April 1, 2020June 11, 2021 By Sneha Betharia

Some of the bright Side of the Coronavirus

Though positive news stories have mostly been buried under an avalanche of news, statistics and some of the ongoing updates about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lately, they are still out there.
It might also look that cheerful stories have been few and far between of late, but even in the direst of circumstances, there is often a silver lining.

Here are some of the positive developments related to COVID-19 that might point towards a light at the end of the tunnel for all the people in confinement, quarantine, and those infected by the COVID-19 that has the majority of the world in lockdown.

In Venice, locals are reporting they can see fish in the canals for the first time in years

The water of the canals in Venice is much clearer ever since the COVID-19 coronavirus has put a halt to tourism in the famous city. Over the past few years, the city has been struggling to deal with the overcrowding and pollution caused largely by tourism.
This has resulted in the city canals becoming murky due to pollution. Now, images showing that the water has become crystal clear.
It is not just Venice that has seen big changes. In Italy, where drastic lockdown measures were put in place following a spike in the COVID-19 cases, such as the port of Cagliari. Swans have filmed in the waters of Milan, and other wildlife has reportedly been spotted returning to areas that were previously uninhabitable.

Air pollution and global CO2 levels are going down dramatically

Air pollutants and warming gases over the cities across the globe have gone down dramatically since the COVID-19 coronavirus started to impact work and travel.

According to the report revealed by the BBC, results show that carbon monoxide, mainly from cars, has been reduced by around 50% compared with the last year in the typically traffic-heavy city.
CO2 emissions have also dropped dramatically. Scientists predict that by the month of May, when CO2 emissions are typically at their peak due to the decomposition of leaves, the levels recorded will be the lowest since the financial crisis over a few decades ago.

India has signed a big relief package deal

Governments across the globe, including India, are passing unprecedented laws to help citizens affected by the ongoing pandemic. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed into law a bill that makes sure paid leave benefits many Indians. It is a part of a wide-ranging aid package that will help those struggling with the current situation.

A report also suggested that legislation also promises free coronavirus testing to anyone, including the people who are uninsured. The bill also increases health funding across India.

It’s bringing out the best in people

In such type of difficult moments people come together, help each other out, and show a sense of solidary that is often missing in calmer times – despite some ugly, unwanted scenes related to the supermarket stockpiling, this has overwhelmingly been the case in people’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Italy, which is one of the worst affected countries by the pandemic, whole communities have come together to sing songs and play instruments from their balconies.

In India and Spain, citizens started a tradition of clapping from their balconies for the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers working hard to fight to help those who are ill.

Pangolins

A silver lining for pangolins, Vietnam is going to end its trade in wild animals killed for meat or parts after the COVID-19 has been linked to transmission from bats to humans with a wildlife host. The ministry of agriculture is said to be drawing up the directive “quickly” to present by the 1st of April. The WWF has revealed that it inspired a crackdown on the trade-in pangolin scales.

A helping hand… Sanitiser

Lots of companies who normally produce things like alcohol and perfume have switched their attention to producing hand sanitizer for free.

It is because lots of supermarkets and chemists have placed strict limits on the number of hands sanitizing gels shoppers can buy as producers struggle to source enough ingredients and small plastic bottles.

Due to this, people have learned a habit of sanitizing hands and their homes at regular intervals.

Top 5 DevOps Trends to look out for 2020

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The DevOps world moves fast. The mission to build, test, and release software as reliably and quickly as possible produced constant change and innovation. What trends can we expect through 2020 in the DevOps? What challenges and opportunities will define the field this year?

Maxed out DevOps teams will need more automation

This might seem to look like an odd place to start. Moreover, within the DevOps, there is an increasing focus on the human environment of digital systems delivery and a rise in the understanding that employee experience leads to customer experience.

Rani Osnat, vice president of strategy for Aqua Security, thinks 2020 may be the year that DevOps teams finally start to max out within many organizations: “DevOps teams will find themselves taking on more and more responsibilities, including more security and quality automation… The solution,” Osnat believes, “lies in automating practices into the DevOps processes and toolchain, enabling a more integrated ‘detect early, fix fast’ environment.”

Low-code development will continue to rise in popularity

To bring out more opportunities for the innovation, chief information officers have increasingly explored using the low to no-code development tools. More people now have the ability to take part in software and app development, which expedites the overall process.

In terms of the testing part, this requires additional nuances in assessing software, more test cases, and wider coverage. This demand will continue through 2020, as DevOps teams will need to show faster and faster feedback in testing.

IP protection and security will become a key issue

As predicted by the Enterprise IT strategies, cybersecurity will continue to be a major issue in 2020, driving more companies to pay strict attention to their compromisable date. Stolen user data has been a topic of a bunch of headlines this year.

IP security and protection is a vital, organization-wide issue; DevOps teams should expect to have to pay more and more attention to the issue via 2020.

AI and ML will even be going to influence skill set requirements

Industry experts predict that, at the time of 2020, AI and Machine Learning will become an ever more integral part of test creation, execution, and automation. The shift will mean that skill set requirements have to change, requiring more data and analytics experience and more knowledge in data science and deep learning within the software testing jobs. DevOps teams that stay ahead of this curve will be the ones that thrive.

The CI/CD toolchain will need CO more and more

Through 2020, the overall speed of the DevOps will pick up. This will drive a demand deeper teamwork across the departments and a need to blend skill sets and low code technology to make sure continuous deployment and testing.

As apps get more complex, DevOps will require the help of continuous optimization if they are to minimize the cost and maximize the performance of the deployed applications and software. Even a 5-container application can have trillion of basic resource and parameter permutations, and sp finding the right combination of cost-effectiveness and performance will need the unique capabilities of AI and ML.

