Dc5m United States IT in English Created at 2016-12-21 06:00

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DC5m United States IT in english 27 articles, created at 2016-12-21 06:00

1 You can now buy refurbished Apple Watch models for as little as $229

(1.02/2) Apple’s renewed commitment to refurbished mobile products now extends to its smartwatch line. Starting today, you can buy discounted Apple Watch devices straight from the company’s website. The... 2016-12-20 21:23 2KB www.theverge.com

2 The hype life: 2016 tech that wowed and whiffed Virtual reality. Space travel. Flagship phones and next-gen computers. What 2016 tech was worth the wait, and what left us cold? 2016-12-20 20:48 866Bytes www.cnet.com

(0.01/2)

3 TR's 12 days of giveaways: Zalman chimes in with offerings

(0.01/2) Good afternoon, gerbils! The TR Santa was feeling quite cheery yesterday, and we have the cameras pointed at the snow in the... 2016-12-20 18:52 4KB techreport.com

4 Literally sticking Apple AirPods in your ear is one way to stop them from falling out Are your wireless Apple AirPods already falling out of your ears? Are you trying to commit to Apple's glorious proprietary future, but keep having to fork out for single earbuds to hear the other... 2016-12-20 22:54 2KB www.theverge.com

5 A convenience store's drones are flying circles around Google and Amazon

The convenience chain has seemingly conquered the skies 2016-12-20 22:42 2KB feedproxy.google.com

6 Google's dueling doodles return to mark new season(s) Our boulder buddies return in a pair of doodles to welcome winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. 2016-12-20 22:06 1KB www.cnet.com

7 Australia’s metadata laws could soon be expanded to include civil cases

Public still has time to reject proposed changes 2016-12-20 21:33 2KB feedproxy.google.com

8 Advocacy Groups File Complaint With the FTC Regarding Google Privacy Policy Change Google purposely deceived consumers about real importance of change, groups say. 2016-12-20 21:30 4KB www.eweek.com 9 Microsoft Expands Power BI Mobile Data Sharing on Android, iOS The iOS version of Microsoft's Power BI app makes annotating and sharing business insights on the go easier. 2016-12-20 21:15 3KB www.eweek.com

10 Reporter goes after Twitter user for allegedly causing seizure Kurt Eichenwald is on a mission to find out who sent him a tweet that triggered an epileptic seizure. 2016-12-20 21:10 2KB www.cnet.com

11 Tour a vodka distillery in 360 degrees

Put on a VR headset and watch how vodka is made. 2016-12-20 21:07 882Bytes www.cnet.com

12 Facebook launches Live Audio, its version of podcasts The social network continues its push in live media. This time, video is not included. 2016-12-20 20:57 1KB www.cnet.com

13 Congressional report sides with Apple on encryption debate The U. S. is better off supporting strong encryption that trying to weaken it, according to a new congressional report that stands at odds with the FBI’s push to install backdoors into tech products. 2016-12-20 20:55 3KB www.itnews.com

14 Facebook Initiates New Measures to Rein in Fake News DAILY VIDEO: Facebook strategy to halt fake news includes a 'Head of News'; Google releases test set to check cryptographic library security; Microsoft bolsters performance of SQL Server database on Linux; and there's more. 2016-12-20 20:45 8KB www.eweek.com

15 VMware Obtains Another SDN Option with PLUMgrid Buy PLUMgrid is a natural for VMware, because the Palo Alto-based company is investing heavily in network virtualization, security and OpenStack IP. 2016-12-20 20:33 3KB www.eweek.com

16 President Obama blocks new offshore drilling in Arctic and Atlantic President Barack Obama just made millions of acres of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans off limits to oil and gas drilling. It’s a move that will protect critical habitats for marine life. And it will... 2016-12-20 20:27 2KB www.theverge.com

17 LG ProBeam fixes the one thing everyone hates about projectors

This leightweight projector claims it still works in bright rooms 2016-12-20 20:24 2KB feedproxy.google.com 18 SDN is the unsung hero of the cloud services evolution Cloud services are evolving, but they need SDN's centralized management and global network visibility for truly next-level deployments 2016-12-20 20:17 5KB www.infoworld.com

19 Mark Zuckerberg reports on his year building A. I. for his home Not all appliances are smart or connected, and even those that are have different interfaces, which made coding difficult, Zuckerberg said. 2016-12-20 20:13 6KB www.pcworld.com

20 Twitter CTO Adam Messinger to depart, latest in exec exodus Twitter also loses its vice president of product in an apparent management restructuring. 2016-12-20 20:02 2KB www.cnet.com

21 What company leadership can learn from coders about communication Developers know that clearer code is easier to read, use, and contribute to. The same principle can be applied to every department of your business 2016-12-20 19:50 4KB www.infoworld.com

22 Lost your gig to a robot? Here's a check to help you get by A poll says people are open to the idea of a "universal basic income" to counter tech- fueled job loss. But figuring out the nitty-gritty is another story. 2016-12-20 19:36 2KB www.cnet.com

23 A Google employee is suing the company for being too confidential A Google product manager has filed a lawsuit against the company for its confidentiality policies on the grounds they violate California labor laws, according to a report from The Information. The... 2016-12-20 19:35 2KB www.theverge.com

24 This sous vide cooker gets a little help from a smart- home friend The company that owns the Wink smart-home hub will help produce the Mellow, a sous vide machine that's been in development for more than two years. 2016-12-20 19:22 1KB www.cnet.com

25 Congressional group says backdoor laws would do more harm than good Today, the House Judiciary Committee’s Encryption Working Group released its year- end report — and the result is good news for technology companies. While the report doesn’t explicitly rule out... 2016-12-20 19:12 2KB www.theverge.com 26 LG's 5K Mac display finally hits the Apple Store

Better late than never 2016-12-20 18:38 1KB feedproxy.google.com

27 The Ethernet ecosystem today is driven by applications, not speed alone Diverse applications in new and traditional industry verticals expand the Ethernet family 2016-12-20 18:07 5KB www.itnews.com Articles

DC5m United States IT in english 27 articles, created at 2016-12-21 06:00

1 /27 You can now buy refurbished Apple Watch models for as little as $229 (1.02/2) President Barack Obama just made millions of acres of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans off limits to oil and gas drilling. It’s a move that will protect critical habitats for marine life. And it will be challenging for the next administration to...

A Google product manager has filed a lawsuit against the company for its confidentiality policies on the grounds they violate California labor laws, according to a report from The Information. The suit, filed today in California Superior Court in...

Today, the House Judiciary Committee’s Encryption Working Group released its year-end report — and the result is good news for technology companies. While the report doesn’t explicitly rule out encryption legislation, it lands firmly on the side...

"Sometimes I fear our technological progress will slowly take over. We meet people through texts and screens. Is it setting us free? Or are we slowly wrapping ourselves in, depending too much on it? The fall is bigger when our hopes are not...

A year into its expensive investment into live video, Facebook is adding an audio option. The company said today that the feature, which is first being made available to publishers, is designed to complement video streams with a lower-bandwidth...

