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A Ransomware Attack, Self-Taught Robots and Online Abuse: The Week in Tech News

From a critical ransomware attack to tackling online abuse: filter out the media noise with our selection of the top 3 tech news stories of the week.

In the world of IT, real news can easily get mixed with eye-catching headlines and promotional buzz. From a critical ransomware attack to tackling online abuse: filter out the noise with our selection of the top 3 tech news stories of the week.

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Ransomware attack: the new oil disrupting the old one

One of the most echoed statements about data is that it is the new oil. Regardless of whether you agree or not with this comparison ; you will surely find it ironic to see how much the decryption of data, this “new” oil, can end up affecting the old one. 

Last Friday, Colonial Pipeline, one of the largest oi pipeline operators in the United States, experienced a ransomware cyberattack that pushed it to shut down its IT systems. Linked to the DarkSide hacking group, the breach happened on the business side of the company’s IT infrastructure but affected its nationwide operations. 

Although it is thought the motivations behind the attack were economic and not of sabotage, the incident reignites fears of the dangers hackers pose to a country’s critical infrastructure. Oil prices have gone up due to the supply disruption, with people all over the US piling up fuel reserves. The issue might not be fixed until the end of the week.

ZDNet

Self-taught robots

The idea of programming AI systems to teach themselves has been gaining major traction in recent years. Flexible software that is able to learn through experience makes a lot of sense. But our current capabilities in this regard might not be as far-reaching as we think.

A group of Amsterdam-based researchers built a simple robot and tried to make it learn how to move through trial and error. Made of independent units chained together into a train-like structure ; the robot used a series of inflating pumps to propel itself at a top speed of two millimetres per second. 

Unfortunately, while the autonomous learning system managed to effectively move, maintain a stable pace and follow a circular track, the robot encountered a few real-world problems that threw all its calculations off. A good reminder of how easily a variable not accounted for can disrupt machine learning algorithms.

Ars Technica

Tackling tech-enabled abuse

The tech boom caused by the pandemic has brought along some troubling side effects. An increase in online abuse is one of them. With the number of tech abuse cases requiring specialised assistance having grown by 97% over the last year.

All around the world, domestic abusers use both legitimate online tools and so-called stalkware to harass, control and monitor their partners. Suffice it to say, this kind of behaviour usually predates or accompanies other forms of abuse, from physical to psychological. 

That’s why the Barclays-backed non-profit Refuge has launched a site to help abuse victims protect themselves from tech-enabled domestic abuse. RefugeTechSafety.org has been built with the help of survivors and provides educational and actionable resources in multiple languages. 

Computer Weekly

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AI, IBM Chips, and a Novel Cloud Security Concept: The Week in Tech News

Real news can be hard to pinpoint. From AI and chips to cloud security: filter out the noise with our selection of the top 3 tech news stories of the week.

In the world of IT, real news can easily get mixed with eye-catching headlines and promotional buzz. From AI and chips to cloud security: filter out the noise with our selection of the top 3 tech news stories of the week.

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AI is everywhere

The AI hype is so strong we often forget that artificial intelligence is already an integral part of our everyday lives. 

Firstly, AI played a key role in the development of Covid-19 vaccines. But there are many other, less conspicuous ways we benefit from it directly. 

For example, from anti-spam email filters to fraud detection for your banking account, silent, tiny AI helpers accompany us throughout the day without us necessarily being aware. Whether it is by dimming our phone’s screen brightness or suggesting sentences we tend to use, low-level AI tools do exactly what the best kind of technology does: help out without being noticed. 

But not everything’s about the little things, other common applications have positive effects on our society, like smart city traffic management or energy grid optimisation. 

World Economic Forum 

IBM makes chip breakthrough

For all its innovation potential, the technology industry still has an over-reliance on the diminishing effects of the long/established Moore’s Law, by which the number of transistors in computer chips tends to double in number and halve in size every two years. 

Unfortunately, recent years have seen this rule of thumb falter, with chip manufacturers struggling to keep the good ratio going.  

Enter IBM. The company announced this week a significant breakthrough in the way computer processors can be effectively made. IBM created a 2nm chip it claims can boost performance by 45% over 7nm chips while cutting down energy consumption by 75%.

