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Total 64 articles, created at 2016-04-23 06:03 1 Lenovo Yoga 900 review: What this laptop gives up in size, it gains in power

(2.00/3) The Yoga 900 is thicker and heavier than the Yoga 3 Pro, but it also comes upgraded with a larger battery, beefier CPU, and other goodies that let it run longer and faster. 2016-04-22 16:30 7KB www.itnews.com 2 How AMD is resurrecting itself as a formidable rival to Intel The rivalry between AMD and Intel peaked during the first decade of the 2000s, when the companies consistently challenged each other with a stream of chip innovations. (2.00/3) 2016-04-22 12:44 4KB www.itworld.com 3 Google and Microsoft agree to end regulatory battles Microsoft had been a leading voice calling for antitrust investigations of Google 2016-04-22 09:38 2KB www.infoworld.com (2.00/3)

4 Data management: Five decades of prospecting for business value Data management and business intelligence have been at the heart of business value creation for decades. Read how Computer Weekly has tracked their promise and tribulations. 2016-04-23 01:31 2KB www.computerweekly.com 5 Rising Storm 2 interview: bigger maps, new modes, and far too few helicopter details We talk to Antimatter Games' Sturt Jeffery about automatic weapons and asymmetry in Rising Storm 2. 2016-04-23 00:12 2KB www.pcgamer.com 6 Overwatch director says Blizzard 'failed horrifically' on canceled Titan MMO It sounds like Titan was a bigger mess than we thought. 2016-04-22 23:49 2KB www.pcgamer.com 7 Ubuntu 16.04 Linux Debuts With Support Until 2021 This long-term support release of one of the most popular Linux distributions brings new package management, container and file system capabilities. 2016-04-22 20:50 1KB www.eweek.com 8 Masquerada: Songs and Shadows seeks a final push on Kickstarter Witching Hour Studios says it wants to take a little more time to really nail down the game. 2016-04-22 23:07 2KB www.pcgamer.com 9 This week's highs and lows in PC Gaming Each week the PC Gamer team keeps the hot takes hot and the cool takes cool in an enormous and wasteful Styrofoam box. 2016-04-22 22:46 5KB www.pcgamer.com 10 Outlast 2 is a terrifying mishmash of horror tropes and crotch stabbing They tried to make me scream. I'm pretty sure I didn't. 2016-04-22 22:15 1KB www.pcgamer.com 11 Flash Array Deployment for Dummies, IBM Limited Edition Data storage systems play a crucial role in the ability for IT to support your business’s goals. But as the need to 2016-04-23 00:21 1KB www.itworldcanada.com

12 TURBO LAMP: The LAMP Stack for Today’s Demanding Application Workload Requirements In today’s business environment, with its focus on retrieving and delivering massive troves of data for engagement, the LAMP stack has become 2016-04-23 00:21 1KB www.itworldcanada.com 13 Migrating, Managing, and More: Real IT Pros. Real Advice It is not a question any more whether or not businesses are moving applications to cloud platforms, but how quickly IT can 2016-04-22 12:03 1KB www.itworldcanada.com 14 Magicka: Wizard Wars is closing in July Paradox says the game has been losing money for the better part of a year. 2016-04-22 21:18 2KB www.pcgamer.com 15 Astroneer lets you burrow into planetary cores with friends Shape the terrain of strange planets in a cooperative space survival game. 2016-04-22 20:56 1KB www.pcgamer.com 16 Twitch is handing out deodorant at PAX East And yes, there's enough for everyone. 2016-04-22 20:18 1KB www.pcgamer.com 17 Kill monsters and then cook them in this Iron Chef inspired RPG Battle Chef Brigade takes a pinch of Street Fighter, a dash of puzzle game, and garnishes with a jRPG. 2016-04-22 20:06 1KB www.pcgamer.com 18 Geralt goes on a mini-adventure in new Witcher 3: Blood and Wine screens Geralt shares some vacation photos. 2016-04-22 19:18 1KB www.pcgamer.com 19 Get to grips with Heroes of the Storm's Battlefield of Eternity map Defense of the immortals. 2016-04-22 19:00 7KB www.pcgamer.com 20 VR hardware sales predicted to soar past $2 billion by end of year IDC forecasts that VR hardware sales will skyrocket in 2016, with the category generating more than $2 billion revenue. 2016-04-22 18:50 2KB www.pcgamer.com 21 As VMware's Server Virtualization Business Cools, Software-Defined Networking Is Riding To Rescue VMware's vSphere business continued its multi-quarter slowdown in its recent quarter, but its partners expect solid growth of NSX software-defined networking to pick up the slack. 2016-04-22 18:35 3KB www.crn.com 22 We have 1,000 Atlas Reactor closed beta keys to give away Enter for a chance to try out Atlas Reactor's turn-based team battles. 2016-04-22 17:40 1KB www.pcgamer.com 23 Acer pounces on VR gaming with new Predator desktop and laptop PCs Acer expanded its Predator gaming line with a new desktop, notebook, and monitor, all primed for VR. 2016-04-22 17:09 2KB www.pcgamer.com 24 Macworld’s May Digital Edition: How does the 9.7-inch Pro stack up to the big version? Macworld's latest digital edition. 2016-04-22 17:07 1KB www.itnews.com

25 Windows 10 Preview Build 14328 puts clocks on every taskbar Windows 10 Insiders on both PC and mobile platforms should be receiving Preview Build 14328 today. Microsoft calls this a "major" build... 2016-04-22 16:01 2KB techreport.com 26 5 Companies That Came To Win This Week For the week ending April 22, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their 'A' game to the channel. 2016-04-22 15:33 1KB www.crn.com

27 Finow X5 review: Smartwatch meets smartphone watch with this £100 Android watch The Finow X5 is an Android smartwatch that accepts a 3G SIM to make calls, send texts and get online independently of your phone. At just £100, we see whether this cheap smartwatch is a worthy competitor to rival Android Wear watches from the likes of Motorola... 2016-04-22 15:21 8KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk 28 Polycom Channel Leader Sounds Off On Mitel Acquisition, Microsoft Partnership, Channel Partners' Future Polycom executive Nick Tidd talked with CRN about the impact its acquisition by Mitel will have on its channel partners and relationship with Microsoft. 2016-04-22 15:00 1KB www.crn.com 29 From idea to new app in a matter of minutes Hybrid is a new concept floating around the halls and conference rooms of the IT Department. The concept describes a new approach to how the enterprise combines compute and storage with simplified management and flexible deployment models to deliver new applications faster and drive the business forward. 2016-04-22 14:51 7KB www.computerworld.com 30 The Ethernet community is working to introduce six new rates in the next 3 years New rates are targeted at applications vs. the historic approach of turning the crank 2016-04-22 14:30 5KB www.itnews.com 31 Rumor: Nvidia Pascal GP104 die shots leak The smoke around Nvidia's next-generation graphics chips keeps getting thicker, and if Tuesday’s purported GeForce GTX 1080 cooler shots didn’t warm things... 2016-04-22 14:21 1KB techreport.com 32 10 steps to ensure success when implementing chat for customer support Customers expect to be able to use chat when they reach out for help. Here’s how to get it right 2016-04-22 13:53 895Bytes www.itnews.com 33 Uber wins a major coup for the gig economy Uber can keep on trucking. 2016-04-22 13:36 3KB www.computerworld.com

34 Using AI to multiply the efforts of human InfoSec analysts A system that mimics a human can be thought of as a system that generates an army of virtual analysts, but armies need leaders to direct and train them 2016-04-22 13:13 3KB www.itnews.com 35 Hackathon Starter gets newbies up and running on Node.js The tool provides templates for easy coding and serves as a starter point for Web app development 2016-04-22 12:47 1KB www.infoworld.com

36 The Week in iOS Apps: Test your heist skills in Break This Safe The week's roundup includes an Apple Watch game that lets you play the role of a safecracker. 2016-04-22 12:45 2KB www.itnews.com 37 Marantz and Pioneer usher in spring with new network- ready A/V receivers New Marantz and Pioneer models tout robust streaming features and immersive audio for budget-conscious consumers. 2016-04-22 12:34 4KB www.itnews.com 38 XebiaLabs introduces ChatOps XebiaLabs creates bot to bring ChatOps to its XL Deploy solution 2016-04-22 12:28 2KB sdtimes.com

39 Google 'moonshots' increasingly expensive Longer-term projects like driverless cars, wearables and connectivity balloons carry hefty tab; the very-profitable company makes its money from Android, search and other 'core' tech. 2016-04-22 12:23 4KB www.itnews.com 40 In the Software Defined Data Center, application response time trumps infrastructure capacity management With applications consisting of a plethora of services delivered from a range of resources, End User Experience (EUE) is key 2016-04-22 12:16 6KB www.itnews.com 41 Microsoft gives testers first look at the Windows 10 upgrade slated to debut this summer Microsoft today released to testers the first real look at its next big Windows 10 upgrade, dubbed the "Anniversary Update. " 2016-04-22 12:16 3KB www.computerworld.com 42 15 ways to not get fired from your dream job You’ve got your dream job, now how do you keep it? Columnist Rob Enderle shares 15 things you should know before you even start your new dream job in order to not get fired. 2016-04-22 12:15 3KB www.itnews.com 43 Sources blame lens yield for Oculus Rift delays Sources blame lens yield for Oculus Rift delays. So says DigiTimes, anyway. 2016-04-22 12:14 2KB feedproxy.google.com

