Virtual Reality (VR) holds a huge potential to transform how people and businesses interact with each other as well as the surroundings.

Previously VR was generally associated only with the gaming industry. Now it’s on fire with new opportunities for use.

Twibi Digital Marketing Agency says although this innovative technology has been traditionally associated with the gaming industry, it is amazingly being applied in various fields to manipulate physical surroundings.VR allows its users to experience the real environment in more immersive ways.

Mechasparrow, a U.S.-based VR specialist who teaches people his skillset, says that “it’s just a matter of time before we experience more intriguing uses of virtual reality than the ones we know of today.”

Some of the fields that have since taken up the use of the VR technology and revamped their offerings include business, medicine, manufacturing, architecture, and the leisure industry.

Here are 10 amazing uses of virtual reality today.

1. Recruitment and Training

The corporate sector has largely benefited from the revolutionary technology.

Some companies are now recruiting and training their workforce by using virtual reality that engages the employees in seemingly real work challenges and scenarios. For example, during recruitment, a company can make use of simulated interviews and choose the best candidates for the job.

The use of VR in the workplace can allow potential employees to have a feel of the typical work environment and be prepared to offer the best solutions for challenges that may arise. A company can also train employees from different physical locations at the same time. This also gives employees a seemingly physical involvement which offers the satisfaction gained from a real training.

2. Work Collaboration in the Workplace

Some companies have embraced virtual sharing to allow personnel to collaborate on assignments without relocating to one physical location. For example, where a company has remote workers from different geographical locations, it is necessary that they coordinate and complete tasks on time.

Since teamwork is essential for a company’s success, VR technology makes it possible for workers to hold meetings through video conferencing and deliberate on issues. With this technology, employees can gather in the same room and consult without meeting face to face.

This saves unnecessary travel and allows them to work on assignments concurrently and complete tasks within the shortest time possible.

3. Creating Ideas and Forecasting Trends

Virtual reality allows businesses to come up with fresh ideas and perform tests before implementing them in the actual environment. This immersive technology allows companies to forecast trends and determine the performance of projects beforehand.

Companies can determine their potential sales performance and customers’ growth in a virtual setting.

In car manufacturing, for instance, the end product of a design can be tested to determine how well it will be accepted in the actual market. Engineers can test a car’s safety in a virtual setting before the actual manufacturing process begins. Potential customers can also test drive the vehicles using virtual reality headsets before making purchase decisions.

Consequently, this helps in making the production process efficient: allowing companies to come up with the best products that satisfactorily meet the goals of the end users.

4. Pain Management

Uses of virtual reality in medicine are widespread. For example, this technology has been used in pain management for patients undergoing treatments that inflict insurmountable pain such as cancer. Each treatment pain of the cancer patient can be helped and managed. Consider other high pain treatments such as, high degree burns, physiotherapy treatments, broken limbs, and open wounds.

When patients wear VR headsets, the technology is used to distract their brain and confuse the pain pathway by drawing their minds from the suffering. Dentists are also using the technology to soothe patients when extracting their teeth or conducting root canals and other dental surgeries.

5. Training Medical Students

The virtual reality technology is used to assist medical students to learn and acquire work experience faster. With this use of virtual reality in education, medical students can learn how to conduct delicate surgical procedures.

Since the procedures can be time-consuming and risky, VR helps the students to perform real surgeries without putting the lives of patients in danger. The trainees can also use this technology to increase their hours of practice in a virtual setting, eliminating the fear of risk on real patients.

6. Treatment of PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder is common among soldiers due to the trauma they were exposed to during combat. This disorder has become more widespread than previously thought. PTSD is also found in the general population and is not limited to the combat soldier. PTSD is a mental disorder that faces anyone who has undergone petrifying experiences, both physically and mentally, such as sexual assault, abuse, and road accidents.

Virtual reality can assist in treating  the fears in patients with PTSD by helping them to replay what they went through. As a result, reliving the experiences can help the medical team to understand the patients’ conditions and come up with ways to help them cope better.

7. Training on Social Cognition to Manage Autism

The number of patients suffering from autism, a social developmental disorder, has been on the rise. This problem has mainly been attributed to the increased awareness about the condition among parents and guardians – but may have many other causal conditions, including environment.

Autism impairs the reasoning, interaction, and social skills of patients. Virtual reality technology can help in managing the condition by boosting the patients’ brain activity and imaging.

