Month: November 2022

Tata Consultancy Services today launched the TCS Quantum Computing Lab on AWS, a new service designed to provide enterprise customers with insight into what it described as “one of the most promising technologies of the decade.”

The lab, it said, will allow organizations to explore, develop and test business offerings aimed at accelerating adoption.

“While still in its nascent stages, quantum computing has the potential to help solve challenges too difficult for classical computers to solve in a timely manner today, such as enhanced detection of surface anomalies or optimization problems,” the company said in a release.

The new initiative, it added, will offer a virtual research and development environment leveraging Amazon Braket, a quantum computing service from AWS. TCS said it plans to leverage the lab to design industry-leading solutions, build domain-centric performance benchmarks, and drive hackathons.

The intent, it said, is to “help customers explore and co-create new

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Accounting software provider Xero has announced a collaboration with Intel to help small business owners better manage their finances. The company’s products are included in the launch of the Intel Software Advantage Program, a global full-service program that offers complimentary software for customers purchasing a qualifying Intel device, providing customers access to a wide variety of applications. The program is a sales tool that lets participating retailers drive sales and customer relations.

Source: Intel

With the partnership between the two companies, Xero customers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom who purchase an eligible Intel vPro PC (desktop or laptop) will receive an exclusive offer for Xero’s cloud accounting solutions.

Xero’s cloud accounting software helps businesses sync bank and financial information, monitor cash flow, reconcile transactions, send invoices and get paid faster with online payment options. The company says its platform can help eliminate the need for

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A new report from Deloitte Canada found growing gaps in Canadians’ access to digital technology and skills development, as well as an increased threat to their online privacy and safety.

The Digital Equity report reveals that the gaps have a greater impact on certain Canadian equity-denied and marginalized groups, showing that it’s more than just a rural versus urban accessibility problem. 

“The sort of demographic lines that jump out are age, ethnicity, income, and geography,” said Jamie Boyd, Deloitte Canada’s national digital government leader.

In late 2021, Deloitte conducted two surveys of almost 2,000 Canadians each to assess their access to and comfort with digital technology. The report found that Canada is falling behind when it comes to digital equity, and it drew attention to challenges related to access, affordability, digital literacy, and cybersecurity. It found these challenges disproportionately impact Indigenous peoples, people in the 2SLGBTQ+ community, racialized communities, recent

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The micro-blogging site Mastodon has seen explosive growth in the past few weeks, as Twitter users in the hundreds of thousands have flocked to it in the #twittermigration. Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, Mastodon has grown by hundreds of thousands of new users, and today has over one million users who have been active in the past week. This last point is critical. The power of a social network is not how many people are members, but how many are active.

Can this upstart social media platform really succeed and establish itself as a solid alternative to Twitter?

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is a micro-blogging platform, similar to Twitter in some respects – and vastly different in others. It was founded in 2016 by now 29-year-old German programmer, Eugen Rochko.

As on Twitter, users post short comments or messages. Mastodon has a 500-character limit as opposed to the 280

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A Montreal-area city was hit by ransomware over the weekend, according to a Quebec news service.

La Presse reported this morning that the city of Westmount mayor Christina Smith confirmed the attack. Westmount is a municipality of about 21,000 people within Montreal.

The Lockbit ransomware gang has claimed credit, saying it copied 14 TB of data and will release it in two weeks unless a ransom is paid. The city’s website hasn’t been affected by the attack.

LockBit’s claim shouldn’t be assumed to be accurate, cautioned Brett Callow, a British-Columbia-based threat analyst for Emsisoft – at least, not in relation to 14TB having been exfiltrated. “They’ve exaggerated in the past, and could be doing so again,” he said in an email.

According to La Presse, the attack was spotted Sunday morning by a city employee who noticed a problem with a computer.

La Press quotes Claude Vallières, the city’s head

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