44 Government mulls 10-year sentences for digital pirates Government mulls 10-year sentences for digital pirates. Despite ORG's best efforts. 2016-04-22 11:56 3KB feedproxy.google.com 45 PC Specialist Launches Liquid Series PC Range PC Specialist Launches Liquid Series PC Range. Water cooling, lighting and custom colours are all in the mix with PC Specialist's new range 2016-04-22 11:27 2KB feedproxy.google.com 46 Channel Beat: Microsoft Earnings Disappoint While SAP Soars In other top stories, CRNtv looks into what partners think about Intel laying off 11 percent of its workforce. 2016-04-22 10:57 1KB www.crn.com 47 iPhone 7 UK release date, price, specification & new feature rumours | Video: This is what the iPhone 7 will look like The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will be unveiled in September 2016, potentially alongside a third iPhone - and the fourth this year. Apple iPhone 7 UK release date, UK price and specification rumours. 2016-04-22 10:52 20KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk

48 DevOps and deviance: How bad IT practices become accepted as normal What IT can learn about the study of the “normalization of deviance” phenomena 2016-04-22 10:45 3KB www.itnews.com 49 Amazon restricts sales of popular movies and games to Prime members only If you're not an Amazon Prime subscriber, you won't be able to buy games like FIFA 2016 and Grand Theft Auto V. 2016-04-22 10:43 1003Bytes www.itnews.com 50 AMD’s noise-curbing Wraith coolers get bundled with more CPUs AMD FX-8350 and FX-6350 CPUs now have a quieter Wraith cooler as part of the package. 2016-04-22 10:03 1KB www.itnews.com 51 How to use Snapchat new features: Snapchat adds new face swap feature, Chat 2.0, Emoji stickers for video Snapchat has new features including slo-mo and rewind filters for video, plus Force Touch for iPhone 6S and 6S Plus 2016-04-22 10:00 8KB www.pcadvisor.co.uk 52 Nostalrius petition passes 200k signatures, Mark Kern to deliver it He may need assistance to lift it. 2016-04-22 09:41 1KB www.pcgamer.com 53 Facebook bug hunter stumbles on backdoor left by hackers The backdoor script stole Facebook employee credentials from a corporate server 2016-04-22 09:33 3KB www.infoworld.com 54 Botched WSUS patch KB 3148812 throws errors 80244019, 80244008, 8024401f Two days after the patch rolled out, Microsoft provided instructions for dealing with reported problems -- but the new fixes don't work either 2016-04-22 09:31 3KB www.infoworld.com 55 GitHub Project of the Week: Wangle An open-source project by Facebook has made it as SD Times’ GitHub project of the week. The project is called Wangle, and it is a client/server application framework to build asynchronous, event-driven modern C++ services. Facebook open-sourced this project last... 2016-04-22 09:00 3KB sdtimes.com 56 Cherry launches new MX Speed gaming switch Cherry launches new MX Speed gaming switch. Partners with Corsair for launch. 2016-04-22 09:00 1KB feedproxy.google.com

57 How contact centers can benefit from SD-WANs Software defined WANs can improve reliability and the customer experience while lowering costs 2016-04-22 08:50 6KB www.itnews.com 58 Valve considers 'Prime' matchmaking for CS:GO Counter-Smurfs win! 2016-04-22 08:47 1KB www.pcgamer.com

59 How DCIM tools improve PUE, reduce costs and help mitigate your carbon footprint Data Center Infrastructure Management provides increased levels of automated control to simplify capacity planning and allocation 2016-04-22 08:28 4KB www.itworld.com

60 5 things to look for in a partner that can help ease the pain of managing a multi-cloud environment We can’t avoid the complexities of living in a multi-cloud world, but partners can help 2016-04-22 08:10 2KB www.itnews.com 61 Intel refocusing itself, and its revenue stream, on cloud Analysts expect Intel to increase its investment in private cloud tech -- areas in which it already has strength. 2016-04-22 08:04 3KB www.computerworld.com 62 Event: Rwanda to host the 26th World Economic Forum on Africa World Economic Forum, engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. The Forum brings together the world’s foremost CEOs, Heads of State, Ministers, International Organizations, Youth, Technology innovators and so forth, with... 2016-04-22 08:01 3KB pctechmag.com 63 The Samsung 750 EVO (120GB & 250GB) SSD Review: A Return To Planar NAND Since the introduction of their first consumer TLC SSD with the SSD 840 , Samsung's consumer/retail SATA SSD lineup has consisted of... 2016-04-22 08:00 3KB www.anandtech.com 64 10 Tools To Bring Virtual Reality To Life VR and AR systems have begun to ship. But before the headset comes content creation. Here's a look at 10 tools that will shape the virtual world. 2016-04-22 07:06 4KB www.informationweek.com Articles

Total 64 articles, created at 2016-04-23 06:03

1 Lenovo Yoga 900 review: What this laptop gives up in size, it gains in power (2.00/3) Use commas to separate multiple email addresses Your message has been sent. There was an error emailing this page. By Jon L. Jacobi PCWorld | Apr 22, 2016 4:30 PM PT Unlike its predecessor, the Yoga 900’s isn’t trying to be the slimmest reversible laptop around. It’s 18 percent thicker than the Yoga 3 Pro to accommodate a more powerful Intel Core i5 or i7 processor—the Pro used a Core M chip—and the larger battery and additional cooling it requires. That means considerably better performance and a longer runtime. Those are improvements that no one will complain about, unless they prefer a skinny machine. The Yoga 900 starts at $1,150 and is available from Best Buy and Lenovo . That said, Lenovo claims that the Yoga 900 is the thinnest Core laptop on the market. That may well be, but at 0.59 inches thick and 2.8 pounds, it’s still bigger than the older 0.5-inch, 2.6- pound Yoga 3 Pro. However, with its slightly reduced depth (8.86 inches versus 9 inches) and width (12.75 inches versus 13 inches), the Yoga 900 has crossed over into looking somewhat generic due to its squatter profile. While an 18-percent increase sounds like a lot, the extra thickness isn’t all that much. But though I prefer the look of the Yoga 3 Pro, the Yoga 900 is an attractive laptop, especially since it also boasts the Yoga line’s fancy watchband hinge. It’s too bad that motif isn’t applied subtly to the rest of the laptop, but if you want to turn heads, you can always opt for the Clementine Orange color. The now famous watchband hinge on the Clementine Orange model Yoga 900. The Yoga 900 is a fully reversible laptop with a 13.3-inch, 3200x1800 IPS touchscreen display. Its picture is great under most circumstances, especially playing movies in low-light conditions, and has a decent amount of brightness. On the minus side, the screen reflects quite a bit of light, and it has a rather healthy amount of bezel. It’s hard not to want something sleeker after the example set by Dell’s XPS 13. The port selection on the Yoga 900 is minimal but adequate for everyday use. You get two USB 3.0 Type A ports, a USB 2.0 charging port, an SD/MMC card reader, combo analog audio jack, and a USB Type C port. That Type C gives you standard USB 3.0 (5Gbps) speeds. It doesn’t support Thunderbolt 3, nor charging. You don’t get a dedicated video-out port, but the Type-C port provides DisplayPort over USB if you use an optional dongle. The Yoga 900 in tablet mode. The Yoga 900 is available with an Intel Core i7-6500U CPU, a 256GB or 512GB SSD, and up to 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory. All versions come with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Our $1,400 model had its specs maxed out, while the minimal Core i7 configuration runs $1,150. With a faster CPU, it was no surprise that our Yoga 900 zipped past its predecessor in our PCMark benchmarks, scoring 2,531 versus the Yoga 3 Pro’s 1,723 in the Home Conventional test, which runs the system through basic tasks like word processing, web browsing, and light photo editing. It also scored 2,778 versus the Yoga 3 Pro’s 1,988 in the Work Conventional test, which is similar to the Home Conventional test but with a stronger focus on work-oriented tasks like spreadsheet editing. This improvement in performance will show more clearly the more you throw at the Yoga 900. While the Yoga 900 smokes the Yoga 3 Pro, it does slightly underperform competition with the exact same processor. That said, the difference is so small you won’t really notice it. The Yoga 900’s SSD keeps things moving along quickly. Our AS SSD benchmark clocked the Samsung SM871 M.2 SATA SSD at a high of 473MBps for sequential read speed and a high of 437MBps for sequential write speed. That’s decently quick, if not as fast as an M.2 PCIe SSD would have been in the same scenario. Battery life is decent, even if it’s not the nine hours Lenovo touts. The Yoga 900 lasted 6 hours and 37 minutes during our video rundown test, in which we run a 4K ultra-HD video on loop using the native Windows 10 media player. Thanks to the Yoga 900’s larger 66WHr battery, that’s almost 50 percent longer than the Yoga 3 Pro, with its 44.8WHr power cell. As for watching movies with the sound going through the laptop speakers—you get a surprisingly decent experience that way. No one will mix their next album using the Yoga 900’s speakers, but the clarity is better than average, and there’s even a modicum of bass. They’ll do if you’re too lazy to pull out your headphones. The Yoga 900 in reverse-stand mode. I’ve generally praised Lenovo for its keyboards, and the Yoga 900’s is about as good as it gets. It even offers dedicated functions keys—the Yoga 3 Pro instead had combined them with the top-row numeric keys. I do have a personal issue with the lack of forward rake to the unit and the keyboard deck, because I encounter lots of accidents with the space bar. That’s easily fixed with a couple of self-adhesive rubber feet for the rear of the Yoga to add the incline that I need, though. The Yoga 900 in normal laptop orientation. The touchpad feels very comfortable to use: It doesn’t require much effort to click, and it’s very smooth when dragging your fingers across it. It also isn’t overly sensitive to tapping. As for the touchscreen, I can’t speak highly enough of it. I wish they made touchpads that were as smoothly responsive. There was a fair amount of “value-added” software running in the Windows 10 Home system tray, a lot of it courtesy of Intel. Removing it (hint: remove then re-install the Intel drivers using Device Manager) as well as McAfee made for a slightly smoother experience. The base warranty on the Lenovo Yoga 3 900 is a one-year carry-in. You can increase that all the way to three years with accidental damage protection for $219, or pick an option in the middle. If the Yoga 3 Pro was like a stick-thin runway model, the Yoga 900 is like a muscle-toned fitness model. The Yoga 900 has much more of an edge over the Yoga 3 Pro when it comes to specs and performance, rather than in purely chic looks. It’d be nice to have seen features on it like 10Gbps USB and a PCIe SSD, but all things considered, it’s still a chart-topping reversible. And everybody will dig the hinge. This story, "Lenovo Yoga 900 review: What this laptop gives up in size, it gains in power" was originally published by PCWorld . Jon L. Jacobi — Freelance Writer Start your new computer off right with solid security tools, productivity software, and other programs... Which graphics card is best for your money? We test over a dozen AMD and Nvidia GPUs to help find the... Got Apple Watch questions? Come on in. Macworld's latest digital edition. New rates are targeted at applications vs. the historic approach of turning the crank Customers expect to be able to use chat when they reach out for help. Here’s how to get it right

