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BSP to be on guard against cryptocurrency issues – BusinessWorld Online

THE PHILIPPINES should be on guard for issues involving cryptocurrencies as it could affect financial stability, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.

BSP Governor Felipe M. Medalla said there should be regulations for cryptocurrency in order to combat money laundering and to protect the investing public.

The point where crypto gets changed into pesos or bank accounts, thats the time where all regulations come in. Whether its crypto or regular banking, the entire world is afraid that cross-border movements of money could be financing things that are quite destructive, Mr. Medalla said at a press briefing following the Financial Stability Board (FSB) Regional Consultative Group for Asia (RCGA) meeting in Mactan, Cebu.

Cryptocurrencies in the Philippines are classified as digital or virtual assets.

Since the Philippines is under the Financial Action Task Forces (FATF) gray list, Mr. Medalla said regulators cannot afford to have more cases of money laundering.

Indeed, our big problem is the Philippines is on the gray list, which has possible consequences, he said.

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Global financial crime watchdog FATF put the country on its list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring for dirty money risks in June 2021. The BSP hopes to exit the gray list by January 2024.

Crypto for the Philippines is not a financial stability issue because it doesnt involve too many people in that aspect, but it is an issue that may call the attention of the government one way or another, he said.

Mr. Medalla noted informal lenders are now closely tied with e-money issuers, taking advantage of how Filipino households tend to have low access to formal lending.

These are potentially great improvements in consumer welfare, we should be open to it, but at the same time, as in any opportunity, there are dangers. And this is where were looking at it as regulators, Mr. Medalla said.

FSB Chair and De Nederlandsche Bank President Klaas Knot said the board will be putting in various forms of investor protection when regulating the crypto assets space.

We have money laundering issues. Whether we like it or not, in some criminal investigations, crypto comes to the fore more often than we wouldve liked in cases like text fraud and also outright trafficking of drugs, money laundering, tax evasions, etc, he said.

If countries are not willing to comply with the standards set by the FSB, Mr. Knot said the jurisdictions will have to face supervisory scrutiny.

If we have individual holdouts, individual countries that are not willing to implement the standards, you will very quickly see all the crypto asset activity that migrate to jurisdictions like that, Mr. Knot said.

Countries are expected to implement a global regulatory framework for crypto assets by 2024 to 2025.

Mr. Knot said they are currently working on high-level recommendations for the global regulatory framework to be submitted during the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in July.

Todays meeting of the RCGA reflects the recognition of the close interconnections within our financial system and also between our economies, and indeed recent developments have once again showed a light on the truly global nature of the financial system, Mr. Knot said.

The full, timely, and consistent implementation of international financial standards remains key to bolstering global financial stability, he added.

Established in 2009, the FSB is a body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system.

In a statement on Wednesday, the FSB said its members discussed how to address the vulnerabilities and enhance the resilience of the nonbank financial intermediation (NBFI) sector in Asia.

Members also shared experiences and developments in regulating crypto assets, NBFIs, and financial markets in their jurisdictions and recognized the need to mitigate the risks that may arise from them.

They acknowledged the FSBs recommendations for the regulation, supervision and oversight of crypto-assets and markets and its recommendations targeted at global stablecoin arrangements, the FSB said.

The FSB RCG Asia is co-chaired by Mr. Medalla and M. Rajeshwar Rao, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

The RCG Asia comprises financial authorities from Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. K.B. Ta-asan

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Cloud(y) with a chance of incidents…. – JD Supra

I hear this frequently: "We've moved everything to the cloud, so our security is good." Maybe yes, maybe no. Cloud applications operate on a "shared responsibility" model, which means that the cloud provider will have a certain level of security, but the customer also bears a level of responsibility for settings, encryption at rest, and a host of other issues. Misconfigured cloud storage applications (such as AWS S3 buckets) can expose terabytes of data to the open Internet. Bad guys know where and how to look.

Does your incident response plan deal with how to handle cloud incidents? (Do you have an incident response plan?)

Kroll has put together a helpful review of issues associated with cloud service providers.

For organizations that have moved to the cloud, the so-called cloud management plane serves this purpose. Also known as the management console, administrator console or control plane, the cloud management plane is the web-accessible center for accessing and managing all the services and applications in the customers cloud instance. If access is not strictly limited or protected, an actor has the proverbial keys to the kingdom.

https://www.kroll.com/en/insights/publications/cyber/effective-cloud-incident-response?elqid=CDUFF000000899867

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Amazon’s cloud unit to invest $13 billion in India by 2030 – Reuters

May 18 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) cloud computing unit will invest 1.06 trillion rupees ($13 billion) in India by the end of this decade, doubling down on its past investments to cater to the growing demand for such services in one of Asia's fastest-growing economies.

This comes on top of its $6.5 billion investment in e-commerce in India, where it has rapidly expanded over the years but faces a strict regulatory environment that forces it to run only a marketplace.

