Providence Technology Group

The state’s leading consumer privacy agency is throwing its support behind a bill built to bolster protections around Californians’ online data. SB 362, also known as the “Delete Act,” would create a portal for residents to remove personal data that’s been collected by data brokers, from purchase history to internet browsing habits. There are currently 486 data brokers registered in the state of California, which aggregate and sell personal data to third parties. Many times, the information is only used for targeted ads, but state Sen. Josh Becker, who introduced the bill, worries about other potential uses. Keep Reading This Article at MSN.com

Thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables, already in place across California, can shake up the study of earthquakes. New research out of Caltech used a section of telecommunication fiber to sense and measure a magnitude 6 earthquake, repurposing the assemblies to extract sharper details about the temblor. Zhongwen Zhan, professor of physics at Caltech, said the same fiber optic network used for internet and television can serve as a dense network of makeshift seismometers in a method called DAS, distributed acoustic sensing. Keep reading This Article at the East Bay Times

HAYWARD – Officials in the city of Hayward announced that the city’s internal computer network has been restored following a ransomware attack that took systems down earlier this month. In a statement Thursday, city officials said the network was brought back on Tuesday, more than two weeks after the cyberattack was first discovered. “The restored network ties together computer systems on which departments and divisions of City government normally rely for general municipal operations—each of which themselves has had to be painstakingly assessed, restored and brought back into service,” the city said in a statement. Keep Reading This Article at CBS News

Artificial intelligence is fast encroaching upon every area of our lives, and it seems like there’s no stopping it. This technology is proving particularly game-changing in the world of business, where it’s enabling data-driven decision-making, automation, and improved customer experiences. With things moving so fast, and so many sources of information available, we’ve gathered these up-to-date AI statistics to give you a snapshot of AI in 2023. Keep reading for fascinating insights on who is using AI, how they are using it, and how it’s impacting the workplace. Keep Reading This Article at Techopedia

In the wake of companies like Waymo and Cruise expanding their autonomous vehicle services to San Francisco, citizens have taken a unique approach to protest by placing traffic cones on the hoods of these vehicles. Videos of the group, who call themselves “Safe Street Rebel,” have gone viral on Twitter and TikTok, attracting both support and criticism from users. The companies that own these vehicles are, however, not pleased with the attention, considering it an act of vandalism. Keep Reading This Article at Interesting Engineering

Whether it’s picking a meetup location for a hike, choosing a campground from miles away or finding help if you stranded off the beaten path, California State Parks has announced a new tool that’s as simple as three words. New innovative location technology — known as what3words — will now be used throughout the state parks system. This revolutionary technology pinpoints exact locations through the app, giving users the ability to communicate precisely where they are or intend to be. Keep Reading This Article at MSN.com  

The personal information of about 769,000 retired CalPERS members was exposed in a third-party data breach that was reported earlier this month. CalSTRS said 415,000 of its members and beneficiaries were impacted by the breach. CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, is the nation’s largest public pension fund. It serves more than 2 million members in its retirement system and more than 1.5 million in its health program. CalSTRS, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, is the second-largest public pension fund in the United States and the largest teachers’ retirement system. It serves more than 947,000 members. Keep Reading This Article at MSN.com

Remote Power In a remarkable first, scientists at the California Institute of Technology say they’ve successfully transmitted solar energy gathered by a satellite in orbit down to the Earth’s surface, as well as to nearby receivers in space. Dubbed the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE), the experiment was launched back in January as part of an exciting triptych of tests from Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project (SSPP). “Through the experiments we have run so far, we received confirmation that MAPLE can transmit power successfully to receivers in space,” SSPP co-director Ali Hajmiri said in a press release. “We have also been able to program the array to direct its energy toward Earth, which we detected here at Caltech.”...[Read More]

West Sacramento CA – Gemini Bioproducts a leading supplier of cell culture reagents and process liquids, a portfolio company of BelHealth Investment Partners, LLC (“BelHealth”), a Florida-based healthcare private equity firm, today announced the opening of a new, state-of-the-art cGMP manufacturing facility and warehouse in West Sacramento, California. GeminiBio’s new 32,000 square feet fully validated cGMP facility consists of segregated animal origin (AO) product ISO 7 manufacturing suites and segregated AO/ animal origin free (AOF) raw material and finished good warehousing. This new cGMP warehouse includes temperature mapped and validated storage conditions, including -20C, 2-8C, and controlled room temperature (CRT). Keep Reading This Article at The Davis Vanguard

With the explosion in user-friendly artificial intelligence software such as ChatGPT and countless other innovative applications, we’ve entered an age of accessibility so expansive it has been compared to the advent of the internet. But like the internet and its anarchic inception, the collective imagination is struggling to keep up with how these AI tools will impact daily life, and how to evade those who utilize them for malicious purposes. Using AI, criminals can be craftier, more convincing, and nearly impossible to detect — even for the otherwise tech-savvy. Phone scams aren’t just for the elderly anymore. With voice cloning software, just a three-second recording is needed to seamlessly mimic a real person’s voice, and scammers are already exploiting it. Keep Reading This Article at ...[Read More]

In an email last Thursday, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ announced the creation of a new college, the College of Computing, Data Science and Society, or CDSS. Approved by the University of California Board of Regents on May 18, CDSS is UC Berkeley’s first new college in 50 years. The undergraduate majors in computer science, data science and statistics currently housed in the College of Letters and Science, or L&S, are expected to transition into the new college by spring 2024, according to Assistant Dean of Communications for CDSS Tiffany Lohwater. Keep Reading This Article at The Daily Californian

Scientists have invented a type of electronic skin that can “talk directly to the brain”, allowing amputees to feel a human-like sense of touch through prosthetic limbs. The ground-breaking artificial skin is embedded with sensors for temperature, pressure and strain, which are converted into electrical signals – similar to how nerve impulses communicate with the brain. The wearable electronic circuit, known as a monolithic e-skin, was developed by a team from Stanford University, who detailed their breakthrough in a study published in the journal Science. Keep Reading This Article at Yahoo.com.