Lenovo Yoga 900 Review itworld.com 2016-04-22 16:30 Jon L www.itnews.com

2 How AMD is resurrecting itself as a formidable rival to Intel (2.00/3) The rivalry between AMD and Intel peaked during the first decade of the 2000s, when the companies consistently challenged each other with a stream of chip innovations. Since then, AMD lost its way, and today it barely registers as a threat to Intel. But the competitive landscape could start changing as early as next year. Intel's x86 chips are installed in most PCs and servers, and AMD has been losing market share for years. AMD's chip technology has fallen behind Intel's after some ill-advised architectural changes, acquisitions, and manufacturing problems. Intel's x86 processor market share was 87.7 percent the fourth quarter of 2015, growing from 86.3 percent a year earlier. AMD held just a 12.1 percent share, falling from 13.6 percent, according to Mercury Research. But AMD has made some smart moves recently. It decided to cut its reliance on the declining PC market in 2013, something Intel finally acknowledged this week while cutting 12,000 jobs. AMD also has emphasized custom chips and hit paydirt with specialized processors for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. AMD is now poised to threaten Intel's market dominance. Only time will tell if AMD will be successful, but here are some technologies and business decisions AMD is relying on to better compete with Intel. It's possible we'll see PCs and servers using AMD-based chips not made by company, with AMD now licensing its top-line chip architecture. The long-running two-horse x86 race could then include more players, a development bound to hurt Intel more than AMD. Licensing is an easy way for AMD to expand the installed base of its processor technology while generating licensing revenue. AMD this week licensed its upcoming Zen server chip architecture to THATIC (Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. Ltd.), a consortium of public and private Chinese companies, as part of a joint venture. AMD has a valuable asset that Intel doesn't possess: the world-class Radeon and FirePro GPUs. Graphics processors are hot, with sales of gaming PCs growing in an otherwise slumping market. Intel wants to focus on gaming but only has a good CPU. AMD still has to compete with Nvidia in GPUs, but the company has a combination of hardware technologies that put it in a better position than Intel in virtual reality and gaming. AMD is placing a lot of faith in its upcoming Zen x86 CPU -- if it fails, it could take the company down with it. But Zen could be equalizer AMD needs to compete with Intel in CPUs, and it could perhaps attract some enthusiasts over from the Intel camp. AMD claims Zen delivers a 40 percent performance improvement per clock cycle, which is higher than the single-digit gains delivered by recent x86 chips. The first Zen chips for enthusiast desktops will ship later this year. The time is ripe for AMD to grow in the server market, where Intel's superior Xeon chips have destroyed AMD's Opteron processors. AMD once held a double-digit market share, but then came problems with the faulty and poorly constructed Bulldozer architecture. AMD's server strategy is now in shambles, and it is relying on the Zen chips for what it calls a "reentry" into the server market. The company will initially target Zen chips at hyperscale servers, then at other systems. AMD is chasing the booming Chinese server market by licensing its upcoming x86 chip to THATIC. That frees up cash-strapped AMD from committing resources to selling chips in the country. AMD could also use the licensing strategy to sell more PC chips in China, where the company has a committed following among home PC builders. AMD had to find a new place to sell its processors with PC shipments falling, so it focused on products like gaming consoles, gambling machines, ATMs, and automobiles, all of which require custom processors. The console makers are already coming back to AMD for more processors. AMD is now taking on only larger custom-chip orders that will bring in considerable revenue.

How AMD is reviving itself to take on Intel computerworld.com 2016-04-22 12:44 Agam Shah www.itworld.com

3 3 Google and Microsoft agree to end regulatory battles (2.00/3) Google and Microsoft have agreed to end their long-running regulatory battles and stop complaining to government agencies about each other. Microsoft had been one of the leading companies calling for governments to investigate Google over potential antitrust violations in recent years. Earlier this year, though, Microsoft withdrew its support for FairSearch, a coalition of companies pushing the EU to file formal antitrust complaints against Google. The announcement of the new agreement between the two companies comes just two days after the European Commission filed new antitrust charges against Google related to packaging its apps on Android phones. The two tech giants, over several years, have been waging a behind-the-scenes cold war against each other involving government agencies in the U. S. and other countries, but that's now ending, both companies said in short statements. "Microsoft has agreed to withdraw its regulatory complaints against Google, reflecting our changing legal priorities," a Microsoft spokesman said by email. "We will continue to focus on competing vigorously for business and for customers. " The new detente stems from a global patent deal the two companies signed last September. That deal ended about 20 patent lawsuits between the two companies in the U. S. and Germany. "Our companies compete vigorously, but we want to do so on the merits of our products, not in legal proceedings," a Google representative said by email. "As a result, following our patent agreement, we've now agreed to withdraw regulatory complaints against one another. " The new agreement, announced in statements released Friday, isn't driven by a single event but is a natural progression of the companies' relationship, said one person familiar with the deal.

Google and Microsoft to end regulatory battles computerworld.com 2016-04-22 09:38 Grant Gross www.infoworld.com

4 Data management: Five decades of prospecting for business value Data management has been the midwife of business value for IT for much of the past half century. Twenty years ago, in the 7 November 1996 issue of Computer Weekly that commemorated 30 years of our publication, Nicholas Enticknap wrote: “The 1990s have seen an increasing emphasis on making IT provide competitive business advantage, and this has led to the rise of data mining and data warehousing applications. “It has also led to an appreciation of the advantages of making your data and even applications available to others; customers, suppliers and intermediaries such as brokers.” Twenty years on and that is still, in the overall context of IT, the specific vocation of data management and business intelligence, and data analytics. Enticknap goes on to say this is what is “driving the second major revolution of the 1990s: The rise of internet-based computing.” In the 3 July 1986 issue of Computer Weekly, a decade earlier, the same author was harping on a similar theme, in a series of articles on what was then called the “fifth revolution” in computing, touching on artificial intelligence (AI): “We expect to see new applications that are designed to translate data into information, such as decision support and expert systems.” Generations one to four, whatever the detail of the distinctions between them, all “conform[ed] to the same basic computer architecture as first proposed by [John] von Neumann and his colleagues in 1944”, wrote Enticknap, when a computer was “a super-powerful calculator when electronics was still in its infancy”. A big aspect of the new paradigm, which included also user friendly computers, was solving “the problem of capitalising fully on the large investment in data”.

2016-04-23 01:31 Brian McKenna www.computerweekly.com

5 Rising Storm 2 interview: bigger maps, new modes, and far too few helicopter details We were a little surprised to find out Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, which was announced last year at E3 , would be playable here on the PAX East 2016 show floor. Tom Marks and I hopped on for a couple rounds earlier today, crouching and crawling around as American and North Vietnamese soldiers in a mode that isn't quite the Red Orchestra or Rising Storm we're used to: small team competitive point capture. I was disappointed I didn't get to charge a machine gun nest with a team of 32 players, but in retrospect, a smaller mode is better suited for a quick demo at a crowded convention. I'm not fearful of any dramatic shift in priorities for Rising Storm 2: it feels very much like its predecessors—quick deaths, detailed gun handling, and careful movement all intact—except with more automatic guns. The classic modes and big maps (bigger, even) will return, though we didn't get to see them. Tripwire also won't elaborate on whether or not Red Orchestra's vehicle combat is returning. Helicopters? We must know about them. Are they a call-in strike like artillery or something we can really pilot or ride in? We'll have to wait for those answers. In the meantime, there's still plenty to talk about. Watch the video above to see what I could learn in a quick interview with Rising Storm 2 director and lead programmer Sturt Jeffery. Also watch Tripwire and Antimatter's presentation from the PC Gamer Weekender for more detail on what Vietnam brings to the series. We'll check in again with the devs at PAX to bug them about helicopters some more.