This can be achieved through introducing the patients and parents to different social scenarios and then using medical and psychological training teaching both guardian and patient about the best usage behavior in each situation. This gives each the opportunity to practice before the occasion arises.

8. Managing and Treating Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety creates a sense of panic in patients. Some describe their feelings as the individual feeling as if they have lost the ground beneath their feet. Some have chest pain or feel like they must escape to a safer location.

A notable symptom of anxiety is breathing difficulties. This symptom and many other variables that the patient deals with can be monitored, explained and controlled using virtual reality.

The medical team can use functional apps fused with the VR technology to monitor the individual patient’s breathing patterns and offer appropriate scenarios for the patient to consider and choose. If needed the medical team can quickly administer anxiety medication thus saving the time lapse between traditional medicinal responses.

9. Therapy for Paraplegics

Persons and patients with differing physical abilities can have the opportunities to use VR tools to experience the thrills of various environments without being confined to their physical locations. Notably, VR headsets are being used to enable paraplegics to build back their brain functions and regain control of limbs. This is one of the most exciting uses of this new VR technology and can’t be overemphasized for those in this suffering state.

10. Leisure

The tours and travels industry has largely benefited from the virtual reality technology. For example, the industry has been using this technology to give clients a feel of various holiday destinations around the world. Clients can visit different destinations in a virtual setting before making travel choices.

In this way, the world becomes a place where all who wish to can learn and immerse themselves in other cultures and traditions. This can lead entire generations to a greater understanding and appreciation for people globally. If someone doesn’t have access to what it take to reach a destination physically, they can still visit these locales and experience the greatness offered in these regions of the world.

Wrapping up

Virtual reality applications examples are numerous and are not limited to the limited descriptions above.

The potential of the technology to revolutionize the world is unmatched. We can only wait for more amazing ways VR will change the future. Therefore, learning how this wonderful technology works can assist you to advance your career. You can also be ready to use this knowledge in other ways to serve your family, friends and communities.

Do you know of other examples of virtual reality in everyday life? Please think how you would help someone you love with VR. How would you teach your favored concept through virtual reality. We would love to hear from you with your progressive thoughts and ideas.

The post 10 Amazing Uses of Virtual Reality appeared first on ReadWrite.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is clearly taking the world by storm.

This technology is poised to revolutionize almost every facet of our lives—from how we purchase items to how we communicate to how we move across the world; we seem to be increasingly reliant on AI systems to move our lives forward.

Now, AI is pushing its boundaries further by encroaching into deadly territories: predicting death.

Andreybu, who is from Germany and has more than five years of experience in training people how AI works, says that “we are yet to see the full potential of employing artificial intelligence to achieve objectives that were previously unimaginable.”

What is artificial intelligence?

Simply, AI is a branch of computer science that aims to make machines simulate the human intelligence processes.

This way, an AI system can recognize commonalities in a dataset and make intelligent predictions.

AI systems usually become better at making predictions using a technique referred to as machine learning.

Since they imitate human action and rational thought, the intelligent machines can be programmed to achieve various objectives such as autonomically driving cars and identifying shopping trends.

This amazing technology has grown over the years. Currently, artificial intelligence systems are used in various fields of the economy to increase efficiency and maximize output.

AI in the healthcare sector

AI-enabled systems have been used in the healthcare industry to catapult its growth. Recently, Google created an AI that can be used to predict a patient’s death—astonishingly.

To develop the intelligent system, the tech giant collaborated with other experts from The University of San Francisco, California, The University of Chicago Medicine, and Stanford Medicine.

Surprisingly, Google claims that the AI can predict when a patient might die more accurately than other traditional models used by doctors.

How the Google AI works

Google published the results of trying out the death prediction AI in a journal article in May 2018.

The system works by chewing up data about various details of a patient such as age, gender, ethnicity, previous diagnosis, present signs, and laboratory results.

What’s more, the system can also take data buried on charts and PDFs and use it for making predictions.

After testing the algorithm, Google found out that it could make death predictions with an astonishing accuracy level of 95%, which is 10% more accurate than the traditional models.

In one of the case studies, the Google AI software crunched about 176,000 data points of the records of a woman with metastatic cancer and pronounced that she had a 19.9% chance of dying in the hospital. The doctors at the hospital had given her a 9.3% chance of dying.

Amazingly, as predicted by the AI software, the woman died after two weeks—beating the doctors at their own game.

