Saturday, 21 March 2020
WHO Health Alert brings COVID-19 facts to billions via WhatsApp
Today, WHO is launching a messaging service with partners WhatsApp and Facebook to keep people safe from coronavirus.
This easy-to-use messaging service has the potential to reach 2 billion people and enables WHO to get information directly into the hands of the people that need it.
From government leaders to health workers and family and friends, this messaging service will provide the latest news and information on coronavirus including details on symptoms and how people can protect themselves and others. It also provides the latest situation reports and numbers in real time to help government decision-makers protect the health of their populations.
The service can be accessed through a link that opens a conversation on WhatsApp. Users can simply type “hi” to activate the conversation, prompting a menu of options that can help answer their questions about COVID-19.
The WHO Health Alert was developed in collaboration with Praekelt.Org, using Turn machine learning technology.
JK: Medical officer suspended for refusing to monitor suspected coronavirus cases
A medical officer here was placed under suspension for allegedly refusing surveillance duty to monitor suspected coronavirus cases placed under home quarantine in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, officials said on Saturday.
Saleem Bhatti was suspended with immediate effect by Deputy Commissioner, Poonch, Rahul Yadav, with direction to the medical superintendent of the district hospital to initiate disciplinary action against him, the officials said.
Quoting the order issued by the deputy commissioner on Friday, the officials said Tehsildar Haveli reported that Bhatti, deputed in surveillance team, refused to perform his duty.
The order said medical professionals are critical to government efforts in these difficult times when the government is putting all out efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.
“Across the globe, medical professionals have gone beyond call of duty to contain the spread of COVID-19 and Jammu and Kashmir is no exception. However, such lackadaisical attitude on part of one single doctor can make efforts of all other health professionals futile,” the order said.
It said the medical superintendent, district hospital Poonch, would initiate disciplinary action against the suspended doctor and submit the action taken report to the office of the deputy commissioner at the earliest.
“During suspension period, he will remain attached with district hospital Poonch at the disposal of medical superintendent for further duty,” the order said.
Basic protective measures against the new coronavirus
Stay aware of the latest information on the COVID-19 outbreak, available on the WHO website and through your national and local public health authority. Most people who become infected experience mild illness and recover, but it can be more severe for others. Take care of your health and protect others by doing the following
Wash your hands frequently
Regularly and thoroughly clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water.
Why? Washing your hands with soap and water or using alcohol-based hand rub kills viruses that may be on your hands.
Maintain social distancing
Maintain at least 1 metre (3 feet) distance between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing.
Why? When someone coughs or sneezes they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the COVID-19 virus if the person coughing has the disease.
Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth
Why? Hands touch many surfaces and can pick up viruses. Once contaminated, hands can transfer the virus to your eyes, nose or mouth. From there, the virus can enter your body and can make you sick.
Practice respiratory hygiene
Make sure you, and the people around you, follow good respiratory hygiene. This means covering your mouth and nose with your bent elbow or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Then dispose of the used tissue immediately.
Why? Droplets spread virus. By following good respiratory hygiene you protect the people around you from viruses such as cold, flu and COVID-19.
If you have fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical care early
Stay home if you feel unwell. If you have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical attention and call in advance. Follow the directions of your local health authority.
Why? National and local authorities will have the most up to date information on the situation in your area. Calling in advance will allow your health care provider to quickly direct you to the right health facility. This will also protect you and help prevent spread of viruses and other infections.
Stay informed and follow advice given by your healthcare provider
Stay informed on the latest developments about COVID-19. Follow advice given by your healthcare provider, your national and local public health authority or your employer on how to protect yourself and others from COVID-19.
Why? National and local authorities will have the most up to date information on whether COVID-19 is spreading in your area. They are best placed to advise on what people in your area should be doing to protect themselves.
Protection measures for persons who are in or have recently visited (past 14 days) areas where COVID-19 is spreading
- Follow the guidance outlined above.
- Stay at home if you begin to feel unwell, even with mild symptoms such as headache and slight runny nose, until you recover. Why? Avoiding contact with others and visits to medical facilities will allow these facilities to operate more effectively and help protect you and others from possible COVID-19 and other viruses.
- If you develop fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical advice promptly as this may be due to a respiratory infection or other serious condition. Call in advance and tell your provider of any recent travel or contact with travelers. Why? Calling in advance will allow your health care provider to quickly direct you to the right health facility. This will also help to prevent possible spread of COVID-19 and other viruses.
Coronavirus latest: Covid-19 cases in Spain rise 25% in 24 hours as outbreak worsens
Spanish cases jump by 25 per cent in 24 hours Daniel Dombey in Madrid The number of documented Spanish cases of coronavirus has increased by almost 5,000 in 24 hours and more than 300 people have died from the virus in that time, according to figures released on Saturday. The Spanish government said there were now 24,926 cases, with 1,612 people in intensive care and 1,326 deaths. Compared with Friday’s figures, this represents a 25 per cent increase on the number of cases, a 40 per cent surge in people in intensive care and a 32 per cent increase in the death toll. Overall, 2,125 people have recovered. Spain’s hospitals and intensive care units are struggling to cope, despite conversion into temporary hotels of some Madrid hotels and of the Fair of Madrid, the capital’s main exhibition space. Madrid remains the worst affected part of the country, with 8,921 cases, 767 people in intensive care and 804 deaths. Joshua Oliver 21 MINUTES AGO Google revamps coronavirus search results after Trump comments Google launched a dedicated website with information about the coronavirus alongside changes to its search results for the virus a week after President Donald Trump touted the company's efforts to inform people about the disease. The company has redesigned its search results pages for the virus including a sidebar with links to official health advice. “This new format organises the search results page to help people easily navigate information and resources”, wrote Google’s Emily Moxley in an online announcement. The changes come a week after President Trump told reporters that 1,700 Google engineers were working on an online tool to help people find out if they should be tested for Covid-19. Google’s new website directs users to local health resources in each US state, with plans to expand to other jurisdictions, but does not offer the personalised testing advice Mr Trump described. The site also includes resources for online education as well as links to Youtube videos on working from home and cooking with non-perishable food items. Google’s fellow Alphabet Inc subsidiary Verily has said it is working with California health officials to help deliver coronavirus testing, with the programme now open in some counties in the San Francisco Bay area. Adam Samson 32 MINUTES AGO Hong Kong re-imposes partial lockdown to fight 'second wave' of outbreak Nicolle Liu reports from Hong Kong: Hong Kong has resumed a partial lockdown as the number of confirmed cases imported from abroad has increased sharply, highlighting the 'second wave' of the outbreak that is sweeping across Asia. Carrie Lam, the territory's chief executive, announced from Monday onwards, public recreational facilitates such as sport grounds and museums will be shut again and civil servants work-from-home arrangement will recommence. Private companies would be encouraged to follow, Ms Lam said. Kevin Yeung, the Secretary for Education, said schools will remain closed until further notice and public exams scheduled to start next week are postponed for a month and oral assessment will be cancelled. “The epidemic from imported cases, is more severe and harder to deal with compared to any time in the past two months, and have a much higher chance to lead to a community outbreak,” said Ms Lam The total of confirmed and probable cases in Hong Kong have reached 294, with most of the recent infections occurring in those coming from abroad or their close contacts. Coronavirus testing will be expanded to asymptomatic elderly individuals or those who are living with them returning from high risk areas from aboard, said Sophia Chan, the Secretary for Food and Health. Ms Lam added that the government is ramping up law enforcement towards those who violate compulsory quarantine orders imposed to all arrivals from all countries and jurisdictions, except Taiwan and Macau, to Hong Kong. Authorities have found seven cases allegedly breaching the rules and they will be prosecuted accordingly, she said. Sid Venkataramakrishnan 53 MINUTES AGO WHO launches WhatsApp service to fight Covid-19 fake news The World Health Organization announced that it is launching a messenger service via WhatsApp to directly provide the public with information about Covid-19. The service offers up-to-date statistics, details on symptoms, advice on how to guard against the virus and a list of common rumours and misinformation. False news and information about Covid-19 have been rife. While social media platforms have been one vector, campaigns spreading fake narratives and inaccurate advice have also used encrypted messenger apps and traditional SMS texting. While Facebook and Twitter have said that there is no evidence of state-backed campaigns on their open platforms, the provenance of much misinformation remains unclear.
