Archive for October 13, 2020

AppDynamics Enables Nouveal e-santé To Take On COVID-19 Contact Monitoring

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 13, 2020 by itnerd

AppDynamics, part of Cisco and the world’s #1 APM solution, announced its partnership with connected health developer, Nouveal e-santé to improve the performance of its latest solution, Covidom. Covidom is an app that allows remote monitoring of patients with COVID-19, created specifically to simplify remote medical monitoring, improve service logistics for individuals in quarantine and enable contract tracing for people who have come in contact with or been recently diagnosed with COVID-19.

Nouveal e-santé implemented AppDynamics Application Performance Monitoring (APM) to monitor the performance of the application as the company quickly developed new features and capabilities, ensuring users would continue to receive a flawless digital experience regardless of updates being made on the backend. By partnering with AppDynamics, Covidom was able to successfully scale from a rate of supporting 20,000 patients a year to 20,000 patients in two hours without any disruption in service, reducing the strain on hospitals and healthcare professionals and helping to manage the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

When COVID-19 hit in March, France was one of the most significantly impacted countries in Europe. The country needed a solution to quickly free up healthcare organizations from unnecessary patient visits so that they could focus resources on those with severe symptoms. Nouveal e-santé knew that in order to create a platform that could scale and support the country during an unprecedented health crisis, it would need a partner to monitor the performance of the application. Nouveal selected AppDynamics’ APM solution to ensure application performance issues were identified and resolved quickly, ensuring that any change in service due to potential issues on the backend would not impact the thousands of patients using the app. 

Since partnering with AppDynamics, Nouveal e-santé has been able to make vast improvements in scaling the platform, including:

  • Performing real-time surveillance of their apps as they develop new features
  • Reducing average response times from 1,500 milliseconds to 110 milliseconds 
  • Accelerating capacity from serving 20,000 patients a year to 20,000 patients in just two hours

The Covidom app currently supports more than 186,000 patients, enabling individuals to manage the virus themselves and reducing the strain on hospitals. Today, Covidom is available in France ⁠with growing interest across the globe.

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Guest Post: Atlas VPN Shows How Much The Top 7 Music Streaming services Really Pay Artists

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 13, 2020 by itnerd

According to Atlas VPN investigation, music streaming services are now the largest source of revenue for recorded music. In 2019, music streaming accounted for $7.1 billion or 63.6% of all recorded music revenue, which reached $11.1 billion.

To compare, CD sales revenue amounted to $4.3 billion and 55.2% of total recorded music sales in 2009, but fell sharply to $614.5 million and accounted for only 5.5% of total revenue in 2019. Meaning, throughout this 10 year period, CD sales slumped by nearly 7 times.

So, the music industry has had a major shift toward streaming services, but what platforms should artists focus on?

To help artists and those interested in the music industry navigate the complex streaming service landscape, we provide real-world revenue data as well as the userbase of the most popular streaming services.

Napster tops the list with a $0.00916 payout per-stream, which amounts to $9,160 per 1 million clicks. To earn the US monthly minimum wage of $1,260, artists will have to average over 137 thousand streams per month. 

Apple Music is second on the list with $0.00675 revenue per play, which means that 1 million listens will rake in $6,750 for the artist. For artists to earn minimum wage, they will have to reach nearly 187 thousand plays per month. 

Spotify, arguably the most popular music streaming service, compensates artists $0.00348 per hit, or $3,480 for 1 million plays. Singers will have to get at least 362 thousand clicks to see $1,260 hit their bank accounts. 

Userbase 

Userbase is the second most important element when considering potential revenue, so it is vital to consider this factor before jumping on a specific platform.

Even though Napster has a considerably higher per-play payout rate than other services, you can expect that a total stream count will be minuscule compared to Spotify and YouTube. Napster has only 32 million users, of which 2.5 million are paid subscribers.

In comparison to Napster, Apple Music provides the potential to reach a wider audience since this platform has over 68 million paid users. Following Apple Music comes Deezer, a service that has only 16 million active listeners, out of which 7 million pay for a premium subscription.

Amazon Music is one of the more popular platforms which has 55 million paid subscribers. A music streaming service that is becoming more popular by the day —Spotify, has over 299 million subscribers as of October 2020.

