Amazon Connect now provides an API to programmatically change the current status of an agent. Agent statuses are used to determine when an agent is “Available” to be routed contacts in Connect, versus when they are set to “Offline” or a custom status such as “Lunch” or “Break” and should not be routed contacts. Using this API, businesses can now build custom dashboards for contact center managers to change an agents’ current status, for example if an agent has forgotten to change their status to “Offline” when they are done handling contacts for the day. Previously, this functionality was available only via the Amazon Connect Real Time Metrics page.

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) now offers customers the option to use Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) addresses in their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) on new and existing RDS instances. Customers moving to IPv6 can simplify their network stack by running their databases on a network that supports both IPv4 and IPv6.

Amazon Connect now allows you to search for and view Voice ID authentication and fraud detection outcomes on the contact detail page, making it easier to take action based on Voice ID results. You can search for contacts based on Voice ID attributes such as authentication status, caller actions (enrollment or opt out), fraud risk status, and fraud risk reason. These details are also available from within the contact detail page for a specific contact. For example, you can search for all contacts categorized as high risk for fraud and then listen to these call recordings in order to identify fraudster patterns or strategies, which can enable you to deploy additional security measures to address.

There was once a great engineer who qualified as a stoker on steam trains. The motorbike bug took him into racing bikes, then cars. He developed an alloy of 88% aluminium and 12% copper to use in the pistons of cars and a car equipped with them set a new speed record of 89.7 mph. …

This story continues at Fable: The Racer

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Intelsat, the communications satellite services provider, has donated a piece of satellite history to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. It is the ground spare of the Intelsat 1 satellite.

This story continues at Picture of the Day: Intelsat 1, the first commercial comms satellite

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In absolute terms, the largest supporter as of March 27 was the United States, with a total of €7.6 billion made up of €3.2 billion in humanitarian aid and €4.4 billion in military aid. As this infographic using Kiel Institute for the World Economy data shows though, when it comes to a country’s commitment in …

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The Electronics Weekly team share some fingerposts – their picks of the week, in terms of announcements, developments, product releases, quotes or anything else in the wider world that caught their eye… David Manners, components editor Will this come to be seen as the first Swallow of a chip spring as GPU ASPs take a …

This story continues at What caught your eye this week? (Chip Spring, Diamond buffers, Satellite hacking)

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Microchip is to introduce five families of 8bit microcontrollers, sharing both its PIC and ex-Atmel AVR resources amongst new PICs and AVRs. Users who favour PIC or AVR should not be concerned, according to Microchip marketing director Oyvind Strom: “We are maintaining the bus structures of PIC and AVR, the way you interact with the peripherals …

This story continues at Five families of AVRs and PICs for sensor nodes

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Unidirectional superconductivity without a magnetic fields is possible, according to the technical university of Delft. The proof-of-concept uses a van der Waals heterostructure with 2D materials: NbSe2 – Nb3Br8 – NbSe2, and is superconducting on one direction, and normally-conducting in the other. Compared with the semiconductor diode, “superconductors never had an equivalent of this one-way idea …

This story continues at Superconducting diode made reality

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The UK Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has appointed Lord David Willetts as Chair of the UK Space Agency’s Board. Willetts has previously served as Minister for Universities and Science, and held Chair and Board positions across the space and science sector. For example, he was Chair of the British Science Association, member of the Space …

This story continues at Two-brained Lord appointed as UK Space Agency Chair

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