This might be the best way to save on an Apple Watch right now feedproxy.google.com

2016-12-20 21:23 Nick Statt www.theverge.com

2 /27 The hype life: 2016 tech that wowed and whiffed (0.01/2) We've all fallen victim to hype at one point or another, and the year that was proved no exception.

Here's a rundown of the times when we were all aboard the hype train and the times where we were left at the station. Alone. In the rain.

Anything we missed? Let us know what exceeded your expectations or didn't live up to the hype in 2016 in the comments!

2016 tech that lived up to the hype (and tech that didn't) cnet.com

2016-12-20 20:48 by by www.cnet.com

3 /27 TR's 12 days of giveaways: Zalman chimes in with offerings (0.01/2) Good afternoon, gerbils! The TR Santa was feeling quite cheery yesterday, and we have the cameras pointed at the snow in the distance, hoping he'll arrive with a smile again. Although, hm, it's been a while since the appointed time. We have to wonder if the reindeer didn't run out of pixie dust on the way here. Hold on, I think we can spot something in the distance, and it looks like... a moving box? Scratch that, it's several moving boxes, apparently just sliding across the snow. They're coming closer now, and I think we can hear some giggling. Oh dear, Santa sent his elves walking all the way from the North Pole carrying the items. That's some serious employee dedication. Thanks guys, we'll take it from here. Oof, how did they manage to carry this so easily? Let's see... these are the Zalman goodies! There's a Z9 Neo case , a ZM-K900M RGB LED keyboard , and a ZM-GM4 Knossos mouse. Let's check out the big item first—literally, in this case. The Zalman Z9 Neo chassis (a $70 offer) in white finish is quite a looker. It offers four USB ports in its front panel with LED accents in them, a noise-dampened front door, mounting spots for a total of five fans, and plenty of room for drives. Added touches include a PSU shroud and raised feet to help prevent dust buildup.

Zalman couldn't let itself be outdone by other companies in the lighting department, though. The company threw in a ZM-K900M RGB LED keyboard (worth $100) in the bag for those that absolutely love a high amount of blinkenlighting in their setups. We reviewed the ZM-K900M only a short while ago, and gave it a TR Recommended seal. Its claim to fame is the fact that it can be fully programmed, macros and everything, using nothing but the keys themselves. Eric Fredriksen also liked the typing feel of the Kailh Blue switches inside it, too.

The third item that the company sent for our gerbils is the rather fancy-looking Zalman ZM-GM4 mouse (goes for $43). This wired rodent has a rather distinct look that takes the cybertronic concept up a few notches, and offers what's pretty much a fully-adjustable shape. Both side panels and the palm rest can be moved closer or farther from the main body in order to best suit the player's hand. Eight buttons and a sensor that's capable of 8,200 DPI round out this rather unique-looking rodent.

I know what you're thinking right now. You have your ID in your hand to see if the name we're going to post matches yours, down to the last letter. But wait, we have to do our usual countdown. In today's edition, we're going to count down from the number of companies that make gaming mice. Surely that's not too hard! All done? Good. And our winner is (drumroll)... Mitch Spradlin! Congratulations Mitch, you just won yourself a Santa-sized sack of hardware gear. Our biz handler will be in touch with you soon so you can get your prizes. Meanwhile, we believe Krogoth was actually interested in the Zalman bundle, but lost any interest as soon as he heard "RGB LEDs. "

And now, let's have a hearty round of applause for the folks at Zalman. The company is a long- time acquaintance of TR gerbils, since the days of Pentium 4s and Athlons. Zalman was kind enough to hook us up with all this sweet gear, so go follow its Twitter feed , and hit Like on its Facebook profile.

Don't forget to sign up for the remaining random draws in TR's 12 days of giveaways. TR Santa still has goodies to deliver over the next few weeks, and you still have good chances. We'll have another giveaway tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can gaze at an item that may or may not be up for grabs:

TR's 12 days of giveaways: Zalman chimes in with offers techreport.com

2016-12-20 18:52 by Bruno techreport.com

4 /27 4 /27 Literally sticking Apple AirPods in your ear is one way to stop them from falling out Apple’s renewed commitment to refurbished mobile products now extends to its smartwatch line. Starting today, you can buy discounted Apple Watch devices straight from the company’s website. The cheapest model, a refurbished Apple Watch Series 1 in...

President Barack Obama just made millions of acres of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans off limits to oil and gas drilling. It’s a move that will protect critical habitats for marine life. And it will be challenging for the next administration to...

2016-12-20 22:54 Rich McCormick www.theverge.com

5 /27 A convenience store's drones are flying circles around Google and Amazon While the likes of Google's Project Wing and Amazon's drone delivery service are still working out the details in delivery via autonomous aircraft, it appears the home of the Slurpee is strafing ahead the competition.

7-11 managed to complete 77 individual deliveries-by-drone as of this November, according to a press release from Flirtey , the company which operates the courier drones for the convenience store chain.

12 different customers in Reno, NV who lived within a mile of the test 7-11 store participated in the service.

Using a dedicated app, the customers placed orders from a special list of available items ranging from over-the-counter medicine to breakfast items, and the GPS-guided drone would then make the drop in the average span of ten minutes.

Flirtey claims its partnership with 7-11 marks the first time a drone delivery service has made regular drop-offs to a customer's home - a monumental achievement in the field, especially given the progress of its competitors.

The aforementioned projects from Google and Amazon, being larger in scope, still need to work with regulators to find ways to operate their services within the legal confines of drone operation .

7-11 and Flirtey were able to get a leg up seemingly by taking baby steps. Laws currently require drones (even autonomous ones) to operate within the operator's line-of-sight unless given express permission from the FAA - something services like Google and Amazon's services would likely function better without.

By confining its efforts to a select group of people and making regular deliveries nearby, 7-11 was able to rack up considerable experience as unlikely leader in the drone delivery biz - and with seemingly good reception, as one customer is reported to have remarked the experience as something out of "the real-life Jetsons. "

2016-12-20 22:42 Parker Wilhelm feedproxy.google.com

6 /27 Google's dueling doodles return to mark new season(s) Rockin' with the first day of winter.

The longest night is upon us.

The winter solstice arrives in the Northern Hemisphere on Wednesday, ushering in winter on what is also the shortest day of the year. Winter officially arrives at 2:44 a.m. PT, when the sun is at it lowest latitude in the Earth's sky.

To underscore the bone-chilling weather many of us can expect for the next three months or so, Google has created an animated doodle that features the same family stone that heralded the coming of summer and fall earlier this year. As snow flakes gently blanket our boulder buddies, you can almost read their hope in their eyes for the warmer days still months off as they shiver under the snow.

... and summer Down Under.

And just as there are two sides to every coin, story, etc., the story is different on the other side of the world. In the Southern Hemisphere, the Summer Solstice marks the longest day of the year below the equator and traditionally warmer weather. Google's family of stones is rolling into the Summer Solstice, welcoming warmer days with the help a strawberry-stealing squirrel.

Both events have varied interpretations among different cultures worldwide but are generally marked by holidays, festivals and rituals. However you mark the seasons' changing, take solace in knowing that the days are getting longer (and shorter).

