Daily Tech Digest - November 24, 2022

The Future Of The Metaverse Is MultiChain - But Its Users Must Be Unchained

It’s an extremely unrealistic scenario that will probably never happen. Every time a shiny new blockchain platform for the metaverse arrives, loaded with promise, it leads to the arrival of new flaws and problems that must be overcome. New chains are made to solve these new issues, and yet more problems arise. And so the cycle of innovation goes on and on. These new blockchains do offer some interesting solutions and benefits, hence they become fertile breeding grounds for numerous developers to experiment with new metaverse projects and decentralized applications. That fuels greater interest in the metaverse, prodding users to further explore the world of Web3 and the multitude of other blockchains that support it. Different chains have different strengths and play host to different metaverse worlds, and users soon understand the need to be able to move across these networks. Mobility across chains is a must, as it is the only thing that enables true metaverse freedom. At present, so-called blockchain bridges are the go-to mechanism for moving digital assets across chains. 


3 Reasons the Cloud is Critical for Ensuring Patient-Centered Care

One of the keys to delivering patient-centered care is gaining a full understanding of the individual and actively engaging them in their outcomes. But for this to become a reality, patients and their providers need access to medical records and open lines of communication matched to patient preferences. The cloud enables centralized access to patient records, giving healthcare providers a full view of the tests, diagnoses, treatments and other patient information. The addition of artificial intelligence (AI) in cloud-based solutions is enhancing care by analyzing vast amounts of patient data and offering insights that aid in clinical decision-making, which can result in faster time-to-treatment and better outcomes. ... In the past, connecting with physicians outside of appointments often turned into a game of phone tag and resulted in multiple voicemails. But with the cloud supporting patient portals, video chat and text messaging, patients and their providers have more ways to communicate. They can quickly exchange information or ask and answer questions electronically at their convenience, and refer back to those messages should they forget something. 


Nearly Half Of CIOs Say Digital Transformations Are Incomplete

In the fully digital era, when employees have the flexibility to work from anywhere, eliminating data silos will be key to improving organization-wide collaboration. Part of the challenge is completely digitizing an organization’s documents and workflows. The other piece is creating a central repository for digital data – one that’s universally accessible to and shared by multiple teams within an organization. According to a recent study by S&P Global Market Intelligence, only 17% of those surveyed said that their organizations had a single source of truth where everyone could access the knowledge they created. If businesses want to realize the benefits that come with fully digital processes, there’s still more work to do. Investing in full digitization, including a unified document system, will make the most of an organization’s data while significantly reducing costs and enhancing collaboration, improving interactions between team members wherever they may be located.


Coding is Dead, Long Live Programming!

No-code platforms usually target industry-specific functions, with their primary audience being non-technical users who wish to optimise their business operations. Low-code platforms, on the other hand, typically target developers who are operating under a time constraint. They are used to deliver applications quickly and conserve resources which can be better utilised to create something that has more impact on the organisation’s bottom line. Since no-code platforms usually target a line of business users, who look to create applications that can be used to expedite their business operations, they provide a host of benefits. Not only do these platforms open up access to creating code-based solutions to non-codes, the feature-rich nature of modern no-code environments allow developers to solve problems unique to their line of work. In addition to this, no-code platforms can also be used to automate workflows, thereby saving more resources. As with any upcoming market, there are challenges associated with no-code and low-code platforms. 


How can business prepare for changes in data legislation?

The role of the Data Protection Office (DPO) is also likely to change, as rules for smaller organisations in particular are loosened as the government tries to create some advantages of Brexit for smaller business which economic data suggests are somewhat thin on the ground right now. The panel all expressed concerns about how DPOs will potentially be replaced with Senior Responsible Individuals (SRIs) who will have the seniority but not necessarily the in depth knowledge necessary for the role. Patrick Burgess, Co-Founder & technical Director of MSP Nutborne Ltd. commented: "Already in the non-enterprise world you often find people are nominated as DPO and they aren't necessarily trained. That person needs to be supported at the highest level or it really is just a box ticking exercise. You have to give people the right powers, responsibilities and training and not get cross when they tell you what you don't want to hear." None of these issues are necessarily going to be resolved by swapping out SRI's for DPOs, although they are, as Kon pointed out, theoretically harder to fire if they sit at board level.