BBC

A scalable approach to cloud security

Making sure that evolving cloud environments remain protected against malware is becoming increasingly difficult in a world where multi-cloud is the new norm and a single weakness can compromise an entire network

As if human fallibility and the cloud’s sheer size were not enough, attackers are using increasingly sophisticated methods of bypassing traditional security measures and protocols.

Malware is often only valuable until its detected, as its signature can then be easily identified by the system. Yet, scanning an entire cloud ecosystem for irregularities still involves too much complexity and resources due to its sheer size. 

A research initiative by Microsoft’s, Projet Freta, proposes a novel approach: a cloud-centric in-memory scanning system that focuses on virtual machine instances to deliver scalable protection.

TechRepublic

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Mindquest Welcomes Melchior du Boullay as General Manager to Support its Hypergrowth Ambitions

Mindquest welcomes Melchior du Boullay as its new General Manager to lead its fast-evolving organizational structure and propel its international expansion.
Mindquest welcomes Melchior du Boullay as its new General Manager to lead its fast-evolving organizational structure and propel its international expansion.

Mindquest and its parent company Club Freelance are welcoming Melchior du Boullay as the new group General Manager. This entrepreneur, IT specialist, and business development expert is now back in his native France after 14 years in the United States. His mission: to lead the group’s fast-evolving organisational structure and propel its international expansion.

A new structure for new needs

Above all, the appointment of Melchior du Boullay comes as the recruitment group embarks on an acceleration phase, driven by the strong vision of its founders and materialized by the launch of Mindquest at the start of the year.

In recent years, IT skills have become much more complex and harder to secure. Consequently of talent shortages, demand has shifted towards a stronger hybridisation of tech roles and careers.

Discover The Top IT Skills to Master in 2021

An agile approach to IT recruitment

By providing both freelancer sourcing services and recruitment on permanent contracts, Mindquest offers an agile approach to IT recruitment that is unique in its sector. This approach meets both the needs of companies to build mixed teams (freelancers and permanent employees) and the desire of talent to break the linearity of their careers based on their evolving life plans.

Profitable since day one, the Mindquest / Club Freelance group hopes to reach 70 million euros in turnover and 100 employees by 2025, compared to 21 million and 35 employees at present. The ambitious plans include the deployment of the group’s services in several European countries: an expansion that will now be supported and spearheaded by du Boullay as new General Manager.

A hypergrowth management specialist at the helm

A graduate of the EPITA, the first Engineering and Computer Science school in France, and endowed with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, Melchior du Boullay has spent his entire career at oXya, a provider of technical services and cloud solutions for SAP customers, now part of the Hitachi group.

Du Boullay held various positions there: IT consultant deployed at customers, SMBs and large enterprises, then project manager and development manager. His international career took him to Congo, Canada and various other countries. He then settled in the United States, where he has led the American subsidiary of oXya for 14 years and achieved double-digit growth year after year. Nearly 20 years of continued challenges and successful conquest have enabled him to acquire very strong expertise in management, process optimization, and corporate governance.

The importance of inclusion and diversity

Close to the field, to his teams, and to his clients, du Boullay has made inclusion and diversity his guiding principles and will be keen to put his passion for people at the service of Mindquest. His transatlantic experience will also be an asset in the context of the group’s international ambitions.

Mindquest new General Manager Melchior du Boullay will work to take the excellent quality of service that characterises the company into a context of hypergrowth. A phase always difficult to manage.

“My role will be to structure the organisation in order to realise the vision of its leaders. It’s about bringing together and engaging our entire ecosystem. It is especially important for me to preserve the values of goodwill and high standards that permeate the group and made me want to join this adventure. Coming from the IT world myself and having already had to manage complex phases of strong growth, I want to support Mindquest in its development while keeping its values intact. My goal is to make it grow from a recognised player to an undisputed leader both in its original French market and internationally, “assures du Boullay.

For any press inquiries, please contact:

Sarah Hachemi

shachemi@quatriemejour.fr

Antoine Billon

abillon@quatriemejour.fr

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The Week in IT news: CPU Merges with RAM and 2021 IT Spending

The week in IT news. CPU merges with RAM, CIO's top budget priorities for 2021, and cloud spending surpasses on-prem for first time

Here’s what happened this week in IT news.

