Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-22-2020, 01:48 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 9.0.1 Update Coming Today
Nintendo is rolling out a new patch for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate very soon. The game's 9.0.1 update is scheduled to go live today, October 21, and it appears it'll include more character tweaks.
Nintendo has not shared patch notes for the new update yet, so it's not exactly clear what changes are being made to the game. The company only notes that the 9.0.1 update will include "fighter adjustments." This also means you'll need to convert any replay data you've saved before it's rendered incompatible with the new version of the game.
Smash Bros. Ultimate's 9.0 update arrived last week. Along with various balance adjustments, that update introduced the game's latest DLC character, Steve (and Alex) from Minecraft. The blocky fighter arrived alongside a brand-new stage, as well as a selection of Minecraft Spirits to unlock.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Unity Asset Store, Unity are running the Mega Bundle X sale. This is a collection of assets organised into tiers, very similar to a traditional Humble bundle. If you buy a higher dollar value tier you get all of the assets in the lower tiers as well. The tiers of this bundle consist of:
10$ Tier
25$ Tier
36$ Tier
Be sure to use the bundle link and not the individual links above, as the sale pricing is only on the bundle itself, individual assets are all still full price. You can learn more about the bundle in the video below. Links to the bundle, including this one, contain an affiliate code that pay a small commission to GFS if used (and thanks if you do!).
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-21-2020, 10:02 PM - Forum: Windows
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Fundraising and Engagement for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales announced
Since 2017, Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact initiative has been working to empower the nonprofit sector. As part of that effort two years ago, we released our Common Data Model for Nonprofits, a set of best practices represented as data entities, attributes, and relationships.
The Common Data Model is essentially a Rosetta Stone that helps nonprofits relate data across applications and platforms, and it is the foundation for all of the technology we create for the sector.
Nonprofits represent a wide diversity of mission types and beneficiaries served, but these organizations share many scenarios common to all. Every nonprofit has to fundraise and partner with constituents and donors. At the same time, donors want to understand how their contributions drive impact. This requires nonprofits to support strong, diversified funding portfolios grounded in transparent data and reporting.
Our top priority is getting technology into the hands of nonprofits to help them be more successful. The tech sector has a responsibility to provide an easier and less costly path for nonprofits to modernize its fundraising and constituent management programs. And with the impact COVID-19 has had, there has never been a more critical time to deliver on that vision.
Fundraising and Engagement is a comprehensive solution designed to help fundraisers, marketers, and development operations staff transform the way they work with workflows and business logic to match their priorities.
The solution supports the most common fundraising scenarios across multiple donation types and channels—including major and annual giving, recurring gift and membership programs, opportunity and designation management, and household and life event management.
Marketers can leverage campaign, package, and appeal workflows, along with insights and campaign segmentation tools available on the Microsoft platform, to execute informed campaigns. Finance, database administrators, and business analysts will love that payment processing, data management, and business intelligence are powered by Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power BI.
The Common Data Model removes the silos between all of these activities. Since alignment of funding to programs and projects is at the core of the solution, it can deliver proactive insights and business intelligence to transform reporting, strengthen existing relationships and uncover new opportunities for growth.
The solution leverages Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Azure, and as part of Microsoft’s ecosystem of products, it integrates with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Power BI, and Microsoft Power Platform through the Common Data Service to deliver the most robust digital platform available to nonprofit organizations.
Nonprofits can now transform how they manage their full lifecycle of fundraising. This is an incredibly powerful application that allows organizations to truly digitize their operations without requiring substantial investments in customized solutions.
Customer spotlight: Right To Play
MISSION CRM’s work with Right To Play offers an early look into the value of this new solution. Since 2017, Right To Play has been working with MISSION CRM to digitize its operations in support of an outreach initiative to acquire new donors.
Before working with MISSION CRM, Right To Play had been handling the initiative manually, leading to challenges and delays. Payment confirmation often took a full day, and the organization had a difficult time projecting revenues, adding high volumes of new donors, and rolling out programs to help more children.