Although the Google’s AI may not be perfect at predicting deaths, it would continue to perform better as it is ‘taught’ with more data.

Therefore, if this breakthrough healthcare technology is improved, it can reduce human error in medicine and lead to more lives being saved.

Wrapping up

Google’s artificial intelligence technology can assist medical professionals to improve diagnosis and make better decisions, ultimately leading to enhanced patient care.

So, the next time you visit the hospital, please ask if they can run the AI algorithm against your records and assess your chances of survival.

Would you take that bold step?

Please let us know in the comment section below.

The post Did You Know That Artificial Intelligence Could Predict Your Death? appeared first on ReadWrite.

The use of immersive technologies has revolutionized various industries globally, and the health sector has not being an exception.

In the past, virtual reality (VR) was commonly associated with gaming companies where users would use VR headsets for multi-projected environments.

Mechasparrow, who teaches people how to use the VR technology to extend the functionalities of applications, says that “today, the three-dimensional simulation allows users in all industries to experience a real environment as they manipulate the physical surroundings they are in.”

Both patients and physicians are in a position to enjoy the existing and potential benefits that result from the implementation of virtual reality technology in healthcare.

This technology is transforming the operating environment of the medical field with its advanced applications in the following areas.

1. Medical Training

Over the years, surgical procedures have been known to be time-consuming, for obvious reasons.

The delicate nature of surgeries requires that surgeons become meticulous and keen while the patients are on the operating table, lest they put their lives at risk.

And while at it, surgeons in training are expected to practice and execute real surgeries on patients under the supervision of assisting senior doctors.

To speed up the training processes, the virtual reality technology comes in handy. It allows the trainees to increase their hours of practice as they are able to cover bigger proportions of surgical procedures without fear of risk on real patients.

For example, students at Stanford University School of Medicine are already utilizing the innovative Stanford Virtual Heart to revamp education on congenital heart diseases.

Students at the University have reported that virtual reality is the most enthralling technique of grasping complicated concepts in anatomy, far exceeding the traditional teaching methods.

2. Phobia Therapy

Patients suffering from paranoia need a fully controlled environment to help them manage their fears.

Virtual reality provides an avenue for doctors to offer exposure therapy to such patients. While in their physical surroundings, the VR headphones provide a seemingly calm experience for the patients through a controlled and monitored environment that appears to be real.

3. Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Soldiers who have been in combat are likely to suffer from a disorder as a result of the trauma they faced.

Nonetheless, the post-traumatic stress disorder is not limited to soldiers. The mental disorder can affect anyone who has faced any petrifying experience such as physical or mental abuse, sexual assault, and road accidents.

The virtual reality technology is used in the medical field to create immersive scenes that triggers a patient’s fears and help them relive the painful experiences before they are assisted to cope with those situations.

The medical professionals usually use the seemingly realistic scenes to treat the PTSD and anxiety while assuring the patients that they are far from harm and are now in a safer environment.

4. Training on Social Cognition

Autism is a developmental disorder that impairs the social relations of patients and how they reason and interact with others.

One of the ways through which the medical sector deals with autistic persons is developing programs such as the social cognition training to monitor the brain wave of patients.

This is achieved using the virtual reality technology which boosts their brain imaging by placing the patients in different social scenarios, giving them social cues and helping them understand different social patterns.

The VR headsets boost the brain activity of autistic people and help them to develop acceptable social behavior.

5. Pain Relief

VR technology has been widely embraced in the medical field for pain management in patients undergoing overwhelming treatments.

In situations where patients experience extreme pain such as cancer and physiotherapy treatments, burns, open wounds, and broken limbs, there is a need for a distraction in the brain.

This helps in confusing the pain pathway that leads to the brain, which minimizes the excruciating experiences.

For example, virtual reality games act as a good distraction as they draw the patient’s mind away from the pain points.

6. Patient Relaxation

Chronic medical conditions tend to confine patients to the hospital, rendering them bedridden. The experience can be torturous mentally since the patients have to live life from their beds with medical teams helping them perform the most basic functions.

But, they don’t have to see life from that one angle. Virtual reality enables bed-ridden patients to see the world from a different light. They are able to relax and visit a seemingly real external world from their rooms and have experiences taking long walks or riding bicycles like they would if they were not confined to a bed.

7. Anxiety Treatment

General anxiety attacks results in patients feeling an overwhelming sense of panic and distress such as the ground being swept away beneath their feet.

