Hello Technology, Goodbye Jobs

As the Internet of Things takes over, it will do more than provide convenience. It promises to steal nearly all existing jobs. Without change, this is bad news all around for pretty much all of us.

And now we can finally pay attention to more important matters...

Top of mind: the future unemployment rate.

It's gonna be high.

Very high.

Painfully high.

So high that it sparks riots among people with no hope for employment - the young and agitated Americans for whom cheap accelerants such as alcohol and drugs are easily available while the American dream is not. They're going to take to the streets to raise hell and destroy property and demand some sort of government intervention to lift them out of the misery to come.

That's certainly not going to help the economy, regardless of this new president or the next one.

It will, however, have sharp and painful impacts on you and me and our collective wallets.

In the not-too-distant future, this is what will happen:

• Your refrigerator will monitor the bar codes on the products inside, and it will know when your inventory falls below preset par levels.
• When you're low on, say, malt liquor or mayonnaise, the fridge will automatically order refills from the local Grub-o-rama.
• Grub-o-rama's automated systems will dispatch a drone to grab the items in a warehouse and pack them into a driverless delivery vehicle.
• That vehicle will arrive at your door ferrying a delivery bot with (quite literally) more technical aptitude than the entire Apollo space program that landed a man on the moon. It will communicate directly with the smart lock on your door that keeps thugs and scallywags out of your house, but which is intelligent enough to unlock itself for the delivery that your refrigerator told the lock to expect. The fridge will have established a one-time, unhackable security code that it shared with both the smart lock and the delivery bot.
• The delivery bot will enter your house, open the fridge, deposit the products and retreat. The door will secure itself afterward.

Best I can tell, that takes every single human job function out of the transaction.

There's no bored order-taker, no warehouse runner tasked with retrieving and packaging your malt liquor or mayo, no cashier to take your payment and no driver to deliver the goods to your home.

Even you're out of the equation.

As the Internet of Things takes over the planet, it promises to do way more than make our lives simpler and more convenient. It promises to pretty much steal most of the jobs that exist today. And I'm not talking about menial jobs such as warehousing and delivering.

I'm talking about skilled jobs in law and medicine, policing and architecture, writing and financing, and, well, pick any job really, and there's a very good chance technology will replace the human component.

This is bad news all around for pretty much all of us.

Growth Without Humans

In eras past, new technology regularly spawned new types of jobs that replaced those automated out of existence. This time, though, something really is different. Technology is putting us on a path much different than the past.

Consider Facebook.

It has created vast wealth for a severely limited number of people associated with the company as either founders, managers or investors. The company has roughly 1.8 billion users who generate $25 billion in profits for those founders, managers and investors. Yet the company employs about 13,000 workers. Facebook could easily double or triple its business without adding many more workers because the technology that runs the show can easily replicate itself for the next billion or so customers.

Home Depot can't add exponentially more customers without a commensurate investment in new stores. General Motors and Maytag cannot build and sell exponentially more cars and refrigerators without paying the costs of adding more production facilities. That creates real jobs and generates an investment in the economy.

But technology is just bits and bytes and pieces of code, replicating itself over and over and over an infinite number of times without the added cost of a single penny.

Indeed, technology is reaching the point where it doesn't even need workers for maintenance and repair. Worker bots and other pieces of coding can monitor other pieces of technology and address problems before they even happen. Technology is smart enough that it can now create its own technology, as Google recently demonstrated when it allowed a security program to figure out its own security algorithm without input from a human - and it succeeded.

It's all very cool and Star Treky and futuristic, and it promises a radically different world of convenience for us humans - at least on the Jetsonian cartoon side of this rapidly accelerating tomorrow.

On the other side is a very dark and dystopian Blade Runner world in which wealth aggregates among a select few and meaningful jobs are rare, if they exist at all.

Change or Face the Consequences

At some point in the very near future, nearly six of every 10 jobs in the developed-world economies will require no human activity, or so says a study from Citi and Oxford University.

