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Weekly News: The Rise of The Machines

Weekly News: The Rise of The Machines
Due to the rise of the machines, new jobs will emerge, especially in the areas of healthcare, big data and the green economy.

Weekly news. Discover our news about IT: the rise of the machines, Bitcoin goes mainstream and Robin Hood strikes back

The rise of the machines

New report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) has forecasted that as much as half of all work tasks could be handled by machines by the year 2025. The rise of machines.

The think tank’s research, which spanned 300 of the world’s biggest companies, estimates that the so-called “robot revolution” will create 97 million jobs around the globe but destroy almost as many. 43% of respondents felt they were likely to cut jobs due to technological transformation in the near future.

Yet new jobs will emerge as a result, especially in the areas of healthcare, big data and the green economy. However, the Forum is calling for a conscious effort to ensure that no sectors of society are left behind.

BBC

Bitcoin goes mainstream

PayPal has announced that it will start allowing transactions in Bitcoin. The firm will also provide support for other cryptocurrencies including Ethereum and Litecoin.

The new features, which will debut in the U.S. shortly and worldwide next year, mark an important milestone in the normalisation of cryptocurrencies. 

The company sees the economy’s shift to digital currencies as inevitable, and it is committed to helping make them easier to use by the broader public. 

TechRadar

Robin Hood strikes back

A new emerging trend has cybersecurity and legal experts baffled: charitable cybercrime.

Also read our article & discover our interview: Leadership Failure: The Real Human Element Behind Cyber Attacks

The ransomware-as-a-business group DarkSide introduced itself to the world earlier this year, issuing a press release where they detailed how they picked their victims and pledged to leave non-profits, healthcare and governments alone. 

Well – these cybercriminals with a strong moral code are now taking it to a whole new level: they are donating their profits to charities.   

Two US-based organisations received equal payments of 0.88 bitcoin (or $10,000) in mid-October, money they say they will return as soon as possible. The authorities are warning NGOs around the globe to not accept donations from these cyber schemes, as that would make them legally liable for profiting from crime.  

ComputerWeekly

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20 Amazing Women Leading Europe’s Tech Revolution

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Weekly News: Robot Farmers

Robot Farmers, Microsoft jobs, Ada Lovelace Day: discover our weekly news about IT & Tech.
Robot Farmers, Microsoft jobs, Ada Lovelace Day: discover our weekly news about IT & Tech.

Robot Farmers, Microsoft jobs, Ada Lovelace Day: discover our weekly news about IT & Tech.

Robot Farmers

Google‘s parent company, Alphabet, has presented a prototype for a new line of farming robots to help farmers monitor the health of crops and multiply crop yields.

Consequently, project Mineral consists of swarms of “robot buggies” that go up and down the fields inspecting every plant. They do so on upright pillars, coasting on top of the plants much like harbour container cranes do.

Meanwhile Alphabet’s goal is to accumulate large amounts of data about how crops grow to help the agricultural industry tackle the world’s increasing need for food and the sustainability of growing it.

BBC

Microsoft wants to create 1.5M jobs

In addition, Microsoft has made a pledge to create 1.5 million tech jobs in the UK over the next 5 years, with and additional 300,000 depending directly on them.

Called Get Go 2021, the campaign targets people currently in education, those looking into pursuing a career in tech, and those already in tech and wanting to change careers. The initiative is also meant to help those whose jobs have been affected by the Covid-19 crisis and bridge the IT talent gap. It will be based on education and training programs.

The company will also leverage LinkedIn data to anticipate the need for more than 3 million skilled IT workers. 

IT Pro Portal

To discover more about Microsoft: A Microsoft Technologies Careers Guide.

Ada Lovelace Day

Born in early 19th-century England, Ada Lovelace was a pioneering mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Engine,” a steam-powered calculating machine now regarded as the first fully-automatic mechanical computer.