The latest investment will be used to build its cloud infrastructure in India and will support over 100,000 full-time jobs annually, Amazon Web Services (AWS) said in a statement on Thursday. With this, the total planned investment in India adds up to about $16.4 billion by 2030.

The company already runs two data centers in the Indian subcontinent - one in Mumbai which was launched in 2016, and another in Hyderabad, which started in 2022.

The cloud platform offers more than 200 services, including storage, networking and artificial intelligence.

Amazon's move comes as India steps up efforts to attract more big-ticket investments in the digital space to address the spike in demand for data storage and services from corporate and government bodies.

India's public cloud services market is expected to touch $13 billion by 2026, climbing at a compound annual growth rate of 23.1% for 2021-26, according to market intelligence provider IDC.

A host of global companies, including Microsoft Corp(MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, have ramped up cloud investments in India in recent years amid New Delhi's push to gain stricter oversight of Big Tech firms by nudging to store data locally.

The country is currently drafting a cloud and data center policy to regulate the sector. India's broader tech sector, too, has attracted high-profile investments in recent months. U.S. networking equipment maker Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) earlier this month said it would start manufacturing from India to diversify its global supply chain, while Apple Inc (AAPL.O) supplier Foxconn(2317.TW) will invest $500 million to set up plants in the southern Indian state of Telangana.

($1 = 81.7800 Indian rupees)

Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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‘Born from the need of affordable storage for everyone’ – Times of India

Founded in 2020, DigiBoxx is a Made in India storage as a service for individuals and businesses. DigiBoxx allows registered users to share, store and track their assets. HDFC Life, Jio, ProBurst and Schneider Electric are among the many companies that have partnered with DigiBoxx for its cloud services. In an interaction with Times of India Tech, DigiBoxx CTO Abhijit Ray talks about the company, competition and moreWhat sets DigiBoxx apart from competition?DigiBoxx was born from the need of affordable storage for everyone. Today, pretty much everyone generates digital content on their phones, computers and other personal digital devices. This has led to fragmented offline storage and created the need for a cloud-based central repository that can be accessible from any connected device. This need is followed by the requirement of an affordable cloud storage option, which has not been available in the Indian market.There are major players in this space in the world today but none have given a thought to the regular, everyday people in India who also have a digital footprint but do not have a big budget for cloud storage. Thats where DigiBoxx comes in. Our free plan offers a substantial 20GB storage space and the paid packages are very affordable to everyone, irrespective of their economic status. Where are DigiBoxx data centres located?We have multiple data centres currently situated in Noida, Mumbai and Indore. That said, we are looking to expand further. Along with that, we also have offices in Mumbai, Gurugram, Gurgaon, Bengaluru and Kolkata. Kolkata, in particular, has been our recent expansion and has become a major delivery centre for us. We are actively hiring local talent for the hub there.Who is your target audience?In all honesty, our target is everyone. To be more precise, anyone with a phone is our audience. If you visit our website, you will find two main kinds of packages:Individual: This package is for people from all walks of life. This would include individualswho want to store and share their personal data, photos or videosto freelancers, content creators and gig workers wishing to store and share their digital assets for their work or profession.Although SMB stands for Small and Medium Businesses, it truly is meant for all kinds of business, irrespective of their size. We cater to all, thats how scalable DigiBoxx can be to cater to an organizations needs. All businesses need to store and share digital files or documents for all kinds of operations like collaborations and campaigns. For instance, our SMB package can be used as a highly scalable Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution for creative agencies.Recently, DigiBoxx introduced the DigiFotos features. Could you share more about this new feature and how it benefits DigiBoxx users?DigiFotos is a feature that allows individual users to synchronize the photos and videos stored on their smartphone with DigiBoxx automatically. This is an invaluable feature because we all face low storage issues on our handsets. Individuals do not to deal with the loss of personal memories in case of theft or physical damage.DigiFotos is also more than just an auto backup facility. Media files can be edited directly within DigiFotos and shared across social media instantly without having to go through other apps. Its that simple. There are other features also that allow users to synchronize data over Wi-Fi to save precious mobile bandwidth and premium subscribers can also set a password and an expiration date to the web link, etc.Does DigiBoxx offer cross-platform support? How easy is it for users to access their account?DigiBoxx is accessible to anybody with Internet access and a web browser whether a PC, laptop or a mobile device. One just needs to enter their name and email ID to register. The user will receive an email with instructions to activate their account and set the password. Thats it. Now the user can sign-up for DigiBoxx from the web browser and via the app, which is available for Android and iOS devices.What more can we expect to see from DigiBoxx in the near future?Oh, we have just got started. Right now, we have DigiBoxx on the web and its corresponding Android app. We have just launched the iOS app for iPhone users and introduced a file versioning feature that allows one to keep multiple versions of a file. Next, we are on the verge of launching the Windows desktop app that will allow users to synchronize their computer contents automatically with their DigiBoxx account. We are constantly listening to user feedback, so we know that we have many users waiting in the wings for the release of the desktop app.

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With Project Beacon, Nutanix Opens Up And Reins In Cloud Infrastructure – The Next Platform

Here is a question for you. Which is more proprietary? The Nutanix hyperconverged compute, storage, and networking platform or a cloud like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure?

It was a trick question. They are all proprietary, but oddly enough if you mix them together, you can get something that is at least somewhat less proprietary and more broadly useful and therefore with a much larger addressable market. And in the case of Nutanix, if it lets go completely of its own cloud storage, compute and networking and wraps its new Nutanix Central management tools and application and data services around native cloud compute, storage, and networking, it has a chance of creating a universal substrate that spans on premises and cloud without forcing customers to run the Nutanix Compute Cloud stack, called NC2, on those clouds.

This is exactly what Nutanix is hoping to do with an effort called Project Beacon, which was announced at its recent .NEXT 2023 user conference. We sat down with Lee Caswell, senior vice president of product and solutions marketing at Nutanix, to find out more about Project Beacon, which is the next and perhaps final expansion and evolution of the Nutanix server-SAN hybrid that debuted way back in 2011 to much fanfare.

Caswell, who came to Nutanix in February 2022, knows his way around virtual compute and storage. He was formerly vice president of product and technical marketing at VMware, NetApp, and Fusion-io and before that co-founder, chief marketing officer, and chief executive officer at hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) pioneer Pivot3, which was acquired by Quantum in July 2021.

Our job is to always be on the lookout for the next platform, and so we have paid close attention since it uncloaked from stealth mode a dozen years ago. The Nutanix platform, which has had more names than Elizabeth Taylor had husbands over the years, had all of the hallmarks of a technology that could go mainstream in a big way, and had VMware stubbornly refused to do virtual SANs for longer, Nutanix may have eclipsed it. But VMware woke up and protected its market and Nutanix has grown more slowly than it otherwise might have.

But as we have pointed out before, Nutanix and all of the HCI players have, for reasons that are often perplexing, had a hard time going mainstream, by which we mean having hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. Soon after founding The Next Platform, we took a stab at trying to understand what was holding HCI back despite its obvious benefits for enterprise customers. After watching Nutanix bleed cash for so many years, in September 2021 we pondered why HCI was not more pervasive given the quality of the Acropolis platform, which is another name for the Nutanix Compute Cloud, or NC2, the latest and hybrid on-premises/cloud incarnation of it. And we also wondered why it was not more profitable after a decade in the market, and thought that maybe being part of the IBM-Red Hat collective could help the Nutanix HCI platform expand to what seemed to be its natural size. We wondered if Citrix Systems and Nutanix should merge, creating a behemoth that could create a big platform to rival those of Microsoft and VMware. We heard rumors about Nutanix potentially being acquired in October 2022 and suggested that only a big cloud would be rich enough to do so. And as 2022 was coming to a close, we just flat out asked if any of the modern storage providers with Nutanix and Pure Storage being the examples could actually make money, or even come close to the booming NetApp and EMC in their respective NAS and SAN markets in the 1990s and 2000s.

This Project Beacon twist is as interesting as it is inevitable, and we have seen it before in other platforms. Here is a good example. Just as the Dot Com Boom was beginning to bust, Vern Brownell, who ran infrastructure for Goldman Sachs, founded Egenera and created its BladeFrame platform and Processor Area Network (PAN) virtualization stack. This was way before VMware came on the scene, but just as server virtualization was taking Unix servers by storm. PAN created what we would call bare metal instances that could be virtualized and partitioned to run workloads, much like hardware partitions on Unix systems. Selling this hardware provide more difficult than anticipated, and seven years later the PAN Manager software was broken free of the BladeFrames and sold as a management tool for the blade server infrastructure made by IBM, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, and NEC. By 2013, Egenera was basically kaput, in this case because all of the blade server makers were creating their own management layer and they had no interest in helping their rivals, particularly Cisco Systems and the converged server-network hybrid code-named California and known as the Unified Computing System, or UCS, that shook up the server market from 2009 through 2013 before settling down.

Dont take the wrong meaning from that comparison, with over 23,000 enterprise customers and $1.3 billion in cash in the bank, we are not suggesting that Nutanix is somehow going to fail. It is just difficult to get competitors with their own vested interests to cooperate, even if it is something that customers want.

And we think that enterprise customers operating at scale do want a unified, managed platform that spans on premises and clouds and we do think that existing Nutanix customers will welcome the Project Beacon effort to provide the same management and control for native compute and storage services on AWS and Azure that are provide for the NC2 stack running on premises or on bare metal instances from those two cloud providers.

The shift from virtualized to bare metal instances for running NC2 in the cloud is an important once, since it lowers the cost of the cloud infrastructure and also allows for the Acropolis hypervisor to be used as a single substrate across on premises and cloudy infrastructure. Otherwise, you have to use the native virtualization on the clouds KVM on AWS and Hyper-V on Azure, or even ESXi on VMware on AWS if you want to do something that will be a very expensive proposition.

Project Beacon is going to be self-funded in a sense because it aims to make the new Nutanix Central cloud management tool span the clouds and on premises application and data services and help customers not only control the whole shebang from one place, but control the exorbitant costs they have on the clouds.

Cost concerns are coming up because money is no longer free, Caswell tells The Next Platform. As the bills have come in, and interest rates are going up, people are now taking a harder look at how they are spending for infrastructure and how they might optimally locate compute and storage. Our latest survey on this workload movement shows that almost all customers have been moving applications across different infrastructure environments, and we expect that to actually increase over time as people start thinking about wheres the best place to locate things given cost, performance, and data sovereignty issues. The issue is a bit like having the kids load the dishwasher after a holiday meal. They just put everything in there, and when you open the door you see that more can fit if you start rearranging things. When it comes to cloud, we are at this optimization stage. It is interesting that Google and Microsoft are talking about optimization, not cost cutting, too.

The heart of the Project Beacon effort is Nutanix Central itself runs in the cloud as a service, and it is not just an instance of the Prism HCI management tool pried loose from the Acropolis stack, but is rather a brand new piece of software that treats application and data services running on Acropolis, Azure, or AWS as peers. Gartner is calling such tools digital platform conductor tools, and we wonder are they thinking train or orchestra? (Probably orchestra.) The point is to have a common view of similar services running on dissimilar end points.

Today, our relevance with the Nutanix stack is to hundreds or thousands of datacenter and edge end points, with some extension out to the cloud, says Caswell. The opportunity of moving up the stack with Project Beacon and Nutanix Central increases our relevance to millions of cloud users.

Now here is the neat bit, which we are going to come back to and get some real data from Caswell when it is ready for publication. With Nutanix Central running application and data services and running N2C on the cloud bare metal instances at AWS and Azure, by applying their own virtualization to them and then overcommitting CPUs and share resources across instances, Nutanix thinks it can cut the cost of providing compute and storage for applications in half compared to loading up Nutanix and running it on stock virtualized, T-shirt sized instances on Azure or AWS.

We are going to be talking to Nutanix and getting the information to explain how this works technically and economically. Half is a big deal.

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2023 Productivity Series – Seton Hall University

The Teaching, Learning and Technology Center is pleased to announce the 2023 Summer Productivity Series, hands-onworkshops dedicated to the tools and strategies that enable you tooptimize your workflow. Participants will learn how to increase productivity while using key programs such as Microsoft Teams and OneDrive for Business. We will also demonstrate how to keep your laptop up to date and discuss the impact of laptop health on overall efficiency and productivity.

The productivity series will be held on Tuesday, July 11 Thursday, July 13, and repeat on Monday, July 31 Wednesday, August 2. Faculty, administrators, and staff are invited to attendsessions either in person, in Space154, or virtually on Teams. View the full workshop schedule and the workshop descriptions below.

View All Productivity Series Workshops

Tuesday, July 11 at 10 a.m. | Wednesday, August 2 at 1 p.m.

Get ready for the upcoming semester by updating your laptop! Keeping your laptop secure and up to date is essential, especially as security concerns grow and new malicious threats are created every day. In this workshop, we will show you how to keep your laptops health in top shape by performing Windows Updates, Lenovo System Updates, performing virus scans, and by updating common software such as Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft 365 apps.

Tuesday, July 11 at 1p.m. | Wednesday, August 2 at 10 a.m.

Microsoft Teams is a collaboration app that allows people to communicate, share files, create virtual meetings and post conversations amongst working groups. In this workshop, we will focus on the functionality of Microsoft Teams to help you complete everyday tasks.

Wednesday, July 12at 10a.m. | Monday, July 31at 1p.m.

This workshop will introduce you to the Adobe Creative Cloud. Access industry-leading creative desktop and mobile apps like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and many more. Use Adobe Express to edit images, videos, and pdfs, or create flyers, posters, logos, and so much more!

Wednesday, July 12at 1p.m. | Monday, July 31at 10 a.m.

As a member of the Seton Hall community, you have full access to LinkedIn Learning: an on-demand video library of over 16,000 lessons ranging from mastering Microsoft Excel to learning accounting. Whether youre aiming to build skills related to your daily tasks or trying to learn new skills to benefit you in the office, LinkedIn Learning has the training you need. In this workshop, we will focus on searching by topic and creating learning paths and content collections.

Thursday, July 13at 10 a.m. | Tuesday, August 1at 1p.m.

Learn best practices in file management and organization by using OneDrive for Business. OneDrive for Business is a cloud storage, data hosting service that allows users to sync files and later access them from a web browser or mobile device. Use OneDrive for Business to save important files, share files with others, create a departmental repository, and sync files between multiple devices.

Thursday, July 13at 1p.m. | Tuesday, August 1at 10 a.m.

SharePoint has a similar interface as Microsoft365 and can be easily configured and adjusted by the user. You can use it for file sharing, web content management and document management. SharePoint also provides the benefit of a central location for storing and collaborating on documents, which can significantly reduce emails and duplicated work. It is also capable of keeping track of the different versions of documents created by different users. This workshop will cover the essentials needed to start using SharePoint today!

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Confluent’s New Cloud Capabilities Address Data Streaming Hurdles – Datanami

Confluent has announced several new Confluent Cloud capabilities and features that address the data governance, security, and optimization needs of data streaming in the cloud.

Real-time data is the lifeblood of every organization, but its extremely challenging to manage data coming from different sources in real time and guarantee that its trustworthy, said Shaun Clowes, chief product officer at Confluent, in a release. As a result, many organizations build a patchwork of solutions plagued with silos and business inefficiencies. Confluent Clouds new capabilities fix these issues by providing an easy path to ensuring trusted data can be shared with the right people in the right formats.

Confluents 2023 Data Streaming Report, also newly released, found that 72% of IT leaders cite the inconsistent use of integration methods and standards as a challenge or major hurdle to their data streaming infrastructure, a problem that led the company to develop these new features.

Right off the bat, the engine powering Confluent Cloud has been reinvented. Confluent says it has spent over 5 million engineering hours to deliver Kora, a new Kafka engine built for the cloud.

(Source: Confluent)

Confluent Co-founder and CEO Jay Kreps penned a blog post explaining how Kora came to be: When we launched Confluent Cloud in 2017, we had a grand vision for what it would mean to offer Kafka in the cloud. But despite the work we put into it, our early Kafka offering was far from thatit was basically just open source Kafka on a Kubernetes-based control plane with simplistic billing, observability, and operational controls. It was the best Kafka offering of its day, but still far from what we envisioned.

Kreps goes on to say that the challenges facing a cloud data system are different from a self-managed open source download, such as the need for scalability, security, and multi-tenancy. Kora was designed with these constraints in mind, Kreps says, as it is multi-tenant first, can be run across over 85 regions in three clouds, and is operated at scale by a small on-call team. Kora disaggregates individual components within the network, compute, metadata, and storage layer, and data locality can be managed between memory, SSDs, and object storage. It is optimized for the cloud environment and the particular workloads of a streaming system in the cloud, and real-time usage is captured to improve operations like data placement and fault detection and recovery, as well as costs for large-scale use.

Krebs says Kora will not displace open source Kafka and the company will continue contributing to the project. Kora is 100% compatible with all currently supported versions of the Kafka protocol. Check out his blog for more details.

(pichetw/Shutterstock)

Data Quality Rules is a new feature in Confluents Stream Governance suite that is geared towards the governance of data contracts. Confluent notes that a critical component of data contracts enforcement is the rules or policies that ensure data streams are high-quality, fit for consumption, and resilient to schema evolution over time. The company says it is addressing the need for more comprehensive data contracts with this new feature, and schemas stored in Schema Registry can now be augmented with several types of rules. With Data Quality Rules, values of individual fields within a data stream can be validated and constrained to ensure data quality, and if data quality issues arise, there are customizable follow-up actions on incompatible messages. Schema evolution can be simplified using migration rules to transform messages from one data format to another, according to Confluent.

High levels of data quality and trust improves business outcomes, and this is especially important for data streaming where analytics, decisions, and actions are triggered in real time, said Stewart Bond, VP of data intelligence and integration software at IDC said in a statement. We found that customer satisfaction benefits the most from high quality data. And, when there is a lack of trust caused by low quality data, operational costs are hit the hardest. Capabilities like Data Quality Rules help organizations ensure data streams can be trusted by validating their integrity and quickly resolving quality issues.

Instead of relying on self-managed custom-built connectors that require manual provisioning, upgrading, and monitoring, Confluent is now offering Custom Connectors to enable any Kafka connector to run on Confluent Cloud without infrastructure management. Teams can connect to any data system using their own Kafka Connect plugins without code changes, and there are built-in observability tools to monitor the health of the connectors. The new Custom Connectors are available on AWS in select regions with support for additional regions and cloud providers coming soon.

To provide accurate and current data across the Trimble Platform, it requires streaming data pipelines that connect our internal services and data systems across the globe, said Graham Garvin, product manager at Trimble. Custom Connectors will allow us to quickly bridge our in-house event service and Kafka without setting up and managing the underlying connector infrastructure. We will be able to easily upload our custom-built connectors to seamlessly stream data into Confluent and shift our focus to higher-value activities.

Confluents Stream Sharing allows topics in Kafka to be shared. (Source: Confluent)

For organizations that exchange real-time data internally and externally, relying on flat file transmissions or polling APIs for data exchange could result in security risks, data delays, and integrations complexity, Confluent asserts. Stream Sharing is a new feature that allows users to exchange real-time data directly from Confluent to any Kafka client with security capabilities like authenticated sharing, access management, and layered encryption controls.

In Kafka, a topic is a category or feed that stores messages where producers write data to topics and consumers retrieve it through messages. Stream Sharing allows users to share topics outside of their Confluent Cloud organization between enterprises, and invited consumers can stream shared topics with an existing log-in or a new account using a Kafka client.

Confluent is also debuting is a new early access program. Apache Flink is often chosen by customers for querying large-scale, high throughput data streams, and it operates as a service at the cloud layer. Confluent recently acquired Immerok, developer of a cloud-native and fully managed Flink service for large-scale data stream processing. At the time of the acquisition, Confluent announced it had plans to launch its own fully managed Flink service compatible with Confluent Cloud. The time has come: Confluent has opened an early access program for managed Apache Flink to select Confluent Cloud customers. The company says this program will allow customers to try the service and help shape the roadmap by partnering with the companys product and engineering teams.

For a full rundown of Confluents news, check out Jay Kreps keynote from May 16 at Kafka Summit London 2023 here.

Related Items:

Confluent Works to Hide Streaming Complexity

Confluent Delivers New Cluster Controls, Data Connectors for Hosted Kafka

Confluent to Develop Apache Flink Offering with Acquisition of Immerok

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Android File Transfer Not Working on Your Mac? Here Are 6 Fixes to … – MUO – MakeUseOf

Transferring files between macOS and Android devices can be troublesome because of the lack of native support. However, Google's Android team took the initiative to ensure smooth file transfer between a Mac and Android through its dedicated Android File Transfer tool.

Android File Transfer is fairly easy to use, but it can sometimes stop working. You may run into errors like "Could not connect to the device. Try reconnecting or restarting your device." Here are some fixes you should try to solve Android File Transfer issues on Mac.

The first step you should take after connecting your USB cable to both your Android phone and Mac is to update your USB preferences. It may sound like an Android and Windows thing, but it also applies on Mac because Android doesn't use File Transfer mode by default when you connect a data transfer cable.

Instead, you'll have to do it yourself. You'll know if the USB preferences are the cause if you see an error with the title, "Can't access device storage."

After plugging in your cable, open your Android device and swipe down from the top to view the notification shade. Look for Charging this device via USB among the list of notifications and tap it twice to open USB Preferences in the Settings app. Once the page opens, select File Transfer / Android Auto (some Android phones may use the term MTP) under Use USB for.

Steps for changing the USB preferences may vary, but the basic rules are the same.

Once this option is selected, your Android phone will make its internal memory accessible via the USB cable. Hence, you'll be able to browse files and folders from your Android device on your Mac. Remember to keep your Android Phone unlocked throughout the transfer process to avoid further issues.

Suppose you've updated your USB preferences but are still facing issues. Chances are another app is already reading your plugged-in USB devices. In this case, Android File Transfer won't be able to see your files because it has no access to those connected devices.

You can bypass this by closing all apps on your Mac that are accessing your USB devices. Examples include cloud backup apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and even some built-in macOS apps like Preview (for macOS Ventura, and the latest). If closing doesn't work, you can force quit an app on Mac.

The key drawback with this method is it can be hard to tell which open apps can read USB on your Mac. Common culprits are cloud backup apps, but if closing such apps doesn't fix the issue, trial and error is your last resort. Close open apps on your Mac one by one and try using Android File Transfer each time to see if that solves it.

Another fix for Android File Transfer issues is to try another USB cable or switch to a different port on your Mac. First, start by troubleshooting your cable. As you may already know, not all USB cables can transfer files. Some are solely meant for charging.

You can test the cable by connecting it to a different device. You can also try using a different cable to see if it works. We highly recommend using the official cable that your Android device came with first. Smartphone companies include quality USB cables that can perform file transfer and charging.

Besides the cable, another possible problem source is the port on your Mac or Android phone. If either port is faulty, no file transfer will take place. Since Macs come with more than one port, try using another one. You won't have that option on most Android devices, so connect your phone to a different computer to check if the USB port functions correctly.

When you're using Android File Transfer to move files between Android and Mac, you may run into issues such as cache problems or conflicting resources. They're hard to spot, but can be to blame if the app was previously working and has now stopped for no obvious reason.

If you've tried everything until now and are still facing issues, try uninstalling the app and then reinstalling it. We recommend using AppCleaner to completely delete the software from your system rather than simply dragging it into the Trash. This might give you a fresh start free of transfer troubles.

Sure, it sounds like a clich, but there's a reason why restarting fixes most smartphone problems. And it's not just phones; this applies to other devices and even software programs. In a nutshell, it does so by clearing your system's memory and refreshing resources.