DeveloperWeek Enterprise: Sorting Out Big Data to Empower AI

“In many cases, big data is a big data swamp,” he said in his presentation, “The Big Data Delusion - How to Identify the Right Data to Power AI Systems.” The problem, he said, comes from traditional analytical systems and approaches being applied to outsized amounts of data. For example, an unnamed fintech company that was a customer of EastBanc had huge datasets of its customer data, transactional data, and behavioral data that was cleaned by one team then transferred to another team that enhanced the data. While such an approach may be sufficient, Shilo said it can also slow things down. The fintech company, he said, wanted a way to use its data to predict which of its customers would be receptive to contact. The trouble was it seemed to be a herculean task under traditional processes. “Their current team looked at the task and estimated the effort would take four, five months to complete,” Shilo said. “That’s a lot of time.”


Trends in data centre sustainability

Finch is perplexed by the sudden attention paid to data centre sustainability, given that it’s always been embedded in the DNA of Kao Data, which operates three sites in outer London. Says Finch: “We have always tried to do things in a sustainable manner. It’s as if everybody’s just woken up and smell the coffee. Sustainability has always been in the foundations of Kao Data at its very core.” Sustainability goes hand in hand with reliability, he says. You are not such a hostage to yoyoing energy prices if you use renewables. Also, sustainability reduces both short-term capital expenditure and long-term operational expenditure. Finch says: “Really you end up ticking all the boxes, and it makes complete economic sense to do things in a sustainable manner.” Data centres need to have backup diesel generators in the event of power network outage. Many data centres handle critical Government infrastructure, such as the NHS. One data centre handles Government communications with the nuclear submarine fleet – and infrastructure doesn’t come more critical than that.


Microsoft: Popular IoT SDKs Leave Critical Infrastructure Wide Open to Cyberattack

It took some digging to identify that the Boa servers were the ultimate culprit in the Indian energy-sector attacks, the researchers said. First they noticed that the servers were running on the IP addresses on the list of indicators of compromise (IoCs) published by Recorded Future at the time of the release of the initial report last April, and also that the electrical grid attack targeted exposed IoT devices running Boa, they said. Moreover, half of the IP addresses returned suspicious HTTP response headers, which might be associated with the active deployment of the malicious tool that Recorded Future identified was used in the attack, the researchers noted. Further investigation of the headers indicated that more than 10% of all active IP addresses returning the headers were related to critical industries — including the petroleum industry and associated fleet services — with many of the IP addresses assigned to IoT devices with unpatched critical vulnerabilities. This highlighted "an accessible attack vector for malware operators," according to Microsoft.


India drafts new privacy bill for transfer of personal data internationally

"Cross-border interactions are a defining characteristic of today’s interconnected world," according to an explanatory note from the government accompanying the bill. "Recognising this, it has been provided in the bill that personal data may be transferred to certain notified countries and territories." ... “The Central Government may, after an assessment of such factors as it may consider necessary, notify such countries or territories outside India to which a Data Fiduciary may transfer personal data, in accordance with such terms and conditions as may be specified,” according to the draft. A data fiduciary, according to the draft, could be any person or a group of persons who determines the purpose and means of processing personal data. The draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, for which the ministry of electronics and information technology has invited feedback from the public via a portal till December 17, also lays out the exemptions and conditions that must be considered when considering the transfer of personal data to other nations.


Examining low-code/no-code popularity across Africa and its range of disruption for CIOs

Dagadu appreciates he could do without a developer to use these tools even though he initially used one, which incurred a lot of cost. “At first we had to employ a web developer who did a lot of work, but it looks horrible using technology like Square Space,” he says. “In Africa, development costs are very high and can only be tackled by companies with a lot of funding. But with the growth of low-code/no-code, more people with bright ideas can bring them to life without the need for expensive developers.” He noted that because of the popularity problem in Africa of these tools, people believe that every time they have an idea to implement an application or technology, they have to resort to an application developer. But by coding less or not at all, there’s an easier entry into hard code according to WenakLabs’ Assani. “It’s a way to be visible quickly, to offer your services to the world without resorting to the skills of a developer. Above all, you learn through experimentation.”



Quote for the day:

"And how does one lead? We lead by doing; we lead by being." -- Bryant McGill

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