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Weekly News: Google’s Project Zero-Day Bugs, Cloud and a Quantum Leap

Google’s Project Zero-Day Bugs, Cloud and a Quantum Leap… Watch this recap in video format.


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Infosec & Google’s Project Zero: Google says try harder

New research by Maddie Stone, a researcher at Google’s Project Zero security team, suggests hackers have it way too easy thanks to the business world’s failure to patch zero-day and recurring vulnerabilities. 

According to Stone, attackers these days don’t really need to come up with new vulnerabilities to exploit. Although industry leaders including Google itself are diligent enough in issuing patches to zero-day vulnerabilities, these bug fixes often fall flat and don’t fully address the issue, leaving the doors open to future attacks.  

Project Zero, whose only focus is to investigate these zero-day flaws, advocates for greater investment and a more proactive approach to security. The key, Stone says, is to let engineers go deeper to identify the root of the problem and implement more meaningful structural changes. 

MIT Technology Review

It’s all about the cloud

This week we got a surprise announcement from a technology titan: Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO of Amazon. And his choice of successor is quite revealing of where the industry is headed next. 

Amazon started as an online retailer, and that’s for what most people know the company. But it’s not where the money is at. Any tech insider like yourself will undoubtedly tell the layman that the Seattle born company makes most of its revenue with its cloud services. It is no surprise then, that Bezos has chosen Andy Jassy, head of Amazon Web Services, to take the company into the future.  

And Amazon is not alone here. Microsoft is no longer the company that makes Windows. Google is not just a search engine. Cloud has clearly become the winning bet for tech goliaths. And, with only 25-30 percent of business workloads in the cloud. we are just seeing the beginning of it.   

NBC News

Quantum leaps

And speaking of Microsoft and cloud, the Redmond-based company announced this week the availability on preview of Azure Quantum, a public cloud ecosystem that lets users access the quantum capabilities of partners like Honeywell, IonQ and Quantum Circuits. 

With this public preview, Microsoft wants to encourage developers, researchers and systems integrators to learn how to use the platform and build applications that could potentially transform a wide range of industries. 

The announcement comes the same week Dutch researchers at Radbourd University revealed a new method for assembling a network of atoms that works in a similar way to the synapses in our brains. The breakthrough, the researchers say, is a major step towards the creation of a quantum brain that is able to function and change like a human’s.

ZDNet / The Independent


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Weekly News: Online Traders Hit Wall Street

Here’s what happened this week in IT news.


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Amateur traders take on Wall Street’s old guard

The Internet can be a fascinating place. And especially Reddit. Mix online stock trading with a pinch of cancel culture and a good amount of memes and, boom: a bunch of Wall Street big shots lose millions in a matter of hours. 

Retail investors using low-cost, online trading platforms like Robinhood organised through the ‘WallStreetBets’ subreddit to do something they had been wanting to do for a while now: get back at hedge funds and other traditional investors who make money by betting on failing companies (aka shorting).

These amateur traders, who see themselves as part of a new wave of anti-establishment investors, went on to inflate the stock price of GameStop, a now-failing American brick-and-mortar videogame store. Wall Street had borrowed many of the company’s stocks, sure these would go down in price and they’d be able to make a profit upon returning them. 

Ouch. Certainly a clear reminder of the power that the virtual world can have over the real one.  

BBC

Davos goes virtual

Like pretty much any other large event whose organisers sport a bit of common sense, this year’s gathering of the World Economic Forum is being held fully online. Its focus this time around? Surprise, surprise. You guessed it — pandemic recovery. 

Specifically, the organisation consulted world business leaders ahead of the start of the talks conference talks about how technology should be used to help reset our society, economy and business environment.

Cloud and collaboration tools to strengthen community ties and help us predict and address health crises. Accelerated digital transformation to keep improving business models and ultimately people’s lives. Widespread use of AI to automate repetitive tasks and allow businesses to focus on adding real, high-end value. 

The underlying theme: prioritising the common good. 

World Economic Forum

A five-year timeline for AI in the enterprise

A newly published Gartner report aims to do something at which most tech predictions tend to fail: getting too specific with the time estimates.

The study looked at the unintended ethical and social repercussions of AI adoption and then provided recommendations on what business should do to address them. 

By 2025, our world could look quite scarier than it does today in terms of privacy and cybersecurity. Large-scale AI models will be concentrated in the hands of 1% of vendors. Deepfakes will be so common companies will have to conduct regular employee trainings on how to spot them. About 75% of workplace conversations will be analysed to add organisational value and assess risk.

Learn more about AI: 5 Online Courses to Get You Up-To-Speed with AI

The most obvious routes for businesses to take include setting up ethic boards at companies that sell or use AI and establishing guidelines for responsible AI consumption.  