If the source of your problem is conflicts among accumulated temporary files and cache data, preventing Android File Transfer from working as expected, this will give you a fresh start. Restart your Android phone first, then try again. If the issue is not fixed, restart your Mac, and try transferring files again.

According to the team behind Android File Transfer, it supports macOS 10.7 and higher. If you're using older versions without official support, that may be why the tool is not working. So first, start by updating your Mac software to ensure you're running the latest version.

Also, download Android File Transfer from the official site and install it to ensure you have the tool's newer version. The last piece of the puzzle is to update your Android phone.

Generally, we recommend keeping your software up-to-date as a matter of course. Software updates can improve security, patch existing bugs you may be experiencing, and enhance the overall experience by including new features.

If nothing worked, it might be time to try another method for transferring your files. Android File Transfer is not actively maintained, so try other tools if your issues persist.

We recommend OpenMTP, which is open-source and free. Another alternative is to use cross-platform cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox if you have stable unlimited internet connectivity.

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Elementor #99416463 – The Island Now

Lets not forget about the good old computer. Heres how to download TikTok videos onto your PC or Mac:

Direct Download If youre browsing TikToks website and come across a video youd like to keep, click the Share button and then Copy Link. Then, open a new tab and paste the link. After the page loads, right-click on the video and select Save video as to download it to your computer.

Vidloder on Computers If the direct download doesnt work, Vidloders website can assist. Simply paste the copied TikTok video URL into Vidloders search bar on their website and press Download. The video will be saved onto your computer.

Downloading TikTok videos can be straightforward or slightly complex, depending on the device youre using and the specific videos privacy settings. However, with this information and Vidloder at your disposal, you should be able to handle it with ease.

Here is How to Download Videos from TikTok in general:

Before you can become a pro at downloading TikTok videos, you have to start at the beginning, and that means finding the right video. Whether youre a longtime TikTok user or youre new to the platform, youre in for a treat. The fun, short-form videos that make up TikToks content span a wide array of categories everything from comedy to cooking, fashion, education, and beyond. Start exploring the platform, and youll be sure to find a video that catches your eye.

Now that youve gotten your feet wet in the sea of TikTok, its time to find a video that youd like to keep for posterity. With the sheer volume and variety of content available, you could spend hours just scrolling through and enjoying the clips. You could stumble upon a mouth-watering recipe, a must-try DIY craft, or a hilarious prank. Whatever tickles your fancy, once youve found that perfect video, tap on it to play.

Once you have your chosen video open, the next thing you need to do is grab the link to it. Youll find the Share button on the screen, which is quite easily identifiable its an arrow pointing to the right. Tapping this button will conjure up a new menu full of various options, and the one youre interested in is Copy Link. Selecting this option will swiftly copy the URL of the video to your devices clipboard. Its a simple process, similar to copying and pasting text, but in this instance, its a video link youre dealing with.

With the video link securely stored on your clipboard, youre now ready to download the video. This is where you use the app Vidloader. Vidloder is a highly reliable video downloading tool available for free online. Navigate to the Vidloder website via your preferred web browser.

Once on the Vidloder homepage, youll notice a box thats asking for your video link. Simply tap in this box, and your device will offer you the option to paste the link you previously copied. After pasting the link, all you need to do is hit the Download Now button. Vidloder will then swing into action, processing your video. This usually takes a few moments, but once its done, Vidloder will provide you with a download link for the video.

Youre now just one step away from having your chosen TikTok video saved onto your device. After clicking on the download link provided by Vidloder, your device will ask you to save the file. Choose the location where youd like to store the video, and then tap either Save or Download. Once this final step is completed, youll have the video downloaded and stored in your chosen location.

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Canva vs. Adobe Creative Cloud: Which Is Better for Designers? – MUO – MakeUseOf

With a growing number of design software available to anyone who has access to a computer and internet, it can be overwhelming to know which is best to useespecially if you must part with cash to find out.

Adobe has been the community leader in graphic design and digital art software for decades, but how does Canva measure up to Adobe Creative Cloud? Which is better for designers?

Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva have each been around since 2013; however, Adobe itself provided digital art solutions long before it released Creative Cloud.

Canva is available as a browser-based app, accessible by anyone who has internet from a computer, phone, or tablet. For the latter two, you can download a standalone Canva app.

Canvas software is only one program, but it has many tools built into it. If you can access Canva, you have access to all its tools. All you need is a Canva account, which just requires an e-mail address.

Since Adobe formed Creative Cloud, it made all its software available via the cloud. Unfortunately, though, you cant just access Creative Cloud through a browser like Canva.

You must sign up for an Adobe account, but to access the software, youll need to download and install Adobe Creative Cloud to your computer. From theredepending on your Adobe planyou can install individual programs, such as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and many more, to your system. An All Apps plan gives you access to around 20 individual programs.

You can also access some of Adobes software as apps for your tablet or phone, although these are often for a separate price point and provide lesser features than the computer versions.

Price plays a big part in whether we choose to use a service. Your choices may be influenced by the actual prices, subscription options, free trials, or ease of cancelation.

Anyone can use Canva for free. Its main free software contains access to most features, with limits only affecting use of premium graphic elements, Canvas brand kit feature, and certain save options.

Canva offers a 30-day free trial for Canva Pro. This is plenty long enough to explore the Canva Pro features you miss out on with the free version. Canvas free version does plenty, though, and you can create many things without a Pro subscription.

Canva Pro is $12.99 per month or $119.99 for an annual subscription. With a monthly subscription, its easy to cancel if you need tobut impossible to cancel an annual subscription.

Adobe offers a 14-day free trial for any of its software plans. Since you can subscribe to individual programs, you do not have to get a trial for all programs at once. You can stagger the trial to discover which programs would be best for you.

There are many different price plans for Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions. For example, you can subscribe to All Apps for access to everything. Alternatively, you can choose individual subscription plans or smaller bundleslike the Photography plan which includes Photoshop and Lightroom. Each plan has a different price.

A full Creative Cloud plan is $54.99 per month. However, you can find cheaper plans for students, along with deals on Black Friday or other discount days. Even though the Creative Cloud plan is billed monthly, its an annual subscription, thus making it difficult to cancel mid-plan without a large fee.

How do you store the software, and how does the software let you store your files?

Since Canva is a browser-based software, you dont need to download it. There is no storage required for the software itself. If you use the tablet or phone app, it only needs around 90MB to store the app.

Canva uses a cloud system to store your projects, so you can access them anytime from any device if you log in to your account. To save designs to use elsewhere, you can download them locally at different sizes or formats.

Storage for the Creative Cloud software might be obvious, given its name. You can store the Adobe Creative Cloud software in the cloud when not in use. This means if you have the All-Apps plan but only use a few of the programs, you dont need to slow your computer down by installing all of them at once. You can easily download any software from the cloud if and when needed. You can uninstall software from your computer, too, and easily get it back again later.

To store your files, you have the choice between cloud storage or local storage. Using the Adobe Cloud makes it easy to transfer files to teammates or clients, access files on other devices, or transfer files between your own softwarefor example, if you created an element in Illustrator but want to add it to a Photoshop project, you can transfer it using the Adobe Assets library. You can also save any projects or elements locally if you prefer.

Each software has a lot to offer, but do they directly compare to one another in their capabilities?

Canva is first and foremost a template-based design software. It offers pre-made templates for all major social media types, as well as non-digital design uses like invitations or posters. This is a huge time saver if your focus is on output rather than input design. You can create your own Canva templates to share if you want to design from scratch but allow others to use Canva's template feature.

You can use Canva for animating, making videos, or adding motion to your posts, but it isnt focused on being a video or animation tool. You should only use the animation or video functions for basic movements, although its good to have the option.

While not strictly a UX/UI tool, you can use Canva to create basic webpagesbut you wont get very far when creating an entire website. Aside from basic logo design and the brand kit feature, Canva isnt most designers go-to for brand design, either. You can get the basics done, but its not an in-depth tool.

In 2023, Canva released many new tools, including a bunch of AI tools under the Magic label. Using Canvas Magic features, you can recolor, add or remove parts of images, write text, and many other things. Canvas AI tools are helpful and work successfully.

Since Adobe is a long-held design leader, it would be a correct assumption to say using Creative Cloud is best for designing from scratch. Across much of its software, youll find an abundance of tools to let you create, edit, or combine images, videos, layouts, and more. With the inclusion of Adobe Express, or Adobe Stock, you can create and use templates too.

Creative Cloud has designated video and animation softwarePremiere Pro and After Effectsas well as the inclusion of animation tools in other programs like Photoshop. Adobes motion design software is high-standard and used by many videographers and animators.

You can easily create full branding designs with Illustrator, InDesign, and other tools. Adobe does offer its own UX/UI tool: Adobe XD. However, it isnt the leading UX/UI tool across the market.

For AI tools, Creative Cloud has many built-in features to aid your designs without the acknowledgment of using AI. Adobes Sensei feature is built into most products, allowing content-aware fill, photo restoration, and faster features across the board. Theres also the introduction of Adobe Firefly, introduced as a beta model in 2023, which has a handful of AI tools like vector recoloring and AI font generation. You can discover various AI font generation ideas in Firefly in a separate guide.

The choice is up to you as a digital designer or artist. If you have the money to invest in yourself, then Adobe Creative Cloud likely has every tool you could ever need. Its pricey, and since it has lots of tools, it may take a while to learn. Canva is a much more cost-efficient tool with hardly any learning curve.

If youre less bothered about how to create designs and more bothered about showing off great designs, then Canva is better for you. But if youre a process lover, then Adobe will keep you learning and pushing your boundaries.

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