The Cognixia podcast discusses the environmental challenge of e-waste and introduces a new flexible material developed by researchers at MIT, the University of Utah, and Meta. This material could revolutionize electronics by allowing for complex, multi-layered circuits while being recyclable. Unlike the commonly used polyimide, which is energy-intensive to produce and difficult to recycle, the new material is a form of polyimide that hardens quickly at room temperature and can be dissolved for recycling. This innovation could help mitigate e-waste and advance electronics, making technology more sustainable and accessible.

The Cognixia podcast episode highlights the significant role of AI at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Intel, Google, and Alibaba have partnered to enhance the event's technological capabilities, from AI-powered chatbots and digital twins to advanced sports analytics and sustainability efforts. AI tools have been crucial in ensuring fairness, transparency, and improved athlete performance through data insights. The episode also notes the Olympic Committee's commitment to sustainability and AI's broader impact on sports, hinting at future innovations. The podcast concludes with a teaser for the next episode, encouraging listeners to keep learning.

In this week's episode of the Cognixia podcast, the focus is on SearchGPT, OpenAI's upcoming search engine that combines AI-generated content with human-written articles, offering a conversational interface that allows users to ask follow-up questions. Unlike traditional search engines, SearchGPT provides real-time, up-to-date information and prominently credits original content creators, addressing previous concerns about AI content generation. While still in its prototype phase, SearchGPT shows potential to disrupt the search engine market. The episode also touches on Google's dominance and the evolving nature of search engines. Stay tuned for more updates next week!

In this week's Cognixia podcast, we discuss the importance

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast! Endpoint protection has been a buzzword in the world of cybersecurity for quite a bit now. Endpoint protection involves software running on local machines so they wouldn’t run malicious software or any unintended code. It is like a more modern name for the good old anti-virus and firewalls, sounds like it, no? It has two key components – a backend control center and an agent software which would be installed on the end point devices. And, if you haven’t guessed so far, endpoint devices are the user devices – mobile phones, laptops, desktops, etc. The endpoint protection agent software is constantly running on the endpoint devices. So, if you run a program or application that the agent feels needs to be prevented, a sensor would be notified by the operating system of the device and it will prevent the execution. The main endpoint application would also be notified about the blocked execution, which would further notify the control center, using the internet.

Simply put, this is a surveillance system of sorts. To be seriously effective they need to be deeply embedded into the operating system. It would also need to have the capability and requisite permissions to bypass lots of internal security systems.

So what happened exactly that more than 8.5 million systems were affected? Banking services came to a halt, countless flights were canceled, travelers were stranded, retail services came grinding to a stop, and an unimaginable number of workplaces were left staring at what is popularly called “The Blue Screen of Death”. While this number is less than 1% of Microsoft devices sold and operational globally, the broad economic and societal impact of even that 1% is unfathomable.

This is the first time such an incident has had figures, that too of this magnitude revealed. It is believed that this could be the worst cyber event in history. And, while the event is largely being labeled as a “Microsoft outage”, it is actually caused by an update that was rolled out by CrowdStrike, not Microsoft. The closest next big incident would be the WannaCry cyberattack of 2017 where over 300,000 devices were affected in over 150 countries. But do you see the difference between 8.5 million devices and 300,000 devices?

On 19 July at 04:09 UTC, CrowdStrike carried out a regular release of one such ‘sensor’ as a Windows device driver which would hook and attach deeper into Windows, one of the updates as part of the ongoing protection mechanisms of the Falcon platform. To do this, it would need special permissions, of course. These drivers would be written in C and C++, the same as the Windows kernels and core libraries. The configuration system triggered a logic error leading to a system crash and the blue screen of death or BSOD on impacted systems.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast! we talk about a major infrastructure innovation called the Hollow Core Fiber. As technology evolves, it requires the infrastructure supporting it to evolve as well, to keep up with the demands of the change. In this AI era, large scale computing is becoming an everyday thing and it is impossible to carry this out without strong, resilient, and foolproof infrastructure to support it. This is what could be called ‘Purpose-Built Infrastructure’. This can’t happen by just picking up a bunch of hardware and dumping it at a data center somewhere in the world, can it? That’s not how scientific breakthroughs and innovations really happen, do they?

