Monthly Archives: September 2020

2018 Grand Jury Report On ECUA Allegations Released With Critical Findings And Recommendations – NorthEscambia.com

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Over two years after it was issued, a grand jury report on the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority was released Friday afternoon.

An Escambia County grand jury completed its review into complaints and allegations involving ECUA in July 2018. But that report was never released due to appeals filed by ECUA seeking to block it from becoming public.

A grand jury was convened and tasked with review of the operations, policies, and procedures of ECUA, specifically the grand jury investigation related to eminent domain proceedings, Florida public records and sunshine law, ECUA Board supervision, and delegation of authority.

Following its investigation and witness testimony, the grand jury concluded that criminal charges were not appropriate and returned a no true bill. However, because the grand jury was deeply concerned by the testimony it received, it issued the report. Under Florida law, individuals named in the report were given the opportunity to move to repress or expunge improper unlawful portions of the report. The appeals were ultimately rejected by the First District Court of Appeal.

In reading the findings below and the linked report, keep in mind it was issued two years ago and several aspects have changed. For instance, former ECUA director Stephen Sorrell has since retired, and then board member Elvin McCorvey passed away in January 2019.

TO READ THE FULL REPORT, CLICK HERE (PDF).

In the report, the grand jury made the following recommendations:

We find that the Board has been grossly negligent in their supervision of the executive director, Stephen Sorrell. This is particularly true in the matter involving Bear Marcus Pointe and in their delegation to Sorrell of unlimited authority.

We believe that the absence of term limits on Board Members has created a sense of complacency and has fostered an overreliance on the executive director and attorneys. An amendment to the Special Act should be considered that would place term limits on Board Members.

A clear policy should be established regarding the signing of documents, particularly those involving real property. We believe that the Board Chair should sign such documents. Whenever the executive director is authorized to sign documents on behalf of the Board, there should be clear direction by way of resolution giving that authorization.

There should be a policy, with deadlines, to honor commitments so that builders and developers can properly plan future projects. ECUA should formalize the development process in order to provide cost predictability related to design standards, requirements, and timelines once initial plans have been submitted. The Board should hold a public forum to discuss the development process.

ECUA should develop an advisory board to review engineering manuals and standards to ensure that the manuals are consistent with other similar water and sewer agencies. Public stakeholders should be involved in this process.

We strongly recommend that the Board hire an in-house attorney and support staff who are paid by salary and not on an hourly basis. We believe this would reduce the incentive oflitigation and would foster good will with businesses and individuals that ECUA works with. We also recommend that ECUA maintain a relationship with an attorney who specializes in eminent domain cases.

Indemnity and hold harmless agreements should be in all easements unless specifically prohibited by law. This is standard practice for Gulf Power Company. ECUA has given such coverage to Gulf Power but refused the same request by the owner of the property.

There should be specific policies in place requiring ECUA attorneys to provide regular briefing on attorneys fees and litigation costs in pending cases.

We recommend that appraisal procedures be reviewed particularly as they relate to eminent domain cases. We have noticed appraisals that were considerably under value that resulted in potentially unnecessary litigation.

ODOM AND BARLOW (ECUAs attorneys)

We find that Odom and Barlow heavily misled the Board and failed to keep them informed regarding pending litigation. Information involving settlement offers and discovery sanctions were never presented to the Board. Odom and Barlow did not advise the Board in a timely manner regarding issues with their email system or the missed deadline for the filing of an appeal. This resulted in four years of additional litigation and more than $460,000 in cost to ECUA.

We recommend that ECUA continue to pursue possible legal malpractice claims against Odom and Barlow.

Board members have indicated that they have asked for documents regarding legal fees and expenses, but have not been provided that information. Information regarding attorney expenses should be available at all times. ECUA should establish accounting procedures to make this information readily available.

We find that Odom and Barlow were making policy decisions. This should not continue. We specifically find that they made policy decisions regarding indemnification and hold harmless agreements.In their testimony, Board members have been very supportive of Bradley Odom. Other witnesses did not share this opinion. In his testimony, we found Odom to be both unprofessional and unprepared. We make these findings because they are important and should be considered by the Board in future decisions.

STEPHEN SORRELL

We recommend that an independent review be conducted to determine if Stephen Sorrell should retain his position as executive director of ECUA. Of particular concern are his actions in the Bear Marcus Pointe case. We recommend that the employment contract for the executive director be renegotiated every two years with no automatic renewal provision. The current contract has been in place since 2004.

We recommend that the executive director be formally evaluated annually and that a public feedback component should be included.

SUNSHINE/PUBLIC RECORDS

We recommend ECUA contract with an outside agency to provide annual training for all employees on the requirements for both Sunshine and Public Records. Either the Attorney Generals Office or the First Amendment Foundation may be available to provide this training.

All employees, including Board members, should only use official e-mail accounts when conducting ECUA business. ECUA should establish an archiving system to maintain all e-mail in an offsite location.

ECUA should require that any outside agency that contracts with ECUA comply with all applicable laws regarding Public Records.

BOARD MEETING/SHAD MEETINGS

Board meetings are currently held on Thursday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. We recommend that the meetings be moved to the evening similar to the practices of both Escambia County and the City of Pensacola.

This should result in greater citizen attendance and input.

ECUA should explore broadcasting Board meetings live similar to that done by Escambia County. Meetings should be advertised in multiple ways.

Topics of shade meetings should be announced in public meetings. This procedure is used by Escambia County.

Transcripts of past shade meetings should be posted to the ECU A website as soon as they become a public record.

The Board should hold litigation or shade meetings in all pending cases. Shade meetings may be used to have strategy sessions regarding litigation expenditures. This may help avoid the costly litigation that we have reviewed.

Written by William Reynolds Filed Under TOP STORIES

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2018 Grand Jury Report On ECUA Allegations Released With Critical Findings And Recommendations - NorthEscambia.com

Political signs targeted by thieves – crawfordcountynow.com

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By Kimberly Gasuras, CCN Reporter September 11, 2020 2:08 pm

BUCYRUSStealing political signs is a crime and several Bucyrus residents have reported signs stolen from their yards in the past few weeks.

Mayor Jeff Reser said he has received calls from citizens who have had their signs stolensome very unhappy folks.

I dont blame them for being unhappy. We have a long history in Bucyrus of getting along with our neighborsregardless of political affiliation. I believe that the thefts of political signs are the work of very few people who dont know that this is a serious issue, said Reser. We live in politically charged times and we need to redouble our efforts to respect those people (and their property) with whom we may not agree with politically. Stealing signs is no way to support your candidate.