2016-04-23 00:12 Tyler Wilde www.pcgamer.com

6 6 Overwatch director says Blizzard 'failed horrifically' on canceled Titan MMO Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime was a bit vague when he spoke in 2014 about the studio's reasons for pulling the plug on the MMO Titan after seven years in development. “We didn't find the fun," he said at the time. "We didn't find the passion.” But in a recent interview with Gamespot , Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan was a bit blunter about the state of the game when the axe finally fell. “You had a really amazing group that was working on Titan. They were really talented individuals, but we failed horrifically in every way... In every way that a project can fail. It was devastating,” he said.”You had these people who either came from other companies or from within Blizzard, and were used to working on games that were very successful like a World of Warcraft, for example. To go through such a complete and utter failure is very hard for people who are used to experiencing success.” Kaplan said the Titan team felt pressure, not from external sources, but because of the wild success of virtually every other Blizzard franchise in existence. “Nobody said a word, everyone was super supportive, but I think there was this inward embarrassment of like, 'No, we need to prove that we’re worthy of being at Blizzard too. We can make something that makes the company proud',” he said. Despite the ugliness, the ultimate outcome was positive: The wreckage of Titan helped lay the foundation for Overwatch , and Kaplan said the shared experience of “sitting on the smoking pile of a canceled project” actually helped bring the team together. “When it came to move to Overwatch there was an extremely tight bond on the team and a ravenous hunger to show the world that we’re not failures and we can make something really fun,” he said. It's not often that you'll hear a high-ranking game developer refer to his previous project as a horrific failure, but I suppose it's a little easier to do when you're confident that your next project is going to be a killer—and so far, Overwatch is looking pretty good. It's set to come out on May 24, following an open beta that will run from May 5-9.

2016-04-22 23:49 By Andy www.pcgamer.com

7 Ubuntu 16.04 Linux Debuts With Support Until 2021 Every two years, Canonical releases what it refers to as an LTS, or a long-term support, version of its open-source Ubuntu Linux operating system. On April 21, Ubuntu 16.04 (also known as the Xenial Xerus) made its debut as the first LTS update since Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) was released in 2014. Ubuntu 16.04 provides users on the desktop, server and cloud with a new operating system that will be supported for five years (until 2021). Among the highlighted capabilities that Canonical is including in the new release is the Snappy transactional update package system. With Snappy, applications are packaged as "Snaps," which can be updated quicker than a traditional Linux package format. To help developers package apps for Snappy, Canonical has created the Snapcraft tool for building and deploying Snaps. On the server side, container deployment gets a boost with the LXD container hypervisor technology. With LXD, containers can run in a secured system process, enabling better performance as well as application density. For the cloud, Ubuntu 16.04 integrates the recently released OpenStack Mitaka cloud platform. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the features in the Ubuntu 14.04 Linux release.

2016-04-22 20:50 Sean M www.eweek.com

8 Masquerada: Songs and Shadows seeks a final push on Kickstarter We first encountered Masquerada: Songs and Shadows , “an RPG about masks and magic,” in early 2015. It caught our attention with a bright, colorful isometric visual style, and its real-time- but-also-pausable combat, which we took a closer look at last August. It was originally slated for release this spring, but developer Witching Hour Studios is hoping that a Kickstarter campaign will enable it to spend a little extra time on the game, to “add the final touches. " Work on Masquerada is coming to an end, and the studio said that it could conceivably be released as early as next month. “But we would not be satisfied with the final product. It’s like giving up on a personal best in the gym just because you’re really exhausted,” it wrote. “Problem is, we don’t directly have the means to keep on working on the game.” Because of that, it's taking a run at Kickstarter to secure sufficient funding to really tie it all together. “With your money, we’re going to continue iterating on the hundreds of combat encounters in the game to ensure they are balanced in a deeply satisfactory way for all skill and character configurations. And we’re going to throw more tweaks and layers at our visuals, so that things don’t just shine, they’ll be eye-popping,” the studio wrote. The campaign goal is £45,000 ($65,000), and it's running for an unusually short period of just 14 days: Witching Hour said most Kickstarters are funded in their first and last three days, so it “decided to go with something shorter and punchier to really get the best out of our time.” The campaign comes to an end on May 5, and if it's successful, the game is expected to be ready for release this summer. For now, you can try a free demo of Masquerada: Songs and Shadows on Steam.

2016-04-22 23:07 By Andy www.pcgamer.com

9 This week's highs and lows in PC Gaming I was impressed by Hitman's first episode. The Paris Showcase was initially tricky—featuring more persistent, intricate security than perhaps any previous Hitman game. But once you'd learned its tricks, it became an interesting space to subvert. And IO squeezed plenty of life out of that mansion, with a good selection of difficult Escalation Contracts. Still, it's been over a month. I'm ready for something new. The good news is that happens next week. Sapienza is Hitman's second episode, and it's… well, I don't know. Beyond the fact it's set somewhere sunny, I can't tell you anything about the place. There's a trailer here , but I haven't watched it. Unlike the first episode, where I saw multiple Opportunity solutions before release, here I've avoided all information. I can't wait to experience it all for the first time. I’ll admit it: I’m no pub expert. If a place serves me beer, I’ll probably like it okay. If you asked me whether I was in a pub, a bar, a tavern, or an ale house, I’d get pretty hot under the collar because I have no idea. This is why I’m very glad we have pub experts like Phil Savage to weigh in on the quality and accuracy of pubs in games. In this case, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’s pub. It’s a hard but fair review, and I came out of it knowing more about pubs than I did before. I’m still clueless when it comes to Cumbrian fishing bylaws, though. Phew. The last two months have been all about The Division and Dark Souls 3. I reviewed both, and because we like to surround big game releases with plenty of ancillary content, I lived and breathed those games for the majority of that time. Stardew Valley descended in my ‘Recent’ Steam sorting list a little more every day, and with it, my heart. Well, not exactly. I dug The Division even if it has some major issues to work through, and Dark Souls 3 might be one of my favorite games ever, but playing for work and playing for leisure are two distant states of mind. But for now, I don’t have any big reviews on the docket, so I can play whatever I like (don’t tell Tyler). Here’s what I’ve been dabbling in without committing: Hyper Light Drifter, Stardew Valley, Enter the Gungeon, Quantum Break, Ice Lakes (for some terrible reason), Overland (early access), and Stephen’s Sausage Roll. They’re all pretty great games in their own way, but now I’m having a hard time choosing one to stick with. Seriously, there’s never been a better time to play games. It’s impossible to keep up. Jarred Walton: Xpoint marks the spot While graphics is arguably the sexiest aspect of modern PCs, the technology powering our storage devices can be equally impressive. Intel announced their 3D XPoint Technology last year, which uses a new form of storage (“not transistors,” apparently a variant of phase change memory) to pack more data into a smaller area, with greatly improved endurance and performance. At IDF 2016 in Shenzhen, Intel demonstrated their Optane SSD pushing over 2GB/s when transferring data from an external drive. That might not seem any faster than other NVMe drives (it’s not), but there’s a good chance the external Optane drive is running into bottlenecks imposed by the Thunderbolt 3 interface. We’re eager to get our hands on actual hardware for extended testing, as previously Intel showed a massive jump in random I/O performance. The good news is that Intel is still on track to release XPoint SSDs in both consumer and enterprise devices this year (Q4 to be precise). We expect prices to start high, but in time we may see similar phase change memory solutions replace the current NAND and 3D NAND offerings. Evan Lahti: Scourge of smurfs As previously documented , ‘smurfs’ in multiplayer games are scum. Shirking your own skill by playing on an alternate, lower-ranked account in a competitive game like CS:GO is selfish, cowardly and shows a total lack of respect for other people’s time and fun. There isn’t a single, silver-bullet solution to quashing alt accounts, hackers, and the various ne’er-do-wells you’ll find in the ranked matchmaking mode of a popular competitive game like CS:GO. But it was good to see Valve take another step toward improving the experience for legitimate players this week as it rolled out a beta version of what it’s calling “ Prime Account Matchmaking ,” a feature that matches you to players who have linked their CS:GO account to a phone number. The intention is that anyone with multiple accounts will only be able to tie a single account to their phone, which in time, Valve hopes, will create a separate population of verified ‘Prime’ players who only play with one another. It’s not a foolproof system, but adding another asshole filter can’t hurt. Hopefully the beta will go smoothly and this will become a formal feature in Steam’s second-biggest game in short order. I’ve been avidly keeping pace with the plight of Nostalrius , the Vanilla WoW private server that Blizzard hit with a cease and desist order. Nostalrius ceased—and indeed desisted—but its community did not: the obligatory internet petition set up in the wake of the closure has passed 200,000 signatures. I know that change.org petitions typically have the weight of a primary school book report, but it’s an endearing show of passion from a legion of longtime fans. Will Blizzard allow Nostalrius to continue? I’m almost certain it won’t. But it can’t have failed to hear 200,000 people clamouring for access to a game it controls. Doesn’t that sound like money to you?

