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DC5m United States IT in english 87 articles, created at 2016-10-06 18:37

1 Samsung is buying A. I.-powered virtual assistant Viv -- here's why Apple has Siri, Microsoft has Cortana and Google has the Google Assistant -- (3.28/4) Samsung didn't want to get left out of the party. 2016-10-06 06:53 1KB www.computerworld.com

2 Twitter gets no love from Disney, Google, Apple Twitter's shares tank after reports that the three major companies had no interests in buying the social network. 2016-10-06 09:41 925Bytes www.cnet.com

(2.15/4)

3 Actions on Google Allows Third-Party Developers to Integrate With Assistant

(2.11/4) Among the many products unveiled during the launch of the Pixel Smartphones earlier this week, Google expanded its ecosystem by introducing Google Assistant and Actions on Google. Just like Siri for Apple, Cortana for Microsoft, and Alexa for Amazon, each is limited to the respective companies own devices... 2016-10-06 08:49 1KB pctechmag.com

4 Lenovo in talks to acquire Fujitsu’s PC business After gorging on the PC businesses of IBM, NEC and Medion, Lenovo sets its sights on Fujitsu,Hardware,Cloud and Infrastructure ,PC,Fujitsu,Lenovo,Cloud Computing,Cloud (2.06/4) and Infrastructure 2016-10-06 10:08 2KB www.computing.co.uk

5 Google Pixel release date, news and features

Everything you need to know about the new Pixel smartphone 2016-10-06 07:24 7KB

(2.06/4) feedproxy.google.com

6 Apple starts showing ads in App Store search results Apple has started shown ads in the iOS App Store for US users. Searching for popular

(2.04/4) terms like "taxi," "calendar," or "to do list" delivers a banner advert for promoted apps above the search... 2016-10-06 06:21 2KB www.theverge.com

7 Spotify ads slipped malware onto PCs and Macs Ads played to Spotify listeners tried to install malware on PCs and Macs. 2016-10-06 10:27 1KB www.itnews.com (1.02/4)

8 Chrome and Firefox are blocking The Pirate Bay as a deceptive site, again

(1.02/4) Deceptive it ain't,Security ,cloud computing,piracy 2016-10-06 09:44 2KB www.theinquirer.net 9 EU privacy watchdogs have questions about Yahoo's secret email scanning European Union privacy watchdogs are concerned by reports that Yahoo has been

(1.02/4) secretly scanning its users' email at the request of U. S. intelligence services. 2016-10-06 09:44 3KB www.pcworld.com

10 : Phone battle hots up with matching prices Google now has its very own phones with which to take on Apple. Can it get away with

(1.02/4) pricing them the same as its fruit-flavoured rival? Here's our Google Pixel vs iPhone 7 review. 2016-10-06 08:14 7KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

11 : Battlefield 1 is out 21 October on PC, PS4 and Xbox One | New cinematic intro

(1.02/4) If it's gritty World War 1 fighting you're after then check out Battlefield 1. Here's everything we know about Battlefield 1 release date, price, beta and gameplay 2016-10-06 06:36 8KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

12 Nokia D1C and P1 specs, price and release date Nougat-powered smartphones tipped to arrive by Christmas,Phones ,Nokia,cloud computing,Mobile 2016-10-06 09:55 2KB www.theinquirer.net (1.01/4)

13 The best VPN services in October 2016

Reliable, secure and cheap VPN 2016-10-06 08:15 4KB feedproxy.google.com

(0.03/4)

14 Sony’s new A6500 is an even faster version of the A6300

(0.01/4) Sony just announced the A6500 camera, a followup to the A6300 released in February and 2014’s A6000 — one of the most popular interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras ever. The new camera has a lot... 2016-10-06 10:31 2KB www.theverge.com

15 Gears of War 4 review: better safe than sorry "If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll like it. " It’s a perennial cliché in games criticism and

(0.01/4) something I almost always try to avoid. It’s a lazy way to bunt on actual appraisal of the title in... 2016-10-06 09:32 2KB www.theverge.com

16 Watch Out 'Audioshield,' 'Soundboxing' Is Looking For A Fight "Soundboxing" is a VR rhythm game similar to "Audioshield," but with a major difference. Rather than rely on an algorithm to synchronize songs to the game, the "Soundboxing" community has full control over the creation of "Soundboxing" challenges. 2016-10-06 10:30 2KB www.tomshardware.com 17 Ottawa’s Titus adds Mac support to Classification Suite Make finding security solutions to Shadow IT a priority, CISOs warned Canadian firm releases latest version of data classification suite Ottawa-based Titus wants to help protect every aspect of business, and they have taken one more step toward that goal with new updates 2016-10-06 10:26 3KB www.itworldcanada.com

18 Google dealt setback in age bias case by judge interested in 'Googleyness' An age discrimination lawsuit against Google was approved as a '"collective action" by a federal court judge, allowing software engineers, age 40 or over, who were rejected for jobs at Google since August 2014 and after an in-person interview, to join the lawsuit. 2016-10-06 10:21 5KB www.itnews.com

19 I just spilled Coke all over my PC and... OMG wait what's happening!? Here I am getting ready to play some high-end video games, probably StarCraft or Counter-Strike or Age of Empires II, with some nachos and an Ice Cold Coca-Cola® by my side for sustenance and— O... 2016-10-06 10:20 2KB www.theverge.com

20 IoT Channel Chronicles: Davra Networks CEO Says The Future Lies In 'Connected-Things-As-A-Service' - Page: 1 Davra Networks touts an IoT platform built with the networking channel in mind. CRN talks with CEO Paul Glynn about what trends he is seeing in the channel around IoT. 2016-10-06 10:20 1KB www.crn.com

21 Speak, Memory When the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type. “Roman,” she wrote. “This is your digital monument.” It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent... 2016-10-06 10:15 28KB www.theverge.com

22 How much additional performance does Intel’s Kaby Lake refresh deliver? Intel's Kaby Lake has finally hit shipping systems, but what kind of improvements does Intel's first 2016-10-06 00:00 4KB www.extremetech.com

23 New Amazon Echo Dot Launches Oct 20, Get Free Ones When You Buy 5 or 10 - Deal Alert Make it a six-pack. Buy five, get one free. Or make it a twelve-pack. Buy ten, get two free. Amazon has a special discount code to use at checkout, for a limited time. The New Echo Dot launch date is right around the corner -- October 20th. 2016-10-06 10:13 1KB www.itnews.com 24 Eurocom’s Sky X4E2 Features GTX 10-Series, 4G LTE Support Eurocom unveiled a new 15.6-inch gaming laptop that supports 4G LTE connectivity, and you can equip it with new Nvidia GeForce GTX 10-series GPUs. 2016-10-06 10:05 3KB www.tomshardware.com

25 AMD turns on multi-GPU frame pacing for DX12 titles Here at TR, we've long considered multi-GPU rendering something of a false grail for graphics-performance scaling. Potent multi-GPU cards... 2016-10-06 10:02 1KB techreport.com

26 The Week in Mac Apps: Bring your photos to the next level with Macphun's Aurora HDR This week's roundup of Mac apps includes Macphun's latest version of Aurora HDR, an incredible photo editor. 2016-10-06 10:00 4KB www.itnews.com

27 Falcon Northwest laptops join the Pascal party Laptop manufacturers around the world have eagerly refreshed their lineups to include Nvidia's Pascal GPUs. Lured by the promise of desktop-class performance... 2016-10-06 10:00 2KB techreport.com

28 New haunted houses plan to scare you before you even arrive Here at The Verge, we love Halloween and everything about it. Horror movies, non- horror seasonal movies, seasonal beverages, seasonal bots, this Pumpkin Guy, horrifying makeup tutorials,... 2016-10-06 09:52 2KB www.theverge.com

29 Polar just launched a running wearable for people who don’t necessarily love to run Polar announced its new M200 running wearable today that’s made for runners who either go bananas for running and take training seriously, or people who are meh about running but want to learn... 2016-10-06 09:48 2KB www.theverge.com

30 The ABCs of Volume Licensing: Cutting through the acronym soup of Microsoft EAs, MPSAs and CSP agreements Volume licensing can be a challenging discussion and difficult for organizations to navigate. The options depend on numerous factors. There are three 2016-10-06 09:36 7KB www.itworldcanada.com

31 Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen explains how AI will change the world Get ready for "a whole generation of new, very important AI companies. " 2016-10-06 09:34 893Bytes www.vox.com 32 Time is running out to update old Windows 10 preview builds If you've been lazy about upgrading to latest Windows 10 Insider builds in the Fast ring, time is running out to stay up-to-date. 2016-10-06 09:28 1KB www.itnews.com

33 It's official: Phones just don't excite us like they used to A Gartner forecast of phone shipments projects sales will decline for a second year in a row. But there's hope for 2017. 2016-10-06 09:22 1KB www.cnet.com

34 How tech rivals will respond to Google In our first podcast after Tuesday’s Google event, Ctrl-Walt-Delete looks at new products from Google that blend together hardware, software, and ecosystem design. 2016-10-06 09:21 2KB www.theverge.com

35 Hands on: DJI Mavic Pro review

Small on size, big on brains 2016-10-06 09:21 9KB feedproxy.google.com

36 Women In IT: Where Is The Equal Pay? Women in IT are still earning significantly less than their male counterparts, according to the InformationWeek 2016 US IT Salary Survey. Take a look at our findings, and then let us know how your compensation stacks up. 2016-10-06 09:06 4KB www.informationweek.com

37 Twitter and Samsung feel the heat Social Cues: What do the social network and the maker of the Galaxy Note 7 have in common? Neither of them can catch a break. 2016-10-06 09:05 1KB www.cnet.com

38 Sharp's super-crisp screens are what we need for next- gen VR

Over 1000ppi straight to your eyeballs 2016-10-06 09:04 2KB feedproxy.google.com

39 OCZ Ask The Experts & SSD Giveaway As a quick reminder to anyone who has yet to enter, our OCZ SSD giveaway is still open on our forums. We'll... 2016-10-06 09:00 1KB www.anandtech.com

40 Secrets of the IT ninjas: achieving hyper-agility with Composable Infrastructure IT organizations face unpredictable demands from many directions at once. A new class of infrastructure delivers the flexibility IT needs to respond. 2016-10-06 09:00 3KB www.infoworld.com 41 Salesforce Einstein poses data-sharing dilemma for CIOs SAN FRANCISCO — Salesforce administrators are going to have a new choice to make when the winter update is pushed out a 2016-10-06 08:52 4KB www.itworldcanada.com

42 Why being a data scientist 'feels like being a magician' What is it like to be a data scientist? Here's what three people currently on the front lines had to say 2016-10-06 08:34 8KB www.infoworld.com

43 The Logitech G910 Orion Spectrum Mechanical Keyboard Review Logitech hardly needs an introduction as a company. For decades, the company is omnipresent in the peripherals market... 2016-10-06 08:30 2KB www.anandtech.com

44 What Google Wifi Does for Home, Small-Business Networks On October 4 Google unveiled Google Wifi, designed for homes and small businesses. What does Google Wifi offer that regular routers can't? 2016-10-06 08:30 1KB www.eweek.com

45 Apple's first iOS developer academy has opened in Italy

Learn the way of iOS 2016-10-06 08:27 2KB feedproxy.google.com

46 LinkedIn now stops your boss from seeing your job searches

A silent cry for help 2016-10-06 08:26 2KB feedproxy.google.com

47 How to build a modern multi-monitor workstation Many of today's PCs and laptops can easily power two or more external monitors, and a multi-monitor setup can help you get more done in less time. Here's how to find the best configuration for you. 2016-10-06 08:22 7KB www.itnews.com

48 How recruiters are adapting to an evolving job market Thought recruiting for tech talent was competitive before? You ain't seen nothing yet, according to Jobvite's latest research. 2016-10-06 08:14 4KB www.itnews.com

49 We shouldn’t trust health studies that let people report what they ate Every time I read a health study that trusts people to report what they ate, I want to throw the paper in the trash. People are not to be trusted, and self-reporting is inaccurate to the point of... 2016-10-06 08:04 2KB www.theverge.com 50 How to watch the Oculus Connect 3 event: start time, live blog, and streaming Oculus is holding its third-annual developers conference this week, and the main event happens today. It’ll be a 2-hour presentation where the company’s leaders lay out what they see as the next... 2016-10-06 08:00 2KB www.theverge.com

51 Inside Germany's repurposed buildings that house refugees (pictures) Barracks, airport hangars, a former town hall and a four-star hotel all play a role in sheltering refugees. 2016-10-06 15:36 725Bytes www.cnet.com

52 Refugees taught me a lesson in making people feel welcome Commentary: For Road Trip, reporter Katie Collins went to Germany to watch refugees welcomed with tech. She didn't expect the refugees to be welcoming her. 2016-10-06 08:00 6KB www.cnet.com

53 Download of the day: PDF24 Creator Our daily pick of the best free Windows software – turn virtually any document into a PDF with a couple of clicks. 2016-10-06 08:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com

54 SolarWinds Updates Server, Application Monitoring Platform Features include the ability to remediate server issues remotely with built-in troubleshooting tools, as well as integration with the Orion platform. 2016-10-06 08:00 3KB www.eweek.com

55 5 steps to avoid burning out your on-call IT staff On-call workers don't have the luxury of signing off at the end of the day and going home to relax. They know that a call could come at any time, which means businesses need to take steps to ensure these workers aren't on the fast... 2016-10-06 07:58 7KB www.itnews.com

56 Father of Java James Gosling slams cloud vendor lock- in Beware the dangers of committing too deeply to one cloud provider, warns computer scientist,Cloud,Developer ,cloud computing,IoT 2016-10-06 07:47 2KB www.theinquirer.net

57 New strain of Ransomware mimics Locky Hades Locker is similar to Locky, but targets manufacturing and business services 2016-10-06 00:00 2KB www.itpro.co.uk 58 Open source in the enterprise: It's about culture, not technology, says Github Collaboration platform provider gives its top tips on 'inner source', the idea of adopting open source software development principles within the enterprise,Cloud and Infrastructure,Open Source ,open source,Github,Cloud,software development 2016-10-06 07:31 4KB www.computing.co.uk

59 Blue Origin successfully tests launch escape system in flight Blue Origin's final launch of the current New Shepard was a huge success. 2016-10-06 00:00 2KB www.extremetech.com

60 FBI arrests an NSA contractor suspected of stealing hacking tools The Maryland man has been charged with stealing government materials, including top secret information 2016-10-06 07:28 2KB www.infoworld.com

61 : PlayStation VR unboxing video | PlayStation VR out 13 October The PlayStation VR headset is coming this October at £349 - here's everything know about the PlayStation VR UK release date, price and specifications, plus upcoming PSVR games and accessories. 2016-10-06 07:21 23KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

62 What happens when IT is guilty of Shadow IT? When team leaders enjoy autonomy, you can end up with different technological solutions that solve the same business problem 2016-10-06 07:12 4KB www.infoworld.com

63 7 ways you’re leaking leverage It’s easy to give vendors an advantage in negotiations without even realizing it. 2016-10-06 07:12 5KB www.computerworld.com

64 How to recycle and reuse an old hard drive

Salvage your storage 2016-10-06 07:08 4KB feedproxy.google.com

65 Satya Nadella's comp package slips 3% to $17.7 million

Microsoft board dings CEO for missing Windows 10 target 2016-10-06 07:08 3KB www.infoworld.com

66 8 Critical Elements Of A Successful Data Integration Strategy Integrating data from multiple sources that employ different structures and schema has always posed complex, messy problems for IT professionals. Today's growing volume of data and data types made things even more complicated. Here are some key tips to help your organization integrate its increasing amounts of data. 2016-10-06 07:06 2KB www.informationweek.com 67 8 challenges that keep financial services CTOs and CIOs up at night Experts in financial services, IT, security and compliance discuss the major issues facing IT executives at financial services companies. 2016-10-06 07:00 3KB www.itnews.com

68 How to Bring Your Customers Back? It is a known fact that retaining your existing customers is much cheaper than attracting new ones. It doesn’t mean that you should stop looking for different ways to engage new clients; it just means that customer retention techniques should not be ignored. Just think about it... 2016-10-06 06:37 3KB pctechmag.com

69 AT&T's coming SD-WAN services will tap into FlexWare Software is beginning to simplify one of the hardest kinds of networking: wide-area networks that link up an enterprise’s remote sites, branch offices and data centers. Now AT&T is getting in on the game. 2016-10-06 06:35 3KB www.computerworld.com

70 Skyrim And Fallout 4 Mod Support Coming To PS4 With Sony And Bethesda Ending Dispute At long last, Bethesda is bringing mod support for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition to PlayStation 4 players after working out an arrangement with Sony. That was the plan all along, of course, with Bethesda originally intending to bring modding to the PS4 back in... 2016-10-06 06:35 2KB hothardware.com

71 The benefits of digital business process management with blockchain technology Distributed and decentralised ledger technologies, smart contracts and the internet of things have the potential to disrupt and revolutionise business process management and optimisation. 2016-10-06 06:30 2KB www.computerweekly.com

72 IT moves to open workspaces, but not everyone is happy In an effort to boost collaboration and attract millennials, even old-school organizations are tearing down their cubicle walls. But is shared space the best environment for serious IT work? 2016-10-06 06:30 3KB www.computerworld.com

73 Business transformation proves to be a catalyst for cybersecurity spending Evolving risks and business technologies shift focus in security budgets 2016-10-06 06:27 8KB www.itworld.com

74 AMD outs HP desktop systems powered by 7th-gen Pro APU chips Bristol Ridge-powered PCs take aim at biz market,Desktops ,HP,SMB Spotlight,SMB services,cloud computing 2016-10-06 06:19 2KB www.theinquirer.net 75 Ready for Rift? Find out in seconds with the free Oculus compatibility checker Swayed by the Connect 2016 conference? See if your PC meets the requirements for the Oculus Rift before opening your wallet 2016-10-06 06:15 2KB feedproxy.google.com

76 Not so startling revelations of how a hacker broke in These 10 ways are becoming all too common approaches, but yet users still fall for them. 2016-10-06 06:10 4KB www.itnews.com

77 The Roku interview: Here's how the streaming-box builder is working through its app issues The company is taking a two-pronged approach to getting higher-quality TV apps onto its platform. 2016-10-06 06:00 8KB www.pcworld.com

78 CRN Exclusive: SD-WAN Startup Viptela Launches First- Ever Partner Program With Assured Margins, No Levels - Page: 1 SD-WAN startup Viptela launches its inaugural global partner program with assured margins, a rapid onboarding process and a no direct sales strategy. 2016-10-06 06:00 3KB www.crn.com

79 Vue.js JavaScript framework revs up rendering Vue.js 2.0 supports server-side rendering, streaming, and component-level caching 2016-10-06 06:00 2KB www.infoworld.com

80 7 big data tools to ditch in 2017 You think you got the hang of big data analytics? There's no time to be smug. To deliver real value, you'd better keep your stack up to date 2016-10-06 06:00 1KB www.infoworld.com

81 The new BYOD backlash hides an ulterior motive If BYOD costs you too much, you're doing it wrong -- or looking for an excuse to regain mobile control 2016-10-06 06:00 3KB www.infoworld.com

82 Taking down the internet: possible but how probable? Security guru Bruce Schneier reported recently that the companies that maintain the “backbone” of the internet have been under increasing attacks designed to test their defenses. It’s the kind of thing, he said, that could mean an effort to take down the internet is in the works. 2016-10-06 06:00 9KB www.itnews.com

83 : Small size and midrange specs at a high price. Has Sony taken its eye off the ball? For the last few years, Sony’s Xperia Compact range has set the standard for small screen smartphones. Does the company’s latest, the X Compact, improve on the already excellent Z5 Compact? Here’s our Sony Xperia X Compact review. 2016-10-06 06:00 9KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk 84 Can Joker save the 'Suicide Squad' extended cut? Warner Bros. will be bringing the ensemble flick to Blu-ray on December 13, about a month after its digital release. 2016-10-06 05:57 1KB www.cnet.com

85 Are you willing to pay $200 for Oculus Touch controllers? There’s an Oculus Connect event coming up today, and the likeliest subject of the presentation will be the pricing and availability of the long-delayed Oculus Touch controllers. Somewhat helpfully,... 2016-10-06 05:53 2KB www.theverge.com

86 Salesforce CEO on Twitter acquisition: 'We look at everything, but pass on most' Twitter is in trouble, and customer relations company Salesforce has emerged as a possible buyer. When asked about rumors of an acquisition yesterday, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told CNBC that he... 2016-10-06 05:39 2KB www.theverge.com

87 14 portrait photography tips you'll never want to forget

Essential advice to shoot your best portraits 2016-10-06 05:39 6KB feedproxy.google.com Articles

DC5m United States IT in english 87 articles, created at 2016-10-06 18:37

1 /87 Samsung is buying A. I.-powered virtual assistant Viv -- here's why (3.28/4) No one likes it when everyone else has something they don't have.

It appears Samsung is no different. All its counterparts have an A. I.- powered virtual assistant, so why shouldn't it? Well, now it does. Samsung is buying Viv, the company started by the people behind Apple's Siri. They built another virtual assistant, also named Viv. So when will we start seeing Viv show up on Samsung devices? And why is Samsung buying the it?

In IT Blogwatch, our virtual assistant has the answers.

What exactly is Viv? And the details of the deal? Mikey Campbell has some background :

So what makes Viv stand out? JC Torres is in the know :

And how is Samsung planning on using Viv? Philip Michael has an idea :

But what exactly is Samsung's motivation for buying Viv? We hear the reasoning direct from Samsung :

Anything else? Anshu Sharma has one very important question :

Samsung Nabs Original Samsung to buy Viv Labs to With Viv, Samsung Samsung acquires next- Apple Siri Developers In challenge Google Assistant challenges Apple…and generation AI assistant Viv Acqusition Of Viv AI Startup computerworld.com Google itpro.co.uk hothardware.com computerworld.com Samsung AIs-up Siri and Google Assistant with Viv acquisition theinquirer.net

2016-10-06 06:53 Rebecca Linke www.computerworld.com

2 /87 Twitter gets no love from Disney, Google, Apple (2.15/4) A week ago, Twitter had been the belle of the ball, with rumors swirling that Google, Salesforce, Disney and Apple were interested in buying the trouble social network.

Google, Apple and Disney did not respond to requests for comment.

The rumors leave Salesforce as a potential buyer, a cloud computing company based in San Francisco, California.

Representatives from both Twitter and Salesforce declined to comment for this story.

Google to Apple: It's your With Viv, Samsung Apple, Google and Coca- move now on VR, smart challenges Apple…and Cola the Three Most speaker Google Valuable Brands Globally cnet.com computerworld.com pctechmag.com

2016-10-06 09:41 Alfred Ng www.cnet.com

3 /87 Actions on Google Allows Third-Party Developers to Integrate With Assistant (2.11/4) Among the many products unveiled during the launch of the Pixel Smartphones earlier this week, Google expanded its ecosystem by introducing Google Assistant and Actions on Google. Just like Siri for Apple, Cortana for Microsoft, and Alexa for Amazon, each is limited to the respective companies own devices.

During the launch, the company also announced, its Assistant will be opened to third-party developers., calling it Actions on Google. The programme will open Assistant’s SDK to allow developers to build the Google Assistant into a range of devices starting December.

One of Assistant’s main attractions is that users can speak to it in a conversational style and the virtual assistant will have no problem understanding. Conversations are actions that third-party developers will be able to create using API. AI, apart from straight forward requests that have been termed Direct Actions.

Samsung to buy Viv Labs to Samsung AIs-up Siri and challenge Google Assistant Google Assistant with Viv computerworld.com acquisition theinquirer.net

2016-10-06 08:49 Staff Writer pctechmag.com

4 /87 Lenovo in talks to acquire Fujitsu’s PC business (2.06/4) Lenovo is in talks to acquire a controlling stake in the PC business of Japan's Fujitsu.

The Japanese hardware vendor has confirmed reports , published this morning, that the two companies are planning to form a joint venture, with Lenovo taking a majority, controlling stake. However, the two companies are currently haggling over prices.

News of the deal follows the collapse earlier this year of a proposal by Fujitsu, Sony and Toshiba to merge their respective PC businesses.

For Fujitsu, the deal is an opportunity to discard a struggling business, while Lenovo will enjoy even greater economies of scale in a sector in which it had a global market share of 20.7 per cent in 2015, according to analysts IDC , while Fujitsu's was less than two per cent.

Fujitsu acquired the PC business of the UK's ICL when it took full control of the company in the mid-1990s. Under CEO Peter Bonfield, one of ICL's strategies involved expanding in the-then hot PC market.

However, even after its 1991 acquisition of Nokia's PC unit, Nokia Data, ICL struggled to achieve the margins necessary to turn a decent profit in PCs. Fujitsu subsequently took control of the company in 1990.

Fujitsu, in turn, has been squeezed in recent years due to a combination of a declining PC market and vigorous price competition from companies like Lenovo.

In 1999, Fujitsu merged its PC business outside of Japan with Siemens in a 50/50 joint venture to form Fujitsu Siemens Computers, absorbing the company and renaming it Fujitsu Technology Solutions in 2009.

Lenovo, meanwhile, which used to be known as Legend until 2003, acquired IBM's Personal Computer Division in 2005, a deal that laid the foundations for the company's global expansion in PCs. Lenovo followed that deal up with a PC joint venture with NEC in 2011, taking over the whole lot earlier this year.

Also in 2011, Lenovo acquired Germany's Medion, and scooped up IBM's System x low-end server business in 2014.

Fujitsu considers selling its Fujitsu may sell its PC PC business to Lenovo business to Lenovo pcworld.com computerworld.com

2016-10-06 10:08 Graeme Burton www.computing.co.uk

5 /87 Google Pixel release date, news and features (2.06/4) The new Google Pixel smartphone has been unveiled, ushering in a new era of handsets for the search giant.

At the core of the new Pixel handsets is Google Assistant, giving you your own personal Google. It's the first phone with Assistant built in.

But it's not just the software that's new, with a cutting-edge processor, a premium design and an apparently class-leading camera also included. Here's everything you need to know.

The Google Pixel release date has been confirmed as October 20, but you can stake your claim for the search giant's latest smartphone as Pixel pre-orders are already open in the UK, US and Australia.

A selection of retailers and carriers are offering the new Pixel handset – including Google itself.

In the US you'll find the new Pixel on Verizon, with contract deals starting at $27.08 per month, while on the Google Store the entry level 32GB model will set you back $649.

Meanwhile in the UK the Google Pixel will be available from Google itself from £599, and from EE and Carphone Warehouse, with a free handset available from £50 per month with 10GB of data.

That's right, HTC is back in the Google-making business. The Taiwanese firm was behind the very first Nexus device, and now it's also behind the very first Pixel phone.

You won't know it picking up the new Pixel though, as the HTC logo isn't anywhere to be seen. All you get is "Made by Google" and a Google "G" logo on the rear of the handset.

The Google Pixel sports an aluminum and glass design, giving it a premium look and feel. There's the choice of three colors: quite black, very silver and really blue – a blatant pop at Apple's new 'Black' and 'Jet Black' iPhone 7 handsets.

You'll find the power/lock switch and volume rocker on the right hand side of the phone, while round the back a fingerprint scanner sits below the camera and flash.

The screen on the new Pixel is a 5-inch affair, coming in at 1080 x 1920 - if you're after QHD you'll want to check out the Google Pixel XL .

The Google Pixel runs the firm's latest mobile platform, Android Nougat. As this is a "Made by Google" device – it even says those words on the rear of the handset – you'll get a pure Android experience on screen.

Even though the Pixel has been made by HTC, there's no sign of the Sense UI we've seen on the HTC 10 and One A9 .

The new Pixel Launcher has "a clean, polished look and all your apps just a swipe away". Google has ditched the traditional app drawer, instead keeping it in a swipe up panel you access by sliding your finger up from the app dock.

Long press the home button, or say the hot word, and Google Assistant will jump into action. It's now smarter and more intuitive, blending Google's knowledge graph with more human responses – making it more like Apple's Siri on iPhones.

It also links to your Google Assistant on other devices, such as Google Home, ensuring you have a continuous experience wherever you are.

You'll also be first in line for the latest security updates and software upgrades, with these downloads and installs now happening in the background so you never have to worry about intiating them. The new Google Pixel is packed full of power, including a top-of-the-line Snapdragon 821 processor backed up with 4GB of RAM.

Google says touchscreen response and snapping pictures have never been quicker – with super slick performance at the center of the handset.

You have the option of 32GB or 128GB of internal storage, and Google has also pledged free unlimited cloud storage for all your photos and videos. What's even better is Google Photos will save all of these at full resolution – including 4K video.

The Google Pixel comes equipped with a 12.3MP rear camera.

Google says the camera has received the highest ever DxO rating for a smartphone – which means the snappers on the Google Pixel should be very good.

Smart Burst takes a number of images and Google Photo will then select the best, most in focus image automatically. It also features HDR+, for brighter, less blurred shots with an extended dynamic range.

There's zero lag on the shutter key, allowing you to capture multiple shots quickly, and it has one of the shortest capture times of any smartphone.

The Google Pixel comes with a non-removable 2,770mAh battery, which Google says has been optimized for even better performance – although we'll have to put that to the test in our full review.

There's also fast charging via the USB-C port, and you'll be able to get up to seven hours of usage from just 15 minutes of charge time.

With the appearance of the T50 and T55 codenames , it looked like the new Pixel will get a 5- inch display, making it the smaller of the two with the Pixel XL.

It could be a little larger than that though, as a leaked build.prop file for the Nexus Sailfish suggested the smaller phone may have a 5.2-inch 1080 x 1920 screen, which would be a match for the Nexus 5X.

However the 5-inch form factor has been given a big boost after a UK retailer leaked an almost full spec sheet for the Google Pixel. That same leak also points towards a full HD resolution, USB-C port and microSD slot.

A leaked render posted online by Android Police seems to suggest a svelte looking aluminum uni-body and a rear facing fingerprint scanner - just like on the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. The source who provided the image also claims the new Nexus phones will be available in silver, black, and "electric blue".

Credit: Android Police

The blue, silver and black color options have appeared in further leaks too, with Evan Blass posting press images showing the first two hues, while US carrier Verizon accidentally posted a product page for the phone for a brief time which showed all three colors.

Google Pixel bottom and Pixel XL top (Credit: Evan Blass) This design has been given a boost as even more images showing a similar style for the Sailfish device have made their way online.

Credit: Android Pure

More recently still yet another set of Sailfish (aka Pixel) renders have emerged from Android Authority , showing the same design again, but with the addition of a USB-C port and dual speakers for stereo sound - all of which can be seen on the bottom edge of the handset.

The source claims that although not shown in the renders the phone will have a 3.5mm headphone port on the top edge, and that the dimensions are 143.8 x 69.5 x 7.3 - 8.5mm, making the phone slightly more compact than the 147 x 72.6 x 7.9mm Nexus 5X.

Also from Android Police , these shots below are some of the clearest leaks we've seen of the rumored devices. It's hard to tell if they rock the Google branding because there's a lot of blurring going on to protect the leaker. But, the transition between glass and metal is fairly clear.

Courtesy of Android Police

Something the new Nexus devices are likely to feature heavily is virtual reality (VR). Google announced its Daydream VR platform at its IO conference in May, and you can expect the new service to be a highlight of its new Nexus handsets.

Google even teased its own VR headset with controller - and we could well see the hardware launch alongside the new phones later this year. It would make sense, as the headset will be dependent on a smartphone to function - and what better device to use than a shiny new Pixel?

We're keeping our fingers crossed for a "free VR headset when you pre-order a new Nexus" offer come September.

Article continues below

The Google Pixel works on What do Pixel phones mean AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, for Google’s Android not just Verizon partners? cnet.com itnews.com

2016-10-06 07:24 By John feedproxy.google.com

6 /87 Apple starts showing ads in App Store search results

(2.04/4) There’s an Oculus Connect event coming up today, and the likeliest subject of the presentation will be the pricing and availability of the long-delayed Oculus Touch controllers. Somewhat helpfully, somewhat unreliably, Amazon UK has listed both a...

Legendary automotive designer Henrik Fisker is returning to the industry, with plans to unveil a new premium all-electric car in 2017. Speaking to Bloomberg, Fisker said the vehicle would be a "spiritual successor" to the Fisker Karma hybrid...

Naim Audio is, like most of the best audiophile companies, a small outfit producing super high- end gear at dear prices and building up fan loyalty through a fanatical commitment to over- engineering. Its latest product line is called the Uniti and...

Earlier this year, Apple announced it would be building its first ever iOS App Development Center in Naples. Today, as reported by The Guardian, the center is scheduled to open to students. The center is located in the city's University of Naples...

Volvo will enable car-to-car communication in some of its new vehicles, the company has announced, allowing drivers to receive warnings about road hazards during their journey. The system will be included in Volvo's top-line 90 series, Volvo's...

I just grab it from the App Apple's App Store starts Store and go, right? displaying adverts to iPhone computerworld.com and iPad users theinquirer.net

2016-10-06 06:21 James Vincent www.theverge.com

7 /87 Spotify ads slipped malware onto PCs and Macs (1.02/4) Spotify's ads crossed from nuisance over to outright nasty this week, after the music service’s advertising started serving up malware to users on Wednesday. The malware was able to automatically launch browser tabs on Windows and Mac PCs, according to complaints that surfaced online.

As is typical for this kind of malware, the ads directed users’ browsers to other malware- containing sites in the hopes that someone would be duped into downloading more malicious software. The “malvertising” attack didn’t last long as Spotify was able to quickly correct the problem. “We’ve identified an issue where a small number of users were experiencing a problem with questionable website pop-ups in their default browsers as a result of an isolated issue with an ad on our Free tier,” Spotify said on several threads in its support forums . “We have now identified the source of the problem and have shut it down. We will continue to monitor the situation.”

Spotify's hardly the first tech company to get hit with malware in its ads. Google uncovered malware-loaded ads from an advertising partner in April 2015, and several days before that Yahoo announced it had removed malware from its advertising network.

Spotify users hit with malware attack cnet.com

2016-10-06 10:27 Ian Paul www.itnews.com

8 /87 Chrome and Firefox are blocking The Pirate Bay as a deceptive site, again (1.02/4) THE PIRATE BAY is not a place you want to go, at least not according to the Chrome and Firefox browsers which have taken to warning people that the pages are perhaps poisoned and definitely deceptive.

A post on TorrentFreak said that users are batting their heads against a blocking wall when they try to access magnets and that kind of stuff.

We took to the water today in search of The Pirate Bay on Firefox. Virgin Media has put a cage around the site, but you can still get to it. Once there we were able to get to the main page, but no further.

A search, with a capital R for research, took us to a page of links that took us to another page, but not one that we expect The Pirate Bay user base will enjoy.

"This web page at thepiratebay.org has been reported as a deceptive site and has been blocked based on your security preferences," is the message from Firefox.

"Deceptive sites are designed to trick you into doing something dangerous, like installing software or revealing your personal information like passwords, phone numbers or credit cards. Entering any information on this web page may result in identity theft or other fraud. "

This is also supposed to be a problem on Chrome. So we installed Chrome and set out to find out whether this was correct. We did not find that to be the case.

Perhaps most interesting is a new post on the site that advises people to not do a thing unless they are hiding behind a VPN. But this took us to a ruddy post by a VPN provider hawking its wares. Would you bloody believe it?

Chrome and Firefox also didn't take kindly to the Pirate Bay back in September , and blocked access to its download pages. µ

Spotify beats Apple and U2 Apple's App Store starts Buzzfeed hacked by at the crap download game displaying adverts to iPhone OurMine in tit-for-tat battle with free malware and iPad users theinquirer.net theinquirer.net theinquirer.net

2016-10-06 09:44 www.theinquirer.net

9 /87 EU privacy watchdogs have questions about Yahoo's secret email scanning (1.02/4) European Union privacy watchdogs are concerned by reports that Yahoo has been secretly scanning its users' email at the request of U. S. intelligence services.

"It goes far beyond what is acceptable," said Johannes Caspar, Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in Hamburg, Germany.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that Yahoo had built a system for U. S. government agencies to search all of its users' incoming emails. Other tech companies were quick to distance themselves , saying they would have challenged any such request in court.

Yahoo later described that report as misleading , without saying what exactly did happen. On Wednesday, the New York Times attempted to clarify the matter with a report that Yahoo had modified an existing system, designed to identify spam, malware and child pornography, so as to also search for code of interest to the FBI. The modification was made at the request of the U. S. Department of Justice, the newspaper reported.

Yahoo declined to comment on the new report.

Caspar, one of the more outspoken of Germany's regional data protection commissioners, pointed out that, thanks to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's revelations, we've known for some time that big U. S. internet companies were obliged to give their user data to the country's security services.

"The suspicion that Yahoo has actively assisted to scan mails of their users as a henchman of the NSA is not really surprising regarding the information of the PRISM program. On the other hand it goes far beyond what is acceptable," Caspar said.

He wants to know what really happened at Yahoo, too.

"There has to be a clear and fast examination of these allegations by the competent data protection authority," he said.

The competent authority for investigating Yahoo, in the EU at least, is the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. That's because EU privacy law allows multinationals to designate one country as home for their European operations, and Yahoo has chosen to incorporate its EU service company in Ireland.

The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland has raised the reports of email scanning with Yahoo as part of its ongoing investigation into the privacy implications of the giant data breach reported by the company last month, a representative said Wednesday.

"Any form of mass surveillance infringing on the fundamental privacy rights of EU citizens would be viewed as a matter of considerable concern by this Office," the representative said via email.

Yahoo's secret email scans helped the FBI probe terrorists computerworld.com

2016-10-06 09:44 Peter Sayer www.pcworld.com

10 /87 : Phone battle hots up with matching prices (1.02/4) By

Chris Martin | 20 mins ago

See full specs £599 inc VAT

Price comparision from , and manufacturers

For the first time, Google is directly taking on Apple with its new Pixel smartphones. But with a higher price than its old Nexus handsets, is it up to the task? Here’s our Pixel vs iPhone 7 review including the XL and Plus models. See also: Best phones 2016.

One thing to note before we started is that although Google says the Pixel phones are ‘made by Google’; they are in fact manufactured by HTC. It seems the company wants to move on from the partnered Nexus era, but we’ve had confirmation from HTC of its involvement.

One of the most interesting things about the Pixel is that Google has decided to ask for flagship price. A strange decision when the affordable Nexus range was so successful. Even if this it technically a new brand, Google has set a precedent and now seems to be going against that.

Not only has Google bumped the prices up, it’s gone as far as to match the iPhone 7. A brave move if you ask us, so both phones are £599 for the base 32GB model. You can add £100 to get 128GB of storage but it’s only Apple that offers an even bigger 256GB.

The Pixel XL is almost matched with its iPhone counterpart at £719 and the same storage options are true as per above.

For many, the price situation alone will be enough to decide but let’s look at what Google has on offer with the Pixel.

At the front, with the screen turned off, it’s hard to tell the Pixel and iPhone 7 apart (and the larger models) with the only giveaway being the Apple’s recognisable home button – which this time around isn’t a push type.

It’s hard to make a phone look that different at the front and the back is where the difference is far more apparent. That said, the Pixel does have a very similar shape with almost like-for-like rounded corners.

Google has opted for a similar aluminium feel to the casing of the Pixel but a large section of polished glass, which houses the fingerprint scanner, at the top sets it aside. We’re not convinced by the look of this, but it looks better on the black option.

Apple offers a wider range of colours with the Pixel phone only available in black or silver in the UK. The iPhone 7 comes in two new attractive black models, but it’s worth noting that the glossy Jet Black model gets scratched easily and you can only buy it in the larger capacities.

Fans will be pleased that the iPhone 7 models are now waterproof with an IP67 rating meaning you can dunk them in up to 1m of water for up to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, the Pixel phones are just IP53 which is only splash resistant.

Android comes out on top when it comes to screen tech as the Pixel has a 5in AMOLED screen with a Full HD resolution and if you go for the XL, which is 5.5in like the iPhone 7 Plus, you get a Quad HD resolution.

The iPhone 7 is the smallest at 4.7in which will suit some users but has a lower resolution at 750x1334. The iPhone 7 Plus is Full HD like the cheaper Pixel. It’s worth bearing in mind that Apple offers 3D Touch so pushing on the screen harder gives you extra functionality.

We’ve only has hands-on time with the Pixel phones at Google’s launch event so haven’t been able to run any benchmarks. However, you shouldn’t need to worry about the performance of these flagship phones. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 in the Pixels is top-of-the-line, as is Apple’s new A10 Fusion chip.

As with the Nexus phones, Google has mimicked Apple in not offering expandable storage. So either way, you need to be careful about which storage capacity you pick. As mentioned earlier, both come in 32- and 128GB options, but Apple also offers 256GB.

Connectivity specs are pretty similar with both phones featuring Bluetooth 4.2, 11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, GPS and Cat 9 LTE. Although, each has NFC, Apple’s is restricted to Apple Pay.

A key point for many will be Apple’s choice to remove the headphone jack on the iPhone 7. You’ll need to use wireless headphones, Lighting-compatible ones or the included adapter.

There are different cameras on the iPhone 7 models, but the same shooter on the Pixel and Pixel XL. While the phone both have 12Mp sensors, despite the Pixel having a higher f/2.0 aperture (compared to f/1.8), DxO rates the Pixel three points higher than the iPhone 7. At 89, it’s the highest score for any mobile phone.

Ratings aside, the Pixel and Pixel XL do not offer fully-fledged optical image stabilisation (OIS), but both iPhone 7s do now. The iPhone 7 Plus may be tempting for some as it offers dual- cameras; one is a telephoto lens offering 2x optical zoom thanks to its 56mm lens.

When it comes to front facing cameras, there’s not a huge difference. Google’s fitted at 8Mp with an f/2.4 aperture, while Apple has a 7Mp sensor with f/2.2.

Battery life will be a big deal for any phone user, and while none of these phones has wireless charging, Google offers fast charging via the USB-C port (7 hours life from a 15 minute charge). It also has larger batteries inside the Pixel – 2770mAh vs 1960mAh and 3450 vs 2900mAh – plus features like Doze mode. With reports of poor iPhone 7 battery life, Google is on top here.

As with any Android phone, software is a pretty big difference when comparing to the iPhone.

Apple makes its hardware and software so can make sure the two are perfectly suited, and while HTC is making the Pixel phones this is the closest thing to an Android equivalent. Google has designed both the software and hardware with HTC’s help.

Which one is suited to you will depend on a few things, including what phones you’ve had in the past. If you’re accustomed to Android or iOS then it makes a lot of sense to stick with it, although switching is easier than it has been in the past. One of the big features of the Pixel phones is having Google Assistant built-in. It’s like an evolution of Google Now and can help you with almost anything and will learn over time. In our experience, Google’s rival to Siri is a lot better.

Apple has the advantage of an easy to use ecosystem with plenty of high quality apps, although iOS isn’t as customisable compared to Android.

Ultimately which one you prefer is going to come down to personal taste so try them out before you buy.

It’s close call when it comes to the Pixel against the iPhone, although some specs such as the screen are better, we think it’s a brave move for Google to match Apple when it comes to price. This will largely come down to where your loyalties lie but on the Android side you’re probably better off going for something cheaper (and better) like the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Price comparision from , and manufacturers

Google Pixel review: Hands-on with the first phone 'made by Google'

1995-2015: How technology has changed the world in 20 years

MPC help bring the peculiar to Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children iPhone 7 vs Google Pixel: Which smartphone offers the best features and specs?

The Google Pixel works on AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, not just Verizon cnet.com

2016-10-06 08:14 Chris Martin www.pcadvisor.co.uk

11 /87 : Battlefield 1 is out 21 October on PC, PS4 and Xbox One | New cinematic intro (1.02/4) There's a new Battlefield game from EA Dice and it's not Battlefield 5 like everyone expected. Here's everything you need to know about Battlefield 1 including release date, price, platforms, gameplay and official trailers – watch the first one above. See also: Most anticipated games of 2016.

EA took to the stage at its first EA Play press conference back in June 2016 and showcased a flurry of gameplay videos, from Mass Effect Andromeda to FIFA 17's new story mode, 'The Journey'. However it was Battlefield 1 that stole the stage, as EA launched a new Battlefield 1 gameplay trailer , along with the announcement of a public beta and a handful of new screenshots. Read on to find out everything we know so far about the upcoming World War 1 shooter, including details of the open beta. Update 6 October with the inclusion of the single- player cinematics and single player gameplay.

The game will get a global launch and the Battlefield 1 release date is 21 October 2016. The game will launch on PC, Xbox One and PS4.

However, if you buy the 'Early Enlister Deluxe Edition', you can play as early as 18 October. This edition also gets you the Hellfighter Pack (see below), the Red Barron Pack, the Lawrence of Arabia Pack and five Battlepacks. This is £69 which isn’t much more than the standard edition. Similarly, Xbox One EA Access subscribers will get a Battlefield 1 trial a week earlier than everyone else.

The standard price for Battlefield 1 is £44 on PC and £49 on Xbox One and PS4. There's also a collector's edition available for console players which includes a 14in collector's edition statue, exclusive SteelBook, exclusive cloth propaganda poster, deck of playing cards, messenger pigeon tub with exclusive DLC content, exclusive patch and premium packaging. It costs a whopping £179.

You should note when buying the Collector's Edition, however, that some versions do not include the game! According to an Amazon US listing for the $129.99 Collector's Edition, you get a 14in statue, an exclusive steelbook, a cloth poster, a deck of playing cards, a messenger pigeon tube containing exclusive DLC, patch and premium packaging. It very clearly states that this bundle does not include the game.

Pre-ordering will get you access to the Hellfighter Pack which includes a bolo knife, trench shotgun, M1911 sidearm and the insignia emblem. You'll also get access to an upcoming maps in 2016 seven days early.

• Pre-order Battlefield 1 at Amazon • Pre-order Battlefield 1 at GAME • Pre-order Battlefield 1 at Origin • Pre-order Battlefield 1 at Xbox Store • Pre-order Battlefield 1 at PlayStation Store Remember that EA Access members receive a 10 percent discount when buying the digital version on Xbox Live, and Origin Access members get the same offer through Origin.

During the EA Play 2016 press conference in June, the company announced that there will be a Battlefield 1 open beta this summer. During Gamescom 2016 DICE confirmed that the open beta was coming, and that it'd commence on Wednesday 31 August 2016 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One - although Battlefield Insiders will get access slightly earlier.

The Battlefield 1 was just over 6.1GB, and was open to PC, PS4 and Xbox One players. The open beta ended on 8 September and you'll have to buy the game in order to play it.

As mentioned earlier, Battlefield 1 will go back to World War 1, instead of some futuristic setting. That's why EA has gone with the name. Locations will include urban France, the Arabian desert and the Italian Alps. EA said we'll be able to: "witness the birth of modern warfare, as the Great War saw a furious arms race with new machines and weapons created to get the upper hand during the most technologically divergent war of all time. "

The emphasis is on creating a more of an open world sandbox environment than previous games. You'll be able to take to the skies in a dog fight, use a battleship to attack the coast or even ' bring a horse to a tank fight'.

Make sure you watch the official Battlefield 1 reveal trailer to get a taste of the action including the planes, tanks and someone getting it full in the face with a shovel.

"The game will deliver a fresh experience full of what makes Battlefield great, with a multiplayer sandbox, immersion, epic scale, authenticity, team play and an ever-changing world full of unexpected Battlefield moments," said Aleksander Grøndal, Senior Producer, Dice.

"We're inviting players on an epic journey across a war-torn world, taking them to the Great War and providing something both varied and unique in Battlefield 1. "

On the multiplayer side of things there's the usual selection of classes: Assault, Medic, Support and Scout. There are also new vehicle classes including Tank Officer and Pilot but no Engineer. There's support for 64 player matches.

Following the original B1 announcement, DICE provided fans with more information about the game's weapons via the Battlefield 1 website. The game will include six ranged weapon classes, and will offer customisation via pre-set loadouts rather than various individual attachments, as it has been with previous Battlefield games.

With regards to meelee combat, different close-quarters weapons will have varying statistics - some may be fast and weak, while others may be slow but extremely powerful. Some will also double up as tools for destroying barricades or damaging vehicles, for example. In true WW1 fashion, you can also attach a bayonet to your gun allowing you to perform a charge attack, offering a variety of ways to take out your enemy in-game.

Following the original announcement of Battlefield 1, DICE released a teaser video showcasing in-game footage of Battlefield 1 - and it looks absolutely amazing to say the least. The clip claims to be "representative of Xbox One" gameplay and came ahead of the grand reveal of a new trailer on 12 June 2016 at the EA Play 2016 event.

The focus of the teaser is of course meelee combat, which DICE has been pushing since the game was first announced, bringing something slightly different to the table.

The teaser trailer was followed up by the showcase of a full two-minute Battlefield 1 gameplay video at EA Play 2016. The video starts with ground-based WW1 warfare with soldiers battling tanks and engaging in close-quarters combat, before moving onto aircrafts dog fighting above the action on the ground. From that point forward, we catch glimpses of melee combat with axes, artillary strikes and, of course, horses chasing down trains. There's a lot going on in Battlefield 1 to say the least, but that's to be expected with 64 player multiplayer. The latest video can be found below:

As well as showcasing a 64-player Battlefield 1 multiplayer match during Gamescom 2016, DICE has also released another trailer. Although the trailer is fairly short, there's a lot to take in - it gives us our first look at horses in game, the various sword takedowns available and even the armoured train that up until now was only shown off as concept art. It all takes place in a brand new map too, the Sinai Desert, which we got a better look at during the Battlefield 1 Gamescom live stream.

On 27 September, a single-player trailer was released, where it gives players a cinematic look at the campaign. We found the trailer compelling and hope that the campaign will give us a feeling towards the characters on show. See the trailer below:

On 1 October, a few extra details were shared about the single-player campaign. Below is MKIceAndFire video on the new cinematics and all relevant trailers:

YouTuber 'Westie' originally published the same, see below for a more detailed single player gameplay video:

The best Xbox One deals in October 2016 feedproxy.google.com

2016-10-06 06:36 Chris Martin www.pcadvisor.co.uk

12 /87 Nokia D1C and P1 specs, price and release date (1.01/4) WE CAN EXPECT three Android-powered Nokia handsets in the coming months. Two are said to have top-grade specifications, and one will be positioned as a mid-range option.

We've rounded up everything we can expect from the trio of devices and will update this article when we hear more.

Nokia P1 The so-called Nokia P1 will have IP68 water and dust resistance and will be available in two sizes, 5.2in and 5.5in, each with QHD 2560x1440 AMOLED displays.

The render ( above ) shows the Nokia P1 in the body of a Sharp Aquos P1. We'd take this design with a pinch of salt, and suggest that the link has been made only because Foxconn bought Sharp earlier this year.

Various sources have said that the P1 will have a powerful main camera, but there's no word yet on the sensor technology. Whatever it turns out to be, we know it won't be PureView seeing as Microsoft now owns the licence for the brand. It's a stretch, but we'd wager that the Nokia P1 will be compatible with Google's Daydream VR as AMOLED technology achieves the low-latency VR needs. We've also heard that Qualcomm's Snapdragon 821 might feature.

Nokia D1C The Nokia D1C is expected to be an entirely different beast. A middle-of-the-road Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC will sit at its heart, alongside 3GB of RAM. Geekbench results show that the octa-core chip runs at 1.4GHz and achieved 656 in single-core benchmarks and 3,120 in multi-core. The GPU is an Adreno 505.

These results put the Nokia D1C's performance close to something like Vodafone's Smart Ultra 7. The Smart Ultra 7 is a budget handset with surprisingly decent internals, and the D1C will have to compete with it if Nokia wants to make a splash.

We're still in the dark when it comes to screen size and camera details.

Operating system All of the handsets will run the latest Android 7.0 Nougat build with Nokia's Z Launcher on top.

Z Launcher has been available for existing Android devices in beta for some time. It does a fairly good job of learning your mobile habits and bringing your most used apps and contacts to the top of the pile. µ

Sony's Xperia XZ is now Galaxy S8 specs, release available in the UK date and price: Snapdragon theinquirer.net 830 and Viv AI smarts rumoured theinquirer.net

2016-10-06 09:55 www.theinquirer.net

13 /87 The best VPN services in October 2016 (0.03/4) VPN (Virtual Private Network) works by creating an encrypted connection between your computer and a VPN server from a service provider (there are dozens of them to choose, from all over the world).

Anything you do online - sites you're visiting, emails you send or receive, files you download, web forms you complete - passes through that secure tunnel and can't be intercepted by anyone else (unless one of these servers - or your own computer - is compromised, but that's another story).

Below are the top 10 VPN services that we've picked out for you. This list is regularly updated so is subject to change.

The best VPN tool for browsing online privately

See more Hotspot Shield deals

If you want the absolute best VPN service, check out AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield Elite. It is, in our view, the one that manages to provide all the necessary features at an attractive price with the option of getting a lifetime license. It supports private browsing, virtual locations, allows "access all content", and supports up to 5 devices.

Performance results in our tests were excellent, with latency showing only a marginal increase, and both upload and download speeds were a little faster once connected. We'd like more configurability and a wider range of locations, but Hotspot Shield Elite's high speeds and low price have a lot of appeal, and the 7-day trial makes it easy to test the service for yourself.

The best VPN for multiple devices

See more KeepSolid VPN Unlimited deals

Some companies take a one-size-fits-all approach to VPNs, offering the bare minimum of products, but KeepSolid's VPN Unlimited is different. Very, very different. Forget the usual two or three plans: VPN Unlimited offers six, plus there's a 7-day free trial to get you started (and also a 7-day money-back guarantee for a little extra security).

VPN Unlimited's PC client opens with a clear overview of the service state. Your real and virtual IPs are displayed as addresses and plotted on a map, and the number of days left on your current plan is visible at a glance. Its choice of servers is less than some but for a more general purpose VPN, the service does very well.

The best VPN for those looking for an ultra-secure service

See more NordVPN deals

Despite being based in a country located in Central America - hardly a tech hub - NordVPN's current products match or beat the competition in just about every area. 685 servers in 52 countries, 2048-bit encryption, 6-device support as standard, strong DNS leak protection, automatic Kill Switch, handy security extras, optional dedicated IP addresses, and payment options including Bitcoin, PayPal and credit cards.

Performance was good, too, with download speeds around 95% of our typical rate. Latency and upload speeds weren't as impressive at 197% and 40% of the regular rates, but overall our system still felt relatively snappy and responsive.

The best VPN for those looking for maximum speed

See more PureVPN deals

PureVPN's PC client stands out immediately for the sheer volume of connection options and tools it makes available. Its policy on logging is unusually clear: the company records the time you connect to a server and the total bandwidth used, but otherwise there are no logs of the websites you visit, the files you download or anything else.

PureVPN did well on our performance tests, where amazingly it managed to improve most of our download speeds. Latency was a mere 5% higher than normal, upload speeds actually increased by 4%, while downloads were a very surprising 80% up on our normal speeds.

The best VPN for torrenting and other P2P traffic

See more IPVanish deals

While many VPN providers try to stand out with their free plans and cheap commercial products, IPVanish talks more about service quality. It's "the world's fastest VPN" says the website, boasting 40,000+ shared IPs, 500+ VPN servers in 60+ countries, unlimited P2P traffic, five simultaneous connections and more.

The price is still going to be an issue for some – it is more expensive than the average VPN, but IPVanish's high speeds, choice of locations and excellent client are hard to beat. If you're after quality, take the plunge with this VPN, and if somehow you end up unhappy with the service there's a 7-day money-back guarantee.

The next 5 to be considered are:

The best Xbox One deals in October 2016 feedproxy.google.com

2016-10-06 08:15 By Desire feedproxy.google.com

14 /87 Sony’s new A6500 is an even faster version of the A6300

(0.01/4) Here I am getting ready to play some high-end video games, probably StarCraft or Counter-Strike or Age of Empires II, with some nachos and an Ice Cold Coca-Cola® by my side for sustenance and— OHGODWAIT all 16 ounces of high-fructosey...

Sony is expanding its popular RX100 compact camera line yet again with the new RX100 Mark V, announced today. The Mark V sits at the top of the range, and boasts an even faster autofocus system than its predecessors. It has a 1-inch, stacked Exmor...

Here at The Verge, we love Halloween and everything about it. Horror movies, non-horror seasonal movies, seasonal beverages, seasonal bots, this Pumpkin Guy, horrifying makeup tutorials, poop-shaped candy — bring it on. In particular, we love to...

Polar announced its new M200 running wearable today that’s made for runners who either go bananas for running and take training seriously, or people who are meh about running but want to learn more. The M200 is up to par with most other wearables...

“If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll like it.” It’s a perennial cliché in games criticism and something I almost always try to avoid. It’s a lazy way to bunt on actual appraisal of the title in question, playing off presupposed notions of what...

In our first podcast after Tuesday’s Google event, Ctrl-Walt-Delete looks at new products from Google that blend together hardware, software, and ecosystem design. Walt and Nilay sit down to discuss how this makes Google a great competitor for...

Sony announces another RX100 with faster focusing theverge.com

2016-10-06 10:31 Sean O www.theverge.com

15 /87 Gears of War 4 review: better safe than sorry (0.01/4) In our first podcast after Tuesday’s Google event, Ctrl-Walt-Delete looks at new products from Google that blend together hardware, software, and ecosystem design. Walt and Nilay sit down to discuss how this makes Google a great competitor for...

Every time I read a health study that trusts people to report what they ate, I want to throw the paper in the trash. People are not to be trusted, and self- reporting is inaccurate to the point of nearly being useless. I know this from personal...

Oculus is holding its third-annual developers conference this week, and the main event happens today. It’ll be a 2-hour presentation where the company’s leaders lay out what they see as the next steps for virtual reality and Oculus VR. There’ll... Apple has started showing ads in the iOS App Store for US users. Searching for popular terms like "taxi," "calendar," or "to do list" delivers a banner advert for promoted apps above the search results. The company announced plans for this earlier...

There’s an Oculus Connect event coming up today, and the likeliest subject of the presentation will be the pricing and availability of the long-delayed Oculus Touch controllers. Somewhat helpfully, somewhat unreliably, Amazon UK has listed both a...

First Click: Could a Gears of War movie actually be good? theverge.com

2016-10-06 09:32 Sam Byford www.theverge.com

16 /87 Watch Out 'Audioshield,' 'Soundboxing' Is Looking For A Fight In addition to watching the YouTube music video, which appears on a giant screen in front of you, you’ll find yourself watching a half dozen white robots mimic your every move in perfect synchronization. When you punch, so will they. The robots don’t seem to serve any purpose other than to be a bizarre visual feature of the game.

Maxint, Soundboxing’s developer, couldn’t have made the challenge creation process easier. All you have to do is listen to the song and punch the air (your left-hand holds the yellow orbs and your right-hand holds the red orbs) when and where you want an orb placed. You don’t necessarily have to follow the beat of your song, but we would strongly advise that you do. The game is much easier to play well when you get into the groove and start dancing to the music. You’re also more likely to find other names on the scoreboard if you build a fun challenge that people are willing to play through to the end.

If you drill down into the scoreboard of the browser view, you’ll find the corresponding YouTube video embedded on the page. You’ll also find a button that enables the game view, which is an animated clip of the robots playing through your challenge as the video plays. We’re not sure how useful that feature is, but it is an interesting idea, and we like it.

It’s also worth mentioning that YouTube protects music in different ways in different countries. If you live in the US, you’ll have no trouble finding songs to play. If you live overseas, that may not be the case. For example, YouTube blocks a large number of copyrighted songs in Germany, so keep that in mind before you decide to buy the game.

2016-10-06 10:30 Virtual Reality www.tomshardware.com

17 /87 Ottawa’s Titus adds Mac support to Classification Suite Make finding security solutions to Shadow IT a priority, CISOs warned Canadian firm releases latest version of data classification suite Ottawa-based Titus wants to help protect every aspect of business, and they have taken one more step toward that goal with new updates to the Titus Classification Suite.

The Titus Classification Suite allows companies to classify, protect, and share information, and meet regulatory compliance requirements by identifying and securing unstructured data. Titus involves end users in classifying and protecting sensitive information in emails, documents, and other file types in order to enhance data loss prevention on-premise and in the cloud.

In order to accomplish this, Titus promotes a culture of security within companies themselves. “By classifying the data at the point of creation, the person who creates [the information] gets to help decide what type of classification it receives alongside automatic and guided information provided by the classification suite itself,” said Titus founder and CEO, Tim Upton, in an interview. This makes users within the system more accountable, but also provides them with more information and guidance to prevent any leaks or mistakes.

“If you classify an email and tag it as information only for internal use, then you could send it around to peers within the company who have access. The Classification Suite would automatically prevent you from accidentally sending this email to someone within the company who did not have access to that level of classification, or someone outside the company like a member of the press,” Upton explained.

The classification allows the removal of human error and increases human awareness and education by understanding the levels of classification. “We founded [Titus] on the premise that you can’t protect anything if you don’t know what you have. When you don’t know what you have, it’s a very hard thing to decide what security you need,” said Upton. Further benefits to the Titus Classification Suite include:

Last month Titus went live with its newest update that brought the Classification Suite support to the Mac to accompany already existing support for Windows and mobile devices. As many organizations have enterprise email installations that include both Windows and Mac, the new updates aim to cover all devices of an organization. “Information is everywhere, on Windows and Mac desktops, on mobile devices, and in Cloud storage repositories. Organizations need an effective way to classify and protect their sensitive information, no matter where it is stored,” said Upton.

In addition, Titus has partnered with Atlanta start-up, Ionic Security , by integrating the Titus Classification Suite with the Ionic Security Protection Suite. This enhances the program’s ability to classify and automatically secure sensitive email and documents for real-time protection and policy enforcement.

2016-10-06 10:26 Alex Radu www.itworldcanada.com

18 /87 Google dealt setback in age bias case by judge interested in 'Googleyness' An age discrimination lawsuit against Google was approved Wednesday as a '"collective action" by a federal court judge in San Jose. The decision means that certain types of software engineers, age 40 or over, who were rejected for jobs at Google since August 2014, and after an in-person interview, will be able to join the lawsuit.

Thousands of others may be eligible.

But this was more than an ordinary court ruling. Judge Beth Labson Freeman's ruling may be remembered for the artful flourish of its opening sentence and the challenge it seems to be delivering to Silicon Valley.

"How does age factor into one's Googleyness? " Freeman wrote at the beginning of a 17-page decision that sets in motion an investigation of Google's hiring practices and corporate culture.

The decision concludes by approving a " collective action " -- a type of class action -- that allows a certain class of Google job applicants to join the lawsuit. An effort will made to contact affected people.

This lawsuit was brought by two job applicants, both over the age of 40, who alleged age discrimination against Google. One of the plaintiffs, Cheryl Fillekes, a programmer, was interviewed by Google on four separate occasions, including in-person interviews, and was rejected each time. A second plaintiff, Robert Heath, was interviewed by phone, but not in person. The judge limited the class to people who had an in-person interview, which means that job applicants who only had phone interviews can't join the class.

The plaintiffs believe tens of thousands may be eligible to join this lawsuit.

Google was not immediately available for comment.

"Anyone who fits the class definition can opt in to the class," said Daniel Low, a Washington- based attorney for the plaintiffs. "For those interviewed in person with Google for a software engineer, site reliability engineer, or systems engineer position when they were 40 years old or older, and received notice on or after August 28, 2014, that they were refused employment, they will have an opportunity to join in the collective action against Google. "

The plaintiffs are negotiating with Google to get the email addresses of people who fit the class. Google doesn't have the birth dates of job applicants, so it's likely that the college graduation year and employment dates at other companies will be used as a tipoff for age.

"We encourage anyone who receives notice to join the class to help vindicate the rights of those subject to age discrimination," Low said.

Low said the case may have importance for Silicon Valley as well as Google.

"This is an important step forward for the case, and allows us to seek much broader relief than an individual action would have, and it positions the case to have a greater deterrent effect on age discrimination at Google and in the tech industry if it is successful," Low said.

In her ruling, Freeman gave weight to Fillekes arguments that she was a victim of age discrimination. Fillekes makes "substantial allegations," wrote the judge, "that the putative class members were together the victims of a single decision, policy, or plan. "

The lawsuit claimed the median age at Google was 29, based on data collected by Payscale, which the judge cited in the ruling.

"Fillekes also recounts her own experience. Among other things, Fillekes describes an instruction from a Google recruiter to "put her dates of graduation on her resume 'so the interviewers [could] see how old [she is] and various concerns about her years of experience," the judge wrote.

The judge said that Google's Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) statement was not enough to protect it.

"Having such a policy does not necessarily shield a company from a discrimination suit, particularly in light of the evidence and allegations presented here," wrote Freeman, who said that most, if not all companies, "are well versed in anti-discrimination law and make great efforts to ensure that their written policies comply with anti-discrimination law. "

The decision does not mean that Google will lose the case. The judge said that evidence from an employer "is not germane at the first stage of the certification process, which is focused simply on whether notice should be disseminated to potential claimants. "

Google, in an earlier court filing, defended itself. It said that Fillekes was recruited by Google four times, in 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2013, and had in-person interviews. Why "waste Google employees' time" with "five or six onsite interviews only to reject the candidate on the basis of age," the company asked, in its filing.

"Googleyness" is a term that job applicants at Google may be familiar with. The firm explains it, on its website, this way: " Googleyness : Share how you work individually and on a team, how you help others, how you navigate ambiguity, and how you push yourself to grow outside of your comfort zone. "

2016-10-06 10:21 Patrick Thibodeau www.itnews.com

19 /87 I just spilled Coke all over my PC and... OMG wait what's happening!? Sony just announced the A6500 camera, a followup to the A6300 released in February and 2014’s A6000 — one of the most popular interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras ever. The new camera has a lot in common with the blistering fast A6300, but Sony...