Bucyrus resident Lisa Miller has had her Biden signs stolen twice in the past month.

Gary and I have had signs stolen twice this year and in past campaigns. We might disagree with a candidate, but we would not stoop to the level of thievery, said Miller.

Roger Groves, who lives a few blocks away from the Millers, had his Trump sign stolen about a month ago.

I think it was teenagers who did it. I did not replace it because I figure they will do it again, Groves said.

Neither Miller nor Groves made a police report regarding their stolen signs.

That is not a good use of our safety forces time. We just replace the signs. Gary also made one that says, Biden/Harris 2020. Thou shalt not steal, said Miller.

Lt. Tom Walker, public information officer for the Bucyrus Police Department, said there have only been two police reports made about stolen political signs.

According to our records, only two people have reported political signs stolen: one Trump and one Biden, said Walker.

He said that in Ohio, stealing a political sign is a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

There are also civil implications, for which someone can be sued by the victim for violating his or her First Amendment rights which is freedom of speech. The penalty for a tort of that kind falls within the discretion of a judge or jury, Walker said.

Walker said there are no suspects yet in the incidents that are being investigated and anyone with information regarding the theft of political signs should contact the Bucyrus Police Department at 419-562-1006.

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Political signs targeted by thieves - crawfordcountynow.com

Singapore Announces Amendments To Its International Arbitration Act – JD Supra

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On September 1, 2020, Singapores Ministry of Law introduced an International Arbitration (Amendment) Bill (the Bill) that proposes two changes to the International Arbitration Act (IAA), which governs the conduct of international arbitrations seated in Singapore. The first change is the addition of default processes and timeframes for appointing arbitrators in multi-party situations where the parties agreement does not specify an appointment procedure. The second change would explicitly recognize the powers of an arbitral tribunal and Singapores High Court to enforce confidentiality obligations. Singapore is a world class international commercial arbitration hub, and these changes aim to further enhance its legal framework for international arbitration.

The Bill is the culmination of a public consultation process that took place, and upon which we reported, last year. On June 26, 2019, Singapores Ministry of Law published a consultation paper seeking comments from the public on six proposals for amendments to the IAA. The proposed amendments included: (1) introduction of a default nomination procedure for arbitrators in multi-party arbitrations; (2) a requirement that arbitrators decide on jurisdiction at the preliminary stage if requested by all parties; (3) recognizing the power of an arbitral tribunal and Singapores High Court to enforce confidentiality obligations; (4) provision for parties to opt in to an appellate procedure on questions of law; (5) exclusion/limitation of set aside grounds under the Model Law and the IAA; and (6) empowerment of Singapore courts to order costs following set aside. We discussed these proposals in detail in our previous article. Ultimately, the Bill adopts two of the proposals made in the consultation paper.

The first amendment that the Bill proposes is the addition of a new section 9B of the IAA, setting out a default mode of appointment of arbitrators in multi-party situations where the parties agreement does not specify the procedure applicable where there are more than two parties.

At present, section 9A of the IAA sets out a default procedure for the appointment of three arbitrators: Each party appoints one co-arbitrator, and the parties appoint the third arbitrator by agreement or, if no agreement is reached in 30 days, the appointing authority appoints the third arbitrator. Section 9A closely follows Article 11(3)(a) of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (1985, with amendments as adopted in 2006). However, this default procedure applies only to situations involving a single claimant and a single respondent. No provision is made for the possibility of multiple claimants and/or multiple respondents who might not be able to agree among themselves on a single co-arbitrator.

This lacuna in the IAA contrasts with leading institutional rules, which have for several years stipulated default multi-party nomination procedures. In order to ensure the equality of the parties, the current versions of leading institutional rules typically provide that the relevant appointing authority shall select all three arbitrators where the parties on one side are unable to agree among themselves upon a co-arbitrator. See, e.g., SIAC Rules (2016), Rule12.2; HKIAC Rules (2018), Art. 8.2(c); ICC Rules (2017), Art. 12(8); LCIA Rules (2020), Art. 8.1 (except where separate sides have been agreed in writing).

The Bill proposes the following default mode of appointment of arbitrators in an arbitration with three or more parties and three arbitrators:

The addition of a procedure for appointing arbitrators in multi-party situations addresses an important deficiency in the Model Law and the current IAA and is a welcome development as arbitrations with three or more parties are common.

New Recognition of Tribunals and high Courts power to enforce confidentiality obligations

The IAA at present does not contain any express provision imposing a duty of confidentiality in relation to an arbitration or empowering the tribunal or the courts to enforce such obligations. However, under Singapore law, there is an implied common law duty on the parties to keep the arbitration and information surrounding the arbitration confidential, which operates as a default duty absent party agreement to the contrary in all Singapore-seated arbitrations. See, e.g., Myanma Yaung Chi Oo Co Ltd v Win Win Nu [2003] 2 SLR(R) 547; International Coal Pte Ltd v Kristle Trading Ltd [2009] 1 SLR(R) 945; AAY v AAZ [2011] 2 SLR 528.

Many institutional rules impose express confidentiality obligations on parties in relation to the arbitral proceedings and/or the award. See, e.g., SIAC Rules (2016), Rule 39; HKIAC Rules(2018), Art. 45; LCIA Rules (2020), Art. 30; but cf. ICC Rules (2017), Art. 22(3). Arbitration legislation rarely does so, though there are exceptions such as section 17 of the Hong Kong Arbitration Ordinance.

The proposed amendment would not itself impose a confidentiality obligation, but would rather by new section 12(1)(j) to the IAA expressly empower the tribunal to enforce any existing obligation of confidentiality (i) that the parties to an arbitration agreement have agreed to in writing, whether in the arbitration agreement or in any other document; (ii) under any written law or rule of law; or (iii)under the rules of arbitration (including the rules of arbitration of an institution or organisation) agreed to or adopted by the parties. This clarification is a welcome amendment and should give tribunals confidence to respond to breaches of confidentiality appropriately.

The Bill is the latest in a series of amendments to the IAA, which was also amended in 2001, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2012, 2016, and 2019. The regularity of the amendments highlights the fast pace of innovation in arbitration legislation in Asia, as well as Singapores initiative to ensure that its arbitration legislation remains cutting edge and responsive to the needs of users, and competitive with regional rivals. The latest proposed amendments demonstrate that Singapore remains intent on cementing its status as one of the premier seats of international arbitration. It is important for arbitration users to regularly update their arbitration clauses with the help of experienced counsel to ensure consistency with current procedures and to take advantage of recent innovations.