Medical professionals usually recommend mediation and reflection as a form of treatment as it helps in checking, monitoring, and controlling a patient’s breathing.

To improve breathing patterns, physicians usually use functional apps integrated with the virtual reality technology for monitoring and controlling the regularity of a patient’s breath before administering proper anxiety treatment.

8. Management of Phantom Limb Pain (PLP)

People who have lost a limb or have had their limbs amputated tend to suffer from a localized sensation around the area that is missing the limb.

It also happens to people who have prosthetic limbs attached to their bodies, leading to excruciating pains and a lot of discomfort.

With virtual reality, the healthcare industry is able to help patients manage the Phantom Limb pain (PLP) using VR games that help them relieve the pain and control their limbs.

9. Therapy for the Differently-Abled

Differently-abled people should not be stopped from experiencing the thrills of the outside world because of their physical conditions.

Virtual reality in the health sector improves their quality of life by allowing them to experience different environments that appear seemingly real from where they are.

For example, a person bound to a wheelchair can take a walk on a beach or go scuba diving using the three-dimensional simulation.

Wrapping up

The numerous benefits of virtual reality in the medical field has prompted medical experts to rapidly integrate the technology in several healthcare solutions.

The amazing virtual reality technology offers fascinating opportunities in medicine and it has limitless potential in making physician and patient experiences more bearable.

The post How the Virtual Reality Technology is Transforming the Healthcare Industry appeared first on ReadWrite.

Machine learning is a revolutionary technology that currently forms a critical aspect of numerous burgeoning and established industries.

This technology allows computers to access hidden insights and predict outcomes, leading to remarkable changes to businesses.

Wei Lei,  who is the Vice President and General Manager at Intel, says that “machine learning is becoming more sophisticated with every passing year. And, we are yet to see its full potential—beyond self-driving cars, fraud detection devices, or retail trends analyses.”

So, what’s the future of machine learning? How will it impact our world in the future?

Here are five key forecasts about the future of machine learning.

1. Improved unsupervised algorithms

In machine learning, unsupervised algorithms are employed to make predictions from datasets when only input data is available without corresponding output variables.

Whereas in supervised learning the output of the algorithm is already known, its unsupervised counterpart is closely associated with true artificial intelligence—the concept that a machine can learn to identify complicated processes and patterns without any direct human intervention.

When algorithms are left alone to scour and present the interesting patterns in a dataset, hidden patterns or groupings can be discovered, which could have been difficult to get using supervised methods.

In the coming years, we are likely to see improvements in unsupervised machine learning algorithms. The advancements in developing better algorithms will result in faster and more accurate machine learning predictions.

2. Enhanced personalization

Machine learning personalization algorithms are used to offer recommendations to users and entice them to complete certain actions.

With such algorithms, you can synthesize the information in a data and make appropriate conclusions, such as a person’s interests.

For example, an algorithm can deduce from a person’s browsing activity on an online retail website and discover that he is interested in purchasing a mower for his garden.

Without that insight, the buyer could have left the website minus making a purchase.

Currently, some of such recommendations are inaccurate and annoying, which cripple users’ experiences. However, in the future, the personalization algorithms are likely to be fine-tuned, leading to far more beneficial and successful experiences.

3. Increased adoption of quantum computing

Quantum machine learning algorithms have the potential of transforming the field of machine learning. For example, these algorithms can utilize the benefits of quantum computation to enhance the capabilities of classical techniques in machine learning.

If quantum computers are integrated into machine learning, it could lead to faster processing of data, which could accelerate the ability to synthesize information and draw insights—and that’s is what the future holds for us.

Quantum-powered systems will provide a much faster and more heavy-duty computation to both supervised and unsupervised algorithms.

The increased performance will unlock amazing machine learning capabilities, which may not have been realized using classical computers.

4. Improved cognitive services

Cognitive services consist of a set of machine learning SDKs, APIs, and services, which allow developers to include intelligent capabilities into their applications.

With such services, developers can empower their applications to carry out various duties, such as vision recognition, speech detection, and speech understanding.

As this technology is continuing to evolve, we are likely to witness the development of highly intelligent applications that can increasingly speak, hear, see, and even reason with their surroundings.

Therefore, developers will be able to build more engaging and discoverable applications that can effectively interpret users’ needs based on natural communication techniques.

5. Rise of robots

As machine learning is becoming more sophisticated, we’ll see increased usage of robots. Robotization depends on machine learning for accomplishing various purposes, including robot vision, self-supervised learning, and multi-agent learning.