Although she wrote the first-ever algorithm, Lovelace’s true genius lied in her ability to envision the computer’s potential beyond mere arithmetic calculations. She is hence considered to be the first computer programmer, a “prophet” of the computer age.

This week we celebrated Ada Lovelace Day, reflecting on women’s countless contributions to science, technology engineering and math (STEM) — something we should honestly do every day.

Let this day serve as a reminder of how much work is left to do to ensure equal representation of women in tech.

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5 Online Courses to Get You Up-To-Speed with AI

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Weekly News: Windows Made With Linux

Weekly News: Windows Made With Linux
Discover 3 IT lastest news. Windows made with Linux. Linux the new Windows? - AI: behind the screens - The pandemic and S/4HANA implementation

Is Linux the new Windows?

The renowned open-source champion Eric Raymond has always been a huge Linux believer. 

Raymond has long argued that the OS is destined to rule the desktop market. Now he’s gone a step further by saying that it won’t be long before Windows 10 becomes a simple emulation layer on top the Linux kernel. 

According to Raymond, Microsoft’s latest investments in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) reveal that the Redmond, Virginia company might be quite aware of this impending shift. The company also has recently unveiled a Linux version of Edge for IT pros to test websites. 

But there’s more: the Windows emulation might ultimately disappear altogether, leaving us with a Microsoft shell that is basically all built on Linux.

ZDNet

AI: behind the screens

Despite the media buzz around AI, it can be difficult for someone who is not immersed in the technology to precisely tell you how and where it is being applied. 

Well, this week we got a behind-the-screens look at what developers are doing in both the public and the private sector.

The city of Amsterdam debuted the Algorithm Register, a portal where everyone can learn more about the various AI initiatives being implemented across the city. 

Also, Alexa developers unveiled how they get Amazon’s smart home assistant to interpret what users mean rather than what they say. Here’s more. 

The pandemic and S/4HANA implementation

S4HANA implementation was ramping up before COVID-19 hit the global business community. Now, as uncertainty piles up, some organisations might consider postponing their migration to SAP’s next-gen ERP until things settle down a bit. 

But should they? 

In an interview with TechTarget, S/4 experts recommend taking advantage of the current disruption. The slowdown in activity offers a great opportunity for IT departments to undergo a more thorough examination of their legacy ERP and come up with a better ecosystem that delivers greater business value.

The biggest challenge they face: convincing business leaders their S/4 project should move ahead.

TechTarget

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Weekly News: Artificial Intelligence, Minecrafting the Real World

IT news

Since 2018, the Generative Design in Minecraft (GDMC) competition challenges participants to push the limits of artificial intelligence and come up with realistic cities from scratch.

If you are unfamiliar with Minecraft (I doubt it), the cube-based video game lets players build all sorts of structures with almost absolute freedom. In other words, cubic freedom.

Participants must leverage a combination of various Artificial Intelligence techniques in Minecraft to level terrain, build roads and bridges and erect buildings. It is a very complex task involving everything from path-finding algorithms to machine learning, but it’s starting to come together. 

Surely the technology is still years away, but it looks like city planners and designers will soon have a new digital partner for their construction projects.

Your future apartment building might well be designed by an AI architect. At least parts of it.

Racist Artificial Intelligence strikes again

And speaking of artificial intelligence I, yet another poorly trained algorithm has put yet another Internet giant in serious trouble. This time it was Twitter’s turn. 

Have you ever wondered how the platform decides what parts of a picture to crop in preview mode? It is, of course, an image-cropping algorithm. Using a combination of tools, Twitter tries to prioritise faces and text, unless your face is black. 

Ironically, the issue was discovered when a PhD student was trying to tweet about another racially-biased algorithm he had encountered on Zoom. The videoconferencing service had erased the image of his black colleague after failing to recognise his face. Twitter decided that wasn’t enough and erased his colleague from the screen capture too. 

