TechRepublic’s Karen Roby spoke with Dr. Pauline Mosley, assistant chair of Information Technology at the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace University, about getting girls interested in STEM careers and the challenges associated with teaching robotics via Zoom. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

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Pauline Mosley: Transitioning from face-to-face modality into a virtual modality has been challenging. However, it has been very, very rewarding. For example, this past semester, I taught a course called Web Design for Nonprofit Organizations, which was comprised of students from China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. It was amazing how we were able to,

The problem with enterprise IT consistency (i.e., with implementing a single software stack across the organization that will bring order to chaos) is that enterprise IT isn’t static. Because technology isn’t static. As Google’s Kelsey Hightower put it in an interview with Comcast’s chief software architect Jon Moore, “Most organizations learn over time. So whatever you build today as the [default stack] is going to branch out based on new learnings.” 

So how should an enterprise standardize, thereby reaping cost savings and productivity gains? You don’t, said Hightower. At least, not once and for all: “Standardize where you can, but allow things to grow apart and then re-standardize those things as you go and just follow the path of evolution.”

But how to standardize?

Not all companies have the resources to develop their own big data management systems, hire the staff to manage them, and glean all the information they can from it. With large amounts of data coming in, this can lead to massive data management challenges. 

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“There are companies like Netflix and Twitter that immediately understood the value of big data and that had the resources needed to develop big data staffs and applications at the onset of the big data movement,” said Monte Zweben, CEO of Splice Machine, a company that provides a SQL-database platform that’s specifically tailored for accelerated big data modeling and deployment. “Unfortunately, most of the Fortune 2000 companies couldn’t compete with these efforts, so

Ladies and gentlemen of the TechRepublic universe, it’s that time again–holiday shopping season. This Android gift guide can help you shop for those you love, cherish, and tolerate throughout the year. From stocking stuffers to big gift ideas, you should be able to find something for all of the Android fans on your list. If you don’t find anything on this list, consider a Google Play gift card for those on your list who prefer to select their own gifts.

In the coming days, OSIRIS-REx is set to robotically scoop an asteroid sample more than 200 million miles from Earth. On Oct. 20, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will descend on asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of its surface in what NASA has officially dubbed a Touch-And-Go (TAG). If successful, the cosmic bounty could be the space agency’s largest space sample recovery since the Apollo era, according to NASA. We recently spoke with Jason Dworkin, the project scientist for OSIRIS-REx, about the upcoming TAG, the “greedy” tendencies of asteroid sampling, and more.

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