At the Microsoft Ignite event in November 2023, a vey revolutionary technology came to everyone’s attention. This tech was called the hollow core fiber. It is an innovative optical fiber that can revolutionize global cloud infrastructure by not just offering superior quality but also improved latency and a more secure data transmission.

The hollow core fiber technology or HCF uses a proprietary design where light propagates in the air core of a hollow fiber. The cores of traditional fibers are made of optical glass, hence the name optical glass fiber or optical fiber. The HCF offers advantages over this traditional optical fiber.

But how do you prevent light leakage in a hollow core fiber and how do you ensure that the light keeps moving ahead in a straight path?

Well, the structure of the hollow core fiber has nested tubes that help reduce any unwanted light leakage and that also ensures that the light keeps moving ahead in a straight path through the hollow core.

If you go back to your high school physics class, you will remember that light travels faster through air than through glass. This helps the hollow core fiber to be about 47% faster than the standard silica glass. This, in turn, leads to much faster speeds and much lower latency when using the HCF. The HCF would also offer much higher bandwidth per fiber.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. These are the communication, people management, and personality traits that make you a project manager people want to work with. Imagine a project manager as an orchestra conductor. They gotta guide each musician (team member) to play their part in harmony. That takes serious people skills to keep everyone motivated and moving in the same direction.

Project managers also need to be communication chameleons. They chat with higher-ups, the HR and admin folks, and even customers, vendors, and other teams. Each interaction requires them to adjust their communication style to get the best results. Mastering these soft skills is key to becoming a project management rockstar.

Soft skills, now what are they? These aren't skills you can learn from a coding tutorial – they are the people skills that make you a great teammate and a great leader. Think communication, collaboration, emotional intelligence – basically, anything that helps you work effectively with others. And let's be honest, projects rarely succeed in a vacuum – you need a strong team to get things done, it always succeeds on the backs of the people working on it. This is why soft skills are becoming increasingly important, no matter which industry you operate in or what your job title may be. They are like the glue that holds everything together, even for project managers with the best certifications the market can offer.

Technical skills might lay the groundwork for your project, but soft skills are the secret sauce to smooth execution. Think about it – even the most recognized project management certification, the PMP®, highlights the importance of soft skills like critical thinking, managing conflict, and making tough decisions. These might seem intangible, but they're the magic ingredients that turn a good project manager into a great one. So, before we dive into how to develop these essential skills, let's explore why they're becoming such a big deal in the project management world.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. Maybe you were trying to buy something from the latest sale on your favorite online shop, or you wanted to buy a gift for someone, or you were trying to track a parcel. Happens to all of us, doesn’t it?

Most times we would drop trying and tell ourselves that we will do this later, right? But how many times do we really go back? Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t, right? That is the cost the company paid for the downtime it faced, and usually, it is more than just a lost business.

A recent Splunk Report has shared that downtime costs the world’s largest companies about $400 billion every year – approximately 9% of their profits! This is the equivalent of about $9,000 lost for every minute of system failure or service degradation. Direct revenue loss is the biggest drain from downtime, but other hidden costs include diminished shareholder value, stagnant productivity, and reputational damage. The Report also goes on to share that a Forbes Global 2000 company would take about 75 days for its revenues to recover to where it stood financially before the downtime incident.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. The theory of disruptive innovation was first introduced in 1995. Since then, it has proved to be a powerful way of thinking about innovation-driven growth. From Intel to Salesforce, disruptive innovations have been highly regarded and the theory is a guiding star for all individuals and organizations who want to do something cutting-edge.

Fast-forward to 2024, the disruption theory is threatened to become a victim of its own success. The theory, as experts opine, has been widely misunderstood and its fundamentals are frequently misapplied, often quite grossly.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia