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Using Measurement to Optimise Remote Work
Dave Longman of HeadForwards wrote about using data to demonstrate the effectiveness of remote work during lockdown. Michael Schrage of MIT’s School of Management also wrote about the importance of using data-driven insights to improve performance in the current climate. Laura Giurge of London Business School talked about how isolation is teaching individuals and firms to be remotely effective.
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Google Meet’s Scaling Challenges during COVID-19
Google wrote about their challenges in scaling Google Meet due to increased usage since the COVID-19 pandemic led to more people using it. The SRE team at Google used their existing incident management framework with modifications to tackle the challenge of increased traffic that started earlier this year.
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Remote Collaboration Fatigue is Real, Remote Workers are More Empathic, Remote Work is Here to Stay
As the shift from in-person to remote working persists, organisations have been doing research into the impact this is having on individuals and teams. Studies by Gartner and Microsoft indicate that remote collaboration fatigue is real, remote workers are more empathic and inclusive, and remote work is here to stay.
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Pandemic Programming Survey Results Show Negative Impact of COVID-19 Changes
The Pandemic Programming survey looked at the ways that developers' lives have been impacted by the lockdowns and changes caused by COVID-19. Over 2200 people from 52 countries answered the questionnaire to assess their wellbeing and productivity before and while working at home. The results show that wellbeing and productivity are suffering with some groups more impacted than others.
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Conflicting Reports on Remote Worker Productivity and Contentment
Remote working is becoming normal for the tech industry, with most tech employees working remotely due to the ongoing impacts of COVID-19. Studies and surveys are trying to measure the impact on productivity that organisations are seeing as a result of the shift. The results are conflicting and illustrate the complexity of the times we find ourselves in.
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Apple Releases iOS 13.5 with Exposure Notification Beta and Best Practices Sample App
The latest release of iOS, iOS 13.5, includes beta support for the Exposure Notification API Apple defined jointly with Google to enable contact tracing apps. Apple also published a sample app to showcase best practices in contact-tracing apps.
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Tech Giants Shift to More Remote Working for the Long Term
As the impacts of COVID-19 continue to be felt around the globe, and many tech industry employees get used to working from home, large tech companies are making long-term decisions about allowing and encouraging their people to work remotely. Facebook, Twitter, Shopify and others are making plans to have most or all of their workforce permanently remote.
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Secure Multiparty Computation May Enable Privacy-Protecting Contact Tracing Solutions
The current COVID-19 pandemic has fueled several efforts to implement contact tracing apps, based on a number of different cryptographic approaches. InfoQ has spoken with HashiCorp principal product manager for cryptography and security Andy Manoske to learn more about Secure Multiparty Computation and how it can enable privacy-protecting analysis on private data from different sources.
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In Memory of John Horton Conway
John Horton Conway, pioneering Mathematician and creator of the Game of Life, was sadly lost to covid-19 in April. Hackday recently wrote about his influence on generations of programmers. The Communications of the ACM, the Scientific American and Siobhan Roberts, his biographer, have all written about his long list of celebrated accomplishments and contributions.
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Google and Apple Jointly Working on Contact Tracing for iOS and Android
Google and Apple announced a joint effort to create a Bluetooth-based contact tracing solution for iOS and Android. This initiative aims to provide a tool to fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus by alerting participants who have been in contact with someone who has been positively diagnosed.
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Pandemic Shines Security Spotlight on Zoom Collaboration Risks
COVID-19 self-isolation has resulted in Zoom growing from 10m to 200m daily users. This has highlighted issues with Zoom's data privacy, security practices and meeting configurations. Bruce Schneier and other security commentators have provided insights into these issues. While governments and major companies have banned it, Zoom started a 90-day security hardening stint with former Facebook CSO.
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COVID-19 and AI: Virtual Conference at Stanford Discusses the Future
The Stanford Institute For Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence approaches COVID-19 from a wide variety of perspectives.
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Looking after Mental Health and Wellbeing During COVID-19
In times of crisis such as what is happening around the world with COVID-19, anxiety, fear, sadness, anger and frustration are normal reactions and we need to accept that these emotions will happen without minimising or denying them. There are things which you can do to help overcome the stress; empathic responding is one way to positively deal with the stresses we all find ourselves under.
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AlphaFold Algorithm Predicts COVID-19 Protein Structures
DeepMind uses AlphaFold to predict 3D protein structures straight from amino acid sequences for novel coronavirus 2019 (NCOVID-2019).
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Data Science Community Reacts to COVID-19 Pandemic
The data science community has reacted with fervor to the COVID-19 pandemic, with numerous articles from a data-oriented perspective and both official and grassroot efforts to provide access to data and utilize ML techniques to help deal with the crises across industry, academia and governmental organizations worldwide.