TechRepublic


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Weekly News: Robot Butlers and Virtual Influencers

Robot Butlers and Virtual Influencers – Tech´s flashy new toys, A new logistics network, and Microsoft cloud comes to retail… Discover our weekly tech news.

Robot Butlers and Virtual Influencers – Listen to the podcast version

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Tech´s flashy new toys

CES; the world´s biggest technology show; is at full throttle since Monday, having changed its traditional Las Vegas setting for virtual presentations due to the pandemic.

The event is known for its outlandish new tech concepts and products. A way for consumer brands to show off and set the agenda for the upcoming year. And, although most of these technology predictions don´t end up panning out, there is always something to learn from them. 

These year´s big reveals include a robot butler that can both serve you dinner and wash the dishes afterwards. A smart pet portal that lets your cat in and out while keeping other neighbourhood animals out, and Reah Keem — LG’s new virtual influencer with around 6,000 followers on Instagram.

The Telegraph

A new logistics network

From ‘cloud kitchens’ that centralise all meal orders for a given area of the city, to more ubiquitous and smaller warehouses closer to the delivery location. The logistics infrastructure is changing. 

The pandemic has given e-commerce firms a boom, creating the need to update existing delivery networks to be able to keep up with demand. Furthermore, expected delivery times are narrowing, with costumers now being accustomed to delivery windows of less than 30 minutes. 

All in all, this new wave of e-commerce developments is quietly reshaping our cities in a time where their streets are mostly transited by delivery vans and bicycles. This expansion, experts say, is comparable to the laying of fibre-optic cable 20 years ago, and its effects will be long lasting.

Financial Times

Microsoft cloud comes to retail

Following the release of its cloud service for the healthcare market, Microsoft has made available on preview its second vertical cloud, this time around for the retail industry. 

The offering combines services and features from Azure, Microsoft and Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform to help the company’s retail customers provide an end-to-end shopper journey. 

Microsoft also announced new features for its Dynamics 365 Commerce, its app providing back-office, in-store, call centre and e-commerce solutions. The app will now offer both in-built B2C and B2B commerce on a single platform. 

Learn more about Microsoft Technologies Careers Overview

ZDNet


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Weekly News: Uber Faces Reality

Weekly news. Discover last news about IT: Uber faces reality and news about SAP that shared a few significant announcements.

Uber Faces Reality

One of the biggest heralds of the mobility revolution, Uber is known for making bold statements about the near future and the company’s role in making it possible.

Flying taxis crossing the city’s skyline, fleets of driverless cars optimising traffic flow across entire countries. The full picture. 

Well, it’s time to face reality. The reality of public traded companies, that is.

In an effort to turn a profit next year, the company is abandoning both its loss-making flying taxi division and the development of its own driverless car. 

Uber is selling the two businesses to two different start-ups, hoping to pursue its futuristic ambitions through partnerships moving forward.

The Guardian

SAP News

German software giant SAP used its yearly TechEd event to share a few significant announcements. 


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The company is the latest big player to jump on the low-code bandwagon with its new Cloud Platform Workflow Management tool. The solution lets employees with little to no knowledge of coding create their own operational workflows. 

The tool also includes predefined workflows for processes like employee onboarding and can be integrated with Qualtrics data.

SAP also announced its first-ever RPA solution. Named SAP Ruum, the tool complements the company’s new low-code strategy by allowing businesses to integrate easily deployable automation into departmental processes.

TechCrunch

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Weekly News: Presenting Our New Podcast Mission Control Center

Say hello to our new podcast Mission Control Center

Because we know how busy you are, we are launching a podcast version of the newsletter from Mission Control Center, so that you can listen to it while you work.

Every week, our editor Miquel Morales will walk you through the most relevant tech news and share all sorts of career development advice. 

We’ll soon be having interviews with experts in all areas of IT, so make sure to follow us every week!


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AI cracks half-century-old problem

After having proven its worth with programs capable of beating humans at various games, the artificial intelligence group DeepMind has reached a major scientific milestone.

The group’s latest program, AlphaFold, has finally solved a problem that had kept researchers baffled for 50 years: predicting how proteins fold into 3D shapes. 

Protein folding patterns, which are unique to each protein and extremely complex, could until now only be unravelled through years-long lab work. It took AlphaFold just a few weeks to learn how to predict folding with greater accuracy than humans.   

The breakthrough paves the way for the design of more powerful drugs and vaccines to fight diseases, as well as for the production of more nutritious crops.

The Guardian

The key technologies for 2021

A new global IEEE survey of CTOs and CIOs reveals the top technologies and challenges for organisations in the upcoming year.

While overcoming the effects of the pandemic remains the biggest concern amongst technology leaders, AI and machine learning are cited as the game-changing tech trends for 202. Next-gen 5G solutions and IoT follow close behind. 