Fundraising and Engagement has automated many processes and improved workflows to allow Right to Play to focus on relationships and programs. Today, donor information is imported directly into the system, so Right To Play can dynamically assess revenue streams. The solution also facilitates greater transparency with stakeholders about program results and challenges. Donors know exactly where their dollars are going and the impact they are having.
Fundraising and Engagement has enabled Right To Play to scale from 100 to more than 3,000 new stakeholders per month, managing a broad and international portfolio of donors, engaging them in new ways—and building better programs and serve more than two million children each and every week.
Partnership with MISSION CRM highlights opportunity for ISVs
Right To Play’s story shows how the shift from paper or manual processes to truly digital workflows can improve both operational efficiency and programmatic efficacy, while allowing an organization to more quickly and transparently tell that impact story to donors.
Historically, realizing that kind of digital transformation in a nonprofit has come with a unique set of challenges. Nonprofits haven’t had a wealth of choice in configured solutions. Many have had to adopt a hodgepodge of applications for different fundraising needs.
This patchwork approach obscures insights, creates manual workarounds, and is expensive to maintain. Integrating applications to create efficiency and insight can require costly development or significant manual effort every month. Many nonprofits are unable to make those investments.
MISSION CRM was one of the first ISVs that engaged with Microsoft around the Common Data Model concept to solve this problem. In partnering to build Fundraising and Engagement, Microsoft and MISSION CRM bring together a mature data model built on the most secure, scalable platform to raise the standard of what technology can deliver to the sector and really light up any nonprofit organization.
Delivering this on a rich cross-cloud ecosystem makes it easy for partners to integrate with and innovate from a trusted platform supported by Microsoft. Partners effectively require only a single integration point with Microsoft to provide interoperability and exchange of data. This allows Microsoft and its partners to innovate towards productivity, online collaboration, rich data insights, operations and financials, and program design.
Three years of TSI: looking ahead
Three years ago, we started the Tech for Social Impact initiative. At the time, Microsoft worked with about 60,000 nonprofits worldwide. Today, we work with more than 200,000 organizations, and our engagement with the sector overall has deepened dramatically.
And we’re just getting started. As a platform company, Microsoft is committed to building a vibrant ecosystem with diverse expertise to deliver the most effective range of solutions. We have fostered strategic partnerships with industry-leading technology companies including Blackbaud, whose world class fundraising solutions are powered on Azure and enhanced with connectors that make it simple to integrate Blackbaud’s fundraising solutions with applications on Microsoft Power Platform and in Microsoft Office 365.
Other partners are delivering integrated solutions as well, including Adobe through our participation in the Open Data Initiative. Still others have aligned their existing solutions to the Common Data Model, including Unit4 with Oracle’s NetSuite not far behind. We have 20 launch partners such as m-hance, Barhead, Quantiq, and Avanade who are building industry-specific solutions on the Common Data Model that are interoperable with Fundraising and Engagement.
Our goal is to create an ecosystem of solutions aligned to Common Data Model. As beneficial as the Common Data Model is, it still is only a model. To truly realize its promise, it needs to be used and adopted widely. Taken together, our nonprofit partner ecosystem now has more than 200 ISVs, developers, and systems integrators supporting nonprofits worldwide.
In this challenging time, we recognize that it’s not just about the technology. Applications tailored for nonprofit workflows go a long way to reduce the cost of modernizing the digital ecosystem at any charitable organization, just as important is the ability to adopt and effectively use this technology. That is why we combine all of our technology offerings with free training and affordable, ethical pricing. To help nonprofits get started with Fundraising and Engagement, we are announcing a grant available by end of this calendar year. Qualified nonprofits can get Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise free for up to five users, as well as Microsoft Power Apps (per App plan) free for up to 10 users. Sign up for alerts to receive a notification when the offers are ready.
The solution we are announcing today is part of this broad commitment to the nonprofit technology ecosystem. We are committed to working with tech companies large and small to align their solutions to Common Data Model, and we’ll have more of those to announce later in 2020.
Ultimately, people don’t go to work for a nonprofit to worry about technology. They are focused on the mission of their organizations. Working with our partners around the world, Microsoft is delivering tools for nonprofits that reflect their business and those priorities right out of the box.