2016-12-20 22:06 by by www.cnet.com

7 /27 Australia’s metadata laws could soon be expanded to include civil cases If you recall the moment Australia’s current data retention laws were introduced back in 2015, you may also remember that a lot of the opposing parties had expressed concerns about the new law. At the time, the laws were stated to be specifically aimed at terrorists and serious criminals, but civil liberties groups were concerned that this limited remit could easily snowball into something more expansive.

Now it seems like those fears could have been justified, as the Attorney-General’s Department has just announced a review into these laws, calling on members of the public to have their say on whether or not they should be extended to cover civil proceedings, with submissions closing January 17, 2017.

As they stand now, these laws require a mandatory two-year retention of users’ communications data by service providers, including information on phone calls, text messages and internet browsing sessions.

According to information on the current law , “Data is used in almost every serious criminal or national security investigation, including murder, counter-terrorism, counter-espionage, sexual assault and kidnapping cases.”

If this new review is successful, however, Australians could be seeing their data used in cases that cover everything from piracy to child support, signalling a massive shift towards absolute data retention.

It's a little sneaky (but perhaps unsurprising) that a review like this has been brought up several days before Christmas, when most people’s attention is focused elsewhere.

There is still time for the public to act, however. Australian citizens have been asked to weigh in on this topic — so if you have concerns about the proposed changes, we’d strongly suggest having your say now. At this festive time of year, that January 17th deadline will be here and gone in a flash.

2016-12-20 21:33 Harry Domanski feedproxy.google.com

8 /27 Advocacy Groups File Complaint With the FTC Regarding Google Privacy Policy Change Two consumer advocacy groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that Google deliberately deceived consumers about a change in the company's data privacy policy.

Two privacy groups have formally accused Google of deceiving customers about the implications of a privacy policy change that the company made earlier this year.

In a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), advocacy groups Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) alleged Google had forced the change on users "in a highly deceptive manner" and without proper notice.

"The change also violated legally binding commitments that Google made to the FTC," the two organizations claimed in the complaint.

At issue is an announcement that Google made in June that effectively neutralized a commitment from nearly ten years ago when it acquired consumer-tracking firm DoubleClick. When purchasing DoubleClick, Google had pledged to the FTC and Congress that it would not combine browsing data from DoubleClick's database with personally identifiable information about users of services like Gmail.

In June, however, the company backed away from the pledge and said it would combine the two data sets where needed in order to deliver a more personalized experience for users of its services. Google has since described the decision as being driven by the proliferating use of mobile devices.

According to the company, the multiple devices that people use these days to access Google services makes it necessary for the company to combine the two data sets so it can continue to deliver a personalized experience. The company has also stressed that the tracking is purely opt-in. In other words, Google says it tracks people across both databases only in situations where users proactively enable the tracking. Consumers have the option at all times to opt-out of the tracking, Google has said.

PRC and Consumer Watchdog—a perennial Google critic—however claim that Google deliberately downplayed the significance of the change and miscast its new policy as something that would give consumers more control of their personal data.

According to them, Google in fact took several affirmative steps to conceal the fact that the policy change eliminated the barrier between Google’s DoubleClick data and the data it collects from its login accounts like Gmail and YouTube.

"Google induced users to accept the change to its privacy policy by cloaking it in an offer to enable “new features" that purport to provide "more control" over users' personal information," Consumer Watchdog and PRC said "Unsuspecting users accepted Google's offer in droves. "

By being able to combine the two data sets, Google now has the ability to create "super-profiles" of its users. The company can now track user activity on Android phones, which hold an 88 percent share of the smartphone market. It also can do so across any website that uses Google Analytics, displays ads served by DoubleClick or hosts YouTube videos.

With its policy change, Google has essentially given itself the power to track users across a vast majority of websites worldwide, including those that appear to users to be entirely unconnected from Google, the two advocacy groups said.

The complaint asks the FTC to investigate Google's data collection practices, the adequacy of Google's disclosure and whether the company had violated the commitment it had made to the FTC when it acquired DoubleClick.

2016-12-20 21:30 Jaikumar Vijayan www.eweek.com

9 /27 Microsoft Expands Power BI Mobile Data Sharing on Android, iOS The iOS version of the Power BI app makes it easier for users to annotate and share their business insights on the go with Apple mobile devices, including the Apple Watch. Microsoft is rolling out the final Power BI mobile app updates for 2016. This time around, the focus is on making it easier to share findings and get Android tablet users up to speed on the business intelligence (BI) app.

On iOS, the company has made new enhancements to the app's annotating and sharing features. New to the latest release is the ability to share both annotated and mobile- optimized reports directly from the app. Further, shared snapshots sent via email now create a deep link that takes the recipient directly to the related Power BI tile or report.

Building on Power BI's existing Quick Response code capabilities, which allow users to share reports using codes that can be scanned by cameras on smartphones and tablets, the company has added the ability for unauthorized users to request access directly from the app. The owner of the related Power BI dashboard in question must approve the request using the Power BI web portal.

The app also allows Apple Watch users to refresh data from the companion app for the wearable. With the iPhone app running in the background and the dashboard index page visible on the Watch, users can "deep press" the Watch's Force Touch-enabled screen to perform a refresh.

This month, Microsoft finally released a preview edition of the Power BI app for Android tablets. The company is encouraging users to take it for a spin and help the company refine the app by supplying feedback using the Power BI Mobile online community forum.

Also for Android devices, Microsoft has enabled location-based geographic report filtering.

"Now you can use your Android device to filter reports by your current location in just one tap," stated Romi Koifman, a Microsoft Power BI program manager, in a Dec. 19 blog post. "When viewing reports with data about the city, state, or country that you're in, you'll be able to filter your data by that city, state, or country. As long [as] you're using the app, the filter will remain in effect in the reports to which it was applied. "

On both the Android and iOS Power BI apps, Microsoft has modified how the apps behave when users tap on tiles containing custom URLs. Tapping a tile now takes users directly to the URL instead of the focus mode view for the tile. Microsoft has also changed how the apps' offline background refresh feature works on all versions of the app to reduce network overhead.

Meanwhile, Microsoft senior program manager Will Thompson assured desktop users that the company is taking menu bloat seriously as the desktop version of Power BI continues to gain features.

"The overall UX [user experience] across the desktop is getting busy as we add more functionality, and we're always looking at ways to better structure it," said Thompson during a recent Power BI Ask Microsoft Anything session in the community forums. "We've got some ideas that'll help the formatting and layout options in particular—and the order in which cards appear is getting fixed too. "

2016-12-20 21:15 Pedro Hernandez www.eweek.com

10 /27 Reporter goes after Twitter user for allegedly causing seizure Journalist Kurt Eichenwald

Kurt Eichenwald is going after whoever sent him a tweet that he says triggered an epileptic seizure.

The Vanity Fair and Newsweek writer, who suffers from epilepsy, says someone or some group sent him a strobe-light image last week meant to trigger the condition. On his Twitter stream, he suggested the tweet was retaliation for his critical coverage of President-elect Donald Trump and said it was the second time he's been attacked with a strobe image over Twitter.

On Monday, a judge in Dallas County, Texas, signed a court order requiring the social network to disclose information about the user alleged to have sent the image from the now-suspended Twitter handle @jew_goldstein .

