Providence Technology Group

As nationwide protests force a deep examination of police tactics and funding, technology companies say they are re-evaluating their relationship with law enforcement as well. Amazon has halted police use of its facial recognition technology for one year and the website Nextdoor has stopped forwarding tips to police. Now, privacy groups and activists are scrutinizing the relationships between Amazon and local police departments that allow law enforcement to request access to video recordings from doorbell cameras installed in private homes. Amazon’s expanding network of law enforcement “partners” for its Neighbors app remains intact, an arrangement that critics say is designed to boost sales of its Ring cameras and capitalize on fears of property crime. Social media and news channels are f...[Read More]

Microsoft plans to provide digital skills training for 25 million people this year under a new, multi-million dollar initiative that will bring together multiple branches of the company, including LinkedIn and GitHub. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith announced the initiative Tuesday and stressed the urgency of training workers for the jobs of the future at a time of severe economic distress. The U.S. unemployment rate has surged past 14% with more than 20 million Americans out of work since the outset of the pandemic. “Talent is everywhere but the opportunity is not,” Nadella said during the virtual event. “Over and over again, we see that when people have access to education and skilling they create new opportunities for themselves and other people.” Keep reading this ...[Read More]

America’s top two most-innovative states share similar paths to success. For the second consecutive year, California and Massachusetts took the first and second spots in Bloomberg’s annual State Innovation Index. The ranking is based on six equally weighted metrics: research and development intensity, productivity, clusters of companies in technology, STEM jobs, residents with degrees in science and engineering disciplines and patent activity. California and Massachusetts’ success dates back more than 150 years ago with the creation of land-grant universities under the Morrill Act, according to New York University Stern School of Business economist Paul Romer. The Morrill Act of 1862 helped boost higher education in America by granting states public land they could sell and then use the pr...[Read More]

The new Blue Shield of California initiative is for Blue Shield of California members. A previous version of this article said the initiative served Blue Cross Blue Shield members. Payers looking to scale up their telehealth strategies face numerous hurdles, shared Peter Long, senior vice president of Blue Shield of California (BSC). And he should know. Long is at the head of a sprawling initiative called Health Reimagined that seeks to bring personalized, integrated, digitally-supported care to Blue Shield of California members—and in some cases non-members—in California. Keep reading this article at Health Payer Intelligence

One of Greater Sacramento’s booming industries is food and agriculture. As a young professional, I have stepped into the world of these industries, working for their economic growth which is something I didn’t originally see in my future. I was born in China where I was exposed to the life of farming and agriculture through my father’s family, who had a microfarm composed of vegetables they would consume daily, like tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, green beans and more. At the age of seven, we moved to Southern California and the idea of entering into a career in agriculture was not on my radar. There were always the unattractive perceptions of working in the dirt – that it is strenuous and not lucrative. I realized I wanted to invest my career in these industries after being exposed to their ...[Read More]

“There’s an app for that!” is something we can say for nearly anything nowadays. No taxis in sight? Use Uber. Hotels fully booked? Check out Airbnb. Working remotely during COVID-19? Call up your coworkers with Zoom. These apps, along with many others, have optimized the way we live and work, by providing us with accessible solutions that are cost-effective on both time and money. Every industry is influenced by smartphone apps and other forms of modern technology, including the world of real estate investment. To effectively communicate with today’s tech-savvy homebuyers, it’s important that investors remain on top of these fast-evolving trends and learn how these new technologies can be of benefit. Keep reading this article at TMCNet.com

Members of Sacramento State’s faculty are packing their virtual suitcases for a summer camp experience meant to further prepare them for fall classes that are scheduled to be taught online because of COVID-19 considerations. The University has committed $1 million in federal funding to Teach ON!-line Summer Camp, a new program led by the Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL) and created in partnership with Information Resources & Technology (IRT) and the College for Continuing Education (CCE). The funding comes from Sac State’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Security (CARES) Act allotment and will allow for as many as 800 faculty to attend a three-week-long session. Nearly 500 tenured and probationary faculty and lecturers have signed up so far. Each faculty participant who completes ...[Read More]

(TNS) — As California hurries to reopen stores, offices, restaurants and more this week, another rush is on behind-the-scenes. State health officials have launched an unprecedented effort to train thousands of front-line, county-level workers to act as a firewall to stop the coronavirus from roaring back this fall. Gov. Gavin Newsom calls them his “army of disease detectives.” Commonly known in the public health world as communicable-disease “contact tracers,” this ad hoc group will serve as community strike teams in each county, working on tight deadlines to stop individual infections from turning into major outbreaks. Keep reading this article at GovTech.com

Sachin Dhar thought he and his fiancée had a great deal paying $2,650 per month for a one-bedroom rental in South San Francisco, a short commute from Facebook Inc.’s offices in Menlo Park, where she works. But when the social networking company announced that most employees would be working from home until the end of the year, their calculation changed. “It makes no sense paying Bay Area rent if we can earn our salary living elsewhere,” says Dhar, 25, who already works remotely for a New York advertising startup. They’re considering moving to Hawaii—or, to really save money, somewhere in the rural U.S. Dylan Hecklau is thinking along the same lines. His ad-tech employer, Jelli Inc., was dubious about letting people work from home before the pandemic hit. Now that employees have proven prod...[Read More]

The Sacramento Regional Transit District (SacRT) is partnering with the California State Transportation Agency and the city of Sacramento to turn buses into free hotspots for communities with limited high-speed internet access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Testing for the 60-day proof of concept began May 1, with the first three Wi-Fi buses going live May 4, to promote opportunities for distance learning, telework and telehealth. Seven additional buses will be deployed to more “digital desert” communities across Sacramento beginning the week of May 11. Buses will provide three and a half hours of wireless broadband service at two locations each day, with updated schedules available at thewifibus.com Keep reading this article at MassTransitMag.com

The robotic company’s newest mission is to help the state of California with touchless vehicles, moving and deploying medical goods throughout the former home of the Kings. Nuro, a Mountain View based robotics company, has a mission to accelerate the benefits of robotics for everyday life. The bread-and-butter of its operation is the development of autonomous vehicles, intended for public road grocery delivery. Today, with a global pandemic affecting the everyday life it sought to optimize, Nuro has implemented a new use for their technology. Keep reading this article at NBA.COM

Scientists in the Sacramento area believe they have developed a way to keep the new coronavirus from finding the doorknob that it typically turns to enter human lung cells. Chris Xu, the CEO of Rancho Cordova-based ThermoGenesis, said the biopharmaceutical treatment could go to market within two months. “We are so advanced at this because we leveraged our unique global resources,” Xu said. “When this epidemic started to surface in Asia, we have several top universities in China where we collaborate and developed the science behind this and did the screening. So now we are probably at least four to six months ahead of any other comparable research institution here (in the US).” In addition, the company is now marketing a diagnostic kit that will allow health care professionals to tell patie...[Read More]