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News story #1: CPU + RAM: the way ahead?

Computers will soon be faster thanks to the fusing of CPUs and RAM. This is accordingly to that’s what SK Hynix CEO Seok-Hee Lee thinks. 

The head of the world’s second-largest memory maker behind Samsung made this prediction during his keynote address at IEEE’s International Reliability Physics Symposium. Assuring that the central processing unit and the memory will eventually be integrated within a single die to deliver higher performance computing systems.

To achieve this feat, Lee, whose company only produces memories and not CPUs, believes the chip manufacturing industry will need to come together and adopt a collaboration model focused on open innovation.  

The Register

News story #2: Top budget priorities for CIOs

IDG’s annual State of the CIO survey clearly shows how the pandemic has affected IT spending. After a 2020 impacted by tightening budgets and a sole focus on mission-critical initiatives, the priorities for this year are somewhat widening.

This year’s three main business drivers for IT are transforming business processes, increasing cybersecurity protections and improving customer experience. 

To do so, CIOs will be putting most of their money into technologies. This will include data and business analytics, security and risk management, cloud-based enterprise applications and customer experience technologies. Global budgets are expected to increase by 6.2% to cover this broader spectrum. 

CIO

News story #3: Cloud spending (finally) surpasses on-prem

And speaking of spending —  enterprise cloud spending topped that made on data centers for the first time last year. Nothing too unexpected in terms of IT news of the week. But one thing is to know change is coming, and a whole different story is to have confirmation.

A global report by the Synergy Research Group reveals businesses spent 35 percent more on cloud-based solutions, taking the total up to almost $130 billion. Conversely, spending for on-premise solutions went down six percent to less than $90 billion. 

CIOs are spending most of their cloud budget on servers storage, security and software. When it comes to software, however, it is important to mention that the report mainly looked at server OS and virtualisation software — comparing software-as-a-service with on-prem business apps software would render way different results.   

IT Pro Portal

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The Week in IT news: Agile turns 20, the Web 30, and light-based computing moves ahead

The week in IT news. The Agile philosophy turns 20, Berners-Lee's annual letter and advancements in light-based computing

Here’s what happened this week in IT news.

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News story #1: Agile after 20 years

With the manifesto for Agile software development turning 20 this year, industry insiders are looking back at the philosophy’s two decades of existence to see how deeply embedded it actually is among the world’s businesses. 

While most companies have fully bought into the idea of Agile and are on board with its values and principles, the term “agile” is still a buzzword rather than a true practice in many cases. 

According to experts, organisations often resort to Agile methodologies as a simple solution to accelerate their digital transformation projects. In doing so, they fail to implement the development framework as a wholistic philosophy that ties IT with business objectives.

Automated testing and deployment and rapid feedback loops have been widely adopted by industry players, but better value stream mapping and new business-oriented performance metrics will be needed if we are to unleash the full potential of Agile.       

ZDNet

News story #2: Berners-Lee’s annual letter

Just like Warren Buffett, Tim Berners-Lee (a.k.a. the father of the world wide web) has made a habit out of sending an annual letter reflecting on the state of the Internet world.

Last Friday, March 12th, marked the 30th anniversary of the web, and Berners-Lee, who has always been adamant about making the Internet a more inclusive medium, turned his attention to universal access to the Internet, web-based environmental initiatives and curbing online abuse. According to Berners-Lee, the pandemic has accentuated the difference between the 2.2 billion young people who lack stable Internet access and those who don’t. But it is the web’s hostility towards minorities that worries him the most.

Yet, despite his concerns regarding “the toxic Internet,” Berners-lee is optimistic about our ability to make online forums a safer place. Specifically, he points towards big social media platforms as the ones who should be implementing the changes to make that happen. The way forward, says Berners-Lee, should be building “social networks where bad things happen less.” 

The Guardian

News story #3: Mirror-based computers

The end the week in IT news — While quantum computing is the alternative to traditional computers that gets the most attention these days, it is not the only new kid in the block. 

Researchers are also exploring ways to make standard bit-based computation faster and more efficient — and we are not talking about cramming more transistors into a silicon chip. It’s more about re-inventing the traditional transistor altogether. After all, we don’t need all future computers to be quantum; faster traditional PCs should suffice for most tasks. Enter light-based computing.