2016-04-22 22:46 Christopher Livingston www.pcgamer.com

10 Outlast 2 is a terrifying mishmash of horror tropes and crotch stabbing To play Outlast 2 at PAX East , you're first ushered into a creepy house and sat among black curtains. There's a camera above the monitor, mocking you, waiting to capture your screams so they can put you in their next trailer. I refused to become an infrared marketing clip. Outlast 2 is scary, though, for sure. It's got all the horror pastiches we know and love: a night vision video camera, inverted crosses, a creepy music box, a cornfield, a little kid, tricycles. It's a toybox of horror tropes rattled around until a monster jumps in your face. I let out a "hah, uh," at one point, I think. But no scream. Not me. I left the black curtains more uncomfortable than on edge, really, because the final scene gave me a nice first person look at what it might be like to be stabbed through the crotch. What the hell, Outlast 2? After my demo, I spoke to Red Barrels co-founder Philippe Morin (I didn't scream or ask him 'what the hell?' but maybe I should've) about the horrors we can expect in the full game. Watch the interview above, and look for Outlast 2 to release later this year.

2016-04-22 22:15 Tyler Wilde www.pcgamer.com

11 Flash Array Deployment for Dummies, IBM Limited Edition Data storage systems play a crucial role in the ability for IT to support your business’s goals. But as the need to do more, and more quickly, cost- effectively using fewer resources, alternatives for storage technology must be looked at. Fortunately, solid state storage made from NAND flash memory chips has evolved to the point where many organizations are considering its use to replace inefficient, slow mechanical-spinning systems. Whether in ecommerce, government, financial services, science and technology or simply enterprises with cloud, mobile or social engagement requirements, database performance drives value—and flash storage systems simply perform better than old mechanical ones. Recent studies have shown also that overall IT costs can be lowered by embracing higher- performing storage systems.

2016-04-23 00:21 www.itworldcanada.com

12 12 TURBO LAMP: The LAMP Stack for Today’s Demanding Application Workload Requirements In today’s business environment, with its focus on retrieving and delivering massive troves of data for engagement, the LAMP stack has become a de facto standard. Traditionally, Intel processors have been the primary platform for LAMP stack solutions, but with improvements to its price-performance, entry-level Power Systems based on POWER8 have emerged as an option. The Turbo LAMP stack on IBM POWER8 processors is a tight collaborative relationship with several key component providers. IBM and its OpenPOWER Foundation partners Ubuntu and Mellanox provide an infrastructure to allow software stack vendors to take advantage of the new POWER8 line of processors.

2016-04-23 00:21 www.itworldcanada.com

13 Migrating, Managing, and More: Real IT Pros. Real Advice It is not a question any more whether or not businesses are moving applications to cloud platforms, but how quickly IT can manage the migration. Business applications are no exception. Competitive pressures are driving IT professionals to take advantage of cloud infrastructures and to integrate cloud on top of their existing environments. IDG Research Services, in conjunction with Microsoft, recently surveyed 55 IT pros—from a wide range of industries—who have deployed enterprise business applications to a public or hybrid cloud to produce this insightful eBook. All respondents are deeply involved in the purchase or implementation of third-party cloud solutions.

2016-04-22 12:03 www.itworldcanada.com

14 Magicka: Wizard Wars is closing in July A little over a year after leaving Early Access on Steam, the free-to-play multiplayer MOBA Magicka: Wizard Wars is coming to a close. Publisher Paradox Interactive said it kept the lights on for as long as it could, but the game has been losing money for the past nine months and the time has come to pull the plug. “When the decision came to halt development on the game we left the servers open so that our small but passionate player base could still continue to enjoy the game as it was, we hope that this has been a fun time for you all (the odd server gremlin aside)!” Paradox said in the Magicka: Wizard Wars forum . “Unfortunately though we have reached the point where we can’t economically justify to continue running the costly server infrastructure.” Magicka: Wizard Wars will continue to run until July 21, but all items and bundles with a real- money cost have been either removed or converted to Crowns, the in-game currency; players with real-money boosters that expire after the shutdown date should contact Paradox support , so it "can look into refunds where appropriate.” Between now and the shutdown, Paradox may also drop “old content we have collecting dust in our archives” into the game, although what and how much will depend on the amount of work required to make it happen. It's an unfortunate conclusion, because Magicka: Wizard Wars showed real promise. But that potential never translated into big numbers: Steam Charts indicates that its average player count hasn't popped up over 200 since October of last year, and it's only broken four figures once, in June 2014. “Finally a big thanks from all of us who’ve worked on the project, to you, the fans,” Paradox wrote. “The passion and feedback from you throughout the whole development of the game has been nothing short of awesome!”

2016-04-22 21:18 By Andy www.pcgamer.com

15 Astroneer lets you burrow into planetary cores with friends I tried to dig my way through a planet this morning at PAX East, but didn't quite make it, spinning and panicking in darkness somewhere within the crust. Apparently the center of the world isn't the best place to try to reach, anyway. I'm just glad to know I could've made it. Astroneer is an open-ended, cooperative space survival game that puts you, a little astronaut, on a variety of spherical stellar objects where you can mine, build bases, and morph the terrain, growing mountains or digging deep trenches. Right now, the controls are a tad wonky—the camera requires some manual fiddling and I got stuck on alien rocks here and there—but there's clearly some interesting machinery to toy with and things to build. And of course, you can dig, and dig, and dig. Astroneer is currently planned to release in Early Access this year. Watch my interview above to find out whether or not you can build a ladder to the moon.

2016-04-22 20:56 Tyler Wilde www.pcgamer.com

16 Twitch is handing out deodorant at PAX East #PAXEast hero we need spotted @Twitch . pic.twitter.com/uYDWder6XC — Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) April 22, 2016 The underarm generosity was recognized on Twitter earlier today by Cliff Bleszinski , the head honcho at LawBreakers studio Boss Key, who described Twitch succinctly as the “hero we need.” The heroism was confirmed by Dave Oshry of New Blood Interactive, who seemed to be so touched by the gesture that he actually (virtually) shed tears. It's amusing, but also a sharp bit of marketing: Old Spice is sponsoring Twitch's “Partner Meet and Greet Zone” at this year's event. And believe it or not, Twitch has confirmed that it's got enough to cover all three days of PAX action. I can't even imagine how much deodorant that is. Thanks, Kotaku . 2016-04-22 20:18 By Andy www.pcgamer.com

17 Kill monsters and then cook them in this Iron Chef inspired RPG Battle Chef Brigade is an odd mix of at least three different genres: a match-three puzzle game, a fighting game, and an RPG all rolled into one. But, much like on the cooking-competition shows it's inspired by, these unexpected ingredients come together wonderfully. I got a chance to play Battle Chef Brigade at PAX East today, and it was surprising how well the different elements come together. You can watch the video above to see to for yourself, and hear from President of Trinket Studios Tom Eastman about how they went about balancing the different ingredients of the game.

2016-04-22 20:06 Tom Marks www.pcgamer.com

18 Geralt goes on a mini-adventure in new Witcher 3: Blood and Wine screens The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt DLC Blood and Wine is set in the previously-unseen duchy of Touissant, which sounds like a lovely place: Nice weather, good wine, fancy architecture, and utterly untouched by the scourge of war. Today, developer CD Projekt released a handful of new screens showcasing the brightly-colored realm, that also tells a fun little tale of Geralt's first visit. Let's follow along! Like a drifter on a high plain, Geralt rides into town. Geralt decides to sample the cuisine at a local eatery. Classy place! Later, he takes a stroll through the garden, a magical, verdant refuge from the worries of the world. HOLY CRAP THESE WERE NOT IN THE BROCHURE The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine may or may not be coming soon. We'll keep you posted.

