• On Your iRadar: Super Smart Chatbots

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Don’t look now, but thanks to breakthroughs in natural language processing (NLP), we’re on the cusp of having chatbots that can provide human-like question-answering capabilities. Within a matter of years, according to experts, basic communication between companies and their customers will be handled by AI, leaving humans to handle tougher cases and VIPs.

  The key breakthrough driving advances in NLP are large language models, specifically a class of language model called a transformer network. These transformer networks use deep learning methods to essentially learn the right sequence for words to go together. The order of words has been one of …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, April 28

  April 28, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  The winds of change are blowing. Well, it might be more correct to call is a slight breeze, but the fact is that we are starting to see a slow rebound from the pandemic. This week, our own Alex Woodie reported on tech conferences happening around the IBM i. Virtual elements still remain, but the return to in-person conferencing is underway and coming to a city near you. Get more details in the Top Story below and then stay in the loop on what’s happening in your area (or on your computer) by checking out the Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 17

  April 28, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  You may recall last week, when we were in PTF Guide Download Heaven. As wonderful as it was to have so much to report to all of you, we do owe an apology for the typo on the Cume release levels. With so much happening in one week, it was a case of a little too much excitement and not enough attention to detail. Please accept our sincere regret for the error. Let’s solider ahead with this week with some security bulletins, as well as the regular rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level.

  Security Bulletin: OpenSSL for …

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• IBM Grows, Power Systems Slows

  April 26, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The good news, if you are a customer of IBM who wants Big Blue to stick around in the systems business, is that IBM actually saw some growth in its overall business for the first time in two years. This growth was driven in large part by its System z mainframe line, in the first quarter of 2021. The less than good news – but not unexpected – is that the Power Systems business continued to shrink as customers await high-end Power10 systems later this year and low-end Power10 machines early next year.

  In the quarter ended in March, IBM’s …

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• IBM Tweaks Power Systems Hardware Here And There

  April 26, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  First of all, our apologies for taking so long to get to the hardware roundup from the April 13 Power Systems announcements, which brought us new Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4. There were a few changes to the hardware lineup as well, and let’s go through them now.

  As you can see from announcement letter 121-013, IBM has done a refresh on the 2.5-inch flash drives used in the Power9-based server line. According to Douglas Gibbs, offering manager for peripherals at the Cognitive Systems division that is responsible for the Power Systems lineup, this …

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• Guru: A Simple Script That Capitalizes on IBM i’s Open Source Capabilities

  April 26, 2021 Rob McNelly

  In my last piece, we got Yum and Bash running on IBM i. Now let’s build on that foundation to find an open campsite.

  I’m serious. Recently I used an IBM i LPAR to schedule a hiking and camping trip to the Grand Canyon. Where to begin? My bio, perhaps. Here it’s mentioned that “Rob enjoys camping, hiking, biking, and backpacking through the mountains of Arizona. . . . His favorite trip was hiking to the blue waters of Havasupai, and he is planning on hiking the Grand Canyon in the near future.”

  So last summer I went …

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• New IBM i Events Spin Up In May

  April 26, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Last year, the coronavirus pandemic devastated tech conferences, those multi-day affairs that brought computing communities together and that resulted in a lot of cheese being eaten and coffee being dranken. So it’s big news that COMMON will be holding its first in-person event in over a year in May with its NAViGATE 2021 conference. But before then, HelpSystems will be holding its inaugural BuildIt event next week.

  HelpSystems’ BuildIT conference will take place May 4 through 6. It will be an online-only affair, and feature more than 40 sessions covering a range of IT topics. Much of the event …

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• Sundry Power Systems Cloud Announcements

  April 26, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  April is generally a busy time for the Power Systems team, and not just for IBM i, but also for AIX and sometimes for Linux, too. In the spirit of Power Systems family unity, and in recognition of the fact that more than a few IBM i shops also have AIX and/or Linux in their shops, we wanted to tell you about some tweaks that Big Blue has made to the other platforms in the Power Systems family.

  In announcement letter 221-099, IBM is making some tweaks to the Power Systems Enterprise Cloud Edition stack of software. The components …

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• Need An RPG Programmer? Nalashaa May Have You Covered

  April 19, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Companies that are having trouble finding RPG programmers to maintain IBM i applications may be interested in the services of Nalashaa Solutions, an IT services company that has nearly 200 RPG programmers at its disposal. In addition to expertise in healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing/distribution industries, the New Jersey-based company can help with application modernization, code documentation, and migration to the cloud, too.

  The RPG coder supply chain is an oft-discussed topic that incites passion in many people. In some parts of the country and the world, companies have no problem finding RPG programmers to hire. In other locales, you …

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• Every Day Has To Be Earth Day

  April 19, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Every day is Earth Day at IBM, as it has become for many companies that are trying to lessen their environmental impact and increase the sustainability of their businesses and of our planet at the same time.

  But that does not mean that we don’t celebrate the real Earth Day, which is on April 22 this year and which was first held on that day in 1970. Back then, at the birth of the environmental movement, 10 percent of the population of the United States took to the streets to demonstrate peacefully against the environmental and health impacts of a …

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