22 years ago, I worked at a company called LACityWeb.com. The company failed in the year 2000, but back in 1999 we were selling websites. The sales pitch was that a website was a key part of reaching customers: you could provide your phone number, an email form, even a…

If you’re like me, until recently, you may have never heard of Discord. The short version is that it is another online chat app. Unlike most chat apps, Discord organizes itself around a concept of “Servers” (you can think of them like virtual rooms) where people can hang out and…

I’m often critical of robots (slang for machine algorithms), but I wanted to take a beat to call out an activity they can be put to work on that makes us all safer. Unlike Bender from Futurama, some robots are actually productive members of society doing things that people can’t. Robots can look at everything …

Summer is almost upon us and with it the season of summer internships. But with the shadow of the pandemic still retreating and the vast amounts of work happening from home, will the summer internship survive? Entry-level jobs in tech For those who know me, I am passionate about entry-level job creation, specifically in…

Change is everywhere these days, both positive and negative. The United States is opening back up, vaccination rates continue to increase, and in Los Angeles, students are returning to in-person school for the first time in over a year. In the entertainment industry, we have heard that a major conference…

In a memo released by the White House last week, the Biden administration urges business leaders to take immediate steps to prepare for ransomware attacks, warning that cybercriminals are shifting from stealing data to disrupting operations. As I wrote a few weeks ago, not just large companies are facing a…

I recently bought a t-shirt online. Printed on the shirt is a hilarious mash-up of a cartoon from the 80s (He-Man) and a modern-day meme (“do you even lift?”). …

I saw an interesting headline in the news this week, which read: “Microsoft’s cloud boss says the company doesn’t want to compete with doctors.” This statement is coming as Microsoft and other Cloud providers are making their way into the healthcare space. Microsoft recently announced the acquisition of a speech…

Exactly three weeks ago (5/8/21), the Colonial Pipeline Company announced that they had learned they had been the victim of a cybersecurity hack on their website. This attack involved ransomware, a computer virus that encrypts data and holds it hostage until the affected party pays the attacker to get its…