Although the company was quick to apologise for not testing the algorithm thoroughly enough, Twitter feeds quickly filled up with people doing experiments to test the flaw. Some even tried posting images of differently coloured dogs. 

Time for lessons to be learnt.

Announcements from Microsoft Ignite

Microsoft has kickstarted its annual Ignite user-focused conference by announcing a series of additions to its cloud and productivity portfolios. 

Teams is getting new security and compliance-related features, as well as a suite of new tools to help companies better support remote workers. The latter are mainly data insights to assess the overall wellbeing of employees, made available to users and managers to help them improve productivity and reduce burnout.

The company has also teased Virtual Commute, an upcoming Teams functionality aimed at helping workers unwind after a long day of work. Hmm, how about not being on Teams after working hours to start with?

Plans to expand Azure Stack’s hybrid cloud capabilities have also been announced. The platform lets businesses run public cloud-like workloads within on-premise data centres. Users will be now able to run and deploy containerized applications on the setup, while the Azure Stack Hub will incorporate GPU support for broader machine learning capabilities. 

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Weekly News: Fishing for Data & Data Storage

Weekly News: Fishing for Data & Data Storage
Fishing for Data, data storage, data center, AI, cloud gaming and DevOps, discover latest news with Mission Control Center by Mindquest.

Fishing for Data, cloud storage, data center, AI, cloud gaming and DevOps, discover latest news with Mission Control Center by Mindquest.

Data storage & Liquid cooling

Some weeks ago we learnt how a future where cloud gaming was the norm could see emissions rise by 30%. 

Maintaining a data centre and a data storage is a costly endeavour. Especially because of how much power is devoted to cooling the hardware. But Microsoft has a solution. 

Earlier this week, the company retrieved a cylinder-shaped data centre it had sunk off the Scotland coast two years ago. Albeit covered by algae and barnacles,; the data centre is in perfect working order and has in fact proven to be more reliable and efficient than traditional server rack environments. 

Researchers attribute the positive results to a combination of less human interaction and cooler temperatures; as well as to the nitrogen that was used for ventilation instead of the usual oxygen. Which reduces corrosion.

Although one could wonder how an ocean floor full of servers would affect global water temperatures. 

BBC

Snakeoil sellers beware

And speaking of AI…

An international coalition of medical experts has introduced the world’s first standards for clinical trials involving artificial intelligence. 

The standards, which were published on Nature Medicine and The Lancet, are aimed at tackling the current hype around AI and preventing interested parties from leveraging the media attention to sell dubious research.

The move comes at a time when the entire world is laser-focused on Covid vaccine clinical trials. An area in which AI can help speed up things immensely. Applied wrongly, however, the technology could endanger millions of people.  

MIT Technology Review

DevOps: the future of the enterprise

In an interview with SiliconANGLE, Gene Kim, the DevOps guru behind books like “The Phoenix Project” stressed how vital DevOps is to the future of the enterprise. 

At a time when ensuring effective data storage, management and analytics is so pressing, businesses are prioritising developer operations to make informed business decisions.

Kim argues that DevOps not only helps organisations’ bottom line; it is the new bottom line.

A focus on empowering developers, Kim says, will undoubtedly reward companies with unprecedented freedom and agility.

SiliconANGLE

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Weekly News: IT Professionals Feeling Confident Lately

IT professionals feeling confident
IT professionals feeling confident

A renewed sense of confidence for IT professionals

A new report from SolarWinds suggests that IT professionals are feeling more confident during the pandemic. Thus, according to the survey, tech experts admit to having been more proactive in bringing new ideas to the table and taking on a bigger role.

Also, experts believe this newfound confidence is the result of IT pros being used to sudden shifts and unexpected situations – a quality that has helped them ride the Covid-19 wave as opposed to being swept by it.

IT has been pivotal to business resilience during this unprecedented crisis, elevating tech experts within their organisations and putting them closer to the decision-making process. 

Luckily, it looks like things will stay this way.