Manufacturing, healthcare, financial services and education are expected to be the industries in which technology will play a more pivotal role. 

One positive finding is that an overwhelming majority of IT leaders (92%) believe their company is now more prepared to respond to a catastrophic and sudden event like a natural disaster or a data breach.

TechRepublic

Mac minis are coming to AWS

Amazon Web Services kickstarted its yearly re:Invent conference with a big revelation: the company is bringing macOS to the AWS cloud. 

AWS will be making available Mac mini instances for developers to create apps directly on its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). 

It is a significant announcement for devs, who now can run Xcode and Swift tools in the cloud without having to maintain and patch custom-built Mac machines. 

However, the Mac minis being currently deployed in AWS data centres are still sporting previous-generation Intel chips. The company will be rolling out the new Apple-silicon machines early next year. 

TechCrunch


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Weekly News: Bot Friday

Also discover our article: The IT Jobs Market of Today

Bot Friday

Black Friday long ago escaped the confines of its native United States to become a global shopping phenomenon. Now, another trend is joining this spread: bot.

If you are looking to catch a sweet deal this year, be advised: you’ll have to compete with more than a swarm of people lining up at the store’s gates. 

For some time now, retail bots have been out there scouting the Internet for the best deals. The exact second an item goes on sale, the bots flag the deal to their owner, who then makes a profit by selling a bot at a higher price. 

The item on sale is sold out? Chances are bots are to blame and it’s on eBay now.

BBC

Fighting cyberattacks with deception

With cyberattacks getting increasingly sophisticated, organisations have to deploy comprehensive cybersec solutions that address multiple fronts. 

Enter deception.

Deception technology is easy to deploy and manage, being to attackers what a honey trap is to fruit flies. Whereas traditional deception was solely focused on this honeypot approach, today’s solutions are way more powerful and have become one of the most effective ways to detect and stop attackers early on.  

However, persistent myths about the technology are keeping companies from leveraging its full potential. 

eWeek

SAP skills shortage threatens UK businesses

We have discussed the issue of SAP skills shortages before, but new research insights keep coming in reinforcing this trend.

In the last two weeks, two surveys conducted in the UK have put a number to the SAP talent gap. A study by Ensono revealed how 80% of SAP customers have postponed cloud migrations due to skills shortages. 

According to the UK & Ireland SAP User Group, 35% of organisations cite the cost of salaries as the main roadblock for recruiting SAP roles, while the overall lack of skills in the market is the main cause for concern for 24% of companies.

The SAP skills gap is further accentuated with the industry’s imminent migration to S/4HANA, which has businesses competing for the scarce number of professionals with this set of skills.  

Diginomica

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Weekly News: Translating Cat Meows

Translating Cat Meows; what the EU could do about emissions; Quantum moves ahead; and an anti-poaching cloud cover… Discover our Weekly News.

Translating Cat Meows: Do you speak cat?

What did the cat just say? 

According to research, cats do not share a common language. Every cat is unique and tailors its meows to its owner (a.k.a. human servant). And, just like it happens with people, some cats are chattier than others.

Well, a former Amazon Alexa developer has created an app that leverages AI and machine learning to translate those meows into human language. 

MeowTalk already has 13 phrases in its vocabulary, including “Feed me!” and “Leave me alone.” 

You can bet you’ll be hearing the first one a lot more. 

BBC

What the EU could do about emissions

The use of renewable energies and other traditional approaches to curbing emissions are no longer enough if the EU wants to meet its 2050 climate-neutrality target. 

Enter technology.

From large-scale, data-powered simulations of the Earth’s climate to green data centers, there are plenty of emerging technology initiatives underway for which EU funding could be a game-changer.

The folks at Politico have compiled a shortlist for you to bring up over dinner. 

Politico

Quantum moves ahead

Several of the world’s leading research institutions and tech companies have been working on their own take on quantum computing for a while now.

One of the key differences between the various approaches out there is what is used as the basis of the computer’s qubits, the basic units of information on which quantum computers operate.   

While technology juggernauts like IBM and Intel had traditionally opted for using tiny superconducting loops as qubits, the use of trapped-ion systems remained marginal. 

Now that is changing. Ion traps have gained traction, which is good for competition.

Nature

An anti-poaching cloud cover

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has revealed how its collaboration with Google Cloud is helping protect endangered species from poachers.

Beyond developing custom machine learning models to identify and track threatened animals across the globe, ZSL used a network of acoustic sensors to listen for gunshots in a nature reserve in Cameroon. 

The organisation then used the data collected to generate insights on poacher activity, revealing key details like what time of day poachers tend to be more active and where. 

ZSL hopes to evolve these insights into a monitoring system that is able to provide alerts in real time.  

ComputerWeekly

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Weekly News: High Speed Levitating pod

Hyperloop’s first passenger ride

Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop completed this past weekend the world’s first passenger ride on a high-speed levitating pod. 