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US conspiracy charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange politically motivated – ComputerWeekly.com

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US extradition charges filed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are politically motivated, a court heard yesterday.

Mark Feldstein, a journalism historian expert and professor of broadcasting at the university of Maryland in the US, told the Old Bailey the case was the first use of the US Espionage Act for journalistic activities.

The political motive of the prosecution was shown by the unprecedented nature of the charges against him, the fact that Assanges prosecution was rejected by former president Barack Obama, the framing of the indictment, and current president Donald Trumps known vitriol for the press, he said.

He was speaking on the second day of an extradition hearing against the founder of WikiLeaks, who faces 18 charges in total, 17 of which are under the US Espionage Act.

Assange was re-arrested before the hearing, when he was served with a superseding indictment which added new allegations that he conspired with computer hackers to obtain information for WikiLeaks.

During the hearing, Feldsteins evidence came under attack from James Lewis QC, representing the US, who accused Feldstein of omitting from his witness statement evidence that would harm Assanges defence.

Under cross-examination from Assanges defence counsel, Mark Summers QC said there had been a long history in the US of whistleblowers leaking classified information to the media.

In written evidence, he said the Senate Intelligence Committee had counted 147 classified leaks to eight top US newspapers in just six months, and a study by a law professor found there had been thousands upon thousands of national security-related leaks to the media.

He told the court that although the US government had charged whistleblowers, it had never charged publishers because it feared running foul of the US constitution, which protects freedom of speech.

The government intentionally paints Julian Assanges activity in a very nefarious light. Soliciting information, gathering information is a standard thing that all journalists do. It is standard operating procedure. We teach it at conferences and journalism school, he said.

Feldstein said he was sceptical of the US governments claims that documents published by WikiLeaks disclosed the names of people and put them at risk.

He said over-classification of documents by the US government was rampant and that its principle concern was not national security, but embarrassment.

It is easy to assert that there will be harm from national security stories that will be published. It is often impossible to refute. If you look at this at face value, you have to be sceptical, he said.

When the New York Times began publishing excerpts of the Pentagon Papers, a top secret study of the Vietnam war, the solicitor general claimed it would cause irreparable harm to the security of the US.

He later admitted that he had never seen any trace of a threat to the national security from the publication.

Questioned by Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Assange, Feldstein said that according to publicly available accounts, the Obama Administration was eager to file charges against Assange.

The justice department decided in 2013 that it could not prosecute Assange because it would set a precedent for the prosecution of journalists, and it was not clear that charging Assange with publishing classified information would succeed.

That changed under the Trump regime, when the administration wanted to put a head on a pike to send a message to journalists. Trump talked about putting reporters in jail and the CIA director Mike Pompeo attacked WikiLeaks as a hostile intelligence service.

James Lewis QC, acting for the US, challenged Feldsteins account, arguing that it was clear that a US grand jury continued its investigation into Assange through the Obama presidency and into the Trump presidency.

Feldstein said he knew from his experience as a reporter that grand juries continue investigating, but that the proof is in the pudding the Obama regime did not charge Assange.

Lewis questioned why Feldstein, as an impartial witness, had left out a full copy of an article from the Washington Post he referred to his report in a footnote.

The paper reported that officials had said a formal decision had not been made on charging Assange and that there was little possibility of bringing a case against him unless he had been implicated in criminal activity, other than releasing top secret documents.It also quoted a WikiLeaks spokesman who said he was sceptical that the US government was not going to prosecute WikiLeaks.

The reason you might not have included it was it has an important section you might not want anyone else to read, said Lewis.

Feldstein said he had made editorial decisions on what to include in his report. He said he had reported that the Obama administration had decided not to bring charges not that the grand jury investigation was closed.

Professor, as an unbiased expert, would it not have been fair to put in your report that there was an ongoing investigation? said Lewis.

The court heard that Assanges US lawyer, Barry Pollack, had said the US had not informed him that they had closed the investigation and that WikiLeaks had tweeted that if Obama granted clemency to Assange, he would agree to go to a US prison.

Lewis repeatedly asked Feldstein why he had left that and other similar information out of his report.

I do not see how these tweets about what Assange or WikiLeaks did really shed much light on it. What matters, and is more credible, are the people who are engaged on it, he said.

Lewis pressed Feldstein whether, if Assange had conspired with Chelsea Manning to leak classified documents, putting her in breach of US law, Assange would also commit a crime.

It would depend on the details, said Feldstein.

The journalism historian said he did not agree that WikiLeaks should have published unredacted documents that could have potentially exposed individuals.

Lewis argued that a grand jury had found probable cause to bring charges against Assange, and that the charges were brought by independent prosecutors following a legal code.

Are you saying that President Trump or the Attorney General directed them to bring charges irrespective of the evidence against Assange? he asked.

We wont know until history renders the motive, replied Feldstein.

Under re-examination byMark Summers QC, also representing Assange, Feldstein said journalists solicit information from sources as an essential part of their work.

The New York Times worked closely with Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, to publish secret government documents on the Vietnam war. At one point, a reporter had a key to the room where the documents were kept.

Journalists conspire with their sources every day. They cajole them to get what they need. They send them back to get more information. If that becomes conspiring, that is most of what journalism does, he said.

Feldstein said it was telling that the US government had brought conspiracy charges against Assange, rather than prosecuting him under the US Intelligence Identities Protection Act for leaking government cables that disclosed names.

The fact that Assange was indicted on 17 charges of espionage, he said, suggested the US was trying to set a wider precedent for the press.

The case continues.

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US conspiracy charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange politically motivated - ComputerWeekly.com

US demands hinder Spanish probe into alleged CIA ties to security firm that spied on Assange – EL PAS in English

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There will be no judicial cooperation forthcoming from the United States unless a Spanish judge reveals his information sources in an investigation into alleged espionage against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Judge Jos de la Mata of Spains High Court (Audiencia Nacional) has sent a request for judicial cooperation to US authorities as part of his probe into a Spanish private security company named UC Global S.L. and its owner David Morales, on allegations that this firm secretly recorded Assanges private meetings with lawyers, politicians, relatives and journalists at the embassy, where he took refuge in 2012 to avoid separate legal proceedings against him in Sweden.