2016-04-22 19:18 By Andy www.pcgamer.com

19 Get to grips with Heroes of the Storm's Battlefield of Eternity map One of the first maps released as part of the Eternal Conflict event, Battlefield of Eternity takes place in the Diablo universe. It’s also the first map that doesn’t have three lanes. Instead, two lanes orbit a central arena housing the map’s primary objective: two immortals, each representing one team, duking it out. Battlefield of Eternity is the map where you’ll spend the least amount of time laning, because the vast majority of the action takes place with (and around) the immortals. It’s also one of the larger maps, with the massive gap between the lanes making typical roaming tactics ineffective. Your objective is to take out the enemy immortal before they kill yours, before marching into battle with your immortal to help it destroy enemy structures. The challenge of taking down an immortal before your enemy has a number of solutions. To make the most out this map, you need to recognise which is the best strategy for your situation. Like many other maps in Heroes of the Storm, one lane is typically designated for a player to sit in by themselves. Heroes like Zagara, Chen, Greymane, and others that can survive on their own are typically the best choices for this position. The top lane is typically played this way, but that leads to some teams subverting this for their own gain: be wary of enemy teams that intentionally send a 4 person crew to the top lane in order to catch out your solo laner! Otherwise, a team composition that lends itself towards lengthy drawn-out fights is your best choice. When immortals spawn, you’ll typically find your team scrapping in the claustrophobic arena at the centre of the map. Having a support on the team who can heal heroes over a long period of time is the best option: try Lt. Morales or Brightwing for this role. Due to the amount of time it takes to kill immortals and how far the objectives are from the lanes, Abathur and The Lost Vikings are incredibly effective for soaking up experience. If you’re a fan of those heroes, give them a shot! One player should lane on their own, soaking experience, while the other four members of the team tussle in the other lane. This is where the team will generally stay until immortals spawn. The four-person team should try to make sure they capitalise on any mistakes the enemy makes in lane. That said, going against expectations can create opportunities to pull ahead. If you’re confident, one teammate can go for a jog up to the solo laner and try to get a kill up there. It’s unreliable, and the distance between the lanes means it’s easy to escape if the enemy catches on to what you’re doing, but it’s worth a shot if your team desperately needs that advantage. Despite the name, immortals aren’t immortal. They’ll spawn 1 minute and 45 seconds into the game in two circles opposite each other. While the immortals do attack each other, they cannot hurt one another, and the players must take them out. When one of them reaches 50% health, the two immortals will move to the remaining two circles after a brief animation. immortals have two abilities aimed at heroes, both of which are easy to see and avoid. The first damages, knocks back, and briefly stuns heroes caught in a small radius around the immortal, while the second damages and stuns any heroes caught in any one of several circular zones it attacks at a range. These attacks can do a big chunk of damage to those with a smaller health pool, but they’re easy to dodge if you’re paying attention. They’re a threat when the enemy has the ability to bodyblock, stun, or root you in place so you can’t avoid it. Where possible, try to use that to your advantage if you’re defending your own immortal. The first thing to determine is whether your team can kill an immortal fast. For example, a team full of warriors won’t be able to kill the immortal nearly as quickly as a team of assassins, so they have to use a different strategy. If you’re confident that you can kill the enemy immortal faster than they can kill yours, do so. Ignore them and focus on taking out theirs first. If you kill the enemy immortal, two regeneration globes will spawn in the centre of the map. Don’t forget to collect them for a bit of health and mana. If this isn’t possible, there are two options. The first is to cut your losses and take out as much of the enemy immortal’s healthbar as possible, weakening them for the coming siege. The second option is to engage the enemies underneath your immortal. Hopefully the enemy team will be focused on the immortal and take time to retaliate, and you also have the immortal itself to back you up. If you’ve managed to take out the enemy immortal first, send four teammates to whichever lane the immortal decides to attack, with the final teammate soaking experience in the other lane. The aim is to defend its shield for as long as possible. As long as the shield is active, the immortal has a ranged attack rather than a melee attack, making it far easier to defend from the enemy. Generally, it’s best to help the immortal do its thing by pressuring enemies away from it. Don’t charge at the enemy, but do try to intimidate them with your presence alongside the immortal. The immortal will still be able to use the abilities from beforehand—if any enemy gets stunned, try to nab a quick kill before they can escape. When defending, the aim should be to take out the immortal’s shield with ranged abilities and heroes as quickly as possible. As soon as the shield goes down, melee heroes can start to help taking the immortal out. As teams return to lanes, you’ll see a lot of players move as a small group to take mercenaries —while this is just about the correct time to capture these camps, they won’t be used to their full effect if captured quickly. Immortals will respawn two minutes after the last one died, and capturing mercenaries too early will mean the enemy can kill them easily. Instead, watch the timer, and start to take them close to the immortals’ respawn time. This will allow the mercenaries to push down an undefended lane as the enemies focus on the immortals. The best way to secure a victory is with a lategame immortal. There are few units that can even compare to their strength as a damage sponge, and their utility with stuns is a good way to intimidate foes into staying away. As there are only two lanes, you’ll have fewer creeps and catapults to back you up in the final siege than you would in another map. The key is to use the immortal. Those immortals will be won by whichever team can catch their opponent out. Long death timers mean that if a player is killed they’ll be out of the game long enough for their enemies to take an immortal. Ambushes and flanks in the fog of war towards the centre of the map are good ways to find opportunities for this—just be sure that you don’t let it happen to you!

2016-04-22 19:00 By Hannah www.pcgamer.com

20 VR hardware sales predicted to soar past $2 billion by end of year There's been an inordinate amount of attention placed on VR this year, and that's due in large part to the much anticipated releases of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. While neither outfit has revealed specific sales figures, market research firm IDC reckons that as a whole, VR hardware "will skyrocket in 2016. " Led by Samsung, Sony, HTC, and Oculus, IDC expects total volumes of VR hardware to reach 9.6 million units by the end of the year while generating a whopping $2.6 billion. Those are staggering figures considering that VR is still very much in its infancy at this point. That kind of rapid growth could have a snowball effect, with game developers and content creators taking notice of and catering to a suddenly large install base. "In 2016, the first major VR Tethered HMDs [head-mounted displays] from Oculus, HTC, and Sony should drive combined shipments of over 2 million units," said Tom Mainelli , vice president for devices and displays at IDC. "When you combine this with robust shipments of screenless viewers from Samsung and other vendors launching later this year, you start to see the beginning of a reasonable installed base for content creators to target. " "Video games will clearly be the lead rationale for people to pick up an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or PlayStation VR this year," added Lewis Ward, research director of gaming at IDC. "While there have been some launch window hardware shipment hiccups that must be addressed near- term, I'm confident that they will be ironed out before the holiday season. The addition of exciting new titles will lead to a new wave of VR HMD hardware interest among those buying for themselves or family members and friends. " In other words, all these early hardware sales will prompt game developers to create some interesting content, which in turn will lead to even more hardware sales. That's how IDC sees it playing out, anyway. By the year 2020, IDC predicts VR hardware will tally 64.8 shipments. On top of that, IDC says AR (augmented reality) hardware like Microsoft's HoloLens will be a force by then as well, adding another 45.6 million units to the pile.

2016-04-22 18:50 By Paul www.pcgamer.com

21 As VMware's Server Virtualization Business Cools, Software- Defined Networking Is Riding To Rescue VMware said earlier this week that NSX bookings grew 100 percent year over year in the vendor's fiscal first quarter, which came as welcome news to investors concerned about the slowdown of the vendor's server virtualization business. While NSX isn't yet as widely deployed as vSphere, VMware partners told CRN they're confident the technology will help VMware maintain its dominance of the data center market. "Interest is picking up, and I'd say it's more than it's ever been," said Scott Trinque, president of EchoStor, a VMware partner in Hopkinton, Mass. "Customers are seeing the value and investing more. " [Related: Why Enterprises Are Deploying Cisco And VMware's Software-Defined Networking Together And Loving It ] NSX now has more than 1,400 customers, of which around 350 of them are using the technology in production networks, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said on the Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor's earnings call Tuesday. Yet VMware's vSphere server virtualization business continued its slow decline during the quarter, with compute license bookings falling 10 percent year over year, and total compute bookings dropping 1 percent. While VMware has been adding new features and functionality to vSphere, this hasn't stemmed the decline. While NSX has a long way to go to reach vSphere-like status, VMware is more focused on talking about specific use cases for the technology than about sales numbers. NSX was on an annualized run rate of $600 million going into 2016, but VMware hasn't updated that figure since then. While VMware has said previously that most NSX customers are running the technology on Cisco networking hardware, it also works with a wide range of hardware from other vendors, including purveyors of white-box gear. VMware now has customers using NSX in conjunction with Cisco's competing Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) technology, including Shutterfly and SugarCreek, according to Gelsinger. CRN reported earlier this month that VMware partners were seeing more customers deploying NSX alongside ACI. "We have some very profound new capabilities, and overall, [NSX] is now being unquestionably seen as the premiere overlay technology," Gelsinger said on the call. Ron Flax, vice president at August Schell, a Rockville, Md.-based VMware partner, said he's seeing strong interest in NSX within his customer base. More recently, August Schell has seen an uptick in services opportunities involving NSX, Flax told CRN. NSX's microsegmentation -- or network security -- use case is driving most of that activity, Flax said.

2016-04-22 18:35 Kevin McLaughlin www.crn.com

22 We have 1,000 Atlas Reactor closed beta keys to give away Atlas Reactor is a competitive strategy game that cleverly does something tricky to pull off in tabletop games: simultaneous turns. Each player chooses their movement and attacks on a timer, and then everyone's turn plays out at the same time—meaning you might end up firing at a bunch of nothing. It's easier to understand if you watch it , but even easier if you play it. What luck: Trion has given us 1,000 closed beta keys to give away. Entering is easy enough: just pop your email address into the box below. Note that entering doesn't guarantee you a key, but puts your email into a raffle which will conclude tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, April 23 at 6 pm Pacific). The 1,000 winners will be randomly selected from everyone who entered and emailed a beta code with instructions. Good luck! And if you don't get a key, we'll have a few more to give away later, so keep an eye out for that.