The successful test marks a key milestone for the technology. It indeed promises to revolutionise human and cargo transportation by using magnetic levitation to hurtle vehicles through vacuum tubes. 

Although the Hyperloop executives involved in the trial only reached a top speed of 172 km/h, the technology promises to deliver speeds of 966 km/h and faster. That’s twice as fast as a commercial jet with a fraction of the emissions. It could be a reality by 2030.

The Guardian

High Speed Levitating pod: Updates from Microsoft

Microsoft has released the .NET 5.0 developer platform, introducing among other features the new C# 9 and F# 5 programming languages.

.NET 5.0 allows developers to unify their toolset across platforms and operating systems, whether they are building for desktop, mobile, cloud or IoT applications. The new programming languages offer easier, more expressive top-level coding.

Additionally, the Redmond, Virginia company released on Tuesday its November security patch, addressing 112 vulnerabilities. The Windows zero-day vulnerability revealed last month is among them.

TechRepublic / ZDNet

High Speed Levitating pod: Tougher EU tech export rules

European law-makers are tightening rules for the export of dual-use technology products, a category of technologies that can be used both by civilians and the military.  

The technologies involved to improve high-speed levitating pod include high-performance computing (HPC), drones and facial recognition software, will now require vendors to meet a much higher set of conditions when closing licensing deals. 

The rules focus on protecting democracy and human rights and can be easily and quickly amended to cover any new emerging technologies that may appear in the future.    

ITPro

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Weekly News: The Funny Side of AI

We are often discussing the dangerous implications of AI and what we can do to address them: bias, job losses… So it’s refreshing to be able to talk about its more benign side effects. Discover the funny side of AI.

3 stories to discover the funny side of AI

Football or bald head?

Do you enjoy football? How about bald heads?

Since the start of the pandemic, the world of sports has had to forgo live audiences in favour of live streamings. Bigger teams and leagues can afford proper TV crews to cover their matches, but smaller teams need to be more creative.   

A football team in Inverness, Scotland decided to use an AI-enabled camera to track the football’s movements. Unfortunately, and to the delight of the whole world, the camera tracked the referee’s bald head instead of the ball. Best match ever.

TNW


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What drones are really for

Few technologies have received as much public hype as drone technology. We all have a friend who enjoys chasing flocks of sheep with their little quadcopter. If you don’t, then you might be that friend.

But what are drones actually good for?

The non-consumer applications that first come to mind tend to be rather pessimistic. Surveillance, warfare… There is an understandable trust deficit when it comes to drones, but the technology’s potential is huge if we manage to overcome it.

From humanitarian aid in dangers zones to remote delivery and agriculture, drones can be extremely helpful in helping us get where we need to get more easily and in time. 

TechRadar

Funny side of AI: Game over for 1809

Microsoft is discontinuing service for Windows 10 version 1809 starting on November 10, so make sure all your systems are upgraded accordingly.

The cut will affect Windows 10 1809 for Home, Pro, Pro for Workstations, and IoT Core, which will stop receiving security updates and support.

Support for Windows 10 1803 for Enterprise, Education and IoT Enterprise will be extended until May 2021, as will the Enterprise and Education versions of 1809.    

TechRepublic

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Weekly News: Apple’s Siri is the new Google

According to a report by the Financial Times, Apple Siri may be the new Google. In other words, Apple might be working on their own search engine in a move to make Siri a one-stop shop. 

The rumours emerged at a time when big tech is under growing scrutiny for its monopolistic practices. 

Besides trying to capitalise on the current media agenda to appear more pro-competition, Apple Siri intends to eliminate the need for its popular assistant to resort to Google searches whenever a query is made. 

Experts, however, believe the move might be a stepping stone towards a full-fledged search engine that eliminates the Google factor altogether.

TechCrunch

Will Apple Siri be the new Google? Edge computing in 2021

In addition, a new Forrester report points at 5 predictions about how technological transformation will impact edge computing in 2021. 

Spending on edge computing is expected to grow at the detriment of the public cloud. Orchestration and 5G will also keep on spreading.

Edge hosting is likely to become its own marketplace, with content delivery companies reaching out to colocation partners to build a widely distributed network of data centres that can host applications closer to where they are used.

AI will also move towards the edge, making machine learning happen closer to the source rather than within the data centre. 

TechRepublic

An update on cloud

Microsoft is celebrating a record quarter, fuelled by the growth in cloud adoption brought about by the epidemic. 

The company’s core cloud business grew 31% over the last quarter, with Azure’s revenue jumping up by 47%.

Enterprise software giant SAP had a few cloud updates as well this week. The firm announced a new roadmap to shift to a co-innovation, one-data model that prioritises cloud-based subscriptions over traditional upfront licensing.    

Financial Times / ZDNet

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