Learn more
To learn more, join us October 27, 2020 for the “Introducing Fundraising and Engagement for Dynamics 365 Sales” launch event. In this virtual session with live Q&A, you’ll get a deep dive into Fundraising and Engagement with Microsoft experts and Microsoft partner MISSION CRM, see a demo, and hear a panel discussion with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada on the impact this solution is having on their organization.
This article explains how to make incremental or differential backups, with a catalog available to restore (or export) at the point you want, with Butterfly Backup.
Requirements
Butterfly Backup is a simple wrapper of rsync written in python; the first requirement is python3.3 or higher (plus module cryptography for init action). Other requirements are openssh and rsync (version 2.5 or higher). Ok, let’s go!
[Editors note: rsync version 3.2.3 is already installed on Fedora 33 systems]
After that, installing Butterfly Backup is very simple by using the following commands to clone the repository locally, and set up Butterfly Backup for use:
Butterfly Backup is a server to client tool and is installed on a server (or workstation). The restore process restores the files into the specified client. This process shares some of the options available to the backup process.
Backups are organized accord to precise catalog; this is an example:
$ tree destination/of/backup
.
├── destination
│ ├── hostname or ip of the PC under backup
│ │ ├── timestamp folder
│ │ │ ├── backup folders
│ │ │ ├── backup.log
│ │ │ └── restore.log
│ │ ├─── general.log
│ │ └─── symlink of last backup
│
├── export.log
├── backup.list
└── .catalog.cfg
Butterfly Backup has six main operations, referred to as actions, you can get information about them with the –help command.
$ bb --help
usage: bb [-h] [--verbose] [--log] [--dry-run] [--version] {config,backup,restore,archive,list,export} ... Butterfly Backup optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --verbose, -v Enable verbosity --log, -l Create a log --dry-run, -N Dry run mode --version, -V Print version action: Valid action {config,backup,restore,archive,list,export} Available actions config Configuration options backup Backup options restore Restore options archive Archive options list List options export Export options
Configuration
Configuration mode is straight forward; If you’re already familiar with the exchange keys and OpenSSH, you probably won’t need it. First, you must create a configuration (rsa keys), for instance:
$ bb config --new
SUCCESS: New configuration successfully created!
After creating the configuration, the keys will be installed (copied) on the hosts you want to backup:
$ bb config --deploy host1
Copying configuration to host1; write the password:
/usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: Source of key(s) to be installed: "/home/arthur/.ssh/id_rsa.pub"
/usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: attempting to log in with the new key(s), to filter out any that are already installed
/usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: 1 key(s) remain to be installed -- if you are prompted now it is to install the new keys
arthur@host1's password: Number of key(s) added: 1 Now try logging into the machine, with: "ssh 'arthur@host1'"
and check to make sure that only the key(s) you wanted were added. SUCCESS: Configuration copied successfully on host1!
Backup
There are two backup modes: single and bulk. The most relevant features of the two backup modes are the parallelism and retention of old backups. See the two parameters –parallel and –retention in the documentation.
Single backup
The backup of a single machine consists in taking the files and folders indicated in the command line, and putting them into the cataloging structure indicated above. In other words, copy all file and folders of a machine into a path.
Above all, bulk mode backups share the same options as single mode, with the difference that they accept a file containing a list of hostnames or ips. In this mode backups will performed in parallel (by default 5 machines at a time). Above all, if you want to run fewer or more machines in parallel, specify the –parallel parameter.
Incremental of the previous backup, for instance:
$ cat /home/arthur/pclist.txt
host1
host2
host3
$ bb backup --list /home/arthur/pclist.txt --destination /mnt/backup --data User Config --type Unix
ERROR: The port 22 on host2 is closed!
ERROR: The port 22 on host3 is closed!
Start backup on host1
SUCCESS: Command rsync -ahu --no-links --link-dest=/mnt/backup/host1/2020_09_19__10_28 arthur@host1:/home :/etc /mnt/backup/host1/2020_09_19__10_50
There are four backup modes, which you specify with the –mode flag: Full (backup all files) , Mirror (backup all files in mirror mode), Differential (is based on the latest Full backup) and Incremental (is based on the latest backup). The default mode is Incremental; Full mode is set by default when the flag is not specified.