The old-timer Pandora has 60.9 million listeners, but only 6.2 million decided to purchase a premium subscription.

To read the full article, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/this-is-how-much-top-7-music-streaming-services-really-pay-artists

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Proof That Apple’s T2 Security Chip Is Pwnable Has Surfaced…. Apple Now Has A SERIOUS Problem

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 13, 2020 by itnerd

Yesterday I posted a story on news that Apple’s T2 Security chip that is used in a lot of Macs is vulnerable to attacks, and the issues are “unfixable”. Apple hasn’t commented on this, but I think they will have no choice but to comment now seeing as proof of a zero interaction attack has surfaced. A group calling itself the T2 Exploit Team has demonstrated a way to do so without user intervention using a modified USB-C cable:

A second video proves that it succeeded by modifying the Apple logo seen during startup.

You can read the blog post here that has additional details. But this is now a very serious problem for Apple. The fact that they can pwn a Mac without user intervention, and that info is basically available means that no Mac using a T2 chip is safe. Apple needs to respond to this to detail how they are going to protect their Mac user base from this attack as Apple’s usual strategy of silence isn’t going to work this time.

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NordVPN Introduces Colocated Servers

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 13, 2020 by itnerd

Following its promise to become faster, stronger, and more secure, NordVPN is proud to announce yet another upgrade to its infrastructure – the deployment of colocated servers. NordVPN is adding a private server network, wholly owned and controlled by the company itself. The custom-specific servers are expected to provide NordVPN users with an even higher level of security and privacy.

NordVPN’s first colocated servers are up and running in Finland. Several successful tests were run to make sure the new infrastructure operates at its best performance, provides high network speeds, and complies with top security standards.

Server colocation is just one of the many big steps in NordVPN’s product development progress. Only last week, AV-TEST, an independent provider of comparative tests, officially recognized NordVPN as the fastest VPN connection on the market. Furthermore, the company has just finished upgrading its entire infrastructure to RAM servers. Now, all NordVPN’s regular servers are RAM-based, which means that no information is stored locally. 

To continue staying ahead of the market-leading standards, NordVPN has recently undergone the second audit of its no-logs policies and became the first VPN provider to launch a public bug-bounty program. It’s also one of the founders of the VPN Trust Initiative, which is focused on creating industry guidelines and VPN business standards. 

NordVPN has recently announced a strategic partnership with Troy Hunt, a web security expert and the creator of Have I Been Pwned. Hunt is now a member of NordSec’s team of advisors who share their expertise and provide guidance on the company’s security and commercial practices. NordSec is a home for advanced security solutions, including the world’s most advanced VPN service NordVPN, the powerful file encryption tool NordLocker, the business VPN solution NordVPN Teams, and the next-generation password manager NordPass.

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SkipTheDishes Announces Support for Local Restaurants As Second Wave of COVID-19 Hits

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 13, 2020 by itnerd

SkipTheDishes, Canada’s largest online food delivery network, announces initiatives to support their restaurant partners through new waves of restrictions as provinces begin to implement new measures to manage the pandemic’s second wave. 

As the Canadian leader in online food delivery, Skip is responding to the needs of its partners to develop an impactful support package for affected restaurants in regions experiencing restaurant closures that includes:

  • A 25% rebate on commission for local, independent restaurant partners 
  • 0% commission rate for any new restaurants joining the network during the restriction period
  • Additional marketing and order-driving initiatives that can both increase repeat orders and attract new customers, like the launch of Skip Rewards 
  • The continuation of Skip’s restaurant tipping initiative, which has seen over $1 million in generous donations from customers go directly to local restaurants 
  • App functionality that allows partners to diversify their menu offerings, increasing orders and revenue

Skip has already launched this support package for affected areas in both Ontario and Quebec last week, and is ready to action similar support across the country as provincial government restrictions of restaurants are announced. 

Since the start of the pandemic, Skip has worked alongside its restaurant partners to proactively provide impactful support as they continue to navigate the continued effects of COVID-19 on the industry. To date, Skip has provided $24 million to its restaurant partners in commission rebates and order-driving initiatives.

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