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DC5m United States IT in english 73 articles, created at 2016-12-15 16:01 articles set mostly positive rate 5.2

1 1.0 Yahoo announces over a billion user accounts compromised in security hacks (6.44/7) Not only is this separate from the attack disclosed earlier this year, which affected 500 million people, Yahoo had no idea it had happened until contacted by outside law enforcement officials. 2016-12-15 08:30 3KB www.extremetech.com

2 5.3 Trump meets the tech industry's leaders What went on behind the closed doors of the president elect's meeting with Silicon (3.07/7) Valley bigwigs 2016-12-15 08:26 5KB www.itpro.co.uk

3 1.8 | 20 best phones 2016/2017 UK: Best smartphone reviews including best Android phones, iPhones and (1.09/7) unlocked or SIM-free smartphones - best mobile phone reviews What's the best phone? The best smartphone is the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, but there are 19 other best mobile phones in our round-up of the best phones 2016/2017. We reveal the best Android phones, best iPhones and best Windows phones. Best phone reviews. 2016-12-15 09:00 6KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

4 11.1 The best instant cameras in 2016 Perfect for party snappers or retro artists 2016-12-15 08:25 6KB feedproxy.google.com

(1.02/7)

5 0.8 California says Uber autonomous car test needs a permit first

(1.02/7) The California Department of Motor Vehicles has asked Uber Technologies to first get a permit for testing its self-driving cars on the roads of San Francisco, a task the company has so far refused to do. 2016-12-15 07:44 3KB www.computerworld.com

6 7.1 Web-friendly Smalltalk gets JavaScript upgrades The open source Amber derivative bridges Smalltalk syntax to JavaScript code 2016-12-15 07:00 2KB www.infoworld.com (1.02/7)

7 5.6 Win-win: Open-source. Net pays off for devs By open-sourcing. Net Core, Microsoft is reaping the rewards -- as are the developers 2016-12-15 07:00 4KB www.computerworld.com (1.02/7) 8 6.7 Your Pebble watch should work for at least another year

(1.02/7) And some features may work beyond that 2016-12-15 06:07 2KB feedproxy.google.com

9 5.3 The 10 best tablets you can buy in 2016 The best iPad, Android and Kindle tablets you can buy in 2016 2016-12-15 05:03 7KB feedproxy.google.com (1.02/7)

10 2.3 | Best mid-range smartphones 2016/2017 UK: The pick of Samsung, HTC, Sony and more without blowing the (0.07/7) bank If you've got a budget which won't stretch to a flagship handset, here are the best phones under £300. The best mid-range smartphones you can buy in the UK 2016/2017. 2016-12-15 09:13 2KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

11 1.3 | 20 best dual-SIM phones 2016/2017 UK: The best phones with two SIMs - How to add two SIMs to a phone (0.05/7) It can be difficult to find two-SIM phones in the UK, but we'll show you exactly where to look. We round up the 20 best dual-SIM phones you can buy in the UK today. Best dual-SIM phone buying advice. 2016-12-15 09:09 11KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

12 0.8 Nokia to buy network analytics vendor Deepfield to fight DDoS attacks Cloud providers and large enterprises don't know enough about what's going on in their networks, according to Nokia. 2016-12-15 09:37 2KB www.itworld.com

13 5.6 Best of CNET Magazine, 2016 ICYMI, here's a look at a few of our favorite stories from CNET Magazine, CNET's printed quarterly. 2016-12-15 09:30 1KB www.cnet.com

14 1.1 Why your tech is a pain in your neck. And back. And eyes All those blinky, flashy, beepy screens keep you connected at your body's expense. Here's why it's time to cut back. 2016-12-15 09:30 9KB www.cnet.com

15 4.0 Best invoicing software tools: What's the best billing and invoicing services for small businesses? What's the best invoicing service for small businesses? We look at the best invoicing software for business users. 2016-12-15 09:30 794Bytes www.computerworlduk.com

16 2.1 2017 IT forecast: Budgets will rebound TEKsystems 2017 IT forecast shows IT budgets rebounding from a slump in 2016 and IT leaders' confidence is high going into the new year. But some challenges will persist. 2016-12-15 09:20 5KB www.itnews.com 17 1.7 Uber goes with the glow to help you spot your ride You pick the color, and a beacon in the car coming your way will help you pick your driver out of the crowd. 2016-12-15 09:18 2KB www.cnet.com

18 1.2 Privacy protections for wearable devices are weak, study says The rapidly expanding wearable device market raises serious privacy concerns, with some device makers collecting massive amounts of personal data and sharing it with other companies, according to a new study. 2016-12-15 09:17 4KB www.pcworld.com

19 1.4 The top 10 PC technologies and trends to watch in 2017 In an era of sexy gadgets, its easy to knock PCs of being dinosaurs from a bygone era. But For every blue screen of death, there are many technological enhancements driving PCs into the era of virtual reality, 4K video and 5G connectivity. 2016-12-15 09:15 7KB www.pcworld.com

20 1.7 The best cheap 4K TV deals for Christmas 2016 Hey you! Are you looking for a cheap TV? 2016-12-15 09:07 1KB feedproxy.google.com

21 2.9 Who will be the new British king of the ring? WWE to crown UK champ 16 British bulldogs enter the WWE ring in January, but who will be the big daddy towering above the competition in Blackpool? 2016-12-15 09:03 2KB www.cnet.com

22 0.0 Uber's Beacon update will help you find your cab with dashboard lights

No more hopefully approaching random Toyotas 2016-12-15 09:00 2KB feedproxy.google.com

23 2.1 Tech and your job: What to expect in 2017 A new report from Glassdoor shows how tech is becoming inextricably linked to the job market. 2016-12-15 09:00 3KB www.cnet.com

24 1.2 Facebook is the unwilling king of the news Facebook says it's a tech firm, not a media company. But as it continues to grow, so too does its media might, bringing along conflicts. 2016-12-15 09:00 7KB www.cnet.com

25 2.5 CNET asks: What's your favorite Star Wars film? As the Star Wars saga keeps expanding, we want to know your favorite film in the series. May the opinions be with you! 2016-12-15 09:00 700Bytes www.cnet.com 26 0.0 Vertigo Games Explains Core i7 Exclusivity For 'Arizona Sunshine' Vertigo Games faced harsh backlash from its customer base due to the perception of an exclusivity deal with Intel. We talked to the developer to get its side of the story. 2016-12-15 09:00 1KB www.tomshardware.com

27 0.0 New malvertising campaign infects home and small business routers New DNSchanger targets Chrome and gives attackers control over web traffic,Hacking ,Security,netgear,malvertising,router 2016-12-15 08:30 3KB www.computing.co.uk

28 1.2 First Click: Quora is still the weirdest thing in my inbox There’s a lot of crap in my inbox. Not necessarily junk mail or spam, just things I have zero interest in ever opening — college alumni drives, flight deals, promotions from a swanky London gym I... 2016-12-15 08:30 2KB www.theverge.com

29 4.2 EU Commission agrees rollout of 5G mobile broadband The EU has reached a preliminary deal for a coordinated rollout of the ultrafast 700 MHz spectrum for mobile services 2016-12-15 08:25 3KB www.itpro.co.uk

30 2.9 : get smooth, stable video from practically any smartphone The latest Osmo does away with a camera and allows you to use your phone’s camera to take stabilised videos, and it’s a lot cheaper, too. Here's our DJI Osmo Mobile review 2016-12-15 08:25 7KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

31 1.3 Bad News In Tech: 2016's biggest data breach fails (so far...) The technology industry is fast moving, with businesses playing a constant game of whac-a-mole in trying to secure their data from malware and ransomware attacks. Here are some of the most calamitous cock-ups from 2016, to date. 2016-12-15 08:18 9KB www.computerworlduk.com

32 3.7 Imagination GPU tech next year could power Apple iPhone 8 graphics Apple's powerful iPhone 7 GPU is based on Imagination Technologies' PowerVR GT7600 architecture, and a possible successor could come next year. 2016-12-15 08:02 3KB www.computerworld.com 33 0.8 Meet Beacon, Uber’s colorful new gadget to help prevent those awkward car mixups We’ve all been there: you land at an airport, book an Uber to your hotel, only to find 20 identical black Honda CR-Vs waiting when you get outside. Which one is yours? Or it’s late, you’re leaving... 2016-12-15 08:00 2KB www.theverge.com

34 0.0 Why Embedded Analytics Will Change Everything Analytics is being embedded in all kinds of software which suggests a major shift is on the horizon. How we think about analytics will change and so will our use of analytics. We explain why. 2016-12-15 08:00 5KB www.informationweek.com

35 3.8 The iPhone switcher's guide: Move from iOS to Android and keep all your stuff We'll help get your photos, contacts, calendars, and everything else to their new home. 2016-12-15 08:00 6KB www.itnews.com

36 4.2 Ransomware: Most businesses would pay up and shut up, claims IBM What do the ransomware makers see in the $1bn per year business?,Security,Public Sector ,ransomware,Security 2016-12-15 07:56 2KB www.computing.co.uk

37 3.7 California mandates energy-efficiency standards for computers California has become the first state to mandate energy-efficiency standards for monitors and a variety of computers, including notebooks, desktops, workstations and servers. 2016-12-15 07:49 2KB www.computerworld.com

38 3.4 CIO role to be "more important than it's ever been in 2017" says NetScout VP Also: IT security job availability to rise in 2017 as digital change accelerates,Leadership ,CIO,Leadership,NetScout,NetscoutCollaboration 2016-12-15 07:48 3KB www.computing.co.uk

39 6.7 Court sinks The Pirate Bay in Australia Pirates ye be warned 2016-12-15 07:45 2KB feedproxy.google.com

40 4.6 Here's some questions Congress should ask about the election-related hacks President-elect Donald Trump remains skeptical Russia was involved, despite U. S. intelligence findings 2016-12-15 07:45 3KB www.infoworld.com 41 2.5 10 best new phones 2017 | New Android phones, new iPhones, new Windows phones Due an upgrade? Don't agree to anything until you've seen our list of the best new phones coming in 2017. We've rounded up the best new Android phones, best new iPhones and best new Windows phones, including the best new Samsung phones,... 2016-12-15 07:39 19KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

42 0.0 Walking Dead can teach you valuable security lessons The most terrifying thing about the world of The Walking Dead isn’t "Walkers", it’s other people: Walkers, as they are referred to on the show, are predictable; they’re hungry, and they want to eat your brains. Humans on the other hand... 2016-12-15 07:38 8KB www.itnews.com

43 0.1 Tips for maintaining security while employees are out of the office for the holidays As workers are enjoying time away from the office for the holidays, hackers are viewing this slow down as an optimal time to attack corporate systems. To avoid having your organization turn into this holiday’s victim, security professionals provide tips for IT managers to protect corporate data. 2016-12-15 07:33 9KB www.itnews.com

44 0.0 14 eyebrow-raising things Google knows about you Some are fascinating, others are frightening, but here's how to find out what Google has on you. 2016-12-15 07:32 10KB www.computerworld.com

45 3.8 Microsoft's Edge follows Chrome in blocking Flash Microsoft's Edge follows Chrome in blocking Flash. Pushing users to HTML5. 2016-12-15 07:26 2KB feedproxy.google.com

46 0.0 : set up email, apps, contacts, security and more with our easy step-by-step guide If you've just received an iPhone (or treated yourself), here's how to get it set up with all your contacts, email, apps and more. 2016-12-15 07:21 6KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

47 6.2 Samsung's 'VIV' voice bot may miss the Galaxy S8 because of Google Assistant

Don’t expect a new assistant 2016-12-15 07:06 1KB feedproxy.google.com

48 7.7 Amazon Echo now supports IFTTT commands in the UK

If this, then Echo that 2016-12-15 07:02 1KB feedproxy.google.com 49 1.4 Microsoft to bring Dolby Atmos to Xbox One, Windows 10 Microsoft to bring Dolby Atmos to Xbox One, Windows 10. Fixes a bandwidth bug, too. 2016-12-15 07:00 3KB feedproxy.google.com

50 0.0 9 signs you should quit your programming job Here's how to tell when your coding job isn't all it's cracked up to be -- and it's time to take off for a new gig 2016-12-15 07:00 5KB www.infoworld.com

51 1.8 Google’s Long, Strange Life Span Trip Why does a mole rat live 30 years but a mouse only three? With $1.5 billion in the bank, Google’s anti-aging spinout Calico is rich enough to find out. 2016-12-15 07:00 16KB www.technologyreview.com

52 3.0 So THAT'S who reads the furshlugginer manual! An upgrade to this company's transaction processing system is due shortly, and one pilot fish is tasked with proofreading the system's user manual -- a simple exercise in nothing-to-see-here, right? 2016-12-15 07:00 1KB www.computerworld.com

53 3.3 Cloud compute: AWS, Azure, Google, SoftLayer compared AWS still offers the greatest variety of instance types, but its top rivals have differentiating features of their own 2016-12-15 07:00 13KB www.infoworld.com

54 1.3 The new Apple TV update is no friend to cord cutters The Apple TV's new TV app to replace your home screen, but it's almost useless without a cable login. 2016-12-15 07:00 5KB www.pcworld.com

55 1.0 Amazon Air makes its UK debut with 13 minute delivery Flights of fancy, still a long way from reality.,Boffin Watch ,Boffin Watch,cloud computing,emerging technologies,robotics,computing,amazon.com,unmanned aerial vehicle,autonomous car,drone,Jeremy Clarkson 2016-12-15 06:39 2KB www.theinquirer.net

56 3.6 : Doom Bloodfall multiplayer DLC live now Our complete guide to Doom, including the latest DLC news and rumours 2016-12-15 06:30 5KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

57 5.6 Evernote's new privacy policy lets its staffers read your notes Note-taking app will let humans read your scrawls because machine learning,Security ,Privacy 2016-12-15 06:29 2KB www.theinquirer.net 58 3.3 Boxing Day sales set to break new records in 2016 We'll be listing all of the best Boxing Day sales deals right here. 2016-12-15 06:22 10KB feedproxy.google.com

59 2.6 : Seasons of Heaven confirmed as Switch exclusive The Nintendo Switch is coming out in March 2017 and there's a preview trailer which reveals lots of new details on the Codename NX console. Read for the Nintendo Switch price, release date, games and specs. 2016-12-15 06:18 20KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

60 2.4 BMW's HoloActive Touch floats a virtual touchscreen next to your steering wheel BMW has announced the first details of HoloActive Touch, a concept dash interface that uses gesture commands. It's an iteration on the AirTouch system shown off at CES last year, and will itself... 2016-12-15 06:00 2KB www.theverge.com

61 1.5 Turn your stone age curtains into voice-controlled super-curtains with Slide Are you embarrassed by your dumb curtains? Do you spend hours each morning simply shouting at them to open before giving up and cutting your way through with a knife? Well, stress no more: Slide is... 2016-12-15 05:48 2KB www.theverge.com

62 2.8 : What is Amazon Prime? How much does Amazon Prime cost? How does Amazon Prime work? A complete guide to Amazon Prime including Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Music (and Amazon Music Unlimited), Amazon Prime delivery and more. What is Amazon Prime and what you get with your Prime subscription. 2016-12-15 05:35 6KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

63 2.6 You can now control Netflix using Google Home Google has added support for Netflix to its home assistant Google Home — just in time for a bit of holiday binge-watching. You’ll be able to ask Home to play specific series, skip episodes, pause... 2016-12-15 05:19 2KB www.theverge.com

64 2.0 The cord-cutter's guide to the best indoor antennas Indoor antennas are pretty cheap, but our tests of six popular models did reveal some differences. Here's how they stack up. 2016-12-15 05:00 7KB www.cnet.com

65 0.7 The IEC Announces A New Generation of Smart Charging for Consumer Portable Devices According to a study conducted by a partnership of United Nations organizations, industry, governments and scientists, the amount of global e-waste — discarded electrical and electronic equipment — reached nearly 42 million tons in 2014. By next year it is predicted that the world will... 2016-12-15 04:55 4KB pctechmag.com 66 7.7 10 best smartphones in the US What's the best phone in the US for 2016? 2016-12-15 04:55 1KB feedproxy.google.com

67 2.9 Valve adds full PS4 controller support to Steam Valve has extended its support for the PlayStation 4’s DualShock controller in Steam. Users can now customize the controller as deeply as they can Valve’s own Steam Controllers, allowing them to... 2016-12-15 04:51 2KB www.theverge.com

68 0.0 51% off Apple USB-C to Lightning Cable - Deal Alert This USB-C cable connects your iPhone, iPad, or iPod with Lightning connector to your computer's USB-C port for syncing and charging. 2016-12-15 03:17 869Bytes www.itnews.com

69 1.4 VR arcade trend continues to spread, now to Tokyo Virtual reality is an expensive platform to enjoy at home -- but, thankfully, VR arcades look to be a trend. 2016-12-15 02:24 1KB www.cnet.com

70 0.0 With new court ruling, Aussie pirates could soon find their favourite sites blocked

Well, until they figure out how to use a VPN... 2016-12-15 01:58 2KB feedproxy.google.com

71 2.2 Opera v.42 for all Users Comes With a Built-in Currency Conversion Internet browser Opera has released a new stable desktop version for all users, and it comes with a few nifty features worth highlighting. The biggest addition in Opera 42 is the built-in currency converter tool that makes it very easy to convert amounts in foreign currency without... 2016-12-15 01:46 2KB pctechmag.com

72 0.5 Arista wins big in latest court patent case go-around over Cisco In rejecting a $335 million damage award to Cisco, a California jury gave Arista Networks a key verdict in part of the expansive patent infringement lawsuit the two networking companies are fighting over. While the jury found Arista had copied some of Cisco Command Line Interface it... 2016-12-15 00:02 4KB www.itworld.com

73 1.8 Tech ads 2016: Microsoft best, Apple worst Commentary: There were a lot of ads. Many sniped at competitors. Some, though, lost their way. 2016-12-15 00:00 7KB www.cnet.com Articles

DC5m United States IT in english 73 articles, created at 2016-12-15 16:01

1 /73 1.0 Yahoo announces over a billion user accounts compromised in security hacks (6.44/7) Well, this is just dandy. Earlier this year, Yahoo announced that it had suffered one of the largest hacks in history, with up to 500 million user accounts affected. Now, the company has come clean about an even bigger hack that happened a year earlier and exposed sensitive information on approximately one billion accounts. The most surprising thing about this, of course, is that one billion people had Yahoo accounts to start with.

Here’s where things take a further detour into the ridiculous. In September 2016 we found out about a series of hacks that hit Yahoo back in 2014. Now, at the tail end of the year, we’re hearing that an even larger attack in 2013 not only captured more information, it captured vastly more sensitive data including plaintext security answers to identity questions. Yahoo is now requiring everyone to change their security passwords and is invalidating all of its old questions, but this isn’t just a case of locking the barn after the horse has escaped — the horse has already died of old age.

Yahoo apparently only found evidence of these attacks after analyzing log files provided to it by law enforcement. Said files came from a third party who claimed they held information on Yahoo, which means the company didn’t even find this independently — it had to be handed the evidence others had gathered. Verizon is still expected to buy Yahoo, but the company talked publicly about potentially seeking a lower price in the wake of the earlier hack, and now Yahoo has a problem literally twice as big on its hands. This time, the hack actually involved personal information and could be easily mined for additional information on how users tend to select passwords.

Hacks and security breaches are far more useful to black hats than just a list of passwords and logins. By creating dictionaries based on passwords people actually use, black hats can accelerate how quickly and effectively they are able to breach future accounts. In theory, users should create a different login and password for every site, but very few people do so. Most of us use a handful of passwords, at best, or a single common password that’s rotated out over time. Meanwhile, Yahoo took a short view on security for several years, possibly out of fear of losing users, possibly because the company had ideas for monetizing mass surveillance in ways the old East German Stasi would’ve envied.

But more than anything, this just highlights how little society — or businesses — care about online security. Breaches are treated as non-events, even when critical information is exposed, and even when that data could be used to target individuals for theft. If you have access to someone’s email, you may well have access to information about their ongoing medical care, their bank accounts, billing statements, or other personally identifiable information. To coin an analogy: If the USPS announced that it had lost over a billion pieces of physical mail, people would be up in arms about it — but a hack of sensitive user information that may have exposed tens or hundreds of billions of pieces of mail (depending on which information was stolen and how it was used) stirs scarcely a ripple.

If you’ve still got a Yahoo account, it’s probably time to dump it. Use Outlook.com, or Gmail, or any other third-party provider you like, but don’t keep using a company that plainly cares so little for your own privacy and security — unless, of course, you don’t care either.

| How to change Gmail, Yahoo breach means New record! Yahoo hacked - Yahoo breach means Hotmail, Yahoo password: hackers had three years to - 1 billion user accounts hackers had 3 years to One billion accounts abuse user accounts compromised abuse user accounts affected by yet another infoworld.com computerworld.com computerworld.com Yahoo data breach - how to change your Yahoo password now pcadvisor.co.uk

Yahoo: One billion accounts Yahoo warns of breach Delete your account: Yahoo compromised in second affecting a billion user admits to another hack major hack accounts affecting one billion computing.co.uk feedproxy.google.com customers theinquirer.net

2016-12-15 08:30 Joel Hruska www.extremetech.com

2 /73 (3.07/7) 5.3 Trump meets the tech industry's leaders The future might look a little brighter for Silicon Valley, after Donald Trump struck a friendly and helpful tone during his meeting with the tech industry's biggest names, according to reports.

The President-elect summoned the heads of the country's biggest tech companies to a roundtable discussion , which took place at Trump Tower in New York - or the White House 2.0, as it may come to be known.

Many were expecting the meeting to be tense and confrontational. Trump had made a series of threats towards the tech industry and its major players, such as promising to go after Amazon for tax issues and force Apple to move its manufacturing operations back to US soil, but despite the fact that the CEOs of both companies were in the room, there was no sign of conflict. In fact, Trump kicked off proceedings by waxing lyrical about the value of the tech industry, saying: "There's nobody like you in the world... this is a truly amazing group of people". He also promised that his administration will do everything it can to work with Silicon Valley.

"We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation," he said, promising that he and his people will do "anything we can do to help this go along... we're going to be there for you".

In what will doubtless come as a shock to many, the future President also took the opportunity to discuss policy ideas, including some suggestions which may prove downright revolutionary. According to the New York Times , during the closed-door portion of the meeting Trump spoke of the need for more vocational education (something that has been widely recommended as a way of closing the skills gap) and even asked about the possibility of using data science and analytics to identify and eliminate waste and inefficiency within the government.

Smaller, more intimate meetings are also said to be on the cards, set to be organised by Trump's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner and held quarterly. The main focus will reportedly be on the topics of education and immigration.

"Right now, everybody in this room has to like me," Trump said with uncharacteristic self- awareness, "at least a little bit". He appeared to be right; despite the fact that many at the meeting had backed Hillary Clinton, there appeared to be little conflict in the room. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in particular called the meeting "very productive".

"I shared the view that the administration should make innovation one of its key pillars, which would create a huge number of jobs across the whole country, in all sectors, not just tech," Bezos said following the discussion.

Similarly, Tesla CEO Elon Musk - whose progressive views on climate change would seem to contradict Trump's branding of global warming as a "hoax" - has been appointed to the President-elect's Strategic and Policy Forum , where he will be joined by Uber's Travis Kalanick.

However, if Silicon Valley's bigwigs are content to go along with the incoming administration, the industry's rank and file most certainly are not. More than 500 engineers, developers and other tech workers have signed a petition declaring that they will not participate in creating any database that could be used by Trump's government to target people based on religion, race or nationality. Trump has previously put forth the idea of using such a database to register and track Muslims in the US.

While many of the biggest names in tech were represented at the roundtable, one company was notable by its absence. Despite being the President-elect's communication method of choice and one of the biggest social networks in the world, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey did not have a seat at the table. Trump's staff told the media that it was simply an issue of space, with adviser Sean Spicer saying "the conference table was only so big". Anonymous sources told Politico , however, that this was a deliberate snub in retaliation for a spat over emojis during the campaign.

As part of a $5 million advertising deal, the Trump campaign allegedly wanted to use a custom emoji to replace the #CrookedHillary hashtag frequently used by Trump and his supporters, but it was personally blocked by Dorsey. This drew public condemnation from the campaign, who called it "BS" and said it was "incredibly reckless and dangerous".

The meeting also led to accusations of corruption and nepotism being aimed at Trump from numerous quarters. While space at the meeting was limited - "I won't tell you the hundreds of calls we've had asking to come," Trump boasted - he and his children made up a full 20% of the attendees.

Although the future president has claimed that his business affairs will be run by his children, they are clearly still being given access to important matters of policy, raising a possible conflict of interest.

The meeting was the first in what is likely to be a long, ongoing effort to work with Trump on behalf of Silicon Valley, but based on reports from this first discussion, there may still be hope for the US tech industry.

Trump snubs Twitter from Trump, tech leaders avoided Yahoo hack: Tech industry summit of tech leaders over encryption and surveillance responds 'crooked Hilary' emoji row talk at summit computing.co.uk theinquirer.net infoworld.com

2016-12-15 08:26 Adam Shepherd www.itpro.co.uk

3 /73 1.8 | 20 best phones 2016/2017 UK: Best smartphone reviews including best Android phones, iPhones and unlocked or SIM-free smartphones - best mobile phone reviews (1.09/7) Jump straight to our full best phones chart

The smartphone industry is set to grow by 10 percent in 2016 with more than 1.5 billion phones sold ( source ), but only one of those sales is important to you. We help you choose your new smartphone, with our guide to the 20 best phones you can buy in the UK in 2016/2017. Also see: Best new phones coming in 2017.

Also see: Best Phone Deals

When we review smartphones we take into account their build quality and design, ease of use, features, performance and value, although the latter isn’t always such a big deal when it comes to a phone you are most likely to buy on a contract. Generally speaking a flagship phone will cost between £500- and £600, or between £40- and £50 per month on a contract. If you are buying SIM-free then you should also check out our best SIM-only deals.