Listing catalog
The first time you run backup commands, the catalog is created. The catalog is used for future backups and all the restores that are made through Butterfly Backup. To query this catalog use the list command. First, let’s query the catalog in our example:
$ bb list --catalog /mnt/backup BUTTERFLY BACKUP CATALOG Backup id: aba860b0-9944-11e8-a93f-005056a664e0
Hostname or ip: host1
Timestamp: 2020-09-19 10:28:12 Backup id: dd6de2f2-9a1e-11e8-82b0-005056a664e0
Hostname or ip: host1
Timestamp: 2020-09-19 10:50:59
To export the catalog list use it with an external tool like cat, include the ––log flag:
$ bb list --catalog /mnt/backup --log
$ cat /mnt/backup/backup.list
Restore
The restore process is the exact opposite of the backup process. It takes the files from a specific backup and push it to the destination computer. This command perform a restore on the same machine of the backup, for instance:
$ bb restore --catalog /mnt/backup --backup-id dd6de2f2-9a1e-11e8-82b0-005056a664e0 --computer host1 --log
Want to do restore path /mnt/backup/host1/2020_09_19__10_50/etc? To continue [Y/N]? y
Want to do restore path /mnt/backup/host1/2020_09_19__10_50/home? To continue [Y/N]? y
SUCCESS: Command rsync -ahu -vP --log-file=/mnt/backup/host1/2020_09_19__10_50/restore.log /mnt/backup/host1/2020_09_19__10_50/etc arthur@host1:/restore_2020_09_19__10_50
SUCCESS: Command rsync -ahu -vP --log-file=/mnt/backup/host1/2020_09_19__10_50/restore.log /mnt/backup/host1/2020_09_19__10_50/home/* arthur@host1:/home
Without specifying the “type” flag that indicates the operating system on which the data are being retrieved, Butterfly Backup will select it directly from the catalog via the backup-id.
Archive old backup
Archive operations are used to store backups by saving disk space.
Butterfly Backup was born from a very complex need; this tool provides superpowers to rsync, automates the backup and restore process. In addition, the catalog allows you to have a system similar to a “time machine”.
In conclusion, Butterfly Backup is a lightweight, versatile, simple and scriptable backup tool.
Review: Horace – A Heart-Warming Nostalgia Trip And Must-Play Masterpiece
The name “Horace” has cultural cachet in the world of British retrogaming, and we can’t help but believe that the evocation thereof is very, very intentional on the Horace developers’ part. After all, their game is steeped in nostalgia; the pop culture of days past infuses Horace from its opening nod to Thames TV’s iconic ident, and doesn’t let up. This is no reference-fest, though. The wistful longing for what came before and the comfort of familiarity are crucial to its extended setup; a meaningfully protracted prologue to a much grander adventure.
Horace himself is an automaton of initially ambiguous purpose, recruited into a wealthy family for mysterious reasons and ultimately being accepted as one of them. It’s a cosy, friendly introduction, impeccably paced and choreographed for the emotional moments of the storytelling to have a powerful impact when they need to. There’s surprisingly little gameplay in the first hour, but everything that’s there is well-written, charming as you like and ceaselessly entertaining. The story fosters intrigue without being unnecessarily cryptic, is humorous without being crass or desperate, and portions out its emotional beats so skilfully that its moments of gravitas feel entirely earned and all the more powerful. The extensive and masterful use of classical music doesn’t hurt.
We’ve talked a fair amount about the storytelling, but not the gameplay, which may raise red flags for some of you. Don’t worry. Horace plays like a dream to match its frankly majestic use of extremely expressive sprite art. It’s a platformer, but such a smooth, intuitive one that it’s a joy to play. The physics feel great – there’s a weight to Horace that gives his movement something of a timeless feel. Level design is strong, with platforms and obstacles that are clear and distinct. Initial areas are fairly straightforward, but it doesn’t take long before Horace acquires the ability to run on walls and ceilings, transforming the way you navigate the terrain – the way you see it, even.