University of Cambridge researchers have discovered a way of making a material switch between glass and mirror with a short laser pulse. This type of optical switching is way faster than current computer switches — about a million times faster. It also consumes a fraction of the energy. Plus, the switch could be applied to quantum computing as well.   

Phys.org

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Weekly IT News: Eco data centers, a Microsoft hack and the EU’s digital sovereignty

Your weekly recap of IT news. Learn more about the eco data center, the latest Microsoft hack and the EU's digital sovereignty

Here’s your weekly recap of IT news.

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News story #1: Data centers to curb carbon emissions

One of the main arguments against the expansion of cloud computing could turn out to be one of the strongest reasons for the technology’s wider adoption. 

Data centers have long been known to need vast amounts of power to keep their servers cold and operational. Basic logic dictates more data centers will translate into greater electricity consumption, but, as is often the case with global issues, basic logic is not always enough.

For each centralised data center in a cloud network, fewer, discrete computing resources will be needed to sustain the productive ecosystem. And that means energy savings. Additionally, smarter data centers can reduce electricity consumption by optimising power distribution and the cooling of servers. 

Well, according to new research by IDC, a combination of these two strategies could save the planet 1B metric tons of carbon emissions by 2024. 

ZDNet

News story #2: The Microsoft hack

Problems keep piling up for American cybersecurity experts. And, consequently, for everyone else. On the heels of the SolarWinds hack that left thousands of companies and government bodies open to vulnerability exploits, Microsoft announced on March 2 that suspected Chinese-sponsored attackers had identified 4 zero-day exploits in the company’s Exchange business email solution. 

While Microsoft immediately released a patch, other hackers have since been busy at work looking for users who have yet to install the update. But even those who patched the issue might still be at risk, as some hackers are targeting backdoors that were put in place during the original attack and never discovered.

Organisations around the globe experienced issues as a result of the breach, including the European Banking Authority. Given how widely used Miscrosoft Exhange is, we can expect other prominent institutions to come forward in the coming days. 

DCK

Story #3: The EU wants digital sovereignty

Finally, the European Union unveiled on Tuesday a plan to double its chip manufacturing capacity by 2030. 

The so-called Digital Compass plan aims to advance the eurozone’s digital sovereignty by funding a series of technology initiatives that grant the region greater autonomy. 

In addition to scaling up the production of semiconductor processors to 20% of the global market, the EU wants 5G access for all houses, the online availability of all key public services, and also to build the union’s first quantum computer. 

Although vital to Europe’s geopolitical position in a tech-powered future, the chip-manufacturing part of the plan will prove challenging. Making chips is very expensive, and the European industry will have to pivot from building the machines needed to fabricate chips to making the chips themselves. 

The Verge

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Weekly IT News: Bitcoin Hunger For Power

Weekly IT News: Bitcoin's Hunger For Power
A look at the week in tech and IT news. Bitcoin hunger for power, robot farmers, and a new EU regulation for the repair of electronics.

A look at the week in tech and IT news. Bitcoin hunger for power, robot farmers, and a new EU regulation for the repair of electronics.

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Bitcoin – Crypto-pollution

Bitcoin’s latest price surge and growing institutional support have put the cryptocurrency back in the public eye and attracted scrutiny around the amount of power it needs to function. 

Bitcoin works thanks to a mechanism called proof-of-work, by which a globally distributed network of computers competes to solve a complex cryptographic problem every 10 minutes. The process is estimated to use as much electricity as Norway or Argentina do in a year. That’s 2.5 times as much energy as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google need every year — combined. 

The impact could be reduced if a greater part of this power came from renewable resources, only 39% of it does today. But that’s no solution. Proof-of-work is still a terrible waste of electricity. Alternative transaction validation methods like the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism used by other coins, will need to be adopted to ensure the long-term viability of the ecosystem.

The Guardian

Of robots and cows

Farmers and robots are not necessarily two concepts one would put together. Yet these unlikely companions are quickly becoming inseparable sidekicks. 

It makes sense, though. Both automation and agriculture share a common goal when it comes to optimising processes and maximising output. All over the world, technologists and food producers are coming with new and imaginative ways of helping plants grow faster and be more nutritious, but also of improving the quality of life of cattle. 