Soon, we expect robots to become more intelligent at accomplishing tasks. Drones, robots in manufacturing places, and other types of robots are likely to be used increasingly to make our lives easier.

Conclusion

Machine learning is one of the most disruptive technologies of the 21st century. Although this technology can still be considered to be nascent, its future is bright. The above five predictions have just scratched the surface of what could be possible with machine learning.

In the coming years, we are likely to see more advanced applications that stretch its capabilities to unimaginable levels.

Till then, see you!

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Drones are a perfect example of how our technology has evolved and will continue to grow in the future. So, what exactly does it offer? For casual users, it is just a fun toy. However, drones have use cases in multiple fields, including safety, health, and industry.

Until now, drones have gone on a wild ride. It has been massively regulated by U.S. government considering the threats that it brings including spying. Moreover, drone safety had been a significant issue. But to completely understand drones, we need to understand both its advantages and disadvantages before making a final call on how they should be regulated.

For starters, there are good drones and destructive drones. Those drones that are created for good are being used to save lives, help improve business efficiency and use autonomous control so that the human limitation can be removed. Destructive or bad drones do the exact opposite and are harmful in one way or another.

In this article, I will try to understand the future of drones from the perspective of tech, security, and innovation.

Drone Technology

Drones have evolved rapidly in the last decade or so. However, drones are not new and existed from the 1930s. The modern era of drones started after 2001, and it is now slowly becoming part of our daily life. You can now own a drone only if your state laws allow you to do so.

So, what is next for drones? The answer depends on how artificial intelligence (A.I) can be used to make drones more useful. A.I. can help drones overcome the human limitation and make drones more useful in different sectors including industry, tech, delivery and so on. However, A.I. powered drones can also be used to kill humans, deliver drugs or worse spy on someone.

There has already been a lot of debate on how A.I. can provide drones with ultimate power. Elon Musk also called out on the ban on killer robots which can also include drones. But, we have to weigh the gains over a possible loss and should be used to improve the different levels of transportation, accessibility, and overall growth.

Drones can now be programmed to learn from mistakes. Learn to Fly by Crashing, a paper published by Carnegie Mellon University explores how AR drones 2.0  are learning by learning from their own mistakes. This is just one use case of how A.I. and big data are going to impact drones in future.

Another critical use case of drones that are going to evolve and get implemented is their use in the industry. Many big companies will use drones to inspect their infrastructure and send direct reports to the system. Furthermore, they are also equally useful for surveillance purposes. The delivery system will continue to be refined in future as currently, Amazon is testing the use of drones to improve the delivery system. Jeff Bezos, Founder & CEO of Amazon, says that the aim is to get items delivered in “60 minutes.”

Regulatory Reform

Government regulations on drones have always been tight. However, 2018 can be the year when the laws become less stringent. The current regulations from Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulate drones such that they must be used within human sight. However, this regulation is binding at many levels as it will not allow commercial companies such as Amazon to use drones in their operation.

In 2017, the general perception towards drones changed as well as their purpose as such in recent natural disasters, fortifying their benefits. Now that change is progressing; the FAA needs to take note and began to set appropriate regulations for the future of this industry. Drones manufacturers will also play a role, by ensuring that their drones can navigate safely through an environment, especially rooftops, humans, vehicles, etc. To achieve this, current technologies need to be adapted to allow for autonomous navigation and self-learning capabilities.

Final Thoughts

Drones have evolved remarkably in the last decade or two. The commercial usage will only propel it towards mass adoption. 2017 has been the year where it is now impossible to ignore the benefit in natural disasters management and commercial spaces. With relaxation in regulations, more and more industries will adopt drones.

One more thing is how blockchain can be used to revolutionize drones. Recently, blockchain is impacting almost every industry. Drones can be the next thing that can utilize blockchain technology. We only have to wait and see if blockchain powered drones can become more secure, accurate and easily regulatable.

The post How The Drone Industry Evolve In 2018 appeared first on ReadWrite.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Crowdfunding industries have both grown exponentially in the recent past. Their dependency on each other is quite evident as many AI projects would never have become a reality without crowdfunding.

See also: AI will “most likely be the cause of WW3” says Elon Musk

Other than crowdfunding platforms, novel platforms such as LiveEdu, a live and video tutorial learning platform, can help  AI projects to get the exposure they need  to get crowdfunded. Even LiveEdu has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. They plan to collect project ideas from learners all over the world to expand their premium project tutorial catalogue.