Sunday, 16 February 2020
DevOps Model Defined
DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.
Under a DevOps model, development and operations teams are no longer “siloed.” Sometimes, these two teams are merged into a single team where the engineers work across the entire application lifecycle, from development and test to deployment to operations, and develop a range of skills not limited to a single function.
In some DevOps models, quality assurance and security teams may also become more tightly integrated with development and operations and throughout the application lifecycle. When security is the focus of everyone on a DevOps team, this is sometimes referred to as DevSecOps.
These teams use practices to automate processes that historically have been manual and slow. They use a technology stack and tooling which help them operate and evolve applications quickly and reliably. These tools also help engineers independently accomplish tasks (for example, deploying code or provisioning infrastructure) that normally would have required help from other teams, and this further increases a team’s velocity.
DEVOPS JOBS 2020
DevOps: Breaking the Development-Operations barrier
DevOps gave us an edge
“DevOps has helped us do very frequent releases, giving us an edge on time to market. We are now able to make daily product releases as opposed to 6-month releases, and push fixes to our customers in a span of a few hours.”
— Hamesh Chawla, VP of Engineering at Zephyr
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a set of practices that automates the processes between software development and IT teams, in order that they can build, test, and release software faster and more reliably. The concept of DevOps is founded on building a culture of collaboration between teams that historically functioned in relative siloes. The promised benefits include increased trust, faster software releases, ability to solve critical issues quickly, and better manage unplanned work.
At Atlassian, DevOps is the next most famous portmanteau (combining of two words) next to Brangelina (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), bringing together the best of software development and IT operations. And like our jokes, it requires some explaining.
At its essence, DevOps is a culture, a movement, a philosophy.
It's a firm handshake between development and operations that emphasizes a shift in mindset, better collaboration, and tighter integration. It unites agile, continuous delivery, automation, and much more, to help development and operations teams be more efficient, innovate faster, and deliver higher value to businesses and customers.
Who's doing DevOps?
Chef is the company behind the Chef Automate platform for DevOps workflows. Tens of thousands of developers use Chef to test, automate, and manage infrastructure. At the forefront of the DevOps evolution, the Seattle-based company has been releasing products like Chef, InSpec, Habitat, and Chef Automate to advance new ways of developing and shipping software and applications. To experiment with and refine its own DevOps practices, Chef relies on the Atlassian platform.
Challenge
At the forefront of the DevOps evolution, the Seattle-based company has been releasing products like Chef, InSpec, Habitat, and Chef Automate to advance new ways of developing and shipping software and applications. To experiment with and refine its own DevOps practices, Chef relies on the Atlassian platform.
At the forefront of the DevOps evolution, the Seattle-based company has been releasing products like Chef, InSpec, Habitat, and Chef Automate to advance new ways of developing and shipping software and applications. To experiment with and refine its own DevOps practices, Chef relies on the Atlassian platform.
Solution
Chef first adopted Jira Software for bug tracking. As the company matured both its agile and DevOps practices, its use of Atlassian evolved from a helpdesk and ticketing system to a more holistic product development solution. Using Atlassian helps Chef ensure business value is attached to each opportunity so teams understand what they should prioritize. Says Julian Dunn, product manager at Chef, "Jira helped us think beyond agile to develop our DevOps approach."
Chef first adopted Jira Software for bug tracking. As the company matured both its agile and DevOps practices, its use of Atlassian evolved from a helpdesk and ticketing system to a more holistic product development solution. Using Atlassian helps Chef ensure business value is attached to each opportunity so teams understand what they should prioritize. Says Julian Dunn, product manager at Chef, "Jira helped us think beyond agile to develop our DevOps approach."
“DevOps has evolved so that development owns more operations – and that’s how Chef works,” adds Dunn. Chef itself doesn’t have a QA team anymore. “We can’t just throw it over the wall anymore. Our engineers are responsible for QA, writing, and running their own tests to get the software out to customers.”