ITProPortal

IT professionals: Bye to VS Codespaces and Flash Player

Microsoft has decided to end Visual Studio Codespaces (formerly known as Visual Studio Online). The cloud-based development environment will then be merged with GitHub’s version of the same product.

Microsoft’s move comes after some developers expressed confusion between the two nearly-identical products. Unfortunately for developers, there is currently no way to migrate existing projects from one platform to the other. 

The company has also warned businesses to get ready for the end of Adobe Flash Player support. Microsoft and Adobe first announced the phase-out of the popular internet media player in 2017. From January 21, Flash will be disabled in both IE 11 and Microsft Edge browsers.

ZDNet / TechRepublic

IT professionals: IT jobs are booming in the UK

IT professionals are feeling more confident so that the government-funded think tank Tech Nation reports a 36% increase in tech vacancies between June and August. 

The sector is experiencing a fast recovery compared to other industries, with 90,000 new jobs being advertised every week across the UK. 

The most sought-after skills identified in the report include:

  • Engineering
  • .net
  • Javascript
  • Java
  • C++
  • Data
  • SQL
  • Python
  • Amazon Web Service
  • Client

CBR

C++ just got an A+

Tiobe Software’s latest Programming Community index points at a revival of C++. 

The 35-year-old language is the fastest growing language in terms of popularity, while C tops the list of most used languages.  

Experts at the company believe the new C++20 standard is responsible for the recent uptick, moreover, the standard includes a new modules feature which replaces the infamous include mechanism function.

Other languages gaining popularity are R and C#, whereas Java has experienced a drop compared to last year.  

ADT Mag

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Weekly News: Game Streaming and Emissions

Weekly News: Game Streaming and Emissions
The next generation of video game consoles is hitting the shelves this holiday season. Discover news about Game Streaming and Emissions...

Game Streaming and Emissions, or Game vs. the environment

The next generation of video game consoles is hitting the shelves this holiday season. An epic marketing battle precedes its launch, with the PS5 and Xbox Series X fighting to get a head start on each other by selling more consoles than the other.

Yet, ironically, this new generation of consoles might be the last. 

Like it happened in other industries, video games are moving away from local hardware in favour of a distributed computing model. Why spent money in a pricey box when you could stream higher-quality video games directly to your TV or phone in real time? 

With companies like Google and Microsoft having already released their proprietary cloud gaming platforms, it’s just a matter of time before most gaming is done this way. But, as convenient as it sounds, this could have severe environmental implications.  

A new report suggests emissions could rise as much as 30% in a future where game streaming was the norm.

BBC

Low-code is coming to Teams

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced it was building a low-code Dataflex solution for Teams that would allow users to easily develop custom applications without leaving Teams. We got more details this week.

Code-named Project Oakdale, the platform will let teams create quick applications based on shared databases. No need for third-party tools to build an HTML or JavaScript feature that runs on Teams. Just install Project Oakdale and use an Access-like table and form creator to get the job done.

Each team will get its dedicated data environment so that team members can exchange actionable insights and access more relevant information. The applications will also be able to connect with the rest of Microsoft’s ecosystem.

Although it has its limitations, Project Oakdale will be included in the Teams subscription — a big step towards democratising low-code development within the enterprise.

TechRepublic

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Weekly News: The Best Language for Economic Research

Weekly News: The Best Language for Economic Research
Python, Matlab, Julia -- R. Who would win the battle of the best language for economic research? Hint: the winner has a woman's name.

The Best Language for Economic Research

Python, Matlab, Julia — R. Who would win the battle of the best language for Economic research? That’s probably one of the most common online queries in the programming world. There is just something about humans and our obsession with chasing the very best of the best. 

Discover Python Projects to Try – From Beginner to Advanced

In reality, of course, each language has its nuances and areas in which it shines. Anyone claiming to have a definitive answer on the matter should come up with some solid arguments to back their verdict.