With a clear connection between AI and crowdfunding established, let’s take a look at the five interesting AI crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo.

#1: Artificial Intelligence A-Z

Artificial intelligence(AI) is the next big technology changing how humans and machines interact in the world. The Artificial Intelligence A-Z: How To Build An AI project aims to deliver all the necessary tools and courses for learning AI. The project goal is to provide all the courses for learners who are interested in making their career shine in AI or want to contribute to the world of AI.

#2: Arsenal

Arsenal is an AI-powered camera assistant that completely changes how photos are taken. The hardware uses advanced machine learning algorithms to ensure that every shot is perfect. The AI algorithm and the sensor take note of 18 different environmental factors and determine the optimal settings automatically. This is a revolutionary idea and has already been accepted by the community with a funding of $3,049,905(5301% funded).

#3: Sensoria

Sensoria is an AI-powered sportswear that uses artificial intelligence to monitor health. This helps users to improve their health and athletic performance as it provides vital information to the user. Healthcare can immensely benefit from the use of Artificial Intelligence. Engineers such as CodeHatcher also understand the importance of healthcare apps and they have developed a Healthcare App for doctors that use a wide range of technologies including JavaScript and AI.

#4: Nakamichi Edge

Love music? Then, Nakamichi Edge, an AI-powered Wireless headphone is all you need. It uses AI algorithms to scan the surroundings and provide you with the best music listening experience possible.

#5: Career Muse

Career Muse is an interesting application of Artificial intelligence. It uses AI algorithms to get past applicant tracking systems. Many companies are using AI to filter our resumes, and this app ensures that your resume doesn’t get stuck in the automation process.

Crowdfunding needed for AI

Artificial intelligence solves a lot of interesting problems. From healthcare to education, every industry is being impacted by AI. However, it would not be possible for many AI related projects to become a reality without crowdfunding platforms. Some ideas are unique and downright crazy, and that’s why most investors ignore these novel ideas. Crowdfunding opens the doors for these kinds of projects and allows the real users to decide whether they are useful or not.

Many new platforms are also making AI projects shine. LiveEdu is one of those platforms where you can find many new promising AI projects. Their crowdfunding campaign also aims to collect diverse and interesting AI project suggestions which can further improve the state of artificial intelligence learning worldwide and increase the likelihood of more AI crowdfunding projects.

Do you think we missed an awesome AI crowdfunding campaign? Comment below and let us know.

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“Self-driving car engineer” is one of the latest buzzwords in the market. Many engineers are leaving their current job as they want to contribute to the autonomous car space or secure their future by working on cutting-edge technology.

Autonomous cars popularity has also reflected on the learning platforms where content creators are eagerly sharing their knowledge regarding autonomous vehicles. The influx of learning material also reflects on the popularity of autonomous car technology.

The top 5 companies that are working in the trade are Ford, General Motors, Waymo, Uber, and Tesla. They are focused on bringing autonomous cars by the year 2018 – 2025. All of them have already spent millions of dollars for developing the self-driving car technology for their vehicles and aim to release the truly autonomous vehicles by the end of 2015.

For many of us, there is no doubt in our mind that becoming a self-driving car engineer is one of the lucrative professions right now. However, it is not always the case. Just like any other idea, there is always a flip side. The same applies when it comes to being a self-driving car engineer.

First, the good news

Let’s look at the pros of being a self-driving car engineer first:

#1. Work on the most interesting technology in the world

Self-driving car is the technology of the future. In simple terms, self-driving cars are not perfect, but they are better than human drivers.

Coming to the point, if you decide to work as a self-driving car engineer, you are working on the leading technology in the market. The self-driving car tech is evolving every day with more and more startups coming up with unique ideas to improve the ecosystem.

An interesting article by Wired.com lists 263 startups and companies that are currently working on self-driving cars. They are divided by hardware, service, software and much more. The future of transportation is going to be glorious, and so is the future of a self-driving car engineer.

#2. Work with the best talent and experts

With companies fighting for the best talent in the market, a self-driving car engineer is bound to land in the team where almost everyone is a genius. Autonomous car tech is complex and requires extensive skills to prove one’s worth. Moreover, due to the complexity, you might be working on a sub-problem. This leads you to interact with other peers or experts, opening doors for networking and learning.