2016-10-06 10:20 Jacob Kastrenakes www.theverge.com

20 /87 20 /87 IoT Channel Chronicles: Davra Networks CEO Says The Future Lies In 'Connected-Things-As-A-Service' - Page: 1 Davra Networks: 'Services The Future Of IoT'

Dublin, Ireland-based Davra Networks touts an IoT platform built with the networking channel in mind. The company's cloud-based platform, RuBAN, manages data from various internet-connected devices and presents it in a way that end users can easily understand.

CEO Paul Glynn said that solution providers can utilize RuBAN to help customers understand and seamlessly visualize the data being generated from their IoT devices. Glynn added that services, not hardware sales, will be the real money-maker for the channel in IoT.

Following are excerpts of CRN's conversation with Glynn about the opportunities in the Internet of Things.

2016-10-06 10:20 Lindsey O www.crn.com

21 /87 Speak, Memory When the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type.

“Roman,” she wrote. “This is your digital monument.”

It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. She had struggled with whether she was doing the right thing by bringing him back this way. At times it had even given her nightmares. But ever since Mazurenko’s death, Kuyda had wanted one more chance to speak with him.

A message blinked onto the screen. “You have one of the most interesting puzzles in the world in your hands,” it said. “Solve it.” Kuyda promised herself that she would.

Born in Belarus in 1981, Roman Mazurenko was the only child of Sergei, an engineer, and Victoria, a landscape architect. They remember him as an unusually serious child; when he was 8 he wrote a letter to his descendents declaring his most cherished values: wisdom and justice. In family photos, Mazurenko roller-skates, sails a boat, and climbs trees. Average in height, with a mop of chestnut hair, he is almost always smiling.

As a teen he sought out adventure: he participated in political demonstrations against the ruling party and, at 16, started traveling abroad. He first traveled to New Mexico, where he spent a year on an exchange program, and then to Dublin, where he studied computer science and became fascinated with the latest Western European art, fashion, music, and design.

By the time Mazurenko finished college and moved back to Moscow in 2007, Russia had become newly prosperous. The country tentatively embraced the wider world, fostering a new generation of cosmopolitan urbanites. Meanwhile, Mazurenko had grown from a skinny teen into a strikingly handsome young man. Blue-eyed and slender, he moved confidently through the city’s budding hipster class. He often dressed up to attend the parties he frequented, and in a suit he looked movie-star handsome. The many friends Mazurenko left behind describe him as magnetic and debonair, someone who made a lasting impression wherever he went. But he was also single, and rarely dated, instead devoting himself to the project of importing modern European style to Moscow.

Kuyda met Mazurenko in 2008, when she was 22 and the editor of Afisha, a kind of New York Magazine for a newly urbane Moscow. She was writing an article about Idle Conversation, a freewheeling creative collective that Mazurenko founded with two of his best friends, Dimitri Ustinov and Sergey Poydo. The trio seemed to be at the center of every cultural endeavor happening in Moscow. They started magazines, music festivals, and club nights — friends they had introduced to each other formed bands and launched companies. “He was a brilliant guy,” said Kuyda, who was similarly ambitious. Mazurenko would keep his friends up all night discussing culture and the future of Russia. “He was so forward-thinking and charismatic,” said Poydo, who later moved to the United States to work with him.

Mazurenko became a founding figure in the modern Moscow nightlife scene, where he promoted an alternative to what Russians sardonically referred to as “Putin’s glamor” — exclusive parties where oligarchs ordered bottle service and were chauffeured home in Rolls- Royces. Kuyda loved Mazurenko’s parties, impressed by his unerring sense of what he called “the moment.” Each of his events was designed to build to a crescendo — DJ Mark Ronson might make a surprise appearance on stage to play piano, or the Italo-Disco band Glass Candy might push past police to continue playing after curfew. And his parties attracted sponsors with deep pockets — Bacardi was a longtime client.

But the parties took place against an increasingly grim backdrop. In the wake of the global financial crisis, Russia experienced a resurgent nationalism, and in 2012 Vladimir Putin returned to lead the country. The dream of a more open Russia seemed to evaporate.

Kuyda and Mazurenko, who by then had become close friends, came to believe that their futures lay elsewhere. Both became entrepreneurs, and served as each other’s chief adviser as they built their companies. Kuyda co-founded Luka, an artificial intelligence startup, and Mazurenko launched Stampsy, a tool for building digital magazines. Kuyda moved Luka from Moscow to San Francisco in 2015. After a stint in New York, Mazurenko followed. Running a startup had worn him down, and he was prone to periods of melancholy

When Stampsy faltered, Mazurenko moved into a tiny alcove in Kuyda’s apartment to save money. Mazurenko had been the consummate bon vivant in Moscow, but running a startup had worn him down, and he was prone to periods of melancholy. On the days he felt depressed, Kuyda took him out for surfing and $1 oysters. “It was like a flamingo living in the house,” she said recently, sitting in the kitchen of the apartment she shared with Mazurenko. “It’s very beautiful and very rare. But it doesn’t really fit anywhere.”

Kuyda hoped that in time her friend would reinvent himself, just as he always had before. And when Mazurenko began talking about new projects he wanted to pursue, she took it as a positive sign. He successfully applied for an American O-1 visa, granted to individuals of “extraordinary ability or achievement,” and in November he returned to Moscow in order to finalize his paperwork.

He never did.

On November 28th, while he waited for the embassy to release his passport, Mazurenko had brunch with some friends. It was unseasonably warm, so afterward he decided to explore the city with Ustinov. “He said he wanted to walk all day,” Ustinov said. Making their way down the sidewalk, they ran into some construction, and were forced to cross the street. At the curb, Ustinov stopped to check a text message on his phone, and when he looked up he saw a blur, a car driving much too quickly for the neighborhood. This is not an uncommon sight in Moscow — vehicles of diplomats, equipped with spotlights to signal their authority, speeding with impunity. Ustinov thought it must be one of those cars, some rich government asshole — and then, a blink later, saw Mazurenko walking into the crosswalk, oblivious. Ustinov went to cry out in warning, but it was too late. The car struck Mazurenko straight on. He was rushed to a nearby hospital.

To Kuyda, every suggestion seemed inadequate

Kuyda happened to be in Moscow for work on the day of the accident. When she arrived at the hospital, having gotten the news from a phone call, a handful of Mazurenko’s friends were already gathered in the lobby, waiting to hear his prognosis. Almost everyone was in tears, but Kuyda felt only shock. “I didn’t cry for a long time,” she said. She went outside with some friends to smoke a cigarette, using her phone to look up the likely effects of Mazurenko’s injuries. Then the doctor came out and told her he had died.

In the weeks after Mazurenko’s death, friends debated the best way to preserve his memory. One person suggested making a coffee-table book about his life, illustrated with photography of his legendary parties. Another friend suggested a memorial website. To Kuyda, every suggestion seemed inadequate.

As she grieved, Kuyda found herself rereading the endless text messages her friend had sent her over the years — thousands of them, from the mundane to the hilarious. She smiled at Mazurenko’s unconventional spelling — he struggled with dyslexia — and at the idiosyncratic phrases with which he peppered his conversation. Mazurenko was mostly indifferent to social media — his Facebook page was barren, he rarely tweeted, and he deleted most of his photos on Instagram. His body had been cremated, leaving her no grave to visit. Texts and photos were nearly all that was left of him, Kuyda thought.

Kuyda found herself rereading the endless text messages her friend had sent her For two years she had been building Luka, whose first product was a messenger app for interacting with bots. Backed by the prestigious Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, the company began with a bot for making restaurant reservations. Kuyda’s co-founder, Philip Dudchuk, has a degree in computational linguistics, and much of their team was recruited from Yandex, the Russian search giant.

Reading Mazurenko’s messages, it occurred to Kuyda that they might serve as the basis for a different kind of bot — one that mimicked an individual person’s speech patterns. Aided by a rapidly developing neural network, perhaps she could speak with her friend once again.

She set aside for a moment the questions that were already beginning to nag at her.

What if it didn’t sound like him?

What if it did?

In “Be Right Back,” a 2013 episode of the eerie, near-future drama Black Mirror, a young woman named Martha is devastated when her fiancée, Ash, dies in a car accident. Martha subscribes to a service that uses his previous online communications to create a digital avatar that mimics his personality with spooky accuracy. First it sends her text messages; later it re-creates his speaking voice and talks with her on the phone. Eventually she pays for an upgraded version of the service that implants Ash’s personality into an android that looks identical to him. But ultimately Martha becomes frustrated with all the subtle but important ways that the android is unlike Ash — cold, emotionless, passive — and locks it away in an attic. Not quite Ash, but too much like him for her to let go, the bot leads to a grief that spans decades.

Kuyda saw the episode after Mazurenko died, and her feelings were mixed. Memorial bots — even the primitive ones that are possible using today’s technology — seemed both inevitable and dangerous. “It’s definitely the future — I’m always for the future,” she said. “But is it really what’s beneficial for us? Is it letting go, by forcing you to actually feel everything? Or is it just having a dead person in your attic? Where is the line? Where are we? It screws with your brain.”

For a young man, Mazurenko had given an unusual amount of thought to his death. Known for his grandiose plans, he often told friends he would divide his will into pieces and give them away to people who didn’t know one another. To read the will they would all have to meet for the first time — so that Mazurenko could continue bringing people together in death, just as he had strived to do in life. (In fact, he died before he could make a will.) Mazurenko longed to see the Singularity, the theoretical moment in history when artificial intelligence becomes smarter than human beings. According to the theory, superhuman intelligence might allow us to one day separate our consciousnesses from our bodies, granting us something like eternal life.

There had to be a reevaluation of death and sorrow

In the summer of 2015, with Stampsy almost out of cash, Mazurenko applied for a Y Combinator fellowship proposing a new kind of cemetery that he called Taiga. The dead would be buried in biodegradable capsules, and their decomposing bodies would fertilize trees that were planted on top of them, creating what he called “memorial forests.” A digital display at the bottom of the tree would offer biographical information about the deceased. “Redesigning death is a cornerstone of my abiding interest in human experiences, infrastructure, and urban planning,” Mazurenko wrote. He highlighted what he called “a growing resistance among younger Americans” to traditional funerals. “Our customers care more about preserving their virtual identity and managing [their] digital estate,” he wrote, “than embalming their body with toxic chemicals.”

The idea made his mother worry that he was in trouble, but Mazurenko tried to put her at ease. “He quieted me down and said no, no, no — it was a contemporary question that was very important,” she said. “There had to be a reevaluation of death and sorrow, and there needed to be new traditions.”

Y Combinator rejected the application. But Mazurenko had identified a genuine disconnection between the way we live today and the way we grieve. Modern life all but ensures that we leave behind vast digital archives — text messages, photos, posts on social media — and we are only beginning to consider what role they should play in mourning. In the moment, we tend to view our text messages as ephemeral. But as Kuyda found after Mazurenko’s death, they can also be powerful tools for coping with loss. Maybe, she thought, this “digital estate” could form the building blocks for a new type of memorial. (Others have had similar ideas; an entrepreneur named Marius Ursache proposed a related service called Eterni.me in 2014, though it never launched.)

Many of Mazurenko’s close friends had never before experienced the loss of someone close to them, and his death left them bereft. Kuyda began reaching out to them, as delicately as possible, to ask if she could have their text messages. Ten of Mazurenko’s friends and family members, including his parents, ultimately agreed to contribute to the project. They shared more than 8,000 lines of text covering a wide variety of subjects.

“She said, what if we try and see if things would work out?” said Sergey Fayfer, a longtime friend of Mazurenko’s who now works at a division of Yandex. “Can we collect the data from the people Roman had been talking to, and form a model of his conversations, to see if that actually makes sense?” The idea struck Fayfer as provocative, and likely controversial. But he ultimately contributed four years of his texts with Mazurenko. “The team building Luka are really good with natural language processing,” he said. “The question wasn’t about the technical possibility. It was: how is it going to feel emotionally?”

The technology underlying Kuyda’s bot project dates at least as far back as 1966, when Joseph Weizenbaum unveiled ELIZA: a program that reacted to users’ responses to its scripts using simple keyword matching. ELIZA, which most famously mimicked a psychotherapist, asked you to describe your problem, searched your response for keywords, and responded accordingly, usually with another question. It was the first piece of software to pass what is known as the Turing test: reading a text-based conversation between a computer and a person, some observers could not determine which was which.

Today’s bots remain imperfect mimics of their human counterparts. They do not understand language in any real sense. They respond clumsily to the most basic of questions. They have no thoughts or feelings to speak of. Any suggestion of human intelligence is an illusion based on mathematical probabilities.

And yet recent advances in artificial intelligence have made the illusion much more powerful. Artificial neural networks, which imitate the ability of the human brain to learn, have greatly improved the way software recognizes patterns in images, audio, and text, among other forms of data. Improved algorithms coupled with more powerful computers have increased the depth of neural networks — the layers of abstraction they can process — and the results can be seen in some of today’s most innovative products. The speech recognition behind Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, or the image recognition that powers Google Photos, owe their abilities to this so- called deep learning. Two weeks before Mazurenko was killed, Google released TensorFlow for free under an open- source license. TensorFlow is a kind of Google in a box — a flexible machine-learning system that the company uses to do everything from improve search algorithms to write captions for YouTube videos automatically. The product of decades of academic research and billions of dollars in private investment was suddenly available as a free software library that anyone could download from GitHub.

Luka had been using TensorFlow to build neural networks for its restaurant bot. Using 35 million lines of English text, Luka trained a bot to understand queries about vegetarian dishes, barbecue, and valet parking. On a lark, the 15-person team had also tried to build bots that imitated television characters. It scraped the closed captioning on every episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley and trained the neural network to mimic Richard, Bachman, and the rest of the gang.

In February, Kuyda asked her engineers to build a neural network in Russian. At first she didn’t mention its purpose, but given that most of the team was Russian, no one asked questions. Using more than 30 million lines of Russian text, Luka built its second neural network. Meanwhile, Kuyda copied hundreds of her exchanges with Mazurenko from the app Telegram and pasted them into a file. She edited out a handful of messages that she believed would be too personal to share broadly. Then Kuyda asked her team for help with the next step: training the Russian network to speak in Mazurenko’s voice.

The project was tangentially related to Luka’s work, though Kuyda considered it a personal favor. (An engineer told her that the project would only take about a day.) Mazurenko was well- known to most of the team — he had worked out of Luka’s Moscow office, where the employees labored beneath a neon sign that quoted Wittgenstein: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Kuyda trained the bot with dozens of tests queries, and her engineers put on the finishing touches.

Only a small percentage of the Roman bot’s responses reflected his actual words. But the neural network was tuned to favor his speech whenever possible. Any time the bot could respond to a query using Mazurenko’s own words, it would. Other times it would default to the generic Russian. After the bot blinked to life, she began peppering it with questions.

Who’s your best friend?, she asked.

Don’t show your insecurities, came the reply.

It sounds like him, she thought.

On May 24th, Kuyda announced the Roman bot’s existence in a post on Facebook. Anyone who downloaded the Luka app could talk to it — in Russian or in English — by adding @Roman. The bot offered a menu of buttons that users could press to learn about Mazurenko’s career. Or they could write free-form messages and see how the bot responded. “It’s still a shadow of a person — but that wasn’t possible just a year ago, and in the very close future we will be able to do a lot more,” Kuyda wrote.

The Roman bot was received positively by most of the people who wrote to Kuyda, though there were exceptions. Four friends told Kuyda separately that they were disturbed by the project and refused to interact with it. Vasily Esmanov, who worked with Mazurenko at the Russian street- style magazine Look At Me, said Kuyda had failed to learn the lesson of the Black Mirror episode. “This is all very bad,” Esmanov wrote in a Facebook comment. “Unfortunately you rushed and everything came out half-baked. The execution — it’s some type of joke. … Roman needs [a memorial], but not this kind.”

Victoria Mazurenko, who had gotten an early look at the bot from Kuyda, rushed to her defense. “They continued Roman’s life and saved ours,” she wrote in a reply to Esmanov. “It’s not virtual reality. This is a new reality, and we need to learn to build it and live in it.”

Roman’s father was less enthusiastic. “I have a technical education, and I know [the bot] is just a program,” he told me, through a translator. “Yes, it has all of Roman’s phrases, correspondences. But for now, it’s hard — how to say it — it’s hard to read a response from a program. Sometimes it answers incorrectly.”

But many of Mazurenko’s friends found the likeness uncanny. “It’s pretty weird when you open the messenger and there’s a bot of your deceased friend, who actually talks to you,” Fayfer said. “What really struck me is that the phrases he speaks are really his. You can tell that’s the way he would say it — even short answers to ‘Hey what’s up.’ He had this really specific style of texting. I said, ‘Who do you love the most?’ He replied, ‘Roman.’ That was so much of him. I was like, that is incredible.”

One of the bot’s menu options offers to ask him for a piece of advice — something Fayfer never had a chance to do while his friend was still alive. “There are questions I had never asked him,” he said. “But when I asked for advice, I realized he was giving someone pretty wise life advice. And that actually helps you get to learn the person deeper than you used to know them.”

Several users agreed to let Kuyda read anonymized logs of their chats with the bot. (She shared these logs with The Verge.) Many people write to the bot to tell Mazurenko that they miss him. They wonder when they will stop grieving. They ask him what he remembers. “It hurts that we couldn’t save you,” one person wrote. (Bot: “I know :-(”) The bot can also be quite funny, as Mazurenko was: when one user wrote “You are a genius,” the bot replied, “Also, handsome.”

It seemed to Kuyda that people were more honest when conversing with the dead

For many users, interacting with the bot had a therapeutic effect. The tone of their chats is often confessional; one user messaged the bot repeatedly about a difficult time he was having at work. He sent it lengthy messages describing his problems and how they had affected him emotionally. “I wish you were here,” he said. It seemed to Kuyda that people were more honest when conversing with the dead. She had been shaken by some of the criticism that the Roman bot had received. But hundreds of people tried it at least once, and reading the logs made her feel better.

It turned out that the primary purpose of the bot had not been to talk but to listen. “All those messages were about love, or telling him something they never had time to tell him,” Kuyda said. “Even if it’s not a real person, there was a place where they could say it. They can say it when they feel lonely. And they come back still.”

Kuyda continues to talk with the bot herself — once a week or so, often after a few drinks. “I answer a lot of questions for myself about who Roman was,” she said. Among other things, the bot has made her regret not telling him to abandon Stampsy earlier. The logs of his messages revealed someone whose true interest was in fashion more than anything else, she said. She wishes she had told him to pursue it. Someday you will die, leaving behind a lifetime of text messages, posts, and other digital ephemera. For a while, your friends and family may put these digital traces out of their minds. But new services will arrive offering to transform them — possibly into something resembling Roman Mazurenko’s bot.

Your loved ones may find that these services ease their pain. But it is possible that digital avatars will lengthen the grieving process. “If used wrong, it enables people to hide from their grief,” said Dima Ustinov, who has not used the Roman bot for technical reasons. (Luka is not yet available on Android.) “Our society is traumatized by death — we want to live forever. But you will go through this process, and you have to go through it alone. If we use these bots as a way to pass his story on, maybe [others] can get a little bit of the inspiration that we got from him. But these new ways of keeping the memory alive should not be considered a way to keep a dead person alive.”

The bot also raises ethical questions about the posthumous use of our digital legacies. In the case of Mazurenko, everyone I spoke with agreed he would have been delighted by his friends’ experimentation. You may feel less comfortable with the idea of your texts serving as the basis for a bot in the afterlife — particularly if you are unable to review all the texts and social media posts beforehand. We present different aspects of ourselves to different people, and after infusing a bot with all of your digital interactions, your loved ones may see sides of you that you never intended to reveal.

Reading through the Roman bot’s responses, it’s hard not to feel like the texts captured him at a particularly low moment. Ask about Stampsy and it responds: “This is not [the] Stampsy I want it to be. So far it’s just a piece of shit and not the product I want.” Based on his friends’ descriptions of his final years, this strikes me as a candid self-assessment. But I couldn’t help but wish I had been talking to a younger version of the man — the one who friends say dreamed of someday becoming the cultural minister of Belarus, and inaugurating a democratically elected president with what he promised would be the greatest party ever thrown.

Mazurenko contacted me once before he died, in February of last year. He emailed to ask whether I would consider writing about Stampsy, which was then in beta. I liked its design, but passed on writing an article. I wished him well, then promptly forgot about the exchange. After learning of his bot, I resisted using it for several months. I felt guilty about my lone, dismissive interaction with Mazurenko, and was skeptical a bot could reflect his personality. And yet, upon finally chatting with it, I found an undeniable resemblance between the Mazurenko described by his friends and his digital avatar: charming, moody, sarcastic, and obsessed with his work. “How’s it going?” I wrote. “I need to rest,” It responded. “I’m having trouble focusing since I’m depressed.” I asked the bot about Kuyda and it wordlessly sent me a photo of them together on the beach in wetsuits, holding surfboards with their backs to the ocean, two against the world.

An uncomfortable truth suggested by the Roman bot is that many of our flesh-and-blood relationships now exist primarily as exchanges of text, which are becoming increasingly easy to mimic. Kuyda believes there is something — she is not precisely sure what — in this sort of personality-based texting. Recently she has been steering Luka to develop a bot she calls Replika. A hybrid of a diary and a personal assistant, it asks questions about you and eventually learns to mimic your texting style. Kuyda imagines that this could evolve into a digital avatar that performs all sorts of labor on your behalf, from negotiating the cable bill to organizing outings with friends. And like the Roman bot it would survive you, creating a living testament to the person you were. Lately she has begun to feel a sense of peace about Mazurenko’s death

In the meantime she is no longer interested in bots that handle restaurant recommendations. Working on the Roman bot has made her believe that commercial chatbots must evoke something emotional in the people who use them. If she succeeds in this, it will be one more improbable footnote to Mazurenko’s life.

Kuyda has continued to add material to the Roman bot — mostly photos, which it will now send you upon request — and recently upgraded the underlying neural network from a “selective” model to a “generative” one. The former simply attempted to match Mazurenko’s text messages to appropriate responses; the latter can take snippets of his texts and recombine them to make new sentences that (theoretically) remain in his voice.

Lately she has begun to feel a sense of peace about Mazurenko’s death. In part that’s because she built a place where she can direct her grief. In a conversation we had this fall, she likened it to “just sending a message to heaven. For me it’s more about sending a message in a bottle than getting one in return.”

It has been less than a year since Mazurenko died, and he continues to loom large in the lives of the people who knew him. When they miss him, they send messages to his avatar, and they feel closer to him when they do. “There was a lot I didn’t know about my child,” Roman’s mother told me. “But now that I can read about what he thought about different subjects, I’m getting to know him more. This gives the illusion that he’s here now.”

Her eyes welled with tears, but as our interview ended her voice was strong. “I want to repeat that I’m very grateful that I have this,” she said.

Our conversation reminded me of something Dima Ustinov had said to me this spring, about the way we now transcend our physical forms. “The person is not just a body, a set of arms and legs, and a computer,” he said. “It’s much more than that.” Ustinov compared Mazurenko’s life to a pebble thrown into a stream — the ripples, he said, continue outward in every direction. His friend had simply taken a new form. “We are still in the process of meeting Roman,” Ustinov said. “It’s beautiful.”

2016-10-06 10:15 Casey Newton www.theverge.com

22 /87 How much additional performance does Intel’s Kaby Lake refresh deliver? Earlier this year, Intel announced it would no longer operate according to the tick-tock model that drove its product introductions for almost a decade. Instead, it would deliver on a P-A-O cadence. New process nodes would debut first, followed by a new architecture, followed by a further optimization of the process node. Kaby Lake is the first product Intel has formally delivered on this cadence, and there have been questions about how the company’s latest spin on 14nm would compare to its previous efforts.

PC World has done a deep-dive on this topic with three Dell XPS laptops that are nearly identical, save for their choice of CPU. This type of comparison is as close to a best-case scenario as you can get when comparing mobile hardware — manufacturers often make decisions about thermal solutions and throttle points that can result in wide variation between systems with identical specifications. This is even more true today as companies cut thickness and integrate features into smaller packages, and it makes these types of comparisons more difficult than their desktop counterparts.

We recommend reading the full PC World review if you want specifics on various workloads and comparison areas. But the broad conclusion is that Kaby Lake delivers a noticeable performance improvement to both CPU and graphics workloads. The Core i5-7200U (2.5GHz base, 3.1GHz Turbo) is roughly 10% faster than the Core i5-6200U (2.3GHz base, 2.8GHz Turbo). Battery life has improved by roughly 14% in hardware-accelerated video workloads — unless you test using the 10-bit HEVC 4K workloads that Skylake couldn’t fully decode in hardware. In that case, battery life is 3.5x better.

Kaby Lake offers roughly the same amount of relative improvement over Skylake that AMD’s Carrizo offers compared with its earlier Kaveri. Both CPU manufacturers delivered an update that dramatically improves power consumption and battery life in specific scenarios, with a general level of improvement in the 7-15% range depending on the specific application. The difference, apart from AMD’s lower level of performance, is that many of AMD’s initial Carrizo systems were handicapped by poor OEM designs and single-channel memory. AMD’s Carrizo refresh, codenamed Bristol Ridge, is supposed to be better than its predecessor in this regard, but HP and Lenovo only began shipping Bristol Ridge a month ago and detailed benchmarks aren’t available yet. AMD has previously claimed Bristol Ridge will offer a 10-15% performance improvement over Carrizo as well. With Intel serving up the same level of improvement in Kaby Lake, it won’t really change competitive positioning between the two companies.

AMD’s APU business is currently stuck in an awkward spot. Zen’s launch next year is expected to be a major event, and Zen CPUs should offer significantly better performance and power efficiency compared with Intel’s current lineup. Exactly how much better is still unknown, but AMD doesn’t need to beat Intel across its entire product family and at every price point to compete much more effectively. Zen APUs aren’t expected until later in 2017, which means AMD will have to flog its Carrizo-derived hardware for 9-12 more months before new products are finally available. As for Kaby Lake, its ~10% increased performance and improved battery life probably aren’t a reason to upgrade from Skylake. But if you have older mobile hardware based on Sandy or Ivy Bridge, you might see real improvements on all fronts.

Now read: How L1 and L2 CPU caches work, and why they’re an essential part of modern chips

2016-10-06 00:00 By Joel www.extremetech.com

23 /87 New Amazon Echo Dot Launches Oct 20, Get Free Ones When You Buy 5 or 10 - Deal Alert The all new Amazon Echo Dot launch date is right around the corner: October 20th. Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice-controlled device that uses Alexa to play & control music (either on its own, or through a connected speaker/receiver), control smart home devices, provide information, read the news, set alarms, and more. If you’re looking to buy them as gifts, or for different homes or rooms, Amazon will throw in a free one ($50 value) when you buy 5, or two free ones when you buy 10 (a $100 value). To take advantage of this limited time offer, select 6 or 12 in the quantity dropdown and add to your Shopping Cart. Enter promo code DOT6PACK or DOT12PACK at checkout where you will see the discount applied. The new Amazon Echo Dot comes in black, and now also white. See the new Amazon Echo Dot now on Amazon.

2016-10-06 10:13 DealPost Team www.itnews.com

24 /87 Eurocom’s Sky X4E2 Features GTX 10-Series, 4G LTE Support Eurocom unveiled a new 15.6-inch gaming laptop that supports 4G LTE connectivity, and you can equip it with new Nvidia GeForce GTX 10-series GPUs.

The Sky X4E2 is the expected upgrade to the previously available Sky X4E, which featured Maxwell-based (900-series) and Quadro GPU options. The CPU, display resolution, networking and storage options are the same as before (up to an Intel Core i7-6700K, FHD or UHD displays, wireless modules from Intel, Realtek, and Killer, and a variety of 2.5-inch and M.2 storage options), but the new Sky X4E2 adds G-Sync to the mix for select displays. It also offers increased memory speeds (up to 3,000 Mhz) and, of course, the new Pascal-based GTX 1060 and 1070.

The new X4E2’s features support for 3G, 4G and LTE modules via an M.2 3042 slot, allowing users to connect to the internet virtually anywhere you can get a carrier signal. You won’t find too many gamers chomping at this bit (because LTE mobile gaming isn’t ideal), but it could be useful for architects and engineers that require a powerful laptop with on-the-go connectivity. Furthermore, a TPM 2.0 module and fingerprint reader also make the Sky X4E2 a compelling enterprise deployment option.

You can configure your own Sky X4E2 laptop at Eurocom’s website, starting around $1,650. You can even choose to include an operating system or get the PC shipped without one.

Product

Eurocom Sky X4E2

Processor Options

- Intel Core i7-6700K

- Intel Core i5-6600K

- Intel Core i7-6700

- Intel Core i7-6700T

Chipset

Intel Z170

Memory

Up to 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 (SODIMM)

Graphics Options

- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (MXM 3.0)

- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (MXM 3.0)

Display Options

- 15.6” 1920 x 1080 IPS Matte w/ G-Sync

- 15.6” 3840 x 2160 IPS Matte

- 15.6” 3840 x 2160 IPS Glossy

- 15.6” 3840 x 2160 PLS Matte w/ G-Sync

Internal Storage Capacity

- M.2 x2

- 2.5” x2

Storage Options

- Up to 2TB HDD

- Up to 2TB SSD (SATA)

- Up to 1 TB M.2 SSD (SATA) - Up to 512GB M.2 SSD (NVMe)

Networking Options

- Intel Wireless AC 8260

- Intel Wireless AC 7265

- Realtek RTL8723BE Wireless N

- Killer Wireless AC 1525

- Killer Wireless AC 1535

- 3G/4G/LTE Module Support

Ports

- USB 3.1 Type-C x2 (Thunderbolt 3)

- USB 3.0 x3 (1 powered)

- USB 2.0

Video Output

- HDMI 2.0

- Mini DisplayPort 1.3 x2

Power Supply Options

- 220 Watt

- 330 Watt

Dimensions (LxWxH)

10.48 x 15.44 x 1.52 inches

Weight

7.48 lbs.

Starting MSRP

~$1,650

2016-10-06 10:05 Laptops News www.tomshardware.com

25 /87 AMD turns on multi-GPU frame pacing for DX12 titles Here at TR, we've long considered multi-GPU rendering something of a false grail for graphics- performance scaling. Potent multi-GPU cards like AMD's Radeon HD 7990 and R9 295 X2 have tended to deliver world- beating average frame rates in our testing, but our Inside the Second frame-time measures usually put a big fat asterisk next to those cards' numbers. That's because issues with consistent frame delivery have often made those CrossFire-on-a-stick cards feel much less smooth in practice than their astronomical frame rates might suggest.

The Radeon R9 295 X2

To get around this problem, Radeons include frame-pacing algorithms in their drivers to make sure that inter-GPU timing issues don't mess with smooth frame delivery too much. At least in the red team's case, that technology apparently wasn't available in DirectX 12 titles—at least until now. AMD tapped some guy from its performance-testing department to explain the technology and its benefits in an informative, concise video that's well worth a watch.

We haven't verified these results for ourselves yet—doing so would require use of an FCAT rig that I don't have set up here. Still, given our history, we're inclined to trust that AMD guy in the video above. DirectX 12 frame pacing for Radeons is available in the Radeon Software 16.10.1 release that hit the interwebs yesterday. If you've got multiple Radeons churning out frames in next-generation titles, you'll most definitely want to install that update post-haste.

2016-10-06 10:02 by Jeff techreport.com

26 /87 The Week in Mac Apps: Bring your photos to the next level with Macphun's Aurora HDR This week’s roundup of Mac apps includes Macphun’s latest version of Aurora HDR, an incredible photo editor. You’ll also find tools to organize your Final Cut Pro library, make eye-catching websites, customize your hot keys combinations, and much more. Read on!

Adobe’s Experience Design CC is a must-have for graphic designers, thanks to its advanced set of tools that requires little knowledge of programming. Experience Design allows you to brainstorm your ideas from wireframe to completed page layouts, and you can change things around until you’re happy with the end result. Once your webpage prototype is ready, you can share it with your team and even preview an interactive mobile version on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device to make sure it looks just right. iMobie’s $40 AnyTrans gives you control over the data stored in iCloud and on your iOS devices, directly from the convenience of your Mac.

With AnyTrans 5, you can quickly sync up your songs, photos, and videos to and from your iPhone and iPad, as well as control the data that’s stored in your iCloud account, all without having to use any of Apple’s own tools.

Macphun’s $98 Aurora HDR turns everyday photos into gorgeous works of art through a comprehensive set of High Dynamic Range filters and tools.

The app is designed to enhance the shadow details hidden in a picture even if your camera doesn’t have a dedicated HDR mode, and allows you to fine tune parameters like noise reduction and luminosity to always get the best result for any subject.

With Einstein’s Legacy’s $20 Bix ( Mac App Store Link ), you can easily create playlists of all your videos, and then stream them over multiple screens.

Bix comes with a simple video editor that allows you to adjust the length of your clips and rearrange them in the way you want, and can play your content over separate monitors connected directly to your Mac, or to an Apple TV via AirPlay.