The World Economic Forum posits that in less than four years, at least 5 million developed-world jobs will vanish forever because technology automated it out of existence.

Forrester Research estimates 12 million American cubicle-dwellers across a host of white-collar sectors - 13% of today's total U.S. workforce - will be jobless by 2025.

This represents a fundamental crisis for modern capitalism and for Western politicians, regardless of their party's platform.

Idle hands are the weapons of revolution.

People need a way to pay for their lives, and not just for some lifeless, utilitarian existence. Robotics and artificial intelligence do not square with that need. They kill jobs and care not about the human consequences.

Politicians will have to care, or they will face bloodshed in the streets and violent overthrow.

There are a few potential solutions:

• Limit the number of jobs technology can replace by forbidding companies from implementing certain types of technology. (That's probably not going to work.)
• Pay every American a "universal income," a basic monthly stipend to live on. That might work for a while - but it raises much bigger challenges: How does government pay for this when there are limited employment taxes and sharply reduced consumer/business taxes? And how will people living on a universal income and without access to a job afford expenses like property taxes or vacations or the niceties of life? The concept could be as malevolent as it is beneficial.
• Tax the hell out of technology to pay the cost of a universal income. Probably likely, but this is a catch-22: If the only income people have is a universal income, they can't afford much in the way of new consumer-tech items, which limits the income the tech company earn, which limits the taxes it pays to fund the basic income.
• Get rid of money and replace it with some other means of commerce. Also possible, though socially, politically and structurally disruptive on an immeasurable scale.
• Your Protection Against the Upheaval

So, what are we to do?

We can't change what's coming at us at warp speed. (And science is even working on warp speed, in case you care.)

Taxation is going to go much, much higher. I expect politicians will look to double the highest income-tax rates on individuals and businesses. They will double or triple capital-gains rates and eliminate numerous, if not all, deductions.

We could get to the simplified point where there's no longer a tax form to fill out and no IRS. All money will be electronic, and the government will simply deduct its pound of flesh from every bit of income that flows into your life.

That's a world for gold and other items with which you might barter for a haircut or those Fourth of July fireworks to celebrate all the wonderful freedoms we (used to) have.

As a lifelong world traveler, Jeff Opdyke has been investing directly in the international markets since 1995, making him one of the true pioneers of foreign trading. He is Investment Director for The Sovereign Society and a weekly contributor to The Sovereign Investor Daily.

How to Build the Best HTPC Media Centre at the Right Price

With DVDs phasing out and the rapid growth in online media more and more people are looking to build a HTPC media centre for their living rooms. Good systems are difficult to build and there are many considerations to make when choosing your components.There are three main considerations to make when designing your system.

Price vs Performance

To many it makes sense to buy top of the range computer components to build their media centre. They want a system that is going to last and rarely need an upgrade. Unfortunately this is not a cost efficient way to build a system and you will be paying far more than you need to. The home computing market is ever changing and as new technologies come out prices fall on the older kit. Buy the top of the range processor today and in 12 months it will be half the price. To get the cost efficient build you must first decide what it is you want your media centre to do. Is it to simply watch movies and video content or do you want high end gaming? When you have decided this, source the minimum specification hardware that will carry out the task. If your system is for gaming is an Intel I7 processor required or will the I5 suffice? With all this said you do not want to degrade performance taking the cheaper option. Yes the Intel I5 processor may run the games you want to play but can it achieve the resolutions that you want and will the gameplay be jumpy? People worry too much about future proofing their systems but prices fall so dramatically it is more often than not better to upgrade every 18 months or so and save on hardware costs.