Companies such as Waymo, Tesla, and Google are spending billions of dollars to win the autonomous car race. Companies that are behind the big giants are paying more to get the talent to their company improving their tech team to new heights.

#3. Continuously learn and self-improve

When you work on cutting-edge technology, you are bound to improve. The story is true for self-driving car engineers. They work on new things all the time. The demand for creative and innovative thinking is a must in this field and if you have them, you will be blessed with interesting problems to solve. In the end, you create yourself a path of self-improvement.

Outside of job, self-driving car engineers always focus on improving their skills by taking courses from popular online platforms such as LiveEdu.tv and Udacity.

#4. Huge pay packages and respect from peers

Self-driving car engineers earn the best packages, and it can range from $232,000 to as much as $405,000. The high salary is justified as there is low talent pool for autonomous cars. News like Google self-driving car engineers leaving their job because they are paid too much shows how much money the trade holds.

And now the downside

So, you are now thinking what the cons of being a self-driving car engineer are? Or is there any? Also, is it cons even worth discussing when compared to the Pros? Let’s try to answer it.

Self-driving car technology is evolving at a rapid pace. New products, services or any hardware related to self-driving can become obsolete as fast they appeared on the market. There can be many reasons. Either a better solution comes to the market, or the solution just didn’t find any traction. The uncertainty can easily be equated to a con for a self-driving car engineer. Anyone who is working with a startup already knows the challenges that come with it.

Self-driving car laws are complex, and if you are working in the industry, you need to always keep up with the diverse advancement by the laws associated with it. This can easily add stress and more workload on your work.

The last two points are related to the stress and the ethical burden associated with working as a self-driving car engineer. Stress is just part of the game. However, things change when top companies are fighting it out to bring the best autonomous technology or service on the road. The ethical burden is a more personal approach, and it depends on how a person thinks. The ethical burden comes from the fact that majority of individuals who rely on driving skills will lose their jobs to autonomous vehicles.

All of the above discussion leads us to one question: Should you become a self-driving car engineer? The profession is one of the top-paid and in-demand ones in the market. It also gives you the ability to change the world by creating something that everyone will use in the future.

The post What are the pros and cons of being a self-driving car engineer? appeared first on ReadWrite.

When choosing a cloud platform, newcomers may only look at the cost, but many different business needs should be taken care of before making the final call. We hope to help you get a clear perspective on three major cloud platforms.

Right now, there are three main players in the market: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure. The fierce competition has enabled cheap cloud computing prices and excellent competing feature-set. This helps small business to grow easily and big business to capitalize on the growth that they have been doing for so many years.

See also: 4 common mistakes companies make in transitioning to the cloud

Cloud computing has single-handedly changed how technology works. Now anyone can host their website on the cloud, manage their files, and do stuff not possible before. Big business also takes full advantage of cloud computing.

Why cloud is important for big and small business players

It is important to understand why cloud computing is critical for the current market before we dive deep into the actual comparisons.

Cloud computing enables companies to forget about maintaining an infrastructure. Many large companies such as LiveEdu, Netflix, and Spotify take full advantage of the cloud and by doing so, they don’t have to worry about the technicalities that go into maintaining a cloud. Also, they don’t have to worry about the infrastructure, enabling them to focus on what they do best: provide their service to the audience.

Small business can also take advantage of cloud and focus on developing their product and not the infrastructure that is required to make them operational.

Who’s who?

Google Cloud Platform (GCP): GCP started their journey on October 6, 2011. With only 5 years in operation, they have created good presence in the market. The initial push was done to power their own services such as YouTube and Google. Later on, they built enterprise services and enabled anyone to host in the cloud. Google manages GCP.

Amazon Web Services (AWS): With 11 years in operation, AWS is one of the oldest players in the cloud market. Their computing services are extensive and cover important cloud sections such as deployment, mobile networking, etc. Amazon manages AWS.

Microsoft Azure: Azure is also 6 years old and has shown great promise in the market. They can easily be associated with the leader group in the market with AWS. Azure also provide a complete set of cloud services. Microsoft manages Azure.

Note: Cloud services are composed of multiple pre-configured products. To give us a reference of providers’ insight, we will call them “solutions.” These “solutions” can be used to solve a problem with good efficiency and reliability.

A three-way battle

To understand the difference between the three major players, we need to evaluate them using different parameters. In the end, we will try to also give a general outlook and use cases for which each of the cloud computing services can be used.