Twitter declined to comment on the order or the reported attack through its platform. Eichenwald didn't immediately return a message seeking comment. He said Tuesday on ABC's " Good Morning America" he doesn't remember much about the seizure, was bedridden for 24 hours and will not be able to drive for months.

"Your memory gets pretty obliterated," he said. "From what was described to me, this was a multicolored strobe that was going at a speed that was designed to cause a seizure -- and it succeeded. "

Eichenwald has been a frequent critic of Trump, reporting on his business ties and the conflicts of interest they might represent.

As his Twitter feed attests, he's ready to go after anyone involved.

Eichenwald has written extensively about his experiences having seizures. He said the December 15 tweet containing the strobe image did its job. He says the tweet bore the legend, "You deserve a seizure for your posts. "

On Tuesday, Eichenwald told "Good Morning America" that Trump supporters have been filling his Twitter feed with so many hateful and damaging tweets that he can't look at the feed anymore. He said his followers with epilepsy can't look at his feed either.

"It is amazing to me that simply because I am a political reporter, and that I write about Donald Trump, that we have become so sick and twisted in this country that people think they have the right and obligation to inflict potentially very serious injury," he told the show.

He later wondered on Twitter why anyone would go to such lengths to demonstrate his or her dislike toward him.

He also tweeted...

And then there's this warning...

2016-12-20 21:10 by by www.cnet.com

11 /27 11 /27 Tour a vodka distillery in 360 degrees Having a few sips of vodka can be enough to make your head spin.

At the Hangar One distillery based in Alameda, California, we took a 360-degree camera to film the vodka-production process -- no alcohol consumption required.

Head distiller Caley Shoemaker looks after every part of the production. Watch as she explains the steps of vodka distillation, from small-scale batches to a full production run.

You can also click and drag around the video with a mouse if you're on desktop.

2016-12-20 21:07 by by www.cnet.com

12 /27 Facebook launches Live Audio, its version of podcasts Facebook is launching its version of podcasts.

Facebook's latest innovation: podcasts?

The social network said Tuesday it's launching a new feature called Facebook Live Audio , which is like video live- streaming on Facebook but with no video. So, radio. It's Facebook radio.

To kick things off, the company is partnering with media outlets including BBC World Service and Harper Collins. Facebook said it will expand the feature next year to let other publishers and people use it, but the company didn't give a specific timeline.

The new feature is the latest in Facebook's effort to push live media, as it tries to get its 1.8 billion users to spend as much time on its site as possible.

The social network has invested heavily in live video, even creating a dedicated tab for videos at the bottom of the Facebook app -- some of the most prime real estate in the mobile world. The company last week also introduced 360-live videos -- more immersive scenes where viewers can look up, down and around in a video.

But audio-only is a new route. The company points out that one of the advantages is for people in areas with low bandwidth, where videos don't load as smoothly. If you're listening to a Live Audio stream on an iPhone, there's a catch. You have to stay in Facebook's app. If you're on a phone that runs Google's Android mobile software, you can leave the app to do other things on your phone.

2016-12-20 20:57 by by www.cnet.com

13 /27 Congressional report sides with Apple on encryption debate The U. S. is better off supporting strong encryption that trying to weaken it, according to a new congressional report that stands at odds with the FBI’s push to install backdoors into tech products.

On Tuesday, a bipartisan congressional panel published a year-end report , advising the U. S. to explore other solutions to the encryption debate.

“Any measure that weakens encryption works against the national interest,” the report said.

The congressional panel formed back in March, amid the FBI’s public battle with Apple over trying to gain access to a locked iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter.

Tuesday’s report essentially sides with Apple and its stance that strong encryption is vital for security. But the report also acknowledged that the technology has become an obstacle for law enforcement agencies when investigating crimes.

However, forcing U. S. companies to compromise their encryption wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem. Consumers and bad actors, for instance, would likely choose to use more secure products offered by foreign companies, the report said.

“Congress cannot stop bad actors — at home or overseas — from adopting encryption,” the report added.

Lobbying groups from the tech sector welcomed Tuesday’s report. The Computer and Communications Industry Association said weakening encryption would be “shortsighted.”

“(It) would play directly into the hands of those who would do us harm,” said association president Ed Black in an email.

Tuesday’s report advises that congressional committees explore other measures to help law enforcement agencies with their investigations. Among the suggestions was examining the use of “legal hacking” to break into tech products.

Rather than build backdoors into tech products, law enforcement can consider exploiting flaws in secure products that already exist, the report said.

The FBI resorted to this approach when it hired an unknown third-party to hack into the passcode-protected iPhone from the San Bernardino shooter. The agency’s director has suggested the FBI paid more than $1 million for the hacking tool involved.

However, any legal hacking would raise other questions, like if and when a law enforcement agency should alert tech companies about these vulnerabilities, the report said.

News agencies have already sued the FBI, demanding details over how it gained access to the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone.

Other measures Congress can explore include legally compelling criminal suspects to unlock their smartphones and finding better ways to use metadata analysis in law enforcement investigations.

Tuesday's report also emphasized the need for both the tech industry and law enforcement to foster cooperation, despite past tensions between the two sides.

"This can no longer be an isolated or binary debate. There is no 'us versus them,'" the report said.

The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

2016-12-20 20:55 Michael Kan www.itnews.com

14 /27 Facebook Initiates New Measures to Rein in Fake News DAILY VIDEO: Facebook strategy to halt fake news includes a 'Head of News'; Google releases test set to check cryptographic library security; Microsoft bolsters performance of SQL Server database on Linux; and there's more.

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Read more about the stories in today's news: Facebook Strategy to Halt Fake News Includes a 'Head of News' Google Releases Test Set to Check Cryptographic Library Security Microsoft Bolsters Performance of SQL Server Database on Linux DevOps Adoption High in 2016, But Some Users Hit QA Wall

Today's topics include Facebook’s strategy to halt fake news, Google’s release of a set of tests to check for known vulnerabilities in cryptographic libraries, why developers working with the DevOps application development process are encountering a software testing bottleneck, and Microsoft’s preview of its new SQL server database for Linux.

Facebook has faced severe criticism because the social network because it has become one of the largest distributors of unfounded propaganda and phony news stories along with legitimate news.

To try to solve the problem Facebook will take a multi-faceted approach that uses a form of crowd-sourcing to curate the content as it comes onto news feeds.

The network said it will ask readers for immediate feedback on such articles and will be using a group of editors to respond to this feedback. The company also said it will be making tools available for instant notification of false new stories when they appear.

Google has released a set of tests that developers can use to check some open source cryptographic libraries for known security vulnerabilities.

The company has named the set of tests Project Wycheproof, after a mountain in Australia, which has the distinction of being the world's smallest registered mountain.

"The main motivation for the project is to have an achievable goal," Google security engineers Daniel Bleichenbacher and Thai Duong, explained in a blog announcing Project Wycheproof. "The smaller the mountain the easier it is to climb it!”

The engineers wrote that Project Wycheproof is designed to help developers catch subtle mistakes in open source cryptographic libraries that, if left unaddressed, can have catastrophic consequences.

