Quote for the day:
"Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility." -- Peter F. Drucker
The one secret to using genAI to boost your brain
Research published by Carnegie Mellon University this month found that groups
that turned to Google Search came up with fewer creative ideas during
brainstorming sessions compared to groups without access to Google Search. Not
only did each Google Search group come up with the same ideas as the other
Search groups, they also presented them in the same order, suggesting that the
search results replaced their actual creativity. The researchers called this a
“fixation effect.” When people see a few examples, they tend to get stuck on
those and struggle to think beyond them. ... Our knowledge of and perspective on
the world becomes less our own and more what the algorithms feed us. They do
this by showing us content that triggers strong feelings — anger, joy, fear.
Instead of feeling a full range of emotions, we bounce between extremes.
Researchers call this “emotional dysregulation.” The constant flood of
attention-grabbing posts can make it hard to focus or feel calm. AI algorithms
on social grab our attention with endless new content. ... To elevate both the
quality of your work and the performance of your mind, begin by crafting your
paper, email, or post entirely on your own, without any assistance from genAI
tools. Only after you have thoroughly explored a topic and pushed your own
capabilities should you turn to chatbots, using them as a catalyst to further
enhance your output, generate new ideas, and refine your results.How AI-Powered DevSecOps Can Reinvent Agile Planning
The shift toward AI-enhanced agile planning requires a practical assessment of
your current processes and tool chain.Start by evaluating whether your current
processes create bottlenecks between development and deployment, looking for
gaps where agile ceremonies exist, but traditional approval workflows still
dominate critical path decisions. Next, assess how much time your teams spend on
planning ceremonies versus actual development work. Consider whether AI could
automate the administrative aspects, such as backlog grooming, estimation
sessions and status updates, while preserving human strategic input on
priorities and technical decisions. Examine your current tool chain to identify
where manual coordination is required between the planning, development and
deployment phases. Look for opportunities where AI can automate data
synchronization and provide predictive insights about capacity and timeline
risks, reducing the context switching that fragments developer focus. Finally,
review your current planning overhead and identify which administrative tasks
can be automated, allowing your team to focus on delivering customer value and
making strategic technical decisions rather than adhering to process compliance.
The goal is not to eliminate human judgment but to elevate it from routine tasks
to the strategic thinking that drives innovation.The AI power swingers
AI workloads - generative AI and the training of large language models in
particular - demand a profusion of power in just a fraction of a second, and
this in itself brings some complications. “When you are engaging a training
model, you engage all of these GPUs simultaneously, and there’s a very quick
rise to pretty much maximum power, and we are seeing that at a sub-second pace,”
Ed Ansett, director at I3 Solutions, tells DCD. “The problem is that you have,
for example, 50MW of IT load that the utility is about to see, but it will see
it very quickly, and the utility won’t be able to respond that quickly. It will
cause frequency problems, and the utility will almost certainly disconnect the
data center, so there needs to be a way of buffering those workloads.” ...
Despite this, AWS and Annapurna Labs have made some moves with the second
generation of their home-grown AI accelerator - Trainium. These chips differ
from GPUs in both an architectural standpoint, and their end capabilities. “If
you look at GPU architecture, it's thousands of small tensor cores, small CPUs
that are all running in parallel. Here, the architecture is called a systolic
array, which is a completely different architecture,” says Gadi Hutt, director
of product and customer engineering at Annapurna Labs. “Basically data flows
through the logic of the systolic array that then does the efficient linear
algebra acceleration.”Why database security needs a seat at the cyber strategy table
Too often, security gaps exist because database environments are siloed from
the broader IT infrastructure, making visibility and coordination difficult.
This is especially true in hybrid environments, where legacy on-premises
systems coexist with cloud-based assets. The lack of centralised oversight can
allow misconfigurations and outdated software to go unnoticed, until it’s too
late. ... Comprehensive monitoring plays a central role in securing database
environments. Organisations need visibility into performance, availability,
and security indicators in real time. Solutions like Paessler PRTG enable IT
and security teams to proactively detect deviations from the norm, whether
it’s a sudden spike in access requests or performance degradation that might
signal malicious activity. Monitoring also helps bridge the gap between IT
operations and security teams. ... Ultimately, database security is not just
about technology, it’s about visibility, accountability, and ownership.
Security teams must collaborate with database administrators, IT operations,
and compliance functions to ensure policies are enforced, risks are mitigated,
and monitoring is continuous.Cyber Vaults: How Regulated Sectors Fight Cyberattacks
Cyber vaults are emerging as a key way organizations achieve that assurance.
