Technology
Actress Malinda Williams Boosts STEM Initiatives for HBCU Women
Actress Malinda Williams opens up about her natural passion for supporting STEM programs for women at historically black colleges and universities.
Since its launch Arise And Shine Foundation in 2023, the “Soul Food” star helped young women at HBCUs pursue careers in tech through a coding boot camp. The program is modeled after Williams’ personal experiences, who went from actress to tech skilled who learned to construct web sites out of necessity.
“As a successful actress, people didn’t want to hear my story of adversity. They didn’t want to know that I could code or build websites,” she said he said Afro technology.
“They just wanted to know when my next movie was coming out. ‘Yeah. That’s nice, but when’s your next TV show?'”
“So I really had to and still have to push through the imposter syndrome of what I thought people expected of me that I knew I could do. And that’s part of what we’re incorporating into this HBCU coding boot camp is those hard skills of learning to code, but also the soft skills of pushing through adversity and showing up to the world 100% authentically.”
According to Williams, she has all the time been “an engineer at heart,” but it surely was a “spiritual” trip to a bookstore that inspired her to make use of her natural abilities in technology.
“I set off on a further spiritual journey, but I also went to a bookstore and found a lot of spiritual material there. A book called ‘HTML for Dummies’ fell off the shelf,” she recalls.
“I’ve tinkered with technology a little bit. I’m an engineer at heart. My dad’s an engineer, and my mom’s a creative. So I think I have an equal amount of both in me.”
After reading the book, the Wood star taught herself the best way to code at a time when technology wasn’t as advanced because it is now. The challenges she faced helped encourage her to create future coding programs for young women.
“I had learned about four different programming languages at that point, which was about 15 years ago. So there were no modular programs that allowed us to just arrange and drag and drop,” Williams explained.
“You had to know the code. You had to know how to build using these coding languages, and that’s what I learned.”
After teaching herself the best way to code, Williams began constructing web sites for her friends for free and used YouTube to succeed in an audience she wanted to attach with on a brand new level. She saw a shift coming within the content space and desired to help motivate other black women to remain ahead of technology trends.
“I’ve built quite a following on YouTube just by doing hair videos… When you make that change, when you make that transition, when you take that step, everything starts to fall into place,” she shared.
Williams eventually founded Arise And Shine Foundation Inc. together with her sisters Leslie Williams-Dunn and Lisa D. Williams-Sorensen to attach and educate underserved and underrepresented women and girls. The foundation’s coding bootcamp kicked off May 31 at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, teaching students the best way to construct their very own apps and including coding activation, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) training, and Apple’s programming language.
“It exceeded our expectations,” Williams said of this system, which received devices and academic support from Apple as an official partner. “The young ladies came in and were absolutely stunning.”
“We have some arrangements in place for them to celebrate, make sure they feel valued, let them know they are important and that this is an exchange,” she continued.
“We offer resources to you, but you are also a resource to us… It really built trust in a very short period of time during that kickoff weekend, followed by a four-week virtual coding boot camp where all the students learned how to build apps. Some of them knew nothing about technology or coding before they got there.”
Following a successful pilot program, Williams will proceed the coding boot camp in 2025 with plans to expand the initiative to more HBCUs across the country.
“Our goal is to impact every single HBCU,” she said. “Next year, we’re going to be doing a different school. And eventually, I want to do a tour. I want to be at an HBCU near you… I want us to hit the ground running in all these different regions and be present and accessible to women who want to be empowered.”
Technology
US medical device giant Artivion says hackers stole files during a cybersecurity incident
Artivion, a medical device company that produces implantable tissue for heart and vascular transplants, says its services have been “disrupted” resulting from a cybersecurity incident.
In 8-K filing In an interview with the SEC on Monday, Georgia-based Artivion, formerly CryoLife, said it became aware of a “cybersecurity incident” that involved the “compromise and encryption” of information on November 21. This suggests that the corporate was attacked by ransomware, but Artivion has not yet confirmed the character of the incident and didn’t immediately reply to TechCrunch’s questions. No major ransomware group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Artivion said it took some systems offline in response to the cyberattack, which the corporate said caused “disruptions to certain ordering and shipping processes.”
Artivion, which reported third-quarter revenue of $95.8 million, said it didn’t expect the incident to have a material impact on the corporate’s funds.
Technology
It’s a Raspberry Pi 5 in a keyboard and it’s called Raspberry Pi 500
Manufacturer of single-board computers Raspberry Pi is updating its cute little computer keyboard device with higher specs. Named Raspberry Pi500This successor to the Raspberry Pi 400 is just as powerful as the present Raspberry Pi flagship, the Raspberry Pi 5. It is on the market for purchase now from Raspberry Pi resellers.
The Raspberry Pi 500 is the simplest method to start with the Raspberry Pi because it’s not as intimidating because the Raspberry Pi 5. When you take a look at the Raspberry Pi 500, you do not see any chipsets or PCBs (printed circuit boards). The Raspberry Pi is totally hidden in the familiar housing, the keyboard.
The idea with the Raspberry Pi 500 is you could connect a mouse and a display and you are able to go. If, for instance, you’ve got a relative who uses a very outdated computer with an outdated version of Windows, the Raspberry Pi 500 can easily replace the old PC tower for many computing tasks.
More importantly, this device brings us back to the roots of the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi computers were originally intended for educational applications. Over time, technology enthusiasts and industrial customers began using single-board computers all over the place. (For example, when you’ve ever been to London Heathrow Airport, all of the departures and arrivals boards are there powered by Raspberry Pi.)
Raspberry Pi 500 draws inspiration from the roots of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a non-profit organization. It’s the right first computer for college. In some ways, it’s a lot better than a Chromebook or iPad because it’s low cost and highly customizable, which inspires creative pondering.
The Raspberry Pi 500 comes with a 32GB SD card that comes pre-installed with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution. It costs $90, which is a slight ($20) price increase over the Raspberry Pi 400.
Only UK and US keyboard variants will probably be available at launch. But versions with French, German, Italian, Japanese, Nordic and Spanish keyboard layouts will probably be available soon. And when you’re in search of a bundle that features all the things you would like, Raspberry Pi also offers a $120 desktop kit that features the Raspberry Pi 500, a mouse, a 27W USB-C power adapter, and a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable.
In other news, Raspberry Pi has announced one other recent thing: the Raspberry Pi monitor. It is a 15.6-inch 1080p monitor that’s priced at $100. Since there are quite a few 1080p portable monitors available on the market, this launch is not as noteworthy because the Pi 500. However, for die-hard Pi fans, there’s now also a Raspberry Pi-branded monitor option available.
Technology
Apple Vision Pro may add support for PlayStation VR controllers
According to Apple, Apple desires to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive for gamers and game developers latest report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
The Vision Pro was presented more as a productivity and media consumption device than a tool geared toward gamers, due partly to its reliance on visual and hand controls moderately than a separate controller.
However, Apple may need gamers if it desires to expand the Vision Pro’s audience, especially since Gurman reports that lower than half one million units have been sold to this point. As such, the corporate has reportedly been in talks with Sony about adding support for PlayStation VR2 handheld controllers, and has also talked to developers about whether they may support the controllers of their games.
Offering more precise control, Apple may also make other forms of software available in Vision Pro, reminiscent of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Photoshop.
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