The next time you see cows grazing on a field, pay attention to their ear tags. Chances are they are hiding a GPS tracker with advanced biometric capabilities that let farmers monitor the animals’ health and anticipate when they will need anything. And watch out for little wheeled robots inspecting the fields. They are small and it’s easy to trip over them.

BBC

The right to repair

Finally, a new EU regulation came into effect on Monday. 

The European Right to Repair, by which manufacturers of electronic equipment must ensure their products can be repaired and last for up to 10 years, is aimed at tackling one of the main problems of technological progress and consumerism: waste. 

However, environmental campaigners are not satisfied. And with reason. The rule currently only applies to products like refrigerators and other appliances. Consumer electronics like laptops and mobile phones are not factored in. 

Individual countries like France are already going one step further, passing regulations to require companies like Apple to accompany their devices with repairability scores. The EU is likely to follow suit in future revisions of the initiative. 

TechRepublic

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Weekly News: What Devs Hate Most

Weekly News: What Devs Hate Most
A look at the week in tech news with Mission Control Center. Coding, debugging, .NET skills, database, DevOps and what devs hate most.

A look at the week in tech news with Mission Control Center. Coding, debugging, .NET skills, database, DevOps and what devs hate most.

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I’d rather go to the dentist, tbh – what devs hate most

What do you enjoy doing the most on a daily basis? How about spending a whole afternoon paying your bills? 

Well, not entirely surprisingly. Over a quarter of developers (26%) would prefer doing exactly that; instead of devoting the same amount of time to identifying and fixing code bugs. And that’s not all. Over a fifth of coders (21%) would rather pay a visit to the dentist than debug a section of code. All according to a new survey by software firm Rollbar.

Existing error monitoring methods are far from perfect and often fail to detect vital errors. That results in a third of all software developers having to spend up to 10 hours a week manually fixing bugs; instead of producing new code. And that’s only so that some Internet crusader can kindly let you know you’ve missed a critical flaw just after releasing the product. 

As with many things tech, automation has a vital role in helping developers address this issue. Next-generation, AI-powered debugging tools are bound to become the programmer’s best friend.

Tech Republic / Harvard Business Review

The top-paying .NET skills

A new badge of reports by various tech industry actors has prompted Visual Studio Magazine to comb through the data to reveal the top-paying .NET and Microsoft-centric skills of the moment. 

Visual Basic occupies the fifth position in the list of top 10 programming languages of 2021, with C# being number 8.

Microsoft’s take on the SQL standard, Transact-SQL, is the top Microsoft-focused programming skill, with TypeScript, the company’s open-source take on JavaScript following next. 

When it comes to certifications, the Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) badge is the second-most popular certification, right behind CompTIA’s A+. 

Visual Studio Magazine

The state of database DevOps

In today’s rapidly moving software development space, implementing a solid DevOps strategy has become a must for any team aspiring to be at the industry’s forefront. 

Automating and streamlining processes throughout the software life cycle permits greater agility in developing the product and ensures higher levels of quality. But that’s not the only area in which Agile and CI/CD philosophies can help. 

With 70% of companies using more than one database in their stack thanks to cloud hybridisation, automating database changes and deployments is attracting growing attention.

51% of businesses are already using some level of automation in their database deployments. These are lower adoption numbers compared to DevOps in software development, but a majority of companies plan on stepping up their continuous delivery efforts in the coming months.

DevOps.com

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Weekly News: One Algorithm to Save the World

Weekly News: One Algorithm to Save the World
Software development has been accelarated by the pandemic, and that's great news for technologists. Weekly news about one algorithm to save the world.

Software development has been accelarated by the pandemic, and that’s great news for technologists. Weekly news and one algorithm to save the world.

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Preparing for the next time around with an algorithm

So, was it a pangolin or not? 

At this point, the scientific community can more or less confidently say that the coronavirus that is wrecking havoc across the globe came originally from bats. But they are not so sure about which animal acted as the intermediary host.  

Identifying animal species that might become the source of the next pandemic is one of the main pillars of our strategy to future-proof our public health. It is, however, not an easy task, as the potential lines of investigation are just too many and new virus strains can be quite unpredictable. Well, it turns out AI can help with that too. 