As more enterprises make the move toward utilizing a DevOps approach to software development, many of them are still seeing a problem the process is suppose to eradicate: They're experiencing a software testing bottleneck called the "QA wall" that puts a damper on the speed of software releases.

The goal of DevOps is to improve the relationship between software developers and business operations by advocating better communication and collaboration between the two business units.

A Vanson Bourne survey revealed that while 73 percent of respondents have adopted some DevOps processes, 54 percent of those adoptees have identified their current QA automation as a bottleneck.

Microsoft made waves earlier this year when it announced that its SQL Server database was heading to Linux in mid-2017.

For an early peek at what that experience is like, database administrators, can download a beta release of the software. Version 1.1 of the so-called SQL Server vNext Community Technology Preview (CTP), released nearly a month after the first preview, contains several performance enhancements and supports more Linux distributions.

The new vNext branding is meant to evoke SQL Server's evolution from a Windows-only technology to a cloud-enabled, Linux and container-friendly data platform.

The upcoming release of SQL Server vNext for Linux is one of several moves the software giant is making to court the open source community and developers who make extensive use of Linux to build solutions for the enterprise.

2016-12-20 20:45 eWEEK Staff www.eweek.com

15 /27 VMware Obtains Another SDN Option with PLUMgrid Buy PLUMgrid is a natural for VMware, because the Palo Alto-based company is investing heavily in network virtualization, security and OpenStack IP.

Virtualization superpower VMware has acquired the intellectual property and some staff members from software-defined networking startup PLUMgrid. A VMware spokesman said the deal closed Dec. 16, SDxCentral reported Dec. 19. No information was disclosed regarding a purchase price.

The acquiring company apparently isn't offering further details, and there's no information on which executives of Santa Clara, Calif.- based PLUMgrid might be asked to move across Silicon Valley to join VMware.

Last March, PLUMgrid launched the newest version of its networking virtualization offerings that included support for the latest releases of the OpenStack cloud orchestration stack.

The company unveiled Open Networking Suite (ONS) 5.0, which supports the Kilo and Liberty releases of OpenStack for both service providers and enterprises. PLUMgrid offers both SDN and network-functions virtualization (NFV) technologies for OpenStack-based cloud environments.

PLUMgrid is a natural for VMware, because the Palo Alto-based company is investing heavily in network virtualization, security and OpenStack IP. VMware has been covering the first two categories with its NSX hypervisor, and it since has made available its own OpenStack distribution.

Along with the Kilo and Liberty support, ONS 5.0 also comes with a range of new features designed to make it easier to deploy OpenStack clouds and more efficient to run them, PLUMgrid said.

With the latest ONS release, customers that are running virtual machines, containers and bare- metal architectures in their environments can use SDN overlays for micro-segmentation for multi-tenancy, traffic isolation and policy enforcement to make management easier.

ONS 5.0 includes support for Docker containers, improved gateway integration with Cisco Systems' Nexus 9000 switches, IPv6, and PLUMgrid's new SmartLogs technology.

For the last few years, VMware has been making major changes within its NSX hypervisor to accommodate containers, which are among the hottest IT trends of the last decade.

PLUMgrid's technology, introduced in 2013, gives enterprise customers another option to capitalize on SDN, bringing a different approach from contemporaries such as Nicira (acquired by VMware) or Big Switch Networks.

Rather than create an SDN controller to dictate instructions to switches, PLUMgrid created IO Visor, an I/O processor that sits in the Linux kernel and controls virtual domains for network virtualization, monitoring, and security. IO Visor has since become a Linux Foundation project.

Founded in 2011, PLUMgrid raised a total of $27 million in venture funding. 2016-12-20 20:33 Chris Preimesberger www.eweek.com

16 /27 President Obama blocks new offshore drilling in Arctic and Atlantic A Google product manager has filed a lawsuit against the company for its confidentiality policies on the grounds they violate California labor laws, according to a report from The Information. The suit, filed today in California Superior Court in...

We live in an age of reboots and cinematic universes. And yet I had no idea that Hollywood was rebooting The Mummy until this morning, when the IMAX YouTube channel uploaded a Mummy trailer in which the sound was hilariously butchered. It was a...

2016-12-20 20:27 Rachel Becker www.theverge.com

17 /27 LG ProBeam fixes the one thing everyone hates about projectors Projectors have always been intriguing alternatives for the home theater enthusiast not wanting to commit wall space to an immobile display.

However, those ideas are usually nixed the minute you try to get something showing on the wall with a home projector, only to have it washed out by ambient daylight. To combat this, LG just announced the ProBeam , a laser engine video projector capable of emitting a whopping 2,000 lumens of brightness - an amount LG claims will keep a clear image even in a bright room.

While that level of brightness isn't a first - or even the brightest - among projectors, it's the kind of lamp more common in business-minded (read: very expensive and bulky) models.

Unlike most business projectors, however, the ProBeam has a more table-friendly vertical build in place of that wide and horizontal frame we're used to, and weighs only 4.6 lbs.

In addition to a bright lamp, lighter build, and vertical shape, the ProBeam also features Bluetooth connectivity for your speakers or headphones.

The ProBeam also uses LG's webOS software - seen in the company's smart TVs - to ensure you won't be without the usual staples of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and whatnot.

While LG hasn't mentioned prices yet, it appears the ProBeam is being marketed for home and leisure use, which could lead to a more consumer-level price - but that's not a guarantee.

Curious to see if the ProBeam is up to snuff? The sleek laser projector will be on display at LG's booth January 5-8 during CES 2017.

Just do yourself a favor and avoid staring directly into the ProBeam's lens. If LG's claims about its brightness are correct, that could be an easy ticket to Retinal Damage-ville.

2016-12-20 20:24 Parker Wilhelm feedproxy.google.com

18 /27 SDN is the unsung hero of the cloud services evolution In the span of one month, Google acquired Orbitera and announced its intention to acquire Apigee -- a deal that was completed on November 10. It's fairly obvious that these acquisitions are to bolster the GCP (Google Cloud Platform), but what's less obvious is how Google's Andromeda project justifies the acquisitions.

Andromeda, Google's SDN (software-defined network)-based network virtualization technology, improves the speed of GCP, laying the groundwork so the Orbitera and Apigee acquisitions can be meaningful. Orbitera is a cloud commerce platform and Apigee is a cloud services and API management platform.

Google uses SDN in the cloud to let customers assign and control their own slices of compute and storage resources. Their customers can do this on separate virtual networks, and GCP can deploy network services like load balancing and security based on moment-to-moment customer needs. GCP uses SDN to optimize cloud interconnections, which is all part of the move away from vendor lock-in to allow unprecedented choice in the cloud.

Cloud services providers are entering a world of collaboration where they need to bridge gaps between disparate cloud environments. Services can't be designed strictly for isolated cloud environments anymore. They have to be designed for easy collaboration between environments, e.g. between AWS and GCP. Moving toward collaboration means greater access for enterprises and less restricted products for customers. Collaborative designs also mean shorter times between upgrades and fixes, because applications will be developed with interoperability in mind.