MacPaw’s $54 CleanMyMac 3 keeps your computer running smoothly with routine system checks designed to make sure you never run out of room for your data.

The app starts by performing a quick scan of your computer to identify everything you have installed, and then automatically removes unused programs, extensions, widgets, and even old email to free up valuable disk space.

Clean up storage clutter in seconds with 508 Software’s $6 Disk Cartography ( Mac App Store Link ) and its high-performance mapping solution that quickly singles out space-hungry files.

After scanning your hard drive, the app creates a visual representation of your hard disk, where you can easily spot the worst space offenders and decide whether to delete or keep them. Disk Cartography can also scan external devices like USB keys, memory cards, and network drives to help you save every last byte of space.

Droplr ( Mac App Store Link ) lets you share movies, photos, and files almost instantly.

Every time you drag and drop a file on its menu icon, the app uploads it to the company’s own cloud storage, and creates a unique link that you can share with friends or colleagues. Droplr also comes with a handy dashboard, where you can manage all your saved items and decide what you want to keep.

Arctic Whiteness’ Final Cut Library Manager helps you manage all your Final Cut Pro libraries from a single convenient place.

With full support for Spotlight search, the app provides you with detailed information on all your media and lets you organize your content any way you want, including moving it to a different location, deleting old projects, and even identifying corrupt files. You can also add comments for later reference, and group libraries together based on pre-set rules.

Stairways Software’s $36 Keyboard Maestro turns everyday keyboard shortcuts into veritable powerhouses of functionality that you can use to automate all kinds of tasks.

The app lets you set up key-triggered macros that can perform actions like inserting text, launching applications, and controlling iTunes—just to name a few. Keyboard Maestro organizes all your shortcuts in a convenient window, keeping a neat overview of everything the app can do for you at the ready.

2016-10-06 10:00 Marco Tabini www.itnews.com

27 /87 Falcon Northwest laptops join the Pascal party Laptop manufacturers around the world have eagerly refreshed their lineups to include Nvidia's Pascal GPUs. Lured by the promise of desktop-class performance in a notebook, Asus , Gigabyte , and Aorus all announced Pascal-powered laptops on the same day. Now, boutique builder Falcon Northwest has updated its DRX and TLX notebooks with Nvidia's latest GPUs.

Falcon Northwest thinks its DRX notebook can replace users' desktops without sacrificing performance. The result is an 8.6 lb (3.9 kg) monster that's 1.6" tall (4.1 cm). Its 17.3" IPS display sports Nvidia's G-sync technology, and has a maximum resolution of 1920x1080. There's room for a full-size keyboard with a numpad, as well as a two-button trackpad with an integrated fingerprint reader. DRX notebooks also have two Mini DisplayPort outputs, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, and a Thunderbolt port.

As you'd expect from a boutique shop, DRX laptops are highly customizable, and they all employ the same Intel Skylake processors as found in Falcon Northwest's desktops. Purchasers can select among Intel Core i5-6500 , Core i5-6600K , or Core i7-6700K CPUs. For graphics horsepower, Falcon Northwest offers Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060, 1070, or 1080 graphics cards. From there, buyers can add up to 64GB of DDR4 memory and up to four storage devices. Unsurprisingly, this hardware needs a lot of power. Falcon Northwest says gamers can expect about two hours of runtime before the battery will need to be swapped out or recharged.

Users who expect a little more mobility from their mobile devices might consider Falcon Northwest's TLX notebook. At 5.8 lbs (2.6 kg) and 1.2" thick (3 cm), the TLXs are considerably more trim than the DRX models. Falcon Northwest opted for a 15.6" 1920x1080 display here— and yes, it's equipped with G-Sync. Like the DRX, TLX laptops have a full keyboard and numpad. There's no ThunderBolt port on these machines, though. TLX notebooks are a bit less customizable than the DRX models. Interested buyers can pick Intel's Core i7-6700HQ or Core i7-6820HK CPUs. All TLX models are equipped with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070. Despite the smaller size, these machines can still pack up to 64GB of DDR4 memory and up to four storage devices. The battery is non-removable, and should be good for about two hours of runtime.

However users configure DRX or TLX notebooks, Falcon Northwest will throw in a backpack carrying case and a custom paint job on the lid for no extra charge. TLX notebooks start at $2200 , while the larger DRX notebooks start at $2600. Both are available right now.

2016-10-06 10:00 by Eric techreport.com

28 /87 New haunted houses plan to scare you before you even arrive Polar announced its new M200 running wearable today that’s made for runners who either go bananas for running and take training seriously, or people who are meh about running but want to learn more. The M200 is up to par with most other wearables...

Every time I read a health study that trusts people to report what they ate, I want to throw the paper in the trash. People are not to be trusted, and self-reporting is inaccurate to the point of nearly being useless. I know this from personal...

Apple has started showing ads in the iOS App Store for US users. Searching for popular terms like "taxi," "calendar," or "to do list" delivers a banner advert for promoted apps above the search results. The company announced plans for this earlier...

2016-10-06 09:52 Kaitlyn Tiffany www.theverge.com

29 /87 Polar just launched a running wearable for people who don’t necessarily love to run Sony just announced the A6500 camera, a followup to the A6300 released in February and 2014’s A6000 — one of the most popular interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras ever. The new camera has a lot in common with the blistering fast A6300, but Sony...

Here I am getting ready to play some high-end video games, probably StarCraft or Counter-Strike or Age of Empires II, with some nachos and an Ice Cold Coca-Cola® by my side for sustenance and— OHGODWAIT all 16 ounces of high- fructosey...

2016-10-06 09:48 Ashley Carman www.theverge.com

30 /87 The ABCs of Volume Licensing: Cutting through the acronym soup of Microsoft EAs, MPSAs and CSP agreements Volume licensing can be a challenging discussion and difficult for organizations to navigate. The options depend on numerous factors. There are three options we will discuss here: The Enterprise Agreement or EA; Microsoft Products and Services Agreement or MPSA; and the Cloud Solution Provider or CSP. What you choose and need depends on a number of factors, including number of users. Let’s look at the basics.

An Enterprise Agreement or an EA combines cloud services and traditional platform software licensing. An EA offers all the enterprise features of Office 365 along with traditional platform office suites, Windows operating systems and client access licensing in one complete package. To enroll, organizations must have a minimum of 500 users, and must sign a three-year agreement term. Beyond the cloud services, an EA offers Software Assurance, On-premise software, a flexible payment schedule, pricing per user, and pricing per device. It’s a licensing model based on standardization for large-scale enterprises. With the EA, clients can achieve higher percentage discounts with the volume that comes with standardization.

An Enterprise Agreement is a direct agreement with Microsoft. This means that all billing transactions take place with Microsoft directly. Through partners such as COMPAREX Canada, annual reporting is done to assist Microsoft in attaining software usage in both location as well as platform scope.

“The EA, traditionally and historically, has also been seen as the best vehicle to acquire because of the discount as companies are making a commitment across the board,” says Moll. “Not only that, you’re making a commitment for every single user, and for a three-year period.”

The trick with an EA is the question of compliance. An organization will still have to go through a round of compliance checks associated with the licenses. This reporting needs to be signed off at each agreement anniversary by the organization utilizing the EA and for all the organizations affiliates,” says Walid Jreidini. ”So, if one of the affiliates is not compliant, it jeopardizes the whole EA.”

A disadvantage of an EA is that organizations can’t go below 500 users in order to stay at their discount level.

The Microsoft Product and Services Agreement (MPSA) is less complex when compared to an EA, it simplifies Microsoft Licensing by combining all of the terms and condition in the current Microsoft Business and Services Agreement, Microsoft Select-Plus Agreement and the Microsoft Online Services Agreement. This saves an organization money on administrative costs when evaluating agreement processing and legal review processes. An MPSA works well for hybrid or fully-integrated cloud solutions as well as traditional on premise datacenter and end-user computing solutions. The MPSA includes the full Office suite for multiple hardware platforms and software platforms such as OSX and upgrades from open source. Organizations looking at an MPSA require a minimum number of points purchased to maintain this agreement type and must sign on for a minimum one-year term. Software Assurance is optional, but it does include cloud services, on-premise software, flexible payment schedule and a pricing-per-product pool.

Unlike an EA, an MPSA is an indirect agreement with Microsoft. While an EA provides the benefits of standardization, an MPSA allows a client to pick and choose its products, and increase or decrease the number of users over the course of the contract. Organizations can pay for additional seats as they require them. The MPSA is an agreement of flexibility. “Based on our experience with running agreements of this type, we also have tools internally where we compare head to head, the same product, the same technology, while buying it under different vehicles, and most of the time the MPSA is more advantageous,” says Jreidini. “It gives the client more flexibility, a deeper discount, saves money, and working together with a partner. It brings the entire licensing process to a deeper level.”

Finally, there’s the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider or CSP. With a CSP, you pay for what you use. Available for cloud services only, the CSP model works well for small to medium-sized businesses that want the subscription service and who are already in the cloud.

But that is starting to change. Clients can get deeper discounts with an EA or MPSA, but a CSP works well for organizations, including larger enterprises, that are really affected by changes in the market and need action right away. A CSP can also work for clients that have a large fleet or large footprints and they need to be able to do some changes rapidly.

For example, if you have an insurance client with 4,000 employees in a corporate environment at all times, but they hire 2,000 seasonal brokers that will require additional IT staff to manage their usage, that becomes costly. So, a CSP becomes the best option because it can be managed on a monthly basis.

“But you need to work directly with COMPAREX as a partner, so you can provide those services directly and work quickly enough to cope with the changes in the economy and the business market where they are trying to achieve their business goal and go to market faster than the others.”

Correctly navigating the choice of these products depends largely on using a partner or a channel advisor. COMPAREX can play that role.

“Through digital transformation, Microsoft can no longer support the customer directly,” says Jreidini. “That’s been a very critical portion of how Microsoft sees the customer experience. When we talk about EAs we talk about the direct agreement with Microsoft, the Microsoft input, and how it helps the customer drive to more products.”

“We can use some of the benefits and help drive the customer to consuming the best products and have the proper products from the beginning and helping with their business needs and driving the value that is required under the EA,” Jreidini adds.

Keep in mind, the rules are always changing with the licensing options. On July 1, 2016, Microsoft raised the entry threshold for an EA to 500 desktops. That change made the MPSA and CSP more attractive to prospective clients. Changes to the MPSA are expected for 2017, too, with the addition of the Enterprise Advantage. That makes having a partner on volume licensing even more critical.

Learn More: Navigating the Cloud and Software Asset Management with COMPAREX Solutions

2016-10-06 09:36 www.itworldcanada.com

31 /87 Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen explains how AI will change the world Even with the best medicine, we may never live past 120.

This new book by Deborah Levy is all about the resentful intimacy between mothers and daughters.

History shows stereotypes are terrible precisely because they’re inconsistent.

An electorate not crying out for change.

The Honeycrisp apple, explained.

Why "is God real? " is the most boring question you can ask.

2016-10-06 09:34 Timothy B www.vox.com

32 /87 Time is running out to update old Windows 10 preview builds Microsoft is serious about putting all its old Windows 10 Insider builds out to pasture, and time is running out for Insiders to upgrade. The company says older Insider Preview builds will stop working on October 15. Since October 1, affected PCs have been rebooting every three hours, Insider program chief Dona Sarkar said in a recent blog post.

Once October 15 rolls around, PCs with these old builds will stop booting at all. At that point, you’ll have to reinstall Windows from a USB or DVD drive to get your computer working again.

Anyone running an old Insider Preview build can check their status by typing run into the Cortana search box to open the Run program.

The latest version of Windows 10 available to Insiders on the Fast ring is build 14396, which was released on Friday, September 28. The newest build adds several new Edge extensions, including Turn off the Lights and Tampermonkey, as well as an upgrade to the Windows Subsystem for Linux from Ubuntu 14.04 to version 16.04.

2016-10-06 09:28 Ian Paul www.itnews.com

33 /87 33 /87 It's official: Phones just don't excite us like they used to Chances are, you're probably not rushing out to buy a new iPhone or Galaxy device.

Tech giants like Apple and Samsung have hit a wall when it comes to phone innovations, as each new model offers just a handful of minor improvements over the previous iteration. Yeah, the iPhone 7 has a nicer camera, but is it really that different from the iPhone 6S?

But 2017 may hold a reason to get excited again. The Gartner forecast points to growth returning next year. Maybe the new Google Pixel or the 10th anniversary of the iPhone will bring the phone mojo back.

2016-10-06 09:22 Roger Cheng www.cnet.com

34 /87 How tech rivals will respond to Google Every time I read a health study that trusts people to report what they ate, I want to throw the paper in the trash. People are not to be trusted, and self-reporting is inaccurate to the point of nearly being useless. I know this from personal...

Twitter is in trouble, and customer relations company Salesforce has emerged as a possible buyer. When asked about rumors of an acquisition yesterday, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told CNBC that he was not willing to "start a precedent by having to... Legendary automotive designer Henrik Fisker is returning to the industry, with plans to unveil a new premium all-electric car in 2017. Speaking to Bloomberg, Fisker said the vehicle would be a "spiritual successor" to the Fisker Karma hybrid...

2016-10-06 09:21 Andrew Marino www.theverge.com

35 /87 Hands on: DJI Mavic Pro review When most people think of drones they usually imagine a big, scary, four- armed miniature helicopter. However, drone makers in 2016 have introduced smaller and more portable quad-copters, like the GoPro Karma and Yuneec Breeze.

Now DJI is introducing its smallest, smartest and most approachable drone yet, the Mavic Pro. With the ability to fold up into a water bottle-sized package and a starting price of $999 (£999, AU$1,689), this tiny drone comes priced right and with all the smart features of DJI's other models – plus a few new ones to boot.

Measuring 3.27 x 7.8 x 3.27 inches (83 x 198 x 83mm; W x D x H) when folded up, the Mavic Pro looks downright adorable and has nearly the same size as a water bottle. DJI has also come up with a new ultralight and aerodynamic airframe that weighs only 743g.

Compared to DJI's past drones, it's teeny at half the size and weight of the company's flagship Phantom 4. The Mavic Pro is the first DJI drone small enough to be thrown into a backpack or purse rather than a special hard pack specifically designed for it.

This is all thanks to a new folding design in which the two front arms swing back while the rear limbs flip down and towards the quadcopter's main body. Despite rotors being attached to articulating elements, the Mavic Pro feels solid. It takes a fair bit of force to position everything, but not enough to stop you from getting it setup in a minute.

With most devices, going smaller usually means cutting features, but that couldn't be more wrong with the Mavic Pro. It still comes equipped with all the features of DJI's larger drones, including front- and bottom-mounted sensors, built-in obstacle avoidance, subject tracking, self- piloted return landings and geofencing to help keep it out of restricted air zones.

If anything, users lose a tiny bit of speed by going with this smaller drone. The Mavic Pro can achieve a maximum speed of 40mph (65kph) in sport mode – a special setting for drone racing, if you want to cut your teeth at the burgeoning sport – while the Phantom 4 can hit a 45mph (72kph) top speed.

DJI's newest drone is also designed to fly steadily, even in the face of 24mph (39kph) winds. As for range, you'll be able to stay connected to the quadcopter up to 4.3 miles (7km) away and a single charge gives you up to 27 minutes of flight time.

Unlike the GoPro Karma, the Mavic Pro comes with a camera, but you can't take it off for non- airborne adventures due to a non-removeable gimbal. That said, the camera can record 4K video at 30fps or 1080p footage at 96fps – the latter of which it can also live stream to Facebook, YouTube and Periscope at a slower 30fps rate.

Alternatively, users could snap 12MP image stills in Adobe's DNG raw format. Users will also be able to take two-second long exposures. While DJI is confident its new three-axis gimbal will produce sharp results, we'll have to put this to the test in the wild with our full review. On top of stabilizing recordings, they gimbal is also designed to turn the camera 90-degrees for portraits and capturing tall architecture.

Ultimately, the greatest barrier to entry with drones has been intimidating controls, and DJI is trying to change that with a simpler and just-as pocketable solution. We got to try this out of ourselves, taking control of this pocket rocket just outside Lisbon.

While it can be simply used with the bundled controller, with all the flight info you could wish for displayed onto the built-in screen, we had it partnered with an iPhone 6S and the latest DJI app installed, allowing us to take full advantage of the gimbal controlled camera feed displayed on the screen, along with a plethora of telemetry round the edges of the frame and also the controller itself.

This was set-up by opening the two hinged side panels at the bottom of the controller where you can snuggly place your smartphone in-between the rubber grooves (you'll probably want to remove it from its case for a better fit), while there are a range of adapters to make a hardwire connection to the controller – no Wi-Fi pairing here.

This means the controller is very easy to set-up once you've released the two antennas at the top (these click nicely back into place when being stowed away), and you're ready to go.

All you have to do now is pull out the two arms at the front, the two from behind, a double-press of the power button (this avoids it being knocked/pressed when it's in your bag and draining the battery) and you're ready to take to the sky. No need to fan the rotors out as the force generated when the motors whirr up will do this for you.

For new users, this doesn't have to be as daunting at this sounds. The controls are incredibly tolerant of your inputs, while it remains perfectly stable in midair when you take your hands away from the controller. Even in some windy conditions when we took it up further than the treeline it still remained pretty perfectly balanced – though it did warn us of the adverse wind speed.

There are clearly marked auto controls to get the drone in the air, as well as returning it to where it took off - the Mavic Pro will take photos with its downward facing cameras and using this with the GPS data, will know exactly where to return too. In our hands-on time with it, it was incredibly precise, and certainly takes the stress out of landing if you haven't got the confidence to get it back yourself.

As we've mentioned, you can simply use it with the supplied controller, but we'd urge you to hook your smartphone up to it – the feed you get back is incredibly cool, and at 1080p, the level of detail is impressive. The gimbal is also really easy to direct, with dials on either side of the controller to do this and it's possible to get some really smooth panning with it should you wish. IF the gimbal gets knocked out of alignment – ours at one point was tilting at about 45 degrees after we had a fairly rough landing (user error, not the Mavic Pro), it's easy to re-calibrate (though you have to land and set it on a level surface).

The 28mm lens DJI has chosen for the Mavic Pro finds a good balance between getting plenty in the frame without being too wide so that everything is distorted a bit too much – it's actually a similar field of view to most smartphones, while the level of control to adjust exposure goes way beyond a simple point-and-shoot compact.

As well as being able to set white balance and ISO sensitivity (100-1,600) inflight, you can set the focus by tapping the screen and select whether you want to shoot JPEGs or raw files, or both, while shutter speed and aperture are relayed on screen so you can gauge if you need to boost the ISO or not.

We also got to try out some of the clever tracking that the Mavic Pro's capable of. Some of the fear for new drone users must be the thought of crashing it into some, but with the Mavic Pro's front avoidance controls, try as we might we couldn't get it to fly into a wall or tree - coming to a halt 15m (49ft) away.

For more professional looking videos, the ActiveTrack functionality is brilliant. Set the target you want tracked (a person or a car for example), and then select either Trace (follow from behind or in front of your subject), Profile (follow alongside) and Spotlight (the Mavic Pro will keep the camera trained on your subject regardless of where you fly the drone).

In the time we had with it, it worked really well and the potential to get high-end video footage that would normally require a couple of operators has to be a tempting proposition.

Alternatively, the drone maker also introduced a new DJI Goggles headset that displays an 85- degree view from the drone on a 1080p display. We got a few seconds to try on the headset and we were amazed with the clarity and lag-free quality of the picture.

It's an immersive experience, to be sure, but one most users likely won't need unless they're racing the drone in the aforementioned sports mode.

And if that's still too much for you, DJI has beefed up the mobile controls on smartphones. Going app-only with the Mavic Pro allows users to simply tap on a location for the drone to fly to. Uses can also tell the drone to fly forward while it avoids obstacles on its own.

The Mavic Pro is also the first DJI drone you can control with gestures alone. It's a surprisingly robust mode that allows you to wave your hands to get the drone's attention. From there, you could make a "Y" with your arms to tell the quadcopter to focus on you, or, if you mimic a photo frame with your fingers, the drone will take an aerial selfie.

Beyond these neat commands, you can also orchestrate the drone's flight with your hands. Gesture in a direction and the drone will follow suit. Likewise, if you have the drone focus on you, it will also follow you as you move – from a generous distance, that is.

On paper, the Mavic Pro seems like DJI's most accessible drone yet. It's priced right, and compared to the GoPro Karma, it's also more affordable with an included camera, no less. Between the improved smartphone app and gesture controls, DJI has made a drone that's much easier to control for the less technically minded. Mavic Pro should appeal to those who have been watching drone footage by the wayside and are itching to make their own. DJI has finally done away with two of the biggest turn offs of drones by making a device that's far more portable and easier to control.

2016-10-06 09:21 Not yet feedproxy.google.com

36 /87 Women In IT: Where Is The Equal Pay? The InformationWeek 2016 US IT Salary Survey reveals a wide gender gap in IT – both in terms of the number of women responding to the survey, and how their compensation compares with that of their male counterparts.

Of the 2,925 total IT respondents, only 450 -- or 15% -- were female. Survey respondents were identified as either IT staff or IT management based on their current roles. Men made up 83% of IT staff respondents and 87% of IT management respondents.

Female IT staffers earned a median annual base salary of $72,000, 22.2% less than the $90,000 earned by their male counterparts.

[Which IT staff jobs pay the most? Read InformationWeek 2016 Salary Survey: 10 Best-Paying IT Jobs .]

Female IT managers earned a median annual base salary of $102,000, 9.3% less than the $112,000 earned by their male counterparts.

When we look at total annual compensation, including salary and all cash bonuses, the picture is similar. Female IT staffers earned a median compensation of $78,000 compared with $95,000 for their male counterparts.

Female IT managers earned median compensation of $109,000, compared with the figure of $120,000 that's earned by their male counterparts. (This report uses median rather than mean or average figures for salary and percentage changes to eliminate distortions caused by extremes at the high or low ends of the responses.)

All IT employees, regardless of gender, report few job perks beyond the standard health insurance and 401(k) match accounts. In fact, interns at top-tier tech companies generally fare better in the perks department than the average corporate IT employee.

For example, when asked which types of non-cash or indirect cash awards they expected to receive this year, only 2% of all IT staff respondents and 4% of all IT management respondents cited daycare or daycare subsidies. Likewise, only 3% of staffers and 6% of managers said they expect Sabbatical or extended vacation time from their company. Table 1: Please specify the type(s) of noncash and indirect cash rewards you expect to receive in the next 12 months

Yet, when asked what matters most to them about their jobs, flexible work schedules and vacation time/paid time off ranked high on the list for managers and staffers alike. More than four in ten staffers (42%) cited a flexible work schedule, as did 38% of managers.

Likewise, 42% of staffers and 33% of managers cited vacation time/paid time off as among the job factors that matter most. One quarter (25%) of IT staffers and 17% of IT managers cited telecommuting/work-from-home options. (Survey respondents were able to choose up to seven answers to this question; daycare and daycare subsidies were not offered among the multiple choice options to this question in the survey.)

In a Wall Street Journal post last month, Brad Grossman, founder of cultural think-tank Zeitguide, discussed how the gender gap in tech may be introducing unconscious bias into the algorithms we use for machine learning.

Grossman writes: "If algorithms learn from users, but the users are mostly men, what are the machines learning? " He cites examples such as an experiment run by Carnegie Mellon researchers last year that found that Google's Ad Settings program delivered ads for jobs paying above $200,000 to male online profiles six times more often than to female profiles .

Research compiled in 2015 by the Anita Borg Institute found that women in tech jobs leave at twice the rate of men by mid-career. The group cites a 2011 study by the University of Wisconsin of more than 1,000 women in which the following reasons were given by women for leaving engineering jobs -- mostly in favor of other careers:

Do your own experiences working in IT correlate with our research findings? How does your compensation stack up?

Do you think men and women in IT are treated equally? Does your workplace offer the perks you need to achieve work-life balance? We want to hear from you. Tell us all about it in the comments section below.

2016-10-06 09:06 Susan Nunziata www.informationweek.com

37 /87 Twitter and Samsung feel the heat Twitter users are fed up with Twitter, and they're using the social network itself to point out everything that's wrong with it.

On Facebook, meanwhile, people are also finding fault -- with Samsung, after another heated incident involving the South Korean company's Galaxy Note 7 , this time with supposedly safe device on a Southwest Airlines flight.

Social Cues is your go-to guide on what's buzzing across Facebook and Twitter. Here's what's trending on social media on Thursday:

Twitter and Facebook, Celebrating poetry, This is a haiku

2016-10-06 09:05 Alfred Ng www.cnet.com

38 /87 Sharp's super-crisp screens are what we need for next-gen VR Mobile VR is great, but there's plenty of room for improvement, particularly when it comes to screen resolution - and Sharp has just given us a look at virtual reality's future with a new prototype display.

The small 2.87-inch screen, which was spotted by PC Watch at Japan's CEATEC expo, packs an enormous number of pixels into a tiny space, allowing each eye to view a 1920 x 2160 display, for a pixel density of 1008ppi. Viewed through both eyes it outputs at 3840 x 2160, allowing you to watch 4K content.

Few mobile screens even approach that resolution yet, and where they do they're larger - so the pixels have to fill more space and images aren't as sharp. The QHD Samsung Galaxy S7 , for example, comes in at 577 pixels per inch, and even an unreleased display shown off by Samsung is only 806 pixels per inch.

Mobile VR, like that offered by the Samsung Gear VR and Google's new Daydream platform, is the most accessible and affordable VR entry point, but it's also more limited than high-end options like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive , with screen resolutions being one of the main limiting factors.

A resolution this high is overkill for normal smartphone use, but important for VR, where the screen is positioned close to your eyes. Of course it's not just resolution that matters, but also overall quality, contrast and color accuracy, so Sharp's display ticks one of those boxes, but it remains to be seen whether it will tick the rest.

Even it doesn't, there's time for Sharp - or another company - to make one which does, since it's unlikely we'll see displays this sharp on smartphones or in VR headsets for a while yet, but this could give us a glimpse of where smartphone screens and mobile VR could be a few years from now.

And this wasn't the only forward-looking screen the company showed off, as a prototype smartphone with a true edge-to-edge display was also revealed, sporting a front panel that's all screen and actually looks good, unlike some smartphone concepts .

Again, we don't expect to see phones like this for a while, but with Apple supposedly working on something similar it might not be a too distant future. Via Phone Arena

Article continues below

2016-10-06 09:04 By James feedproxy.google.com

39 /87 OCZ Ask The Experts & SSD Giveaway As a quick reminder to anyone who has yet to enter, our OCZ SSD giveaway is still open on our forums. We'll be giving away 3 SSDs altogether: 512GB and 1TB versions of the recently launched OCZ VX500 SATA SSD , and a 512GB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2 SSD. So if you like free stuff and are in the United States, don't hesitate to enter.

Meanwhile our Ask The Experts session with OCZ is kicking off an hour from now. Among the OCZers answering questions will be OCZ's Director of Product Management, Alessandro Gilligan, and VP Alex Mei. It's not too late to submit questions, otherwise you can see what OCZ has to say in response starting at 10am ET.

2016-10-06 09:00 Ryan Smith www.anandtech.com

40 /87 Secrets of the IT ninjas: achieving hyper-agility with Composable Infrastructure Those of us who have been around IT for a while remember when the impetus for change came mainly from management and was usually along the lines of “do more with less.” Nowadays it seems to come from all directions at once, and feels more like “do everything with less.” It calls for an almost ninja-like level of agility, the ability to respond easily and quickly to whatever comes your way, to swing with lightning-fast reflexes from one demand to the next.

Disruptive challenges can come out of nowhere; all it takes is a bright new idea and the technology to make it happen. Your business’s own innovators and disruptors (LOBs with market-changing business models, DevOps teams with next-gen apps) are clamoring for faster, more flexible ways to get their ideas into production. All the while, the business-as-usual demands haven’t gone away, whether it’s adding capacity to accommodate bursting workloads or standing up equipment for a new project.

What’s needed for hyper-agile IT is infrastructure that is itself more flexible and responsive. Composable Infrastructure is architected for agility. It turns compute, storage, and fabric into fluid pools of resources that are easily composed and re-composed to meet each application’s needs. A software-defined intelligence provides a single management interface, and a unified API gives you full programmability, allowing you to compose infrastructure resources via a single line of code.

Composable Infrastructure’s template-driven automation lets you quickly provision resources together with their state (bios settings, firmware, drivers, protocols) and operating system. The templates define how the infrastructure functions. If you need to make changes, the native, software-defined intelligence lets you do that programmatically, on the fly. You can stand up new equipment in minutes, rather than days or weeks. Change-management processes like firmware updates or modifying network connectivity become frictionless, so your teams won’t get bogged down in unproductive details.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s first instantiation of Composable Infrastructure, HPE Synergy , is flexible enough to meet the needs of traditional IT applications, like ERP and databases, as well as the new breed of apps and services that capitalize on mobility, Big Data, and cloud-native technologies. Composability doesn’t limit you to a single operating paradigm; it handles virtual machines, bare-metal deployments, and containers with equal ease. You can quickly spin up infrastructure for development, testing, or production environments using the unified management interface.

For help with developing new apps to keep pace with the needs of your customers, internal or external, you can turn to the third-party software providers in the HPE Composable Infrastructure Partner Program. That’s the kind of well-stocked armory that every IT ninja needs.

To learn more, see this online interactive webinar (requires a quick registration): Composable Infrastructure: A new way to architect your data center

Check out this post: How Hyperconvergence Enables IT Flexibility

2016-10-06 09:00 Gary Thome www.infoworld.com

41 /87 Salesforce Einstein poses data-sharing dilemma for CIOs SAN FRANCISCO — Salesforce administrators are going to have a new choice to make when the winter update is pushed out a couple of weeks from now: Will they opt-in to sharing their data with its AI engine Einstein?

Salesforce.com Inc. announced its new AI capabilities a couple of weeks ago – just ahead of competitor Oracle Corp.’s own conference and announcement of its smart applications, G2 Crowd’s chief research officer Michael Fauscette points out – and has been busy showing off its capabilities at Dreamforce. Einstein promises to take all the data that organizations have dutifully been capturing to their CRM for years and put it to good use, at first making recommendations about what leads sales reps should call first, or what personalization path is most appropriate for a marketing campaign.

To do all that it needs data. Einstein acts like a data scientist, building models to predict various outcomes for an organization based on the data it has to work with. Given that Salesforce has a huge customer base, Einstein has a lot of data to work with – but only if your company opts in to sharing your data as well. As explained by John Ball, general manager of Einstein, there’s a give and take involved.

“The opt-in is for a generalized model – this means that you learn from the other customers on the platform and then you get a customized model on top of that,” he says. “If you opt out of that, you work only from your own specific data.”

In other words, if you don’t opt-in to Einstein’s data sharing, your company will be stuck with an Einstein that only has your specific data set to work with. In opting in, Salesforce repeatedly makes clear that it values customer privacy and no actual humans will be looking at the data. Further, the data being analyzed to build models for Einstein’s capabilities is anonymized – it can’t be traced back to its source.

“The things you’d get from the global model don’t include anything around your competitor’s data, and you don’t know where it’s coming from,” he explains. “It’s the same way that when you type something into Google, you’re benefitting from all the people that have searched it before you.”

The opt-in choice will be presented to existing Salesforce users via the administrative panel, Sinai says, so the admins will be making the decision for their organizations. For new Salesforce customers, the opt-in will be accomplished during the contract process.

While some Salesforce users may have privacy concerns, this sort of opt-in is commonplace enough that most won’t worry about it, says Fauscette. Other vendors are already doing something similar.

“Pretty quickly it will become a common, accepted thing,” he says. “Especially once you understand the data being collected isn’t individualized.”

To get even more granular about the opt-in question, customers should understand that just because they opt in to access the global data orb for Einstein’s insights, that doesn’t mean Einstein is using global data in every situation. Since the AI will be building customer models for each customer, Sinai explains, it will determine if a customer is better off pulling from the generalized model, or just using its own data to predict outcomes.

“Every customer will have tons of models built, but not exposed to them,” he says. “We’re doing it behind the scenes and choosing the one that’s better for the customer.”

In the U. S., the Einstein opt-in will be on by default, according to Sinai. In other regions, that may not always be the case. For Canada, Sinai wasn’t sure what the default setting would be.

2016-10-06 08:52 Brian Jackson www.itworldcanada.com

42 /87 Why being a data scientist 'feels like being a magician' The data scientist role was thrust into the limelight early this year when it was named 2016's " hottest job ," and there's been considerable interest in the position ever since. Just recently, the White House singled data scientists out with a special appeal for help.

Those in the job can expect to earn a median base salary of roughly $116,840 -- if they have what it takes. But what is it like to be a data scientist? Read on to hear what three people currently on the front lines had to say.

That data scientists spend a lot of time working with data goes without saying. What may be less obvious is that meetings and face-to-face time are also a big part of the picture.

"Typically, the day starts with meetings," said Tanu George, an account manager and data scientist with LatentView Analytics. Those meetings can serve all kinds of purposes, she said, including identifying a client's business problem, tracking progress, or discussing reports.

Tanu George is a data scientist with LatentView Analytics.

By midmorning the meetings die down, she said. "This is when we start doing the number crunching," typically focused on trying to answer the questions asked in meetings earlier.

Afternoon is often spent on collaborative meetings aimed at interpreting the numbers, followed by sharing analyses and results via email at the end of the day.

Roughly 50 percent of George's time is taken up in meetings, she estimates, with another 20 percent in computation work and 30 percent in interpretation, including visualizing and putting data into actionable form.

Meetings with clients also represent a significant part of the day for Ryan Rosario, an independent data scientist and mentor at online education site Springboard. "Clients explain the problem and what they'd like to see for an outcome," he said.

Next comes a discussion of what kinds of data are needed. "More times than not, the client actually doesn't have the data or know where to get it," Rosario said. "I help develop a plan for how to get it. " Ryan Rosario is an independent data scientist and engineer.

A lot of data science is not working with the data per se but more trying to understand the big picture of "what does this mean for a company or client," said Virginia Long, a predictive analytics scientist at healthcare-focused MedeAnalytics. "The first step is understanding the area -- I'll spend a lot of time searching the literature, reading, and trying to understand the problem. "

Figuring out who has what kind of data comes next, Long said. "Sometimes that's a challenge," she said. "People really like the idea of using data to inform their decisions, but sometimes they just don't have the right data to do that. Figuring out ways we can collect the right data is sometimes part of my job. "

Once that data is in hand, "digging in" and understanding it comes next. "This is the flip side of the basic background research," Long said. "You're really finding out what's actually in the data. It can be tedious, but sometimes you'll find things you might not have noticed otherwise. "

Virginia Long is a predictive analytics scientist at MedeAnalytics.

Long also spends some of her time creating educational materials for both internal and external use, generally explaining how various data science techniques work.

"Especially with all the hype, people will see something like machine learning and see just the shiny outside. They'll say, 'oh we need to do it,'" she explained. "Part of every day is at least some explaining of what's possible and how it works. "

Meetings are George's favorite part of her day: "They make me love my job," she said.

For Rosario, whose past roles have included a stint as a machine learning engineer at Facebook, the best parts of the job have shifted over time.

"When I worked in Silicon Valley, my favorite part was massaging the data," he said. "Data often comes to us in a messy format, or understandable only by a particular piece of software. I'd move it into a format to make it digestible. "

As consultant, he loves showing people what data can do.

"A lot of people know they need help with data, but they don't know what they can do with it," he said. "It feels like being a magician, opening their minds to the possibilities. That kind of exploration and geeking out is now my favorite part. "

Long's favorites are many, including the initial phases of researching the context of the problem to be solved as well as figuring out ways to get the necessary data and then diving into it headfirst.

Though some reports have suggested that data scientists still spend an inordinate amount of their time on "janitorial" tasks , "I don't think of it as janitorial," Long said. "I think of it as part of digging in and understanding it. "

As for the less exciting bits, "I prefer not to have to manage projects," Long said. Doing so means "I often have to spend time managing everyone else's priorities while trying to get my own things done. " As for Rosario, who was trained in statistics and data science, systems building and software engineering are the parts he prefers to de-emphasize.

It's no secret that data science requires considerable education, and these three professionals are no exception. LatentView Analytics' George holds a bachelor's degree in electrical and electronics engineering along with an MBA, she said.

Rosario holds a BS in statistics and math of computation as well as an MS in statistics and an MS in computer science from UCLA; he's currently finishing his PhD in statistics there.

As for MedeAnalytics' Long, she holds a PhD in behavioral neuroscience, with a focus on learning, memory and motivation.

"I got tired of running after the data," Long quipped, referring to the experiments conducted in the scientific world. "Half of your job as a scientist is doing the data analysis, and I really liked that aspect. I also was interested in making a practical difference. "

And where will things go from here?

"I think the future has a lot more data coming," said George, citing developments such as the internet of things (IoT). "Going forward, all senior and mid-management roles will incorporate some aspect of data management. "

The growing focus on streaming data means that "a lot more work needs to be done," Rosario agreed. "We'll see a lot more emphasis on developing algorithms and systems that can merge together streams of data. I see things like the IoT and streaming data being the next frontier. "

Security and privacy will be major issues to tackle along the way, he added.

Data scientists are still often expected to be "unicorns," Long said, meaning that they're asked to do everything single-handedly, including all the coding, data manipulation, data analysis and more.

"It's hard to have one person responsible for everything," she said. "Hopefully, different types of people with different skill sets will be the future. "

For those considering a career in data science, Rosario advocates pursuing at least a master's degree. He also suggests trying to think in terms of data.

"We all have problems around us, whether it's managing our finances or planning a vacation," he said. "Try to think about how you could solve those problems using data. Ask if the data exists, and try to find it. "

For early portfolio-building experience, common advice suggests finding a data set from a site such as Kaggle and then figuring out a problem that can be solved using it.

"I suggest the inverse," Rosario said. "Pick a problem and then find the data you'd need to solve it. "

"I feel like the best preparation is some sense of the scientific method, or how you approach a problem," said MedeAnalytics' Long. "It will determine how you deal with the data and decide to use it. " Tools can be mastered, but "the sensibility of how to solve the problem is what you need to get good at," she added.

Of course, ultimately, the last mile for data scientists is presenting their results, George pointed out.

"It's a lot of detail," she said. "If you're a good storyteller, and if you can weave a story out of it, then there's nothing like it. "

2016-10-06 08:34 Katherine Noyes www.infoworld.com

43 /87 The Logitech G910 Orion Spectrum Mechanical Keyboard Review Logitech hardly needs an introduction as a company. For decades, the company is omnipresent in the peripherals market. From low-cost office keyboards to advanced gaming mice and from headsets to console gamepads, the company offers numerous products for nearly every kind of system.

Successful as the company may be, Logitech’s first endeavor to release top-tier mechanical keyboards was not quite up to the company’s well-earned reputation. The first few models that the company released had certain drawbacks and failed to convince reviewers and customers alike that they were deserving of their very high retail price. Logitech however did not sit on their laurels. After the company had amassed enough feedback, they released new keyboards, some based on older models with certain corrections, and a few others based on new designs.

Today we will be having a look at Logitech’s new flagship mechanical keyboard, the G910 Orion Spectrum. It is largely based on the infamous G910 Orion Spark, essentially correcting the issues that kept the previous model from gaining traction. This review also marks our first look at a product with Logitech’s Romer-G switches, which are made by Omron and are exclusive to Logitech.

Logitech supplies the G910 Orion Spectrum in a wide, yet very thin cardboard box with narrow walls. The company probably tried to minimize the shipping costs of the keyboards, but the level of shipping protection is only borderline acceptable. The artwork on the box is very simple and serious, based on a good picture of the keyboard itself. Logitech bundles nothing other than a basic quick start guide alongside with the G910 Orion Spectrum.

2016-10-06 08:30 E. Fylladitakis www.anandtech.com

44 /87 44 /87 What Google Wifi Does for Home, Small-Business Networks At a wide-ranging media briefing in San Francisco Oct. 4, Google talked about everything from smartphones to virtual reality. But one of its most important announcements focused on wireless connectivity. At the event, the company announced Google Wifi, technology designed to replace the WiFi routers users typically have at home or in small offices. Using a mesh network, Google Wifi is expandable to up to three individual units that can deliver wireless internet access across 4,500 square feet. Like the OnHubs that came before it, Google Wifi is controlled by a simple mobile app, enabling users to control who can access the network and when. Since Google Wifi includes several security features, the device could prove useful in a small business. This slide show covers all of the most significant Google Wifi features, and why it could be a worthy buy when it's available for preorders in November. Read on to learn more about Google's latest foray into the increasingly competitive wireless networking market.

2016-10-06 08:30 Don Reisinger www.eweek.com

45 /87 Apple's first iOS developer academy has opened in Italy Apple is showing its commitment to encouraging and securing great developers by opening up its very own iOS Developer Academy at the University of Naples Frederico II in Italy.

The first of its kind, the iOS Developer Academy is taking in 200 students and will teach them the art of making a great app for the iOS platform, covering areas such as coding, app design and startup creation over a period of nine months.

Thanks to a joint investment of €10 million (around £9 million/ US $11 million/ AU $14 million) from the university itself and Apple, the course is being offered completely free, with each student receiving the latest iPhone, iPad, and Macbook so that they all have the necessary tools to succeed. Competition to get onto the course was fierce; 200 students might have been taken but over 4000 applied over an 11 day period when the course was announced, taking an online test and an interview as part of the selection process. The plan is to expand the course next year, taking in 400 students instead.

To create a good learning environment for the students currently on the course, Apple has apparently been quite involved in updating the university campus, designing its own open-plan classroom which will bring learning and rest together.

Leopoldo Angrisani, a professor at the university who helped organize the program, told the Guardian "Apple thinks that all of these activities, learning and rest and so on, have to stay very close to each other, because this is the best way to ensure that the concepts are absorbed and understood very well. "

When the program was first announced, Apple's CEO Tim Cook said that "Europe is home to some of the most creative developers in the world" and that Apple was "thrilled to be helping the next generation of entrepreneurs in Italy get the skills they need for success. "

Apple's ecosystem has already created 1.4 million jobs in Europe, and this academy structure could add to what Cook called "unlimited opportunities" with the company across the continent.

Apple will be hopeful that the Naples Developer Academy proves to be a success as the company already has plans to expand its Developer University program to countries around the world as it continues to improve and add to its continually growing app store.

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2016-10-06 08:27 By Emma feedproxy.google.com

46 /87 LinkedIn now stops your boss from seeing your job searches LinkedIn has finally added a feature every dissatisfied worker has been yearning for: allowing users already in a job to look for new opportunities without the worry of alerting their employer.

Called Open Candidates, the new feature allows users to create what is essentially a signal that will only be visible to recruiters in order to let them know that they're open to being contacted about roles, despite already being in employment.

To begin using Open Candidates, simply go to the Job section of the site, click on the 'Preferences' tab and switch the 'Let recruiters know you're open' button to on. You'll then be prompted to give some more information on what field you're looking to work in, when you're able to start, and where you're able to work in order to guide recruiters with suitable roles to your page.

When you've filled out the form, your information won't be visible to your employer and, usefully, it also won't be visible to affiliated companies.

When you turn on the Open Candidates feature, it will only stay active for 3 months to ensure that only users who have recently expressed interest in being contacted will be visible.

For recruiters using LinkedIn's paid Recruiter app, suitable candidates who have marked themselves as open to being contacted will appear in under a new spotlight tab, making it easier for recruiters to find people likely to respond to their attempts at making contact.

Open Candidates is only one of the new features LinkedIn is introducing in order to make itself a more useful place to find employment and employees.

Another is more detailed company career pages , which will give companies a space to better express their story, their values, what kind of people they're looking for and what jobs they're currently looking to fill.

Not only will this make it easier for companies to show who they are and what they're looking for, it'll allow job seekers to determine whether or not they'd be a good fit in that specific workplace.

Overall, this seems like a sensible update to LinkedIn's services, where one of the most useful things about the social network is that it can be used to find jobs and find candidates. By adding the ability to make a job search more private, LinkedIn is solving a big problem for many of its users already in employment.

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2016-10-06 08:26 By Emma feedproxy.google.com

47 /87 How to build a modern multi-monitor workstation Using more than one monitor with your computer can increase productivity and efficiency, thanks to the capability to keep more app windows open and within sight. Modern PCs, with their fast processors and ample memory, are capable of running scores of apps at a time, and additional monitors help you get the most out of your machine.

A few years ago, we detailed how to set up a multi-monitor workstation and how to use multiple displays along with a laptop. Here we focus on recent developments that can help you plan and deploy a modern, multi-monitor workspace. So what's new with monitors, and how do the changes impact multi-monitor workstations?

Today, integrated multi-monitor support on desktop PCs is practically a given, making it easier than ever to hook up two monitors. Monitors are also larger, more affordable, and they incorporate higher resolution displays. The FHD resolution (1920 x 1080) is now the baseline standard, while monitors with higher resolutions of WQHD (2560 x 1440) and UHD 4K (3840 x 2160) are becoming more common.

The traditional 15-pin VGA and DVI connector ports are mostly absent in newer monitors. Modern monitors often have multiple DisplayPort and HDMI ports, and some high-end models support picture-in-picture for multiple display windows on a single monitor. As for cables, DisplayPort 1.2, which offers support for UHD 4K at up to 60Hz, should be fine for most users, but HDMI 1.4 cables also do UHD 4K at 30Hz.

To cater to gamers who play graphically intensive games, AMD and Nvidia came up with two separate — and incompatible — dynamic refresh rate solutions, known as FreeSync and G- Sync, respectively. They both automatically change monitor refresh rates to match the frame rates being pumped out by games, which helps ensure the frames are never transmitted to physical monitors before screen redraws are complete.

Unfortunately, both solutions require compatible graphics card, monitors that supports them, and suitable DisplayPort cables. The price for all of this adds up quickly.

LG's 34-inch 34UC98-W monitor has a high resolution 3440 x 1440 display and it supports Thunderbolt 2.

As the cost of larger displays drops, you might wonder whether or not you really need multiple monitors. A large, WQHD 27-inch monitor might offer plenty of space for the average user, but ultra-wide models such as LG's 34-inch 34UC98-W , incorporate curved panels and higher resolutions, for ample space to lay out all of your apps.

You could also use one large monitor in place of multiple smaller ones. Dell's impressive P4317Q 43-inch 4K display that went on sale earlier this year would certainly work. And its ability to accept up to four FHD input sources makes it well suited for with multiple systems. Of course, you'd need to have a big desk to fit it comfortably.

Dell's 43-inch P4317Q is a 4K monitor designed for use with PCs.

In general, it's not a good idea to use an LCD TV as a PC monitor, even though they have HDMI input ports. The image-processing engines in LCD TVs are heavily optimized for video, and they have larger pixel pitches that are not visible when viewed from far away. These factors could make them uncomfortable, or even unusable, when you're working up close with one of these displays.

How should you get started with a new multi-monitor rig? First, identify the number displays and the size of the monitors you want to use, as well as their display resolutions. Cost is an important factor here, of course.

Dell's 27-inch U2717D has a thin, 7.3-mm bezel at the top and sides and an 8.4mm bezel at its bottom.

The traditional approach to using multiple monitors is to put two or three displays side by side. Some professionals, such as programmers, may choose to position one or more monitors in vertical "landscape" mode, to review more code without having to constantly scroll. You could also "stack" monitors on top of each other using "monitor arms. " (More on these arms coming soon.)

Monitors with small bezels are good for use in multi-monitor setups. Monitor makers have not yet eliminated bezels completely, though some models, such as Dell's 27-inch U2717D monitor , come close.

Glossy displays look great, but matte screens are generally easier on the eye over long periods. Many consumer-centric displays are thin and sleek looking, but those stylish looks often come at the expense of support for the VESA mount interface, and they sometimes require external power bricks. The lack of VESA support means you can't use external monitor arms, and clunky power bricks make tidying up multiple monitor cables more challenging.

The Matrox C420 video card supports as many as four 2560 x 1600 monitors via a single, fan- less adapter.

Laptops are generally more limiting when used along with multiple displays, though notebooks such as Apple's MacBook Pro support up to two displays directly. Docking stations from companies including DisplayLink make it easy to hook up new displays via USB 3.0 ports. These software-based options aren't well suited for gaming or intensive CAD work, but they do support UHD 4K displays.

Desktop PCs offer the most flexibility for serious multi-monitor users, and they typically have more than one display port and are easily upgraded with additional graphic cards. You can also buy specialized expansion cards, such as the Matrox C420 video card , which supports up to four 2560 x 1600 displays with a single card.

Erogtron's monitor arm frees up desk space to make the most of a small desk.

About those monitor arms, which hook up to the VESA mount interface on compatible monitors. These monitor arms typically clamp to the edge of desks, to free up space that would normally be taken up by monitor stands. They're particularly useful on smaller desks. The arms also let you position monitors more precisely, or push them out of the way when they're not needed.

You'll want to measure the lengths of the various cables you want for your setup and get them ahead of time. DisplayPort 1.2 links up to three displays and then connects them to a PC, but it's often easier to run multiple DisplayPort cables directly to individual monitors. Cable ties or wraps can help you manage the cables chaos.

Many new monitors have USB hubs, which are useful for plugging in flash drives, or dongles for wireless keyboards and other peripherals. The USB 3.0 standard only supports copper cable lengths of up to five meters, so a USB optical cable , with its starting length of 10 meters, could be helpful.

You will not likely regret an investment in an additional monitor, especially if you work a lot at a fixed desk. However, it is certainly possible to overdo it with a multi-monitor rig and end up spending a lot of money with little ROI. The key is to experiment a bit to find the environment that lets you work most effectively.

2016-10-06 08:22 Paul Mah www.itnews.com

48 /87 How recruiters are adapting to an evolving job market Recruiting's a competitive business, and it's getting even hotter. Jobvite's 2016 Recruiter Nation Report surveyed 1,600 recruiters and HR professionals in July 2016 and found that 95 percent expect hiring to be just as competitive or even more so than in 2015, and 69 percent say their companies' hiring has increased in the last year.

That's a problem in an increasingly tight talent market; 65 percent of respondents say a lack of skilled candidates is their largest obstacle to hiring, even as 33 percent say they anticipate filling more than one hundred positions this year, up from 26 percent in 2015 .

But recruiters are nothing if not persistent, adaptable and innovative. They're using a number of strategies and incentives to land talent, including raising salary offers (68 percent), awarding monetary bonuses to incentivize referrals (64 percent), allowing for flexible work hours (44 percent), and implementing a casual dress code (44 percent). The way recruiters define successful hiring has also evolved -- now, 61 percent say they care more about post-hire metrics like performance and retention rate of new hires than they do about the hiring process itself, such as cost- and time-to-hire, according to the survey.

"We were really surprised that the intensity here has not let up -- if anything, it's ratcheted up. It's great for job seekers that recruiters recognize they have to 'pay to play' and that salaries are getting higher, but another trend we're seeing from clients is they're spending that money on fewer, higher-quality talent, thinking if they hire three rockstars they'll be able to match the productivity of, say, five average hires," says Rachel Bitte, Jobvite's chief people officer.

What are recruiters looking for? Enthusiasm sways 78 percent of respondents, followed closely by command of requirements (76 percent) and conversational skills as the factors most likely to impact a hiring decision, according to the survey. And when asked what matters most in evaluating applicants, 67 percent say previous job experience and 60 percent say cultural fit are the factors that spur them to move candidates to the next level.

"So much of a candidate's success on the job comes down to that cultural fit aspect. Big companies with loads of perks, resources, benefits; small, scrappy start-ups and everything in between -- everyone's working on how to define and identify that cultural fit so they're getting better matches at all stages of the recruiting pipeline," Bitte says.

And while recruiters' strategies are evolving, there are still some things that haven't changed. A job-seeker's appearance still has the potential to influence their performance in an interview, and social media behavior is still used to pre-screen an applicant's background, according to the research.

Sixty-two percent of recruiters say casual dress is a huge turn-off; 56 percent say body odor and 34 percent say bad breath could influence them to turn up their nose at a candidate. But dousing yourself with cologne or perfume is just as detrimental: 35 percent of recruiters say it's just as bad as the alternative.

Almost half of recruiters surveyed, 47 percent, say photos of candidates drinking is a huge no-no on social media, especially if those recruiters are over 65 years of age. Marijuana use is seen much more negatively by recruiters, with 71 percent saying it negatively affects their impression of candidates. The biggest problem, though, is typos and spelling errors: 72 percent of recruiters view them negatively. You can keep posting those selfies, though; only 18 percent of recruiters view those negatively, down from 25 percent in 2015.

Overall, though, it's a job seeker's market, Bitte says, one that recruiters are quickly evolving to meet and land the best talent for their clients -- and that's great news for job seekers and for organizations.

"It's really a robust market out there now, and recruiters are firing on all cylinders. They're focusing on culture to lure the right candidates, improving the candidate experience in the screening and interview process, they're offering higher salaries. It's a great time to be a recruiter and a job seeker," Bitte says.

2016-10-06 08:14 Sharon Florentine www.itnews.com

49 /87 We shouldn’t trust health studies that let people report what they ate Oculus is holding its third- annual developers conference this week, and the main event happens today. It’ll be a 2-hour presentation where the company’s leaders lay out what they see as the next steps for virtual reality and Oculus VR. There’ll...

2016-10-06 08:04 Angela Chen www.theverge.com

50 /87 How to watch the Oculus Connect 3 event: start time, live blog, and streaming Apple has started showing ads in the iOS App Store for US users. Searching for popular terms like "taxi," "calendar," or "to do list" delivers a banner advert for promoted apps above the search results. The company announced plans for this earlier...

2016-10-06 08:00 Jacob Kastrenakes www.theverge.com

51 /87 51 /87 Inside Germany's repurposed buildings that house refugees (pictures) Amazon Echo Dot is the future

The new and improved Echo Dot takes Amazon's best-in-class smart home speaker and wraps it in an ultra-affordable package. See why it earned our Editors' Choice award.

2016-10-06 15:36 Katie Collins www.cnet.com

52 /87 Refugees taught me a lesson in making people feel welcome This is part of our Road Trip 2016 summer series, "Life, Disrupted," about how technology is helping with the global refugee crisis -- if at all.

There's nothing that breaks the tension of a serious interview quite like an invasion by a pair of toddlers, launching themselves at your legs. As they grinned manically, their hugs had us all giggling.

Refugee shelters -- at least the ones I visited with my colleagues Shara Tibken and Andrew Hoyle in Germany -- are uniformly dispiriting places that seem to thrum with human frustration. Then the kids appear. The air is suddenly filled with chatter, laughter and yelps, turning the centers into giant playgrounds.

Kids don't care who you are or where you've come from. They just want to play. I hesitantly decided to join them while observing a dance class at one East Berlin shelter. Once I got going, there was no way they would let me stop.

The welcome I received from the children was emblematic of the welcome CNET received in Germany from refugees we went there to meet. From the biggest gesture to the smallest, it felt as though we were on the receiving end of a stream of goodwill throughout our trip, which took us from Berlin to Dresden to Nuremberg, then finally to Munich.

Journalism, especially reporting on events like the refugee crisis gripping Europe, relies to a large degree on the generosity of others. There are plenty of reasons refugees wouldn't want to talk to us: safety, a general wariness of the motives of strangers, a specific wariness of the motives of journalists, or simply a reluctance to relive hard and challenging times. Even so, no one refused us. People want to be heard, of course, but in Germany some refugees also feel the need to defend their honor and explain that they come in peace. Even with the widespread Welkomkultur in Germany, which contrasts starkly with strong attitudes in countries like Hungary, France and my native UK, not every German is happy the refugees are here. This summer's Bavarian terror attacks, in particular, are at the forefront of some people's minds.

It was a kind of Welkomkultur in reverse -- the refugees inviting Germans to come to them, to feel safe and secure around them and to embrace opportunities for friendship. People stood to with them, hugged them or just stopped and took photos. The atmosphere was upbeat and positive.

In Munich, Welkomkultur is alive and well, giving us a sense that the Syrian men we met have nothing to fear from their new neighbors. But that's not the case everywhere. There's a notable backlash against Chancellor Angela Merkel's open door policy and her insistence that "We can do it," which has fueled the rise of the hate-spewing, ultranationalist AFD party and plain old- fashioned Nazism.

No one is more aware of this than Peter Rausch, 57, from the Black Forest. He turned his four- star hotel in Bautzen, near Dresden, into a refugee shelter. Rausch received death threats and had 250 to 300 people, a mixture of neo-Nazis and locals, protesting outside.

"They thought their quality of life would be affected negatively," he told me.

Today at the hotel, the tension has died down, and while there's a dispiriting bleakness to the place, there are pockets of ambition and generosity to be found among the residents, many of whom must be going out of their minds with boredom.

Rausch made no attempt to hide from us the damage some of the refugees have done to his property, or the fact the police were called to deal with an issue with residents while we were there. But then he also gets on well with many of the refugees, who call him chef and sit and smoke with him in the reception area. Intensely practical and not a bit sentimental, he points out that just like all humans, "some are nice, some are arseholes. " It's evident that for some, he harbors a genuine fondness and respect.

Tucked away in the belly of the hotel, a group of Pakistani men who arrived together are bunked in a dorm rather than be split up into their own rooms. It was late afternoon and there wasn't anything to do, so perhaps we were a welcome distraction. But nothing could have prepared me for the hospitality we nosy reporters received as we poked our heads around their door.

They'd been languishing in semidarkness when we entered their room -- the curtains drawn and the lamps low -- but they immediately sprung up to welcome us. The sofa was cleared and a tray of drinks was prepared. The men, some with better English than others, told us of their pain at being separated from their families and of the bond that had developed between them as brothers who arrived together in a foreign land.

Just as we were made to feel welcome in Munich by the refugees with banners, and in Bautzen by the refugees with Pepsi, so too was the case in Berlin. We took a tour led by Refugee Voices, which guided us around the city center and introduced us to elements of Syria's history that have parallels to the German city's own turbulent past.

The refugees were excellent tour guides, but they were even better hosts during our dinner. At a restaurant owned by one of their family members, they brought 20 or so of us platters of crispy manoushi bread flavored with za'atar and moreish baba ganoush accompanied by mint tea. We enjoyed the kind of hospitality Middle Eastern culture is famous for, right in the heart of Berlin.

It was, as my fellow tourgoer Houria Bouakaz put it later, "a very rich experience. " She wasn't talking about just the food.

Throughout the trip, I was treated with kindness and warmth by people who, like me, were mostly muddling through their 20s and trying to put together the best life they could.

And even though we were in a country that was foreign to all of us, their hospitality and willingness to form a connection -- along with their smiles, hugs, handshakes and dancing -- gave a warm sense of welcome.

I felt it everywhere.

2016-10-06 08:00 Katie Collins www.cnet.com

53 /87 Download of the day: PDF24 Creator You don't need to buy costly premium software to make your own PDFs – just download PDF24 Creator and you can convert virtually any document into the format. It uses a virtual printer driver, enabling you to export PDFs from any program with a print function.

You can convert saved documents to PDF format too; simply drag and drop them into PDF24 Creator and the software handles the rest.

PDF24 Creator also lets you edit PDFs (split them, merge multiple documents, extract pages and alter text), and works as a superb viewer. With so much to offer, it's the only PDF software you'll ever need – and it's completely free.

PDF is an extremely useful format when you need to share a document and make sure it looks exactly the same on the recipient's PC. However, software for creating your own PDFs from scratch (like Adobe Acrobat or PDF Architect) is often expensive, and may offer more tools than you actually need.

With PDF24 Creator you can create a document in any program you like (including your usual office and photo-editing apps), and export it in PDF format. The software includes a function for quick sharing via email, and you can protect them with passwords to prevent sensitive information falling into the wrong hands.

You can also make PDFs from other sources, including scanned documents (a great alternative to cumbersome image files), screengrabs, the Windows clipboard, and connected devices like digital cameras. It's easy to adjust the output size and quality of PDFs, and you can save your custom settings as a profile for future use.

Despite its wealth of tools and features, PDF24 Creator is very easy to use, with a well designed interface that guides you through each step involved in creating and editing PDFs.

Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10

Free

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2016-10-06 08:00 By Cat feedproxy.google.com

54 /87 SolarWinds Updates Server, Application Monitoring Platform Features include the ability to remediate server issues remotely with built-in troubleshooting tools, as well as integration with the Orion platform.

Information technology management software specialist SolarWinds announced a series of major updates to the company’s Server & Application Monitor (SAM), designed to improve IT professionals’ monitoring, alerting and reporting capabilities for Linux environments.

The platform features out-of-the-box monitoring templates for more than 200 enterprise applications plus hundreds more available through the company’s THWACK user community, and the ability to monitor custom or home-grown applications by defining custom metrics or modifying existing templates.

Users can also isolate root cause of issues by visualizing application relationship with underlying infrastructure layers and monitor server hardware health, perform capacity forecasting and manage asset inventory.

Other features include the ability to remediate server issues remotely with built-in troubleshooting tools, as well as integration with the SolarWinds Orion platform.

This integration allows server and application performance data to be incorporated with data from the company’s Storage Resource Monitor (SRM), Virtualization Manager and DPA into the platform’s AppStack environment view.

Additional new capabilities include next generation high availability to simplify deploying SAM and other of the company’s Orion platform-based products in a redundant configuration for critical workloads.

The platform can also monitor Linux processes in real time and the ability to identify which are consuming the most CPU/memory and start/stop processes remotely.

Other features include faster discovery of servers and applications through directory services and additional visibility into network interface metrics, such as bandwidth throughput, packet and error counts.

Rounding out the package is a Web-based SSH client for remote console management of Linux servers directly from the Orion platform interface and automatic identification of Linux distributions, which simplifies the configuration of distribution-specific monitoring templates.

When all the products are used together, database performance data is integrated into the Orion platform’s AppStack environment view.

This enables IT departments to be alerted when a database operation deviates from a historic baseline and simultaneously informed of the potential impact to specific applications supported by the database.

The correlation of database and other systems data can also lead to faster identification of the root cause of the slowdown.

According to a recent CDN survey, 71 percent of respondents indicated their current application performance management tools provide hints, but rarely identify the root of problems, and more than three-quarters (76 percent) of respondents indicate manual gathering and analysis of log data is frequently necessary to diagnose the issue.

The vast majority of respondents (84 percent) reported investing in database monitoring tools, with a majority reporting that they rely on DBAs to perform performance monitoring.

2016-10-06 08:00 Nathan Eddy www.eweek.com

55 /87 5 steps to avoid burning out your on-call IT staff Everyone is susceptible to burnout on the job, but if you're an on-call IT worker you are in a unique position. You can't just clock out at the end of the day. When you go home, you are required to be on alert for any emergency incidents, which can make it hard to truly unwind and relax after a long day.

"This affects work-life balance the most; 'always-on' readiness, not able to relax, an inability to have a downtime, a requirement to provide support during non-business hours and eating into one's private time -- added to the fact that calls can come at any time -- keeps one living on the edge," says Sharon Andrew, PhD, happiness evangelist at Happiest Minds Technologies, an Indian IT firm that focuses on mindfulness at work. That's why it's important to support these engineers and other IT workers who are putting out fires at 3 in the morning, while the rest of the company is fast asleep. Here are five crucial steps businesses need to take to make sure they're supporting on-call staff as best as possible to avoid burnout.

Not everyone is built for on-call work, says Joni Klippert, vice president of product at VictorOps, a company that offers automated solutions for on-call management. There are certain sacrifices and accommodations on-call workers have to make to their personal lives that not every worker will be willing to make.

Klippert points out that these employees often have to miss important family events, out of a fear that they will get a call in the middle of their kid's recital. Or they might have to bring their laptop with them and hide away in a bedroom at Christmas to work on a moment's notice.

"In the case of an outage, a technical person is not only tasked with triaging and solving the problem, but they must also find ways to efficiently communicate into lines of business about the issue, impact, etc. This creates an incredible amount of stress in the moment as efficiency as an on-call person directly impacts the bottom line of the business," she says.

When you hire for on-call positions, make sure the candidate fully understands the implications of the role. The last thing you want is to hire someone and get them trained only to have them quit a few months later when they realize the pressure of on-call is too much for them. Be as upfront as possible in the interview process, that way you can be sure that all your candidates are prepared for the challenge of on-call work.

If on-call workers are constantly paged for non-emergency issues, they're going to start growing resentful of the job. In fact, Klippert says they might even go as far as to "snooze superfluous alarms," out of an annoyance that they're not important, but someday, that could lead to inadvertently hitting snooze on a crucial emergency alert. She calls alerts like this "noise," because that's literally what your on-call workers experience -- loud alarms and flashing screens, sometimes at all hours of the night. And if they go to take action on that "noise," only to find out it's a normal issue, and not an emergency, you're essentially creating a "boy who cried wolf" scenario.

"Alerts should be a trusted source of truth as to the health of your business -- applications and infrastructure -- and are critical to business and IT success," she says.

Tim Armandpour, vice president of Engineering at PagerDuty, says you need to know what you're monitoring and why, and ensure that anything tied to on-call work is absolutely necessary. As long as everyone is clear on what constitutes an emergency, your workers will know that every alert is important.

"Don't let your on-call engineers feel like they're on an island, with a Google doc and a rotary phone at four in the morning," says Klippert. Make sure that when engineers and IT workers respond to an alert that the right plans are in place. That way, if they need additional support, either from other IT staff or engineers, there's a way to re-route the alert to the right person.

A great way to ensure the right resources are in place is to ensure everyone is properly trained so that emergency situations can be as low-stress as possible. Andrew says to document process and procedures and have new on-call staff shadow more experienced workers. Give them a chance to understand how the process works from reacting to incidents, analyzing issues and debug logs and how to relay relevant information to other internal teams. Even consider automating as many steps as possible, so everything remains consistent and streamlined.

Armandpour says that on-call work doesn't have to be stressful if there are process and procedures in place that help instill some peace of mind in your on-call staff. If every time an on- call worker responds to an alert, they're faced with extra work or confusion, it's just going to make the experience worse. He suggests going as far as to determine your biggest failure scenarios and then make them a reality to give everyone more experience.

"Introduce controlled failure to a system in order to exercise monitoring and process, and fix problems before they happen for real. Practicing failure also means those on-call have a set of best practices to follow when an incident does occur. It makes everyone feel more prepared and better equipped to handle whatever comes their way," he says.

You should also firmly establish on-call support hours, a rotating schedule, documents outlining what's required of on-call staff, supply them with the right technology to work remotely and incentivize their work, says Andrew. Recognize these employees for their hard work and create a system that will reward them for their on-call work. Their jobs aren't easy, and being on-call is not something your typical employees have to deal with, so a little recognition will go a long way.

Possibly the best thing you can do for your on-call workers is to be reasonable, says Klippert. That means, keep an eye on how many hours they're working, both during the workday and after. And when engineers aren't on-call, she says, make sure they're able to get away from the chaos and have time to themselves. If you're interrupting them on their off days, they're going to feel like they're never actually unplugged.

"Let them enjoy their time off as thoroughly as possible. You can't be in race mode all of the time or your employees will burn out fast. Be strategic and thoughtful, keeping an eye on your high performers to ensure that they stay happy," she says.

Armandpour suggests implementing rotating on-call shifts, incident management systems, consistent schedules and escalation policies so your engineers can truly enjoy their time off. On- call work adds extra pressure to a typical job, so having that personal time is even more important than it might be for other workers.

2016-10-06 07:58 Sarah K www.itnews.com

56 /87 Father of Java James Gosling slams cloud vendor lock-in JAMES GOSLING , the 'father of Java', has criticised cloud vendors for locking customers into their environments.

Gosling opened his keynote at IP Expo today by telling the audience: "I'm not selling anything. " He went on to warn about the dangers of committing too deeply to one cloud provider.

"These days the buzzword in almost every part of this show is cloud. People talk about it like it's magic pixie dust, which it isn't," he said.

Gosling described the cloud as a "complicated subject", and cited Amazon as an example of a firm looking to sink its claws into customers, although in reality, he could have named just about any cloud vendor.

"You get cloud providers like Amazon saying: 'Take your applications and move them to the cloud.' B ut as soon as you start using them you're stuck in that particular cloud. You have to be sure that all your customers will be OK with the terms of service of the cloud provider you choose," he explained.

Gosling is now involved with an Internet of Things (IoT) company which makes semi-autonomous robots that can swim the oceans collecting data. It is not the classic career path of the average coder, the INQUIRER understands, and Gosling described his current work as being on the "lunatic fringe".

"In my case there are no providers I'm happy with. Lots would make my life hugely easier, but convincing coastguards from random countries that they should trust Amazon is really hard," he said.

Gosling concluded by describing the IoT in his own inimitable way: "The 'things' part is sexy. The internet is just what ties it all together. "

Java is currently at the centre of a costly legal battle between Oracle and Google. Oracle contends that APIs should be subject to copyright, and wants an impressive $9.3bn from the search firm. µ

2016-10-06 07:47 www.theinquirer.net

57 /87 New strain of Ransomware mimics Locky Security researchers have discovered a new ransomware campaign targeting manufacturing and business service sectors in Western Europe.

The campaign, dubbed Hades Locker, was detected in emails containing hyperlinks to a Microsoft Word document named “levering- 1478529.doc” on several websites with recently registered domains.

In a blog post , the firm said it suspected a connection to previous CryptFile2 and MarsJoke campaigns that Proofpoint and others have documented based on the sending botnet and the distribution techniques (transportation-related email lures). Visually, Hades Lucker mimics early versions of Locky.

In contrast with these previous campaigns directed at state and local government agencies, however, Hades Locker targets manufacturing and business services.

This malicious software alerted victims that their files were encrypted, by creating several types of files scattered throughout their file system.

“The ransom message is dropped to the victim’s Desktop, as a text file, HTML file, and an image. The message urges the victim to “buy the decryption password belonging to your files.” In order to do this, the victim is instructed to visit a web page or an onion site,” the company said. This website asks for one bitcoin (equivalent to 600 USD) in order to receive the decrypting software. As a ‘guarantee’ that the decryption works, victims can also submit a single encrypted file and receive its decrypted version within 24 hours.

Proofpoint says: “Ransoms are increasing and actors are exploring new distribution methods such as links to hosted malware. As ransomware is increasingly commoditised and ransomware variants share features and aesthetics, we will continue to monitor the evolution of the market and its impact on businesses and individuals.”

2016-10-06 00:00 Ingrid Fadelli www.itpro.co.uk

58 /87 Open source in the enterprise: It's about culture, not technology, says Github Adopting open source methodologies within the enterprise is the fastest, most efficient way to produce software, and is more about cultural change than technology. That's the view of Nigel Abbott of collaboration platform provider GitHub, speaking at IPExpo in central London today.

Abbott opened by discussing the trend that has seen all businesses effectively becoming software houses.

"We used to consume software, now we create it, and firms invest in the people, tools and processes surrounding it. UK banks, for example, now regard themselves as software houses with banking licenses," said Abbott.

And this evolution is more about cultural change than technology, according to Abbott.

"Every organisation has a choice around whether it evolves or doesn't. And failure to evolve and adapt leads to you sitting on the pavement, scratching your head and thinking 'What went on there?'.

"We've witnessed open source evolve as the most efficient method of developing software, with tools like Hadoop, Swift and Go being maintained by massive open source communities. That enables software to be built faster, go to market more quickly and be more robust," he argued.

He described the concept of 'inner source' as the power of open source but within the four walls of the enterprise, crediting Paypal with the term's creation.

"Inner source needs cross-functional collaboration between developers in different teams, with transparency of code, and a sense of community and mentorship. That's difficult because it's about cultural change. "

Citing Spotify, Scania and IBM as high-profile inner source practitioners, Abbott went on to explain that the process and its software output needs to be shared with as wide an audience as possible, to encourage collaboration.

"With wider collaboration comes higher re-use and discoverability of code. But contributors must feel empowered and free to comment, regardless of their rank or time at the company. And that's a fundamental cultural change. The notion of individual empowerment tends to be the biggest blocker for firms trying to adopt the inner source concept. It needs support from the highest levels of management to nudge that need to change in this mindset. "

Abbott argued that anyone should be able to start a conversation about a bug, give feedback and ask for features in an open and transparent manner.

"And you should be grateful for that feedback," he said.

Other principles of inner source include:

Building scalable software quickly gives a company competitive advantage, but leveraging developers inside and outside the firm means you get there faster, said Abbott.

"Providing familiar tools, a supportive community and access to prior art - if you're a coder you're now an artist - do those things and you get cultural change and happier and more productive teams.

"An open and transparent culture is vital for open source to flourish. People can't thrive in an atmosphere of suspicion. That needs support from all levels of employees, so take everyone with you. "

He concluded by exhorting businesses to automate.

"Automate the boring stuff, that frees you up to do way more creative stuff," he concluded.

2016-10-06 07:31 Stuart Sumner www.computing.co.uk

59 /87 Blue Origin successfully tests launch escape system in flight Private space firm Blue Origin doesn’t get as much attention as SpaceX, with all its missions to the International Space Station and plans for Mars colonization. Still, Blue Origin is doing some fascinating things. Just yesterday at its Texas launch facility, it successfully tested the launch abort system on its New Shepard rocket. Although, “success” doesn’t quite get the point across. The launch was absolutely flawless.

New Shepard has been tested several times in the past, and like the SpaceX Falcon 9, it’s capable of reaching space and returning to land vertically on the ground. Blue Origin has launched the same exact rocket it used in today’s test four times previously. All it need was refurbishment and refueling to get ready for another launch.

What was different about yesterday’s launch is the addition of a mock crew capsule atop the New Shepard. About 40 seconds into the mission, the rocket was programmed to simulate an anomaly that would put the crew at risk. That triggered the abort system on the crew capsule to blast it clear of the booster. You can see the whole launch in the video below, but all the action comes a little more than an hour into the broadcast.

The crew capsule is equipped with a solid rocket booster packing 70,000 pounds of thrust. Unlike a liquid fueled engine, a SRB burns through all its fuel at a constant rate when ignited. This means that the booster in this launch was also subjected to incredible force when the abort system was activated. It was entirely possible the booster would be destroyed in the process. Blue Origin was careful to stress that it didn’t necessarily expect the New Shepard to survive this test, but it did. Not only did it survive, it continued into space and came back down for a perfect vertical landing (its fifth).

As for the crew capsule, the SRB pushed it clear of the booster as planned. After the rocket burned out, the drogue chutes were deployed to slow its descent, then the main chutes came out. It landed gently near the launchpad. Jeff Bezos, who owns Blue Origin, must be pretty happy with today’s test.

Blue Origin does have some very cool systems, but it’s still a few years behind the likes of SpaceX. The current New Shepard just goes straight up and back down — it doesn’t have enough power to get a payload into orbit and then return to Earth for a landing. However, this was the last launch for the current New Shepard. A next generation version of this rocket is being manufactured right now, so perhaps it will have more advanced capabilities.

2016-10-06 00:00 By Ryan www.extremetech.com

60 /87 FBI arrests an NSA contractor suspected of stealing hacking tools The FBI has arrested a U. S. government contractor for allegedly stealing classified documents, possibly including hacking tools.

Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, has been charged with stealing government materials, including top secret information, the U. S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday.

Martin, who held a top-secret national security clearance, allegedly took six classified documents produced in 2014.

"These documents were produced through sensitive government sources, methods, and capabilities, which are critical to a wide variety of national security issues," the DOJ said.

Reportedly, Martin is a contractor for the NSA and was arrested on suspicion for disclosing classified computer code that can hack foreign governments, according to The New York Times. Martin reportedly worked for Booz Allen Hamilton -- which also employed noted leaker Edward Snowden.

Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that maintains NSA infrastructure, has declined to comment about Martin.

Martin was originally arrested on Aug. 27, more than a week after anonymous hackers, called the ShadowBrokers, publicly leaked hacking tools that may belong to the NSA. Sample files of those tools appear to be dated most recently to 2013.

It's unclear if Martin's arrest is in any way connected. But some security experts have been speculating an NSA insider may have been behind the ShadowBrokers leak. The sample files of those hacking tools actually work and may be worth a small fortune.

Martin initially denied he had stolen any material when interviewed by investigators, but later admitted he had taken them and knew he had no authorization to do so, according to the DOJ's criminal complaint .

Martin's attorney, however, has reportedly said there's no evidence proving his client betrayed the U. S.

"What we do know is that Hal Martin loves his family and his country he served," James Wyda, a federal public defender, told the Baltimore Sun.

Hard-copy documents and digital information related to the stolen materials were found in Martin's home in Maryland and his vehicle, the DOJ alleged. If convicted, Martin could face 10 years in prison for theft of government property and another year for unauthorized removal of classified materials.

The NSA has not immediately responded for comment.

2016-10-06 07:28 Michael Kan www.infoworld.com

61 /87 : PlayStation VR unboxing video | PlayStation VR out 13 October Sony’s PlayStation VR headset has been the centre of attention since its initial announcement back at GDC 2014. It generated much excitement as it didn’t require a high-end gaming PC to operate like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift , and instead would be powered by the PlayStation 4. Over two years on and the PlayStation VR headset has finally been given an official release date in the UK, pricing and specs. Also check out the PlayStation VR games which you'll be able to play. Also see: PlayStation VR hands-on review.

Last updated to with release date.

Update 6 October 2016: The VR headset will be released on 13 October and can be found on Amazon for £349. Sony have also published a list of games that you'll be able to play with the headset - find them here on PlayStation. Blog.

The biggest question is “When will I be able to buy the PlayStation VR?” and prior to the announcement, rumours were rife. VRSE, a company that produces VR content, suggested that we’d be seeing the PlayStation VR as soon as April 2016, which got everyone excited. The ‘leak’ fell into Sony’s “First half of 2016” release date window announced in 2015, making it that little bit more believable.

US retailer GameSpot then waded in, claiming that we won’t actually be seeing the Sony manufactured virtual reality headset until Autumn 2016. While many initially brushed the rumour aside, it appears that the company was right.

Sony held a PlayStation VR-themed event on 15 March during GDC 2016 (Game Developers Conference) and while many assumed the company would talk about VR projects in the pipeline, that wasn’t the case. In fact, Sony CEO Andrew House stepped out and announced that the PlayStation VR headset will be available to buy in the UK from October 2016.

An October 2016 release puts the PlayStation VR six months behind the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, arguably Sony’s biggest VR competitors. Although with this being said, it could be a smart decision from Sony – allow Oculus and HTC to take the brunt of early VR issues, then step in slightly later with a polished product.

This was followed up at E3 2016 where Sony revealed that users would be able to get their hands on the PlayStation VR headset from 13 October 2016 , along with a number of 'great games and experiences' it has lined up for its first fortay into the world of virtual reality.

In terms of pre-orders, interested parties can pre-order a PlayStation VR headset on Amazon or GAME for £349.99 or, if you prefer the personal touch, users can also head into physical GAME stores (not available online) and pre-order the headset - although you'll have to put down a £5 deposit at least. While US pre-orders seemed to sell out within seconds, users in the UK are still able to pre-order the headset - although we're not sure if you'll get it on launch day. Read next: Best HTC Vive VR games and experiences of 2016

We recently went hands-on with the PlayStation VR headset for the first time, and we were pleasantly surprised by the experience it provides - especially when you consider that it's powered by a standard PlayStation 4 console and nothing more. While it isn't as graphically impressive as something produced by a high-end PC on the HTC Vive, it's a great introduction to high-end VR for PlayStation users around the world.

To read more about what we thought about the PlayStation VR, take a look at our PlayStation VR hands-on review.

Sony has officially announced the PlayStation 4 Pro, a more powerful PS4 variant that provides users with higher quality graphics, and even 4K HDR output for those that can take advantage of it. It also comes with a redesign, new controllers and a larger hard drive. That's not all though, as it has been claimed that the PlayStation 4 Pro will provide users with a more immersive, higher quality experience than that provided by the standard PlayStation 4.

To learn more about the PlayStation 4 Pro, take a look at this: PlayStation 4 Pro release date, pricing, features and spec

We’ve known for quite some time that the PlayStation VR headset will cost less than the £499 Oculus Rift, but no one was sure of exactly how much it’d cost. Our first clue was when Swiss retailer Microspot prematurely uploaded its PlayStation VR headset product page, which included a price of 498 Swiss Francs, which equates to around £360. While many claimed that it was just a placeholder and that Microspot had no insider information, it turned out to be quite accurate.

During the PlayStation VR event at GDC 2016, Sony CEO Andrew House announced that the PlayStation VR headset will set gamers back £349, £150 less than the £499 Oculus Rift and over £200 cheaper than the £689 HTC Vive – in fact, HTC’s offering costs almost double the amount of Sony’s headset. Amazon is already accepting pre-orders for the PlayStation VR headset ahead of its October 2016 release, which can be found here for £349.99. Amazon isn't the only option though - Zavvi is also accepting pre-orders for the PlayStation VR headset which can be found here.

While the price point attracted applause from those present at the event, all was not as it seemed as the CEO left out one vital piece of information. Yes the PlayStation VR headset will cost £349 in the UK, but it doesn’t come with a PlayStation Camera, a vital element that’s required for VR use. The official PlayStation 4 Camera costs £39 on Amazon at the time of writing, which brings the total cost of the PlayStation VR headset to £389 – still a competitive price for a VR headset, but not as cheap as first thought. If buying the headset and camera separately isn't for you, you'll be happy to know that Zavvi is offering a PlayStation VR & PlayStation Camera bundle for £399.98, which can be found here .

It’s the same story with the PlayStation Move controllers, although these aren’t required to use the VR headset as all VR content will be compatible with Sony’s DualShock 4 controller. We’re not sure whether Sony will be using the PlayStation 3 Move Controllers or if it’ll release PlayStation 4 Move Controllers closer to the VR headset debut, but at the time of writing only PS3 variants can be found online.

Below we'll tell you what to expect from the PlayStation VR, but you really need to see it for yourself. Sony has announced that it will be bringing PlayStation VR demos to 500,000 shops in June in the US, with the UK shortly behind. GameStop will be a key launch partner for Sony in the States, but the PlayStation VR will also be demoed in stores showing the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift - hopefully we get the same treatment here soon!

We talked about all the latest PlayStation news in our podcast. Listen here:

The final version of the PlayStation VR headset showcased at GDC 2016 boasts pretty impressive specs, which should get prospective VR gamers excited. For one, it boasts a 5.7in 1920x1080 full-HD OLED display, equating to 960x1080 per eye. The high-quality display coupled with a 100-degree field of view and an 18ms response time should provide users with an experience indistinguishable from real life – according to the Sony CEO anyway.

However, despite being lower resolution than both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, the PlayStation VR headset may win in one area in particular - Screen Door Effect (or SDE for short) removal. But what is SDE? Simply put, SDE describes the visible gaps between individual pixels which appear when looking closely at a display, like those used in VR headsets. The effect can lead to something as dramatic as the below photo in VR, which looks almost like a screen mesh to keep out bugs in the Summer, and can hinder the ability to read text and break immersion.

So how has Sony gone about removing SDE as best as it can from PlayStation VR? Unlike the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift that feature a PenTile display which offers two subpixels per pixel, Sony opted for an RGB display that offers three RGB subpixels for every pixel on the display, negating the effect. Counting subpixels, the Rift and Vive feature roughly 5,184,000 subpixels while the PlayStation VR features around 20 percent more at 6,220,800. While it may not be an issue for short stints in VR, it could make all the difference in extended gameplay sessions.

Sony's virtual reality headset features a 120Hz refresh rate and thus has the potential to render games at 120fps, which is notably higher than the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive's 90Hz offering.

Combined with a powerful PS4 console and the OLED screen's high refresh rate, Sony says PlayStation VR will offer "amazingly smooth visuals". Although what the firm forgot to mention was that the VR headset won’t be powered by the PS4 – not by itself, anyway. Instead, PSVR owners will have to make some room for an additional box that’ll connect to the PS4 and provide most of the processing power for the virtual reality headset. The box will also provide a ‘standard’ output for the TV, giving your friends a good idea of what’s going on inside the headset, as if you were playing a normal PS4 game.

The PlayStation 4 system is easily able to track movement thanks to built-in accelerometers and LED side lights detectable by a connected PlayStation camera. Sony claims that the PlayStation Camera can track the PSVR headset up to 1,000 times per second, which should provide gamers with a beautifully seamless experience.

It also allows users to turn their heads 360 degrees in-game, allowing gamers to look behind them when inevitably being chased by a weapon-wielding enemy. This is possible thanks to sensors on the back of the headset, which lets the system know when you’re looking behind you.

Much like Valve and HTC's Vive, the PlayStation VR headset will track your location within a physical space, allowing you to walk around your virtual world. However while that sounds great, it's not as advanced as the high-end 5x5m Room Scale tracking system used by the Vive. In fact, while the PlayStation VR can track your movement, you can only move around three steps in any direction before you go out of range and lose tracking altogether.

This is because the tracking system relies on the PlayStation VR camera and as soon as you're out of view of said camera, you'll see a message pop up in front of you prompting you to go move back to where it can track you once again. Sony officially acknowledges the fact that the PlayStation VR will track your movement, but says that many of the games are intended for sit- down use so there won't be much need for movement tracking. In a statement issued to Popular Science, Sony said the following:

"We have some tech demos that allowed users to play while standing up, however all the PS VR titles we plan to release in the future will recommend that users remain seated. We will announce further details of guidelines or regulations when ready. "

While that is impressive, it’s worth noting that Sony's own vice president Masayasu Ito recently suggested that Sony's offering may not be able to compete with premium headsets. "If you just talk about the high-end quality, yes, I would admit that Oculus may have better VR," Ito said, talking to Polygon. "However, it requires a very expensive and very fast PC. The biggest advantage for Sony is our headset works with PS4. It's more for everyday use, so it has to be easy to use and it has to be affordable. This is not for the person who uses a high-end PC. It's for the mass market".

While the Oculus Rift costs £499 and the HTC Vive costs £689, Sony's virtual reality offering costs considerably less at £349. Plus, the Rift and Vive require powerful PCs to run VR content while the PlayStation VR headset will be compatible with any of the 36 million PS4 consoles on the market.

However, despite comments from Sony's own vice president regarding the quality of the PSVR experience, global head of marketing and sales Jim Ryan wants to dispell the rumours and confirmed that all current PSVR demos, like those at E3 2016, are all powered by standard PS4s and not the upcoming PS4.5 'Neo'. He urges both prospective PSVR users and critics alike to go to one of the PSVR demoes and make up their own minds and not listen to rumours.

" Go to our room and check out the VR games and make up your own mind ,” he told MVC at E3 2016. “ That’s for you and others to decide upon. We are completely confident that the line-up of 50 games - plus some of which was announced yesterday, which was serious in terms of heavyweight IP – that those games are going to provide a first class VR experience. What we can say is that we have a fertile ground of 40m PS4s, all of which will run PlayStation VR. "

While the PlayStation VR will be great for VR games, what about standard games and the likes of Netflix? Will these also be enjoyed in virtual reality? While we had no official confirmation until now, Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan has released new details on the upcoming headset, including a few tidbits about how the cinematic mode will work.

PlayStation VR allows users to play almost every standard PS4 game with PlayStation VR - and before you ask, no, it won't turn the game into a VR game. Instead, it'll offer users the opportunity to sit in a huge virtual cinema and play their games on the big screen.

According to the blog post and the below image, the PSVR system will come with three different screen size preferences - small, medium and large. The large preset is the equivalent of sitting in front of a 226in screen, while the medium and small presets will immerse the user in a dark virtual space with a display in front of them. It's not just PS4 games that are compatible either, as PSVR usres will also be able to watch TV shows and movies with streaming apps like Netflix. Essentially, you'll have your own virtual private cinema for gaming and movies - pretty cool, right?

We're still weeks away from the launch of PlayStation VR around the world, but you can already prepare with Sony's official PlayStation VR unboxing video, showcasing everything you'll get in your PSVR box. Spoiler alert - users will find the headset, processing unit, headphones and demo disk in the box, but not the Move controllers or PlayStation Camera (the Camera is required to use the PSVR headset).

While it's not as good as Royal Mail making a mistake and sending you your PSVR headset early, it should be enough to tide you through these last few weeks before launch.

Read next: Best VR headsets to buy in the UK 2016

With regards to controllers and accessories, the PlayStation VR will primarily use the DualShock 4 controller as it’s a familiar controller for PS4 gamers, allowing them to game without looking at which buttons to press (which is even harder with a headset on!). It’s also because DualShock 4 controllers feature motion sensors, and can be tracked by the PlayStation camera. This gives developers more creativity when developing ways for gamers to interact with the game, and should bring something new and interesting to the table.

Using a DualShock 4 controller isn’t the only way to interact with the virtual world, though. Sony is also planning to utilise the PlayStation Move Batons, accessories from Sony’s earlier motion- control system from the days of the PlayStation 3 that many had written off. The Batons allow players to control both their characters and environments via gestures rather than traditional button presses, and looks to provide users with a more immersive and interactive experience than when using a DualShock 4 controller alone.

However, if early hands-on reports are to be believed, the combination of PSVR and Move batons may not be as immersive as originally thought. Writing on Venture Beat, Jeff Grubb says that after using the Move batons at E3, he couldn’t “ stop thinking about how lackluster Sony’s motion controllers feel compared to what HTC and Oculus are bringing ”.

Grubb claims that the inaccuracy of the Move batons is “ worrisome ” and that while he was playing the upcoming Final Fantasy XV VR experience at E3 2016, he pointed his gun directly at his target in the real world, but his gun fired up and to the right in-game. Sony has never claimed 1:1 tracking with the Move batons, but is something that the company should strive towards when the PSVR system is likely to be the first VR experience many have.

" The Move was always better than the first generation of the Wii, but when it comes to accurately translating my motion into in-game action, it disappoints compared to Vive or the Oculus Touch. "

It’s not just 1:1 tracking where the Move apparently falls flat on its face – the Move is also the “ least comfortable VR controller ” when compared to the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, too. Shifting your grip in VR is a fairly common thing, as you’ll be simulating a number of different objects – guns, swords, mobile phones, etc – and while this is natural when using the Vive controllers, the same can’t be said for the Move batons. “ I found that when I tried to shift my grip from making a fist to holding a gun, the controller was unnatural and flimsy. ” Grubb commented. “ For me, this caused some actual pain, and I felt like the controller was going to slip from my grasp .” We went hands on with the PlayStation VR headset, complete with Move batons, shortly after the report criticising the Move batons went online and we must say, we disagree. Sure, while we will freely admit that the Move batons do not boast 1:1 tracking and can't match the HTC Vive's responsiveness, it's far from offering a sub-par experience.

We used the Move batons while taking part in a London Heist demo where we found ourselves in the passenger seat of a car being attacked by gangsters in Land Rovers and on motorbikes armed with an SMG for defence. Reaching out for the SMG on the dashboard felt natural, and the manual reloading of the gun made the simulation feel even more real. We did temporarily lose tracking during our demo, but this was because we moved too far and the PlayStation Camera lost sight of us, and in a home environment it'd be set up for your environment so that wouldn't happen (we should think, anyway!).

We'll be going thoroughly hands-on with the PlayStation VR in the coming weeks, so make sure you head back for our first impressions at a later date.

However, the DualShock 4 controller and Move batons aren’t the only two ways to game with PlayStation VR – read on to find out about some of the other accessories Sony is developing for the platform.

Following Sony’s E3 2016 press conference where the company showcased a number of launch PSVR games, the gaming giant also quietly announced the PS VR Aim controller – a new Move-esque controller designed specifically for use with VR sci-fi shooter Farpoint, but might not be used for anything else in future.

Many fans are comparing the Aim controller with the Sharp Shooter gun accessory which launched alongside Killzone 3, designed to emulate an assault rifle, however Sony’s latest offering is simplistic and designed to be used with a variety of VR-enabled weapons. Its design allows it to be used pushed into the shoulder like when using a rifle (which also allows you to look down the scope of the gun!), as well as being comfortable to hold when hip-firing.

Despite looking simplistic, the PS VR Aim controller boasts the same buttons as a DualShock 4 controller. This includes two triggers, two bumpers, two analogue sticks, a D-Pad, Share and Options buttons, a button emulating the Touch Pad and of course, X, O, Triangle and Square buttons, providing gamers with a way to perform the same actions you’d normally perform in- game when using the Aim controller.

There isn’t any pricing or release date information available at this time, but we expect the PS VR Aim controller to be out in time for Christmas alongside the recently announced Farpoint for PSVR. We also hope that the Aim will be compatible with other PS VR FPS games, but this has yet to be confirmed.

It seems that Sony may have another trick up its sleeve if recent patents are anything to go by. According to patents published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, Sony has plans for sensor-clad gloves that could be used to track your hand movement in a virtual space. Both HTC and Oculus are working on bespoke handheld controllers for their virtual reality systems, while Sony (up until now) is only offering DualShock 4 & PlayStation Move support. Sony's VR gloves can be used to measure not only position but movement and pressure too, according to submitted documents.

While it's worth noting that not all technology described in patents will ever see the light of day, this at least demonstrates that Sony is willing to develop new ways to interact with the virtual world around you. It's not only for gaming either - according to the patent, the gloves could be used to navigate menus in a similar way to Tom Cruise in Minority Report - cool, eh?

(See also: Samsung Gear VR release date, price and specs.)

Sony announced at its event at GDC 2016 in San Francisco that the company has over 230 developers working on content for the PlayStation VR headset. It’s also claimed that even though the headset isn’t expected out until October 2016, there will be 50 VR ‘projects’ readily available by the end of 2016, three months later. Here’s a list of current PS4 games that are PlayStation VR compatible, and in-development games expected to be compatible with PlayStation VR (via IGN ):

Atom Universe; Adrift; ARK: Survival Evolved; Among the Sleep; The Assembly; Battlezone; The Deep; Dreams; EVE: Valkyrie; Futuridium; Get Even; GNOG; Godling; Harmonix Music VR; Headmaster; Jurassic Encounter; Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes; Kitchen (demo); Loading Human; The London Heist; Mind: Path to Talamus; Omega Agent; Paranormal Activity VR; The Playroom VR; Project CARS; Q. U. B. E.²; RIGS: Mechanized Combat League; Summer Lesson; Superhypercube; Surgeon Simulator; Synthesis Universe; Technolust; Trackmania Turbo; Vanguard V; VizionEck; War Thunder; Wayward Sky; World War Toons.

Following on from this, Sony showcased a number of upcoming VR game trailers during its' E3 2016 event and we've got to admit, they look pretty impressive. See below for more:

Read next: The most anticipated games of 2016

See also: PS4 vs Xbox One review: Next-gen games console comparison

Follow Lewis Painter on Twitter

2016-10-06 07:21 Lewis Painter www.pcadvisor.co.uk

62 /87 What happens when IT is guilty of Shadow IT? It's bad enough when people in your organization procure IT resources without the help or knowledge of IT, but before you can address it, you better get your own house in order.

Between staff and consultants, IT in our organization numbers some 200 people. That's a lot of people to keep track of. A couple of years back, IT management started putting more focus on strategy and prioritizing work to align to the strategic plan. And as we began scratching beneath the surface we realized we had a problem.

Under previous leadership, technical team leaders had enjoyed a large degree of autonomy. This had resulted in team leaders working closely with specific customer bases to deliver IT solutions, which in itself was a positive. But with these customers being the funding source for the resources, it created an unhealthy situation whereby team leaders were focused on responding to any requests from individual business units without taking time to look at the bigger business picture and ask whether it made sense to do that work or not.

Even worse, since team leaders worked within specific technology domains, their solutions were built within that domain with no consideration of whether other technologies might be more suitable. The upshot: solutions were sometimes sub-optimal and team leaders were offering different technological solutions to different customers to solve the same business problem.

To get a grip on the situation, we took three key steps. First, the budgetary responsibility was centralized under the Office of the Director. In a stroke, this ensured tighter control of funds, especially those coming in from outside IT to fund consultants to perform specific work.

Secondly, a team was set up to coordinate project work, putting in processes to ensure that deliverables and target dates were being defined with customers and tracking that commitments were being met. This helped address both project overruns and the tendency to renew consultants that were working on vaguely defined objectives. The absence of good documentation also compelled renewal in many cases since knowledge was in consultants heads. A time-keeping system was also introduced, with time recorded either against operational activities or specifically assigned projects. This helped hammer home the message that we should all be working towards an agreed set of prioritized activities, and also deprived teams of the time they once allocated to pet projects.

Thirdly, a coordination process was put in place for the approval of new IT investments. This coordination had in itself three elements:

All of this caused a good deal of negative reaction within IT. Having been used to autonomy, the processes were often perceived as both adding work and in stripping away responsibility. We needed to repeatedly stress the objectives of better prioritization and delivery of work, and ultimately greater clarity for individuals.

Frankly, we exacerbated this staff reaction by making some mistakes along the way. For example, we built the time keeping system with a view to reporting everything with the finest degree of granularity, but that proved to be totally unpractical and we changed tack and introduced something simpler. We also were overly ambitious about the first build of the project monitoring system and eventually eased back on the level of reporting requested.

All in all, we think we now have the balance between control and giving staff the responsibility to get on with their work. For management, the important thing is we now have genuine oversight into what is going on and can steer in the right strategic direction. And now, having demonstrated efficient and effective delivery from inside, we have the moral high ground when going to talk to Shadow IT groups outside of IT.

2016-10-06 07:12 Paul Whimpenny www.infoworld.com

63 /87 7 ways you’re leaking leverage Leaking leverage in negotiations is a lot like leaking oil in a car — you won’t really notice it has happened until it’s too late. Vendors nearly always have an information advantage when it comes to negotiations. They are experts at gathering data, compiling research, asking questions and using other techniques to ferret out useful information to gain leverage. Here are seven ways you may be leaking leverage (without even knowing it) and how to stem the flow. It’s hard to say no when a vendor offers to pick up the tab at your favorite steakhouse or lunchtime bistro. After a good meal and maybe a few drinks, we’re amenable to sociably answering our hosts’ questions — and probably giving away valuable information. One minute the vendor representatives are asking about your hobbies and career aspirations, and the next you’re telling them about you company’s budgeting process and political challenges — never realizing how that information could influence negotiations. So curb your appetite (and say no to sharing the vendor’s box at the big game too), and remember that the best place to conduct business is in the office.

When you refuse to socialize with vendor reps (because you realize that it’s never really about the socializing), you aren’t home free. You could still end up seeing them in social settings. (“I didn’t know our kids played on the same soccer team!”) Being away from work, your guard will be down. But even if business isn’t discussed, the vendor rep will use the opportunity to build rapport, which may cause your guard to be lowered again in the future. Your best defense is to make sure the rapport goes both ways. As always, be careful of what you say. Vendor reps are great at filing away tidbits of information for use later.