A group of British researchers have built a computer algorithm that allows them to predict which animals are most susceptible to new coronavirus infections. The results of the algorithm were somewhat alarming, as many more mammals were identified as potential hosts when compared to previous studies based on screenings.

But hey — information is power. Better to know where to look for the next time around. 

BBC

How to develop software remotely

Software development has been accelarated by the pandemic, and that’s great news for technologists. But IT leaders have to juggle the rise in demand with other, more uncomfortable consequences of Covid-19. 

Not considered essential employees for the most part, software developers are largely working from home these days. As it is happening with other locked-down professional; coders and integrators are dealing with challenging situations, having to coordinate family duties with work assignments and falling victim to the isolation and the lack of direct contact. 

This of course, impacts overall team performance. Which is why development team leaders are coming up with new ways to work and support their teams. While there is no single best approach to the problem; a few common patterns emerge when interviewing some of these managers. 

These include greater, more frequent communication between team members. But also visibility over the current status of projects via collaboration tools like Slack and a profound revision of existing workflows. Fostering socialising among peers is also key.

Computer Weekly

The low-code explosion

According to a new forecast by Gartner, the need for more agile and decentralised software development brought about by the pandemic will continue to boost low-code adoption in the coming months.

Low-code platforms let non-IT experts develop solutions without requiring hardcore coding and technical skills. Something which, of course, is very advantageous in a time of rapid digital transformation and overclocked IT departments. 

Gartner estimates that 41% of all employees outside IT; the so-called business technologists; are customising or building digital solutions to accelerate their projects and integrate workflows. 

The firm predicts that half of all the demand for low-code applications will come from business users by the end of 2025. 

Information Age

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Weekly News: Open Source Coders Could Be Worth Millions

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Open source gold

Focusing on open source software solutions could save the European Union billions of euros a year. That’s according to a new report conducted by OpenForum Europe (OFE) under the European Commission’s direction, which concluded that a mere increase of 10% in open source production could increase the EU’s GDP by nearly €100bn.

The study estimated that in 2018 alone there were over 260,000 open source contributors in the EU. The volume of code they produced amounted to the full-time work of 16,000 developers, generating between 65 and 95 billion euros in value.  

The reveal comes as another study by IBM and O´Reilly suggests 94% of developers and technology managers prioritise open source skills over proprietary technology. Expertise in open-source tech like Linux and Kubernetes is almost twice (64.6%) as popular as skills tied to specific platforms like AWS or Azure. 

All thanks to the rise of the hybrid cloud, which requires a unified, flexible IT infrastructure and is expected to grow by 47% in the next three years. 

ITProPortal / TechRadar

Filling the AI skills gap

Artificial intelligence could change all our lives for the better, freeing us from repetitive tasks and allowing us to enjoy more free time and devote our energy to higher-level activities. That is, of course, if governments and business leaders around the world are able to promote the re-skilling of the workforce and bridge the already problematic talent gap.

That was the conclusion of a panel of European institutional experts at The Economist´s recent Innovation@Work summit, which acknowledged AI must be regulated to ensure it is an assistance to people’s lives rather than a hindrance. Ensuring data quality is key, while nations need to set up technology training efforts that produce the talent companies need. 

AI is one of the areas of IT where the talent gap is more apparent, especially as the technology keeps evolving at breakneck speed. Companies are a bit clueless regarding AI skills themselves. According to Gartner, 53% of business leaders believe the inability to identify skilled expertise is the number one impediment to workforce transformation. 

Diginomica

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Big tech goes green

One of the biggest critiques that can be made about big tech companies, besides their near economic monopoly is the carbon footprint they produce. Server farms and data centres, mining of the precious resources need to build hardware, emissions tied to the distribution of products. You name it. 

It is no surprise then that companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft have made in recent years a pledge to reduce their impact on the environment and established ambitious goals for the near future. A move that has become all the more necessary considering mounting regulatory scrutiny by the US and EU governments.  

The solution? Investing in clean energy. 

According to an analysis by Bloomberg and the Financial Times, technology groups are the world’s biggest corporate buyers of green energy. From solar to wind farms, their clean-energy projects expand all across the globe, providing a growing portion of all their energy needs. 

Financial Times

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