Aesthetics & Size

When it comes to aesthetics you need to remember that your HTPC media centre will be placed in the prime spot of your living room in full view so you don't want a case that looks like a PC. With the recent boom in home media there is now a whole range of HTPC cases available that look more like games consoles or home entertainment systems and at quite reasonable prices. The important thing to remember when choosing a case is to ensure that your components will fit! It sounds simple but getting the right case is one of the toughest tasks with most HTPC builds. The more compact cases are often the most attractive but if your system is for high end gaming you will struggle to find a compact case that can house the high end graphics cards. Decide on your components first and then select a case to accommodate them.

Heat and Energy Efficiency

High end processors and gaming graphics cards more often than not produce a lot of heat. Heat is more of an issue when you select a tight compact case. When choosing your case ensure that it has the ventilation required to accommodate the heat production of all of your components. If it will not then check that you have space to install additional cooling devices. (Word of warning: cooling devices are generally noisy and may interfere with your movie enjoyment). You can also combat heat by using energy efficient components. As a rule of thumb smaller components tend to be more energy efficient. Even if your case supports ATX form factor motherboards go for mini-ITX or mini-ATX as these motherboards are far more energy efficient. The added benefit of building with energy efficiency in mind is that your system will have a lower running cost.

Getting your HTPC media centre right is a tough task and one that requires careful consideration. Following the above will get your design right and produce the entertainment system you need at the right price. These are the golden rules for building the optimum HTPC media centre.

For hints, tips and expert guides for building HTPC media centres visit us at Home Media Portal.

http://www.homemediaportal.com

We provide full reviews of the latest products and components for your media centres and show you where too find the very best prices. We also review some of the latest software out there including Kodi and Hyperspin and help you get the most out of each package.

Network Security Begins With an Acceptable Use Policy!

Most folks seem to understand what a firewall is and why it is so very important. They intuitively understand that they need something between the "trusted" internal computer network and the wild west we call the Internet! The installation of a firewall is generally something all business do, from the wireless network at the local coffee shop, to the medium size law firm and the giant multinational distributed enterprise. The barbarians are at the door, but with a firewall we all feel protected! The largest percentage of cyber security risks, however, do not come through the front door and your firewall will never see them enter. The largest risk to the security of your network comes from the employees and guests allowed, either connected by wire or wireless, to attach to your corporate network.

As a CISCO Certified Security Professional, we do a great deal of work in the area of computer network security. When called on to do a "Security audit", "voice readiness" or "network assessment", the first question we ask executive management is where is your AUP? After all we can tell you what protocols are running around on your network and even which user is consuming the most bandwidth. We can not, however, tell you if they are allowed to use that bandwidth! The creation of an "acceptable use" policy (i.e. AUP) is an essential first step in network security. The AUP communicates to all network users what is supported and what applications are allowed on the network. It describes what is acceptable regarding personal email, blogging, file sharing, web hosting, instant messaging, music and video streaming. It defines what is activity is strictly prohibited on the network and clearly outlines what constitutes "excessive use". The computer network is a valuable corporate asset and as such it needs to be valued, protected and secured.

Does your company have a network access and authentication policy? What is the "password" policy? Do you even need a "password" to use the company network? Can anyone just come in and plug whatever phone, pad or computer device they happen to have into the company network? What is the data storage and retention policy? Do you allow VPN tunnels that extend your company network to a home office or coffee shop? Do you allow your users to connect third party provided equipment to your network? Is it acceptable that Bob just added a hub to his office network connection so he can plug in his own printer? How do we feel if Bob plugs in his own wireless access point? Do we have a "guest" network and do we let those folks know what is acceptable on your network?

What are the legal ramifications and liabilities you are exposed to if you are providing a computer network as part of a lease agreement? Are you liable for damages if your computer network is unavailable or "down for any reason? If Home Land Security shows up because your company's public IP address was traced as originating a terrorist treat, do you have the user agreements in place to mitigate the costs you are about to incur defending your good name and reputation?