And that’s exactly what two London School of Economics researchers did. They looked at different languages based on the power of available libraries, the speed and possibilities when handling large datasets, and the speed and ease-of-use for a computationally intensive task.

Hint: the winner has a woman’s name.

Thanks, but no thanks

That’s the polite version of what UK students were shouting in front of the Department of Education over a week ago. The cause of their anger was an algorithm.  

University admission exams had been cancelled because of the pandemic. Teachers proposed predicting their student’s scores as a way to compromise. The education department dismissed the idea on the grounds that previous research had proved such estimates to be biased. Instead, they decided to use an algorithm.  

Well, that one turned out to be even more biased. Close to 40% of students received lower grades than what their teachers had predicted, potentially harming their chances to get into their university of choice. Those in working-class and disadvantaged communities were disproportionately affected.

The issue has now been fixed, but it’s a textbook examples of the dangers of AI bias.

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How To Learn Python With Rune

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Weekly News: A crypto-worm is stealing AWS credentials

IT news

Researchers have discovered what they believe to be the first-ever crypto-mining worm that also manages to steal AWS credentials. 

Crypto-mining worms have been around for a while, stealthily infiltrating a network and using its computing power to mine cryptocurrency. This new worm is actually not even that good at it, having only made a mere $300 in profits. 

However, the attackers, who go by the name TeamTNT, have managed to incorporate the credential-stealing feature into their code. The researchers believe the attackers have recycled this functionality from a previous worm that targetted Alibaba’s cloud. 

This points to an emerging trend of copy-and-paste, opening the door for future malware to replicate TeamTNT’s code and go onto steal AWS credentials and compromise cloud ecosystems.

Fired for skipping the firewall

A whopping four out of ten businesses in the UK admit having dismissed employees for breaching the company’s security protocols. That’s according to a new survey by Centrify, a privileged access management solutions provider.

Most incidents were related to work-from-home scenarios, as a large proportion of employees tends to circumvent safety measures in favour of comfort or portability. 

As a result, 65% of companies have made important changes to their cybersecurity policy. Shadow IT was already a huge problem before the workforce transitioned to remote work. Now it’s become even more difficult to ensure that employees don’t use personal devices to access company networks and files.

Well, just keep in mind that you could get fired for it.

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Weekly News: Your Phone is an Earthquake Detector

Weekly News: Your Phone is an Earthquake Detector
If you are one of the 2.5 billion Android device users out there, you now have a new conversation topic. Yes, your phone is an Earthquake Detector soon...

If you are one of the 2.5 billion Android device users out there, you now have a brand new conversation topic. Soon your phone will be part of a worldwide earthquake detection network. Yes, your phone is an Earthquake Detector soon…

Also discover our article: Weekly News: Robot Butlers and Virtual Influencers

Your Phone is an Earthquake Detector

While using smartphone sensors to build an okay seismometer app is nothing new, Google has a better idea: integrating it into the phone’s operating system directly. 

All devices running Android 5.0 and up will get the new feature through a Google Play Services update, essentially becoming decentralised tremor-monitoring stations that one day will help detect earthquakes early on and warn users. 

For now, Google plans on collecting data for a while to fine-tune the system before rolling out proactive alerts. But don’t worry. You can opt-out of the service via your phone’s settings. Although most people won’t even know it is there.

Toshiba-bye

Thirty-five years after debuting its first laptop, the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba announced it is abandoning the portable PC market. 

The entire PC hardware market, in fact. In 2018, Toshiba had already sold most of its PC business to Sharp, the same buyer this time around. 

The decision comes as the company announced its first quarterly losses in 4 years and officially marks the end of an era in laptop history. 

Toshiba laptops reached their heyday in the 1990s, when they came to dominate the global market. They started losing ground in the late 2000s after an industry shift towards more attractive designs and more powerful machines   

A good reminder of how important it is to adapt and keep innovating.

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