Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Seattle is the first area in the US where residents can vote via smartphones King County, Washington residents will be able to vote from their phones for an upcoming board of supervisors election By  Monica Chin @mcsquared96     Jan 22, 2020, 5:09pm EST King County, where Seattle is located, announced on Wednesday that it’s implementing smartphone voting for an upcoming board of supervisors election. King County’s 1.2 million residents can use their cellphones to vote in the election, which begins on January 22nd and continues until 8PM PT on February 11th. The program is a collaboration between King County Elections; the county’s conservation district; mobile-voting nonprofit Tusk Philanthropies; the National Cybersecurity Center; and Democracy Live, a technology firm that develops electronic balloting. THE PROGRAM IS A COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE COUNTY, A NONPROFIT, AND A TECHNOLOGY FIRM “It will be easier than ever for voters to access their Conservati...

Hundreds of Amazon employees risk firing to protest the company’s climate policies Annie Palmer @ANNIERPALMER MON, JAN 27 202012:29 PM EST KEY POINTS More than 340 Amazon employees signed onto a post published Sunday criticizing the company’s climate stance and protesting its external communications policy. It comes after Amazon threatened to fire two employees for speaking out against its climate stance, claiming they violated the policy. The employees also called out Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers and business with immigration agencies.   ·           More than 340  Amazon  employees are protesting the company’s external communications policy. The employees signed onto a  Medium post  published Sunday by advocacy group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. It includes signatures and quotes from Amazon employees, all of whom are named, across several divisions of the c...

A Warehouse Robot Learns to Sort Out the Tricky Stuff January 29, 2020 in   News ,  Tech   LUDWIGSFELDE, Germany — Inside a warehouse on the outskirts of Berlin, a long line of blue crates moved down a conveyor belt, carrying light switches, sockets and other electrical parts. As they came to a stop, five workers picked through the small items, placing each one in a cardboard box. At Obeta, an electrical parts company that opened in 1901, it is the kind of monotonous task workers have performed for years. But several months ago, a new worker joined the team. Stationed behind protective glass, a robot using three suction cups at the end of its long arm does the same job, sifting through parts with surprising speed and accuracy. While it may not seem like much, this component-sorting robot is a major advance in artificial intelligence and the ability of machines to perform human labor. As millions of products move through  warehouses run by Amazon, Wal...

Government privacy watchdog under pressure to recommend facial recognition ban   BY  CHRIS MILLS RODRIGO  -  01/27/20 04:31 PM EST   The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent agency, is coming under increasing pressure to recommend the federal government stop using facial recognition. Forty groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, sent a letter Monday to the agency calling for the suspension of facial recognition systems "pending further review." “The rapid and unregulated deployment of facial recognition poses a direct threat to ‘the precious liberties that are vital to our way of life,'" the advocacy groups wrote. The PCLOB "has a unique responsibility, set out in statute, to assess technologies and polices that impact the privacy of Americans after 9-11 and to make recommendations to the President and executive branch," they wrote. The agency, created in 2004, advises the ad...

Spies Like AI: The Future of Artificial Intelligence for the US Intelligence Community BY PATRICK TUCKER TECHNOLOGY EDITOR 2:29 PM ET Putting AI to its broadest use in national defense will mean hardening it against attack. America’s intelligence collectors are already using  AI  in ways big and small, to scan the news for dangerous developments, send alerts to ships about rapidly changing conditions, and speed up the  NSA ’s regulatory compliance efforts. But before the  IC  can use  AI  to its full potential, it must be hardened against attack. The humans who use it — analysts, policy-makers and leaders — must better understand how advanced  AI  systems reach their conclusions. Dean Souleles is working to put  AI  into practice at different points across the  U.S.  intelligence community, in line with the  ODNI ’s  year-old strategy . The chief technology advisor to the principal deputy to the D...

Spot the Robot Dog Trots Into the Big, Bad World Boston Dynamics' creation is starting to sniff out its role in the workforce: as a helpful canine that still sometimes needs you to hold its paw. This autumn, after years of dropping view-amassing videos of Spot the robot dog  fending off stick-wielding humans  and  opening doors for its pals , Boston Dynamics  finally announced  that the machine was hitting the market—for a select few early adopters, at least. BD’s people would be the first to tell you that they don’t fully know what the hypnotically agile robot will be best at. Things like  patrolling job sites , sure. But Spot is so different than robots that have come before it that company execs are in part relying on customers to demonstrate how the machine might actually be useful. And now, after a few months on the job, Spot is beginning to show how it’ll fit in the workforce. BD’s researchers have kept close tabs on the 75 or so Spots no...