Judge De la Mata has asked US prosecutors for the IP addresses of the computers or other networked devices that allegedly connected from American soil to a server in southern Spain

Morales was arrested a year ago and released pending trial. According to testimony from several protected witnesses and former UC Global workers who gave evidence in connection with the case, Morales provided the CIA with recordings, video material and reports detailing the activities of the 49-year-old Australian cyber-activist inside the diplomatic mission, where he lived until his eviction in April 2019.

Judge De la Mata, who is heading the probe into UC Global, has asked US prosecutors for the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of the computers or other networked devices that allegedly connected from American soil to a server held by the private security firm at its headquarters in the southern Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera.

That server stored all the recordings made by cameras at the embassy, where UC Global was in charge of security, as well as reports drafted by company employees detailing each visit that Assange received, images of the visitors' passports, and photographs of their cellphones and electronic devices.

According to testimony by several ex-workers as well as e-mails used as evidence in the investigation, US intelligence services allegedly had access to this central server.

US prosecutors have now sent a letter to Mara de las Heras, a liaison judge for Spain in the US, asking her to convey their demands to De la Mata. These include showing proof that the requested IP addresses are relevant and substantial to the investigation. The document requests further details about the Spanish probe, including the sources of information for most of the assertions made in the request for judicial cooperation.

The Spanish judge has been asked to answer a long list of questions regarding every aspect of his investigation, including who he believes that Morales was providing information to, or whether the judge thinks Morales was working for a foreign information service or as an agent for a foreign power or whether it was simply a case of bribery.

US prosecutors have asked for all this information to be relayed before October 16, otherwise we will assume that Spanish authorities are not interested and the request will be shelved.

The Spanish judge has been asked to answer a long list of questions regarding every aspect of his investigation, including who he believes that Morales was providing information to

The alleged espionage on Assange by UC Global was revealed in 2019 by an EL PAS investigation that uncovered numerous illegal recordings made while the WikiLeaks founder was living at the Ecuadorean embassy.

Assanges defense later took legal action against Morales, who is a former member of the military, and against his company. Morales is currently being investigated for alleged violations of privacy and client-attorney privilege, as well as for bribery and money laundering.

The cyber-activist was evicted from the embassy after Ecuador withdrew his asylum status, and since then Assange has been held at Londons high-security Belmarsh Prison. He is fighting extradition to the US, where he is wanted on 18 charges of espionage and computer misuse that carry a maximum penalty of 175 years.

WikiLeakss publication of secret US military documents shed light on war crimes by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq; the organization also revealed thousands of diplomatic cables and released an operations manual for the US prison at Guantanamo, among other disclosures.

Judge De la Mata has just summoned Michelle Wallemak, the former head of operations at UC Global, to provide testimony in court as one of the suspects under investigation in his probe. Wallemak allegedly ordered the companys security personnel to carry out some of the espionage activities against Assange.

English version by Susana Urra.

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US demands hinder Spanish probe into alleged CIA ties to security firm that spied on Assange - EL PAS in English

TikTok admits secretly banning the word "gay" and similar terms in Russia, elsewhere – Boing Boing

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TikTok admitted today that it has banned certain phrases from being used by users in regions that include Russia, Bosnia and Jordan, with "gay", "I am gay" and "transgender" named as examples by the BBC. The firm says it will continue to restrict the terms and related hashtags to "comply with local laws" and to prevent their use "to discover pornographic content."

A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think-tank said many LGBT hashtags were "shadow-banned" in Bosnia, Jordan and Russia.A shadow ban limits the discovery of content without indicating that a particular hashtag is on a ban list. TikTok said that while some terms were restricted to comply with local laws, others were limited because they were primarily used to discover pornographic content.

The ban was incompetently implemented, resulting in Tik Tok suffering from the Scunthorpe Problem, which appears to have played a role in exposing the policy.

An important thing to note is that this is only vicariously a form of censorship. It is a content policy, embraced willingly (if covertly) by TikTok so that it can profit in markets it has no obligation to enter in the first place.

The traditional techie argument for such policies is that you can't possibly expect businesses to forgo operations in totalitarian or oppressive regimes, that their need to do so trumps any ethical or human rights concerns, and that complaining about it makes you naive and childish. (Tik Tok is based in such a regime, at least for now.)

But a level of flagrant bigotry, beyond the needs of capital or authoritarian regimes, is something Tik Tok has long specialized in. Last year, it admitted limiting material posted by people who were disabled, disfigured, autistic or simply "ugly". Tik Tok's contempt for minorities and the marginalized is corporate culture, not merely an act of compliance.

"This is increasingly sounding like a Black Mirror episode"Elon Musk, introducing Neuralink. Elon Musk's brain-computer-interface venture today unveiled a prototype that involves a pig with a computer chip implanted inside their brain. The coin-sized device is implanted beneath the creature's skull. "It's like a Fitbit, but in your skull," says Musk, and it's implanted by []

A reported UFO in the Congo turned out to be a Loon Balloon, floated 20km up to provide cellular internet out in the sticks. The operators neglected to tell the relevant authorities what they were doing; two UFO hunters ended up in jail while Loon, a subsidiary of Google holding company Alphabet, smoothed things out. []

Isolation.site does just one thing: it visits URLs that you want to check out but don't trust, and shows you what comes up. It's not just a convenient wrapper around the curl command-line tool, but generates a rendered snapshot of the site to look around. Protect your devices from web-transmitted infections (WTIs). Picked up some []

No, your phone does not qualify as emergency tech. While it's obviously a huge help when you find yourself in a jam, your phone's main utility in the event you're stranded with a dead vehicle or stuck somewhere in the middle of the night is to call somebody for help. Instead, you should always have []

TL;DR: The Complete Google Cloud eBook and Video Course Bundle will get you up to speed on using one of the fastest-growing cloud platforms anywhere. While a lion's share of the talk in the cloud services space is consumed by the big two Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure there's actually a []

For power and strength training, coaches and trainers are increasingly recommending kettlebell work. These portable weights combine strength training, cardiovascular fitness, and improving your flexibility while also strengthening your core. While kettlebells are great for explosive workouts and dynamic strength, balance and agility training, they do have a few downsides, like needing about ten different []

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TikTok admits secretly banning the word "gay" and similar terms in Russia, elsewhere - Boing Boing

Someone out there doesn’t like Twitter accounts critical of China – India Today

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Twitter is the platform where people from all over the world, including leaders and celebrities, voice their opinions freely. But this free speech model did not go well within the governance framework of the Communist Party of China (CCP); the microblogging site was banned in mainland China and its equivalent called Sina Weibo emerged. Here's the catch: users' posts on Weibo are heavily-monitored and censored, removing the very essence of free speech.