Considering the above, it isn't a shock to see cross-cloud and hybrid-cloud management tools popping up. Google's acquisition of Apigee might have been surprising to those who weren't paying attention, but since they've been working on Andromeda for at least a few years, it seems to be a logical extension of the technology they were developing. Apigee gives them an edge on supporting cross-cloud collaboration because of Apigee's API management offerings, but without SDN technology, the new architecture Google's trying to support would come apart at the seams.

As every aspect of computing becomes less centralized and more diffuse, more distributed, something has to help manage the new network possibilities. SDN helps connect everything. With it, providers can optimize data transfers between disparate cloud environments and keep the entire network running smoothly. It allows customers to host whatever they want wherever they want, and they can do it all from a single point.

SDN means centralized management, which lets businesses and customers monitor applications across physical geographies and disparate cloud environments. This allows the development team a degree of responsiveness that has never been possible before, and gives customers unprecedented choice. Networks can be created, deployed, and managed from anywhere in the world, while applications can be migrated across cloud environments without having to specifically reconfigure the applications to work in another environment. SDN's abstraction layer makes the blending of cloud resources possible, all while handling failures, changes in location, usage spikes, and disaster recovery.

Network visibility is a big concern with network security teams. SDN offers more visibility into the network, stretching out to all the distributed systems comprised by the new multi-cloud network architecture. Security programmability also gets a boost -- customers can program specific controls for how their network security should operate, giving them reach throughout the whole system from one vantage point. This makes it easy to set rules for what traffic should be allowed on the network and how it should act. And while many clouds are already based on some flavor of container technology today, that adoption will continue to increase moving forward. Imagine a phone that allows for separate personas between home and work, or isolated domains for banking. These possibilities will require automated networking infrastructure.

SDN ties everything together by bringing networking, cloud, hosting, and IT services together in an integrated offering. This provides developers access to infrastructure resources from one convenient location, allowing them to innovate through software more quickly. And when developers create an application on an SDN-enabled platform, they can get flow information directly from the SDN -- information like hotspots or how the application performs under different loads -- and add networking resources to guarantee application performance during heavy loads.

SDN's global network visibility means that developers and customers can determine how traffic behaves from one device to another, lending insight into how to make all devices and applications more efficient. It also affords the opportunity to dynamically reroute packets if one device experiences heavy traffic. Developers now have the option of creating a customizable and dynamic application marketplace infrastructure, giving customers responsive provisioning and more control over their experience.

As time moves on, the delineation between the network and the cloud will get more and more blurred. Network and cloud capabilities are already intertwined, and that will only continue in the future as SDN backs the evolution of cloud services architecture.

2016-12-20 20:17 Jay Turner www.infoworld.com

19 /27 Mark Zuckerberg reports on his year building A. I. for his home Mark Zuckerberg’s personal 2016 challenge to build an artificial intelligence system to run his home has been a learning experience for the co- founder and CEO of Facebook.

Some parts were simpler than expected and others were a surprising challenge, Zuckerberg said in a blog post .

“My goal was to learn about the state of artificial intelligence—where we’re further along than people realize and where we’re still a long ways off,” Zuckerberg wrote. “These challenges always lead me to learn more than I expected, and this one also gave me a better sense of all the internal technology Facebook engineers get to use, as well as a thorough overview of home automation.”

Zuckerberg’s personal home A. I. challenge is one of a string of New Year’s resolutions that he has made for himself.

Over the past few years, he’s challenged himself to learn to speak Mandarin, read two books a month, and meet a new person every day.

Mark Zuckerberg’s home A. I. system is set up to recognize friends and family at the front door. It will let them in and notify Zuckerberg that someone has arrived.

Inspired by Jarvis, the home computer system in the Iron Man comics and movies, Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post last January that for 2016 he was going to focus on using A. I. to run his home and help him with his work.

At the time, Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research, said he thought Zuckerberg’s focus on A. I. could spur other researchers to do the same.

Today, though, Kerravala said that doesn’t seem to have happened. "If you were working on A. I., it’s unlikely that Zuckerberg doing it got you more interested,” he added. “If you weren’t, then it’s unlikely it caused you to jump in.”

However, Kerravala still is happy that A. I. was Zuckerberg’s focus for the year.

“Enough small advancements in A. I. will mean a big leap one day,” he said. “More leaders and companies should be focused on moon shots. I think he’s doing what he should be doing. “

So here’s what Zuckerberg said he accomplished this past year.

He reported in his post that he built a simple A. I. system that—by using natural language processing, speech, facial recognition, and reinforcement learning—can control his home’s lights, temperature, security, music, and appliances.

The system, written in Python, Objective C, and PHP, is able to learn new words and concepts, he added, noting that it’s also able to entertain his daughter Max and play Mandarin lessons for her. His system is also named Jarvis.

He used facial and image recognition to enable the system to detect if his daughter is awake and moving around in her crib, if that’s the dog in the living room or if it’s a rug, and if a friend or relative is at the door or if it’s a stranger.

“About one-third of the human brain is dedicated to vision, and there are many important A. I. problems related to understanding what is happening in images and videos,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Face recognition is a particularly difficult version of object recognition because most people look relatively similar compared to telling apart two random objects—for example, a sandwich and a house. But Facebook has gotten very good at face recognition for identifying when your friends are in your photos. That expertise is also useful when your friends are at your door and your A. I. needs to determine whether to let them in.”

To figure out who’s at his door and possibly let them into his house, Zuckerberg said he installed a few cameras to get images of his visitors from different angles, along with a server to monitor the cameras and run facial recognition and check a list of people allowed entry to his home. The system also tells him when a guest has been let in.

“This type of visual A. I. system is useful for a number of things, including knowing when Max is awake so it can start playing music or a Mandarin lesson, or solving the context problem of knowing which room in the house we’re in so the A. I. can correctly respond to context-free requests like ‘turn the lights on’ without providing a location,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“Like most aspects of this A. I., vision is most useful when it informs a broader model of the world, connected with other abilities like knowing who your friends are and how to open the door when they’re here. The more context the system has, the smarter is gets overall.”

Zuckerberg noted that he was disappointed that some of his appliances aren’t smart and connected, and the ones that are use different languages and protocols. This made coding his A. I. system more difficult.

One positive, though, is that he was able to use a Messenger bot to communicate with Jarvis.

“I programmed Jarvis on my computer, but in order to be useful I wanted to be able to communicate with it from anywhere I happened to be,” he wrote. “That meant the communication had to happen through my phone, not a device placed in my home.”

He used the Messenger bot because it was easier than building a separate app.

“I can text anything to my Jarvis bot, and it will instantly be relayed to my Jarvis server and processed,” he added. “I can also send audio clips and the server can translate them into text and then execute those commands. In the middle of the day, if someone arrives at my home, Jarvis can text me an image and tell me who’s there, or it can text me when I need to go do something.”

Though Zuckerberg’s annual year challenge is just about over, he noted in his blog that he’ll continue working on Jarvis, including building an Android app, setting up Jarvis voice terminals in more rooms, and connecting more appliances.

“In the longer term, I’d like to explore teaching Jarvis how to learn new skills itself rather than me having to teach it how to perform specific tasks,” he said. “If I spent another year on this challenge, I’d focus more on learning how learning works.”