2016-04-22 17:40 Tyler Wilde www.pcgamer.com

23 Acer pounces on VR gaming with new Predator desktop and laptop PCs Acer announced a bevy of PC products today, among them three interesting additions to its Predator line. They include the Predator 17 X notebook, Predator G1 desktop, and a new Predator Z1 series of monitors. The new hardware is built to handle VR gaming, whether at home or away. For those who need a portable system, the Predator 17 X answers the call with a 17.3-inch G-Sync IPS panel available in Full HD (1920x1080) or 4K Ultra HD (3840x2160). If the 4K display is actually G- Sync, this is a new panel, as previously we've only seen 1080p G-Sync displays in laptops. Powering either panel is a sixth generation Intel Core i7-6820HK processor paired with a GeForce GTX 980 GPU for desktop-class graphics. You'll also find DDR4-2133 memory, NVMe PCIe solid state drive options configurable in a three-way RAID 0 array, Killer DoubleShot Pro Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, and USB Type-C ports. Acer says you can overclock the Predator 17 X. Even without all that high-end hardware, overclocking a laptop is a quick way to make you and your system sweat, though Acer employs a triple-fan system to help keep thermals in check. One of the fans sits near the GPU and uses the world's thinnest metallic blades at just 0.1 mm, which Acer says simulates aircraft wing flight behavior by enhancing fan speed and reducing noise and drag. On the desktop side, Acer's Predator G1 packs a fair bit of power into a compact 16-liter body. It's also portable in the sense that it's small enough to carry under your arm. Acer offers an optional suitcase-like carrying case to go with it. Though it's small, the Predator G1 supports some big time hardware, such as full size graphics cards up to a Titan X, Intel Skylake processors, and up to 64GB of DDR4 memory. On the storage front, the Predator G1 comes with up to 4TB of HDD storage or a 512GB SSD, and users can always upgrade storage on their own. The last of the Predator expansion includes the new Predator Z1 monitor line. These are high- performance curved panels available in 31.5 inches, 30 inches, and 27 inches. They all support G-Sync, and while Acer didn't provide specs on all three, it did say the 30-inch model features a 2560x1080 resolution, 100 percent coverage of the sRGB color space, a 4ms response time, and up to a 200Hz refresh rate. Look for the Predator 17 X to be available in June starting at $2,799 (€2,499), the Predator G1 in July starting at $2,299 (June in Europe starting at €1,199), and the Predator Z1 series in June starting at $599 (€599).

2016-04-22 17:09 By Paul www.pcgamer.com

24 Macworld’s May Digital Edition: How does the 9.7-inch Pro stack up to the big version? Every day, Macworld brings you the essential daily news and other info about all things Apple. But staying on top of that torrent of information can be a constant challenge. One solution: the Macworld Digital Edition. Available as single copies or with a yearlong subscription, the Digital Edition comes in two forms: Enhanced and PDF replica. The Enhanced Edition has all the news, analysis, product reviews, and how-to’s, along with interactive features, and videos—customized for consumption on your iPad. The PDF replica Edition is designed for your mobile device’s touchscreen to allow pinch and zoom. We review Apple's smaller screens: the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and the iPhone SE. Plus, get started with biohacking and learn how to setup a redundant backup system. Also in this month’s issue: Sign up for The iPad Enhanced Edition to discover a new reading experience with exciting features designed especially for this platform. Existing subscribers can log in to access to their issues. Our PDF replica Edition can be accessed with your subscription on Zinio. Macworld PDF replica Edition can also found through a variety of other digital newsstands such as Next Issue , Google Play , Kindle , and Nook.

2016-04-22 17:07 Macworld Staff www.itnews.com

25 Windows 10 Preview Build 14328 puts clocks on every taskbar Windows 10 Insiders on both PC and mobile platforms should be receiving Preview Build 14328 today. Microsoft calls this a "major" build that brings quite a few new things to the OS. Some of the new features discussed at Build 2016 are now included, like the Windows Ink Workspace. Using an active pen, users can draw on a whiteboard, create sticky notes, and mark up digital maps and websites. There are also refinements coming to tablet mode. The full-screen All Apps menu ( à la Windows 8) is back as an option. The lock screen now hides your e-mail address, and it can display media controls in case you use your Windows device as a media player. Cortana can operate on the lock screen as well, although for anything beyond simple queries you'll have to unlock your device. Microsoft's digital assistant is getting a number of other updates, too. Those cross-device features that Microsoft promised should actually work now. Cortana can also create reminders from UWP apps, or from photos you add to the photo app. Reminders you create will show up on the taskbar clock's calendar, as it is now fully integrated with the calendar app and Cortana. Speaking of the taskbar, gamers with multiple monitors can rejoice, as you can actually have a clock on every taskbar now. The Action Center icon has moved edgeward, and now will be separated from the rest of the notification area by the clock. The action center itself is getting some updates, as well. The biggest of these is notification grouping by app. The Wi-Fi icon will now bring you to the "View Available Networks" menu rather than simply showing Wi-Fi status. Aside from the new features, there are various fixes and issues, as we'd expect from a preview update. These changes and more should hit the Windows 10 mainstream in the Anniversary Update codenamed "Redstone," but Microsoft has given no timetable for when that will happen aside from "this summer. "

2016-04-22 16:01 by Zak techreport.com

26 5 Companies That Came To Win This Week The Week Ending April 22 Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win is solution provider Perficient for its bold move into the digital agency services arena. Also making the list were Unisys for its decision to expand its efforts in security technology and services, BlackStratus for its enterprise-grade SIEM technology for SMBs, Microsoft for growing its FastTrack program that helps partners and customers move to the cloud, and ZyXel for upgrading its channel program to give partners more growth opportunities. Not everyone in the IT industry was making smart moves this week, of course. For a rundown of companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful or just didn't make good decisions, check out this week's 5 Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

2016-04-22 15:33 Rick Whiting www.crn.com

27 Finow X5 review: Smartwatch meets smartphone watch with this £100 Android watch By Marie Brewis | 6 hours ago See full specs £100.99 inc VAT The Finow X5 is an Android smartwatch that accepts a 3G SIM to make calls, send texts and get online independently of your phone. At just £100, we see whether this cheap smartwatch is a worthy competitor to rival Android Wear watches from the likes of Motorola, LG and Sony. Also see: Best smartwatches 2016. You can buy the Finow X5 from GearBest where, at the time of writing, it costs £100.99 with free shipping to the UK. However, note that you may have to pay import duty on goods sent from China to the UK - read our advice on grey market tech before you buy. The X5 is compatible with both Android and iOS, but functionality may be limited with iPhone. The Finow X5 is more ‘smartphone watch’ than ‘smartwatch’ and can be used independently of your phone to get online and send and receive calls and texts, albeit using a very small and fiddly keypad or audible instruction. This is made possible by adding a Nano-SIM card. The X5 also has Wi-Fi connectivity, which you can use to browse the web. We weren’t able to use the internet connection of a paired Samsung Galaxy S6 , despite an option in the watch settings making it look as though this is possible. See all smartwatch reviews. Before you start using the Finow X5 you should download the free Watch Helper app, which pairs to a smartphone and can be configured to deliver notifications from any app installed on your phone, and to push music-, image- and other files from phone to watch and vice versa. By default you will see notifications for calls and texts, and we also managed to set up Watch Helper to deliver WhatsApp, Gmail and Facebook notifications. Frustratingly, you see only the message subject line for email notifications, and once you’ve read the notification it’s gone from the watch. Worse still, we found the X5 would lose the Bluetooth connection if it had been idle for a while. This might help battery life, but it prevents you from receiving any notifications until you physically reconnect it to the phone. And that makes this smartwatch pretty dumb. To get more functionality, then, you really need to add a SIM to the Finow X5. The SIM slot is accessible by unscrewing the rear panel (a screwdriver is supplied in the box), but unfortunately this means the device does not have a waterproof seal and rules out its use as a true sports watch, despite the built-in heart-rate monitor and pedometer. The need to use a screwdriver everytime you want to swap SIMs between phone and watch makes you much less likely to do so. With your SIM in the watch you won’t receive email-, WhatsApp- or other notifications, so ideally you need to keep the SIM in your phone at all times, or have one SIM in your phone and one in the watch. And herein lies the major limitation for UK users: it isn’t possible to have two SIMs for the same phone number. Elsewhere in the world this is possible, and in some European countries you are able to make use of a paid-for service such as Proximus to clone a phone number on to a second SIM. You could try using a second SIM with a second number, but you won’t receive any notifications from your primary number, and your communication will come from a number your contacts don’t recognise. See all wearable tech reviews. Apps are the second biggest limitation: the Finow X5, as we tested it, runs a version of Android 4.4 KitKat with no access to Google Play, and that's how we have reviewed it here. We have read online that others have been able to update the firmware or root the smartwatch in order to get Google Play installed and working, turning this Finow X5 into a proper Android Wear watch - the Bluetooth cutouts would still be an issue unless you used it in place of your smartphone, of course. GearBest tells us that it's possible to install Google Play without rooting and that "Any alterations such as upgrades or flashing a newer version will void the warranty. " Out of the box no update was available to us, which meant the only apps were those preinstalled and the three found in the built-in app store, none of which you’re likely to want to download - there’s Currency Check, Stock Quotes and the Watch Helper app (in Chinese). So what stock apps do you get? First on the menu are Phone, Messages and Contacts. Phone comprises a dialer (which requries you to have a SIM inside) and call log; Messages lists your received SMS messages only; and Contacts can be synched with your phone to bring up your address book, but is of little use to you if you aren’t using the X5 with a SIM. Settings is fourth on the menu, and gives you options to do such things as connect to a phone over Bluetooth, turn on Wi-Fi and GPS, change the clock face (54 are available or you can add your own background image, but you are then limited in how it appears on the watch so you will need to resize it first), adjust the display or volume settings, turn on power-saving options and uninstall apps (what apps we’re not sure). Then you get to the preinstalled apps: Health, which comprises a heart-rate monitor and a pedometer; Music, which can play back music stored on the watch itself, not a paired phone; Weather; Sound Recorder; Barometer; and Browser. You’ll also find an alarm clock, calendar, Watch Helper, the aforementioned and very barren AppStore, a File Manager and a list of recently opened apps, although its positioning at the bottom of the menu doesn’t exactly make them quick to access. All in all, the Finow X5 as a smartwatch is majorly flawed. As a smartphone watch that lets you leave the phone at home, however, if all you need is calls and texts and no other apps, it might just fit your needs. Its limited functionality as a smartwatch is a shame, because for £100 the round-faced Finow X5 appears to be a mostly well-made and nicely designed watch. Our review sample had a black stainless steel case and a stylish 23mm black and tan leather strap that should be fairly easy to replace. It’s rather large (50x48x13mm), but you could say that about most smartwatches; being used to wearing a steel Sony watch, we didn’t find it too heavy either. It’s not without fault: for example, there’s a thick black border between the display and the bezel, and twisting the crown has no effect that we could tell. Used as a button, the crown will take you back to the home screen, while the button above takes you back one step, and the button below is a menu button that, again, doesn’t appear to do a lot with the apps installed on the watch. At this price the 1.4in (400x400) colour AMOLED touchscreen is a great addition; it’s responsive and plenty bright enough, but lacking a little in contrast. We wouldn’t advise turning up the brightness all the way as this will drain the 450mAh battery and you’ll be lucky to get a full day’s life. Given that it charges from a dock rather than Micro-USB, you’ll want it to keep going at least until you get home. The rear-mounted heart-rate monitor is also welcome at this price, and both it and the pedometer seem to work fairly well. It’s only a shame that this watch isn’t waterproof for sports use. The X5 is pretty standard in terms of its specification as smartwatches go. It runs Android 4.4 KitKat (not Android Wear) on a 1.2GHz MediaTek MTK6572 dual-core processor (Mali-400 MP GPU) with 512GB of RAM and 4GB of storage. It accepts a Nano-SIM but offers only 3G (not 4G) connectivity on the GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz and WCDMA 2100MHz bands. Wi-Fi support covers 802.11b/g/n, and there’s also Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS. Follow Marie Brewis on Twitter. At £100 the Finow X5 sounds - and looks - like a great smartwatch. Unfortunately, a lack of app support (at least without Google Play as it was supplied to us) makes it unappealing for use in place of a smartphone, and it just doesn’t function very well as a companion device. For UK users at least, this smartwatch as supplied out of the box is of little use. Best phone camera 2016: Galaxy S7 vs iPhone vs HTC 10 vs Huawei P9 vs LG G5 and more 1995-2015: How technology has changed the world in 20 years Watch the Game of Thrones opening sequence recreated with amazing paper cutouts Best Apple Watch buying guide 2016: Which Apple Watch model, size, material, colour and strap…