For the past few months, as the world is grappling with coronavirus that probably originated in China, it looks like Twitter too may have become victim of a censorship bug that could have the same origin.

There was a lot of controversy when Fei-Fei Li, an artificial intelligence (AI) expert who allegedly has close connections with the CCP, was appointed to the board of Twitter as an Independent Director in May 2020.

Li quit her role as chief scientist of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) from Google in October 2018 following a controversy surrounding Google's Project Maven initiative, which helped the Pentagon identify drone targets from blurry video footage.

Li was also instrumental in the setting up of a new Google AI lab in China that may be involved in the controversial Project Dragonfly, which was meant to be a search engine that would suit China's censorship rules.

Twitter currently uses an AI technique called deep learning to recommend tweets to its users and also uses AI to identify racist content and hate speech, or content from extremist groups.

France-based Chinese dissident and commentator Wang Longmeng speaking to Radio Free Asia said that hiring Li to work at Twitter was like hiring a fox to guard the hencoop. "They seem to have ignored the backstory of Li's previous cooperation with China," he said. "Fei-Fei Li... secretly opposed Google's cooperation with the US Department of Defense from a high moral standpoint ... but turned a blind eye to Project Dragonfly, in which Google was planning to help the Chinese Communist Party vet online speech."

Wang said Li also used a slogan closely associated with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the CCP in a 2017 media interview in China, pledging to help Beijing develop its AI capabilities. Li was quoted in Chinese media as using the CCP slogan "stay true to our founding mission" and said that "China has awakened."

"I hope that democratic countries will reflect on this and start plugging the loopholes," he said. "Fei-Fei Li is very likely to be one of those loopholes."

A week after Li joined Twitter, numerous handles that had criticised this appointment were allegedly suspended without basis or reasons. A Twitter user Caijinglengyan discovered that four of his accounts were simultaneously deleted on May 18. He did not receive an explanation until May 23, when he was told his accounts had been taken down for violating Twitter's rules against posting identical content on duplicate accounts.

The user stated that he believes the real reason for his account cancellations was that on May 17, he tweeted that Twitter's new board member has a "red background."

Caijinglengyan claimed that many other Twitter accounts used by Chinese dissidents were suddenly suspended without notice. After he contacted them, he found that they had also criticised Li or started commenting about her just before their accounts were banned.

Journalist Didi Kirsten Tatlow, a Berlin-based researcher and writer specialising in Chinese affairs, tweeted about her latest research paper for the German Council on Foreign Relations which was on the topic - 'How Democratic security can protect Europe from a Rising China'. Soon after this, she received a communication from Twitter about possible complaints on this post. While Twitter did not find any basis to take actions here, it surely looks like a targeted attack of bots which may have reported this tweet minutes after it was posted.

While speaking to India Today, Didi Kirsten opined that this could be part of a targeted campaign where tweets critical of the CCP and its allies were mass reported. It could be bots or anonymous users who are tasked with carrying this out in an organised manner. How else would one explain the immediacy of Didi's posts getting reported?

As tensions build in Ladakh near the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the death of soldier Subedar Nyima Tenzin hailing from Tibet and part of the Special Frontier Force (SFF) of the Indian Army has changed the dynamics of this conflict. Reporting from the ground, India Today's @AbhishekBhalla7 managed to interview the father of a solider injured in a mine blast. This interview went viral and further irked the Chinese establishment now that the SFF and that its soldiers regularly fought against China as part of the Indian Army was no secret.

Bhalla's Twitter handle went kaput soon after; "unusual activity" cited on the restricted page. It was taken up with the Twitter India team and the account was restored soon after.

Twitter responded to questions of India Today, saying: "We would like to reiterate that the account was never suspended. The reporter was facing a login related issue which was resolved quickly."

The login issue occurred only after the account was restricted and was visible to Twitter followers while visiting Bhalla's account. Bhalla confirms this chronology of events. His account was reset after being restricted. While his account was restricted, he could not access his account and needed a two-factor authentication to reset his access.

In late August, @ChinarCorpsIA - one of the official handles of the Indian Army - was allegedly shadow banned when the handle posted a thread on India's war in 1965 against Pakistan. Multiple tweets part of the thread was hidden or unavailable to the followers of the handle.

Other than journalists, OSINT handles too are facing the brunt while posting tweets that question the policies of CCP and reporting developments on the LAC with respect to the ongoing events involving the Chinese and Indian armies.

Famous handles like @Indopac_info and @CestMoiz have recently expressed their anguish over their own tweets being hidden from their views. These are results of an account allegedly getting shadow banned.

The problem for users is not just suspension of accounts by Twitter, but a more powerful option that the micro-blogging site may have in its repertoire-a shadow ban. Often, journalists and popular handles alike allegedly get shadow banned if their account violates a preset rule structure of Twitter.

Twitter reject the claim that they ever indulge in shadow banning a user.

A shadow ban can be defined as "deliberately making someone's content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster."

When a person is shadow banned, their posts on a platform are rendered essentially invisible to everyone but themselves. Their experience using a site may not change - they feel like they are still posting normally - but other people cannot see the material they produce.

A company statement dated July 2018 reads: "We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology."

But critics are not satisfied. Interestingly, as of January 1, 2020 Twitter's Terms of Service state that they: (...) may also remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services, limit distribution or visibility of any Content on the service (...)

In fact, there is even a website where one can verify if his/her Twitter handle is shadow banned based on a few parameters.

Popular OSINT handle Indopac_info who is a noted critic of the CCP spoke to India Today on the same.

He says, "Twitter has many reasons to restrict a user's reach with their "shadow ban" algorithms. They make sure that only part of my followers receives my tweets on their feed. Many followers told me that they no longer see my tweets or only see some of them. Sometimes, they receive my tweets with a delay of hours or up to 1-2 days."

"Twitter also deletes most of the retweets and likes that I get. I see my retweet count going down a lot, all the time actually and in big numbers. Followers also tell me that they see their retweets and likes disappear. I see the same with new followers. Twitter deletes the follows and followers told me the same many times."

He feels that such actions on CCP critical accounts are widespread and many others face similar issues, especially when commenting on China and CCP.

Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferatntd) is a People's Republic of China-born human rights activist and author, best known for her practice of 'Falun Gong'- the subsequent government suppression of the movement - and the book, Witnessing History: One Chinese Woman's Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong, she wrote about her experience regarding it.

She spoke to India Today on this issue and expressed concerns that she too experiences issues that a lot of others have expressed. Even though she is based in the USA, she feels her voice gets suppressed regularly on Twitter.

She said "I feel very sad that I have to do 'calculations' before posting something. We are supposed to have freedom of speech in the US. But in my case, I had to practice a kind of self-censorship, although many people say that I am very brave, I still am afraid. Tech giants are having too much power. This is a very serious issue that we must tackle now. I hope we find a way to deal with it."

Jennifer was referring to her story on Fei-Fei Li and the fear of the same getting suppressed if she had tweeted about the same. So, she posted updates without triggering "alarms".

It won't be unrealistic to assume an army of fake bots or actual people reporting CCP critical tweets. This could very well be the reason behind the message Berlin-based journalist Didi Kirsten Tatlow received from Twitter. It is a fact that Twitter removed close to 200,000 Chinese Twitter bots and fake accounts that were indulging in posting pro-CCP content during the Covid-19 outbreak and Hong Kong protests. Some of the handles and tweets disappearing could also be owing to mass reporting of the same by such bots and fake accounts.

Solomon Yue, Vice-Chairman and CEO at Republicans Overseas, spoke to India Today expressing his anguish and called for a US-Senate level hearing on the alleged shadow banning of Twitter. Republicans Overseas is a political organisation in the USA that is recognised by the Republican National Committee.

He said, "What I like to see is that Twitter users who have experienced shadow banning of CCP critics by Twitter gather their evidences while my friends in the US Senate to hold a Senate Committee hearing based on their evidences. Twitter is not supposed to regulate free speech when it was exempted from users' legal actions by Congress."

The US Congress exempts social networking sites from lawsuits in order to not regulate or edit free speech.

(The writer is a Singapore-based Open-Source Intelligence analyst)

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Someone out there doesn't like Twitter accounts critical of China - India Today

Reprieve for renters facing eviction in England and Wales – The Guardian

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Renters facing eviction have been offered a reprieve but only if they live in areas under local coronavirus lockdowns.

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, confirmed that court proceedings for evictions would restart in England and Wales on 21 September after being suspended early in the pandemic.

But he said that if an area was in a local lockdown that included a restriction on gathering in homes, evictions would not be enforced by bailiffs.

Jenrick also announced a truce on enforcement action this Christmas, with no evictions permitted in England and Wales in the run-up to and over the holiday except in the most serious circumstances, such as cases involving antisocial behaviour or domestic abuse.

The measures appeared to confirm fears among homelessness and renter campaign groups that the government would not be persuaded into a more permanent U-turn to protect renters who lost income during the spring and summer lockdown and so were issued eviction notices by their landlords.

District councils have said that up to half a million people could be at risk, while the housing charity Shelter said by the end of June, about 174,000 renters had been warned by their landlords that they were facing eviction. Shelter estimated that a quarter of a million renters were in arrears.

As states across the world ordered citizens to stay home in February, the UN housing rapporteur was unequivocal. Housing has become a frontline defence against coronavirus,said Leilani Farha. She called on states to declare an end to all evictions of anyone, anywhere for any reason until the end of the pandemic.

Four months later, and as parts of the world emerge into the so-called new normal, her successor, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, iswarningof an impending tsunami of evictions. In the US, amajority of states have resumed evictions, leaving as many as 40 million disproportionately people of colour vulnerable to homelessness due to rent arrears.

Bailiffs are back in business across the channel, too, afteran extension to Frances winter eviction banexpired last month. In Paris, the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has protected social renters by extending the eviction ban on public housing to 31 October protecting them until next summer by segueing into next winterstrve hivernale.

Some countries are doing more. In Spain, where the leftwing Podemost party are part of a governing coalition,the government has introduced an eviction banthat will remain in force until six months after the end of the state of emergency. An interest-free micro-loan scheme is open to renters who have lost income due to the pandemic.

Strong protections are also in place in Germany, where renting is widespread andrenters unions are well-established and powerful. In March the federal government banned the eviction of tenants who fall behind in rent between April and the end of September, while giving itself the discretion to extend the measure for another six months. Landlords can still take tenants to court to recover lost rent.

For millions, though, the situation remains bleak and uncertain. Thousands in poorer countries such as Kenya and Brazil were being thrown out of their homes even as the pandemic raged, Rajagopal reported. He warned that when people are deprived of shelter, they become more vulnerable to COVID-19 and this heightens the risk of widespread contagion.

I call upon all States to comply with their human rights obligations and ensure that no one is left in a position of increased vulnerability to Covid-19, he said.

Damien Gayle

Ministers have already changed the law to increase notice periods to six months, meaning renters served notice now can stay in their homes over winter. The only exceptions are cases where tenants have demonstrated antisocial behaviour or committed fraud, and the landlord would like to let their property to another tenant.

We have protected renters during the pandemic by banning evictions for six months the longest eviction ban in the UK, Jenrick said. To further support renters, we have increased notice periods to six months an unprecedented measure to help keep people in their homes over the winter months.

The campaign group Generation Rent had welcomed the one-month extension to the eviction ban, but called for a long-term plan to protect renters homes with emergency legislation to restrict the use of section 21 no-fault evictions, as well as eviction for rent arrears.

Labours shadow housing secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, said the announcement showed that the government was gearing up for a drastic increase in evictions this winter, just as coronavirus cases are rising.

They are threatening public health and putting lives at risk, she said. The ban on evictions cannot end until they have a credible plan to keep their promise that no renter should lose their home because of coronavirus.

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Reprieve for renters facing eviction in England and Wales - The Guardian

Why is Pakistans biggest TikTok star leaving the app? – Global Village space

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One of Pakistans biggest TikTok stars has made the shocking decision to leave the app. Jannat Mirza, who is the biggest TikTok star in the country, and has more than 8 million followers on TikTok, recently revealed that she is quitting the app after a rough period of being shadowbanned by the app.

Known for her Bollywood lip-syncs and slow-mo, transform videos, the star has acquired quite a following in recent months. But lately, she fears that her hard work is getting squandered due to her being shadowbanned.

Shadowbanning is the act of blocking a users content on social media sites, in such a way that the user doesnt know its happening. This means that unless you go to the users profile and look for content, you will find it, otherwise a random user wont see it on their timeline, especially if theyre not following you.