2016-12-20 20:13 Sharon Gaudin www.pcworld.com

20 /27 Twitter CTO Adam Messinger to depart, latest in exec exodus Adam Messinger is leaving Twitter after three years as its chief technology officer.

Twitter Chief Technology Officer Adam Messinger said Tuesday he would leave the company, becoming the latest key executive to leave the company this year.

Messinger announced his departure in a tweet , saying he was going to take some time off. Messinger, who joined Twitter in 2011 as vice president of app development in the engineering department, was appointed chief technical officer in 2013.

Messinger's announcement comes the same day as Twitter's vice president of product, Josh McFarland tweeted that he was leaving the social network to become a partner at venture capital firm Greylock Partners. Ed Ho, who has been in charge of product at Twitter, will take over all product and engineering and report directly to CEO Jack Dorsey, Recode reported, citing people familiar with the restructuring.

"We're taking steps to streamline and flatten the organization by elevating our engineering, product and design functions, with each area now reporting directly to Jack," a company spokesperson said in an email.

The departures are the latest in a string of executives who have left the company this year. Adam Bain, the company's former chief operating officer, announced his resignation last month, following product head Kevin Weil, who departed Twitter for Instagram in March. The social network has struggled in recent years as user growth has flatlined, infuriating Wall Street and efforts to transform the platform into a live-streaming hub, including airing Thursday night NFL games , are yielding mixed results.

2016-12-20 20:02 by by www.cnet.com

21 /27 What company leadership can learn from coders about communication I have the great pleasure of working for a company with a high growth trajectory, in a high growth industry. We’ve grown from 20 employees to more than 130 since 2013, so we spend a lot of time talking about onboarding new employees and company culture.

Creating a welcoming environment is important for all organizations, but for our company, it’s a necessity. We have a geographically dispersed team and have grown that team quickly. In order for us to maintain our organizational values as we grow and ensure our team points toward the same north star, we must have a strong, consistent company culture.

Not only is our company culture essential to the day-to-day happiness and experience of our team, it also affects our brand externally. We want everyone who walks in to meet with our staff -- whether it’s in Las Vegas or Greenville, SC -- to have the same experience, understand what makes our organization exciting, and walk away knowing why we do what we do. We have to be diligent to ensure there’s a consistent culture that doesn’t get lost in translation across cities.

Management teams are keenly aware of how important and how difficult getting new team members up to speed can be. Anyone joining a new team faces a learning curve, and the entire company will benefit if that curve is settled on a small hill instead of a steep mountain. After all, a new team member’s first few weeks on the job are critical to setting them up for success, and according to SHRM data, most new hires determine in the first 30 days if they feel welcome in an organization.

In both my role as executive director at The Iron Yard and in the conversations I have with the companies that hire our graduates, the topic of creating a culture that’s easy to walk into and lowers the daunting learning curve for new hires comes up time and time again.

In a recent blog post , I wrote about how being intentional with the language we use helps create an inclusive work environment. Being intentional with our language choices can also be applied to building a company culture that is welcoming to new hires, and we can start by creating a company vernacular that doesn’t need a handbook.

In that respect, I believe company leaders have a lot to learn from coders. Developers -- especially those who contribute to open source projects -- know that having a structure that enables others to easily understand the code and contribute is important. There is agreed-upon language and documentation with the goal of removing ambiguity to align all parties involved.

How many of us have walked into a meeting with a new team and heard a sentence that sounds like this:

As a new hire in that meeting, you have two options: stop the conversation and ask someone to translate, or smile and nod until you figure it out yourself.

To make things even more complicated for new team members, in today’s modern workplace, many of these conversations are happening virtually. Those acronym-ridden messages are being passed around in Slack channels, emails, or remote conferencing. We’re more able than ever to work collaboratively across cities and time zones, but we’ve also expanded the possibilities for important information to get lost in translation.

Why don’t we all just speak in plain English? What if you didn’t have to learn a new set of company acronyms every time you started a new job or Google words in a meeting to understand what others are saying, especially when what they’re saying is really quite simple? Does it really make us seem smarter if we’re able to regurgitate acronyms?

Take for example the sentence above. All we really mean to say is:

My personal challenge is to avoid the acronym temptation and get in a better habit of speaking clearly. To use the word “expert” instead of “SME" or “subject matter expert.” It’s a small change, but it’s something we can do to make our work cultures more approachable and lower that steep learning curve, even if it’s just a little bit.

Developers know that the more clear you are in your lines of code and repository documentation the easier it is for other people to read your code, contribute and use it. The same principle can be applied to every department of your business.

So as we start 2017, let’s all try to think like developers. By being clear in our communication and prioritizing an accessible company culture, we’ll all see the benefits.

2016-12-20 19:50 Jessica A www.infoworld.com

22 /27 Lost your gig to a robot? Here's a check to help you get by "Don't slam the door on your way out, man. "

A robot ate my job and all I got was this lousy welfare check.

A new survey says nearly half of Americans are OK with the idea of a "universal basic income," a monthly payment that could be funded by tax revenues and used as a safety net against job loss caused by, among other things, automation, artificial intelligence and similar tech developments .

Celebrated personalities such as Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking have expressed concern over the possibility of such job loss , and one researcher has forecast that 6 percent of all jobs in the US will be snatched by robots and other technologies by 2021 . (We're not talking just blue collar workers here; Hawking has said that "the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes. ")

The survey was commissioned by the Economic Security Project, a group that's devoted to exploring the possibility of a universal basic income and that counts among its associates Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and legal scholar and Internet activist Lawrence Lessig. ESP associate Misha Chellam gave an overview of findings on Medium on Monday.

While it looks like folks are open to the general idea of a UBI, things change when it comes to hashing out the details.

Forty-six percent supported the basic notion, with 35 percent against and 19 percent undecided. But only 33 percent of respondents liked the idea that recipients wouldn't be required to do some sort of work in exchange for payments. In addition, only 39 percent thought funding such a program with taxes was the way to go, and only 38 percent thought recipients should be able to use the payments for whatever they wanted.

Chellam called acceptance of the general idea of a universal basic income "a good first step" and said his group and others would have to focus on better communicating the pros and cons of a UBI to the public.

2016-12-20 19:36 by by www.cnet.com

23 /27 A Google employee is suing the company for being too confidential Today, the House Judiciary Committee’s Encryption Working Group released its year-end report — and the result is good news for technology companies. While the report doesn’t explicitly rule out encryption legislation, it lands firmly on the side...

The first IMAX virtual reality theater, originally slated to open by the end of the year, is now expected in 2017. The IMAX VR Center in Manchester was supposed to be the first of a half-dozen such theaters to launch in 2016, offering VR... "Sometimes I fear our technological progress will slowly take over. We meet people through texts and screens. Is it setting us free? Or are we slowly wrapping ourselves in, depending too much on it? The fall is bigger when our hopes are not...

Today, AT&T introduced a new service for automated blocking of fraud or spam calls. Dubbed AT&T Call Protect, the system identifies specific numbers believed to be sources of fraud, and will either deliver those calls with a warning or block them...