Computer network security is more than a firewall. A computer with an Ebola virus, Adware or nefarious RAT (remote access terminal) will infect all computers on your network, threaten your corporate data and render your firewall as useless as a screen door on a submarine. If your company has taken the prudent step of providing a Human Resource or employee manual that spells out the company's position on work force violence, sexual harassment, vacation day accrual and drugs in the workplace, why don't you have a manual that defines the acceptable use of your most vital corporate assess, the computer network?

Protect Your Computer From Being Hacked!

The thought of people being concerned that NSA is listing and monitoring their activities is a hysterically funny concept to me. Whatever you think of Edward Snowden, know that he is a day late and a dollar short. Most of these very same people that worry about the NSA, have a "Tracebook", Twitter, Instagram or a half a dozen other social media accounts that should be significantly reducing the NSA operating budget. In fact, let's just disband the NSA and hire Google! It seems that most of us have no issue publicly posting our most intimate details on Facebook including everything short of our Social Security numbers. Posting our current location and "checking in" so that the entire planet knows not only where we are, but what we are doing seems to be an absolutely essential public service and should also include pictures of the meal I am about to eat. How many of these same individuals are aware that every picture posted contains Meta Data that also memorializes the GPS co-ordinates and the camera type used to take the picture? I know you want to share picture of the family, but do you really want ISIS to know exactly where they live?

As everyone is so willing to publicly disclose these personal details, it explains why so many remain ignorant of the data mining that goes on that you do not knowingly consent to. I assume we all know that Google is in the business of selling digital user profiles to advertisers? Every type an email to a friend about planning a trip to the Italy only to find your inbox now populated with travel agency "hot deals"? If your email does not fill up with travel deals to the Italy, you can bet your internet browser will now display a travel agency advertisements, "learn to speak Italian" and top Italian Restaurants on every page you view fin! Now ask me what we think about using Google Docs! We suggest that you consider DoNotTrackme extensions to your Chrome and Firefox browsers. We also recommend that you install "self-destructing cookies" and watch how many cookies are exchanged with your browser each use. Remember, we really don't need your username and password, we need your cookies all of which are transmitted in clear text over that Starbucks wireless you have been using! All available using FireSheep!

Now if this is a vulnerability that effects individuals, what vulnerability effects enterprise level environments? Forget the notoriously leaking Windows Operating system and your hopelessly porous laptop, in the wake of the 55 Million credit card numbers stolen from Home Depot and the 45 million stolen from Target, we now have to worry about the credit card machines at the checkout counter. Actually the TJ Maxx heist was in many ways much larger! You might be considering how did the hackers get through the Firewall? As we have pointed out before, most computer network security exploitations are not executed through the firewall, they are executed by "social engineering" with the assistance of an ignorant employee or paid hit man. It is suspect that at least one of the above break ins was assisted by a third party trusted partner like the heating and air conditioning service company. Nothing like a starving janitorial night service crew to earn a few extra bucks plugging a USB device into any desktop computer releasing a new and improved malware version of BlackPOS! Most of these stolen credit card numbers can be purchase here or on the Darknet using a Tor browser to reach silk road type websites.

It seems you can't turn on an electronic device today without it alerting you that a software update is available for download. From the TV set, to the mobile phone, tablet and now even your car, all are subject to software updates. Do you even question what is being downloaded to your device when you do a software update? You just assume you are connecting with Apple, Amazon or Samsung? What if some evil doer was really just spoofing a software update and you just willingly downloaded a super basket of spy goodies that turn on your phone camera, activate your microphone and email snapshots to back to the mother ship. NSA, are you kidding? You would never know if it was your spouse, or employer would you? Yet millions of people do this without care, day after day and think nothing more about it. If you want to be tracked everywhere you go, risk having your most intimate communications published (just ask Jenifer Lawrence and the other celebrity Nude hack victims) just carry your Smartphone with you at all times!