Read more: Fiza Hussains journey from Aalima to notorious Hareem Shah

Mirza realized that her low views and her most recent videos being put under review rather than simply being uploaded most likely means that TikTok itself isnt allowing her to do good numbers, she posted a screenshot on her Instagram stories declaring that she would leave the app soon. It is yet to be seen if she actually does end up leaving the app that launched her into the cultural zeitgeist or if she can work with TikTok to figure out how to fix the problems with the app.

Mirza broke out on the social app thanks to her stunning good looks, and even attracted attention from within the Pakistani industry who sought her out for modeling and music videos.

Among them was Sarmad Qamar, who had the actress star in a music video for his song. Her fame also brought her an opportunity to work in Bollywood alongside Kartik Aryan, which she turned down due to the ill treatment of Muslims in India. Instead, shes set to star in the next Syed Noor film with Saima.

Read more: Pornography: Pakistan issues final warning to TikTok

However, there has been a downside to her success, with fans editing her pics and making lewd content with her face. She has previously been subjected to being hacked as well and has publicly admitted to feeling sad over the lengths people would go to tarnish her image.

Nonetheless, with 8 million followers on TikTok and more than a million followers on Instagram, it is clear that regardless of TikTok, Mirza is here to stay. With her stepping into the acting world, you may just see her transition to other mediums soon.

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Why is Pakistans biggest TikTok star leaving the app? - Global Village space

Meet GitOps, the key to launching effective software releases in the cloud-native era – SiliconANGLE News

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The automation story behind DevOps centers on CI/CD, the continuous integration and continuous deployment that results in working code ready for production.

Deployment isnt the end of the process, however. Releasing code is the missing step putting new software in front of customers and end-users while ensuring it meets the ongoing objectives of the business.

Achieving this customer centricity and rapid deployments of CI/CD is difficult enough with traditional on-premises and cloud environments. But when deploying to Kubernetes-powered cloud-native environments, the massive scale and ephemerality of the operational environment requires an end-to-end rethink of how to release software into production and operate it once its there.

While most enterprises are currently in the midst of ramping up their Kubernetes deployments, certain industries telecommunications in particular are already looking ahead to the need for unprecedented scale.

As part of the 5G buildout, telcos are standing up small data centers at cell towers and points of presence. But small is a misleading adjective, since these data centers are essentially clouds in their own right, running potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of Kubernetes clusters each.

From the perspective of the telco business, product managers want the ability to roll out new services to customers in sophisticated, dynamic ways. They may want to roll out new capabilities to a small group of customers, and then expand the deployment over time. They may have geographically specific offerings. Or perhaps they will delineate different service categories by compliance restrictions.

Furthermore, the telcos represent the tip of the sword. Many industries, from banking to automotive to media, are also looking to leverage similar capabilities to drive market share and customer value.

The list of possible variations in service offerings that such enterprises might want to roll out to different segments of their respective customer bases is extensive. Similarly, the scale that their technical infrastructures, as well as the personnel supporting them, also goes well beyond their earlier requirements from a mere handful of years previous.

On the one hand, this explosive growth in business demand for ephemerality and scale is driving the exceptionally rapid maturation of the Kubernetes ecosystem.

On the other hand, all this cutting-edge technology actually has to work. And thats where cloud-native operations fits in.

Cloud-native computing takes the established infrastructure as code principle and extends it to model-driven, configuration-based infrastructure. Cloud-native also leverages the shift-left, immutable infrastructure principle as well as favoring extensibility over customizability, itself a model-driven practice.

Although a model-driven, configuration-based approach to software deployment is necessary for achieving the goals of cloud-native computing, it is not sufficient to address the challenges of ensuring the scale and ephemerality characteristics of deployed software in the cloud-native context.

Software teams must extend such configurability to production environments in a way that expects and deals with ongoing change in production. To this end, canary deployments, blue/green rollouts, automated rollbacks and other techniques are necessary to both deal with and take advantage of ongoing, often unpredictable change in production environments.

Abstracting across different production environments is also an important challenge. Whether it be different public clouds, different Kubernetes distributions, or hybrid IT challenges that mix cloud and on-premises environments (perhaps for compliance reasons), cloud-native release orchestration must abstract such differences in order to provide a coherent, configuration-based approach to automating deployments across such variations.

Dependency management is also essential. Whether it be dependencies among individual microservices, or perhaps dependencies upon APIs that provide access to other types of software components, its important that unexpected dependencies dont break the deployment, even when individual components are ephemeral.

Finally, software teams must be able to deal with unprecedented scale. Kubernetes itself is built to scale, with an architecture that deploys microservices into containers, containers into pods, and pods into clusters but clusters arent enough.

Enterprises are already working through the intricacies of multicluster Kubernetes deployments. Software teams must also consider groups of clusters and then fleets of groups of clusters. Such fleets would typically cover multiple regions or data centers, bringing additional challenges of massive scale to the cloud-native party.

In a useful oversimplification, the cloud-native community has boiled down everything organizations need to do to get Kubernetes running in full production into three days.

Day 0 is the planning day. Day 1 is when you roll out Kubernetes and the rest of your cloud-native ecosystem. Day 2 represents full operations at scale.

Dividing such a complex, interconnected set of tasks into three discrete days highlights one important fact: Day 2 has so far gotten short shrift.To provide adequate attention to day 2 issues, the community has coined a term: GitOps.

GitOps is a cloud-native model for operations that takes into account all the concepts this article has covered so far, including model-driven, configuration-based deployments onto immutable infrastructure that supports dynamic production environments at scale.

GitOps gets its name from Git, the hugely popular open source source code management tool. Yet, although SCM is primarily focused on the pre-release parts of the software lifecycle, GitOps focuses more on the Ops than the Git.

GitOps extends the Git-oriented best practices of the software development world to ops, aligning with the configuration-based approach necessary for cloud-native operations only now, the team uses Git to manage and deploy the configurations as well as source code.

Such an approach promises to work at scale even at the fleet level, since GitOps is well-qualified to abstract all the various differences among environments, deployments, and configurations necessary to deal with ephemeral software assets at scale.

GitOps also promises a new approach to software governance that resolves issues of bottlenecks. In traditional software development (including Agile), a quality gate or change control board review requirement can stop a software deployment dead in its tracks. Instead, GitOps abstracts the policies that lead to such slowdowns, empowering organizations to better leverage automation to deliver adequate software government at speed.