2016-12-20 19:35 Nick Statt www.theverge.com

24 /27 This sous vide cooker gets a little help from a smart-home friend It's been two years since we first learned about the Mellow , a Wi-Fi-enabled sous vide cooker that its designers said could keep food chilled, then cook it in a temperature-controlled water bath. Mellow has yet to be released, but a new partnership with a company in the smart- home world could help bring this cooker to market.

Mellow will work with Flextronics International, or Flex, to produce the Mellow and develop more products in the future, the companies announced in an email Tuesday. Flex is a supply-chain solutions company that owns the Wink smart-home platform (Wink's parent company, Quirky, filed for bankruptcy in 2015 ) and products like the Wink Relay touchscreen and the Wink Hub.

"We believe Mellow's connected appliance could be an integral part of the smart-home kitchen, and something consumers will want and enjoy," said Gerhard Zebe, Flex's president of Global Operations, Mechanical Technology Solutions, in the email.

Mellow was scheduled to start shipping the cooker in November to customers who preordered the product. Mellow hasn't responded to a request for comments on the status of the cooker's release.

2016-12-20 19:22 by by www.cnet.com

25 /27 25 /27 Congressional group says backdoor laws would do more harm than good The first IMAX virtual reality theater, originally slated to open by the end of the year, is now expected in 2017. The IMAX VR Center in Manchester was supposed to be the first of a half-dozen such theaters to launch in 2016, offering VR...

Dish’s Sling TV website has (perhaps prematurely) unveiled a new set-top box, the AirTV Player. The device will let Sling TV subscribers stream live cable channels on their television — just like you can do right now with Sling TV on an Apple TV,...

2016-12-20 19:12 Russell Brandom www.theverge.com

26 /27 LG's 5K Mac display finally hits the Apple Store It seems like just yesterday when Apple revealed a LG 5K monitor alongside the MacBook Pro , but finally after months of waiting and a preemptive discount you can finally order high-res beauty.

The Cupertino company has officially added the LG 27-inch UltraFine 5K display to its virtual shelves just in time for its promised December – even if it is already half way into the month. As previously promised, every order put in through and before December 31 will be discounted to $974 (£884, AU$1,418) rather than its normal $1,300 (£1,179, AU$1,889) price.

That said, only a limited number of these entirely USB-C driven monitors will be arriving to quick thinking customers before the end of 2016. Everyone else late to the boat must wait for an additional two to four weeks before a new shipment of 5,120 x 2,880 displays rolls out of the factory.

In a related note, Apple has also decided to extend the price cut on its accessories to March 31. The discount includes 15% to 50% off deals on all of Apple’s official USB-C dongles including:

Previously, Apple only offered a discount on its official dongles until the end of the year. But, now you'll have a bit more time to catch up with Apple vision of a single port 'future.'

2016-12-20 18:38 Kevin Lee feedproxy.google.com

27 /27 The Ethernet ecosystem today is driven by applications, not speed alone For many years, Ethernet evolution was characterized by the “need for speed” as networks and data centers sought higher and higher throughput. But over time, Ethernet has found its way into applications unforeseen by the developers of the original specification, resulting in a broad and varied Ethernet ecosystem. Today the desire to bring the advantages of Ethernet into new applications necessitates a new approach where the needs of the application are considered first and foremost in defining new Ethernet incarnations.

In this new paradigm, the Ethernet roadmap combines new and existing data rates with other attributes to meet various applications’ requirements. Considerations can include distance, environmental factors, acquisition vs. operational cost, longevity vs. fast time to market, ease of use and flexibility, physical infrastructure reuse and even the size and weight of the cabling. In use cases ranging from industrial processes to security to connected cars, Ethernet is increasingly enabling your lifestyle, safety and productivity.

Two new Ethernet specifications illustrate the application-driven approach for the automotive environment, which requires lightweight cabling and robustness in the face of harsh environmental conditions. The IEEE 802.3bw-2015 100BASE-T1 and IEEE 802.3bp-2016 1000BASE-T1 standards provide 100 Mb/s and 1000 Mb/s Ethernet over a single twisted pair copper cable in the “connected car” and mark the entry of Ethernet into vehicular applications to connect the growing number of intelligent devices found there. As the number of connected devices in a vehicle design increases, the more valuable it becomes to provide the automotive industry with an in-vehicle, homogenous network architecture, and Ethernet serves that purpose very well. Enthusiasm appears to be high in this area, as industry discussion is already addressing the topic of “what’s next?” for automotive Ethernet.

Don’t be surprised, but the answer may be to go both faster and slower. The most cost and power sensitive devices, without a lot of data to move, may benefit from a single-pair 10 Mb/s specification. On the other hand, connecting sensors and compute resources for autonomous, self-driving vehicles will cause the bandwidth needs to surge well past 1 Gb/s, and Ethernet may be put to work once again to fill this need. Extending this idea even further, the IEEE 802.3 10 Mb/s Single Twisted Pair Ethernet Study Group is focused on bringing Ethernet protocol with lower costs and longer reaches to industrial automation, building automation and automotive applications.

Although we primarily consider Ethernet to be a data network protocol, consider Ethernet’s utility in moving electric power along the same copper cable as the network data, referred to as Power over Ethernet (PoE). PoE has long been used as a means to power wireless access points, security cameras and IP telephones. Now, new PoE specifications are in the works to provide higher power and more efficient PoE on 4-pair cabling, as well as providing PoE over the single pair cabling used by 100/1000BASE-T1.

Currently, 4-Pair PoE is being standardized by the IEEE P802.3bt task force to deliver power over all 4 twisted pairs, versus the two pairs in current PoE and PoE+ technology. On one hand, this higher power PoE capability will enable higher bandwidth applications, such as higher speed wireless access points. On the flip side, this capability can also be used where little data transmission is needed, such as intelligent lighting systems.

To complement 100BASE-T1 and 1000BASE-T1 networks, IEEE P802.3bu is specifying power delivery over the same single pair cable used for data for applications in internal automotive networks. The goal here is reducing the weight and cost of wiring harnesses – one of the heaviest items in an automotive bill of materials.

As Ethernet has progressed into new application areas, the existing infrastructure needs of enterprise campus applications have also driven a choice of speed. Serving this need, IEEE Std 802.3bz-2016 defines 2.5 Gb/s and 5 Gb/s MAC operating speeds, and 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T PHYs operating over category 5e, category 6, or better cabling. The technology is already in products where it allows users to realize greater data bandwidth from the 70+ billion meters of installed cabling while also supporting PoE for our beloved wireless access points.

What’s next in this whirlwind of new Ethernet applications and corresponding standards?

This most versatile and adaptable protocol continues to evolve. Don’t worry – the need for speed is still there, and development is underway to specify Ethernet links at 50/100/200/400Gbps, from a few inches to tens of kilometers in reach. This is where the network adrenaline junkies thrive, putting to work the latest in electrical and optical signaling technologies in that robust and cost effective form that we call Ethernet. Undoubtedly, the diverse, even currently unimagined networking needs of the Internet of Things (IoT) will drive new Ethernet applications as well.

A standard that began life over 30 years ago to connect computers to printers at 10 Mb/s continues to evolve to serve myriad new applications, with no end in sight. 2016-12-20 18:07 David Chalupsky www.itnews.com

Total 27 articles.

Created at 2016-12-21 06:00