Value becomes more important when you consider older-generation phones. For example, we still think the Samsung Galaxy S6 is better than many of the phones in this chart, especially when you consider that it’s now available under £400 SIM-free. However, we move all older-generation smartphones to our best old phones chart , and you’ll now find the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge sitting at the top of this best phones chart. We also have a best budget phones round-up if you're looking to minimise costs. Also see: Best kids' phones 2016/2017

Note that we have removed the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 from our smartphone chart due to the ongoing battery issues which, in some cases, are catching on fire. Samsung has now discontinued the phone so you should stop using it and return it for a refund.

There are multiple mobile phone operating systems, but really only two worth talking about: Android and iOS. Windows phones account for around 1 percent of all phones sold, so it makes more sense to go with Android or an iPhone. If you do have your heart set on Windows, also see our list of the best Windows phones 2016/2017. (Similarly, for purely Android choices see Best Android phones .)

The vast majority of phones available run the Android operating system, with Marshmallow the latest version. While Apple’s iOS platform has a much lower market share, developers always release their apps on iOS so it has one of the best app stores you'll find. For more, see Android vs iPhone.

Also, for a more in-depth look at each OS see our Android Marshmallow review , iOS 10 review and Windows 10 Mobile review .

If you have an Android phone or and iPhone and want to move to the other type of phone, it's fair easy move your contacts and other data from one to the other. See How to move from Android to iPhone and How to move from iPhone to Android. What you can't move is paid-for apps, so keep this in mind if you're considering a change of platform.

An unlocked phone is one which is not tied to any particular mobile operator, such as Vodafone or EE. Buying unlocked usually means buying the phone outright without a SIM. The most important point is that an unlocked phone is almost always a better deal than buying a phone on contract. The only real exception to this are Apple's iPhones - because of their traditional popularity, operators do often subsidise the cost of buying an iPhone in order to lock you into a lucrative long-term deal. Generally speaking, however, if you can afford the upfront cost of the handset, you will pay less over the life of your phone by buying unlocked. More importantly, you are not locked in. If you want a new handset at any time, you can buy one without having to up-purchase your way out of a contract, or commit to another two years.

One thing to be sure of when purchasing an unlocked or 'SIM-free' phone is that not all SIM-free handsets are unlocked. The excellent Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 is a classic example of this. It is SIM-free, but if you want to use it for any network other than Vodafone you have to first use it for a month with a Voda SIM, and then pay £20 to get it unlocked.

EE's own branded phones are similar. In both cases it may well still be better to buy network branded phones and go through the pain of getting them unlocked, than to buy on contract. But you should do your research before you take the plunge. We can help with that with our feature: 'How to unlock any phone '.

One other thing to consider is the size and shape of the SIM required for your phone. Make sure you get a nano-SIM if a nano-SIM is what your phone requires. If you get that wrong it is easily solvable - every network will gladly send over a different-sized SIM. SIM cards tend to come in all three sizes - you simply pop out the one you need. But that's assuming you are getting a new SIM, and if you're looking for a SIM-free phone or unlocked phone you probably already have one. You can buy adaptors that let you fit a Nano-SIM or Micro-SIM in a Micro-SIM or full-size SIM slot for a very small charge.

More important is to make sure that if you want 4G you get a 4G-enabled phone and SIM. and later this year we are expecting to see new Google Nexus phones (running all new Android N ), the Samsung Galaxy Note 6 , the OnePlus 3 , and Apple’s new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus .

Every single phone in our top 20 is here because we think it is an excellent device, with which few people will be disappointed. All are plenty fast for general tasks and gaming (see our benchmark results in our What's the fastest phone? chart), have nice screens and decent photography capabilities. However, subtle differences mark them out in a fiercely competitive market. You can read the full, in-depth review of each of the 20 reviews below by clicking on the link.

| Best Chinese phones you | 20 best Android phones | Best budget smartphone: | 20 best phablets 2016/2017 can buy in the UK in 2016/2017 UK: What's the The 20 best budget phones UK: We round up the best 2016/2017: Why you should best Android phone? Best under £150 in the UK large-screen phones you can (and should not) buy a Android phone reviews 2016/2017 buy - best phablet reviews Chinese phone - best pcadvisor.co.uk pcadvisor.co.uk pcadvisor.co.uk Chinese phone reviews pcadvisor.co.uk

2016-12-15 09:00 Chris Martin www.pcadvisor.co.uk

4 /73 (1.02/7) 11.1 The best instant cameras in 2016 Digital has killed analogue photography right? Well, that may the case in most areas, but analogue is fighting back. Whether it’s nostalgia creeping back or the unique aesthetic they provide, instant cameras and their distinct prints are seeing a renaissance - even with the dominance of the smartphone, you can’t beat having a print in your hand.

So, whether you’re looking for a fun instant camera to bring out at parties, or wanting to get a bit more creative with your photography, then you’ll want one of these cracking cameras below.

Cheap and cheerful, but great fun

Cheap and cheerful, the instax mini 70 is a cost-effective way to get into instant photography. The only thing you need to be careful of is that you don’t obscure the flash with your finger when you’re taking shots vertically. Everything else is taken care of – focusing, exposure and flash are all fully automatic. The inability to control the flash manually can be a bit of an annoyance – you’d need the more expensive mini 90 for that – but you do get a selfie mode and even a tiny selfie mirror on the front. The direct vision viewfinder is a little cramped, but effective enough. It’s maybe not the kind of camera you’d use for analogue ‘art’ projects, but we really liked the instax 70 as a simple party accessory – and the results are just as good as those from the other instax mini cameras, including the Leica Sofort.

Leica making an instant camera? Yup, you heard it right

It’s chunky and solid, and although it’s made of plastic, it’s good plastic. It comes in a choice of mint, orange and white, and takes regular Fujifilm instax mini film packs, although Leica supplies its own film packs too, which produce a warm white frame around each picture. You compose shots using the small direct-vision viewfinder in the top left corner on the back of the camera. It’s not very big, but it’s usable enough. For an instant camera, the Sofort offers a lot of control, with Macro, Bulb, Self timer, Party & People, Sport & Action, Double Exposure and Selfie modes – in addition to fully automatic operation. You can also turn the flash on and off. The Sofort is expensive compared to the Fujifilm instax mini 70, despite using the same size of film, but it was the most popular model we used.

Large camera that delivers large photos

Big hardly covers it. The instax wide 300 is the size of an old-fashioned medium-format rangefinder camera, even a small folding field camera. It’s because it uses instax wide film packs rather than the regular instax mini. The instax 300 wide might look big and clumsy but it’s light, and the generous grip makes it easy to hold and use. You power up with a spring-loaded switch around the shutter release, which extends the 95mm lens. The instax wide format is much larger than a digital sensor, so this equates to a moderate wide-angle lens. For a big camera, though, the instax wide 300 has a tiny viewfinder. It takes practice even to get your eye lined up with the eyepiece. Otherwise, it’s simple to use and delivers very good results. Where the regular instax mini format produces small photo ‘tokens’, these are more like proper photographs.

Quirky hipster throwback

But while the Lomo’Instant Automat South Beach edition is just a tiny bit mad on the outside, it’s pretty conventional on the inside, packing regular Fujifilm instax mini film. It’s not just the styling that makes this South Beach edition different – it also comes with a selection of accessories, including a lens cap that doubles as a wireless shutter release (there’s a slot for a button cell in the cap), a close-up lens, a wide-angle lens, a fisheye lens, and an object called a Splitzer. This isn’t an interchangeable-lens camera – these are just accessories that clip on the front. The Automat is simple to use, with a power switch around the lens barrel that also operates the three-position zone focusing. The viewfinder is small, but easy to find with your eye, and exposure is automatic. It’s nicely made, although some of the icons on the back are hard to decipher, the full accessory kit pushes up the price… and will you really use it all?

Curious mix of old-school chemistry and new-fangled technical wizardry

Resembling a cross between a plastic pyramid and a spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Impossible I-1 is the only new camera for the original Polaroid film. The lights around the lens form a ‘ring flash’ for softer portrait lighting, while it even comes with a free I-1 app for your smartphone. You can use this as a remote trigger, a noise trigger and a self-timer. The app also allows double exposures, light painting, and aperture and shutter speed adjustment – and it works as a photo scanner too. This makes the I-1 an excellent tool for experiments in instant photography, but too cumbersome for informal party shots. The shape doesn’t help – this is a bulky camera to carry around. The battery in our sample lost its power far too quickly as well: the battery was flat practically every time we went to use the camera.

Retro fun that's an experience to use

Amazing to look at even now, the Polaroid SX-70 (refurbished and sold by the Impossible Project) is a real blast from the past. Even unfolding it for use is an adventure, with the top of the camera opening out on a set of bellows. It’s an ingenious system because you even get through-the lens viewing and focusing via a pop-up eyepiece on the rear of the viewfinder housing and a split-image rangefinder. It’s a bit dark, but it is at least a ‘proper’ viewfinder. You adjust the focus with one dial on the front of the camera and the exposure compensation with another – the new Impossible Project film has a different sensitivity to the original emulsion. The camera is great, but the film is expensive for experimenting with (each pack has a battery built in) and the 30-minute development time is so long that this camera is actually far from ‘instant’. You also need to make sure you get the proper SX-70 film, which has a lower sensitivity than the others

The most common instant film format, producing pictures measuring just 62 x 46mm.

Twice the size of instax mini and twice the price, but photos measure a meatier 99 x 62mm.

Not all Polaroid instant film is the same. The SX-70 film has a lower sensitivity.

Designed for use in the Impossible I-1, I-Type film packs don’t have batteries built in.

Film designed for Polaroid 600-type cameras. It can also be used in the Impossible I-1.

: Best Polaroid & instant printers 2016 UK pcadvisor.co.uk

2016-12-15 08:25 Rod Lawton feedproxy.google.com

5 /73 0.8 California says Uber autonomous car test needs a permit first (1.02/7) The California Department of Motor Vehicles has asked Uber Technologies to first get a permit for testing its self-driving cars on the roads of San Francisco, a step that the company has so far refused to do.

The DMV said it encourages the responsible exploration of autonomous cars, but has a permit process for testing the technology to ensure public safety. “Twenty manufacturers have already obtained permits to test hundreds of cars on California roads. Uber shall do the same,” the agency said in a statement.

Having started testing its self-driving cars with ride-hailing customers in Pittsburg in September, the ride-hailing company decided to extend the tests to San Francisco starting Wednesday. “Starting today, riders who request an uberX in San Francisco will be matched with a Self- Driving Uber if one is available,” Uber wrote in a blog post.

But the company contested the need for a permit to run the tests, stating that the rules apply to cars that can drive without someone controlling or monitoring them. “For us, it’s still early days and our cars are not yet ready to drive without a person monitoring them,” Uber said in the post.

When starting its trials in Pittsburgh too, the company said its “Self-Driving Ubers” have a driver in the front seat because the vehicles require human intervention in many conditions such as bad weather.

But the DMV did not agree with Uber. It cites California regulations that it said establish that a permit is required for testing an autonomous vehicle on public roads, and threatened legal action if Uber did not confirm immediately that it will stop its launch and get a permit.

“The permitting requirement serves the important public policy objectives of ensuring that those testing the vehicles have provided an adequate level of financial responsibility; have adequately trained qualified test drivers on the safe operation of the autonomous technology ; and will notify the DMV when the vehicles have been involved in a collision and specify the instances when the technology had to be disengaged for safety reasons,” the DMV wrote in a letter to Anthony Levandowski, head of Uber's Advanced Technology Group, obtained by some news outlets.

Uber did not immediately comment on the DMV’s letter or respond to a request for information on whether the company would pull its automated cars from the road until it gets a permit for testing the vehicles.

The company’s trials in San Francisco, besides running foul of regulators, reportedly had another hitch. One of its cars - a Volvo XC90 - was caught on camera running a red light, according to news reports. The company later said that the vehicle was not part of the pilot.

Uber’s self-driving car has been pulled over after only one day in California feedproxy.google.com

2016-12-15 07:44 John Ribeiro www.computerworld.com

6 /73 7.1 Web-friendly Smalltalk gets JavaScript upgrades

(1.02/7) Melding Smalltalk and JavaScript for web development, the Amber language will get user experience improvements, better performance, and support for current JavaScript loaders.

Debuting in 2011, open source Amber is a Smalltalk-inspired language that compiles to JavaScript and offers interaction with JavaScript objects. “Smalltalk has a minimal and very clean syntax. It is a pure object-oriented language where everything is an object,” Amber founder Nicolas Petton said. “Its development environment is something unique: All operations happen on a live system, making prototyping and incremental improvements a breeze.

Plans for improving Amber include a focus on the user experience, with better CLI tooling and automatic upgrades on the docket, current Amber maintainer Herby Vojcik said. “There are shifts in JavaScript world, so Amber will likely try to enter the ECMAScript 6 modules bandwagon and try to play nice with latest generation of JavaScript loaders/builders.”

Also in the works are internal changes to the compiler stack to accommodate syntax additions, better documentation, new libraries, and the addition of Pharo classes and methods. The Pharo language and environment is Amber’s reference implementation.

With Amber, developers can use existing JavaScript libraries directly and pass Amber objects as parameters.”Playing nice with JavaScript also means Amber blends into JavaScript tooling,” said Vojcik. “Amber itself is set of AMD [Asynchronous Module Definition] modules and uses AMD to load other modules if needed. You can use a package manager like bower or NPM, create Amber libraries, and upload them to the package managers.”

Amber is not alone in partnering JavaScript and Smalltalk. The Maria framework does this as well and also uses MVC to build JavaScript applications. Web-friendly Smalltalk gets some JavaScript upgrades computerworld.com

2016-12-15 07:00 Paul Krill www.infoworld.com

7 /73 (1.02/7) 5.6 Win-win: Open-source. Net pays off for devs Two years ago Microsoft did the unthinkable: It declared it would open-source its. Net server-side cloud stack with the introduction of. Net Core. The announcement was surprising, thanks to Microsoft’s long- running feuds with open-source projects, as well as its history of portraying open source as a threat to the software economy.

But Microsoft may have seen an opportunity. Perhaps in an effort to sell more tools and cloud services, as well as to attract more developers to its platform, it might have to open up. Thus far, the move has paid off.

Microsoft has positioned. Net Core as a means for taking. Net beyond Windows. The cross- platform version extends. Net’s reach to MacOS and Linux.. Net Core RC1 was first made available on GitHub in November 2015, with. Net Core hitting Version 1.0 status this past June. Developers are buying in, says Scott Hunter, Microsoft partner director program manager for. Net.

“Forty percent of our. Net Core customers are brand-new developers to the platform, which is what we want with. Net Core,” Hunter says. “We want to bring new people in.”

Thanks in considerable part to. Net Core,. Net has seen a 61 percent uptick in the number of developers engaged with the platform in the past year. There has been dramatic growth in GitHub activity related to. Net of late as well, Hunter noted during an online presentation in November.

While. Net Core does not generate revenue directly for Microsoft, it still could positively impact the bottom line, says Rob Sanfilippo, analyst at Directions on Microsoft. “It could be argued that the technology generates indirect revenue by incenting the use of Azure services or Microsoft developer tools,” he explains.

Programmers appear to be active and benefiting too.

. Net coder and blogger Matt Warren calls open-source. Net a success. The data clearly shows significant community involvement across multiple Microsoft-owned GitHub repositories, he says.

“The community has been creating issues and has been sending pull-requests—actually contributing code that has then been included into the product itself—for a sustained period of time and the level of contributions has grown,” Warren says. “I actively follow and take part in the discussions in some repositories—such as CoreCLR and. Net Core Lab. I see firsthand the community contributing.”

The success of Microsoft’s move was never assured. And there have been periods of uncertainty, Warren says, with efforts that would have been done in private now moving to the open. He cites changes in tooling, including moving from project.json back to an MSBuild-based project system.

“Communicating these changes wasn’t always done in the best way, and there were many people who invested time in something that is now out-of-date, so they were upset,” he says. But Microsoft has succeeded by going “all-in,” he adds. “What I mean is that they haven’t just made the source available and left it there; they’ve done their best to allow the community to take part.” Components of. Net Core include the ASP. Net Core framework, for building Web and cloud applications; the. Net Core runtime; and the. Net Entity Framework, for data access. ASP. Net as part of. Net Core Version 1.1 features response caching, improved Azure integration, and view recompilation. Hunter says. Net Core has been built for speed, noting it has been eight times faster than Node.js and three times faster than Go in some benchmarks.

Microsoft’s recent release of Visual Studio for Mac could also bode well for. Net Core.

“It’s the first time the Visual Studio IDE—not counting Visual Studio Code , which is different technology and arguably not an IDE—has been released on a non-Windows platform, and it’s based on Xamarin technology with a stress on. Net Core development,” Sanfillippo says. “This release could drive a further bit of momentum toward. Net Core.”

Microsoft also recently made enhancements to. Net Core tools in the planned Visual Studio 2017 IDE, including simplifying the syntax for. Net Core project files.

Perceptions of Microsoft have changed, thanks to open source. Net, says Warren. Developers “now see [Microsoft] as a lot more open and approachable.”

Microsoft also has gained in community expertise, he adds.

It’s a win-win thus far for sure.

Win-win: Open source .Net pays off for devs infoworld.com

2016-12-15 07:00 Paul Krill www.computerworld.com

8 /73 8 /73 6.7 Your Pebble watch should work for at least another year

(1.02/7) Fitbit acquired Pebble and essentially shut the company down in the process – at least in terms of making and selling Pebble hardware, but if you already have a Pebble watch the software should keep working for a while yet.

In a blog post , Jon Barlow, a developer at Pebble, has revealed that Fitbit is working to keep Pebble software and services running through 2017, and that for now the apps, app store, SDK, Timeline APIs, firmware availability and developer portal will all remain functional.

Reading between the lines it sounds like after 2017 some services may be shut down, but others will continue to work, and to achieve that the company is planning to update its mobile apps, loosening their dependency on cloud services so that they’ll continue to function even once those cloud services are discontinued.

This update will allow Pebble Health to continue working as normal, because health data isn’t dependent on the cloud and will instead feed directly into the Pebble mobile app, along with Google Fit and Apple HealthKit.

For features dependent on third-party services – such as messaging, weather and dictation - the future is less clear, with the company apparently evaluating if and for how long these functions can continue.

But even if Pebble and Fitbit stop supporting them there may be hope, as the blog notes that developers in the Pebble community are already teaming up to help keep the Pebble watch experience alive.

If you’re a developer you can join them, but even if you’re not you can still help, by engaging with Fitbit to demonstrate that Pebble is still important to you.

Fitbit won't ax Pebble smartwatch services for at least a year cnet.com

2016-12-15 06:07 James Rogerson feedproxy.google.com

9 /73 (1.02/7) 5.3 The 10 best tablets you can buy in 2016 The best tablets of 2016 are all about combination, with most offering a decent keyboard and desktop-style experience to sound the death knell for laptops.

From Apple's larger iPad Pro to Android's Google Nexus and Samsung tablets, there's a lot of choice out there. And it's more than just iOS 10 and Android Nougat devices, unlike the best smartphones - Windows makes an appearance, too.

In terms of how we decide which goes where, we rank them based on multiple elements including performance, battery life, screen quality and more, with price playing an important part too.

If none of the best tablets here take your fancy then head on over to our tablet reviews pages, where you'll find in-depth reviews for many more models.

Let us know your thoughts on the top 10 (and what order you think they should go in) in the comment box below.

A brilliant tablet that brings power to portability

The best tablet you can buy right now is the iPad Pro 9.7 - the smaller screen with powerful innards is the best combination on the market.

While there are plenty of brilliant Android tablets around at the moment, the newest iPad offers a lot of the power of the larger iPad Pro, along with the Smart Keyboard and Pencil support, but brings it in a much more bag-and-palm friendly size. Oh, and those four speakers are just brilliant too!

This is the best Android tablet

Google's Pixel C is simply the best Android tablet. It has it all: a fantastic display, heaps of power and a premium design. Plus, for those willing to splash the cash, the keyboard is a great accessory. It's not quite a laptop replacement, but for those in the market for a premium Android tablet - look no further.

A top notch iPad rival

There are plenty of reasons to invest in the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 - especially if you're after a top Android tablet. This is the best tablet that Samsung has ever produced - it's both reading and web surfing-friendly, has a sensational Super AMOLED screen.

You can pick it up for a new low price in 8-inch and 9.7-inch variants. Almost impossibly thin, pumped full of power and with a slicker interface it gives the best iPads a real run for its literal money. We've heard whispers of a Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 release date, but it's not until early 2017, so tablet is still a safe pick.

The best small-screen tablet

The best 7-inch tablet at the moment is definitely the iPad mini 4. If you like the look of Apple's iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro, but find them a) too big, b) too expensive or c) both, then you're in luck as the diminutive iPad mini 4 gives you the best of Apple's tablet world in a form factor that's not only beautiful, but highly portable.

Lighter, faster, waterproof… a real iPad Air 2 rival

The Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet is the best option for PS4 owners as it allows you to stream games from your console direct to the tablet when you're in another room of your house. Link up your PS4 controller to the Z4 Tablet and you'll be gaming in bed, in the kitchen and on the toilet. The included keyboard dock in the box also makes for a great stand.

Apple's biggest slate isn't its best, but it's not far off

The iPad Pro won't be for everyone due to the size and cost, but for those it does appeal to (and can afford it) you're unlikely to find a better tablet for your needs. Whether its graphics, multi- tasking or providing a pseudo-Mac experience when you're away from the office the iPad Pro is capable of so much. Even the Pencil - hilarious name aside - is an impressive tool for a particular niche. For pro, this is the best tablet out there and more than capable of replacing a laptop.

A perfect all round Android tablet

Originally a rather expensive Google-branded tablet, the Nexus 9 has now dropped so much in price it's the best value tablet out there. There's a whole load of power, stock Android and a high res screen making it a great all-round tablet at a very affordable price - and it's still getting the latest Android updates, including Android 7 Nougat.

You won't find the Nexus 9 available to buy through Google's official website anymore. All Nexus-branded devices have been banished since the company ushered in the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL. But you can still find it for a cheap price on Amazon and at other retailers.

Compact, portable and powerful

Tablets don't have to be big and cumbersome, and the rather clumsily named Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is testament to just that. It's not Sony's best tablet - that goes to the Z4 further up the page, but it's super-slim profile, waterproof chassis, bright display and solid line up of specs means it'll comfortably slip in your bag and won't baulk at the first sign of rain. However, it's a little older now, so be warned that it won't be getting all the Android updates you might hope for.

The tablet that can replace your laptop

Can a tablet really replace your laptop or home PC? That's still up for debate, but the best tablet trying to make that happen is the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 - and it does a fine job with the full blown version of Windows 10, an integrated kickstand and optional keyboard attachment. Great for creative professionals, students and everyday folks alike.

The iPad Air 2 is still a good choice

Until the iPad Pro 9.7, this was the best tablet in the world. Even though it has been replaced by Apple, it's still a brilliant tablet that has further raised the bar for the rest of the competition in terms of build quality, features and performance. The best part is this is now cheaper thanks to the release of the iPad Pro 9.7. Apple's range of tablet-optimized apps and a slick user interface makes the iPad Air 2 extremely versatile while also being incredibly easy, and enjoyable, to use. If you're not quite ready to part with your cash, then take a look at the slates which will be coming out this year. A few have launched but we're waiting for them to come in for review before seeing if they make it into the top 10, while others are based on rumours but we feel confident they will arrive in 2016.

Windows 10 where you'd expect Android to be

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro S was unveiled at the very start of 2016 and boasts a great screen, solid build and Windows 10. It's an odd device, but one that works better than we expected it to. The keyboard dock isn't great, with a cramped mouse and keys which aren't the easiest to type on - but over all Samsung's made a solid Windows slate.

Huawei's first Windows 10 device is a well-designed 2-in-1 that rivals the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and iPad Pro in places. It's a promising, yet pricey, first 2-in-1 from the Chinese company, managing to feel fresh despite arriving late to the party.

The high-end waterproof tablet

Things have gone a bit pear-shaped in Sony's camp in 2016. After we expect it to launch either the flagship Xperia Z6 or Xperia Z6 Tablet (or both) at MWC 2016 , Sony did neither - instead launching the confusing new X series instead. That's left the talk of the Xperia Z6 Tablet a little up in the air. Will we ever see this tablet?

Thinner, lighter and even more portable?

The popular iPad mini range has won fans around the world, probably due to the fact it's the cheapest iPad offering in Apple's range. While the arrival of the iPad mini 5 in 2016 is likely, there's a small question mark around whether Apple will bother after criticism for its less than impressive iPad mini 3 update. If it does arrive expect more power with a new processor, iOS 10 on screen and the same premium metal body.

| 20 best phablets 2016/2017 UK: We round up the best large-screen phones you can buy - best phablet reviews pcadvisor.co.uk

2016-12-15 05:03 Matt Swider feedproxy.google.com

10 /73 2.3 | Best mid-range smartphones 2016/2017 UK: The pick of Samsung, HTC, Sony and more without blowing the bank (0.07/7) Jump straight to our full best mid-range phones chart So you can't afford a flagship phone but want something better than the budget market has to offer? Well here are the best phones under £300, these are the best mid-range phones you can buy right now in the UK. See also : The best phones of 2016/2017 for the latest devices.

Also see: Best Phone Deals

It's worth noting, before you look at the phones below, that we're defining a mid-range range phone as one which you can buy for under £300 (as low as £150 which is the higher limit of our budget phones chart).

The price criteria means that this list includes new phones which fit the price bracket but also older ones, namely flagships, which have since dropped in price but are still readily available and make for a great buy. You may need to ignore the RRP listed as this was correct at the time we published the review or updated it since. Live pricing means you can see how much they are right now. Also see: Best kids' phones 2016/2017

Because the star ratings are also decided at the time of publishing they are not always comparable so please bare this in mind too while browsing the list. The phone at the top spot might not be the right one for you, depending on your needs and tastes.