Please note that we are not going to discuss pricing. The reason is simple; the prices fluctuate too much, and that’s why it’s best to check their respective pricing page to know more. In full disclosure, here they are:

• GCP pricing page: https://cloud.google.com/pricing/
• Microsoft Azure pricing page: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/
• AWS pricing page: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

Compute

Compute is the processing power that the cloud services offer. In general, the more compute power, the better. It is directly proportional to the price, and hence price also plays a significant role in understanding the compute power offered by the three players.

So if you need more computing power, you just need to allocate more resources to your current session. Startups are most benefited from this approach as they can order compute power anytime they want without worrying about installation, maintenance and hardware costs.

Let’s start with AWS. They offer EC2(Elastic Compute Cloud) which handles all the compute services. It works by managing virtual machines which can either be configured by the owner or comes with preconfigured settings for ease of use. In comparison, GCP offers GCE (Google Compute Engine) to do essentially the same thing. Our last contender, Microsoft Azure provides Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets.

All of them support containers. They are easy to manage and truly portable. Amazon’s EC2 Container Service(ECS), Google’s Container Engine and Azure’s own container service enable you to handle your instances more swiftly. You can add more stats to them easily or can move them to new locations without much hassle.

Conceptually, all of them are similar however, the real struggle happens when you try to see it through the lens of price and user experience. Read the cloud cost analysis on RightScale to get an idea of which cloud platform offers the best bang for the buck when it comes to choosing a cloud platform according to compute power.

Storage

Storage is yet another important parameter in understanding how a cloud service works. Cloud storage works completely different from the normal HDD or SSD on our computers. They need to solve multiple problems and also make sure that no data is lost during the transfer. The complexity led to some brilliant solution from the best cloud service providers.

Out of the three cloud providers discussed here, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is considered the best. It has been extensive documentation, proper community support and the longevity, i.e., tried and tested. So, if you are looking for a proper storage solution with plenty of resources, Amazon S3 can be your best bet.

The other two players also offer decent storage solution. Microsoft Azure Storage and Google Cloud Storage offer reliable services.

Just like compute power, storage also has a price tag associated with it. As Amazon has better storage solution, they are costly, and hence only be chosen if you have the budget for it.

Backup solutions are also provided, and they work differently when it comes to pricing. 

Locations

When it comes to deploying your application, location is important. First, you want to make sure that the application performs at its peak by having the lowest possible route to the intended customer base. Secondly, you want to make sure that you spend less money when it comes to using these cloud services. Yup, the prices differ according to which region you are taking services from. For example, US can be an expensive place to run a cloud server.

All three of them offer great coverage all around the world. Amazon leads the pack with 42 availability zones. Azure also has a good coverage with availability in 32 regions. GCP have a presence across 33 countries. It should be noted that new regions are added on a regular basis.

Databases

A database is a complex thing to handle however, before you invest in any of the cloud platforms, it is advisable to read their software terms and conditions, and how they manage data on their cloud.

Database images from different vendors let you get started easily. Google seem to be lacking in providing an option to the end user, whereas, Azure and AWS offer a good amount of option to work with. Amazon’s RDS (Relational Database Service) provides support for major databases including Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc. The service manages everything from updating to patching even to offer solutions to common database problems.

Azure SQL database and Cloud SQL offers SQL database handling features for Azure and GCP respectively. They also offer high-performance DB choices such as DocumentDB for Azure, and Aurora for AWS. Clearly, there are multiple types of tools and services offered by the major service providers.

Documentation

Last, but not the least is the documentation. Documentation plays an important role when it comes to choosing the cloud platform for yourself or your company. Ease of use is a valid factor and should not be ignored at all.

AWS offers the best documentation, followed closely by Azure and GCP. AWS documentation is built thanks to its age and contribution from multiple people over a decade. 

Some final thoughts

Comparing cloud services can be a tough task but this comparison only scratches the surface and is meant for people who are getting started with cloud computing. If you are stuck and cannot decide on which cloud platform to choose, you can always hire a cloud expert readily available in the market. They know the in’s and out’s of cloud platforms and can suggest you a cloud service according to your need.

If you would like to go to with the safest option, Amazon AWS is the best way to go. If your application utilizes Microsoft products or languages, Azure can help you sustain and take advantage of Microsoft’s ecosystem. GCP stands in a sweet spot and is viable most of the time. As an individual or a company, you need to ensure proper compatibility and testing before moving to a particular cloud service. This leads us to the end of the article.

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