Cyber-crime, next to the Ebola virus and violent terrorism is the single most economically destructive phenomenon to threaten the American way of life since the Cuban missile crisis. Yet the average business owner winces at the cost of engaging a computer network security audit and thinks that penetration testing is lovemaking foreplay. When the IT team asks for a Firewall upgrade or an increase in budget to cover a subscription to virus, spam and bot net filtering they somehow can't justify the added expense. Educating your employees on the safe use of the Internet over WiFi should be part of the healthcare preventive medicine program, but most business will ignore "social engineering" vulnerabilities until a major data thief publicly embarrasses them.

Choosing the Right Technology for Kids

Today, we live in a digital world that's supported majorly with technology and while technology has changed our world, it also plays an important role in our child's developmental milestones. Thanks to the latest trends in the field of educational based technology, kids are now getting up close and personal with technology daily, at homes and at school.

But is there really a need to of making technology available only at a particular age? Not really, as technology also plays a very positive and vital role while a child is growing. Today with an introduction of smartphones and other mobile devices like tablet PCs and tablets, we have quicker and comfortable access to the internet at any time and any place. This makes it a must have for kids too, as they help promote and share knowledge and information that's related to child's day to day activities along with school based education.

What to buy?

There's a whole wide range of electronic toys and devices available in the market, that are great portable devices to teach your little ones. But deciding what to buy is difficult at times. But we as parents have a fair idea on what might suit our child and what products may excite him to learn. Remember, each child develops differently and would have their own learning milestones. So don't push too hard and do keep in mind the following guidelines while buying these products:

Pre-Nursery: 0-3 Years

It's an ideal age to introduce them to a variety of sounds and lots of colorful stuff. Look for products that feature sounds, are good to touch and feel and most importantly are 'play friendly' in terms of safety measures.

You can buy a stuffed toy that makes a sound, music rattles to make him giggle, something that lights up like a room monitor that glows and pick up books that have bright pictures and sounds too. All these would help a child learn the 'cause and effect' and learn via touch and feel. These will keep the child occupied for a little longer and will open a world of possibilities too.

Prep 2-5 years

At this age, a child needs to hear interesting sounds, see lots of movement around and touch and feel the stuff. This is indeed the most inquisitive age for our little explorers, so be very cautious on what you are gifting them. Encourage them to play with action figures that make sounds and are movable, interactive story books, electronic playsets and talking animals make creative buys.

To increase their learning, gradually introduce them to your smartphone that has a wide range of easily downloadable kid's applications for listening to rhymes or learning numbers, learning shapes & colors. Read them stories that are interesting and show them the moving images to keep them enthralled and entertained. Try creating learning with a theme, so that kids learn faster. Visit a Zoo and ask them to identify the animals!

+5 and above:

Once the kids are 5, it's different to keep a track on what technology they are getting exposed to. At this age, they'll no longer be interested to play with electronic toys or e-readers and would in time, reach out to the internet and play video games or other handheld games that have enhanced features like 3-dimensional effects.

So try to introduce them to a leap frog or similar educational electronics and let them choose what they need to explore. Make sure they are involved in physical activities too.

Screen time too needs to be fixed, as the bright images of the computer screen can affect their sensitive eyes. Don't let them get into a habit of only sitting on the computer. Change your passwords regularly. Offer kids other interesting things to indulge in. Reward or surprise them with gifts.

Please make sure to be around the child whenever they are on the laptop and keep a track what they are watching or reading. Let them keep experimenting independently with new things. Help them search for educational websites and other interactive games. Kids can also read and learn about science experiments and increase their knowledge bank.

While the technology is a boon, remember it is crucial for a kid to keep active in an environment where he is physically active. So opt for outdoor activities and let them explore the natural space. Do praise them in all that they do and inculcate their interest in technology and keep them exploring this amazing world.

Each child is different and with a whole wide range of electronic toys and devices available in the market, there are times when we as parents can't figure out what to buy and when is the ideal time to introduce them to new technology. These guidelines would help you make a better decision. By Ashima Mukherjee