Revealing much about the way Horace expands outward — and outward — would be delving into spoiler territory, but rest assured that his life of domestic bliss can’t last. Heading out into the big, wide world, the game takes on more of a Metroidvania angle, with enormous, ram-packed areas with a brace of secret rooms full of junk to collect. And we mean that literally — Horace’s stated purpose in life is to clean one million things, and this trash forms the bulk of the collectables. It’s not an exhaustive, all-consuming mission — there’s way more to collect than you actually need — and it’s a neat little gag on collectathon gameplay while also scratching the itch for people who enjoy it. That sort of biting-the-hand comedy is something the game revels in, but never at the expense of its tone; there’s none of the Bard’s Tale style “doesn’t this trope suck? Ah well, here it is anyway” pointlessness here, just genuine laughs woven into a genuine story.
On its initial release, Horace’s fairly demanding platforming gameplay was compared to masocore-style titles such as Super Meat Boy, but we think that’s a little wide of the mark. It’s challenging, but only in the sense that dying sees you restart from a checkpoint, rather than exactly where you left off. You’ve got infinite lives, too, and respawns are effectively instant, so we never found ourselves frustrated. As you progress you’re able to protect yourself more than your usual one-hit-kill allows, but the game (naturally) gets trickier and busier as these second chances stack up.
Besides the extensive 2D jump and run stuff, there are also a brace of mini-games that we are absolutely loath to spoil but often take inspiration from classics of yore such as Pong, Out Run and even a quick and surprisingly moving take on Pilotwings. Despite this genre-hopping, it never feels piecemeal or anything besides coherent. Everything meshes brilliantly and serves the game’s broad but resonant themes. What good is nostalgia if you can’t wallow in it?
It’s a challenging game to review, because the story-heavy side of things might not be everyone’s cup of tea and Horace’s debt to gaming’s past could be mistaken for slavish imitation and lazy ha-ha-I-recognise-that humour that it absolutely isn’t. Some stories are worth telling, and Horace’s will stay with you. If it doesn’t put a lump in your throat, we’d recommend checking yourself for a throat. Its expert sprite-work makes you care about these flat 2D characters and their relationships in ways that AAA tent-pole games often can’t even begin to muster, mentioning no names.
Conclusion
Horace is something very special — the only vaguely negative thing we can say about it is the fact that there are so many spectacularly brilliant indie games on Switch already vying for your attention that we fear Horace may fall somewhat by the wayside. If you have any interest in superb level design, excellent storytelling, terrific art, evocative music, great characters, hilarious situations and emotional gut-punches, Horace is a no-brainer. It’s moving without being manipulative, clever without being smug, and nostalgic without being a lazy rehash.
So yes, Horace is another indie masterpiece, and every gamer who enjoys quality experiences should play it; a masterpiece that owes so much to its medium, but has the strength, creativity and identity to stand alone as something very, very special. Buy this.
Matthew McConaughey Explains The Origins Of "Alright, Alright, Alright"
Even among those who aren't quite sure how to spell actor Matthew McConaughey's name, the star is instantly recognizable and has turned in tons of performances with staying power. Just to name a few: There was his rabid turn in Season 1 of 2014's True Detective as Detective Rustin "Rust" Cohle," his absurdly pensive Lincoln car commercials, and his earlier days in rom-coms like 2001's The Wedding Planner and 2003's How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. But regardless of whatever work he might do in the future and everything else he's done in the past, McConaughey is most associated with a phrase he apparently improvised on the first scene he ever shot for 1993's Dazed and Confused: "Alright, alright, alright."
The surfer-stoner patois has taken on a legendary life of its own, and it's one of many, many things written about in the rear-view in McConaughey's new memoir, Greenlighting. The book, in the Academy Award-winning actor's own words, is full of "notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud." But more to the point here, in an excerpt that ran in The Hollywood Reporter, McConaughey writes that he was "only called on set [of Dazed and Confused] to do a makeup and wardrobe set," when director Richard Linklater suddenly, upon seeing his look, suggested his character play a greater role. He pitched McConaughey an idea for a scene where his character "would try to pick up Marissa Ribisi's Cynthia." What he didn't pitch McConaughey on was dialog for the character.