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7 Industries Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2020

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have a rapidly growing presence across the globe today, with applications ranging from heavy industry to education. From streamlining operations to informing better decision making, it becomes clear that this technology has the potential to truly revolutionize the way the world works each and every day!

While AI and ML can be applied to almost each and every sector, once the technology is sufficiently advanced, there are many other fields that can reap the benefits of AI now or what will happen soon. According to a panel of members of the Forbes Technology Board, here are the seven industries that are revolutionizing by AI.

Cybersecurity

The surface of the company attack was very large. There are countless permutations and combinations where the enemies can attackers. It is very difficult for organizations to analyze and improve their security posture. With its power to bring complex reasoning and self-learning by automated means on a large scale, AI will be a game-changer in the way we increase the resilience of our virtual world.

Manufacturing

AI in the world of manufacturing has unlimited potential. From preventive maintenance to human tasks automation. AI will enable more efficient jobs that are more prone to errors and have higher quality. Some of the new initiatives from technology giants such as Microsoft AI and leading small companies such as AtBot will revolutionize AI for all the information workers.

Health Care

Health services just started their AI journey. The computer vision against the X-rays shows promise to help show disease; neuro-linguistic programming shows promise in drug safety. Machine Learning shows promise to find patterns in a population. After we reach the point of true information interoperability, supporting the safe exchange of health data, all these promises will join forces to become a breakthrough for patients.

Construction

The construction industry has long served by the software and technology sector. Many new startups use AI in a big way to take the construction industry tomorrow. Bringing AI and Machine Learning into this industry will make the construction process faster, cost-effective, and safer by better reducing human errors and utilizing big data.

DevOps and Cloud Hosting

AI started making a sign at the DevOps. At present, Amazon has launched machine learning for its Elastic Compute Cloud machines, which applies to auto-scaling predictive instances. Other cloud vendors are following some of the similar technologies.

In the coming ten years, we can see the same thing being applied to bigger things such as infrastructure provision and code dissemination.

Business Intelligence

Companies are overwhelmed by the volume of data which is being generated by their customer, processes, and tools. They found some of the traditional business intelligence tools failed. Spreadsheets and dashboards will be replaced by the AI-powered tools that explore data, make recommendations, and find insights automatically. These tools will change the way companies use data and make decisions.

Logistics and Supply Chain

According to the report, AI will account for around $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, and this has serious implications for the supply and logistics sector.

The sector is embracing AI in its processes because the tool promises to solve the inherent complexities of global logistics. If implemented correctly, AI can enable companies to make agile and smart decisions while foreseeing problems in advance.

AI can streamline day to day procurement jobs via automation and augmentation. For routine tasks, chatbots can speak with suppliers, place purchasing orders and answer internal questions and file documents as well.

Use cases of Blockchain in cybersecurity

The collection of data and private information has been at a constant upward trend, and the value has crossed that of oil’s. These never fathomed a decade ago; events have resulted in cybersecurity threats being on the rise. In the year 2019 alone, governments, global enterprises, universities, and power companies have become victims of well-planned and elaborate hacks. It has become so much of an alarming concern that 75% of the CEOs of global giants plan on acquiring companies that handle cybersecurity or at least put that acquisition on priority.

Blockchain has the potential to be the latest technology that can aid in shielding businesses and some other entities against cyber-attacks. So, let us discuss the use cases where blockchain can help in this endeavor.

Decentralized Storage Solutions

As we talked about in the beginning, data is becoming more valuable than oil, and it is not a surprise that businesses are accumulating customer data to make their marketing more effective. Anything that is so lucrative becomes a prime target for hackers. Since all the data is being stored in one place, all that a hacker needs to do is find a backdoor to that particular place. This makes all the information available for those with malicious intent to use them for anything that they would want to.

Internet of Things Security

It is an unwritten rule among the hackers that the best way to gain access to the network or system is by exploiting the weakest points in the ecosystem. With the IoT kicking in, the number of devices like thermostats, doorbells, security cameras, and other household devices that are prone to cyber-attacks has considerably increased.

One of the key purposes of IoT is to transmit real-time data. With the blockchain securing the transmission and eliminating the need for a centralized authority to control the network, the transmission can happen without any lapses in the security from one corner of the world to another.

Safer DNS

DNS is largely centralized. With this attribute, hackers can capitalize on the vulnerability to break into the connection between the IP address and website name to create havoc. This opens up a plethora of malicious possibilities – caching websites, redirecting users to spam platforms, or simply, which makes a webpage unavailable. A DNS attack can also be paired with the DDoS attacks to make a website or its utilities unusable for extended periods of time. While the tail log files can be used to issue real-time alerts for suspicious activities, the blockchain can take it a notch further.

Security in Private Messaging

The first word in the phrase ‘private messaging’ holds a lot of importance. Conversational commerce is gaining lots of popularity, and a lot of metadata is being collected from the customers at the time of these exchanges. We have seen messengers like WhatsApp use end to end encryption. Some other messaging platforms are beginning to use blockchain to secure the information. Today, a lot of messaging applications are using a standard set of security protocols and a unified framework to enable cross messenger communication. Introducing a blockchain technology can tackle this issue and creates a new system of unified communication. Blockchain not only secures all data exchanges but also enables connectivity between the different messaging platforms.

Clavent hosts a free webinar on emerging technologies and practices every week and this week’s free webinar is on ‘Blockchain and cybersecurity’ on 04th April at 12 PM IST. Register yourself for free form here.

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Some of the bright Side of the Coronavirus

Some of the bright Side of the Coronavirus

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