Currently, 5-6 engineering teams are using Jira Software for lightweight agile processes. Before, Chef had multiple Jira instances with heavily customized boards and workflows that became difficult to manage. Now teams use defaults as much as possible to keep their pipelines clear and avoid giant backlogs. Also, with Jira, they can focus more on customer value while balancing operational needs. “Atlassian gives us end-to-end visibility so we can keep releasing the best products to our customers," says Dunn.
Chef uses Atlassian’s wider set of tools as well. The company integrates Jira with Confluence as the process and procedure knowledge base for engineers, and as a replacement for an archive of Google documents that lacked content hierarchy. IT teams use Jira Service Desk for internal support, such as resolving hardware issues. Says Dunn,“Atlassian is the only company that can get Dev and Ops on the same platform.”
Business teams like marketing also use Trello to track to-do lists, quarterly plans, and other short-term projects. Legal uses Trello to manage any work in flight such as contracts, and HR hosts its employee handbook in Trello. “Trello is easy for any team to get started on a workflow quickly,” explains Dunn.
Benefits
From marketing, legal, engineering, operations and IT, Atlassian improves visibility and collaboration across teams and workflows at Chef. As Chef advances its own DevOps practices, customers embracing Chef products are advancing their practices as well.
From marketing, legal, engineering, operations and IT, Atlassian improves visibility and collaboration across teams and workflows at Chef. As Chef advances its own DevOps practices, customers embracing Chef products are advancing their practices as well.
Thursday, 13 February 2020
What devops skills are needed in Canada?
I will share with you ten crucial skills that every DevOps engineer should have for success.
1. Strong Communication and Collaboration Skills
Communication and collaboration are the skills that can make or break DevOps in any organization.
Just consider a few things that can be efficiently done if communication and collaboration are on your DevOps skill set:
- Breaking down the silos. Everyone is sick and tired of this, but DevOps is all about breaking down the silos between the development and operations teams. A DevOps engineer is someone who builds connections and relieves bottlenecks, which is done by talking to people.
- Aligning Dev and Ops goals for the customer’s sake. A DevOps pro should be able to assess and streamline the goals of Dev and Ops teams towards the common goal to ensure a flawless customer experience.
- Introducing and implementing a DevOps culture. All organizations are different, and you will not be able to instill DevOps values and DevOps culture should communication and collaboration be missing. You will have to explain what DevOps is, educate about DevOps principles and DevOps tools, and verbally dive deep into infrastructure and automation issues.
Simply put, if you are not a people person who can bring employees together to work towards a common goal, DevOps might not be the best fit for you.
2. Empathy and Unselfishness
Soft skills are as important to a DevOps professional as hard skills and should not be underestimated.
Not only does DevOps require strong hard skills like coding and automation, it also necessitates such soft skills as curiosity, flexibility, self-motivation, and empathy.
Among soft skills, nothing beats empathy and unselfishness — DevOps skills that help you understand what other people feel and allow you not to put yourself above others.
DevOps pros should not only be talkers, but also listeners. Never should you rush a DevOps transformation before you:
- Talk to key stakeholders
- Find out what the goals are
- Assess the current state of DevOps
- Identify areas of improvement
- Ensure that stakeholders realize what you are going to do
You should understand how the organization runs, who the people who manage it are, and what the organization’s culture is to avoid creating contention points and constraints. Empathy and unselfishness will definitely help you in the process.
3. Understanding of Major DevOps Tools
DevOps tools are too many, and it does not make much sense to try to master them all. The good news is, you do not have to.
However, knowing your way around the major DevOps tools (displayed in the table below) will be a huge plus on your resume.
| Source Control | Continuous Integration | Configuration Management | Deployment Automation | Containers | Orchestration | Cloud Platforms |
| Git | Jenkins | Puppet | Jenkins | Docker | Kubernetes | AWS |
| Bitbucket | Bamboo | Chef | VSTS | Vagrant | Mesos | Azure |
| TeamCity | Ansible | Octopus Deploy | Swarm | GCP |
DevOps is constantly changing. To ensure that your DevOps skills are up to snuff, you will have to learn something new, including DevOps tools all the time.
4. Software Security Skills
DevSecOps (Security DevOps) has become one of the tech buzzwords in 2018 for a reason, which is:
While DevOps helps develop and release software more rapidly, it also creates a bunch of vulnerabilities, since security teams cannot keep up with the faster cycle.
