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COVID-19 News

Uber Lays Off 14% of Global Workforce due to COVID-19

Sourced from CNet. Uber is laying off thousands of its employees as the ongoing pandemic continues to impact business. The company said in a filing on Wednesday that it is cutting about 3,700 full-time roles or roughly 14% of its staff on the company’s customer support and recruiting teams in response to the reduced volume of ride requests and the company’s hiring freeze. Uber also said in the filing that CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will waive his base salary for the rest of 2020. “Days like this are brutal. I am truly sorry that we are doing this, just as I know that we have to do this,” Khosrowshahi wrote in an email about the layoffs to staffers, which was viewed by CNN Business. /* custom css */ .tdi_3_5b8.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.tdi_3_5b8.td-a-rec-img img{ margin: 0 auto 0 0; } Th...

COVID-19 to Cut IT Spending in Nearly Every Industry in 2020

The International Data Corporation (IDC) currently forecasts worldwide IT spending to decline by 2.7% this year due to the economic impact of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. While every industry will be affected by the global slowdown, IDC notes that some will reduce their IT spending more than others. IDC in its Worldwide ICT Spending Guide: Industry and Company Size, document hospitality and tourism-heavy industries like transportation and personal and consumer services are expected to be the most negatively impacted markets with IT spending expected to decline by 5% or more. However, both markets are relatively small in terms of IT spending. Discrete and process manufacturing are both large market opportunities for technology (nearly $400 billion combined) and face significant risks du...

Groundbreaking AI Scans Lungs for COVID-19 Presence

In Wuhan, China, when the rate of coronavirus infection was at its highest, doctors were able to use an AI algorithm to scan the lungs of thousands of patients. The algorithm in question, developed by Axial AI, analyses CT imagery in seconds. It is able to declare whether a patient has a high risk of developing viral pneumonia from the coronavirus or not. The coloured area shows where the algorithm has detected pneumonia. Sourced from the BBC The BBC writes that a consortium of firms developed the AI in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. They say it can show whether a patient’s lungs have improved or worsened over time – when more CT scans are done for comparison. A hospital in Malaysia is now trialling the system and Axial AI has also offered to donate it to the NHS in the UK. However, th...

How to Tell if a WhatsApp Message is Actually Fake News

Facebook-owned social media and chat powerhouse WhatsApp continues to take part in the fight against misinformation and Fake News – now, thanks to a new chatbot, users can fact check messages right in the app. Partnering with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), WhatsApp is allowing users around the world to talk to this chatbot to inform them of the latest facts so that they can decide on how true or false messages sent to them are. Gadgets Africa says that “the bot is able to easily check whether a piece of news about COVID-19 is true or not”. This new chatbot service comes soon after WhatsApp began taking several measures to curb the spread of fake news and false information. Just recently, the company announced that limits put in place to reduce the amount of copy-paste chai...