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Lowest iPad Pro prices: save up to $420 on 12.9″ LTE models
With limited supply available at the special prices, Apple Authorized Reseller B&H Photo is knocking hundreds of dollars off 12.9-inch iPad Pro (Late 2018) models with LTE.
Save more on iPad Pros
The best iPad Pro deals on the 3rd Generation (Late 2018) models are thanks to B&H exclusive discounts that knock up to $420 off a variety of configs, including bundles that include AppleCare and/or a Magic Keyboard.
Prices start at $799 for the Verizon Unlocked tablets, which can be used on AT&T and T-Mobile networks as well. A physical SIM card may be needed, so check with your carrier to confirm compatibility.
Considering the Late 2018 iPad Pro sports a remarkably similar design to the 2020 iPad Pro and offers Magic Keyboard support just like the latest models, these closeout deals offer substantial savings on well equipped devices that are great for students and business professionals. Check out our detailed feature comparison pitting the 2020 iPad Pro vs the 2018 iPad Pro.
Shoppers can also enjoy a number of perks when shopping at B&H Photo, with free expedited shipping on the 12.9-inch iPad Pros within the contiguous U.S. Those looking to finance the purchase can also apply for the B&H Financing Card to take advantage of no interest financing when paid in full within 12 months. Or if you’re willing to pay the balance off in full right away, check out the B&H Payboo Card to see if your zip code qualifies to save the tax. The Payboo option can save you anywhere from $63 to $110 on average in addition to the iPad Pro markdowns themselves.
To shop the entire sale, head over to B&H. We’ve also included our top deal picks below.
Standalone 12.9-inch iPad Pros
64GB 12.9-inch iPad Pro (Late 2018, Wi-Fi + LTE) Space Gray: $799($350 off)
256GB 12.9-inch iPad Pro (Late 2018, Wi-Fi + LTE) Space Gray: $949($350 off)
Bundle savings
64GB 12.9-inch iPad Pro (Late 2018, Wi-Fi + LTE) Space Gray + AppleCare: $928($350 off)
64GB 12.9-inch iPad Pro (Late 2018, Wi-Fi + LTE) Space Gray + Magic Keyboard: $1,128($370 off)
256GB 12.9-inch iPad Pro (Late 2018, Wi-Fi + LTE) Space Gray + AppleCare: $1,078($350 off)
AppleInsider and Apple authorized resellers are also running additional exclusive deals on hardware that will not only deliver the lowest prices on many of the items, but also throw in bonus discounts on protection plans, software and more. Here are some of the offers:
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-21-2020, 12:19 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
CVP Tom McGuinness: Top takeaways from HLTH 2020
It’s always exciting to attend an event like HLTH! A time to come together with other healthcare innovators as a community to connect with peers, share, and learn from each other. It’s an opportunity to get a pulse on what’s trending and how we shape the future of healthcare. It’s an opportunity to get a pulse on what’s trending and how we shape the future of healthcare. I encourage you to watch HLTH sessions on-demand at HLTH 2020.
But 2020 has been a year of dynamic change—The world after this pandemic will not be the same as the one that came before it. From remote teamwork and telehealth, to supply management and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security—we are working alongside customers every day to help manage through a world of remote everything.
The whole of the healthcare industry has been impacted by COVID-19 in an unprecedented way. It’s had a substantial impact, and in many ways, it has raised the bar on what we need to collectively deliver as an industry.
We all have the potential to deliver a personalized experience for health consumers, empower health team productivity, improve health data accessibility, and find ways to remove the barriers of health equity and affordability. Across the healthcare ecosystem, we’re seeing organizations bring together compute, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) to help accelerate the response to COVID-19. From diagnostic testing to therapeutics and vaccines. Healthcare providers are triaging patients with our Healthcare Bot service, helping more than 40 million people to access critical healthcare information. Biotech organizations are using our machine learning capabilities to decode the immune system response to the virus, and healthcare providers and hospitals around the world are using FHIR technology in Azure to make data available for research, provide more robust treatment assessments, and deliver first-class telehealth experiences to their patients.