Simply put, not only high-quality code but also bugs and malware can be deployed much faster now. Introducing DevOps without having perfected security processes in the IT-organization is a recipe for disaster.
Thus, DevOps should have at least the basic software security skills to be able to introduce security into the SDLC right off the bat.
The security component should be shifted left: You do not want to fix security issues in code; you want to predict and eliminate them from the start.5. Command of Automation Technologies and Tools
Automation is the lifeblood of DevOps.
Unless you know how to automate the entire DevOps pipeline, including CI/CD, continuous testing, app performance monitoring, infrastructure settings and configurations, you cannot call yourself a DevOps engineer.
Automation is key because it allows to reduce the human component, which fosters speed, increases accuracy, improves consistency and reliability while cutting the amount of errors. Eventually, this results in more rapid and swift, higher-quality delivery of value to customers.
3 Steps to Expand DevOps and Automation Throughout the Enterprise from Puppet
Your ability to automate DevOps hugely depends on your knowledge of DevOps tools, coding and scripting skills, and experience with the on-premise and cloud infrastructure.
6. Coding and Scripting Skills
DevOps engineer should not have to be a coding guru. However, having some coding and, most importantly, scripting skills is very much recommended.
As a DevOps, you should have a good handle on Ruby, Python, Java, Javascript, PHP, Bash, Shell, and Node.js. (Of course, you should not know every programming language.) You will need these mostly for automation.
If you are looking for a good place to start, go for Python, Go, and JSON/Javascript.
7. Cloud Skills
DevOps and cloud are joined at the hip.
If you do DevOps, you have to know the cloud, since:
- The cloud provides DevOps and the entire crew a centralized platform to test, deploy, and release code
- It enables DevOps automation by offering CI/CD tools, cost-efficiency, and security
- The cloud ensures that resources are easily monitored and the associated cost is efficiently tracked and adjusted
And, most importantly, the cloud allows IT-organizations to accelerate and facilitate a development process.
Thus, whether you choose AWS or Azure, or any other cloud platform, knowing how to do DevOps in the cloud is a must-have DevOps skill.
8. Testing Skills
DevOps is hugely impacted by how well testing is done in the IT-organization.
You cannot automate the DevOps pipeline if efficient continuous testing, the process of executing automated tests, is not in place.
Ensure that every automated test runs as it should, or risk pushing buggy code directly to customers, which is not great from a user experience standpoint.9. Customer-Centric Mindset
DevOps engineers should work with a final goal in mind, which is delivering value to the end user and getting tangible results for their organization’s business. They should analyze how their own and their organization’s activities can be enhanced to deliver value more rapidly.
To do that, DevOps engineers should keep in touch with key stakeholders, including developers, testers, project managers, and business leaders. Eventually, they need to ensure that their activities are properly synchronized and optimized around the common goal.
10. Passion and Proactivity
DevOps engineers should nurture passion and proactivity.
To begin with, loving your job is naturally linked to happiness at a workplace, which impacts performance and productivity. And the more meaningful results you produce for the company, the more valuable asset you become.
Then, as a DevOps engineer, you will have to learn a lot on a daily basis. New tools, new technologies, new cloud offerings, and so on. You should approach those proactively and with passion. Otherwise, you will slowly but surely become someone whose skills are no longer needed.
And finally, passion and proactivity are your safe road for setting you up as an authority. You can and should develop a brand identity not only to stand out against the competition but also to build trust with your co-workers.
Conclusion
DevOps is not exactly rocket science. However, it requires an individual to have a lot of hard and soft skills. Some of which are really hard to gain and nurture.
DevOps engineers should be able to do a lot on the tech side of things — from using specific DevOps tools and managing infrastructure in the cloud to writing secure code and checking automation tests.
They should be individuals who are passionate about what they do and who are ready to deliver the enormous amounts of value. They should be curious and proactive, empathetic and assertive, reliable and consistent. They should be able to put customers’ needs above their team’s needs and take action when required.
The DevOps role is not easy, yet it is totally worth it to become a DevOps.
To take things off the ground, check how many of the DevOps skills featured in this article you have. And if you lack some of them, be proactive and start learning right now!
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