The beating heart of cloud-native computing is open-source software, so its only logical that open-source projects are spearheading efforts in cloud-native operations.

For instance, Argo CD is a declarative, GitOps-centric CD tool for Kubernetes. Similarly, Tekton is a flexible open source framework for creating CI/CD systems, allowing developers to build, test and deploy across cloud providers and on-premises systems.

In many ways, however, such projects are only pieces of the cloud-native operations puzzle, and it falls to the vendors to put the pieces together.To begin with, a number of vendors tout the model-driven configuration-based approach. Here are a few examples.

Digital.ai Software Inc., for example, takes a model-driven, scalable approach, making changes simple to make and to propagate to all environments. With Digital.ai, developers dont need to maintain complicated scripts or workflows for each deployment instance.

Octopus Deploy Pty Ltd.follows a similar approach, with model-driven ops configuration that provides simple configuration abstractions across heterogeneous environments, for example, on-premises as well as in the cloud.

With Octopus, instead of writing separate scripts for each environment, developers can put those scripts into Octopus and parametrize them, creating an abstracted configuration representation. Instead of separate CI/CD tooling, ops tooling and runbook automation, Octopus provides one deployment tool across all tools, environments and platforms.

Similar to Octopus, ShuttleOps Inc. encapsulates a host of connectors and its own coded application and infrastructure configurations under the covers, parametrizing them as steps in the pipeline workflow. It then reports results to the orchestration and management tools of choice.

CircleCI (Circle Internet Services Inc.) and Cloudbees Inc. are two other vendors that represent a full deployment via declarative configuration files.

Many vendors also resolve the interdependencies among microservices (as well as other components) in production. Cloud66 Inc. enables developers and architects to define service dependencies in an abstracted but deterministic fashion. Those dependencies define the workflows that operations must manage.

Cloud66 can then tell developers when they need a new version of a particular piece of software in order to resolve such dependencies, and it also tells operators what they need to do to support it.

Harness Inc. offers what it calls a continuous delivery abstraction model that uses templates to eliminate dependencies. The CDAM resolves the impact of upstream and downstream microservices dependencies with automatic rollbacks.

Several vendors pull together the cloud-native operations story with a GitOps offering.

At WeaveWorks Inc., GitOps is context-aware, leading to a model of the entire system which represents its desired state. WeaveWorks supports multiple variations, for example, custom platform as a service on-premises as part of the same comprehensive model.WeaveWorks leverages a distributed database for configurations that supports potentially millions of clusters and works in high latency and occasionally disconnected environments.

GitLab Inc. is another vendor with explicit GitOps support. GitLab offers a single platform that takes an infrastructure as code approach, defining configurations and policies as code while leveraging automation to apply changes with Git merge requests.

This automation support in GitLab resolves many governance issues, as it leads to approvals with fewer bottlenecks. GitLabs GitOps strategy is all about automation, for example, automated rollbacks.GitLab also supports release evidence, which gives an audit trail of everything included in each release along with associated metadata.

D2IQ Inc. touts its own flavor of GitOps it calls GitNative, which combines GitOps and Kubernetes-native CI/CD. The goal is to maximize speed, scale, and quality via full-lifecycle Git automation from DevOps to GitOps to GitNative.

D2IQ takes an immutable infrastructure approach that leverages Kubernetes APIs and primitives. Its platform is both serverless and stateless, also works on-premises. D2IQ leverages both the Argo CD and Tekton open source projects.

A final GitOps-centric vendor is Codefresh Inc., whichuses Git as the single source of truth, automating and securing pull requests and deployments. It handles source code provenance and support for multiple regions.

Where the rubber hits the road with Day 2 Kubernetes deployments is whether they will handle massive scale scale on the order of millions of clusters.

Several vendors tout such capabilities. WeaveWorks offers cluster management that runs on the customers choice of managed Kubernetes platform plus application management, including release automation and progressive CD that scales to fleets.

Vamp.io BV leverages Kubernetes-based environments to provide release orchestration for applications that consist of large numbers of ephemeral microservices. This vendor offers release orchestration for DevOps that fully automates releases, including A/B testing, fine-grained segmentation and multitenant releases.

Rancher Labs Inc.,soon to be part of SUSE,offers GitOps at scale. It deals well with large numbers of heterogeneous nodes, including clusters, cluster groups and fleets. D2IQ also touts a single pane of glass for managing fleets of Kubernetes clusters.

A few vendors are also tackling the difficult challenge of ensuring that code in production continues to meet the business need even when that code is inherently dynamic and ephemeral. I call this capability intent-based operations.

On this list: the Keptn open-source project from Dynatrace LLC. Keptn produces a remediation file that automates the remediation of code in production as it drifts from its intended purpose. This remediation also allows for graceful failure in an automated fashion.

Keptn validates whether a particular remediation action works and, if not, it tries another one. Dynatrace calls this automated iterative approach to remediation micro-operations.

Harnesss GitOps approach also includes continuous verification across performance, quality and revenue, with automatic rollbacks another example of intent-based operations.

Finally, Vamp leverages metrics from production traffic to provide continuous validation, ensuring released code meets requirements on a continual basis.

It is tempting for anyone in a traditional enterprise to look at the massive scale and ephemerality characteristics of cloud-native deployments and wonder whether their organizations would ever need software that follows such patterns, which are so dramatically different from most of the software theyre familiar with in todays enterprise environments.

While its true that industry needs will vary, and individual companies will face different challenges from their competitors, no one should be too confident that the Day 2 vision this article lays out wont apply to them.

Remember, if a technical capability becomes available that improves the ability for certain organizations to roll out differentiated products and services that meet customer needs, then their competition must also leverage similar capabilities or risk becoming uncompetitive and, in the end, failing to survive.

In other words, cloud-native computing is here. Its already delivering massive scale and ephemerality to enterprises that are leveraging such capabilities to deliver differentiated products and services to their respective markets. If your organization doesnt jump on this bandwagon as well and quickly your future is in question. Dont be left behind.

Jason Bloomberg is founder and president of Intellyx, which publishes theCloud-Native Computing Posterand advises business leaders and technology vendors on their digital transformation strategies. Hewrote this article for SiliconANGLE. (* Disclosure:At the time of writing, Digital.ai and Dynatrace are former Intellyx customers. None of the other organizations mention in this article is an Intellyx customer.)

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Meet GitOps, the key to launching effective software releases in the cloud-native era - SiliconANGLE News