It's very hard to define a mid-range phone by specs because some will offer more in a particular area. For example, some manufactures will give you the best cameras possible while others will focus on design or the screen.

Which phone is right for you will depend on many things, such as whether you're bothered about looks or pixels per inch. It's certainly true that the previous generation flagship phones from the likes of LG, HTC and Sony are going to get you good bang for your buck now they are cheaper. However, rivals such as OnePlus and Xiaomi simply offer decent specs at an already mid-range price.

Remember, we've hit something of a ceiling when it comes to smartphone tech so many of these phones aren't exactly far off some of the new high-end phones of this year.

Read next: Best new phones coming in 2017 | Best budget smartphone: | Best Chinese phones you | 20 best phablets 2016/2017 | 20 best Android phones The 20 best budget phones can buy in the UK in UK: We round up the best 2016/2017 UK: What's the under £150 in the UK 2016/2017: Why you should large-screen phones you can best Android phone? Best 2016/2017 (and should not) buy a buy - best phablet reviews Android phone reviews pcadvisor.co.uk Chinese phone - best pcadvisor.co.uk pcadvisor.co.uk Chinese phone reviews pcadvisor.co.uk

2016-12-15 09:13 Chris Martin www.pcadvisor.co.uk

11 /73 1.3 | 20 best dual-SIM phones 2016/2017 UK: The best phones with two SIMs - How to add two SIMs to a phone

(0.05/7) Jump straight to our full best dual-SIM phones chart It can be difficult to find two- SIM phones in the UK, but we'll show you exactly where to look. We round up the 20 best dual-SIM phones you can buy in the UK today. Best dual-SIM phone buying advice. (See all phone reviews .)

Also see: Best Phone Deals

Dual-SIM smartphones let you use two SIMs in a single phone. Most people who use dual-SIM phones find the functionality useful for mixing work and pleasure, rather than carrying separate phones for their work- and personal contracts.

Dual-SIM phones are also useful for maintaining two personal contracts, however, whereby one might offer a good rate on calls and texts, and the other offers unlimited data. Or perhaps you frequently travel abroad, and would like to carry a UK SIM for when you're at home and another that is local to the country you're visiting. Also see: Best kids' phones 2016/2017

Whatever your reason for requiring a dual-SIM phone, a problem in the UK is that most smartphones do not include the functionality as standard. Indeed, hardly any of the phones we are sent for review are dual-SIM models, and even where dual-SIM versions are available they are rarely intended to go on sale in the UK. Also see: Best smartphones 2016/2017.

Dual-SIM phones are incredibly popular outside the UK and in the developing world, but for some reason us Brits are being left out of the dual-SIM party. And we want in.

This is one reason why the grey market has become a popular solution for picking up a dual- SIM phone, but there are risks involved - read our advice on buying grey-market dual-SIM phones .

Another way you can find a dual-SIM phone is to search a site such as Amazon or eBay for 'dual-SIM phone', 'dual-SIM Samsung' or 'dual-SIM Sony' and so on. Having seen the standard single-SIM versions that are intended for UK sale we have no doubt that many of these are great phones, but having not personally laid our hands on the dual-SIM variants we're reluctant to recommend them here. They also tend to go off sale as soon as we add them to the round-up. Of course, you are more than welcome to recommend these phones in the comments below.

In this group test we recommend only phones that are sold in the UK with dual-SIM functionality as standard, and that we have personally reviewed. And in the future, we're hoping that the increased demand for dual-SIM phones means we will begin to see more and more dual-SIM smartphones supplied to us for review. Also see: Best budget phones and best phones under £50.

If you already have a single-SIM phone but want the ability to add a second SIM jump straight to our advice on How to add a second SIM to iPhone or How to add a second SIM to a single-SIM phone .

Something we've noticed when shopping for dual-SIM phones is that the manufacturer very rarely provides any information about the functionality other than it exists. It doesn't tell you how the dual-SIM functionality works in practice, nor whether both SIMs support 3G, or even what size SIM cards they accept. As we've learned you can never assume: you'll need to contact the manufacturer or check spec tables, reviews or forums to find out this information.

For that latter concern, as technology journalists who are always having to swap SIMs between the various phones we have in for review, we have found the best solution is to adopt a Nano- SIM for our personal smartphone, then pair it with an adaptor when we need to use it in a phone that supports Mini- or Micro-SIMs. SIM adaptors are very cheap, but some are better than others. We like the MediaDevil Simdevil, which comes with Nano- to Micro, Nano- to Mini and Micro- to Mini adaptors, plus a SIM tray ejector tool. It costs £3.97 from Amazon. If you're planning to stick with the phone, however, you can always request a new SIM of the correct size for free from your network operator, then swap over your number. Also see: Best sounding phone 2016/2017.

In all the dual-SIM phones we've tested both SIMs are on standby at all times (known as dual- standby phones), but you can actively use only one SIM at a time. This means that either SIM can accept a phone call or text at any time, without you having to actively swap between them or reboot the phone. However, if you get a call on one number while a call is active on the other, it won't start ringing in your ear or give you the option to put the first caller on hold - the call will simply not be successful.

Dual-active SIM phones also exist, however, which use two modems and allow you to receive calls on both numbers at once. We've not tested any dual-active phones, but some more recent examples allegedly include the dual-SIM variants of the HTC One M8 , Sony Xperia Z3 and Samsung Galaxy S5 mini. (Always check before you buy, of course.) See also: Best Android smartphones in UK: What's the best Android phone you can buy in 2016/2017?

If it's you who wants to make a call or send a text, Android has a standard SIM Management menu that lets you specify which SIM should be used for voice calls, video calls, messages and mobile data. You can either specify a particular SIM for each of these tasks, or leave the setting at Always ask. If you choose the latter, the next time you want to make a call or send a text you will be asked which SIM you want to use.

Motorola improves on this with its dual-SIM Moto G , with its Automatic SIM selection able to track your SIM usage and then suggest or automatically use a particular SIM for a certain mode of contact.

The data connection is where there seems to be a lot of confusion when it comes to dual-SIM phones. Whereas both SIM slots on some dual-SIM phones are capable of supporting 3G connections (for example the Moto G and the Elephone P5000 ), you can use 3G on only one SIM at a time. Unlike with calls and texts the data connection can't be on standby for both SIMs: you must specify which SIM you want to use rather than select one when prompted.

Of course, this isn't always the case, and the ZTE Blade S6 supports 3G/4G only on its first SIM slot, and you can't change the data connection for browsing the web or making video calls. You can still specify which SIM should be used for calls and texts, although things look a bit different in Lollipop. (We haven't finished our testing of the ZTE Blade S6 just yet, but we'll be adding it to our best dual-SIM phones chart soon.)

By default, when you are using the data connection on one SIM and a phone call comes in to the other it will pause the data connection on the first. In the Moto G you'll find a Connection priority menu, which lets you specify that calls should instead go to voicemail instead of interrupting your browsing. There is no such option on the other dual-SIM phones we've tested, but it's not something we'd be likely to change in any case.

The Elephone P5000 momentarily threw us when we tried to switch the data connection from one SIM to the other. When we tried to change the data connection from O2 to Vodafone it popped up a message suggesting 3G wasn't supported by the Vodafone SIM. We knew it was, which suggested that the second SIM slot it resided in was capable of only 2G. In fact, we found that if we first changed the Video call setting from O2 to Vodafone we could then change the data connection without issue. (Note that if your data connection is 'Off' this is because your Wi- Fi is switched on.) Also see: Best new phones coming in 2016/2017 .

Which SIM is configured to use the data connection is instantly evident from the navigation bar, with the SIM in slot 1 displayed in blue and the SIM in slot 2 displayed in green. One will be marked with G and the other 3G.

You can change these colours and whether or not the phone number is displayed within the SIM Management menu to make it more instantly obvious which is which. The Moto G and ZTE Blade S6 also lets you change the SIM card name.

Another issue when using dual-SIM phones is where your contacts are stored. We found that by default the contacts from both SIM cards are stored in the phonebook. If you'd rather see the contacts from only one SIM, tap the three dots icon at the bottom right of the screen (within the Contacts app) and choose 'Contacts to display'. You can then select All contacts, Gmail contacts, phone contacts or one of your two SIMs.

Usually when you add a contact you get a pop-up menu asking whether you want to store the contact on your phone memory, your SIM or your Google account. Here you'll now see two SIMs in the list rather than one. A quick way to turn this off and prevent you always having to choose is to open the SIM management menu, select Contact binding and then select a specific SIM. Also see: Best cheap 4G phones 2016/2017. The NeeCoo Magic Card is a £30.85 gadget available from Gear Best that lets you add another SIM to a standard iPhone. A gold credit-card-sized ( 85x54x4mm) device that slips easily into a pocket or wallet, the MeeCoo allows you to insert a Nano-SIM card and then connect it to your iPhone over Bluetooth 4.0 from up to 10m away.

You'll need to download the free MoreCard app from the App Store to configure the NeeCoo Magic Card, which requires iOS 7.1 or later. This lets you manage contacts, calls and texts for the second SIM from your iPhone.

Network support includes GSM 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz, so you can use the NeeCoo to make and receive phone calls and texts from a second SIM, but you won't be able to use its data allowance.

The NeeCoo Magic Card is a well-designed device with a lightweight magnesium-aluminium alloy body with tempered glass front and rear. A hole in one corner lets you add it to a keyring, while a small button on the side also allows the NeeCoo to act as a remote camera shutter.

The NeeCoo contains a small 380mAh battery that is recharged over Micro-USB. It should last 80 hours on standby or provide three hours of talktime.

Physically inserting a second SIM into a single-SIM phone would be impossible without altering its design in some way, but it is possible to achieve the same feat by adding a second phone number.

OnOff is an app for iPhone and Android that lets you have multiple phone numbers on one phone. Right now it supports French and UK numbers, which work like any other number for receiving phone calls and text messages. More conveniently, though, you can turn off these numbers when it suits.

This means you could potentially give your work colleagues or clients one phone number that is switched off outside office hours. Or you could give your friends a number that is switched off during office hours.

Another bonus: should your phone battery die, you can log into the app on a friend's phone and still get your calls and texts.

The app itself is free, and you get a free trial with limited functionality for one phone number. If you like it you can then 'activate' that number, which unlocks all the features of the app. You can set up multiple lines, though these must be paid for too.

OnOff pricing starts at 79p per month, with full details here .

Read next: Best new phones coming in 2017

Follow Marie Brewis on Twitter . | Best budget smartphone: | 20 best phablets 2016/2017 | 20 best Android phones The 20 best budget phones UK: We round up the best 2016/2017 UK: What's the under £150 in the UK large-screen phones you can best Android phone? Best 2016/2017 buy - best phablet reviews Android phone reviews pcadvisor.co.uk pcadvisor.co.uk pcadvisor.co.uk

2016-12-15 09:09 Marie Brewis www.pcadvisor.co.uk

12 /73 0.8 Nokia to buy network analytics vendor Deepfield to fight DDoS attacks Cloud providers and large enterprises don't know enough about what's going on in their networks, according to Nokia.

The networking equipment vendor wants to remedy that by enhancing its products with technologies from U. S. IP network analytics vendor Deepfield, which it has just announced plans to acquire. Deepfield provides real-time information about application demand and data flows that Nokia intends to use to help its SDN (software-defined networks) steer traffic.

Nokia sees Deepfield's analytics tools as a way to help its customers -- including ISPs and telcos, hosting companies and others operating cloud services at scale -- to better control and protect their networks.

Indeed, with the rise in DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks, being able to identify and modify abnormal traffic patterns quickly is becoming more important in maintaining quality of service. Deepfield's approach is to fingerprint traffic from around 30,000 of the most popular cloud applications and services, and look out for changes in how it flows through networks. Nokia plans to use that information to make changes in its open SDN platforms, including the Nokia Network Services Platform (NSP) and Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform (VSP), it said.

The changes will happen in real time, without the need for an operator to intervene, the company said. They will even allow it to control quality of service and application performance on a per-subscriber basis, it said.

Deepfield's clients include Time Warner and Comcast, and are predominantly in the U. S. where it is based. Following the acquisition, Nokia hopes to sell Deepfield's products worldwide, it said. The companies expect to close the deal by the end of March. 2016-12-15 09:37 Peter Sayer www.itworld.com

13 /73 5.6 Best of CNET Magazine, 2016 Four times a year, CNET Magazine looks at technology through the lens of how we live. Since tech touches everything we do, we explore it from every angle: its impact on society, the people and companies working on the next big thing, and the gadgets and services making a difference.

In 2016, our reporters, editors and photographers covered everything from bourbon-making to adventure photography, new designs in airlines' economy class seating to the hyperloop. And every issue featured an in-depth Q&A with tech-culture faves, including " X-Men: Apocalypse " star Olivia Munn and HitRecord's Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Here's a quick look at some of the best of CNET Magazine, 2016.

Scott Blanks listens as his iPhone tells him the bus schedule for a local stop in San Francisco.

Experiment with your angles to find interesting compositions.

Barrels of white oak are flame-charred to add flavor to the bourbon as it ages.

Panasonic's Jazz Seat brings a planeload of tech to economy class.

Blizzard's World of Warcraft is known for a rich universe filled with complex characters.

2016-12-15 09:30 by www.cnet.com

14 /73 1.1 Why your tech is a pain in your neck. And back. And eyes For an uninterrupted hour every week, Susan Friedman stashes her smartphone in a locker and turns her full attention to a different screen. On her spin-class bike, only the control panel matters, and physical discomfort comes from exhausted, burning quads -- not neck or eyestrain.

For Friedman, a 35-year-old attorney in Los Angeles, spin class isn't just about getting strong. It's also about staying sane and pain-free. Like many of us, Friedman works up to 70 hours a week from her desktop, laptop and smartphone -- and being always online exacts a physical and psychological toll. By sidelining her phone for an hour, Friedman gives her mind a rare break from workplace and social pressure, while letting her body repair.

"I carry my stress in my shoulders," Friedman says. "So I'm always tense. My eyes will start fluttering, and I can't tell what I'm reading. I get headaches from the eyestrain. " Sound familiar? Neck aches. Sore back. Eyestrain. Thumb strain. Poor sleep. Lack of focus. These are all well-documented symptoms of our digital age, and sure signs that the screens that enrich our lives often overload our brains and bodies, too. In the short term, too much screen time can leave you sore and stressed. But in the long term, using laptops, phones and tablets all day can lead to chronic pain and possibly blunted long-term memory, not to mention a habitual dependence on being constantly connected -- and anxious when you're not.

People who work from digital screens for more than four consecutive hours a day are at higher risk for both short-term and chronic pain. Bad posture is to blame, mostly from slouching, a misaligned spine and looking down.

"Think of the spine as a system that takes the stresses of the body and distributes the force evenly," explains Andrew Lui, a clinical professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation science at the University of California, San Francisco. Bending one part of your spine applies greater pressure to other parts.

For more CNET Magazine stories, click here .

Smartphone use is especially harmful, Lui adds, because craning to read a smaller screen amplifies the pressure on your neck -- as much as 60 pounds of force , according to a computer model created by spinal surgeon Kenneth Hansraj of New York Spine Surgery & Rehabilitation Medicine in Poughkeepsie, NY.

"Damage" and "pain" may sound abstract, but misalignment can lead to herniated disks and pulled or torn muscles. Ligaments and tendons can fray from overuse, and spinal nerves can pinch. And don't forget upper and lower back pain, headaches, stiff neck and repetitive stress injuries to hands, fingers and elbows.

"I get worried about people using cell phones," Lui says, noting that our opposable thumbs -- which don't just bend and straighten, but also circle -- are more vulnerable to overuse, particularly at the joint at the thumb's base. Mobile gaming, which relies on longer periods of intense, repetitive action, increases this risk.

Small-size screen font exacerbates posture problems and strained eyes. When you're absorbed by digital work, you'll automatically scrunch and hunch to read the screen. By the same token, your small eye muscles contract more and blink less, which can dry out your peepers and pile on the muscle tension.

"The body contorts itself to accommodate the eyes," explains Jeff Hopkins, a senior manager with Zeiss, an optics company that sells special glasses for computer users.

Given enough time and rest, your body can usually work out the kinks. Ease up on forceful typing for a few days, and sore fingers will start feeling better. But continue the abuse, or add an hour to an already long day of digital use, and recurring physical problems begin to mount.

It's not just your body that device dependence disrupts -- your mind is affected, as well. Constant attention to media like email and social network updates can curb your ability to process and retain information. Anthony Wagner, a Stanford University professor of psychology and neurology, observed in a study that heavy multitaskers found it harder to ignore irrelevant information when performing a single mental task. Instead of blocking out distractions, they responded to more of them, like the chime of an incoming text.

Playing games like Super Mario Run can tire your twiddlers fast.

Wagner says brains don't really multitask; they switch from one activity to another. That switch comes at a cost. "You're slower to perform a task by switching than by focusing on it intently. "

The heavy media multitaskers Wagner tested either remembered less new information or couldn't recall it as precisely as those who multitasked less. While that doesn't raise flags in the day-to-day, a hampered ability to create strong new memories points to a smaller memory capacity down the road. To test this, Wagner and his team will image the parts of the brain that are responsible for memory, comparing the mental activity of light multitaskers with those who hop around.

Beyond possibly affecting concentration and long-term memory, numerous studies agree that late-night screen time stifles the production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates your sleep cycle. Exposure to green and blue light before bedtime is especially harmful , Harvard researchers have found, with your gadget's blue-tone glow suppressing melatonin twice as long as green light. Less melatonin leads to less sleep, which can eventually cause depression, obesity and diabetes , compromised immune response, impaired memory recall and cardiovascular problems.

So, apart from taking periodic breaks -- and using your device's orange-hued nighttime mode -- what's a modern technologist to do? For some, the answer is to create spaces devoid of gadget use altogether, at least for a few hours at a time.

One such space is Chicago's popular bar The Violet Hour. Framed in the hallway, a sign proclaims the speakeasy's house rules. Rule No. 1: "No cell phone use inside lounge. " (For the record, rule 14 is "No Cosmopolitans. ") It's a simple edict designed to keep the bar's atmosphere intimate and focused solely on classy cocktails and companionship, not on screens. "The concept of the program is that there wouldn't be any TV, no distraction," explains Eden Laurin, The Violet Hour's managing partner. Laurin, who joined the bar in 2008, says that the posted etiquette has received some backlash in the last five years as smartphone use has ballooned, but it hasn't kept customers from forming lines that stretch down the block. Instead, the clientele accepts and even appreciates the excuse to shut down.

Check in your laptops and phones when you get to Camp Grounded.

"It seems to me there's a sense of relief to take a break from technology," Laurin says. Although The Violet Hour won't evict patrons for posting photos of their drinks to social networks, customers quickly put their phones away.

Phones aren't even allowed at Camp Grounded , a no-tech summer camp for grownups that runs in multiple cities around the globe. Still, technology plays a large role. Founder Levi Felix, a former creative director at a tech startup, deliberately fills the camp with physical versions of everyday technology in order to help overworked adults rethink their "need" for gadgets and the Internet.

One example is the ersatz inbox, a cubbyhole for paper messages. Campers who repeatedly check their cubbies are encouraged to ask themselves: "Why do I check the inbox? Am I looking for community? Am I ever really fulfilled? "

In San Antonio, Texas, chef Michael Sohocki's Restaurant Gwendolyn takes a different approach to breaking away from tech. Guests can text and post with abandon, but everyone who steps inside knows that their upscale dinner was made with 19th century techniques -- a fact that draws attention to our modern reliance on laptops and phones. Sohocki uses technology no more recent than May 10, 1869, the date the final spike was driven into the transcontinental railroad. Here, coffee is made with a siphon and gas flame. Preparing cream cheese takes three days.

For Sohocki, cutting modern kitchen technology is more about respecting historical traditions than it is about tuning out the digital world -- though there's some of that, too. True, social networks help promote his restaurant and he uses YouTube to learn new butchering techniques. But relying on gadgets like fancy sous vide machines and even blenders makes us forget that eating and living are hard work.

"When you make food from scratch in the absence of technological advancements," Sohocki says, "then the food contains strong meaning. "

Read more about these no-tech zones.

Nobody is suggesting we quit our screens completely, just that we tend to our mental and physical health and pare back when connecting isn't crucial. Susan Friedman, the Los Angeles lawyer, strives for balance. She consciously stretches at work to help keep her shoulders from tensing and ditches her phone when she can.

"You have to set aside time for yourself that no one can interrupt," she says. "You've got to take control of your technology, rather than let it take control of you. "

2016-12-15 09:30 by www.cnet.com

15 /73 4.0 Best invoicing software tools: What's the best billing and invoicing services for small businesses? Keep track of your accounts with these accounting management tools

Get the most out of your Google Apps with these add-ons

How do you know an invoice is genuine? With great difficulty, it turns out

2016-12-15 09:30 Christina Mercer www.computerworlduk.com

16 /73 2.1 2017 IT forecast: Budgets will rebound TEKsystems 2017 IT forecast shows IT budgets rebounding from a slump in 2016, and IT leaders' confidence high going into the new year. But challenges around talent acquisition and organizational alignment will persist.

The research , which polled 700 CIOs, IT hiring managers, directors and vice presidents in October 2016, found that almost half, 49 percent, expect their IT budgets to increase in 2017. Only 12 percent of respondents say their IT budgets will decrease, and 39 percent say their budgets will stay the same.

IT leaders' confidence levels are high, too, with 86 percent of respondents saying they're confident in their IT department's capability to satisfy core IT demands (up 11 percent over 2016), 76 percent saying they're confident in their ability to satisfy line-of-business demands (up 16 percent) and 59 percent say they're confident in their ability to satisfy demands for new IT initiatives (up 5 percent).

"This is good news and, overall, a pretty optimistic view of the future. If I'm an IT leader, I'd say I'm feeling really good about where our department and our organization is heading in 2017, and I'm feeling secure that we're able to meet the requirements of the people who are relying on us," says Jason Hayman, market research manager at staffing and recruiting firm TEKsystems.

By far, organizational alignment, or how well IT and other areas of the business staff understand and coordinate with each other, continues to be cited by 32 percent of IT leaders as the biggest challenge their organization will face in 2017. By contrast, the next most challenging area for IT leaders, skills, only garnered 19 percent of respondents.

This could be directly related to the decentralization of technology spending, the diffused ownership of IT projects, and resulting pull-back from central IT staff, according to the research. With technology investments being made beyond the IT department itself, the IT team and IT leaders specifically lose visibility into what others in the organization are doing, making it difficult to connect efficiently and understand each department's goals, the research suggests.

"IT's job is to deliver services that align with the needs of the business and so they have to make sure they have a seat at the table when other executive leaders are making decisions about spending. If they don't, their voice can quickly be supplanted by the CMO or other executives as IT spend is increasingly spread out to other departments. The continued decentralization of IT, and Shadow IT is a big problem, and looks to remain that way," says Hayman.

Programming and software development continue to be among the most crucial and hard-to-find IT skill sets, according to the research, with 42 percent of respondents saying these roles are the most critical for success in 2017 and are the most difficult to find, followed by networking (29 percent) and security talent (28 percent). Project managers, too, are in huge demand and essential for continued success, according to 32 percent of respondents.

"Once again, programmers and developers top the list of the hardest-to-find and most critical talent, but don't ignore that security, networking and data integration are also crucial. Nobody wants to be in the news as the victim of the latest data breach, but just as important, every organization needs to know how to get the most value out of the huge streams of data they're collecting so they can continue to innovate and deliver greater customer value," Hayman says.

As organizations struggle to hire and retain this talent, many are pushing salaries for programmers and developers even higher, the research shows. Hayman says that trend shows no signs of slowing, as long as organizations continue to spend on technology. But some are looking for other ways to fill critical talent gaps, such as outsourcing or using a contingent workforce.

"There's not enough talent, and businesses can only continue to raise salaries so far. They have to create a good employee value proposition, too, that includes career growth and development, purposeful, meaningful work and exciting new projects. Some organizations also are using contractors and contingent workforces through the gig economy to fill these talent gaps," Hayman says, while others are leaning more on partners and outside solution providers to share responsibility for IT projects and initiatives.

While challenges remain, overall it seems the future outlook for 2017 is bright and IT leaders have every reason to be confident.

2016-12-15 09:20 Sharon Florentine www.itnews.com

17 /73 1.7 Uber goes with the glow to help you spot your ride Ubers will now glow thanks to their beacons and their handsome drivers.

Uber is adding color to your ride home in the form of glowing beacons designed to help you more easily identify your driver.

The ride-hailing company is set to roll out the feature in four cities globally in preparation for New Year's Eve, one of its busiest nights of the year. Drivers in Miami, Denver and Nashville in the US and in Newcastle, England, will be issued the beacon devices at community events in the coming days, Uber announced Thursday.

The beacon sits on the driver's car windscreen, and it will display the color selected by the passenger within the app, with the aim of making pickups easier at busy times and in busy areas, and for people with visual impairments. But this is not just a stunt for New Year's Eve. The company -- which elsewhere is experimenting with self-driving cars -- is keen to roll the beacons out to more cities in 2017.

Some Uber drivers and passengers have experienced problems in the past with passengers climbing into the wrong cars and or ending up in cars not driven by Uber drivers at all. Giving passengers more ways of identifying the right vehicle and driver provides peace of mind for everyone involved.

As well as introducing the beacons, Uber is adding more details about exactly which car passengers should look out for into the app. Passengers will be provided with color details and photos of their vehicle to check out while they wait. This is in addition to the vehicle registration number and driver photo that Uber already provides.

In the latest version of Uber's app, customers will also notice an update that introduces shortcuts. This feature will let you store your favorite places so that pickup and drop-off details are readily available, meaning you can make a speedy exit from the office Christmas party when things start to get rowdy.

2016-12-15 09:18 by www.cnet.com

18 /73 1.2 Privacy protections for wearable devices are weak, study says The rapidly expanding wearable device market raises serious privacy concerns, as some device makers collect a massive amount of personal data and share it with other companies, according to a new study.

Existing health privacy laws don’t generally apply to wearable makers, the study says. While consumers are embracing fitness trackers, smart watches, and smart clothing, a “weak and fragmented” health privacy regulatory system in the U. S. fails to give consumers the privacy protections they may expect, said the study , released Thursday by the Center for Digital Democracy and the School of Communication at American University.

“Many of these devices are already being integrated into a growing Big Data digital health and marketing ecosystem, which is focused on gathering and monetizing personal and health data in order to influence consumer behavior,” the study says.

As consumers buy more smart wearables and the devices’ functionality becomes increasingly sophisticated “the extent and nature of data collection will be unprecedented,” the study adds. “Americans now face a growing loss of their most sensitive information, as their health data are collected and analyzed on a continuous basis, combined with information about their finances, ethnicity, location, and online and off-line behaviors,” said Jeff Chester, CDD’s executive director and co-author of the report. “Policy makers must act decisively to protect consumers in today’s big data era.”

In the U. S., privacy law is piecemeal, with separate laws for different types of information, such as financial, student, or health data, the study notes. U. S. privacy laws governing health information are “limited and fragmented, with significant gaps in coverage,” the study says. “The degree to which users of wearable devices will be able to make informed privacy decisions ... will ultimately depend on the effectiveness of government and self-regulatory policies.”

While wearable users may believe health information collected by the devices are protected by the U. S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), that’s not the case, Chester said by email.

HIPAA applies only to so-called covered entities, basically health-care providers like doctors and hospitals, he said. “These consumer wearable devices aren’t covered by HIPAA and the marketing that goes on has no protections,” Chester added.

In a June report , the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services noted that “health information is increasingly collected, shared, or used by new types of organizations beyond the traditional health care organizations” covered by HIPAA.

A spokeswoman for fitness tracker maker Fitbit noted the company has worked with privacy group the Center for Democracy and Technology to define privacy best practices for wearables. The company believes users should control their data, she said.

“Fitbit is committed to protecting the privacy of our users’ data and the trust of our customers is paramount,” Fitbit said in a statement. “It has always been our policy not to sell user data.”

Wearable maker Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

The authors of the study called for new privacy standards applied to big data information collection. Companies collecting health and other personal data should be more transparent about their collection and use of data, and the U. S. should consider a new data-protection authority to replace the country’s fragmented privacy protections, the study’s authors said.

“While we need to do everything possible to educate and empower consumers to take control of their personal data, we cannot expect individuals to bear the entire burden of managing their privacy ini the big-data era,” the study says.

2016-12-15 09:17 Grant Gross www.pcworld.com

19 /73 1.4 The top 10 PC technologies and trends to watch in 2017 Though some critics love to knock PCs as dinosaurs, laptops and desktops have gotten sexier, faster and even smarter. For every blue screen of death, there are droves of technological enhancements driving PCs into the era of virtual reality, 4K video and 5G connectivity. Here are the top 10 PC technology and trends to watch next year. An Intel employee demonstrates the company’s Project Alloy headset on stage during IDF 2016 in San Francisco on August 16, 2016.

VR devices will come in many new shapes and sizes, with some of them acting essentially as PCs that fit on your head. Dell, Asus, Acer, Lenovo and HP will release mixed reality headsets, which will allow users to interact with 3D objects that pop up as floating images superimposed on a real-life background. The devices will provide a new level of human- computer interaction, making it more fun than ever to create 3D objects, play games, watch moves, and have interactive Skype calls. These “holographic computers,” as they have been called, will have Intel chips, an integrated GPU and possibly a 3D RealSense camera to identify objects, measure distances, and provide new perspectives on surroundings.

A computer with an Intel SSD on display at Computex 2015 in Taipei

Prices of SSDs are going up due to shortages, and that could have an impact on the price of laptops, 2-in-1 computers and storage. Dell’s XPS 13 with Intel’s Kaby Lake chips and a 512GB SSD, for example, is not available right now. Other laptops with 512GB SSDs are priced unbelievably high. Most PC makers are offering 128GB or 256GB SSDs in PCs by default. Choose storage wisely, as it isn’t easy to screw open a superthin 2-in-1 to replace an SSD.

Woman using Microsoft’s Cortana voice-activated assistant on Lumia smartphone.

The feud between Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana voice-activated assistants could get more interesting next year. Users will be able to shout out Cortana commands to Windows 10 PCs from a longer distance, thanks to a “far-field speech recognition” technology that Intel and Microsoft are working on. Until now, Cortana worked best if a user was close to a PC, but millions of Windows PCs will turn into Amazon Echo competitors with this new feature. Cortana can do a lot more than Amazon Echo, like accessing information from the cloud, chatting with chatbots, checking email and other tasks.

Intel has been the unchallenged king of PCs for more than a decade, but AMD is fighting back with its new Ryzen PC processor, which will reaches PCs next year. A healthy rivalry will be good news for PC users, some of whom may jump from the Intel to the AMD camp. AMD claims Ryzen is 40 percent faster than its current PC chips, which on paper is impressive. The chips will first hit gaming PCs, and then mainstream laptops and desktops later in 2017. Ryzen will battle Intel’s Kaby Lake in early 2017, and the 10-nanometer Cannonlake in late 2017.

The first attempt at ARM PCs, which ran on Windows RT, was an unmitigated disaster, and it left many users skeptical of the idea. But Microsoft hasn’t given up, especially as 5G starts to become a reality and cellular connectivity in PCs becomes essential. Microsoft announced that next year PCs will be available with Qualcomm’s ARM-based Snapdragon 835, which is primarily for smartphones. Super-thin laptops will get integrated modems and a long battery life with the chip. The ARM-based PCs will run Win32 applications that run on regular x86 PCs via emulation.

For now, no PC maker has announced ARM-based Windows PCs—manufacturers may be cautious in light of the Windows RT fiasco. There are also many challenges. Snapdragon isn’t as fast as high-end x86 Intel or AMD chips, and won’t support 64-bit applications initially. Also, emulation may limit the ability to exploit hardware acceleration.

The Bluetooth logo.

Laptops and 2-in-1s will be equipped with the latest Bluetooth 5 wireless specification, which is a longer and faster upgrade to the aging Bluetooth 4.2. Bluetooth 5 will allow PCs to communicate wirelessly with devices up to 400 meters away in clear line of sight, but a more reasonable range is about 120 meters, according to analysts. Bluetooth 5 will transfer data at speeds of up to 2Mbps, which is two times faster than its predecessor.

Dell’s XPS 13 has an edge-to-edge screen.

Laptops like the XPS 13 and Lenovo’s Yoga 910 have beautiful edge-to-edge screens, a feature that may be included in more laptops next year. Also, 4K screens and HDR (high-dynamic range) technology will make games and movies look stunning. HDR results in more vivid images, and TVs, cameras and monitors supporting the technology are already available. Netflix is also doubling down on HDR. An HDR standards battle is brewing with DolbyVision and HBR3, but GPU makers are supporting both standards. AMD expects DolbyVision to ultimately win.

3D XPoint is the technology behind Optane products.

Intel’s Optane, a superfast SSD and DRAM replacement that could ultimately unify memory and storage, could cause a radical change in PC architecture. But that won’t happen for a few years, and the initial expectations for Optane are modest. The first Optane SSDs will be in enthusiast PCs, and could cost a small fortune. Optane SSDs have been measured as being 10 times faster than conventional SSDs. Over time, Optane could replace DRAM DIMMs, with the added advantage of being able to store data.

The SSDs won’t be in laptops next year as the technology’s uses are still being explored. Optane is based on a technology called 3D Xpoint, which Intel co-developed with Micron. SSDs based on Micron’s 3D XPoint technology will ship next year under the QuantX brand.

Lenovo’s Yoga Book has a virtual keyboard on a touch panel.

We saw some interesting changes to keyboards this year: Apple added the Touch Bar, while Lenovo swapped out the hard keyboard for a virtual keyboard on a touch input panel for its Yoga Book. Lenovo wants to bring the virtual keyboard to more Chromebooks and 2-in-1s, partly because of its versatility. The touch input panel can also be used to draw or take notes with a stylus. It’s a toss-up: Lenovo believes that those used to typing on mobile devices will adapt to this touch panel keyboard quickly, while hard keyboard diehards will dismiss the idea.

USB Type-C cable on show at CES

PC makers may not muster up the courage to remove the headphone jack and SD card slots from PCs right away, but USB 2.0 slots could be on their way out. Some PC makers may leave out display and other legacy ports with the emergence of the versatile USB Type-C, which can be used to charge PCs and connect displays, storage devices and other peripherals.

2016-12-15 09:15 Agam Shah www.pcworld.com

20 /73 1.7 The best cheap 4K TV deals for Christmas 2016 This is a great time of year to grab a cheap TV deal. Check out the latest seasonal discounts in our extensive guide below for cheap HD and 4K TV deals.

The days of paying over a grand for a 40-inch TV are long gone as you can see – you can now pick up 40-inch models for under £200, or even 4K 50-inch TVs for under £400.

Curved TVs have come down in price considerably too, and we've discovered some stunning deals on 4K Ultra HD TVs. Now is a great time to upgrade, especially with Netflix , Amazon , the BBC and Sky all planning on bringing more 4K content over the coming months. Check out our guide on Where to watch 4K TV shows and movies.

Our 4K TV deals and HD TV offers feature a wide range of the best TV retailers out there. If you'd prefer to browse their full collections instead of our highlights, here are the direct links to their best TV deals:

We have a selection of the best cheap TV deals across multiple size ranges. Directly below, you'll find our favourite deal of the week.

Alternatively, you can get a larger 49-inch version for just £449 .

Pricehawk is a Chrome extension that will automatically find you the cheapest deals for the tech and games items you're shopping for online. It'll also let you know if there are voucher codes you can use to save even more money!

2016-12-15 09:07 Brendan Griffiths feedproxy.google.com

21 /73 2.9 Who will be the new British king of the ring? WWE to crown UK champ Irish wrestler Finn Balor will soon be joined by the UK's first WWE champion.

Attention British grapple fans: The WWE is crowning its first UK champion.

The World Wrestling Entertainment UK Championship Tournament will be held at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool across the weekend of 14 and 15 January 2017. Tickets go on sale today, or you can watch online at WWENetwork.com , wrestling's biggest streaming service.

WWE executive vice president Paul "Triple H" Levesque announced the news at London's O2 Arena today. The Blackpool event is set to boost UK subscribers for WWE programming. It's a smart move for the US-based WWE, as competition for fans is hotting up in the UK, with more British wrestling coming to TV at the end of the year. WWE's head scout William Regal and trainer Robbie Brookside chose 16 wrestlers from across the UK and Ireland to hit the ring for the single-elimination tournament.

Competitors from the UK wrestling scene include Trent Seven, Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate, stars of independent wrestling promotions including Progress. Also hitting the mat are up-and-coming Londoner Roy Johnson and Irish high-flyer Jordan Devlin, who hails from the same home town as WWE superstar Finn Balor.

English former wrestler Nigel McGuinness will be one of the announcers for the big event.

It's a good time for British wrestling fans: the WWE announcement follows news that broadcaster ITV will resurrect "World of Sport. " In the 1960s, '70s and '80s, "World of Sport" brought British wrestling superstars like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks to the nation's living rooms. ITV will show a one-off extravaganza on New Year's Eve, featuring today's stars of the country's thriving independent wrestling scene.

2016-12-15 09:03 by www.cnet.com

22 /73 0.0 Uber's Beacon update will help you find your cab with dashboard lights Uber is introducing a few new features to its cars and app this week that should make finding your ride even easier, particularly in the busy holiday period.

The most interesting feature is called Beacon. When a customer books their car in the Uber app they’ll be asked to select a color, and a light fitted to their driver’s windscreen will then light up in the corresponding shade, making identifying the right vehicle much quicker and easier at night.

Alongside Beacon, Uber is also introducing car colors and photos in the app so that you’ll be able to see exactly what your car will look like before it arrives.

Where right now you can only see the registration number, car brand, and a picture of your driver, you’ll also be able to see what color of car is picking you up which should make it easy to narrow things down on a busy road.

We’ve all been there: you’re outside a busy station at night waiting for your Uber with dozens of others doing the same thing. Suddenly an inauspicious Toyota turns the corner and you all stumble towards its headlights like extras in a zombie flick, jostling to see its registration plate and find out if they can hop in.

The combination of all these features should at the very least mean only one or two people will find themselves eyeing one another as they approach a car, rather than dozens.

Other notable features being added include real-time journey sharing, which will allow you to share a live map of your location, estimated arrival time, and the identity of your driver with friends you’re meeting or leaving.

Four different cities across the globe will see the new features rolled out first this week, with Newcastle being the first UK location.

2016-12-15 09:00 Emma Boyle feedproxy.google.com

23 /73 2.1 Tech and your job: What to expect in 2017 Is the gig economy on the way out?

No matter what job you do, technology will have something to do with it.

Technology is transforming industries from manufacturing to insurance, requiring employees to develop new sets of skills at an ever-faster clip to stay relevant in the 21st century, according to a new report issued Thursday by job search platform Glassdoor. The report, " Looking Ahead: 5 Job Trends to Watch in 2017 ," was written by Glassdoor's Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain and the title pretty much sums up its purpose.

Some of Chamberlain's findings might be counterintuitive. He sees the gig economy -- the idea people will work for themselves through contract or temporary jobs -- losing its appeal as the thought of driving for Uber or Lyft begins to look less attractive than a traditional 40-hour-a-week job. That's a U-turn from the exuberance earlier this year, when Time declared the gig economy could save capitalism.

The reason: today's fastest-growing jobs aren't gigs but jobs requiring creativity, judgment and personal skills. Roles like product manager or data scientist don't really lend themselves to piecework, he says, citing a November 2016 study that found only a small percentage of US adults, 4.3 percent, had ever made money from an online platform like Uber, TaskRabbit or AirBnb. That same report also showed a lot of churn in these jobs; more than half leave within the year. The gig economy might not be the only thing on the wane. The report also projects that tech companies might start reeling in some of their more creative benefits. So, the days of yoga classes, foosball tables and onsite laundry services might be on the way out.

Glassdoor's own research found the correlation between those outlandish perks and employee satisfaction isn't that strong. A stronger correlation exists with plain vanilla bennies, like health insurance, retirement plans and paid time off.

Next up is automation. The report predicts that few jobs will be left untouched. After already having transformed manufacturing, automation is making inroads into jobs like long-haul trucking and urban taxi driving.

Even white collar jobs are already getting a taste of automation , as well. Insurance, finance and other professional jobs traditionally associated with years of college education are either done or supplemented by computers. For example, one British company called Xchanging has software that closes static insurance claims.

There's also the continued creep of data into the way businesses operate. Glassdoor projects that 2017 will see more transparency on the part of companies when talking about the gender pay gaps, or the difference between what men and women are paid for equal work. The White House estimates women make about 79 cents for every dollar men make. What's more, data can help identify if there's a problem so it can be fixed. Already, companies like Intel and Salesforce have taken such steps.

And that very idea plays into another point about the use of data science , or the practice of gleaning insights from volumes of information. While many companies already rely on data to design and market products, they could start to harnesses data as a way to better recruit, hire and retain employees.

2016-12-15 09:00 by www.cnet.com

24 /73 1.2 Facebook is the unwilling king of the news Facebook has titanic media power. The only thing that matches that influence may be the company's denial it exists.

The US election crystallized the stakes. There are a myriad of reasons behind the voting decisions of millions of people, and the world's biggest social network says its role is getting overblown.

"The idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea," Mark Zuckerberg said last month. He's moderated his comments since then, but Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg this week reiterated that Facebook didn't sway the election. Facebook's media headaches don't start or end with fake news: With 1.8 billion monthly visitors, Facebook is a media-sharing powerhouse. But unlike the search giant Google or other big networks such as Twitter, Facebook exerts more control over what you see. Those News Feed algorithms are really, really good at getting you to click your way down a comfy rabbit hole. The election exposed how your own personal Facebook burrow -- with its echo chambers, fake news and entry points for abuse -- may not be a safest place to live.

The bigger it has grown, the more Facebook has struggled with challenges typically faced by media and news organizations. Even as Facebook has become the primary vehicle for media critical to public debate, like live videos in July related to police violence , the company has continued to insist it is a tech platform, not a media company.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is among the company executives who've said it's a tech firm, not a media outfit.

The wrinkle is that Facebook users may not draw so clear a distinction.

"Most people don't differentiate," said Rachel Davis Mersey, an associate professor at Northwestern University who specializes in audience reception to news. "Consumers of media see Facebook as a media company. "

Facebook declined to comment for this story.

The pope endorses Donald Trump. An FBI agent investigating Hillary Clinton kills himself in a murder-suicide. A man gets paid $3,500 to protest a Trump rally.

All those stories are false -- "fake news. " They also sunk into the brains of Facebook users better than real news. When people complain that Facebook is failing to honor obligations as a news outlet, though, they're only getting it half right.

Facebook is a major news source, and a growing one. Nearly half of US adults get news from Facebook, according to a Pew Research Center study this year. In 2013, 47 percent of all US Facebook users said they got news on Facebook; this year, it was 66 percent.

But criticizing Facebook's news judgment typically holds the company to editorial standards from a different age, like trying to nail horseshoes to the tires of a car.

"Your friends have the right to embellish and lie about their own lives," said Karen North, a professor of digital social media at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. "What if Facebook said everything on there had to be true? There would be nothing left. "

Facebook is stuck in a seemingly lose-lose scenario with news. The hands-off approach allows misinformation to thrive, especially since false reports tend to play well with News Feed algorithms. Facebook sets up the News Feed to prioritize postings by your own friends and stories you're most likely to engage with: "liking," sharing, clicking a link, and so on. Those items are also most likely to be ones that affirm your current points of view.

Facebook's News Feed prioritizes posts by your friends and those you're most likely to engage with.

"We love to find evidence that supports the opinions we already have," North said. But a hands-on approach landed the company in hot water. Facebook faced a outcry in May after a report that the editorial team managing its "Trending Topics" section was instructed to suppress conservative news sources.

Facebook denied the claims , but it changed Trending Topics to be more software-based and held an olive-branch meeting with conservative press leaders .

Criticism about Facebook's media shortcomings don't stop with news. As a publishing forum for all kinds of media, Facebook drew criticism that it fumbled sensitive subjects by removing materials that deserve to be seen.

When Illma Gore painted a nude portrait of Trump with a tiny penis, her posting of the work went viral on Facebook. Someone, presumably a critic, filed what's known as a DMCA takedown request, accusing her of illegally posting media that belongs to somebody else.

As the creator and owner of the painting, she holds the copyright. Yet the request led Facebook to remove her posting and temporarily ban her from the site. That shut down her access to the network where the greatest amount of discussion about her was taking place.

"It felt like I couldn't speak," she said.

Los Angeles-based artist Illma Gore's portrait of Trump went viral on Facebook.

As a company, Facebook isn't legally obligated to protect anyone's speech, but its community standards say the site should "give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. " Copyright complaints offer a glaring hole where postings can be removed almost immediately with little review, according to Corynne McSherry, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to digital civil liberties.

Abuse of copyright takedowns may be significant. WordPress, an online service that lets anyone set up and publish a blog, rejected 9 percent of its takedown requests as abusive in the most recent six-month period.

Facebook doesn't provide numbers about takedowns, but it boasts a monthly audience quadruple the size of WordPress'.

Takedowns aren't limited to copyright violations. Facebook also removes media and bans users over violations of its community standards, sometimes provoking outcries of censorship.

That was Tom Egeland's experience, when the Norwegian writer posted an iconic photo from the Vietnam war in August. Facebook removed the picture depicting a Vietnamese girl fleeing naked from her napalmed village, citing child nudity.

Phan Thi Kim Phuc was photographed as a child during the Vietnam war in the Pulitzer-winning photo projected behind her.

Others posted the photo in solidarity, including the prime minister of Norway , only to see the image deleted again and, sometimes, their account banned as well. Facebook eventually recognized that a historically pivotal photograph isn't the same as child pornography, and it restored some of the posts (but not Egeland's).

"Facebook's primary problem and challenge is to separate valid breaches of their community standards -- like porn -- from a post that should not be removed," Egeland said in an email interview. "Facebook's second problem is that nobody listens to you. "

McSherry at the EFF said Egeland isn't alone in his frustration. Her organization has noticed two recurrent shortcomings in Facebook's community standards. One is a lack of clarity about how standards are applied. The other is recourse.

"We hear over and over again, people don't know how to appeal... It can be days or weeks to get any kind of person to go back and say, 'Wait a minute; did we make a mistake?'" she said. "To have one company have so much power to decide what is and is not indecent is troubling. "

2016-12-15 09:00 by www.cnet.com

25 /73 2.5 CNET asks: What's your favorite Star Wars film? The Force is strongest with which episode? Answer, you shall. After two full trilogies and the beginning of a new one, we're wondering how the Star Wars movies stack up among our readers.

May the Force be with you!

2016-12-15 09:00 Tania González www.cnet.com

26 /73 0.0 Vertigo Games Explains Core i7 Exclusivity For 'Arizona Sunshine' Theoretically, then, wouldnt this be a game that shines on an 8 core Bulldozer/Steamroller? It actually has 8 physical (granted, weaker) cores, so you would think that with the advanced physics on, 8 physical cores would trump 4 physical + 4 virtual. Not really sure why they make no mention of any AMD cpu in the system requirements. Cores on Bulldozer are only about half as strong as Intel cores. With Bulldozer, it would be difficult to run at high framerate required for VR, and not enough power for physics like on i5s. Zen, on the other hand, should be ~4 times the power than same clocked Bulldozer. I get paid 85 bucks hourly for freelancing. I never thought I can manage to do it but my good friend is making 10000 dollars each month by doing this job and she recommended me to check it out. Try it out on following website, you have nothing to lose... Click this link...... www. Nypost55.com

2016-12-15 09:00 Virtual Reality www.tomshardware.com

27 /73 0.0 New malvertising campaign infects home and small business routers A new campaign that infects internet routers with malware via malicious ads has been uncovered by researchers.

The researchers, working at security vendor Proofpoint, have analysed the use of an improved version of the exploit kit DNSChanger. The exploit kit is not new, dating back to 2007, but the researchers note several recent refinements in a new campaign that started in October. Proofpoint's website notes that these include:

• External DNS resolution for internal addresses

• Steganography to conceal an AES key to decrypt the list of fingerprints / default credentials and local resolutions and the layout for the commands sent to attack the targeted routers

• The addition of dozens of recent router exploits: There are now 166 fingerprints, some working for several router models, versus 55 fingerprints in 2015.

• When possible (in 36 cases) the exploit kit modifies the network rules to make the administration ports available from external addresses, exposing the router to additional attacks like those perpetrated by the Mirai botnets

• The malvertising chain is now accepting Android devices as well.

DNSChanger relies on vulnerabilities in the victims' internet router, particularly those designed for home and small business use.

Victims are served malicious ads which will infect their router via their browser. Most new DNSChanger infections have been found to affect the Chrome browser on Windows desktops and Android devices.

Infection occurs when the user visits a legitimate website that is serving malicious ads. The malicious ads send traffic to the DNSChanger exploit kit which then checks the victim's IP address. If the IP address is of interest to the attackers the victim is served a fake ad which contains Javascript code and an encryption key concealed within the image file. These scripts then search for the router and pass information back to the exploit kit, which then returms instructions on how to infect it based on its make and model.

The ultimate goal of the new malvertising campaign is not clear, say the researchers, but one result seems to be the stealing of traffic from ad agencies. However once attackers are able to control the DNS server on a network, they are able to carry out a wide range of actions including include "banking fraud, man-in-the-middle attacks, phishing, ad fraud, and more".

A large number of routers are vulnerable to DNSChanger, including models by Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, Comtrend, Pirelli and Zyxel.

Unfortunately there is little that end users can do to avoid these attacks, except to ensure their router's firmware is up to date. For most home and small business users this generally means relying on the manufacturers to push updates, Proofpoint notes.

2016-12-15 08:30 John Leonard www.computing.co.uk

28 /73 1.2 First Click: Quora is still the weirdest thing in my inbox We’ve all been there: you land at an airport, book an Uber to your hotel, only to find 20 identical black Honda CR-Vs waiting when you get outside. Which one is yours? Or it’s late, you’re leaving the club with a buzz, and inadvertently leap into...

NASA's CYGNSS mission, an initiative to send eight small satellites into space on a Pegasus XL rocket, is slated for another takeoff this morning. The launch was originally set for Monday but was scrubbed because of a faulty hydraulic pump, with a...

BMW has announced the first details of HoloActive Touch, a concept dash interface that uses gesture commands. It's an iteration on the AirTouch system shown off at CES last year, and will itself make its debut at CES 2017 next month. The main...

Are you embarrassed by your dumb curtains? Do you spend hours each morning simply shouting at them to open before giving up and cutting your way through with a knife? Well, stress no more: Slide is here to automate your shades.

Currently raising...

Google has added support for Netflix to its home assistant Google Home — just in time for a bit of holiday binge-watching. You’ll be able to ask Home to play specific series, skip episodes, pause and resume playback, turn on captions, and even... Valve has extended its support for the PlayStation 4’s DualShock controller in Steam. Users can now customize the controller as deeply as they can Valve’s own Steam Controllers, allowing them to map custom functions to the DualShock’s touchpad and...

2016-12-15 08:30 Amar Toor www.theverge.com

29 /73 4.2 EU Commission agrees rollout of 5G mobile broadband Telecommunications services will gain access to a European mobile spectrum band allowing companies to provide ultrafast 5G wireless internet, following a deal between the EU and lawmakers this week.

The deal will facilitate a coordinated rollout of 700 MHz band wireless broadband over the next four years, allowing for the expansion of superfast 5G services essential for the next generation of automated cars and IoT device networks.

