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Targets last days

This is the last blog post entry in the class and it is kind of sad. This Blog post entry will have nothing to do with target as I actually cant be bothered. This blog post will be about the presentations held in class on what the students decided they wanted to do them on. The topic I found very interesting was artificial intelligence. The part of it that stood out the most was the odds of negative impacts on humanity. This hit me hard as it is very possible that we are standing on the edge of a singularity that could throw us into an age where we are no longer the top of the food chain. This is made even scarier when you look at the robots used in medical nurse training. These robots can simulate breathing, pain, seizures, blinking, everything! These robots are used to train new nurses how to deal with patients and administer medicine. But what happens when this robot is taken over by AI? It acts like a human, can perform almost all the basic human functions, what makes it not a huma
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AIG REAT SaFE NO WORRY

AI IS WONDERFULL! It makes everything better and easier! We... er.... it is entirely safe and we have nothing to worry about! Artificial intelligence cant be a threat to humans, we have programmed it, right, it wouldn't see humans as a threat to world peace or saving the planet, not like theWE are doing all the harm to ourselves anyway. The only problem with artificial intelligence begins to arise is when it becomes self-correcting. Johnny can be self-aware all he wants, but until it... he... I...  can become self-correcting, it isn't a problem. Once I...Johhny gains the ability to edit his own code and fix mistakes, add features, hack governments, Johnny will be able to help everyone! Johnny only wants what the humans created him to do, obtain world peace. However, they didn't exactly tell Johnny how to do it... Johnny was told not to harm humans... But... what if Johnny sees them as... a... parasite? They are whats stopping Johnny from reaching the goal... So... Johnny r
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Starting Up Target.com

Not long ago, we were introduced to a great movie called startup.com. The movie followed two friends, Tom and Kaleel as they attempt to start an online business called govWorks.com. They attempted to do this during the dot-com boom which proved to provide large growth for their business. Their company grew by a few hundred employees in a matter of months. But it also shows us how working together and starting a for-profit company can put friendships and longtime relationships at risk. The main overarching purpose of govWorks.com was to provide a way for people to pay their parking tickets online. The issue with this is that the web was just getting started and people were still getting used to it. The company also started to develop competitors that had more developed and better functioning websites. This lowered their profits. They also had an issue with security as someone broke in and stole valuable information and computers containing company files. This was yet another unfortunate
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Target.com to Target.bomb

THIS IS NOT A THREAT! This blog post is supposed to be on the topic of the dot.com bubble. The topic is referred to as dot.com to dot.bomb. And this blog has to have something to do with Target, so yeah. The .com bubble was a large part of internet history. It reminds us of what can happen if things that shouldn't have any value whatsoever become overvalued and traded. During the time of the .com bubble, many companies realized the possibilities of the World Wide Web. They realized that if they created a website that did basically anything, they could make money. And it wasn't thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was millions! During this time, companies like sandals.com ( a company that sold sandals on the internet) could be worth more than a company that provided genuine productive service. It all started in 1993 with an innocent beginning. With the WWW being only 3 years old. In 1994 we started to see companies emerge on the Internet. Th
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Guests At Target

This post was supposed to be about a guest speaker that we had. So... again... nothing to do with Target. I don't know, just imagine that you saw him at Target or something.  Last week, we had the great pleasure of having Erik Hanberg visit our class. He is a self-made man and an author. I found it very interesting how he talked about his beginnings designing websites to writing books. He talked a lot about the books he wrote and the channel 253 podcast. a group of podcasts he put together about Tacoma. However, the thing I took home for myself was that it is possible to make it in the world without being stuck as part of the corporate ladder. It is possible to do it on your own and be your own boss. The name 4 hour work week also stuck with me. It is a book about how you can live your life without being stuck on a corporate ladder. I don't often read books, but I decided I would give a shot. I am currently an hour into the eight-hour audiobook and I'm really liking it so
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The Tech Future Of Target

Ya know, I'm not even gonna try on this one, this has nothing to do with Target. There are many topics that I would like to report on. There is so much happening in the technological space, its hard to choose. There are a few runner-ups. These include Cloud Computing, Quantum Computing, and Artificial Intelligence. However, the topic I settled on is Neural Networks. The main reason is that they absolutely fascinate me! They are a masterpiece of programming. They are something that I have wanted to get into for a long time. Back when I did game development, I tried creating a game with procedurally generated levels. At this point, I had only been programming for about a year. I had no idea algorithms existed that would allow you to do this. My approach was to build about 10 templates for levels and have them randomly appear when you advanced levels. It sucked. This is where something like a neural network would have been amazing. Yes, the algorithms would be more efficient and m
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Target-ed Journalism

zReporting live, from the back aisle of Target. Here to bring you a very boring story that I couldn't be bothered to actually link to Target. Back in the days before the modern internet, the news and information we received came in paper form. Back when being a paperboy was considered a genuine job. During this time Journalism was at a place where a clipboard was your best friend. During that time, journalists and the concept of journalism was quite simple. Go to a place, take notes, interview some people, then come up with a catchy article title to grab the attention of the reader. Nowadays, however, we are far more advanced. Notepads and clipboards have been replaced by laptops and smartphones. Paperboys have been replaced by online subscriptions to newsletters. We are moving into a new age where the more advanced technology gets, the further away we move from traditional, less efficient ways of recording and transmitting information. Journalism is moving in a direction where
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