 in the index are Singapore, up six positions; Sweden, down one; the U.K., up one; Denmark, up two; Canada, down three; Ireland, up three; Australia, down one; and the Netherlands, down five.

The most upwardly competitive countries are Malaysia, rising 11 spots to No. 31; India, up 10 to No. 34; and Singapore, up six to No. 3. The report attributes India's rise to its advances in human capital (plentiful, highly skilled and educated workers) and R&D (such factors as IT patent generation and private R&D spending). Malaysia gets higher marks for R&D, especially its patents, while Singapore's gains came across the board.

The biggest decliners in the index are three former Soviet republics: Lithuania, down 10 spots to No. 41; Russia, down eight spots to No. 46; and Kazakhstan, down six to No. 60. Russia and Lithuania get dinged for their intemperate R&D climates.

Details: http://globalindex11.bsa.org

Steve Jobs recreated the movie industry with Pixar, redefined the music industry with iTunes, restrured the telecom industry with the iPhone, set up highest standard for Unix desktop with OSx, with Applications Store and for hardware with Macintosh, and took the languishing idea of a tablet-sized computer and turned it into the iPad, which is now restructuring the media industry.

That's record of success that will be difficult to match soon.

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