Technology has played an important role in helping to battle the pandemic, and Microsoft will continue to lean in to support efforts where technology can make a difference today and beyond.
Leading through COVID-19 response and recovery
During their HLTH keynote, Microsoft’s own Kurt DelBene EVP, Corporate Strategy, and Toni Townes Whitley, President US Regulated Industries, along with Dr. Nicole Fisher, President, Health and Human Rights Strategies, Global Health and Policy Contributor, Forbes, shared their insights and initiatives that are helping Microsoft employees, customers and partners through the pandemic.
In these types of situations, we must be ready to learn together. Over the past several years one of the hallmarks of our culture has been a learning organization. This is incredibly important as we focus on our employees and our customers. We became digital-first responders supporting customers and partners by leaning in, learning and helping organizations adapt to the disruption, and build scalable modalities of care while safeguarding patients, employees, and assets. From remote teamwork and telehealth, to supply chain management and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security, we are working alongside customers every day to help manage through a world of remote everything.
Our commitment has always been to ensure the tools we provide are up to the task of supporting our customers in their time of need. In that same spirit, we announced our first industry-specific cloud offering, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. The offer brings together existing and future capabilities that deliver automation and efficiency on high-value workflows, as well as deep data analytics for both structured and unstructured data, that enable customers to turn insight into action. A robust partner ecosystem extends the value of the platform with additional solutions to address the most pressing challenges the healthcare industry is facing today. In September, we announced the general availability of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare coming on October 28, 2020. Throughout the publicpreview, we’ve been working closely with customers and partners across the healthcare ecosystem on key use cases, to facilitate integrations into existing platforms and systems of record, to streamline theirworkflows, and ultimately deliver better experiences, insights, and care.
At Microsoft, we will continue to focus on helping everyone get back to their places of work or school, andenabling organizations with the speed and agility to adjust to change, build resiliency that help them weather today’s challenges so they can begin to reimagine tomorrow.
Reshaping the future of disease diagnostic
Julie Rubinstein, President of Adaptive Biotechnologies, and Dr. Greg Moore, Microsoft CVP of Health, highlighted the unreleasedinsights from the growing and largest ImmuneCODE database in their announcement session, “T-cells: The key to SARS-CoV-2 immunity?”ImmuneCODEis one of the largest, most detailed views of the immune response to COVID-19 based on de-identified data generated from thousands of COVID-19 blood samples from patients around the globe. This new data points to T-cells giving us predictive power for early detection and predetermining the body’s immune response.
This is reshaping the future of disease diagnostic with Azure machine learning and AI. Microsoft took the existing partnership with Adaptive and pivoted to use the same technology and antigen mapping and apply it to COVID-19. Recognizing that this approach to the virus is one of a kind, looking at T-cells for the answer for early detection, immune response individual to individual, and for therapeutics and vaccines to determine the best course of action for each patient. Information from ImmuneCODE will continue to accelerate ongoing global efforts to develop better diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics for COVID-19. For more information on how to join or get involved in the Adaptive and Microsoft collaboration, check out, ImmuneRace.
Accessibility as a tech opportunity
With the unprecedented shift to a virtual world, it has never been more important to be accessible and inclusive of more than one billion people worldwide with a disability.
October marks the 75th anniversary of the National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft, talked about her own personal journey and gives us a peek into the evolution of accessibility across companies, education, and healthcare.
At Microsoft, we’re making accessibility a core part of our culture and how we design and build our products. People with disabilities have been the catalyst for innovations that have been critical during these times. Live Captions in Teams saw 30X growth in April versus February, Immersive Reader had a 560 percent increase in use, and upcoming wellbeing features in Teams responded to the growing importance of mental health.