These highly secure environments protect immutable copies of mission-critical
data – typically the data that enables the “minimum viable company” (i.e. the
essential functions and systems that must remain). Cyber vaults achieve this
by creating logically and physically isolated environments that sever the
connection between production and backup systems. This isolation ensures
known-good copies remain untouched, ready for recovery in the event of a
ransomware attack. ... A cyber vault only fulfills its promise when built on
all three pillars. Each must function as an enforceable control. Increasingly,
boards and regulators aren’t just expecting these controls — they’re demanding
proof they are in place, operational, and effective. Leave one out, and the
entire recovery strategy is at risk. ... In regulated industries, failure to
demonstrate recoverability can lead to fines, public scrutiny, and regulatory
sanctions. These pressures are elevating backup and recovery from IT hygiene
to boardroom priority, where resilience is increasingly viewed as a fiduciary
responsibility. Organizations are coming to terms with a new reality:
prevention will fail. Recovery is what defines resilience. It’s not just about
whether you have backups – it’s whether you can trust them to work when it
matters most.Africa’s cybersecurity crisis and the push to mobilizing communities to safeguard a digital future
Trained youth are also acting as knowledge multipliers. After receiving foundational cybersecurity education, many go on to share their insights with parents, siblings, and local networks. This creates a ripple effect of awareness and behavioral change, extending far beyond formal institutions. In regions where internet use is rising faster than formal education systems can adapt, such peer-to-peer education is proving invaluable. Beyond defense, cybersecurity also offers a pathway to economic opportunity. As demand for skilled professionals grows, early exposure to the field can open doors to employment in both local and global markets. This supports broader development goals by linking digital safety with job creation and innovation. ... Africa’s digital future cannot be built on insecure foundations. Cybersecurity is not a luxury, it is a prerequisite for sustainable growth, social trust, and national security. Grassroots efforts across the continent are already demonstrating that meaningful progress is possible, even in resource-constrained environments. However, these efforts must be scaled, formalized, and supported at the highest levels. By equipping communities, especially youth, with the knowledge and tools to defend themselves online, a resilient digital culture can be cultivated from the ground up.Gartner unveils top strategic software engineering trends for 2025 and beyond
Large language models (LLMs) are enabling software to interact more
intelligently and autonomously. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 55% of
engineering teams will build LLM-based features. Successful adoption will
require rethinking strategies, upskilling teams, and implementing robust
guardrails for risk management. ... Organizations will increasingly integrate
generative AI (GenAI) capabilities into internal developer platforms, with 70%
of platform teams expected to do so by 2027. This trend supports
discoverability, security, and governance while accelerating AI-powered
application development. ... High talent density—building teams with a
high concentration of skilled professionals—will be a crucial differentiator.
Organizations should go beyond traditional hiring to foster a culture of
continuous learning and collaboration, enabling greater adaptability and
customer value delivery. ... Open GenAI models are gaining traction for their
flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and freedom from vendor lock-in. By 2028,
Gartner forecasts 30% of global GenAI spending will target open models
customized for domain-specific needs, making advanced AI more accessible and
affordable. ... Green software engineering will become vital to meet
sustainability goals, focusing on carbon-efficient and carbon-aware practices
across the entire software lifecycle. 6 techniques to reduce cloud observability cost
Cloud observability is really important for most modern organizations in that it
dives deep when it comes down to keeping application functionality, problems,
and those little bumps in the road along the way, a smooth overall user
experience. Meanwhile, the growing toll of telemetry data that keeps piling up,
such as logs, metrics and traces, becomes costlier by the minute. But one thing
is clear: You do not have to compromise visibility just to reduce costs. ... For
high-volume data streams (especially traces and logs), consider some intelligent
sampling methods that will allow you to capture a statistically significant
subset of data, thus reducing volume while still allowing for anomaly detection
and trend analysis. ... Consider the periodicity of metric collection. Do you
really need to scrape metrics every 10 seconds, when every 60 seconds would have
been enough to get a view of this service? Adjusting these intervals can greatly
reduce the number of data points. ... Utilize autoscaling to automatically scale
the compute capacity proportional to demand so that you pay only for what you
actually use. This removes over-allocation of resources in the low usage times.
... For predictable workloads, check out the discounts offered by the cloud
providers in the form of Reserved Instances or Savings Plans. For the
fault-tolerant and interruptible workloads, Spot instances offer a considerable
discount. ...
Three Tech Moves That Pay Off for Small Banks Fighting Margin Squeeze
For smaller institutions looking to strengthen profitability, tech may now be
the most direct and controllable lever they have at their disposal. Projects
that might once have been seen as back-office improvements are starting to look
like strategic choices that can enhance performance — helping banks reduce cost
per account, increase revenue per relationship, and act with greater speed and
precision. ... Banks are using robotic process automation (RPA) to handle
repetitive, rules-based tasks that previously absorbed valuable staff time.
These bots operate across existing platforms, moving data, triggering workflows,
and reducing manual error without requiring major system changes. In parallel,
chatbot-style knowledge hubs help frontline staff find information quickly and
consistently — reducing service bottlenecks and freeing people to focus on more
complex work. These are targeted projects with measurable operational impact.
... Banks can also use customer data to guide customer acquisition strategies.
By combining internal insights with external datasets — like NAICS codes,
firmographics, or geographic overlays — institutions can build profiles of their
most valuable relationships and find others that fit the same criteria. This
kind of modeling helps sales and business development teams focus on the
opportunities with the greatest long-term potential.The Cost of Bad Data: Why Time Series Integrity Matters More Than You Think
Data plays a critical role in shaping operational decisions. From sensor streams
in factories to API response times in cloud environments, organizations rely on
time-stamped metrics to understand what’s happening and determine what to do
next. But when that data is inaccurate or incomplete, systems make the wrong
call. Teams waste time chasing false alerts, miss critical anomalies, and make
high-stakes decisions based on flawed assumptions. When trust in data breaks
down, risk increases, response slows, and costs rise. ... Real-time
transformations shape data as it flows through the system. Apache Arrow Flight
enables high-speed streaming, and SQL or Python logic transforms values on the
fly. Whether enriching metadata, filtering out noise, or converting units,
InfluxDB 3 handles these tasks before data reaches long-term storage. A
manufacturing facility using temperature sensors in production lines can
automatically convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, label zones, and discard noisy
heartbeat values before the data hits storage. This gives operators clean
dashboards and real-time control insights without requiring extra processing
time or manual data correction—saving teams hours of rework and helping
businesses maintain fast, reliable decision-making under pressure.
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