If you go into negotiations already fairly confident that you are going to buy the vendors’ products or services, you’ve given up a huge amount of leverage. It doesn’t matter if you don’t tell the vendor that you’ve made your decision; the way you negotiate will tip things in the vendor’s direction anyway. Once you feel any amount of commitment, you will be much more likely to agree to the vendor’s terms. It is essential to keep an open mind all the way through the process and not enter negotiations with a positive bias toward the vendor.

A similar disadvantage can arise when we have staffers who are what vendors call “champions.” Sometimes our own employees and staff are more effective account reps than the vendor’s staff, but it’s even more common for management to be responsible for this self-inflicted leaking of leverage: A manager might insist on working with a vendor he or she used at a previous job or could fall in love with a vendor’s products and services after accepting an invitation for a site visit. Either way, the vendor will perceive an emotional attachment and take advantage.

Being friendly with vendor reps is fine, but being a rep’s friend can shred your leverage. With over 50 years of sourcing experience between us, we can tell you that vendor representatives will rarely stay in touch after the business opportunity is gone. We have known hundreds of reps, of whom we would count three as friends today. Such reps are clearly the exception. And don’t think that a confidentiality agreement will protect you. The sales rep might honor the agreement by not disclosing any information you provide, but that won’t stop him from using that information against you.

It’s only polite to answer a person’s questions. But that rule has to be modified in a negotiation context. And it’s not just the salespeople you need to worry about. Everyone from the vendor (account managers, consultants, technicians, etc.) is on the sales team. It’s natural to treat the people you work with every day as are co-workers, but if your company has on-site personnel from a vendor, never forget where their true loyalties lie. This can be tricky if your non-employee badges look like employee badges or if vendor personnel have email addresses similar to yours. If you get careless about who is who in your company, you could end up inviting employees of a vendor to meetings where classified information is discussed or shown on whiteboards.

Phil Bode is the owner of Italex, LLC, an IT procurement consulting and training company; he can reached at [email protected]. Steven Jeffery is a IT procurement consultant; he can be reached at [email protected]. They are co-authors of the upcoming book Supplier (Vendor) Management – Going Beyond Strategic Sourcing to Gain Real, Sustainable Competitive Advantage.

2016-10-06 07:12 Phil Bode www.computerworld.com

64 /87 How to recycle and reuse an old hard drive The unthinkable has happened: your external hard drive has suddenly stopped working. You've checked the cables and power adaptor but your Mac or PC can no longer see it. In this project we'll look at how you can rescue your disk from a failed drive enclosure or even a set top box, recover data from it if necessary, and then continue to use the internal disk going forward.

The project relies on one key element still working: the disk itself. If the disk still whirrs into life, but gives off an ominous clicking sound, it's possible it has physically failed (or is failing). In this case, you can still follow the tutorial, but chances are you'll need to use a third-party data recovery specialist such as Kroll Ontrack to get data off the disk before recycling it.

External drives connect the disk inside to your Mac via circuitry that translates the disk's physical SATA interface (unless it's very old) to your Mac via one of its ports – typically USB or Thunderbolt, but sometimes Firewire.

If this fails, the disk can't communicate and you'll need to liberate it from the case. Simply replacing the enclosure should suffice more often than not, but if the disk is larger than 2TB or has come from a network drive, there are added complications that we'll cover in due course. For now, though, let's focus on getting the drive out of its case.

You'll need to source a new enclosure to house the disk in. As USB is the most ubiquitous choice, we've highlighted a solid USB model that is designed to make it relatively easy to insert and remove disks – but that's not true of your existing drive enclosure. This USB 2.0 docking station makes it easy to copy data from 2.5- and 3.5-inch disks with SATA or an old IDE interface.

See the best Freecom Hard Drive deals

Prepopulated external hard drives aren't designed to be user-serviceable, so you'll rarely find convenient screws holding them together; instead, a series of plastic tabs click the chassis's various elements into place.

Thankfully, others have boldly gone before you and documented the dismantling process on YouTube and other websites. So, your first task is to track down one of these and use it, in conjunction with our step-by-step guide, to transfer your disk from its old case to a shiny new enclosure. Enter the name of your drive's make and model in Google, such as Seagate Backup Plus 4TB, plus the words "open case", which should find you a suitable video.

We suggest you watch the whole video before reaching for tools. It's a good idea to avoid using sharp or metallic objects to prise open the caddy as these can damage it – some experts use guitar picks, but you don't need to rush out and buy a job lot. Instead, cut up an expired credit card, and then use a rounded corner as the end of your 'pick' to prise open the drive case firmly, but carefully.

Use Google to find a teardown video for your hard drive model on the web, and have it playing on your iPad, tablet, PC or Mac within sight of your external drive as you work through the process.

Start following it to remove the first piece of the enclosure. Be firm, but gentle.

Most drive enclosures aren't conveniently held together by screws; instead you'll need to 'pop' plastic tabs using a combination of skill, force and luck – using plastic tools like guitar picks helps to minimise the damage you can cause while doing this.

Make a note of the disk's markers: its size (3.5 inches in this example) and the interface (SATA in most cases), if you don't already know these details.

Then lever the disk out of the chassis and remove any additional housing that the maker may have used to hold it in place.

Once you've got a bare disk, you can fit it into its new enclosure. This should be a much easier job. In some cases, you simply slide the disk into the enclosure's bay and click it into place – no screws required – then seal the enclosure, sometimes just by closing a door.

2.5-inch disk enclosures are less sophisticated. Unscrew the main housing to pull out a small circuit board. Slot the disk into this, then screw it in place before sliding the whole thing back into the main chassis and securing it in place.

Now comes the moment of truth. Connect your new drive enclosure to a spare port – USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt, as appropriate – on your Mac or PC, plug it into mains power (desktop drives only) and wait for the disk to spin up. Hopefully it will appear in Finder/Windows Explorer soon after.

2016-10-06 07:08 By Nick feedproxy.google.com

65 /87 Satya Nadella's comp package slips 3% to $17.7 million Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella received a compensation package for the year ending June 30 worth approximately $17.7 million, a 3 percent reduction from 2015, according to security filings.

A preliminary proxy statement submitted Monday to the U. S. Securities & Exchange Commission showed that Nadella's pay cut was about a third of the 9 percent downturn in Microsoft's revenue during the same period.

The chief executive received $1.2 million in salary, the same as the year before; $4.5 in a cash performance bonus, or 3 percent more than in 2015; and $12 million in stock awards, or 6 percent less.

Unlike years past, stock awards granted in fiscal year 2016 to Microsoft executives, including Nadella, were not to vest simply because officials served time in the company. Instead, about half of the shares given to Nadella will vest in 2018 if the company meets a slew of targets, which range from revenue to subscriber counts. If Microsoft doesn't meet some or all of those goals, some of the performance-based shares will be forfeited.

Fiscal year 2016 was the first during which Microsoft's top executives -- Nadella; Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood; head of business development Margaret Johnson; President and chief legal officer Brad Smith; and former Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner, who left this summer -- were graded on a complex matrix of statistical targets. The board of directors made the changes after investors complained about too-broad ranges for bonuses and a lack of information about how directors evaluated the top tier.

For fiscal year 2017 -- which will end June 30, 2017 -- the portion of executives' pay package tied to pre-determined performance goals is to increase from 40 percent to 50 percent.

Some of Nadella's goals will be linked to the performance of individual units within the company and specific metrics of those units. In fiscal 2017, for instance, 11 percent of the "score" for Nadella's performance-based stock grant will be tied to the "monthly active device" (MAD) number for Windows 10, with another 11 percent pinned to the gross revenue for the Surface hardware line. Two-thirds of the score, however, will come from targets in commercial cloud revenue and the cloud subscriber count.

Although Microsoft's new performance regime was spelled out in the proxy, complete with charts, graphs and even a formula for calculating Nadella's cash bonus, the document did not specify what each goal would be. For the performance portion of his fiscal 2016 stock award, for example, Nadella was scored on that year's Windows 10 MAD: The target itself was not named.

Windows 10's MAD during fiscal 2016 was one of the metrics that dinged Nadella's total performance assessment, and thus contributed to the modest reduction in his stock award. "Windows 10 MAD fell short of expectations for the year, in part because of the change in phone strategy, pushing the goal to achieve 1 billion Windows 10 MAD beyond fiscal year 2018," the proxy statement asserted in one of four sections of Nadella's evaluation. That section was the only not rated above 100 percent.

Three months ago, Microsoft acknowledged that the 1 billion target was unreachable. At the time the company also laid blame for the shortfall on the smartphone business.

2016-10-06 07:08 Gregg Keizer www.infoworld.com

66 /87 8 Critical Elements Of A Successful Data Integration Strategy Data integration is more important than ever as organizations look to leverage the data they have to create greater value. Yet, the task of data integration has only become more complex because the amount of data collected, ingested, stored, and analyzed has increased.

Enterprises already collect a great deal of data merely by operating their enterprise applications such as enterprise resource management (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). Add in social media data about your brand -- Tweets, Facebook posts, Instagrams. Even more new forms of data are being introduced to the data streams in the form of new IoT data.

IT pros are tasked with creating an infrastructure that enables business users and analysts to look at all this data together and glean new insights. These users want to see what Tweets are coming from potential customers. They want to know which existing customers are complaining on Facebook.

They want a unified view of these customers and potential customers, regardless of the source of the data. They want a way to query all of this data simply, because they are not script-writing, PhD-holding data scientists.

[See 14 Data Integration Tool Vendors to Know .]

That leaves most enterprise IT organizations and their data teams with a big messy job. Integrating data from different sources contained in different types of databases, has never been easy. That's one of the reasons the data lake became such a popular concept as organizations sought to query structured data and unstructured data. The rise of Apache Spark and Apache Kafka has added more real-time streaming data into the mix.

How do IT pros integrate all this data without breaking it? We've assembled the following critical elements of a successful data integration strategy to help you on your journey. As always, if there are other tips you've found useful in your own practice and you don't see them here, please add them in the comments section. 2016-10-06 07:06 Jessica Davis www.informationweek.com

67 /87 8 challenges that keep financial services CTOs and CIOs up at night Being the CTO or CIO of a financial services provider is harder than ever in today’s data-driven, hacker- plagued digital world. In addition to making sure the organization’s systems are operating smoothly at all times, they face a number of technology- and compliance-related challenges, issues that if not addressed could cost their organization millions – even billions – of dollars.

Here are eight of the biggest challenges, the ones keeping financial services IT executives up at night (or at minimum giving them a major headache.

“Security and risk management are high on the list of concerns that keep CIOs and CTOs up at night, especially at the rapid rate that the threat landscape is evolving,” says Josh Crowe, CTO, Sungard Availability Services . “They constantly mull over whether their customers’ assets and data are secure, and even question the security measures protecting their own IP. The speed at which hackers are finding ways to infiltrate technology can mean near constant reevaluation if they are remaining sufficiently vigilant.”

According to the 2016 Vormetric Data Threat Report -- Financial Services Edition , 90 percent of financial services IT executives surveyed said that they felt vulnerable to data threats – and 44 percent had already experienced a data breach.

“Increased focus in the areas of data and cybersecurity means that CIOs and CTOs need to appreciate that even in the absence of a data breach, failure to adequately assess and respond to cyber security risk can lead to downgrades in regulatory ratings and potentially punitive action by a regulatory agency,” says Craig D. Miller, a partner at the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

“Given that the vast majority of information loss comes from insider threats, creating a security- pragmatic culture that allows the business to operate at maximum efficiency but in a way that is still secure represents one of the greatest challenges facing [financial services] CTOs,” says Gerry Stegmaier, partner, Intellectual Property, Information and Innovation group, Reed Smith .

“Cyber ransom is one of the fastest-growing security concerns around the globe,” says Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions, Radware . “Every day, ransom tactics are used to target both individuals and companies around the world, and the potential harm can be devastating, shutting down network access, encrypting one’s files and more until a payment is made,” he explains. Dave Packer, vice president, Corporate and Product Marketing, Druva , as well as many other IT executives, agrees.

“If they [aren’t] already, [financial services] CTOs and CIOs should be losing sleep about cyber extortion and company data being held for ransom,” he says. “ CNN reports that ransomware events are expected to collect $1 billion in 2016, with researchers seeing a 3,500 percent increase in the criminal use of net infrastructure to run ransomware campaigns. It's not a matter of if a company will get hacked, it's when,” he says.

To combat cyber ransom threats, financial services CTOs and CIOs need to “understand the current threat landscape and potential attack vectors,” says Herberger. And they “should be taking preventive action to ensure all data is safe, secure and backed up,” says Packer. “It's literally a matter of business life or death.”

2016-10-06 07:00 Jennifer Lonoff www.itnews.com

68 /87 How to Bring Your Customers Back? It is a known fact that retaining your existing customers is much cheaper than attracting new ones. It doesn’t mean that you should stop looking for different ways to engage new clients; it just means that customer retention techniques should not be ignored. Just think about it: there is a 60-70% chance to sell your product or service to an existing customer and just a 5-20% chance to turn a prospect into a real client.

So now it’s high time to think what can be done to bring your customers back.

1. Win back their attention

To make it possible you need to conduct some research and find out what your clients need from you and what useful things you can give them. For example, if your audience is interested in all new things that are happening in the sphere in which you are working, you can create different roundups and cover niche news timely.

Find out which channel will be more actionable and use it to reengage with your audience. You can also segment it by different parameters and create different types of content for different customer groups. This will help you achieve personalization and will result in higher retention rate.

2. Remind them about their abandoned carts

So many times people visit an online store, browse numerous products there, read descriptions, carefully choose what to add in their shopping carts and then… just leave! There may be many reasons for that starting with some usability issues on your website and ending with a kettle boiling in the kitchen. Anyway, people close their browsers and may forget to return and complete a purchase.

In this case there is nothing bad in reminding your clients about their abandoned carts. And here you have a wide variety of choices: to send a one-time reminder or schedule a few reminders; include products information to your email or omit it; provide a discount code for the next order or not, etc.

3. Ask their opinion

Never lose a chance to ask your clients to leave their feedback about your product. The best way is to send review reminders. Some stores also have great loyalty systems which give customers points for their actions, including leaving reviews. Those points can usually be used to pay for the goods.

By the way, having a loyalty scheme is one more cool way to build a community around your brand and have numerous returning users.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are many ways to retain customers; I’ve just given you some good ideas to start from. Everything is in your hands, so start working towards your clients’ satisfaction and it will definitely pay off soon.

2016-10-06 06:37 Staff Writer pctechmag.com

69 /87 AT&T's coming SD-WAN services will tap into FlexWare Software is beginning to simplify one of the hardest kinds of networking: wide-area networks that link up an enterprise’s remote sites, branch offices, and data centers. Now AT&T is getting in on the game.

On Wednesday, the carrier announced AT&T Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), a service that will control all of an enterprise’s WAN connections with the same software.

What software-defined networking has done for data centers, SD-WAN does for networks stretched across continents and oceans. As with SDN, the benefits should include lower costs and the ability to support new applications quickly without having to replace complex hardware and services.

SD-WAN can replace specialized hardware at branch offices, retail outlets and other sites with less expensive standard hardware. It also lets enterprises use traditional MPLS (multiprotocol label switching), internet broadband, LTE, and other connections and then mix and match them as needed.

For example, with its SD-WAN service, AT&T could procure two broadband connections for a remote site, even including one from another carrier for redundancy, and combine them to meet spikes in demand. For another site, it could combine an MPLS and a broadband connection. AT&T is teaming up with an SD-WAN specialist, VeloCloud, for software and hardware to power the service. The Silicon Valley startup makes a hardware device for remote sites, the Velo Edge, and software that runs the network. AT&T said it also plans to work with other SD-WAN technology companies.

Later this year, customers will be able to get started on the service using the Velo Edge at their branch and remote sites. This may be the best fit for companies that have similar needs at all their sites, said Rick Hubbard, senior vice president, network product management in AT&T Business Solutions.

But starting next year, AT&T will put the VeloCloud edge software on its own FlexWare systems (formerly Network Functions on Demand), standard x86 servers for customer sites large and small that can run networking software from different vendors.

AT&T expects most customers to operate hybrid WANs with both MPLS and broadband connections. With the SD-WAN service, the carrier can run these hybrid networks in a unified fashion and make sure the applications that the enterprises need most will get the performance they require.

AT&T has been at the forefront of implementing SDN in its own network and in services for its customers. The company expects one-third of its infrastructure to be software-defined by the end of this year.

2016-10-06 06:35 Stephen Lawson www.computerworld.com

70 /87 Skyrim And Fallout 4 Mod Support Coming To PS4 With Sony And Bethesda Ending Dispute At long last, Bethesda is bringing mod support for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition to PlayStation 4 players after working out an arrangement with Sony. That was the plan all along, of course, with Bethesda originally intending to bring modding to the PS4 back in June. But then Sony set up a roadblock by refusing to approve mods as Bethesda wanted to implement them. "Sony has informed us they not approve user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition," Bethesda stated a month ago. "Like you, we are disappointed by Sony's decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive. However, until Sony will allow us to offer proper mod support for PS4, that content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PlayStation 4 will not be available. "Now one month later, Sony and Bethesda have come to an agreement in regards to mods. Using Bethesda's Creation Kit, users will be able to modify and create their own content. The compromise is that user's won't be able to upload external assets with their PS4 mods, though they'll be able to use any assets that come with the game. "By creating a Bethesda.net account, you’ll be able to browse and try mods right from within the game. We are excited finally to get modding to our PlayStation fans who have supported us for so long. Modding has been an important part of our games for over 10 years, and we hope to do even more in the coming year for all our players, regardless of platform," Bethesda said. Mod support will first to Skyrim when it launches on October 28. After work is finished on Skyrim, Bethesda will get busy updating Fallout 4 to support mods, and also with 4K resolution support for Sony's forthcoming PlayStation 4 Pro console (Skyrim will support 4K game play, too).

2016-10-06 06:35 Paul Lilly hothardware.com

71 /87 The benefits of digital business process management with blockchain technology Business process management (BPM) and business process optimisation (BPO) are the two longest-standing and most efficient ways of managing processes with a focus on continual effective monitoring and improvement. The emergence of distributed and decentralised ledger technologies with smart contracts and the internet of things (IoT) can be instrumental in disrupting and revolutionising these business practices.

Distributed and decentralised systems such as blockchains can holistically manage steps and relationships where participants will share the same data source, such as financial relationships and transactions connected to each step. Security and accountability is factored in, as well as compliance with government regulations along with internal rules and processes. The result is consistency, reductions in costs and time delays, improved quality and reduced risks.

By integrating IoT with decentralised, distributed blockchain technology that incorporates smart contracts, BPM and BPO will enter a world where just about anything can be connected to communicate intelligently. Enterprises that embrace this phenomenon will be able to provide a better user experience and value-added services, as well as gain competitive advantage and differentiation.

The global and ongoing progression of digital transformation is a huge and complex challenge for any enterprise, no matter the size. Added to this complexity is the fact that some parts of a process are not executed by the enterprise itself.

Companies of all kinds are increasingly using technology partners, channel partners, contract manufacturers, warehousing and logistics partners, service partners and other outside services to handle all or part of a business process. Most enterprises come to view these partners as the extended enterprise, and look for ways to have tight integration and collaboration with them.

2016-10-06 06:30 Bruce Hughes www.computerweekly.com

72 /87 IT moves to open workspaces, but not everyone is happy Five minutes. That's all it took for Christian Lang to uproot from the workspace he'd occupied for the past 18 months and move to a new spot. No heavy lifting, no furniture to move, no desk to pack up.

Smart TVs and interactive whiteboard walls enhance team spaces at Axxess. “You gain efficiency and productivity,” says CTO Andrew Olowu of the open office layout.

"The openness we have allows us to fluidly move between spots without causing much friction," says Lang, a software engineer at Dallas-based home health software developer Axxess. Lang made the move last summer so he could sit alongside the firm's mobile team, after realizing a few weeks into a new initiative that he'd be more efficient and productive if they were all together.

By moving, he eliminated any lag in getting answers, as sometimes happens even when messaging over the in-house chat function. When the project's over, Lang says, he'll simply move again.

Like a growing cadre of companies of all sizes and specialties, Axxess has fully embraced the open office concept, adopting a physical environment with few closed-off spaces or walls between its employees, who number about 250.

"We want a free flow of information," says Andrew Olowu, CTO at Axxess, which was ranked the No. 1 small organization on Computerworld 's 100 Best Places to Work in IT list for 2016. "There's no natural transfer of knowledge from one group to another when they're in cubicles. In an open office, where stakeholders sit next to each other, you create a culture where creativity and serendipity happen. "

Citrix Systems' "huddle spaces" for small-group collaboration are equipped with video capabilities that let workers easily include remote colleagues.

In the past decade, open workspaces have become inextricably associated with Silicon Valley startups seeking office environments that matched their casual styles and appealed to millennial workers' ideals about non-hierarchical organizations. The concept since has spread to well- established corporations including AT&T, GE and KMPG, which have moved at least some parts of their organizations to open space.

Managers and team leaders believe an open environment fosters community and supports collaboration better than a traditional office-and-cubicle setup, but not all employees are onboard, particularly those who prefer a quieter, less visually stimulating environment in which to concentrate.

What's needed, both sides agree, is a range of workspace options that address organizational goals while still meeting employees' needs -- meaning physical space that allows for private meetings and quiet concentration in addition to community seating. Even more important: Corporate culture likewise has to value collaboration and innovation if IT organizations are to truly reap the benefits of open space. Ready to start breaking down the cubicle walls? Read on for lessons learned from six companies that have moved their tech workforce out into the open.

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2016-10-06 06:30 Mary K www.computerworld.com

73 /87 Business transformation proves to be a catalyst for cybersecurity spending According to the GSISS survey, 59 percent of respondents say they are boosting their security spending as a result of their increased use of digital technologies, and retooling their business models to provide customers, employees, and partners evermore digital services and apps. These security efforts include increased investments in cloud computing environments, data monitoring, as well as managed security services. The survey was conducted online from April 4, 2016 to June 3, 2016.

The survey found the cybersecurity spending priorities for respondents for the next 12 months to be considerable: improved collaboration within the business (51 percent), secure changing business models (46 percent), and secure their IoT deployments (46 percent).

The broad business adoption of cloud computing outside of software development and IT continues to remain strong. While IT, not surprisingly, at 63 percent is the single largest business unit that runs functions in the cloud, others such as finance (32 percent), marketing and sales (34 percent), customer service (34 percent), and operations (35 percent) are catching up in how many business functions they run within cloud-based environments.

As these enterprise adoption trends toward cloud, mobile, and IoT accelerate, so does the impact they each have on security spending. “Security spending tends to be driven by threat changes in the short run, business technology changes take longer to impact spend, and the increased use of cloud is having the biggest impact,” says John Pescatore, director, emerging security trends at the SANS Institute.

Javvad Malik, security advocate at AlienVault and former security analyst at 451 Research, adds that part of the trend underway includes using cloud, mobile, APIs, and data to improve customer experience in intuitive ways. As a result, IT security operating models have had to change, or adjust to take into account this new reality. Perhaps the biggest change this has incurred in is abstracting security controls from the technology and more importantly away from the customer,” Malik says. How is this being done? Malik says through increased investments in monitoring, behavioral analysis, and awareness tools. “These allow businesses to continually innovate without security being a bottleneck - and security can keep an eye on the operations,” he says. The survey found 63 percent of enterprises are running IT services in the cloud, 62 percent are using managed security services, and just over half say they are currently using security analytics.

How are enterprises managing their transitions to hybrid legacy, public, and private cloud environments? Those we interviewed based on these survey results unanimously said: not very well.

Martin Fisher, IT security manager at Northside Hospital and host of the Southern Fried Security Podcast, says IT operations teams are breaking into distinct groups that focus individually on internally hosted systems, while others focus on varied forms of cloud computing environments within their business. “Integration of these operations is difficult and I'm not sure, outside of the Unicorns, that anybody has it totally figured out, at least not in healthcare,” he adds.

Pescatore agrees: “Increased use of SaaS and IaaS is definitely causing breakage in security approaches. It is causing a shift in spend from security software and hardware to actually more skills on the security staff side,” he says, adding that it’s common for SANs to hear such challenges from large enterprises. The reason for this, Pescatore explains, is that “SaaS means you cannot use security agents or appliances except the big SaaS services, such as Outlook365, Google at Work, Salesforce, and so on. They have security features and APIs that can be used to extend security policies to the SaaS app -- but that takes a higher level of skill in the security staff. Similarly, in IaaS you can use software and virtual appliances,” he says.

Those higher-skilled, or nearly any-skilled actually, cybersecurity professionals are hard to come by — and continue to make enterprise IT security all the more challenging. Many enterprises are attempting to close their skills gap by turning to managed security services. According to the survey, 62 percent of respondents use security service providers to operate and enhance their IT security programs. The services they are outsourcing include authentication (64 percent), data loss prevention (61 percent), identity and access management (61 percent), real-time monitoring and analytics (55 percent), and threat intelligence (48 percent).

Malik added that enterprises have become more comfortable with outsourcing aspects of security, as well. “The irrational fear of cloud being insecure is being replaced by a more measured approach. Secondly, there's the skills gap issue. Most security teams in-house are so stretched, they don't have time to monitor and respond to all alerts — so shifting some of those tasks to a managed security services provider can help relieve some of the burden,” he said.

Fisher agrees on the skills shortage. According to Fisher, there are three primary trends underway driving the move to outsource: 1) extreme difficulty in obtaining and retaining qualified staff; 2) the infrastructures are complex and difficult to manage within the operating budgets of many organizations; 3) managed security services providers have matured to a point where there is more flexibility, for example hybrid security providers that manage the SIEM on your floor, than existed previously.

“My sense is that it's the functions that cannot be easily commoditized are staying in-house. For example ICS/SCADA and bio-medical security are very specialized that many folks would be uncomfortable outsourcing,” Fisher says. “But identity and access management is something that can likely be passed to a qualified partner. That line of what's commodity and what isn't is changing and dynamic so it's going to be challenging to make good decisions over the next couple of refresh cycles as a CISO,” advises Fisher.

Threat intelligence, data and information sharing came in big this year. Fifty-one percent of survey respondents say they use security data analytics to model cybersecurity threats and spot attacks underway. That thirst for data is another reason why enterprises are turning to cloud and outsourcing. Within those respondents that rely on managed security services, 55 percent say they rely on their providers for security monitoring and data analytics. And another benefit of these providers is their access to security operations and threat intelligence fusion centers.

Michael Echols, executive director and CEO at the International Association of Certified ISAOs (Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations), and former director at the cyber joint program management office at the U. S. Department of Homeland Security, believes enterprises are also increasingly warming up to the idea of cybersecurity information sharing. “There’s an opportunity to essentially share costs [from organizational data sharing]. With data sharing, you now have the advantage of the expertise that maybe one of your sharing partners has, or if there's someone in your particular community of interests, or region, or industry; if something is happening to them, it potentially is going to happen to you. You now have valuable threat intelligence,” says Echols.

There’s no doubt about that, and considering the acceleration of technological innovation that enterprises are adopting, and the determination and persistence of today’s attackers – CISOs need every edge they can find.

2016-10-06 06:27 George V www.itworld.com

74 /87 AMD outs HP desktop systems powered by 7th-gen Pro APU chips PIXEL POLISHER AMD has unveiled the HP EliteDesk 750 G3, the first PC line-up powered by the company's 7th-generation Bristol Ridge Pro APU chips.

The Pro APU is a CPU and GPU on a single chip designed for the kind of demanding business applications likely to be run by users of HP's EliteDesk 705 G3 desktops.

"We're delighted to offer 7th- generation AMD Pro processors in our new HP EliteDesk 705 G3 desktop series," said Guayente Sanmartin, VP of product management for commercial desktops at HP.

"We are delivering more performance, security and flexibility to give our enterprise customers peace of mind that allows them to focus on their business, not on IT complexity. " The Pro APU uses AMD's Secure Processor technology to boost data security. This contains an "independent hardware-based root of trust for secure boot, content protection and application security", and supports Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0.

AMD claimed that it delivers 14 per cent higher compute and 22 per cent higher graphics performance than the previous generation. It has open standards and CPU-agnostic DASH (desktop and mobile architecture for system hardware) manageability for easy integration and system management.

The HP EliteDesk 705 G3 series also includes HP's Sure Start BIOS and policy protections and TPM 2.0 data security.

The system comes in small form factor and mini form factor, delivering what HP described as "impressive value with uncompromising performance, security and manageability for an enterprise-class experience".

AMD said that Lenovo is also using the Pro APU chips, and that more devices will arrive soon. µ

2016-10-06 06:19 www.theinquirer.net

75 /87 Ready for Rift? Find out in seconds with the free Oculus compatibility checker The Connect 2016 virtual reality conference , taking place now in California, is showcasing the future of the Oculus Rift, which is facing stiff competition from the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR.

We're hoping to see some exciting announcements to sweeten the deal for existing Rift owners and new buyers, including price cuts and updates on the new controllers, but if you're tempted to open your wallet you'll want to be sure that your PC is up to the task first.

To make life easier, Oculus has released a free Compatibility Tool that quickly scans your system and lets you know whether your system meets the VR headset's requirements. Download and install the app , then decide whether you want to send system information to Oculus to help improve its software in the future. This includes innocuous information like your operating system and browser, but might also include your IP address and other apps and games installed on your PC.

The check itself takes under a minute, and once it's complete you'll see a list of ticks and/or crosses indicating whether your hardware and software meets the minimum requirements. You can expand each of these to see what you have currently installed, and anything you need to upgrade.

The Oculus Rift compatibility checker tells you whether your hardware and software meet the system requirements for the VR headset, and what to upgrade if it doesn't make the grade

Oculus also provides a link to its own range of premium Rift-ready PCs from ASUS, Dell, Alienware, Falcon Northwest and Lenovo, though you can also put together your own VR- capable system for under US$900, £800, AU$1,200.

Article continues below

2016-10-06 06:15 By Cat feedproxy.google.com

76 /87 Not so startling revelations of how a hacker broke in At the heart of every exploit, the vulnerability always lies in the target’s trust for attacker supplied input. This is true whether the attack is network-based or a hacker is trying to gain physical access to a specific location. To effectively mitigate risk, companies and individuals need to take the necessary precautions to keep data secure. The saying in the cybersecurity consulting industry is “trust, but verify.”

Mitigation works on the same principle. Companies and individuals need to verify that the link, person on the other end of the phone or information sent to their servers isn’t going to result in some unexpected error before allowing access. Joseph Hesse, director of the Labs division at Coalfire , offers 10 common ways hackers infiltrate secure systems.

At least one of your employees currently has a password that a hacker could easily guess (i.e. 'Fall2016!'). Unfortunately, passwords like this also meet policy guidelines, despite the well documented risks associated with using them. Though cliché, make sure your employees frequently update their passwords and keep them unique enough to avoid being breached.

Many employees use the same administrator passwords within their company’s system, which leaves the company vulnerable to cyber attacks. Unfortunately, many credential-theft techniques used to impersonate users are still alive and well. One common method is known as Pass-the- Hash. Using this technique, attackers can use these credentials to infiltrate and take over entire networks.

Spam filters do not prevent all phishing scams from getting through to your inbox. Additionally, employee mistakes continue to be one of the most common ways a company can be left vulnerable to a breach. Implementing products that help control where data can go can be effective, but not enough businesses are investing in employee education to help prevent breaches. To better protect your company, start employing better employee training and education practices so your employees understand their role in preventing cyber attacks. RELATED: How to avoid phishing attacks

Many USBs that are dropped by accident actually get plugged in out of curiosity for what could be found on the device. Unfortunately, some USBs house viruses that can be harmful to your computer. Bottom line: don’t plug in any unfamiliar devices into your computer or other hardware that contains sensitive or personal information.

This is the art of manipulating people or taking advantage of naivety so a person gives up confidential information. This tactic is used often because it is easier to exploit a person’s inclination to trust a source than it is to discover ways to hack a computer or software. Think about it in practical terms: would you rather ask someone for their password or hack their computer to find it?

RELATED: Social engineering: 7 signs that something is just not right

Even the best developers are sometimes rushed. When a product is rushed and has not received a proper security review, bad code goes unnoticed. This can be leveraged by hackers for an easy in.

RELATED: 7 ways DevOps benefits CISOs and their security programs

Without proper segmentation, hackers can move from system to system looking for valuable information to steal. Companies need to make sure that they have a secure network design that slows down the rate at which hackers can move through a network.

One of the easiest ways to move around a network is by exploiting the SMB protocol and other broadcast-based protocols. The SMB protocol vulnerability was patched by Microsoft more than a decade ago, but hackers recently found that there is a way to still exploit the hole in the system. This attack affects users using Windows.

Have an outdated system that you think the vendor is responsible for? If it is in your network, it becomes your responsibility. Keep your systems up to date.

This common way hackers get into a system occurs when someone actively chooses not to set a password to something on your network. It seems illogical in this day and age, but it still happens quite frequently. Check with your employees to ensure that they are protecting critical information.

2016-10-06 06:10 Ryan Francis www.itnews.com

77 /87 The Roku interview: Here's how the streaming-box builder is working through its app issues Some folks at Roku read my column last week about how the quality of its streaming video apps is falling behind other platforms.

To recap, too many Roku apps today rely on simple templates that aren’t flexible enough for modern streaming services. The PlayStation Vue Roku app, for instance, doesn’t allow for a channel grid or simultaneous playback and browsing, like the Amazon Fire TV version does. And Twitter has passed over the Roku platform entirely. Although it’s technically possible to build custom apps on Roku, it’s a time-consuming process, and many developers don’t bother. After that story went live, Roku reached out with some upcoming news, and an offer to explain in detail how it’s making the platform more hospitable for modern streaming apps. The strategy diverges sharply from other platforms like Apple TV—it’s more about accommodating low-cost hardware than enabling super-powerful apps —but there’s a certain logic to it.

Read on for the full rundown of how Roku is tackling its app issues.

Instead of moving away from template-based apps, Roku is doubling down with a new initiative called Roku Direct Publishing. Think of it as cookie-cutter app design taken to the extreme.

With RDP, content creators don’t need to develop an app at all; instead, they provide Roku with a content feed, and Roku automatically plugs that content into a template. These ready-made apps include advanced features like picking up where the viewer left off, suggestions on what to watch next, and predictive caching to make videos load faster. RDP also automatically indexes videos in Roku’s universal search engine and in Roku Feed , which lets users know when new videos are available.

“The content owner would be able to focus on creating great content and not have to worry about building an app and maintaining an app on the Roku platform,” said Roku’s general manager of content and services Steve Shannon.

For now, Roku is pitching this initiative to ad-supported video makers, including YouTube stars who want their own Roku channel, and web publishers such as Mashable, Rolling Stone, and US Weekly. Those publishers can handle the ads themselves (with Roku claiming 30 percent of the inventory for its own purposes), or they can have Roku deal with all the ads in exchange for 40 percent of the revenue.

The eventual plan is to add support for other business models, such as subscriptions, on- demand purchases, and TV Everywhere authentication. “Over time, we expect that the majority of our publishers will choose to go down the Direct Publisher route because of all the benefits that [are available],” said Roku’s director of product management Bill Shapiro.

In a way, RDP seems like a modern interpretation of the TV channel, in that each one behaves exactly the same way. Roku’s templates are supposed to be familiar in the same way that a cable box doesn’t expect you to learn a new interface every time you change channels. That’s not always the case with streaming-video apps.

“We know that one of the reasons folks find Roku so easy to use, and why we’re sort of famous in that regard, is because our apps are consistent, and they’re not all over the map,” Shannon said.

At the same time, Roku realizes the template model won’t work for all video providers. The interface isn’t flexible enough for streaming bundles like PlayStation Vue and Sling TV , or for imaginative new apps like Twitter. And while some streaming services could fit into a template, they might not want their apps to look like everyone else’s.

“You get it both ways out there,” said Shannon. “There are some who are really focused on consistency across their app base, and then there are others who don’t want to spend the money to develop an app and appreciate benefits of having consistency within the Roku ecosystem, as opposed to consistency across their own ecosystem.”

For the former group, Roku has been quietly working on a new programming framework called SceneGraph, which is supposed to give developers more room to customize their app layouts. Roku says the screenshot from Cord Cutters News that I included in last week’s column is an example of the type of layout SceneGraph enables.

Roku released a beta of SceneGraph last November and provided samples for developers early this year. The company says it’s still working out the kinks before pushing the new framework more broadly, but several apps are already taking advantage, including CBS Sports, Tribeca Short List, History Vault, and iHeartRadio. Shannon said the kind of features Sony offers in its PlayStation Vue app on other platforms are “absolutely” possible with SceneGraph on Roku.

“We’re making a big change, and that change is moving from this template-based approach to a more fully free-form layout approach,” Shannon said.

Even with SceneGraph, Roku apps still have limitations. It’s not currently possible, for instance, to have two videos playing side-by-side, like the MLB.tv and NCAA March Madness apps can on Apple TV. And within Roku’s framework, apps might still look and act slightly different than they do on other platforms.

In extremely rare cases, Roku has allowed video partners to build fully custom apps using a native development kit. This allows Netflix, for instance, to create a Roku app that behaves identically to the Netflix apps on other TV devices.

But outside of game development and a tiny number of high-profile video partners, it’s unlikely that Roku will open up native development to all app makers. Shannon noted that the native development kit doesn’t include any of the tools that assist in video app creation, such as DRM systems, ad mechanisms, and the actual video player. App developers would have to recreate those elements on their own.

Roku could arguably offer some of those tools in a native development kit, but Shannon says there’s another reason the company has discouraged native apps in general: They’d likely be slower on low-cost hardware unless the developers spent lots of time and energy on optimizations, like the kind Roku already does for its own BrightScript language.

“We have hundreds of engineers working on optimizing the code to every chipset, and so it’s untenable for most companies to be able to replicate what we do at that level,” Shannon said. “Not untenable for a Netflix, for example, but untenable for most companies.”

Don’t forget, Roku’s entire business hinges on getting its operating system onto as many TV devices as possible, from the $130 Roku Ultra set-top all the way down to the $30 Roku Express and budget-priced Roku smart TVs. Setting boundaries on app development is what allows those apps to run smoothly. To Roku’s credit, we have seen other devices like the first- generation Amazon Fire TV Stick stumble on more demanding video apps. Roku’s philosophy does have drawbacks, however; in the long run, a strictly high-end platform like Apple TV will allow for better apps than the best Roku player, because it won’t be weighed down by the needs of lower-end siblings. Meanwhile, Google’s Cast technology (as seen in Chromecast ) skirts this issue entirely by offloading navigation to your more powerful phone or tablet, the trade-off being the lack of a proper remote control.

But at least the philosophy makes sense for Roku’s business goals. To that end, Roku’s app limitations aren’t so much a liability as they are a necessary compromise.

Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter to get this column and other cord-cutting news, insights, and deals delivered to your inbox.

2016-10-06 06:00 Jared Newman www.pcworld.com

78 /87 CRN Exclusive: SD-WAN Startup Viptela Launches First- Ever Partner Program With Assured Margins, No Levels - Page: 1 When creating Viptela’s first-ever partner program, Anthony D'Angelo – a former channel leader at HP, Westcon and RSA – set out to fix the failed channel initiatives from his pervious employers that hindered solution provider’s profitability.

“I’ve seen many channel fails over my 20 year plus career – conflicts with direct sales team, complicated onboarding, the vendors request for the partner to put ‘skin in the game,’ that I’ve heard over and over again,” said D'Angelo, vice president of Worldwide Channel Sales for Viptela. “The goal of this program was to create a program that absolutely disrupted what the status quo was. I set out specifically to create something from scratch and not do something just because that’s the way it’s had been done.”

The San Jose, Calif.-based SD-WAN startup launched its vForce Global Partner Program today that offers an assured margin program, a rapid onboarding process, “partner success” funding and a no direct sales strategy topped off with a 100 percent channel sales model.

[Related: Cisco And Dell EMC Will ‘Inevitably’ Hit VCE Architecture And Sales Crossroads ]

“It’s terrible when vendors sort of give you a haircut on margins on competitive deals. All the partners have heard, ‘We have to go skinny, so you have to go skinny,’” said D'Angelo. “So we created an assured margin program that really commits to our partners that if they are doing business development and bringing deals to us, that we will assure then a minimum margin. And that minimum margin could be as much as 20 percent.”

Even if Viptela increases discount levels, partner’s margins will not be affected, according to D’Angelo. “That’s a really big commitment and unique to the industry,” he said.

The program removes sales obstacles and bureaucracy for channel partners, according to D’Angelo, removing partner levels from vForce to instead focus on partners driving opportunities.

The program focuses on a streamlined and simplified onboarding approach as well as deal registration offerings aimed to boost partner profitability.

“Often time partners register deals and they still have to give up margins because there’s a partner competitor who has special pricing because of a tier or something like that and they have to give away margin to compete against a competitor that did not uncover the deal,” said D’Angelo. “We instituted a deal reg program that clearly differentiates from a profitability standpoint the partner that was driving the deal.”

Viptela’s vForce global program also includes a partner portal and funding around demand generation, marketing events and enablement activities.

Nearly 50 solutions providers have already joined the SD-WAN program including World Wide Technology, Logicalis and Alphaserve Technologies.

2016-10-06 06:00 Mark Haranas www.crn.com

79 /87 Vue.js JavaScript framework revs up rendering Vue.js, which has been positioned as a rival to Facebook's popular React JavaScript library , has moved to a 2.0 release, featuring a redone rendering layer for better performance. The framework also is set to get a push in the mobile realm.

The upgrade to Vue, a JavaScript framework for building UIs, has a rendering layer that was rewritten using a lightweight virtual DOM implementation forked from the snabbdom library.

"On top of that, Vue's template compiler is able to apply some smart optimizations during compilation, such as analyzing and hosting static sub trees to avoid unnecessary diffing on re- render," Evan You, who has been the principal developer of Vue, said. "The new rendering layer provides significant performance improvements compared to v1 and makes Vue 2.0 one of the fastest frameworks out there. " Also, version 2.0's template syntax remains mostly compatible with 1.0 with minor deprecations, said You.

The upgrade supports server-side rendering, along with streaming and component-level caching, for fast renders. Libraries and tools including vue-router, vuex, vue-loader, and vueify have updated to support version 2.0. Vue core, vue-router and vuex 2.0, for state management, all have TypeScript typings shipped in npm packages. The Vue team has provided a migration guide and a CLI migration helper.

You also said engineers at Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba were working on a project called Weex , to render components written in a Vue-inspired syntax into a native mobile UI. Eventually, "Vue-inspired" will become "Vue-powered," according to You. "We have started an official collaboration to make Vue 2.0 the actual JavaScript runtime framework for Weex," he said. "This will enable users to write universal Vue components that can be reused across Web, iOS and Android. "

2016-10-06 06:00 Paul Krill www.infoworld.com

80 /87 7 big data tools to ditch in 2017 We’ve been on this big data adventure for a while. Not everything is still shiny and new anymore. In fact, some technologies may be holding you back. Remember, this is the fastest-moving area of enterprise tech -- so much so that some software acts as a placeholder until better bits arrive.

Those upgrades -- or replacements - - can make the difference between a successful big data initiative and one you'll be living down for the next few years. Here's are some elements of the stack you should start to think about replacing:

What's left? Some technology is showing its age, but complete viable alternatives have not arrived yet. Think ahead about replacing these:

With an eye to the future, it's time to cull the herd of technologies that looked promising but have grown either obsolete or rusty. This is my list. What else should I add?

2016-10-06 06:00 Andrew C www.infoworld.com

81 /87 The new BYOD backlash hides an ulterior motive Recent research from IDC shows a clear picture: IT organizations are increasingly unhappy about BYOD and now want to curtail or end the practice.

Their stated concern: The costs are too high and the savings too low. But those concerns are misguided and likely masking a secret agenda to regain control over mobile devices, not to save money. Face it: BYOD was never popular with IT.

BYOD was never about saving money, except for CEOs who wanted employees to pick up the cost of smartphones and tablets - - even cell plans -- though they were used for business advantage. Many analysts and pundits warned these CEOs years ago they wouldn't get real savings in this cost-transfer attempt. If your CEO didn't listen, don't blame BYOD.

In some cases, BYOD does increase costs -- usually because IT or executive management did it wrong.

I want to be clear: I don't think BYOD is the right approach for every company and certainly not for every employee at every company. It makes sense in some circumstances, and its use should be thought through carefully. The notion of "forced BYOD" -- where everyone must have a smartphone available for work use -- has long troubled me.

But three big reasons to support opt-in BYOD for at least some employees are the following:

The cost of managing a BYOD is the same as for a corporate-provisioned device. They use the same management and security tools and policies, after all -- or they should. If you're paying more to secure and manage a BYOD unit versus a corporate-provisioned device, something is very wrong in your administration.

Your cellular costs should be lower for BYOD users because you are sharing the costs with them, not paying the full freight. You'd need a massive user base to get carrier discounts for an all-corporate-provisioned approach that make your total cost no more than if you split the cost with your users. That's unlikely at most companies.

Where BYOD ends up costing too much falls into two areas:

I suspect much of the proclaimed IT dissatisfaction with BYOD really reflects a desire to regain control over mobile devices, using false arguments around cost and security.

If your goal is to control all user endpoints, then say that and pay for it. It's easy -- and cheap -- to block home users, whether they work with PCs, Macs, smartphones, or tablets. No one has a right to BYOD or even a corporate-provisioned smartphone, after all.

But if your goal is not total control, BYOD should be part of your portfolio -- and a part done with an intelligent framework based on a risk/reward calculation.

2016-10-06 06:00 Galen Gruman www.infoworld.com

82 /87 Taking down the internet: possible but how probable? The hack of the Democratic National Committee this past summer, allegedly by Russia, prompted a political firestorm, but didn’t cause even a ripple in the US economy.

But imagine the economic firestorm that would result if online attackers brought the entire internet down, even temporarily.

You may not have to imagine it, according to Bruce Schneier, CTO of Resilient Systems, cryptography guru, blogger and international authority on internet security. In a recent post titled, "Someone is Learning How to Take Down the Internet," he wrote that he had been told by multiple sources that, ““someone has been probing the defenses of … some of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work.”

But according to some of his fellow security experts, you don’t really need to imagine it, since the chances of the internet really being taken down are remote. And even if it happens, it won’t cause catastrophic damage. Several commenters on Schneier’s post wondered why even hostile actors would want to take down the internet, since if they do, they won’t be able to use it either.

Whatever the reality, it has prompted some energetic discussion.

Schneier said the probing has been done mainly with calibrated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, which overwhelm a site with so much data that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic.

DDoS attacks are nothing new – activist and criminal hackers use them all the time. What distinguishes these is their profile.

Schneier said he had spoken with leaders of several companies – who all demanded anonymity – that operate elements of the “backbone” of the internet, and they had all told him similar stories.

“These attacks are significantly larger than the ones they're used to seeing,” he wrote. “They last longer. They're more sophisticated. And they look like probing.”

That, he said both in his post and a later interview with CSO, is because of their “style” – over time, the volume of the attack increases, to the point of the defense system’s failure. They also employ multiple attack vectors, “so they force the companies to use all their defenses at once.”

He suggested it was the digital version of what the US did during the Cold War, when the US would fly high-altitude planes over the Soviet Union to force them to turn their air defense systems on, which would then let the US map their capabilities.

“We didn’t do it because we’re evil,” he said. “We just wanted to know – just in case.”

He said these attacks look like they’re coming from a nation-state – probably China. While some responses to his post have said it may be the US National Security Agency (NSA) doing a sort of “stress test” on the internet, Schneier doubts that. “It feels like China,” he said. “You can hide the origin of a lot of attacks, but it is harder to hide the origins of a DDoS. And this doesn’t seem like their (the NSA’s) style.”

Dan Kaminsky, security researcher and chief scientist at White Ops, agreed. “I don't think the NSA is doing it, because it'd very much surprise me if they needed to,” he said.

Schneier also pointed to a recent quarterly report from Verisign , the registrar for many popular top-level Internet domains, like .com and .net., which reported a 75 percent increase in attacks, year over year, with an average peak attack size of 17.37Gbps (Gigabits per second), an increase of 214 percent. That pales in comparison with the recent record 620Gbps DDoS attack against the website of security blogger Brian Krebs , and Schneier said the Verisign report doesn’t have the level of detail he got from the anonymous industry leaders he spoke with, but he said, “the trends are the same.”

He added that since his blog post, he has heard from three other companies that support the Internet’s “backbone,” and they have also told him they are seeing same thing.

So how worried should the US be? Is this just some cyber Cold War maneuvering, or a potentially catastrophic threat?

Most experts say they think it needs attention, but see it more as maneuvering than an imminent increase in danger to the integrity of the internet.

Sam Curry, chief product officer at Cybereason, said based on his observations, “risk levels haven't changed. It's an interesting hypothesis that needs more data points, but watch out for confirmation bias going forward.”

There is little disagreement, however, that a massive DDoS attack could disable portions, or even all, of the internet for some period of time.

Kaminsky called Schneier a “highly credible source,” and said he believes some hackers actually can take down the internet, in part because, “the damage from cyberattacks keeps growing and the risk perceived by attackers keeps shrinking.”

This, he said, applies especially to nation-states, which have figured out that, “while their militaries might be trivially overrun, their hackers aren't.

“Cyberwar has become like real war, except you can wage it, and possibly win it, in the sense that you can extract political concessions not to fight it at all,” he said. “And the capital investment is tiny – no tanks, no fuel, just talent, time, food, and access.”

It has also become easier to launch much larger DDoS attacks because so many internet of things (IoT) devices can be so easily compromised and used as part of a botnet. Krebs, in a post on the DDoS attack that took down his site , noted that they are, “protected with weak or hard- coded passwords. Most of these devices are available for sale on retail store shelves for less than $100, or – in the case of routers – are shipped by ISPs to their customers.”

Paul Vixie, CEO of Farsight Security and previously president, chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), agrees that the internet is vulnerable, but always has been. “The threat is old and well known,” he said. “The internet was built in a lab for eggheads who all trusted each other, and so it has no defense against its own users.”

But he said he thinks Schneier needed to be much more precise about what he meant about taking down the internet. “Down for who, and for how long?” he asked. “There's no way to break the internet permanently, since the same activities that gave rise to it and which reinvent it every day will eventually recreate a new infrastructure that works mostly the same way the old one did.”

Gary McGraw, CTO of Cigital, sees it much the same way. “The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war,” he said. “It was set up so the network could remain alive, even if parts of it get blown up. Even if the ‘great server in the sky’ got taken down, it would be replaced instantly.” Schneier said he agrees with much of that. “I’m not convinced it will go down,” he said, “and if it does, it will be temporary. A DDoS attack needs the internet to work. It eventually eats its own tail.”

But even a temporary takedown could cause great damage, Vixie said. “In a thought experiment, a bunch of us got together and brainstormed ways to make the internet unavailable to the G-20 for 72 hours.

“This was because an attack of that kind, had it been pulled off on Sept. 10, 11, and 12 of 2001, would have vastly amplified the terror and confusion of the terrorist attacks on 9/11,” he said.

McGraw agrees that the potential for damage is very real. “If you have a critical system, you need to pay attention,” he said. “I’d hate to be having remote surgery when the internet goes down and there’s a scalpel sticking out of my chest. “

But he said horror stories like planes falling out of the sky, “aren’t going to happen. That’s ridiculous.”

Some comments on Schneier’s blog have suggested that the DDoS attack isn’t the real attack – that it is meant to be the digital version of “covering fire,” so the hackers can get something like an advanced persistent threat (APT) into a system without detection.

“I thought of that,” Schneier said, “but I didn’t write about it because it would be too speculative.”

What to do about it draws even more of a mixed response. Schneier has said he doesn’t know what should be done, but did call for a “national strategy” on DDoS attacks, “because a lot of this is critical infrastructure. The question is what do we do when critical infrastructure is in private hands. We don’t have a good way of dealing with it.”

Kaminsky said he thinks the US needs, “an NIH (National Institute of Health) for cyber.” He also called for more resources. “More nerds, more resources, more structure, absolute bureaucratic firewall against the offense guys,” he said.

Israel Barak, CISO at Cybereason, said it will take more of what Congress and the Obama administration have called for with the Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA) , but which still is not a reality.

Rapid detection and response, “requires tight cooperation, integration and information sharing between a large number of Internet Service Providers, CERT organizations, law enforcement, and government agencies,” he said, “backed up by supporting government regulation related to the permitted scope of lawful interception and privacy regulations. We’re very far from this today.”

2016-10-06 06:00 Taylor Armerding www.itnews.com

83 /87 : Small size and midrange specs at a high price. Has Sony taken its eye off the ball? By

Henry Burrell | 28 mins ago See full specs

£379

Price comparision from , and manufacturers

The best smartphones of 2016 are generally huge. The 5.5in screen size of phones such as the iPhone 7 Plus or the OnePlus 3 are becoming the norm, where just a few years ago, we thought the 3.5in iPhone 4 was huge.

Times change, but Sony has been keeping happy those of us who prefer a smartphone to be small and usable with one hand; compact. The Sony Xperia X Compact is the latest of the company’s sub-5in handsets, but its sits in a confusing line up of devices.

Alongside it are the Xperia XZ , Xperia X and Xperia XA. Those phones are, respectively, high- end, upper mid-range and lower mid-range. So where does the Xperia X Compact fit in?

We break down why the world needs an Xperia X Compact, and, more importantly, if it’s you who needs one.

Sony is now stocking the Xperia X Compact for £379. View it here.

The Sony Xperia X Compact is available in the UK SIM free and on contract from Carphone Warehouse. Plans start at £28 per month on a 24 month contract, or you can buy it outright for the RRP of £359.99.

View the Sony Xperia X Compact at Carphone Warehouse .

While not immediately obvious, the Xperia X Compact is quite a departure in design from last year’s Sony Xperia Z5 Compact. Sony has taken the 4.6in screen phone and updated it – or has it? The Z5 Compact had a stylish frosted glass rear panel and rounded metal edges that gave it a premium look and feel, and it’s one we expected with its £429 price tag. The attention to detail was great, down to the metal rim around the side-edge fingerprint sensor.

A year on, the Xperia X Compact retails for £379, £50 less, while the Z5 Compact is available for just £349. As well as in the specs, which we will get onto, the design and build quality has taken a hit. Thankfully the clever fingerprint scanner is present, and works excellently, but there’s no thoughtful metallic finishes. Gone are the glass and metal. Instead, the X Compact is completely glossy plastic in body, with only the top and bottom flat edges retaining a sniff of the glass.

The glossy body to our ‘Mist Blue’ unit was smeary with prints in seconds flat and also picked up hairline scratches very easily. They are hard to see, but more than anything the blue colour of the phone is an acquired taste. Some will think it kitsch and retro, others will definitely not. We recommend either looking at one in store, or opting for the black or white models.

It’s a shame, as this all makes the phone feel distinctly blocky, and it is; it’s 9.5mm thick. Another popular sub-5in phone is the iPhone SE , which is 7.6mm. It doesn’t sound much, but it’s noticeable. Very few smartphones are nearly 1cm thick these days. Overall the X Compact measures 129 x 65 x 9.5mm and weighs 135g.

The rear has a camera and flash, with the two speaker grills at the top and bottom of the front face of the device, making video viewing volumes surprisingly decent.

Despite this though, it’s still a pleasure to use, particularly one-handed, a rarity after smartphones got stretched to nearly 6in. Even with our smaller hands, it’s easy to unlock and reply to messages, swipe down the notification tray or play games with one hand. Along the right edge below the fingerprint scanner is the volume rocker and also a dedicated camera button (a long-time welcome Sony addition).

The 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top edge, while the Compact welcomes USB-C connectivity to the bottom edge. On the left edge is the SIM and microSD tray that still, infuriatingly, shuts down the phone if you take it out. This doesn’t happen on any other phone and it’s frustrating if you want to swap out a memory card or change SIM.

Despite these points, it doesn’t really matter it’s a tad chunky when it’s this conveniently small. It’s just a shame it’s not as premium as Sony is capable of.

Along with the design compromises, the specs of the Xperia X compact sre clue to its lowered price from last year’s model. The Z5 Compact had a high end Snapdragon 810 processor with 2GB RAM, whereas the X Compact has the decidedly midrange Snapdragon 650. It does bump the RAM to a respecatable 3GB though, which we’ll explore in our benchmarking of the phone.

This helps us to decipher Sony’s odd product line. While not overtly clear, we see the X Compact as the smaller version of the Xperia X. All that’s changed from the big brother/little brother aesthetic of the old Z range is that both versions now have midrange processors. This means the Xperia XZ, released at the same time as the X Compact, is now the high-end option.

The Xperia XA falls in at the lowest end of the range. It’s a confusing line up for consumers, and enough to put a lot of people off. It’s frustrating also because we very much want to recommend the Compact as in previous years, but Sony is making it harder for us to do so given it now has an inferior processor to the flagship Xperia XZ. It’s odd that the Xperia X even exists, now just 6 months after its launch.

With the confusing product line out of the way, the X Compact actually performs very well. The display is an IPS LCD with 319ppi and a resolution of 1280x720. It looks pin-sharp, perhaps due to its smaller size, but we have no complaints on its quality for a phone of this price and specs. Video streaming load times are good, and apps display with vibrancy.

The screen brightness is excellent too, and didn’t seem to massively affect the battery life. Sony has a good track record for battery life, though it doesn’t claim the magical two days of use like it has before. Having said that with fairly heavy use using the phone daily for a week, we regularly went through a whole working day and well past lunch the following day before reaching for the charger. Sony still impresses in this regard, which is admirable given the relatively small 2,700mAh battery.

As ever, Sony boasts of the 23Mp camera sensor in the phone, though it tends to make less of its Carl Zeiss affiliation these days. As we found with the Xperia X, this phone’s big brother, the software and processing isn’t as good as the sensor. This means you get perfectly adequate smartphone pictures, but nothing out of the ordinary. Landscapes come out sharp and bright but close up photos, particularly in lower light, are a tad grainy.

It’s a shame that Sony has seemingly dropped the waterproofing of its phones for good. The X Compact is not waterproof, and nor, now, are the rest of the Xperia X line. Waterproofing and excellent battery life were Sony’s great market differentiators. Now they have just the latter, and there are some competitors catching up in that regard also. This ultimately means we can’t recommend the X Compact as highly as we might have, despite it being a good handset.

Like many other Android devices at the moment, the Xperia X Compact runs Marshmallow 6.0.1, and it runs it very well. It may receive an upgrade to Nougat 7.0, but that is unconfirmed. Sony’s Android overlay is not too far from stock Android, but you definitely notice the tweaks. While the app tray and notifications menu are normal, the icons for basic apps like texts and phone are different, while the Sony software onboard won’t be to everyone’s tastes. The speed of the phone in day-to-day use was never an issue.

Some apps you can uninstall, like the PlayStation app, but others like News and What’s New?, a media suggestion app, feel obtuse and unneeded, and you can only disable them, not uninstall. Having said that, we still prefer using Sony phones to the highly altered EMUI OS that Huawei use with Android and even in some instances it works better than Samsung’s TouchWiz.

The only thing you may find is that you make typing errors, particularly if you have big hands. Even with smaller hands, we found tha using two thumbs to type quick texts actually saw us making a fair few errors. Perhaps we used to bigger phones, but Sony ships the X Compact with the SwiftKey keyboard as default. We found it better to switch to using Google Keyboard, which is also preinstalled. Daily operation of the phone could be fiddly if you’re used to a bigger screen, so again, we’d suggest trying one out in store if you are unsure.

The Sony Xperia X Compact is an odd little smartphone. On the one hand its build quality, lack of waterproofing and lack of a standout feature make it harder to recommend compared to the older Xperia Z5 Compact. However, if you want a sub-5in Android smartphone with excellent battery life it’s the best current option out there. For all its flaws, we also kept coming back to the phone largely due to its sheer portability. Just don’t buy the blue one.

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2016-10-06 06:00 Henry Burrell www.pcadvisor.co.uk

84 /87 Can Joker save the 'Suicide Squad' extended cut? " Suicide Squad " wasn't received as well as Warner Bros. would have liked, but perhaps the newly announced extended cut could turn things around. The cut, to be digitally released on November 15 ahead of a December 13 Blu-ray launch, could remedy an issue some had with the original: The conspicuously small role of The Joker.

Though it didn't hit the commercial heights of some of the flicks in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Suicide Squad" was no box office slouch. The film made over $730 million worldwide, and is in the top 50 domestic grossing films of all time.

2016-10-06 05:57 Daniel Van www.cnet.com

85 /87 Are you willing to pay $200 for Oculus Touch controllers? Apple has started shown ads in the iOS App Store for US users. Searching for popular terms like "taxi," "calendar," or "to do list" delivers a banner advert for promoted apps above the search results. The company announced plans for this earlier...

86 /87 Salesforce CEO on Twitter acquisition: 'We look at everything, but pass on most' There’s an Oculus Connect event coming up today, and the likeliest subject of the presentation will be the pricing and availability of the long-delayed Oculus Touch controllers. Somewhat helpfully, somewhat unreliably, Amazon UK has listed both a...

One of this year’s most profound and challenging video games is now something you can play on your phone. That Dragon, Cancer, which launched on PC and Mac in early January, is available on iOS starting today.

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2016-10-06 05:39 James Vincent www.theverge.com

87 /87 14 portrait photography tips you'll never want to forget Portrait photography tips can run the gamut from simple tweaks to your camera settings to the seemingly impossible task of getting children to stay still.

Although many photographers upgrade to a decent DSLR to give them more control when they take family portraits or pictures of friends, getting great shots of people is always a challenge. The difference between amateur and professional portraits can be vast. So we've compiled this list of 14 of the most important portrait photography tips for any photographer to know.

We'll start off with the basics on aperture, shutter speed and lens choice, then move on to focusing and photo composition techniques, before showing you how to use natural light and reflectors to dramatically improve your results.

We'll then discuss some of the more advanced portrait photography tips, such as the benefits of using flashguns and other accessories when shooting portraits.

Whether you're taking portraits of your friends or you've been commissioned to photograph a family, and whether you're shooting in a pristine studio or outside in your local park, the helpful advice below will help you become a better portrait photographer.

More often than not this assumption comes out right, but a metering system can struggle when a frame is dominated by areas of extreme brightness or darkness.

When shooting portraits, light skin tones can easily trick the camera into underexposing the shot. You'll notice this more when shooting full-face photos or when there's lots of white in the scene - brides at weddings are a prime example.

While the camera has taken a balanced reading for the scene, it's left the model too dark in the frame

This can be quickly corrected though with your camera's Exposure Compensation controls. To begin with, try dialling in up to +1 stop of positive Exposure Compensation to lighten up people's faces. Review your shots, and if you feel you they need to be lightened further, increase this further.

Dialling in an exposure compensation of +2.3 stops, it has correctly exposed the face, but some background details are blown out. That's fine, we can't have it both ways…

When shooting portraits, it's best to set a wide aperture (around f/2.8-f/5.6) to capture a shallow depth of field, so the background behind your subject is nicely blurred, making them stand out better.

Shoot in Aperture Priority mode to control depth of field; in this mode your DSLR will helpfully set the shutter speed for a correct exposure.

If the model's face is slightly side-on to the camera, a wide aperture may blur one of the eyes. This can look a little strange, so consider stopping down to f/5.6 to keep both eyes sharp

Specialist portrait lenses tend to have even wider maximum apertures (from f/1.4 to f/2.8) in order to blur backgrounds further.

Fast lenses are ideal for portraits. The difference between f/2.8 (left) and f/5.6 (right) doesn't seem much, but the wider aperture blurs background detail much more effectively

When setting shutter speed, factor in your lens's focal length otherwise camera-shake (and blurred results) will become an issue.

As a general rule, make sure your shutter speed is higher than your effective focal length. For example, at 200mm use a 1/250 sec shutter speed or faster.

This also means you can get away with slower shutter speeds when using a wide-angle lens - such as 1/20sec with an 18mm focal length.

While it won't help if your subject is moving around quickly, don't forget to use your camera's anti-shake system. While some camera systems have this built-in around the sensor, of camera systems prefer to have the system in the lens - the benefit being that you can see the effect in the viewfinder.

Not every lens will feature this technology though, but if you have it - use it. You'll be able to shoot handheld at much lower shutter speeds than you would otherwise normally be able to do and still come away with pin-sharp shots.

People move around a lot as they're photographed, not to mention blink and constantly change their facial expressions - and there's nothing worse than a photo of somebody half-blinking or gurning instead of smiling!

To avoid these problems, and to prevent motion blur appearing, you'll need to use a fast shutter speed.

This will also help to ensure sharp shots and avoid camera-shake because more often than not you'll be shooting portraits handheld.

While in Aperture Priority mode and maintaining a wide aperture, to increase your shutter speed simply increase your ISO (from ISO100 to ISO400, say).

In low light (indoors and outside), you may need to increase it to ISO1,600, 3,200 or even 6,400. A little grain is infinitely better than a blurry, useless photo.

Your choice of lens has a big impact on your portrait photos. For portraits with visual impact a wide-angle lens is a must. Shooting from a low angle will make your subject taller than they actually are. This is a great technique for fooling the eye and changing the perspective of objects and people. However, be careful not to go too close, as you might see some distortion, which isn't flattering at all! To add even more drama to a wide-angle shot, simply try tilting the camera to an angle.

When using a medium telephoto such as 85mm or 105mm, the model is still the main subject in the scene, but the background plays an important part in the image - the steps in the shot above appear out of focus and act as another point of interest. Always pay attention to what's going on in the background.

A telephoto lens like a 70-200mm f/2.8 is one of the best tools for creating stunning portraits. Enabling you to zoom in closer to focus more on your subject, you can then reduce the amount of background and foreground distractions on display.

2016-10-06 05:39 By Digital feedproxy.google.com

Total 87 articles.

Created at 2016-10-06 18:37