On this episode of Hashtag trending, we talk about Walmart’s grocery robot helpers, how Las Vegas avoided a cyber attack during CES, and what Microsoft’s newest solution to protect children online.
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People are worried about robots taking over their jobs, but what about seeing them as co-workers? That’s what Walmart wants to do at its future 20,000 square feet grocery location. Once built, little robots will be tasked with assembling customer’s orders. By banding robots and humans together, Walmart is looking to complete more than 800 grocery orders per hour. There’s no need to worry about a metal arm shoving groceries inside your car either as your paper bag will still be handed to you by a real live human.
Trending on Reddit, the city of Las Vegas narrowly avoided a cataclysmic cyber attack thanks to vigilant IT staff. The attack, which is suspected to have been delivered through a malicious email, was promptly detected and thwarted. Still, several services needed to be taken offline for a little while to protect their integrity. Because of prompt action, Las Vegas officials said that no personal data was stolen. Security experts are still combing through the aftermath to ensure that the systems are safe.
Lastly, trending on Reddit, a new Microsoft tool will help catch pedophiles in online chats. It scans the content between two parties and determines the likelihood of grooming behaviour. If it senses that the probability is high, it will usher off the conversation to a human reviewer. The human can then decide the next course of action. Given the unpredictable and often outrageous nature of online chat, many fear that the system will raise too many false flags. Once developed, the system will likely be deployed in gaming chats first as videogames are popular pastimes for the young and old alike.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing.