Ciro Rizzo

A QA engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders 0 beers. Orders 99999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers. Orders a ueicbksjdhd. First real customer walks in and asks where the bathroom is. The bar bursts into flames, killing everyone. A QA engineer walks into a bar, WITH a team of QA AI agents. Asks AI agents to test the app while drinking an ice-cold Modelo Especial. Trained AI agents order X factor of Y elements in Z universes, in parallel using customer behavior data to identify common patterns in the test coverage. The QA engineer keeps drinking and curates the strategy. Real customer walks in, and shares a Modelo with the QA engineer. Lessons: 1. AI is here to help QAs, not just replace them 2. Modelo Especial es muy deliciosa y refrescante

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A new report estimates the extent of economic harm inflicted on the public sector by unfair licensing practices to be around £60 million a year, amounting to over £300 million over the next parliament term. #cloud #software #publicsector Social Market Foundation Computer & Communications Industry Association

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Useful thoughts on yesterdays news

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What's your opinion on the "Inheritance tax"? Inheritance tax is a type of tax that is levied on the income earned by an individual from his/her ancestral property. In the case of properties that are equally divided among all the siblings, the tax is equally levied on the inheritors. Example: If one has $100 million worth of wealth and, when he dies, can only transfer probably 45% of it to his children, 55% is grabbed by the government. In 1985, the finance minister at that time, V.P. Singh, acknowledged that in 50 years, the tax had made little dent in inequality, so Mr. Singh abolished inheritance and estate taxes in India. #VPSingh #IncredibleIndia #Inheritancetax

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A message we see far too often when scrolling on our apps...   Big tech names like Greggs, Apple, and Meta recently faced major service disruptions, impacting millions of users. From 1.75 million WhatsApp problems to tens of thousands on Apple platforms, these incidents highlight the complexities of today's internet.   Experts say these outages happened because of coding errors, reliance on the cloud, and old infrastructure. In response, companies are timing updates to avoid problems during busy times.   But these challenges show the internet depends on old technology as seen in Meta's 2021 outage due to misconfigured BGP updates.   It's a reminder for big companies to stay ahead of tech challenges!   Source: BBC   #IToutages #Techchallenges #Internetreliability

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Tell me again why GenAI is being rolled out at such scale when it has so many fundamental problems? It is not anywhere near mature enough for widescale usage but we're living in a post truth world where nobody seems to care about validity or ethics anymore. How can the world be so woke to some issues but yet so wilfully blind to others? Privacy, Validity, Ethics are all cornerstones of a healthy Digital society. We appear to have none and with no-one gatekeeping or safeguarding. When the leaders of the world truly understand that healthy profits come from healthy behaviours, we will evolve and move forwards but this current paradigm of conning users, stealing data and willing belief in fairytale data is not sustainable and is a hard way to make money. Be nicer....be more human....make so much more money as partners of your users instead of this ridiculous double standard hypocrisy and an adversarial user attitude. Validity. Not just a geeky concept for labs and journals. For the entire enterprise, top to bottom, globally.

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What links Greggs, maker of the UK’s most popular sausage roll, and tech titans Apple and Meta? In March and April 2024, all have seen customers struggle to access some of their services - from baked goods, to Big Macs and WhatsApp messages – because of IT outages. Coincidence? Not according to experts, who say such outages now really are happening more frequently. The article in the link below, written by BBC News, gives a look into the reasons for these outages with insight from Downdetector who monitor web outages. A great article that really helps users put things into perspective as the web and tech continues to develop at lightning pace. >>> https://bbc.in/44bqg00 #ColtellaIT #ITSupport #ITServices #CyberSecurity

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The state of terrible website design on major websites never surprises. This is a new feature on Royal Mail's parcel tracking page, presumably to discourage bots. 'Please click on the entity...' - is that the best choice of words? What's the difference between the refresh icon and the 'Skip' button? They seem to do the same thing. What does the central hand icon mean? It's a link to the provider website, which is of no use. What does the search icon do? Nothing. It's a confusing mess, and this is a universal service for receiving something in the mail. For an accessible version I would need to select the 3-dot menu, go to Accessibility and then enter an email address to sign up for an 'Accessibility Cookie' that will be sent to my email address, a process that is anything but accessible.

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𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐳𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐊 Since our inception in 2008, the U.K. has been a pivotal part of Spotify’s journey, boasting a unique blend of talent, ambition, culture, and renowned music. Read More: https://bityl.co/PV7Q #Spotify #SpotifyNews #FutureOfTech #FutureOfTechnology #technologynews #technews #BusinessNews #NewsUpdate #news #viralnews #ciolook

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We love this story about the UK's old payphones finally being put to good use! BT & media giant Global have teamed up to transform 2,000 payphones into digital hubs for local communities in more than 200 towns and cities, providing public Wi-Fi and live communication at a local level. This means that in addition to old payphones being transformed, local communities will have digital access to a range of services that they may not have had before. At Strive we love helping a product launch – whether it be researching the campaign and communication, or evaluating the customer experience post-launch. For more information get in touch by sending us a DM or emailing us at office@striveinsight.com #MarketResearch #mrx #ProductLaunch #CampaignResearch

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*The magic of filtering* I've been such a fan of the Business of Authority podcast (https://lnkd.in/eicbsXdg) and it's been a continued source of reference for me. So this is a bit of a fanboy moment for me to be mentioned in Jonathan Starks daily email! [insert jonah hill gif] If you want to take a look at the website with all the shows you can do here: https://lnkd.in/emCWy-Fz Enjoy the show! Quick Technical mention: Webflow for the CMS collections referenced in the filtering and overall development platform. Finsweet Attributes for making the impossible possible and for creating the filtering solution that is so powerful.

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Have you seen Tech Nation's report 'UK Tech in the Age of AI'? Their key findings indicate that: 🥇 UK is the number one tech ecosystem in Europe 🦄 out of 172 unicorns in the UK, 20 are in AI 💰 UK tech #startups raised $21.3bn in 2023 ✨ 1 in 2 UK tech companies use AI to improve their products 🏁 1757 UK tech companies exited in 2023 with a combined valuation of $121.9bn 🔗 https://buff.ly/4chKk4b #venturecapital #investment #UKbusiness #AI

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'The State of The Nation Report on UK Tech' was launched by Tech Nation yesterday, at London Tech Week. Optimistic vibes throughout, including the following encouraging headlines: 1)  The UK tech sector is now valued at $1.1 trillion (Q1 '24), which makes us the third most valuable tech ecosystem globally, after the US and China. 2)  The UK is #1 in Europe for AI investment, with a combined market valuation of $92bn (Q1 '24). 3)  171 Unicorns; 20 AI Unicorns. 4)  $21.3b raised by UK Tech startups in '23 5)  16% of total UK VC investment went on AI startups in Q1 '24 6)  69% of UK techies say AI is having a positive impact on them and will benefit the UK economy. 7)  The areas expected to be most disrupted by AI are: Customer Support; Data Analytics, Marketing Services and Engineering & Development. 8)  84% of founders are optimistic about the future of the UK tech sector 9)  1,757 UK tech companies exited in 2023 with a combined valuation of $122b Download the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eXPZzKNF #TechNation #AI #UKTech

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The third Thursday in May each year is #GlobalAccessibilityAwarenessDay. The day will see a number of blog posts focussing on digital content; websites; payment platforms and so much more. Read more on GAAD using the attached link https://lnkd.in/e59F65U4

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One of the narratives coming out of this weeks UK General Election is a question around the 'first past the post' voting system, and the games of which seats to contest for the party; and if and how to tactical vote for the voter. A quick look at the numbers show that there is a significant variation in how many votes it took to secure each Member of Parliament. From 23,605 for Labour to 485,305 for Green and 820,745 for Reform. A 2011 referendum rejected a change in the voting system, but this came after the 2010 General Election in which the top 3 parties by seats secured 88.1% of the vote. This week the top 3 parties by seats secured just 69.7% of the votes - 7 parties would need to reach 90.1% of the vote share. Rory Stewart discussed the need for innovation in our electoral system on election night. Will these numbers change the narrative on that subject? Worth a look through https://lnkd.in/eeieAfC3 who are campaigning on this. Source: https://lnkd.in/eqNHD4Zi

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