Disability is a strength. All these technologies have been powered by insight from employees with disabilities. It’s one of the many reasons why our workforce must reflect the diversity of everyone who uses our technology. You might be surprised what is included as a disability, the majority of disabilities are invisible and include non-apparent conditions such as Cancer, Dyslexia, Autism, Depression, Anxiety, Diabetes, Asthma, and Lupus.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of those technologies that can help employers eliminate barriers to employment and it can help people with disabilities develop professional skills and influence workplace culture. Microsoft is an advocate of people with disabilities, committed to influencing the future of technology to ensure global independence and inclusion in society in three areas of focus: employment, daily life, communication, and connection. Read more about AI for Accessibility or our AI for Accessibility grants.
Ethical approaches to AI
Given the global scale of the pandemic, technology will play a critical role in nearly every facet of addressing COVID-19, from using AI to crunch massive datasets to analyzing disease vectors and identifying treatment impacts. We continue to collaborate with nonprofits, governments, and academic researchers on solutions, and bring our experience to the table, providing access to Microsoft AI, technical experts, data scientists, and other resources.
During the early days of the pandemic, a heightened public concern along with a readily transmissible respiratory pathogen necessitated that health systems adjust their underlying processes for screening and triage. Providence, a large multi-state multi-hospital health system with a significant presence in the greater Seattle region, applied an artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbot technology, developed by Microsoft, to address the rising patient concerns about the virus.
By asking a series of questions based on the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, the chatbot screened patients for COVID-19 symptoms and/or exposures. Patients with symptoms and/or exposures were subsequently directed to Providence’s telehealth portal for clinical evaluation and possible testing. The bot was facilitating successful and efficient population-level care coordination. This enabled high-risk and/or symptomatic patients to receive a timely remote clinical evaluation, without increasing the risk of virus transmission to other patients or extending the wait-times for those with symptoms.
Since then, Microsoft has delivered the same chatbot technology for hospitals and governments across the globe. Today, more than 45 million people globally have been using this AI-enabled bot technology.
We all know every person is unique, and so are their illnesses. AI enables an entirely new level of personalized treatment by taking into consideration what makes a patient unique, from their genetics to their lifestyle. Precision medicine has the potential to radically improve health and longevity for every patient. This is an inflection point where the healthcare industry has an opportunity to improve the quality and delivery of care by taking a people-centered approach to the research, development, and deployment of AI. To achieve this, as an industry we need to embrace diverse perspectives, continuous learning, and agile responsiveness as AI technology and precision medicine continue to evolve.
But it’s also important healthcare organizations cultivate a responsible AI-ready culture throughout their businesses and put principles into place from implementation to governance with practices, tools, and technologies built on multidisciplinary research, shared learning, and leading innovation. Learn more about Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI.
It’s a pivotal time to be working in healthcare and HLTH proved it. If you didn’t attend any of the live sessions, I’d encourage you to watch HLTH sessions on-demand at HLTH 2020. And I look forward to seeing all of you at the HLTH 2021 event, where we are sure to gain a whole new set of insights and inspirations for a bold path forward.
Luigi Can Be Unlocked As A Secret Playable Character In Super Mario Bros. 35
Super Mario Bros. 35 has been available to play on the Nintendo Switch eShop for almost three weeks now, and players have finally discovered a very exciting secret indeed.
It turns out that Luigi is available in the game as a playable character – something that Nintendo hasn’t publicly revealed up until this point. There are a couple of things you’ll need to do to unlock him, which probably explains why it’s taken so long for players to notice his inclusion.
How To Unlock Luigi In Super Mario Bros. 35
First of all, you’ll need to have reached a ‘star rank’, meaning a level over 100 (when your level ticks above 99, it’ll actually go to ‘1-Star’ rather than 100, with ‘2-Star’, ‘3-Star’ and so-on following thereafter). Then, you’ll need to hold down the ‘L’ button while loading up a game.
You can see Luigi appear in this video below from Twitter user @CombotronRobot:
CombotronRobot notes that the timing for this button holding isn’t quite clear, so it’s perhaps safest to hold the button throughout the entire game loading process. Of course, reaching level 100 takes time, so that should be your first goal if you’re hoping to play as Mario’s number two.
Ironically, reaching level 1-Star rewards you with a Luigi icon – perhaps Nintendo was hinting that this could be done all along?