"A coordinated strategy for the whole UHF band asserts our European vision," said Günther Oettinger, European Commissioner for the digital economy, in a statement. "It ensures that Europeans can access innovative services and creative content on the move from their tablets and smartphones, as well as on smart TV sets at home. "

"The coordinated release of the 700MHz band is a major leap forward on the (European) Union's path to 5G," added Oettinger.

The agreement, which is the first deal made under the 2015 Digital Single Market Strategy, will see an EU-wide approach for the use of ultra-high frequency broadband (UHF), including both the 694-790 MHz (700MHz) band, and the slightly lower 470-790 MHz band.

The UHF spectrum will be granted to mobile providers to rush extensive ultrafast wireless broadband across all EU states by 2020. Currently used extensively in digital TV services, the UHF band range is capable of penetrating buildings and walls, and is "ideal for providing high- quality internet to users whether they are indoors in a large city, or on a highway," according to an EU statement.

"Better spectrum coordination is vital to provide higher quality internet to all Europeans," said Andrus Ansip, vice-president for the Digital Single Market. "It paves the way for 5G, the next generation of communication networks, and the internet of things. "

"We made a first step today with a joint approach to use the 700 MHz band in the EU," added Ansip. "We should progress swiftly on these initiatives which are essential to have first-class connectivity in the Digital Single Market. "

Wednesday's agreement, which builds on Commission proposals made in February, will need to be ratified by EU states before becoming law, although negotiators believe the deal will help reduce discrepancies in regulations and provide greater coordination between member states for full wireless coverage. States are able to delay the rollout of the UHF spectrum up to 2022, provided they have legitimate reasons such as reorganising infrastructure, however national plans for adopting the spectrum rollout will need to be published by June 2018.

Despite the deal, frequencies in the sub 700 MHz band will remain available, with public broadcasting services given priority use until at least 2030. The Commission recommends the lower bands be used in support of the faster 5G network as it provides users with the means to innovate with new technology.

Currently only France and Germany have permitted the use of this spectrum for mobile internet services, although Britain, Finland, and Denmark all plan similar rollouts for mobile services in the next few years.

However Sweden recently announced it would be cancelling plans to make the spectrum available to services other than digital TV, citing concerns over broadband security.

2016-12-15 08:25 Dale Walker www.itpro.co.uk

30 /73 2.9 : get smooth, stable video from practically any smartphone By

Jim Martin | 31 mins ago

See full specs

£289 inc VAT

Price comparision from , and manufacturers

Smartphone cameras get better each year and the very best are capable of capturing excellent photos and videos. Some even have optical stabilisation, which gives much less jerky video when panning or walking. But none compares to mounting your phone in a three-axis gimbal such as the DJI Osmo Mobile.

Updated December 2016 to reflect DJI's increased UK pricing.

Also see: Best gadget deals

Just like the gimbals on its drones (such as the new Mavic Pro ) the Osmo’s gimbal is able to rotate in three axes and keep your phone pointing in exactly the same direction even while you walk around.

It also eliminates shaky hands and – once you’ve got the hang of using it – can produce amazingly cinematic shots which people won’t believe were taken on a phone. You can buy the Osmo Mobile from Heliguy for £319. That may sound expensive, but when you consider that the Osmo (which has its own 4K camera) costs £519, it's a decent saving. Note that UK prices were increased in November 2016 due to changes in exchange rate - it was originally £289.

The Osmo Mobile works with iPhones and Android phones which are between 589 - 85mm wide. To give that context, the iPhone 6 Plus (and the iPhone 7 Plus) are 80mm wide, so most phones with screens up to 5.7in should fit fine.

The limitation of iPhone and Android is simply because it requires you to use the DJI GO app which is only available on those platforms. And the need to use the app is down to the fact that this is what you’ll use as your camera app to record video and photos. Plus, without the app, you can’t use the Osmo’s buttons to start and stop video recording or take a photo, or use the trigger to keep the gimbal in a certain orientation (it has other functions too).

Without a phone the Mobile weighs 500g. It can get a bit weighty for long sessions, but there are various accessories available such as a base for table use (£7) and an extension pole (£43).

You’re not limited to using the Osmo upright. You can hold it horizontally like a torch, or even upside down for a low point of view.

It talks to your phone via Bluetooth, and can be charged from a USB port (so can be charged on the move from a USB power bank). The battery lasts up to 4.5 hours and you can buy spares for £38.

Build quality is excellent, and there’s some adjustment if your phone doesn’t balance well in the mount. A large dial on the back allows you to quickly clamp and unclamp your phone, and rubber inserts keep it tightly in place. We found we could use an iPhone in its case, but depending on your phone and exact case, you might have to remove it to use the Osmo.

Although the handle is essentially the same as the more expensive versions of the Osmo – it even has the same mounting point where a phone would normally be attached as a viewfinder – the Zenmuse M1 gimbal is not removable.

One of the benefits of the pricier Osmo models is that you can remove the gimbal (and camera) and upgrade it in the future. In theory you shouldn’t need to do this with the Mobile version as you can use your new phone in it when you upgrade. It doesn’t have Wi-Fi either – just Bluetooth.

The DJI GO app will be familiar to anyone who owns one of DJI’s drones, but the interface is much simpler when you connect an Osmo, because it’s really just a camera app.

You can dive into the settings to calibrate the gimbal and minutely adjust gimbal roll to ensure the horizon is level, and you can choose how the joystick works, reversing the direction if the default of up-to-tilt-upwards isn’t intuitive for you. You can also limit the gimbal to moving in only certain directions.

Using the app you can also shoot time-lapse video and panoramas. With the former, the gimbal will smoothly (and very slowly) move between two points, so it's best to mount it rather than holding it, and the latter automatically rotates the phone and takes nine photos and stitches them together for a wide, high-resolution photo. It’s possible to use your phone in portrait mode and take photos (this works well with the panorama feature), and a triple-press of the trigger button puts it into selfie mode, where the rear of the phone faces you – this is because the rear camera tends to take higher-quality photos.

You can also use the stabilisation to take long-exposure photos, although we didn’t get a chance to try that in our short time with the Mobile.

What we can say is that when we used it with an iPhone 7 at a wedding, it produced wonderfully smooth footage. We certainly didn’t see any problems due to the iPhone 7 having optical stabilisation of its own.

Plus, footage was considerably more stable and cinematic than when simply holding the phone in our hands and trying to be as smooth as possible. In our experience, optical stabilisation is no substitute for a proper gimbal.

Of course, there are other tricks which make the Osmo worth its price (and the hassle of using it compared to just whipping your phone out of your pocket and shooting). One of these is ActiveTrack, a feature Phantom 4 owners will be familiar with. You draw a rectangle around someone (or just their face) and the Osmo will follow them and attempt to keep them centred in the frame.

It works well, until you move (or they move) too fast. It’s great if you’re videoing someone making a speech, but less so when you’re trying to film kids darting around.

Another ‘trick’ is holding down the trigger to keep the gimbal in place. This is perfect for tracking shots and with a little practice really makes it look like your phone was on a dolly.

The Osmo Mobile is perfect if you use your phone to make home videos and want to make them look more professional, or for vloggers that want to do the same. It performs well and isn't ridiculously expensive, although if you already have a phone with good optical stabilisation you may not see a massive improvement in some shots. Of course, it's important to remember that video quality is only as good as your phone's camera.

Price comparision from , and manufacturers

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2016-12-15 08:25 Jim Martin www.pcadvisor.co.uk

31 /73 1.3 Bad News In Tech: 2016's biggest data breach fails (so far...) Update: This article has been updated to include the latest Yahoo breach of 1 billion user accounts, the largest data breach in history.

For the year that brought you the deaths of David Bowie, Alan Rickman, and Lemmy Kilmister, plus the catastrophic political bonus balls of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, these technology disasters might seem like they pale in comparison. Nonetheless, there's a strong mixture of misery to sift through this year.

Barely a day goes by without some high-level data breach putting customers at risk and 2016 was no exception. Here are just some of the worst.

Yahoo has discovered that one billion of its accounts had been compromised, in what is being described as the largest data breach in history.

In a statement , CISO Bob Lord said law enforcement provided Yahoo with reams of data that a third party had claimed belonged to Yahoo. Yahoo and “outside forensic experts” took a look at the data and believed that claim to be true. Yahoo was unable to identify exactly when it was compromised, but it does appear to be a separate incident to the September disclosure.

The stolen details “may have included” names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords, plus encrypted and unencrypted security questions and answers – although there were no passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Nevertheless, the rest of the details are sound basis for identity theft.

Yahoo believes that the breach occurred due to the creation of forged cookies, which could have allowed access to accounts without a password.

“We believe an unauthorised third party accessed our proprietary code to learn how to forge cookies,” Lord said. “The outside forensic experts have identified user accounts for which they believe forged cookies were taken or used. We are notifying the affected account holders, and have invalidated the forged cookies.”

Lord went on to say that Yahoo is “taking steps” to secure compromised accounts, including requiring users to change their passwords. Yahoo has also invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers, invalidated the forged cookies, and “hardened our systems to secure them against similar attacks”.

But it might be a case of too little too late.

"When a breach is disclosed after three years, it has almost zero value,” said Javvad Malik, security advocate at AlienVault. “The damage has been long done and people could have ended up victims without realising the source. The lack of breach detection is extremely worrying, and should serve as a reminder to all organisations of all sizes that if you hold user data, you have a responsibility to secure it.” And Oliver Pinson-Roxburgh, EMEA director at cloud security company Alert Logic, noted that the investigators seem to still be in the process of uncovering information. “This supports the fact that on average, an attacker will be in 205 days or more before detection,” Pinson-Roxburgh said. “It also supports the fact that in many cases, organisations are unable to self-detect.”

In September this year, Yahoo disclosed that a "copy of certain user account information" had been compromised in 2014 – to the tune of 500 million user accounts.

New-ish Yahoo CISO Bob Lord said at the time in a statement that the business believed the compromise was linked to a "state-sponsored actor" and could have included everything from names to email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords, and encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.

The announcement came less than a year after a blustering interview in which Lord described the creation of a new team called the Paranoids, who would work tirelessly to protect Yahoo's billion users.

Senators were quick to criticise Yahoo for its apparent reluctance to disclose the hack.

"Millions of Americans' data may have been compromised for two years," they said. "This is unacceptable. " Yahoo responded at the time by claiming to have only discovered the extent of the attack in an unrelated security audit following a separate incident.

Most recently, Yahoo admitted in a securities filing that some employees were aware of the attack in 2014, however, the timeline remains unclear – and the company did not say if this was communicated to senior management.

According to the New York Times , 23 lawsuits have been filed against Yahoo, both in the US and elsewhere.

A secure payment system. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Database and cloud supremo Oracle disclosed that its Micros payment subsidiary had been compromised by a Russian criminal group, and commentators suggested that the attack was likely linked to a series of cash-grabs and online fraud.

Independent infosec journalist Brian Krebs unearthed the evidence, and noted that when Oracle acquired Micros in 2014, the latter was in use at more than 200,000 food and drink outlets, 30,000 hotels, and at least 100,000 retail stores – providing wide scope for financial gain.

Krebs' source believed that the breach probably began with one infected system in Oracle's network – which was then used to gain access to others. The attackers were also believed to have installed malware on the Micros support forum which was then used to steal Micros customer usernames and passwords.

Two adult friends find each other and exchange flowers. Image: iStock

The company that operates the largest network of 'casual dating' adult websites in the world – previously Penthouse and including AdultFriendfinder.com and Penthouse.com – was subject to an enormous compromise of 412 million accounts in November this year.

Perhaps worse still, the business seemed to have been storing the details of deleted users – their original email with the suffix @deleted1.com. According to LeakedSource , which discovered the data, the passwords had been stored in either a plain visible format or SHA1 hashed, but as the website notes, neither are considered secure.

Not only is the leak at a tremendous scale, the highly confidential nature of the websites opened customers up to the potential of blackmail. Of course, some of the users did not help themselves, with the top six most common passwords used being some variation of 123456789 in numerical order. The next most popular password was 'password'.

The chief executive of Tesco Bank was forced to admit it had been subject to a "systematic, sophisticated attack" that saw some of the 20,000 compromised users lose money from their accounts. According to CEO Benny Higgins, 40,000 accounts registered suspicious transactions, and half of these had money removed.

The attack saw Tesco Bank suspend all online banking until the problems were resolved. It promised to refund users who had money stolen from their accounts – however, many claimed that they were left out of pocket at the time.

Worse still, rival banks accused Tesco of issuing sequential debit card numbers. Critics say that this means it's easier to conduct fraud undetected because all of the card numbers would have been genuine. Tesco has avoided commenting on exactly how the attacks took place because it is an "ongoing investigation", but did claim that no customer data was lost, and that the system itself was not breached.

The banking wing of the supermarket giant is in the process of paying back £2.5 million to customers who had their accounts compromised.

Image: Flickr/IsaacMao

Way back in 2012, LinkedIn disclosed a major breach of 6.5 million user passwords, which it alleged was the work of Russian cyber criminals. But four years later it emerged that the hack was much more severe than initially thought – with 167 million user details up for grabs in exchange for Bitcoin on the dark web. A hacker who called himself Peace told Motherboard at the time that the data was available on darknet market The Real Deal for roughly $2,200 – and paid hacked data website LeakedSource also said it had the data.

LinkedIn began to invalidate passwords for all accounts that were created before the 2012 breach that hadn't been updated since, and alerting users to reset their passwords. In a statement , LinkedIn's CISO Cory Scott told users to create strong passwords and enable two- step verification to keep their accounts safe.

But LinkedIn came under fire for failing to 'salt' the passwords, which were originally hashed with SHA1. Salting a password amounts to placing random digits at the end of hashes, to make them more difficult to crack.

LinkedIn said that although the breach was much larger than first thought, the compromised usernames and passwords were not as a result of a new security breach.

A suspect, Russian citizen Yevgeny Nikulin, 29, was arrested in Prague and now faces extradition to the United States.

2016-12-15 08:18 Tamlin Magee www.computerworlduk.com

32 /73 3.7 Imagination GPU tech next year could power Apple iPhone 8 graphics Apple's powerful iPhone 7 GPU is based on Imagination Technologies' PowerVR GT7600 architecture, and a possible successor could come next year.

Imagination will release the Series8XT family of GPUs, which could provide the underlying technology for graphics in the iPhone 8. It will succeed the Series7XT family of GPUs, which is the base architecture for the PowerVR GT7600 in the iPhone 7.

Analyst firm Linley Group said the iPhone 7 GPU is the fastest among all mobile processors when operating at peak speed. The Series8XT will be even faster, and perhaps more power efficient. The iPhone 7 GPU can overheat quickly if it runs at peak speed for a long time.

Imagination didn't provide further details on the 8XT or a specific release date, and did not say if the GPU would be in the iPhone 8. But Apple has used PowerVR in every iPhone to date, and recently started tuning the architecture to work better with its mobile devices.

Imagination designs GPUs and licenses it to companies like Apple and Intel. Apple is also a minority shareholder in Imagination.

Apple has been notoriously quiet about the underlying technology in its A-series chips. Linley Group only recently unveiled that the iPhone 7 GPU was based on PowerVR GT7600 architecture.

The 8XT could be introduced in late February at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, where Imagination is showing off its PowerVR GPU. The company has used GDC to launch new GPU architectures in the past.

The high-end 8XT architecture is a "technology generator" and will host many new GPU features developed by Imagination, said Graham Deacon, senior director of business operations for PowerVR at Imagination.

Imagination will focus on putting more performance in 8XT, Deacon said.

Beyond smartphones, the company's GPUs also are used in set-top boxes, TVs and other devices requiring graphics power or focusing on visual computing. Imagination this year released the 8XE GPU, which was focused on the fast-growing low-end and mid-range phones market. The Series8XT will offer more performance.

Imagination's PowerVR was once competitive in smartphones, but has lost share as competition grows. ARM's Mali GPUs based on the Bitfrost architecture are catching on strong, and Qualcomm, which is the mobile chip leader, has its own Adreno GPU. Nvidia has the best mobile GPU, but it is being targeted at automotive and machine learning applications.

There are other areas of growth for Imagination GPUs outside of smartphones, especially in automotive and set-top boxes, Deacon said. Imagination is developing many more technologies to boost graphics, and supporting vectors like image analysis add value to PowerVR GPUs.

There are also opportunities in machine learning, and PowerVR could play a big role in enabling self-driving cars. Imagination is developing algorithms, and has been demonstrating neural networks running on GPU computing.

Imagination is also mixing up its MIPS CPU architecture with PowerVR for drones and robots, which heavily rely on visual computing and image analysis.

2016-12-15 08:02 Agam Shah www.computerworld.com

33 /73 0.8 Meet Beacon, Uber’s colorful new gadget to help prevent those awkward car mixups There’s a lot of crap in my inbox. Not necessarily junk mail or spam, just things I have zero interest in ever opening — college alumni drives, flight deals, promotions from a swanky London gym I once feigned interest in for the sake of a free...

Currently raising...

2016-12-15 08:00 Andrew J www.theverge.com

34 /73 0.0 Why Embedded Analytics Will Change Everything Analytics are being embedded in all kinds of software. As a result, the ecosystem is changing, and with it so is our relationship to analytics. Historically, analytics and BI have been treated as something separate -- we "do"analytics, we're "doing" ad hoc reporting -- but increasingly, analytics are becoming an integral part of software experiences, from online shopping to smart watches and to enterprise applications.

"We're creating whole industries that are centered around data and analytics that are going to challenge the status quo of every industry," said Goutham Belliappa, Big Data and Analytics practice leader, for Capgemini North America. "Analytics will become so ubiquitous, we won't even notice it. From a business perspective, it's going to transform entire industries. "

Three drivers are collectively changing how we experience and think about analytics. The first, as previously mentioned, is embedding analytics into all kinds of software. The second is automation, and the third is a shift in the way software is built.

Automation is Fuel

Modern software generates and analyzes more data than ever, and the trend is going to accelerate. The resulting glut of data is outpacing humans' ability to manage and analyze it, so some analytics necessarily have to be automated, as do some decisions. As a result, analytics has become invisible in some contexts, and it's going to become invisible in still more contexts soon.

"Frictionless" is a good way to describe what people are striving for in effective user experiences. Certainly, with more automation and more behind-the-scenes analytics, how we think of analytics will change," said Gene Leganza, VP & research director at Forrester Research. "We'll be thinking about the results -- do we like the recommendations of this site's or this app's recommendation engine or is that one better? We'll gravitate towards the services that just work better for us without knowing how they do it. "

That's not to say that automated analytics should be implemented as black boxes. While humans will apply less conscious thought to analytics because they are embedded, they will still want to understand how decisions were made, especially as those decisions increase in importance, Leganza said. Successful software will not just automate data management and analytics and chose the right combination of microservices to achieve a particular result, it will also be able to explain its path on demand.

Microservices Will Have an Impact

Software development practices are evolving and so is the software that's being built. In the last decade, monolithic enterprise applications have been broken down into smaller pieces that are now offered as SaaS solutions. Functionality is continuing to become more modular with microservices, which are specific pieces of functionality designed to achieve a particular goal. Because microservices are essentially building blocks, they can be combined in different ways which impacts analytics and vice versa.

To learn how embedded analytics are enabling smart cities, read 6 IoT Innovations Making Cities Smarter .

Tableau has embraced microservices so its customers can combine B2B tools in a seamless way. For example, Tableau is now embedded in Salesforce.com, so a sales rep can get insights about a customer as well as the customer details that were already stored in Salesforce.com .

"The more embedded you get, APIs and developer extensions become more relevant because you need more programmability to make [analytics] more invisible, to be seamless, to be part of a core application even though it comes from somewhere else," said Francois Ajenstat, chief product officer at Tableau.

Software continues to become more modular because modularity provides flexibility. As the pace of business accelerates, software has to be able adapt to changing circumstances quickly and without unnecessary overhead.

"In order to automate more and more actions and to enable adapting to a myriad of conditions, we'll be having software dynamically cobble together microservices as needed. The granularity of the services will have to be synched to the patterns in the data. For the near future, the task will be to make the software flexible enough to adapt to the major patterns we're seeing," said Forrester's Leganza.

What's Your Take?

How are your opinions of and experience with analytics changing as analytics become embedded into more types of software? Are your experiences becoming "frictionless" yet or is there room for improvement? How are automated analytics impacting you? We'd love to hear about your experiences and your opinions in the comments section.

2016-12-15 08:00 Lisa Morgan www.informationweek.com

35 /73 3.8 The iPhone switcher's guide: Move from iOS to Android and keep all your stuff So you’ve decided to switch to Android. We can’t say we blame you—as you’ll soon see, the grass over here is as green as our bots—but we know that starting from scratch can be a scary experience. There’s all sorts of information on your old iPhone that you’re going to want to transfer to your new one, and let’s face it, Apple isn’t exactly going out of its way to help. But we are! Whatever your reason for getting your head out of the iClouds, we’re here to support you through this difficult break-up. And before you can say “no headphone jack” we’ll have your new phone up, running, and packed with all the stuff you were afraid you’d have to leave behind.

Before you even turn on your new phone, make sure you have a Google account.

Before your new phone even arrives, there are things you can do to prepare. Just as your iTunes and iCloud accounts are the keys to keeping of your iOS devices humming in unison, a Google account is necessary on your new Android phone. You probably already have a Gmail account, but if you don’t, go get one. While you’re at it, you should enable 2-step verification. Your Google account will hold all your personal information, including contacts, calendars, and Chrome passwords, so the more protection you can add to it the better off you’ll be.

And finally, it’ll also be helpful to sign up for a Dropbox account , if you don’t already have one. There are a number of cross-platform apps that use Dropbox rather than Google Drive as their syncing engine, and one of your old apps will likely need it to transfer your data.

It’s not comprehensive, but there’s a backup system built right into Google Drive.

To get started, download the Google Drive app on your iOS device and head into the Settings (inside the hamburger menu button). Select Backups and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can choose whether you want to save your contacts, calendar events or photos. Tap Start Backup and it’ll begin running, though you’ll need to keep your phone on and the app open, so it’s best to do it overnight with your phone plugged in.

The Google Drive method works well, but it’s an all-or-nothing situation, so if you don’t want every single calendar entry and contact coming over to your new phone, you’ll need to trim them down in their respective apps first. And as we describe below, you’ll still want to change the defaults on your old iPhone to keep everything up to date. But it will get some of the data onto your new phone quickly so you can start using it.

If your new phone happens to be a Pixel or Pixel XL, moving in is easier than it is with any other phone. That’s because of Google’s included Quick Switch Adapter, a simple, speedy method for pulling your data over to your new phone.

Google’s new Pixel is the best way to transfer your information from your old iPhone.

It’s all pretty magical, and the process is much easier than Apple’s Move to iOS app. And it’ll save you a whole lot of time by skipping most of the steps you’ll need to take with just about every other phone.

When you open your calendar app for the first time on your Android device and sign into your new Google account, it’s probably going to be empty. But moving all your appointments from your Apple calendar to your Google one is easier than you think.

You can export all of your calendar entries by taking a trip to iCloud.com.

Find the ICS file you saved and import it into Google Calendar.

When all that’s done, the last thing you need to do is change the default calendar account on your Apple devices (including your old iPhone) from iCloud to Google. On iOS, you can switch it in the Calendars tab inside the Settings app, while on OS X you’ll find it inside the app’s preferences. From there, you can simply log in to your Google account and your events will forever remain perfectly in sync.

Now that you’ve got your appointments in order, you’re going to need some people to communicate with. And since you’re already an expert in importing calendar files, you’ll just need to do the same with your contacts.

Make sure you select all of the contacts you want to bring over before you hit the export button.

Don’t be alarmed, before you can import your contacts, Google will send you back to the old version of Contacts.

Of course, if you’re already using a GMail account as your main email address, you can skip right to the next section. When you sign in to your new Android phone with your Google account, all your mail will be there. But setting up your iCloud account isn’t too much more difficult. And even though you won’t see an option for iCloud when you go to add a new account, you can still use the GMail app to manage your Apple mail.

GMail doesn’t include a dedicated iCloud tab, but you can still use to set up your iCloud account.

That should be enough to get your account up and running, but if you’re still getting error messages, you might need to tweak the server settings. You can find the incoming IMAP and outgoing SMTP server settings on Apple’s website. And if you don’t want to use the GMail app that came with your phone, you can download any number of great ones from the Play Store, including Alto , Newton , Outlook , and others that you may be familiar with on iOS.

Here’s the only real stumbling block with switching between iOS and Android: Your messages don’t play nice between the two operating systems. Even if you’re moving between Android phones the system is less than ideal, mostly relying on third-party solutions that may or may not work.

Don’t forget to turn off iMessage!

As we already discussed, Google offers an excellent solution baked into the Pixel, and Samsung offers something similar with its Smart Switch app, but otherwise there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to bring your messages over. The most popular tool is iSMS2droid , but it relies on making an unencrypted iTunes backup , digging into your drive to find the SMS database file, and renaming it and converting it. Not exactly the easiest of solutions.

So, unless you use WhatsApp , Facebook Messenger , or some other over-the-top service, your iMessages will likely be forever locked on your old iPhone. But a clean slate might be for the best anyway since you’re going to be a green bubble from here on out. Because you’ve already turned off iMessage, right?

2016-12-15 08:00 Michael Simon www.itnews.com

36 /73 4.2 Ransomware: Most businesses would pay up and shut up, claims IBM More than two-thirds of businesses affected by ransomware would pay-up, rather than go through the aggravation of removing computers from the network, wiping their storage devices and restoring from back-ups - if they have been diligent in backing up, that is.

That is the conclusion of a report by IBM Security , which surveyed 600 businesses and more than 1,000 consumers across the US. It follows a quadrupling of ransomware attacks during 2016 as attackers take advantage of bitcoin as an anonymous, global payments mechanism.

The report suggested that as many as 46 per cent of the respondents had been affected by ransomware, and that 70 per cent of these had admitted to paying the ransom, contrary to the advice of law enforcement agencies.

Furthermore, among the organisations that admitted to paying a ransom, most paid-up five- figure sums - an indication of just how profitable ransomware has become for its creators. According to the report, 11 per cent paid between $10,000 and $20,000, one-fifth paid more than $40,000, and one-quarter admitted to paying between $20,000 and $40,000.

The FBI estimates that more than $209m was paid in ransomware payments in the first quarter of the year, and the law-enforcement agency believes that the rate of growth is so high that the figure will top $1bn for the year.

The IBM report comes in a year in which several organisations in the UK have publicly admitted to having been subjected, including both the local authority in Lincolnshire , and one of the county's NHS trusts .

However, in many cases, even paying up doesn't solve the problem, warned Andrew Stuart, managing director of backup and disaster recovery vendor Datto. "We would advise businesses not to pay, as our own research has shown that a quarter of businesses do not receive their data even after payment," said Stuart.

"A blended security approach is what businesses need - educate your users, update all software to the latest patched versions, install a decent AV, and most importantly ensure you have backups in place," he added. 2016-12-15 07:56 Graeme Burton www.computing.co.uk

37 /73 3.7 California mandates energy-efficiency standards for computers California has become the first state to mandate energy-efficiency standards for monitors and a variety of computers, including notebooks, desktops, workstations and servers.

The standards, which go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018, focus on the performance of computers in idle, sleep and off modes rather than putting limits on when they are in active operation, said the California Energy Commission, which on Wednesday adopted the new standards.

California has more than 25 million computer monitors installed in homes and businesses, and the new standards recommend the use of higher efficiency LED backlights and screen technologies.

The state has 21 million desktops, 23 million notebooks, 530,000 workstation computers and 300,000 small-scale servers. As a result of the move, the state hopes to save the equivalent of the electricity use of all homes in San Francisco and San Luis Obispo counties in 2015, equivalent to nearly 350,000 homes.

Implementing the new standards would, for example, add $10 to $14 to the cost of a desktop computer at first but will save consumers more than $40 to $55 in electricity bills over five years, the commission said. The standards would add an extra $1 to the cost of a laptop, $5 to the cost of a monitor and $13 to workstations and small-scale server costs, though the corresponding savings on electricity are said to be proportionately higher.

The computer standards set a baseline energy use target and give allowances or “adders” for additional features in a product.

2016-12-15 07:49 John Ribeiro www.computerworld.com

38 /73 3.4 CIO role to be "more important than it's ever been in 2017" says NetScout VP The CIO's role "will become more important than it's ever been" in 2017, according to NetScout area vice president of strategy Michael Segal.

"Digital transformation is touching all aspects of business, and as a result enterprises need to be aware that every system upgrade, connection, or third- party application added to existing IT infrastructure will increase service delivery complexity, scale, and operational risk," said Segal, stating that the CIO or IT director's position and knowledge are now key to overseeing these increasingly significant rollouts.

"It's a situation that's not only going to create headaches for IT teams, but could also have serious implications for the successful running of any business," said Segal.

"In this environment it's down to the CIO to manage the transition, maintain a sense of order, and lay the foundations for the future. The CIO is uniquely placed to supervise any enterprise digital transformation strategy due to their unique understanding of IT infrastructure and how it can evolve to better serve business growth. "

Segal said that IT infrastructure is "what the digital economy depends on 24/7", and managing this is "highly strategic" for business and IT leaders, with service performance "one of the most important transformational metrics".

"This has always been the case, but as we move into 2017 enterprises will recognise the increasing value of business assurance. Doing this the wrong way, relying on incoherent data and silo-specific tools, will cost companies a lot of money when they are faced with service disruptions, sometimes running into millions of dollars an hour.

"On the flipside, businesses will also recognise how accelerating digital transformation and assuring a consistent service delivery relies on a real-time information platform that supports comprehensive IT visibility, capable of producing unique insights into operations. "

Digital transformation and its associated automation, Segal also pointed out, will begin to cause a noticeable "shift" in the jobs market come 2017.

"[Digital transformation] has already had a profound impact on the factory floor and the number of jobs lost to automation over the past 30 years has now ticked over the 6 million mark in the US alone," he warned.

However, on the bright side, Segal says he expects a healthy hike in cybersecurity jobs in 2017 as the changing threat landscape demands more assistance in coping.

To find out more about what network monitoring - particularly in the area of unified communications - can do for your business, check out our UC&C content hub, built in association with experts from NetScout.

2016-12-15 07:48 Peter Gothard www.computing.co.uk

39 /73 39 /73 6.7 Court sinks The Pirate Bay in Australia Australia’s Federal Court has declared war on online piracy by ordering the country’s internet providers to “take reasonable steps” to block access to several well-known file sharing sites.

The most notorious of the sites to be blocked is The Pirate Bay; founded in Sweden, the site is probably the most infamous source for pirated content in the world, never mind Australia.

The court has ordered that it, as well as Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and SolarMovieFour, which are also known for copyright infringement, must be blocked by Australian internet providers within 15 days.

The judge didn’t specify how the sites should be blocked, just that it should be done by the service providers with the costs being paid by rights holders such as Foxtel and Roadshow Films.

This is an interesting move, as in other countries such as the UK there's no cost. But despite having to foot the bill, the rights holders appear to be delighted with the ruling, which is the first successful use of site-blocking laws in Australia.

Foxtel chief-executive Peter Tonagh described the ruling as a ”major step in both directly combating piracy and educating the public that accessing content through these sites is not OK, in fact it is theft”.

Interestingly, the judge hasn't ordered this to be a "rolling injunction", meaning that if new torrent websites pop after being blocked, the rights holders will have to return to the courts to file and serve a new affidavit.

Whether or not this specific blocking attempt will be a success is, of course, yet to be seen. However, it's an indication that the fight between rights holders and online pirates has reached an even greater scale.

Thanks to VPNs and millions of websites, online piracy is a crime without borders so it will be necessary for each individual country to take similar actions to have any hope of combating it.

2016-12-15 07:45 Emma Boyle feedproxy.google.com

40 /73 4.6 Here's some questions Congress should ask about the election-related hacks Members of congress are demanding answers over claims that Russia attempted to influence the U. S. presidential election with several high-profile hacks. U. S. intelligence agencies are confident that the Kremlin was involved, but incoming president Donald Trump remains skeptical.

As they prepare to investigate, here’s some questions lawmakers should be asking to help them understand and respond to these hacks.

Attribution in any hack can be incredibly difficult, as Trump noted in a tweet , but cybersecurity experts say they have technical evidence showing that Democratic groups and figures were at the very least hacked with spear phishing emails and hard-to-detect malware from two suspected Russian hacking teams.

What we don’t know, and what congress might hear in a classified briefing, is what additional evidence the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency might have that makes a stronger case.

When the FBI first informed the Democratic National Committee that it was the target of hackers, it did so in a phone call, the New York Times reported .

A tech support staffer at the DNC failed to heed the warning, believing that phone calls from the FBI warning of the hack were possibly fake. It wasn’t until March – six months later and when the hackers had a foothold in the system – that the DNC concluded that the phone calls from the FBI were real.

So why didn’t the FBI, which had an office nearby, send an agent in person?

When the DNC finally moved, it hired private security firm CrowdStrike to investigate the hack. But could the U. S. government have been more proactive in helping the DNC investigate or protect its systems?

And who’s in charge anyway? Only in July, did President Obama codify that the FBI would take the lead in investigating major cyberattacks. But will that be enough to stop the next hack?

U. S. lawmakers have called the election-related hacks a threat to American democracy, and possibly an act of war. But the Obama administration hasn’t come up with significant response to them—at least one that’s publicly known—besides giving a warning to Russia.

Without the threat of retaliation, hackers could feel free to interfere in future U. S. elections, experts warn. So it’ll be up to U. S lawmakers, and a skeptical Trump, to consider whether the country needs to make a more forceful response.

The hackers got into email accounts with legitimate-looking messaged from Google designed to trick users into handing over their login credentials.

If Google can scan email to sell us stuff, can it do more to spot phishing attempts? 2016-12-15 07:45 Michael Kan www.infoworld.com

41 /73 2.5 10 best new phones 2017 | New Android phones, new iPhones, new Windows phones Apple is set to go big on the iPhone's 10th anniversary, which could go some way to make up for this year's relatively minor upgrade. A combination of design and hardware changes should make the iPhone 8 the most radical new iPhone to date.

The iPhone 8 could be the iPhone with which Jony Ive finally gets his own way: an iPhone that resembles a single sheet of glass with an edge-to-edge OLED screen. According to an Apple supplier, at least one of the company's new iPhones for 2017 will have a glass body. The TouchID scanner is thought to be hidden within the glass, while the physical Home button will be gone.

Other rumours suggest the iPhone 8 will feature wireless charging for the first time, and possible biometric features such as facial recognition or iris scanning. It'll run the Apple A11 processor and motion co-processor, and be devilishly fast.

One iPhone we won't see in 2017 is an upgrade to the iPhone SE , which Apple allegedly fears may hurt its iPhone 7 sales.

Click here for more iPhone 8 rumours.

(Image via ConceptsiPhone .)

A lso see: Best Phone Deals

HTC 11 UK release date: April 2017

HTC has launched its new phones at MWC in recent years, but skipped the show in 2016 and held its own event to unveil the HTC 10 (pictured). We expect its sucessor to be launched in March/April 2017 and to have the upgrades you'd expect: a faster processor, more RAM and - hopefully - better battery life.

An early leak suggests HTC is about to reverse its fortunes with the HTC 11 - if you thought the last two HTC flagships were a little boring, prepare to be blown away by the HTC 11. If true, it will have a Snapdragon 835 processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, a higher-capacity battery with Quick Charge 4.0 and a 5.5in Quad-HD screen. That's a very high-end spec, so we'd guess that the standard model would have less RAM and storage.

You can read more rumours on the HTC 11 here. LG is rumoured to ditch its modular design for the G6 and potentially adopt a new glass front and rear. In common with the Samsung Galaxy S-series with which it competes it is likely to feature fast wireless charging and see a processor and graphics bump to ready the phone for VR.

One of the most interesting rumours about the LG G6 is that it will feature a new type of iris scanner that uses the same sensor as the phone's front camera, a space- and cost-saving measure that is made possible through use of a special filter.

Read more about the Mi Mix here .

The Mi Note 2 is the latest phablet flagship from Xiaomi, and this dual curved-edge screen phone couldn't come at a better time given the recent discontinuation of the Galaxy Note 7. With curved glass front and back, it looks just like it.

Inside the specs are good, with a 2.35GHz Snapdragon 821 chip, up to 6GB of RAM and up to 128GB UFS 2.0 storage. There's a 22.56Mp rear camera and an 8Mp snapper at the front, and a 4070mAh battery with QC3 support to keep it all going. Better still the Global model supports all UK 4G bands!

The Mi Note 2 is available via GearBest. Click here for more info on the Mi Note 2.

2016-12-15 07:39 Marie Brewis www.pcadvisor.co.uk

42 /73 0.0 Walking Dead can teach you valuable security lessons Since early 19th century West Africa, the word “Zombie” has struck fear into the hearts of people. With the evolution of technology, and the rise of hit shows like “The Walking Dead,” zombies are more popular than ever, but the most terrifying thing about the world of

The Walking Dead isn’t "Walkers", it’s other people: Walkers, as they are referred to on the show, are predictable; they’re hungry, and they want to eat your brains. Humans on the other hand, often can and will be unpredictable, and that’s exactly what makes them dangerous. Here are some tips to learn from the popular show.

Perceived cyber threat expectations among companies and corporations, from mom and pop shops to mega conglomerates shouldn't base cybersecurity protocols on trends, let alone implement new cybersecurity techniques, technologies and procedures without a full understanding of them.

The vetting of various new implementations on any network comes down to knowledge of its most critical weaknesses, and even the most well run networks and business are only as strong as the weakest link.

"Walkers" in the world of The Walking Dead are a serious threat, but it's the living, whose primary motivations are to "survive at all cost" that pose the greatest threat to others.

From departmental staff changes and the changing of passwords, to the full overhaul of security protocols and procedures; staying ahead of the various threats to network security in today's world requires the certainty of uncertainty, and a better understanding of antivirus software, hardware and storage than possible attackers is imperative.

On The Walking Dead, before allowing anyone access to the group's hard earned resources, the protagonist asks newcomers three simple questions,

The first question aside, thorough background checks, psychological evaluations and surveys of and about new employees can give companies a leg up in the long term.

It seems obvious, but many companies give relatively new employees access to highly sensitive information. Access to networked passwords by people with little knowledge of cybersecurity may lead to phishing threats from outside the company, worse yet is access to networked passwords, procedural protocols and other sensitive information by disgruntled employees who have knowledge of coding, may dabble in, or otherwise be experienced hackers.

Bad management often leads to issues from lower-level employees, and anonymous surveys by lower-level employees may lead to restructuring, or even firing of managers who shouldn't be holding their positions to begin with. Periodic and random psychological evaluations can be needed of employees within various sectors.

Though the use of screening employees through psychological evaluations must fall within the legal precedence set by the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2005 case of Karraker v. Rent-A- Center Inc. which found that the employer’s use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) as part of its testing process for managers violated the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

Checks and balances at every level of employment should be put in place to prevent any and all threats rising up the chain: from new hires to high-level executives. Security protocols and procedures may help curb these issues, but they should begin at the beginning.

From the CDC in Atlanta, the “West Georgia Correctional Facility,” the hospital in Atlanta, from Woodbury to Alexandria, and even “the Saviors” camp, one or two, or even a dozen walkers may become a piece of cake for the grizzled veterans of The Walking Dead, but a thousand walkers herded together can and most often will breach the walls of any safe zone, no matter how secure it may seem. On Friday, Oct. 21, 2016, a coordinated DDoS attack shut down DNS servers through Dyn Corporation , located in Manchester, NH. Dyn won’t speculate as to the identity of the attackers, but recent reports and further analysis suggest that a Mirai botnet attack perpetrated by a group of amateurs calling themselves “The New World Hackers” was at least partially responsible for the attack.

These attacks used compromised consumer devices such as routers, IP cameras and DVRs to target Dyn's network servers. As previously stated: the overall security of any business is only as strong as its weakest link. Much like The Walking Dead, sturdy walls may prevent small groups from threatening the safety of any community, just as a good series of firewalls may prevent one, two, or even 10 drive-by-downloads containing packets ready to unleash malware in the hundreds of thousands to the millions. Just as one walker can breach a wall and cause an outbreak of walkers in seconds, Zombie Botnets may unleash a horde of DDoS attacks through something as simple as one to a few well placed phishing emails. Even major DNS service providers such as Dyn have proven unable to prevent these packets from breaching their firewalls and running rampant through their networks.

Securing the most trivial of systems within a network is paramount when something as simple as a malicious email may contain links to a horde of Zombie Botnets waiting to wreak havoc throughout a network and DDoS it to its knees.

Security begins and ends with situational awareness: an awareness of the immediate as well as long-term perceived threats must be handled with an absolute certainty of the uncertain. In the post apocalyptic world of The Walking Dead, from stringed together tin cans, sharpened spikes and barbed-wire, to tripwire triggered explosive devices, booby-traps are often the first, as well as the last line of defense against invaders, whether alive or undead.

The characters on The Walking Dead often gather intelligence of future threats through both scouting and catching people attempting to scout or invade their territory. On more than one occasion, the characters have hidden in plain site by either disguising themselves as their living enemies, or by covering themselves in the blood and guts of walkers to mask their smell against the immediate threat of being eaten alive. In both The Walking Dead and in the real world, deception is a valuable tool against threats. “ Honeypots ” have become an incredibly useful resource against cyber-threats. Hackers often bypass network defenses by using encryption or IPv6 tunneling.

Honeypots won’t gather the data of every perceived threat, because they only report the connections they receive, and almost all of these will be from real attacks. While honeypots rely on well thought out deceptions and stories to lure bad actors into traps, which in turn, covertly gather data from the source of any intrusion, they do so by using IPv6 or SSH, which are able to capture every action by bad actors, including toolkits, keystrokes and communications.

Honeypots contain no valuable data, nor applications a company would deem as critical. But they hold enough data which at first or second glance would be perceived as interesting, that hackers are lured in long enough to occupy themselves with a web of lies, as data is gathered by the honeypot. It can be used to analyze the methods, tools and techniques, as well as their skill level.

So whether your company is brand new, and as fresh to threats as Dr. Eugene Porter , protecting your company's data can seem as complex as traversing a maze of walkers, Or, if your company is well established, and as seasoned to threats as Morgan Jones and Rick Grimes , guarding your company’s data against attacks can seem as simple as carrying a big stick, as we’ve learned from The Walking Dead: the devil is in the details.

2016-12-15 07:38 Vincenzo Marsden www.itnews.com

43 /73 0.1 Tips for maintaining security while employees are out of the office for the holidays The downtime created by the holiday season is a fan favorite for enterprise employees and hackers alike. As workers are enjoying time away from the office for vacations or working remotely, hackers are viewing this slow down as an optimal time to attack corporate systems. To avoid having your organization turn into this holiday’s victim, security professionals provide tips for IT managers to protect corporate data, as well as share recommendations for using the slower cycles to test security systems.

Mike Orosz, Director, Threat and Investigative Services, Citrix:

Use the holidays as an unassuming time to perform program reviews and audits. In every security organization it's all too likely one or two employees perform critical security roles. Periodic verification of procedures is necessary in order to avoid unexpected but avoidable security incidents or disruptions. First for review should be procedures and process. Are there documented processes in place to match the day-to-day responsibilities of all team members? Are those procedures sound or based on best practices? Lastly, are those processes / procedures readily available and/or easily found?

Take this time to critically analyze team maturity, develop a strategic road map for the New Year and to close critical gaps that typically go unnoticed during routine operating times.

The key to a world-class security program is a solid foundation. Having well documented incident-response plans is a critical necessity. Having a set of binders on a shelf or in an obscure folder isn't enough. Not only should incident-response plans and the teams that perform those duties be tested frequently, they should be stress tested. What better time to conduct testing than during a major holiday when many staff members are out of office.

Running a disaster-recovery test during a holiday will reveal gaps in plans, personnel staffing and identify critical areas for improvement. Not to mention, during real times of disruption or disaster, it's unlikely every member of each team will be available. That said, by testing during times of minimal staffing, you will quickly find out how your plans come together and which ones need improvement.

Simon Puleo, Security Researcher, Micro Focus: Malicious Wi-Fi devices have been found in conference rooms glued under desks and most commonly plugged into the wall. Consider that a Raspberry Pi can be made as small as a credit card. Criminals will use these devices to analyze network traffic, create false Wi-Fi networks and couple with cameras to create the perfect spying devices. While everyone is out of the office, sweep for unknown wireless network connections and look for suspicious devices plugged into electrical receptacles. One security sleuth found a device that was plugged between a microwave and the wall socket in the break room!

The holidays are a great time to raise awareness. Remind employees that company-issued devices should be used for business only. I don’t know how many times I have heard the story, loaning out a PC to a son, friend or relative only to be left with malware that infected the network. If someone asks to use your computer even to find directions to grandma’s house, don’t relinquish control of the machine.

Criminals most likely strike when everyone is out of the office, catch them in the act! For security professionals that suspect there may be malicious behavior in the physical environment, making a honey pot in an open area may be a way to catch criminals in the act. A honey pot is made by intentionally putting what looks like important data on a system then simply monitor that machine and wait to see if it is accessed. Place an unlocked PC in an open area with video surveillance, install monitoring software on it, see if any files are touched or if users do the right thing and report it.

Lucas Moody, CISO, Palo Alto Networks:

Enterprises should be on high alert against the threats of Business Email Compromise (BEC) and Business Email Spoofing (BES)— estimated by the FBI to cost organizations billions of dollars. As shown in Palo Alto Networks Unit 42’s latest research, “ SilverTerrier: The Next Evolution in Nigerian Cybercrime ,” the infamous Nigerian threat actors are becoming more organized and have taken up BEC and BES with unprecedented sophistication and success worldwide. Most successful attacks use known, patched vulnerabilities, so ensure systems and devices are up-to-date, well ahead of the quarter- or year-end “lock downs” on enterprise systems.

Remember, you are a target year-round, but inevitably during this time of year, laptop and device thefts go way up. Whatever the cause, vigilance is in order to actively keep company and personal data safe. Keep your valuables out of sight—or better yet, out of your vehicle. Make sure data is encrypted, or work with your technology staff to verify if you’re unsure. And remember that in the chaos of the holiday season, thieves and bandits are looking at you and your devices as their next targets.

Ruchika Mishra, senior product marketing manager, WhiteHat Security:

All enterprises have a backup data protocol. Some companies, because of the nature of their business, are required by legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley act or HIPAA, to backup and archive their data. Whatever your backup method of choice may be, be it external hard drives, tapes, or flash drives, ship it off for offsite storage. Backup data left onsite may be rendered useless in the event of a disaster in the form of a fire, earthquake, or a burglary.

Remember that episode from Mr. Robot, where Elliot plans to destroy the Steel Mountain facility by hacking into its climate control system? A software security system is only as secure as its weakest component, and often times, specialized devices such as thermostats, conference room scheduler consoles, even video conferencing systems can get overlooked when it comes to patching. The key tip here is to not just update the main operating systems like Windows, OSX, and Linux when patches are available, but make sure that smaller operating systems within the specialized devices do not get overlooked.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics, Vectra Networks:

According to the National Retail Foundation, 2016 online holiday sales are forecasted to increase between 7 and 10 percent – more than double the 3.6 percent increase forecast for overall holiday shopping – putting employees who reuse credentials or shop from their work computer at risk.

Recommend employees go directly to a vendor’s website rather than clicking the “shop now” button in a promotional email message. For example, an attacker can easily create fake Best Buy or Amazon promotional email message to entice direct clicks to purchase sought-after items at a special discount. Faux holiday emails could be a phishing attack infecting computers with ransomware or exploits to initiate a targeted cyber attack, while everyone is supposed to be enjoying holiday cheer.

Ransomware attacks strike fast and encryption of an organization's network file shares can happen within a few short hours. Even if your security systems provide an early warning, holiday celebrations will provide attackers with an excellent diversion. The attack on Sony Pictures was revealed on Nov. 24, the Monday prior to Thanksgiving in the United States. With people taking time off during the holidays, there may not be anyone there to take action from early warning signs of an attack.

A solid backup and recovery mechanism is excellent insurance against ransomware. There are merits to having hot backups, cold storage (periodically connected backups), and even offsite cloud backups with version control.

Jeannie Warner, security strategist, WhiteHat Security:

Pre-loading HSTS and setting your organization’s website to HTTPS is easy , and can help prevent successful attacks from Firesheep or Poodle, as well as some man-in-the-middle attacks. For e-commerce sites, these measures will keep customers safer during holiday shopping. Update to the best security protocol possible – TLS 1.2 - as it is the most secure version available.

It’s not just the operating system and applications that need patching in an organization. Start the New Year with every development and de-bugging tool updated to the latest version as well! Don’t forget the lesson that JBoss taught us about new avenues of Trojans and ransomware that skip the user entirely.

2016-12-15 07:33 Ryan Francis www.itnews.com

44 /73 0.0 14 eyebrow-raising things Google knows about you Google may know more about me than I know about myself.

I'm not just saying that, either: I recently started poking around in Google's personal data repositories and realized that, between my wide-reaching use of the company's services and my own brain's inability to remember anything for more than seven seconds, Google may actually have the upper hand when it comes to knowledge about my life.

From face-tagged photos of my past adventures (what year did I go to Nashville, again -- and who went with me to that Eddie Vedder show?) to the minute-by-minute play-by-play of my not-so-adventuresome days (wait, you mean I really only left the house once last Wednesday -- and just to get a freakin' sandwich?!), Google's got all sorts of goods on me. Heck, even my hopes and dreams (which may or may not involve sandwiches) are probably catalogued somewhere in its systems.

And the data itself is only half the story: Google also compiles oodles of stats -- stats that, for better and for worse, shed light onto the tech-connected habits of our modern lives. How many emails have you actually sent over the years, for instance, and how many thousands of web pages have you pulled up in your browser? It really is enlightening, among other things, to see your actions broken down so precisely.

And remember, too, that all this data collection is completely optional -- and very much a tradeoff: By agreeing to let Google store and use your data, you're getting access to an ever- expanding array of futuristic features at no monetary cost. But the decision is ultimately in your hands. To learn more about how Google uses specific types of data and how you can opt out of any or all areas of collection, see the "Opting out and taking control" section at the end of this story.

Everything you've ever said to Google, in one convenient place.

And yes, your voice really does sound like that.

Data doesn't lie. Discover whom among your Google contacts you interact with the most by clicking the "Contacts" header on Google's account dashboard. Just be prepared to make up excuses if your significant other doesn't make the "Frequently contacted" list.

Your browsing habits, broken down into indisputable numbers.

If you use the Chrome browser and typically stay signed into it, check out your account's Chrome Sync settings page to see all sorts of brag- and/or shame-worthy stats about your personal browsing habits -- things like how many bookmarks you've saved, how many tabs you have open across different devices and how many websites you've typed into Chrome's address bar (since last resetting your browser's history).

Free cookie* if you guess within five points of any of your values.

Provided you use Gmail's archiving system instead of permanently deleting messages, you may be in for a shock: Click the aptly named "Gmail" header in Google's account dashboard , and get ready to see why your days always seem so short. Case in point: I have 145,810 message threads in my Gmail account -- with just over 28,000 sent messages. Let me repeat that: Twenty-eight thousand sent messages.

No wonder I never get anything accomplished.

File this one under "Cool Yet Creepy": Google Maps' Timeline feature contains a detailed diary of your every move -- down to the minute.

(My top four are currently my house, Target, the grocery and Barnes & Noble. What can I say? It's a wild and crazy life I lead.)

Your smartphone is a fantastic tool for productivity-enhancing tasks like word processing, spreadsheet creation, and... oh, who the hell are we kidding? You're using the thing for mindless web browsing and meaningless game-playing, just like everyone else.

You can see a detailed log of activity on your Android devices at Google's My Activity site.

Just don't let your boss see that you spent all of Tuesday's meeting "working" on Words With Friends.

These days, Chrome isn't just a desktop browser -- and if you're using the program from a phone or tablet as well as a regular computer, you're bound to have quite the collective history.

See where you've been on the web (while signed in to Chrome) by opening Google's My Activity page and checking "Chrome" in the filter list. You can search for specific keywords and even filter further by date -- a useful tool if you ever need to find a site you pulled up somewhere but can't quite remember.

If you're not seeing your Chrome history on the My Activity page, go to the Activity controls and make sure the Web & App Activity toggle is on and the "Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services" box is checked. (Also make sure that you're signed into Chrome on your various devices.) Your Chrome activity will be tracked from this point forward.

First and foremost, Google is a search engine -- so how much are you Googling? Get the skinny by scrolling down to the "Search History" header in Google's account dashboard .

Click the header to see precisely how many times you've called upon Google's knowledge from any device while signed into your Google account in the past month -- along with a breakdown of your most common search types and some of your most frequently used queries. (Again: Incognito mode. Never forget.)

Think you've been through a lot of phones and mobile devices? Calculate your official Android Geek Quotient score by pulling up Google's account dashboard and looking for the "Android" header. The big green number beneath it will tell you how many Android products have ever been associated with your account. (Hopefully yours isn't as high as my almost-silly-seeming score of 78.)

You can get more detailed info on all the devices, too -- including when each product was last used and a list of all the apps it has backed up to Google's servers -- by clicking the header. And a quick tip: If you want to get old, inactive devices out of your hair, head to the Play Store settings page and uncheck the "Show in menus" option next to any phones or tablets that are no longer relevant.

Your Android app stats can be both enlightening and alarming.

Trying out new apps is a great way to keep your mobile tech feeling fresh -- to a certain point, anyway. See if you've crossed the line from adventurous to ridiculous by finding the "Play Store" header on Google's account dashboard.

If you manage to top my current total of 1,191 apps, seek immediate help.

Are you a person who tends to accept event invitations? Or do you say "no" more often than "yes"? If you're a Google Calendar user who frequently interacts with other Google Calendar users, you can find out by clicking the "Calendar" header at Google's account dashboard. That'll give you a breakdown of your accepting-vs.-rejecting activity over the past month, including a handy pie chart to illustrate your temperament in visual form.

Hey, at least there's no line graph on the lameness of your excuses.

I don't know about you, but I tend to take way too many pictures -- mostly of my 22-month-old daughter (and occasionally of those damn squirrels that always run through my backyard and taunt me with their superior short-term memories).

Thankfully, Google Photos makes it simple for me to store all these images and access them anywhere -- and also to see at a glance just how absurdly large my personal photo collection has gotten.

To get the lowdown on your own virtual photo box, mosey down to the "Photos" header in Google's account dashboard. And be sure to take a mental snapshot of the result.

Everything you've ever searched for in the Play Store, in one centralized place.

Have you ever looked at or searched for something in the Play Store -- then tried to find it again later, only to realize your memory was worse than your friendly neighborhood squirrel's? I know I have.

So use my trick: The next time you find yourself wishing for a time machine, just scamper over to Google's My Activity page. Filter the results to "Play," and voila: You'll find a full list of every item you've viewed and every Play Store search you've made while signed into your Google account. Now if only this thing had a way to tell me where I buried my acorn the other day...

We've all been there: You're in the middle of something extremely productive (naturally) when a single YouTube link happens to catch your eye. Watching one video seems harmless enough, right? But then the inevitable happens: One video turns to two. Wait, what's that in the "Related" section -- a clip of a bird whistling the melody to Guns N' Roses' "Patience"? Click. Watch. Repeat. Before you know it, you're 19 videos in, and the afternoon is over.

Discover just how much YouTube time-whittlin' you've done in the last month (while logged into your Google account) by visiting Google's account dashboard and clicking the "YouTube" header. And for the love of Goog, if your monthly tally is over 200, think long and hard before clicking that next cat-dancing clip.

Want to turn off specific types of data collection or delete existing info from your Google account history? The Google privacy site is the best place to start; there, Google provides detailed information about how each type of data is used along with links to opt out of any specific areas. You can also visit Google's Activity controls page for a simple single-page list of on-off toggles.

If you're looking to clean up your history for anything that Google has been tracking, head to the My Activity site. You can delete any individual item right then and there by clicking the three-dot icon in its upper-right corner and choosing Delete, or click the "Delete activity by" link in the left column for an easy way to erase info based on date and/or product.

Data collection controls can be also found on an Android device by opening the main system settings and selecting Google (or, if you're on an older device, looking for the standalone Google Settings app) and then tapping "Personal info & privacy. "

2016-12-15 07:32 JR Raphael www.computerworld.com

45 /73 3.8 Microsoft's Edge follows Chrome in blocking Flash Microsoft's Edge browser is to follow Google's Chrome in disabling playback of Adobe Flash Player content in an effort to push web developers to HTML5. Microsoft has announced that it is following Google in de- emphasising Adobe Flash content in favour of HTML5 in its browser, adding a click-to-play block to all Flash content by default.

Adobe's Flash has been having a rough few years of it thanks to monthly-or-sooner security notifications of freshly-discovered ways to exploit the rich-media playback software it acquired from Macromedia way back when to take control of users' machines. Accordingly, the launch of the HTML5 standard began a slow but steady move away from Flash which is now picking up pace. Earlier this month Google began deactivating Flash in Chrome , starting with a small number of stable users and half the beta users, and Microsoft has now announced its Edge browser is to follow suit.

' In our next release, we will [...] encourage the transition to HTML5 alternatives by providing additional user control over when Flash content loads, ' explained Crispin Cowan in a blog post detailing the change. ' The user experience will evolve as we move towards a stable release in the Windows 10 Creator’s Update next year. Sites that support HTML5 will default to a clean HTML5 experience. In these cases, Flash will not even be loaded, improving performance, battery life, and security. For sites that still depend on Flash, users will have the opportunity to decide whether they want Flash to load and run, and this preference can be remembered for subsequent visits. '

Edge, Cowan has explained, will include a pre-filled whitelist of ' the most popular sites which rely on Flash today ,' and which will be able to automatically bypass the block. Over time, this list will be reduced until no site is fully exempt. Microsoft's decision to disable Flash playback by default follows on from its April announcement of the disabling of peripheral Flash content such as advertising.

2016-12-15 07:26 Gareth Halfacree feedproxy.google.com

46 /73 0.0 : set up email, apps, contacts, security and more with our easy step-by-step guide If Santa's been generous this year, you might be the recipient of a shiny new iPad or iPhone. Setting them up is really easy, and here we'll show you how to how to choose the right options, create an Apple ID, get your email working, install apps and more. The video above shows the process for an iPhone, but it's almost identical on an iPad.

See also: iOS 10 review and How to download YouTube videos on an iPhone and iPad

There's no need to have a laptop or PC as you can use an iPad and iPhone without one. The only thing you'll need is a wireless router so you can connect to the internet and activate your new device.

You'll also need to insert a working SIM card if it's an iPhone. A tool for removing the tray is included in the box, but a paperclip or pin usually does the trick, too. Some iPads have a SIM tray for mobile data, but you don't need a SIM to use the iPad.

If you've bought an iPhone or iPad for your kids, here's how to make it more child friendly

Step 1: Hold down the power button for a couple of seconds until you see the white Apple logo appear on the screen, then release it. You'll then see a 'Hello' message and you can swipe to the right to begin and choose your language.

Step 2: Now choose your region. This should be the country where you live, as it will affect localisation such as the time and date format, currency, keyboard layout and more.

Step 3: It's time to connect to a wireless network, and the iPhone or iPad will search for nearby networks: choose yours from the list. If you don't know your router's network name check on the labels or in the manual. Usually, it's the one at the top of the list as it will have the strongest signal.

Enter the password for your Wi-Fi network and once connected your iPhone or iPad will activate by contacting Apple's servers. An iPhone will also ask you to insert a valid SIM card for the activation process.

Step 4. Choose whether or not to enable location services. It's best to enable them as many apps use your location, and it's generally useful. You can choose in the Settings app later which apps are allowed to use your location. Step 5: You'll be asked whether to set up the device as a new iPhone or iPad or restore an existing backup. If your new device is an upgrade from an old iPhone or iPad, it's usually best to restore the most recent backup. This backup may be stored online in iCloud, or it may be on your laptop or PC in iTunes.

Note that you can only restore an iPhone from an iPhone backup, and an iPad from an iPad backup, not from a smartphone to a tablet or vice versa.

If yours is the first iPhone or iPad you've owned, choose 'Set up as a new iPhone or iPad'.

Step 6: If you already have an Apple account, sign in using your email address and password. If not, tap Create a free account. You can skip this, but it will mean you can't use many of the iPad or iPhone's features, and you won't be able to install any extra apps.

Step 7: Agree to the Ts and Cs (you can't use your device if you don't), and you'll see a message saying it's now ready to use.

Step 8: Tap Use iCloud on this screen. You can choose not to, but you'll miss out on a lot of useful features. Tap the About iCloud link to learn more about what it can do for you. One of the most important features is the ability to locate your iPhone or iPad if it's lost or stolen: Find My iPad (or iPhone) is enabled automatically when you tap Use iCloud.

Step 9: Assuming you use iCloud, you'll also be asked using which addresses and numbers you'd like people to be able to send you messages via iMessage. You can tick or untick email addresses and phone numbers in the list. iMessage is Apple's messaging app that lets you send messages (including text messages), photos and videos to other iMessage users.

Step 10: Next is the option to use iCloud Drive. This is for storing documents online and it's best not to use it if you have older devices which can't be upgraded to iOS 8 or OS X Yosemite (the operating system for Mac computers). If you only have the iPhone or iPad and a Windows computer, you can enable it safely.

Step 11. You'll be asked next to create a passcode. Don't skip this, because it means others can't get access to your iPhone or iPad if you lose it or leave it lying around. Type in a four-digit code twice. The latest iPads and iPhones will ask you to create a six-digit passcode.

Step 12. Choose whether or not to use Siri. Siri is Apple's digital assistant that lets you dictate messages, set alarms, launch apps, perform web searches and much more. It's well worth using Siri.

Step 13. Decide whether you want to send error reports to Apple (you don't have to) and then you'll be greeted with this message. Tap Get Started to start using your new iPhone or iPad.

Step 14: The first thing you'll probably want to do it get email set up. Here's how to add your Gmail account , but the process is very similar for other email accounts.

Step 15: Many email accounts also include contacts and calendars which you'll choose to enable (or not) in the previous step. Here's how to transfer contacts from an Android phone , and Apple has a Move to iOS app which you can install on an Android phone to make the switch easier.

That's the basics done, but if you want more, here's how to set a song as your iPhone ringtone and we also explain how to transfer photos from your computer to your iPhone (or iPad) .

To install new apps, tap on the App Store icon and browse the thousands upon thousands of apps. Here are the best apps to install on a new iPhone or iPad

Finally, if your iPhone or iPad does get lost, here's how to use Find My iPhone

2016-12-15 07:21 Jim Martin www.pcadvisor.co.uk

47 /73 6.2 Samsung's 'VIV' voice bot may miss the Galaxy S8 because of Google Assistant When Samsung purchased the powerful virtual assistant VIV, we all expected it to feature in the Samsung Galaxy S8 – but a new report suggests that won’t be the case.

The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Edge are both heavily rumored to launch in the first three months of next year and come with Android 7 Nougat software. The latest rumors suggest it’ll be Android 7.1.1 on board, which will feature Google’s highly anticipated Assistant features. It seems Google will be upset if Samsung uses VIV instead.

That's according to a report from The Register which claims Google has requested Samsung leave VIV off of the flagship phones for the time being to push the new Google Assistant features on flagship phones.

It means Samsung will still be able to use the VIV assistant on Tizen devices – such as the Samsung Gear S3 and upcoming wearables – but considering Samsung likely spent a lot of money on VIV it won’t be just dedicated to wearables.

Whether Samsung will keep to Google’s request is yet to be seen, and we probably won’t know for certain until near to MWC 2016 when we expect to see both the new flagship phones.

2016-12-15 07:06 James Peckham feedproxy.google.com

48 /73 7.7 Amazon Echo now supports IFTTT commands in the UK Whether you're booking an Uber, kicking off a Christmas playlist or looking up culinary recipes, Amazon Echo is already grabbing the voice-controlled headlines.

But, in the UK at least, there's been a giant hole in its arsenal of voice-app "Skills", and that's IFTTT integration. But that all changes today - a year after its US launch, the programming recipe service is now available in the UK.

With IFTTT supported by so many other devices, that essentially puts Alexa and Echo right into the heart of the connected home.

If you've never tried IFTTT before, it's a really powerful tool. Interacting with everything from smart thermostats to lightbulbs and even online services like Evernote, it lets you set rules to activate functions in devices and apps.

So, for instance, you could make IFTTT talk to your Philips Hue bulbs and your Spotify app, dimming the lights automatically when you ask the app to play your "Sexytime" playlist. You're limited pretty much by your imagination.

Want to give it a go? Head over to the Alexa channel for IFTTT - you'll then need to follow the simple instructions to link all your devices together.

2016-12-15 07:02 Gerald Lynch feedproxy.google.com

49 /73 1.4 Microsoft to bring Dolby Atmos to Xbox One, Windows 10 Microsoft's Xbox One console and Windows 10 operating system are to get native support for Dolby Atmos surround-sound in both games and Blu-rays, the company has announced. Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 and its Xbox One console are both set to get native support for Dolby Atmos audio technology, even as it fixed a console bug that hobbled users' network performance.

First announced by Dolby Laboratories in April 2012 and launched in June as the cinema audio format for the Pixar film Brave, Atmos is designed to allow up to 128 independent audio tracks and associated special audio description data including location or pan information with support for 64 separate speaker feeds. Naturally, the home implementation launched in 2014 is a little scaled down from its cinema origins: Dolby Atmos in the home adds a special substream to existing Dolby TrueHD or Digital Plus signals mixing together the up-to-128 tracks from the cinema data and supporting a 24.1.10 (24 surround speakers, one subwoofer, and 10 overhead or specifically spatially-located speakers) mix.

With the first Atmos Blu-ray - Transformers: Age of Extinction - having been released in 2014 and Star Wars: Battlefront getting an Atmos upgrade in 2015, content featuring the format is available for those who have the equipment to play it back. Soon, that group of lucky home cinema enthusiasts will widen thanks to Atmos support being baked into Windows 10 machines and the Xbox One games console in a future update.

' Atmos support for the Blu-ray app on Xbox [One] is already available in Preview and will be released to GA [general availability] soon, ' explained Microsoft's Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb in the announcement , ' and we’re very excited now to offer Atmos support to games on Xbox One and Windows 10. You’ll be able to experience Dolby Atmos in your home theater, assuming you have a Dolby Atmos enabled speaker system or soundbar. But you don’t need to have that kind of equipment – it will be possible to enable virtually any pair of headphones with the Dolby Atmos experience. '

The update will bring Blu-ray bitstream passthrough to the Xbox One, and will be followed some time next year by support for Dolby Atmos within games. Thus far, no timescale has been given for the update's release.

At the same time, Microsoft has released a software update for the Xbox One which resolves a major thorn in users' sides: extremely poor network performance. Previously, users with 100Mb/s or greater broadband connections have been finding their downloads running at around half their potential - despite Microsoft running one of the largest cloud computing platforms in the world. The reason, it transpires, is not a failure to spin up enough server instances to meet demand or put in enough backbone capacity but instead a software bug which has now been resolved. Following this week's update, Microsoft has promised, users should find their download performance on high-speed broadband lines boosted by around 80 per cent.

2016-12-15 07:00 Gareth Halfacree feedproxy.google.com

50 /73 0.0 9 signs you should quit your programming job It’s one thing to know how to quit a job; it’s another to know when it’s time. Last year I outlined 15 rules for quitting your job. Here, I’ll give you developers some tips on when to consider it. Don’t jump too quickly, however, as the Trumpocalypse is soon upon us and economic turmoil could be part of the game.

I’m lucky. I work for a great company , my co-workers are nice, I get to work from home, and I get to write about tech and code. It hasn’t always been that way. I’ve worked at some sad, dysfunctional places. I’ve also been able to abandon ship before big layoffs because I could read the tea leaves. It’s an intangible skill that comes in handy at many programming shops.

Here are nine reasons you might want to quote Johnny Paycheck to your current employer and find a new home for your coding chops.

If you’re working on the “legacy system,” polish your resume, cross-train if possible, and learn something new. Your organization, especially the bean counters, are looking to replace the system, and a lot of dumb organizations dump the people along with it and hire someone who already knows the new stuff.

Right now there’s an old codger reading this and saying, “Yeah, whatever kid, I’ve been on the legacy team for 30 years.” Certainly, that happens. But I’ve sorted through more than one resume where a person hadn’t learned a thing in two or three decades and suddenly had to look for a new job. Sometimes taking small risks is better than thinking you’re not taking any risks but finding out you’d taken on the hugest risk of all: irrelevancy.

Whether the reason given is personal, professional, or technological, being dropped from a regular meeting is generally a sign that your ticket is punched. Look for the big rectangle on the wall and step through.

As a white guy, I don’t have to deal with much racism. And like many people, I used to think racism was as obvious as the N word or someone wearing a sheet or a bunch of rednecks driving through a town in trucks with Confederate flags staging a “victory parade” for the president-elect. However, there are other forms , and if you find yourself being victimized in the workplace, no matter how minor it might seem, you should think about moving on.

This could mean being singled out or written up for the same things your co-workers are doing. Or the standard for your work is clearly different than your co-workers’ in your employer’s eyes. Or you find the reward is less. Or your evaluations bizarrely swing from positive to negative without any large changes in your performance.

Sadly, protections against these developments are virtually nonexistent. As an industry we suffer from cognitive dissonance. There is always someone explaining how it’s not really happening or not about race. If you’re in tech despite the bias, you have a lot of choice. Even if through social coincidence you’re in a “protected class,” you have to ask yourself if you really want to work at a place where everyone who doesn’t look like you starts finding the door.

I’ve work for companies that talk about needing a “business case” to justify writing unit or load tests. And I’ve worked at firms where the only thank you for delivery are recriminations when (shockingly) things don’t go right and bugs make their way into production. Get out!

I’m not saying there shouldn’t be an architect or the business requirements are up to the developers or you should be able to download all the shiny stuff off the internet and pad your resume. What I mean is that thing where the boss comes in and makes a declaration, then after he leaves everyone agrees it’s not going to work but we’ll do it anyway. That’s the time to go. It leads to terrible software and failed projects.

Recently a certain consulting company created a diagram of “agile process” that resembles a map for a terribly designed subway system. Someone actually thought this subway map was the best representation of the software development process.

Imagine the sheer number of lines of process documentation per line of code that they generate! There are a lot of organizations that follow byzantine and cavernous versions of the SDLC/waterfall method while using agile terminology. Many of those throw the process out the window when it comes time to actually get anything done. If you want to produce actual software that actually works, this isn’t the kind of environment you want to be in.

Generally a manager who wants to help you get better talks to you informally. If they instead write you a negative review or performance improvement plan (PIP), it’s really the “first-step- toward-firing-you plan,” as another writer put it.

I once worked at a place that put new requirements in shortly preceding the release. The developers would cram to finish them right before, often staying up into the night. Shockingly these new requirements rarely worked right.

Don’t worry they were “agile,” so it was fine!

If the software your team releases is a repeated failure (only internal teams tend to get away with this) and they refuse to change the way they do things, then maybe you should change your team the other way: with your feet.

It’s coming on a new year. If any of the above resonate, maybe your new year’s resolution should be to find a new place to work. What else has set or sent you off? Let me know on Twitter.

2016-12-15 07:00 Andrew C www.infoworld.com

51 /73 1.8 Google’s Long, Strange Life Span Trip At a laboratory outside San Francisco, money from the founders of Google maintains a large number of naked mole rats. The hairless rodents require exacting, expensive conditions to thrive: they live in coöperative colonies like ants, led by a queen rat. But what is truly extraordinary is that they can live about 30 years— 10 times longer than a mouse.

The rodents belong to Calico Labs, short for the California Life Company. In 2013, the cofounder of Google, Larry Page, announced that his company would form Calico and fund it lavishly to carry out a long-term project, trying to sort out the causes of aging and do something about them. The company’s mission: to build a Bell Labs of aging research. It hoped to extend the human life span by coming up with a breakthrough as important, and as useful to humanity, as the transistor has been.

There are reasons to think aging can be slowed in fundamental ways. Among Calico’s first hires was Cynthia Kenyon, now its vice president of aging research, who 20 years ago showed that altering a single DNA letter in a laboratory roundworm made it live six weeks instead of three. There is something hair-raising about Kenyon’s videos of old, should-be-dead worms wriggling vigorously across a petri dish. So Google’s founders created an academic-biotech hybrid they call an R&D company to follow up on such clues, providing nearly unlimited funding to a group of top researchers. Calico has hired stars like artificial-intelligence specialist Daphne Koller. With equal contributions from Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and the drug company AbbVie, it has $1.5 billion in the bank. But despite the hype around its launch— Time magazine asked, “Can Google Solve Death?”—Calico has remained a riddle, a super-secretive company that three years in hasn’t published anything of note, rebuffs journalists, and asks visiting scientists to sign nondisclosure agreements. In fact,

Calico has other researchers “a little miffed,” says Felipe Sierra, director of the division of aging biology at the National Institute on Aging. “We want to know what they are doing so we can focus on other things, or collaborate. They are a research company, so what are they researching?”

MIT Technology Review has learned that Calico is, in effect, an elite university research group housed within a corporate bunker, doing mostly basic science. It has more than 100 employees and has assembled a Noah’s ark of yeast, worms, and more exotic creatures like the naked mole rats, which are kept at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, about 30 miles from Calico’s South San Francisco headquarters.

What’s different about a mole rat? That is the sort of costly, open-ended question Calico can afford to ask. And then there’s the seven-year study Calico is financing that will follow 1,000 mice from birth to death to search for biomarkers of aging. Right now, there’s no proven test for a person’s “biological” age; finding one would be scientifically useful and possibly lucrative. “They don’t open the kimono much,” says Brian Kennedy, a Buck Institute scientist who interacts with Calico. “I think they believe we need a broader grasp on the biology of aging. They recognize it can’t possibly be s imple.”

The Google founders aren’t the first billionaires to decide that aging is the “most fundamental unsolved problem in biology,” as Calico’s press releases put it. Larry Ellison, the cofounder of Oracle, gave away $335 million to scientists studying aging before redirecting his foundation’s grants toward eliminating polio in 2013. The investor Peter Thiel has also donated to the anti- aging cause, and there’s even a $500,000 Palo Alto Longevity Prize to anyone who can radically extend the life of a mammal.

The difficulty is that scientists don’t know enough about why animals age. Calico’s Hal Barron, hired from Roche to lead its drug development efforts, told the National Academy of Medicine in 2015 that there would be no short-term payoff. “We believe you have to take a very long view,” he said, “and not rush into the clinic until you really know what you are doing.”

A hundred and seventy five years ago most people died from infections, not from old age. Thanks to vaccines, better nutrition, and all-around improvements in public health and medicine, life expectancy at birth in wealthy nations has doubled from 40 to around 80 years, an average gain of 2.5 years per decade. But now that we live longer, we have traded up to a new set of killers that are harder to beat: cancer, heart disease, stroke, and dementia.

For all these diseases, aging is the single biggest risk factor. An 80-year-old is 40 times as likely to die from cancer as someone middle-aged. The risk for Alzheimer’s rises by 600 times. But what if it were possible to postpone all these deaths by treating aging itself? “I think we have failed in our effort to attack chronic disease when we attack them one by one,” Sierra says. “And the reason is that they have one major risk factor, which is the biology of aging.” Overarching theory David Botstein is Calico’s chief scientific officer. He is 74, with a grizzled shadow of beard reaching up from his collar. In November, I found him at a lecture hall at MIT, where he offered a rare window onto experiments under way at Calico. Botstein, a well-known Princeton geneticist whom Calico recruited out of near retirement, was in town to celebrate the birthday of a successful former student, now a sexagenarian. “The pleasure is coming to see old friends,” he says. “The not-so-p leasure is if these guys are 60, what am I?”

In his lecture, Botstein described several technologies—four, in fact—that Calico has for isolating old yeast cells from the daughter cells that bud off them. (One project has the institutional-sounding name Mother Enrichment Program.) These old cells are tracked and subjected to a comprehensive analysis of which genes are turned up or turned down, a technique that is Botstein’s specialty.

Botstein told me Calico is exactly what Google intended: a Bell Labs working on fundamental questions, with the best people, the best technology, and the most money. “Instead of ideas chasing the money, they have given us a very handsome sum of money and want us to do something about the fact that we know so little about aging,” says Botstein. “It’s a hard problem; it’s an unmet need; it is exactly what Larry Page thinks it is. It’s something to which no one is really in a position to pay enough attention, until maybe us.”

Botstein says no one is going to live forever—that would be perpetuum mobile, or perpetual motion, which defies the laws of thermodynamics. But he says Kenyon’s experiments on worms are a “perfectly good” example of the life span’s malleability. So is the fact that rats fed near- starvation diets can live as much as 45 percent longer. The studies Botstein described in yeast cells concerned a fundamental trade-off that cells make. In good times, with lots of food, they grow fast. Under stresses like heat, starvation, or aging, they hunker down to survive, grow slowly, and often live longer than normal. “Shields down or shields up,” as B otstein puts it.

Such trade-offs are handled through biochemical pathways that respond to nutrients; one is called TOR, and another involves insulin. These pathways have already been well explored by other scientists, but Calico is revisiting them using the newest technology. “A lot of our effort is in trying to verify or falsify some of the theories,” Botstein says, adding that he thinks much of the science on aging so far is best consumed “with a dose of sodium chloride.” Some molecules touted as youth elixirs that can act through such pathways—like resveratrol, a compound in red wine—never lived up to their early hype.

According to Botstein, aging research is still seeking a truly big insight. Imagine, he says, doctors fighting infections without knowing what a virus is. Or think back to cancer research in the 1960s. There were plenty of theories then. But it was the discovery of oncogenes—specific genes able to turn cells cancerous—that provided scientists with their first real understanding of what causes tumors. “What we are looking for, I think above everything else, is to be able to contribute to a transformation like that,” he says. “We’d like to find ways for people to have a longer and healthier life. But by how much, and how—well, I don’t know.”

Botstein says a “best case” scenario is that Calico will have something profound to offer the world in 10 years. That time line explains why the company declines media interviews. “There will be nothing to say for a very long time, except for some incremental scientific things. That is the problem.”

To get there, Calico is ratcheting up its expertise and skills. Botstein says it has demonstrated it could decode a human genome from scratch, without peeking at the official genome map. That’s a difficult task requiring significant investment in computing and know-how. But Calico got the right answer, so it’s confident of accurately mapping the genome of the naked mole rat—a job he says is half done. And a precise understanding of how the mole rat’s genes are organized may hold clues to its long life. “A lot of what we do is technology development,” says Botstein. “It’s not interesting, and it’s not supposed to be interesting. It’s how you put one foot in front of the other so you don’t trip on yourself.”

Big disappointment To some, Calico’s heavy bet on basic biology is a wrong turn. The company is “my biggest disappointment right now,” says Aubrey de Grey, an influential proponent of attempts to intervene in the aging process and chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation, a charity an hour’s drive from Calico that promotes rejuvenation technology. It is being driven, he complains, “by the assumption that we still do not understand aging well enough to have a chance to develop therapies.”

Indeed, some competitors are far more aggressive in pursuing interventions than Calico is. “They are very committed to these fundamental mechanisms, and bless them for doing that. But we are committed to putting drugs into the clinic and we might do it first,” says Nathaniel David, president and cofounder of Unity Biotechnology. This year, Jeff Bezos joined investors who put $127 million behind Unity, a startup in San Francisco that’s developing drugs to zap older, “senescent” cells that have stopped dividing.

These cells are suspected of releasing cocktails of unhelpful old-age signals, and by killing them, Unity’s drugs could act to rejuvenate tissues. The company plans to start with a modestly ambitious test in arthritic knees. De Grey’s SENS Foundation, for its part, has funded Oisin Biotechnologies, a startup aiming to rid bodies of senescent cells using gene therapy.

Other scientists say it is time to begin large human studies of “geroprotectors”—drugs that could decelerate aging altogether. One such effort is being spearheaded by gerontologists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York. The medication they hope to test, metformin, is used to treat diabetes. It cropped up as an anti-aging prospect after scientists reviewing medical records found that people taking it not only were much less likely to die than other diabetics but died at a 15 percent lower rate than all other patients.

Metformin lowers blood sugar levels, one clue it may have something in common with a low- calorie diet. But getting a study off the ground hasn’t been easy. To convince the U. S. Food and Drug Administration to approve the trial, doctors decided to measure metformin’s effectiveness in preventing three separate diseases: heart attack, dementia, and cancer. “They do not recognize aging as a disease, so what we have done is choose diseases of aging with minimal overlap in their causes,” says Steven Austad, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and scientific director of the American Federation for Aging Research, which has endorsed the metformin study. “If it simultaneously delays them, that would indicate a slowed rate of aging.”

The trial is designed to involve 6,000 people and would last six years. It would be the first large study of a geroprotector in volunteers, according to S. Jay Olshansky, a public health researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He therefore rates the trial as significant no matter whether it flops or, as he hopes, sets off “the most groundbreaking events in public health in this century.”

The only problem is who will pay for the trial, expected to cost $65 million. The chance the NIH will pay for the entire study is “remote,” says Austad, and since metformin is an old drug not covered by patents, drug companies aren’t interested either. Instead, Olshansky and Austad are going with what’s become a favorite play in research on aging: they plan to hit up billionaires for the money. Funding a groundbreaking advance, Olshansky promises potential investors, could be their “ticket to immortality.”

Playing the long game The science of aging is easy to disregard, given its long historical connection to alchemy, quacks, and vitamin pushers. Even now, many scientists do their utmost to avoid the phrase “anti-aging research”—sounding as it does like a promise made on a tin of skin cream. “There are a lot of charlatans in aging research. I should be careful in what I say, but it attracts pretty quirky people,” says Gary Churchill, a mouse geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory, in Bar Harbor, Maine.

It can’t help, either, that the people who bankroll this science keep saying they hope to live forever. Bill Maris, the former head of Google Ventures who hatched the idea for Calico, has said he thinks it is possible people could live “for 500 years.” That’s pretty unlikely. In that sense, Calico’s creation of a strictly controlled research fortress staffed by recognized leaders makes sense as an inoculum against hokum, maybe even from the people paying the bills. “They are playing the long game,” Churchill says. “It’s a good strategy. It could leave them positioned a decade from now to have something.”

Churchill’s work with Calico gives some idea of how long it could take. In April 2016, the company agreed to pay for a large experiment at Jackson Labs to search for a “biomarker” of aging—a molecule, which they hope to find in the blood, whose quantity or properties change with “biological” age, not just with the hands on the clock. Such a diagnostic could be extraordinarily useful, and profitable.

But searching for such a marker is not cheap. At Jackson Labs, Churchill’s team plans to follow 1,000 mice, drawing blood and placing them inside special cages where food and water intake can be precisely measured and the rodents’ droppings and urine collected. Half the mice will be on a calorie-restricted diet to extend their lives—necessary to confirm whether a biomarker really tags them as biologically younger. The experiment will generate millions of readings—for levels of growth hormones and glucose, among other things. Churchill wouldn’t say how much Calico is paying, but simply feeding that many mice could cost $3 million. “We’ve mapped it out, planned it. It’s immense, and we’d never be able to do this with the NIH,” he says. “The willingness to invest in the long term is the most appealing thing about Calico.”

Churchill says the ideal biomarker of aging would actually estimate how much longer you have left to live, barring any unforeseen events. And the readout would change if you took a drug or adopted a diet that somehow rescheduled your appointment with the Grim Reaper. With a test like that, companies could see whether their drugs actually influenced aging without waiting many, many years for the answer. Finding such a blood marker would be the kind of breakthrough that aging research so desperately needs—and that Calico was created to discover.

Antonio Regalado is MIT Technology Review ’s senior editor covering biomedicine.

2016-12-15 07:00 Antonio Regalado www.technologyreview.com

52 /73 3.0 So THAT'S who reads the furshlugginer manual! It's many moons ago and, with an upgrade to the company's online transaction processing system due shortly, this pilot fish is tasked with checking over the most recent revisions to the system's user manual.

"I was also asked to double-check the actual programs that accessed the OLTP system, to verify that they did what the manual told the users they would do," says fish.

"I found not one but two transactions that were not just described inaccurately in the manual, but were 100 percent different from everything the manual said about them.

"That manual had been in users' hands for at least four years before the upcoming upgrade to the system had prompted the revisions. When I double-checked, I found that those two transactions both had fairly high use counts in the production system -- yet no one had ever complained that the user manual was just plain wrong about what they did.

"It made me rather cynical about any need to finish proofreading the manual, but I did it anyway. "

2016-12-15 07:00 Sharky www.computerworld.com

53 /73 3.3 Cloud compute: AWS, Azure, Google, SoftLayer compared Back in the olden days (early 2007), there was one player in IaaS: Amazon Web Services (AWS). And AWS had one instance family, the M1. It was good. But as tech years move faster than dog years, the landscape has changed quickly and dramatically. There are new players -- notably Azure, Google, and IBM SoftLayer -- and new offerings. Even when you consider only the compute offerings of the IaaS providers, the options are vast and varied. Granted, compute is at the core of what these providers offer, and as such they look to differentiate those items. The result has been an explosion in the number of options in the compute realm of IaaS.

Because the underlying hardware and virtualization mechanisms vary among providers, apples- to-apples comparisons are not always possible. As such, in the discussion below, I will focus on describing each vendor’s offerings, with references to similarities and differences in the competing services. I will not go down the rabbit hole of pricing as it can get quite convoluted with varying pricing tiers for on-demand, spot, and preemptible instances, as well as sustained usage discounts and reserved instance pricing, enterprise license agreements, reseller discounts, and so on. I will touch on pricing at a high level, but I’ll leave the gory details for another article.

With those caveats behind us, let’s evaluate the compute offerings of AWS, Azure, Google, and IBM SoftLayer. For a high-level view of the differences (in compute, network, storage, database, analytics, and other services) among these cloud providers, check out the free RightScale Cloud Comparison tool.

AWS was first to market with a cloud compute offering, and it gained a sizable head start. Today AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) has approximately 40 different instance sizes in its current generation (“instance” is the term AWS and Google use for what others call a “virtual machine,” “VM,” “virtual server,” or “VS”). The previous generations of instance types (including the aforementioned M1) are still available, although they are not “above the fold” on any AWS price sheets or product description literature. There are about 15 instance sizes in the previous generations. While they are currently fully supported, it would not be surprising if AWS looks to sunset these instance types at some point in the future.

Focusing on the current generation, some of these instance types come with attached “ephemeral” storage (storage that is deprovisioned when the instance is terminated), while many others come with no attached volumes and instead specify “EBS only” with regard to storage. This means you must separately provision, attach, and pay for the storage. (EBS is AWS’s Elastic Block Storage offering, which will be discussed in a future article in this series.)

The current generation of instances is organized into instance families that are optimized for certain use cases. Some of the current instances address general-purpose workloads, while others are tailored for computationally intensive applications. Still others are optimized for workloads with high memory requirements or for applications that require high amounts of storage (up to 48TB). Some instances provide GPUs that can be used for video rendering, graphics computations, and streaming.

Additionally, some instance families support “burstable” performance. These provide a baseline CPU performance, but can burst to higher CPU rates for finite periods of time provided by “CPU credits” that the instance accumulates during periods of low CPU utilization. Evaluate your use case and workload carefully before deciding upon burstable instance types.

It is important to benchmark your application to ensure that on average it stays at or below the baseline. Not only that, you want to ensure that the CPU bursts are not so long they exhaust your credits, and the CPU valleys are sufficiently long to allow for credit replenishment. If you exhaust your CPU credits, your application may run in a “CPU starved” state that will obviously hinder performance. Burstable instances are a great tool for the right application, but they can prove very problematic when used incorrectly.

AWS instance types can be optionally configured to meet specific use cases, performance targets, or compliance regulations. For example, certain instance types can be configured in an enhanced networking model that allows for increased packet rates, lowers latencies between instances, and decreases network jitter. Additionally, instances can be launched into high- performance computing (HPC) clusters or deployed on dedicated hardware that allows for single-tenant configurations, which may be required for certain security or compliance regulations.

There are also different pricing structures and deployment models that can be used within AWS EC2. The standard deployment model is “on-demand,” which means, as the name implies, you launch when you need them. On-demand instances run for a fixed hourly cost (fractional hours are rounded up to the next hour) until you explicitly terminate them. There are also “spot instances,” which allow you to bid for any excess compute capacity AWS may have at any given time. Spot instances can often be obtained for a fraction of the on-demand cost (savings in excess of 80 percent are not uncommon).

However, they come with the caveat that they may be terminated at any time if the current spot price exceeds your bid price. It is a real-time marketplace in which the highest bid (the price you are willing to pay per hour for the instance) “wins.” You can achieve tremendous cost savings with spot instances, but they are only suited for workloads that can be interrupted (processing items from an external queue, for example).

AWS offers “spot blocks,” which are similar to spot instances in that you specify the price you are willing to pay, but you also specify the number of instances you want at that price, and a duration in hours up to a maximum of six. If your bid is accepted, your desired number of instances will run for the time specified without interruption, but they will be terminated when the time period expires. This deployment model is useful for predictable, finite workloads such as batch processing tasks.

AWS offers discounts through reserved instances (RIs), which require you to commit to a specific instance type running a specific operating system in a specific availability zone (AZ) of your desired AWS region. You must commit to a one- or three-year term, and in return your hourly cost for the instance will be greatly reduced (up to 75 percent for a three-year commitment).

However, you are generally constrained to the instance type, operating system, and AZ that you selected for the duration of the contract, so careful planning is essential. You can request modifications within certain limitations, but those requests are subject to approval by AWS based on available capacity. Clearly, committing to one or three years of reserved instances isn’t for everyone. Other providers have similar discounting policies that are far simpler to implement and don’t require having years of visibility into your workload (Google’s Sustained Use Discounts, for example, which will be described shortly).

AWS has the most complete set of offerings in the compute arena, but it doesn’t have a lock on unique and interesting features. Other vendors are continually adding new compute options that make them attractive alternatives for many use cases.

Microsoft takes a similar approach to compute instance types with Azure, but uses slightly different nomenclature. Instances are called virtual machines (VMs), although you will see the word “instance” sprinkled throughout the online documentation. VMs are grouped into seven different series with between five and a dozen different sizes in each group. Each series is optimized for a particular type of workload, including general-purpose use cases, computationally intensive applications, and workloads with high memory requirements. An eighth group (the “N” series), which is composed of GPU-enabled instances, were recently released for general availability this month.

All told, Azure has approximately 70 different VM sizes, covering a wide array of use cases and workload requirements. All VM types in Azure come with attached ephemeral storage, varying from about 7GB to about 7TB. (Azure measures attached storage in gibibytes, not gigabytes, so the numbers don’t come out as neat and clean as we are typically used to.)

As the maximum capacity of attached storage for an Azure VM is considerably less than for an AWS EC2 instance (the aforementioned 48TB, for example), you may want to provision additional storage. This can be allocated from an Azure Storage account associated with your Azure subscription (“subscription” is the Azure term for what is generally known as an “account”). Azure provides both a standard storage option (HDD) and a “premium” storage option (SSD). I’ll discuss these in more detail in a later post in this series.

Azure also provides a VM size (the A0) that is intentionally oversubscribed with regard to the underlying physical hardware. This means the CPU performance on this VM type can be affected by “noisy neighbors” running VMs on the same physical node. Azure specifies an expected baseline performance, but acknowledges that performance may vary as much as 15 percent from that baseline. The A0 is a very inexpensive VM, and if a particular workload can tolerate the variability, it may be an attractive option.

Azure charges for VMs on a per-minute basis instead of on an hourly rate like AWS. Thus, a VM that runs for 61 minutes on Azure is charged for 61 minutes, whereas AWS would charge you for a full two hours. Azure has an offering similar to AWS’s reserved instances. Called the “Azure Compute prepurchase plan,” this allows you to reap significant discounts (as much as 63 percent) by making an upfront prepurchase, with a one-year commitment, on a particular VM family, size, region, and operating system.

However, the prepurchase plan is available only to customers holding an active Enterprise Agreement (EA) with Microsoft. Because an EA can greatly influence your pricing model, VM pricing on Azure is kind of like the pricing of airline seats on any particular flight: No two people pay the same price, though they are all sitting in the same type of seat and going to the same place. If you have an EA with Microsoft, be sure to speak to your sales representative about your Azure usage.

Microsoft has made great strides in IaaS over the last few years. Azure has started to close the overall gap with AWS, particularly the gaps in its compute offering. As many enterprises are already engaged with Microsoft on some level (or multiple levels), it would not be surprising to see this trend continue.

Google Compute Engine (GCE), the service within Google Cloud Platform that manages IaaS compute resources, also provides numerous options for launching virtual machines. Like AWS, GCE calls the VMs “instances” and the different options “machine types.” These are grouped into several categories (standard, high CPU, and high memory), with multiple sizes within each category.

Currently you’ll find approximately 20 different predefined machine types in GCE, with available memory ranging from 600MB to 208GB. None of these predefined machine types provides ephemeral storage, which is a change from the early days of GCE when ephemeral storage was an option. Ephemeral storage was a casualty of GCE’s live migration (or “transparent maintenance”) service, which enables a VM to be migrated from one physical node to another without any interaction (or even knowledge of the process) by the customer. This feature is unique to GCE and a powerful differentiator to AWS.

Another unique feature of GCE is the ability to create custom machine types. That is, you can specify the configuration of virtual CPUs and available memory if none of the predefined machine types fits your needs. There are limitations to what can be configured, and prices for custom machine types are higher than for predefined instances, but for certain use cases and workloads, custom machines may be an attractive option.

GCE also provides a few “shared core” machine types, which are similar in concept to the oversubscribed VM sizes in Azure. These machine types provide “opportunistic” bursting, which allows the instance to consume additional CPU cycles when they are not being consumed by other workloads on the same physical CPU. GCE does not use a “CPU credit” system such as AWS uses to balance peaks and valleys of utilization. Instead the bursts occur whenever the stars of application need and CPU cycle availability align.

2016-12-15 07:00 Brian Adler www.infoworld.com

54 /73 1.3 The new Apple TV update is no friend to cord cutters Apple TV received a major update this week, but cord cutters aren’t its target audience. The latest version of tvOS includes a new “TV” app that pulls together videos from across dozens of other video apps, including Hulu, ABC, and Comedy Central. Think of it as a modern take on the TV guide, letting you browse through movies and TV shows without having to bounce between apps.

Apple clearly sees the TV app as the interface of the future for Apple TV. But right now, it doesn’t support enough video sources, especially if you don’t have a cable TV login.

The new behavior can be jarring, because TV doesn’t initially display any content or apps on its main screen. To set things up, you must install an app that supports TV, then log into that app, then return to TV, where you must approve of connecting the app you just installed. The connection step is supposed to be a privacy measure—Apple wants your explicit permission to study your viewing habits—but having to repeat this step for every app seems like overkill.

Apple errs on the side of extreme caution with permission to access your viewing habits.

Once you’ve approved some apps, the TV menu will populate with recommendations. You can browse through shows by genre, see what’s popular, and add your favorites to a watchlist, called “Up Next,” that helps you pick up where you left off.

It’s a pretty slick system, but cord cutters will quickly notice the problem: Of the 37 streaming apps that support TV, 26 of them are “TV Everywhere” apps that require a pay-TV login to watch all of their content.

As I’ve written before, TV Everywhere apps aren’t just for cable subscribers. Many of them— including ABC, NBC, Watch Food Network, Watch HGTV, Discovery Go, and Animal Planet Go —offer plenty of TV episodes without a login. But that notion seems lost on Apple, which will not connect any of these apps to TV unless you enter some pay-TV credentials.

If you’re a PlayStation Vue subscriber, you might still get some utility out of this system, because many TV Everywhere apps support authentication with a Vue account. Even so, not all TV Everywhere apps work with TV yet (HBO Go, Showtime Anytime, and Disney Channel are a few examples), and Vue doesn’t support Apple TV’s new single sign-in feature, so you must re-enter your credentials for every app you install.

As for standalone subscription services, TV currently works with nine of them: HBO Now, Hulu, Starz, Showtime, CBS All Access, Tribeca Shortlist, Mubi, Crunchyroll, and CuriosityStream. Netflix is a major omission from TV app right now, and Amazon doesn’t support Apple TV at all.

Free streaming services are another weak point, with TV only supporting CW and CW Seed at launch. It doesn’t pull in content from Crackle, PBS, PBS Kids, Tubi TV, or Shout! Factory TV. Over-the-air DVR users are also out of luck, as TV won’t pull in show recordings from Tablo or anything in your Plex library.

You’ll still need the old home screen to access many streaming apps.

Streaming-bundle subscribers won’t get much use from TV either. The app doesn’t include any content—either on-demand or live—from Sling TV, DirecTV Now, or PlayStation Vue. (Again, Vue subscribers can access dozens of individual TV Everywhere apps, but support from Sling TV and DirecTV Now is much more limited.)

I did discover one workaround that makes TV a bit more useful: If you search for a show through Siri, you can add it to the “Up Next” watchlist even if that show isn’t available directly through TV. When you select that show from the watchlist, you’ll return to Apple’s info page, where you can jump into any source that surfaces content through Siri search—including Netflix, HBO Go, and PBS.

But even this trick has downsides. Unless the content source supports TV, you can’t automatically pick up where you left off, and just getting to the next episodes requires clicking through a couple extra menu prompts.

You can add shows from supported sources (such as HBO Go) to the TV app’s “Up Next” list, but they’ll only take you as far as Apple’s info page.

Although Apple’s TV app isn’t that helpful to cord cutters today, it does have some potential. Perhaps in the future, Apple could cut out the cable-TV middleman and bundle TV Everywhere access on its own, turning the TV app into the primary destination for traditional cable channels. Apple could also bundle standalone streaming services such as Netflix—on the condition that they supported the TV app in full.

The TV app lays a foundation for bigger plans, but until Apple starts making moves—or puts some public pressure on the streaming services that don’t want to participate—cord cutters are better off avoiding the new app and sticking to the standard the Apple TV home screen.

2016-12-15 07:00 Jared Newman www.pcworld.com

55 /73 1.0 Amazon Air makes its UK debut with 13 minute delivery AMAZON HAS made the first delivery by drone, as trials of the service continue in the UK.

The world first for Amazon Air happened recently in Cambridge, where the company has been given a licence to run tests . The delivery took just 13 minutes to arrive with the customer after the order was placed and sent for fulfilment at the Cambridgeshire warehouse as part of a private trial, presumably amongst testers with big gardens.

The drone rises vertically to around 400ft (120ish metres) and then uses similar technology to that in driverless cars in order to navigate to the landing pad, which the user puts in their garden and is basically an Amazon "A", making your garden look like a dyslexic Superman outfit on an old television with no red tube.

Although this is a genuine test with genuine delivery, it's still a long way from reality as concerns over the safety of civilian drones continues, following a number of near misses recently.

Amazon has created proposals for how their drones can safely coexist, and say, "Safety is our top priority. Our vehicles will be built with multiple redundancies, as well as sophisticated "sense and avoid" technology. Additionally, through our private trial in the UK, we will gather data to continue improving the safety and reliability of our systems and operations. "

At present, the service only runs when it is daylight, and when it's not raining, which basically means that the guaranteed 30 minutes that it hopes to offer is going to be totally b*ggered by the UK climate. So that's fun.

Other countries are still dithering about whether to allow trials to start, meaning that the UK has managed to score a little piece of history with this. Sadly, it has been sullied by commentary by its poster boy Jeremy Clarkson. Fortunately, there is a version sans commentary too. µ

2016-12-15 06:39 Chris Merriman www.theinquirer.net

56 /73 3.6 : Doom Bloodfall multiplayer DLC live now This is our complete guide to Doom, including where to buy the game and all the latest news regarding the Doom DLC, including the new Free Update 5 and Bloodfall DLC - read more about them here.

If you want to find out more about what we thought of Bethesda's remake of the 1993 PC classic, read our full Doom review. Spoiler though: we loved it enough that it made its way onto our lists of the best 2016 PC games , PS4 games , and Xbox One games.

Bethesda first announced the roadmap for Doom's DLC at E3 2016, which has so far included five free updates to the game and several paid multiplayer DLC updates.

The first piece of paid DLC for Doom was entitled Unto the Evil. The downloadable content offers three brand new multiplayer maps - Offering, Cataclysm and Ritual - along with a new enemy called Harvester, and a flurry of new weapons, etc.

There have also been improvements made to the SnapMap feature, with the introduction of new tools, construction mods, themes, props, objects, weapons and items in the coming months. This allows users to create extremely detailed and entertaining maps for both online and offline use, producing custom maps that'll keep the game fresh for months to come.

Bethesda has now launched the game's fifth free content update and its third and final paid DLC, Bloodfall. First up, Free Update 5 adds new game mode Infernal Run (basically a demonic Capture the Flag variant), the addition of bots to Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, and extension of the multiplayer rankings to Echelon 11, with the ability to unlock the Doom Marine armour once you get there. There have also been a few new features added to SnapMap.

Meanwhile the third and final paid DLC for Doom is Bloodfall, and is live now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The update adds three new maps to Doom's multiplayer mode: Empyrian, Boneyard, and Outbreak, but that's not all.

There's also three new hack modules, a new weapon (the Grenade Launcher), new equipment (the Lateral Thrusters), new armour options (Cultist Armour), and a new demon to play as (Spectre Pinky - a nasty looking brute with the ability to turn invisible).

Bloodfall is live now, and you can buy a download code for £11.99 - or pick up the season pass , which includes the similar Unto the Evil and Hell Followed DLC packs, for £29.99. If you're undecided, check out the Bloodfall launch trailer:

Doom UK release date: 13 May 2016

Doom was available to buy on 13 May 2016. Three DLC packs have also been developed for the game, along with a host of free content updates. The third and final DLC pack, Bloodfall, is due out on 15 December.

Bethesda also announced a Premium Collectors Edition of the game, which you can find more information about below.

Doom in digital form is available for PC from Steam (£39.99), PS4 at the PlayStation Store (£49.99), and Xbox One at the Xbox Store (£49.99).

Boxed versions are also available if you're prepared to wait, and prices for them have dropped much lower. You can now pick it up from Amazon for any platform for just £14.99, or for just a little more you can get the game together with a season pass for the DLC for a grand total of £19.99.

Also see: Best games deals Alongside the announcement of the Doom release date, Bethesda also announced a Premium Collectors Edition that'd be available worldwide in limited edition numbers. It'll include a 12in collector's statue of a Revenant made by popular prop manufacturer TriForce, and is based on real in-game files for accuracy. It comes complete with an LED base and a slow turning internal turbine, and comes in an exclusive steel case. Price wise, it'll cost you £99.99 from GAME on PC , PS4 and Xbox One .

GAME is also selling a Doom UAC pack that includes a UAC handbook, fabric patches and poster, and costs £37.99 on PC or £47.99 on PS4 or Xbox One. Season Passes cost £29.99.