2016-04-22 15:21 Marie Brewis www.pcadvisor.co.uk

28 Polycom Channel Leader Sounds Off On Mitel Acquisition, Microsoft Partnership, Channel Partners' Future Life After Mitel Polycom channel leader Nick Tidd says the vendor is striving to keep its partnership with Microsoft intact in wake of its $2 billion acquisition by Mitel , a Microsoft competitor. "[Channel Partners] are not seeing a sway from our commitment to Microsoft, nor existing commitment to our road map. Otherwise we wouldn't be onboarding partners the way we are," said Tidd, vice president of Polycom's Global Partner Organization, in an interview with CRN. "Our value proposition now continues to be strong, if not stronger, as a result of this acquisition. " Tidd sounded off on the impact Mitel's acquisition will have on channel partners, Microsoft, competition with Cisco and how San Jose, Calif.-based Polycom is actually onboarding net new solution providers and channel executives ahead of the merger. Following is a bit of that conversation.

Exclusive: Cisco's Earle Defends Intercloud And Its Future In The Channel crn.com 2016-04-22 15:00 Mark Haranas www.crn.com

29 From idea to new app in a matter of minutes There’s a new term floating around the halls and conference rooms of today’s IT departments. The term, hybrid IT, describes a new approach to how IT supports the business, but what exactly is hybrid IT and how does it fit into ongoing storage discussions? Hybrid IT offers the best of two worlds: traditional IT infrastructure combined with today’s software- defined, virtualized environments. Hybrid offers a combination of IT components (servers, storage, and networking) in agile, flexible, cloud-ready, and datacenter-friendly configurations. It enables flexibility in deploying on-premises and cloud solutions that best match the needs of the business, and the hybrid model can be tailored to fit the dynamic workloads that IT environments face in this evolving world. With hybrid, the resources within your infrastructure are available to those who need it, when they need it, thus accelerating the time to deliver new apps and services to customers. It brings a whole new level of flexibility that the old model of traditional IT couldn’t support. In today’s fast-paced digital economy, hybrid IT enables organizations to transform ideas into business value in a flash, if you’ll excuse the pun (storage is, of course, a big part of the hybrid environment, and a lot of it is moving to flash!). Time-to-value is one of the key factors in the concept behind hybrid IT. Gartner says just 15% of companies have adopted a hybrid strategy so far, but the technology will go mainstream over the next five years. Hybrid promises to change how IT is delivered in the 21 st century. Flexibility will enable on- demand infrastructures to deliver new business applications and capacity faster while simplifying the overall infrastructure management of IT services. Infrastructure becomes a profit center, not a cost center. To achieve this, data centers are starting to move away from environments populated with isolated silos and lots of sprawl to high-velocity converged environments that are much more agile and bring together compute and storage in a flexible manner. For instance, a hybrid cloud services company in the Pacific Northwest has transformed its datacenter to a hybrid model to better serve its customers, which range from small businesses with demands for only one server paired with storage, to large enterprises that need hundreds of servers and vast amounts of storage. Every customer wants a flexible infrastructure, which is why the hybrid IT model works so well for this cloud service company. The company can tailor services to meet each customer’s fluctuating workload needs. Some customers don’t need speed but do need a lot of capacity while others need super-fast storage but not so much space. It’s similar to how utility companies operate, dialing their usage up and down as demand fluctuates. Hybrid infrastructures let IT departments slash the time required to bring an idea online from months to minutes. Hybrid IT can even reduce costs by allowing datacenters to repurpose servers with software-defined options to create shared storage pools. It can also cut deployment times with hyper converged solutions that combine compute and storage into one box. What are some of the benefits for customers who go to a hybrid IT infrastructure? Well, think about what you could accomplish if you could deploy resources at your command in a model flexible enough to satisfy the full spectrum of cost and performance requirements. Consider how a Hollywood studio relies on hybrid IT to edit films in the production process. When editors develop the movie, they take bits and pieces of the daily production and assemble it piece by piece at various editing studios often thousands of miles away. A delay of seconds, in transferring the data isn’t that critical in the overall process. Here, the need is for capacity. However, when the studio streams a rough-cut of the film to be viewed by various teams, it can’t afford even a single pause. Now performance is critical. This is where hybrid infrastructures play a key role. Studios build their IT architectures to enable flexibility and choice across the performance and capacity vectors, utilizing traditional, virtualized, and/or cloud infrastructures. Hollywood’s editing booths are not alone in constantly trying to keep up with the evolving digital economy. IT departments are being challenged to provide higher levels of service and the higher levels of resiliency that we now expect from workhorses such as web apps and traditional applications. Hybrid to the rescue! It can do all this and more. So where does this journey to a hybrid architecture begin? Well, first start by asking some important questions to identify the outcomes you want to achieve with hybrid IT: There are a variety of paths you can take in building-out your hybrid infrastructure, but the best part is that you can match it to fit your unique datacenter needs based on the above consideration. For example, you may need to have dedicated SLA-centered storage to meet your core application needs. Alternately, you can repurpose or refresh your servers with software-defined storage for added flexibility and shared capacity to maximize your budget. Or if you have limited IT resources and need to quickly deploy storage and compute, a hyper converged solution is your datacenter-in-a-box that brings rapid time-to-value. These days, businesses require an infrastructure that maximizes performance and flexibility but stays within budget. Now that hybrid IT is building momentum, ideas are accelerating into reality faster than we have seen in the past. As a result, the rate of innovation is faster than before. Once just part of the overhead, IT can now be a value creator. We’re going to see organizations take proactive measures to convert, knowing that if they succeed, they’ll disrupt the marketplace and move to the front of the pack. It’s going to be an exciting time for those who make the transformation and limiting for those who don’t. Want to know more about some of the technologies behind hybrid IT? You can click here to learn more about the benefits of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) software-defined storage solutions and here to learn more about the benefits of HPE hyper-converged. Click here to learn more about: Infographic on Top 10 Purchasing Considerations for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure HPE StoreVirtual VSA HPE Hyper Converged 380 HPE Hyper Converged 250

2016-04-22 14:51 Neeraj Gokhale www.computerworld.com

30 The Ethernet community is working to introduce six new rates in the next 3 years In its first 27 years of existence we saw the introduction of six Ethernet rates – 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, 10Gbps 40Gbps and 100Gbps. And the Ethernet community is now working feverously to introduce six new rates -- 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps, 25Gbps 50Gbps, 200Gbps and 400Gbps-- in the next three years. Higher Ethernet rates used to be introduced when industry bandwidth requirements drove the need for speed. Butwith Ethernet’s success, it soon became apparent that one new advance could satisfy the requirements of each Ethernet application space. This was clearly illustrated nearly 10 years ago when it was recognized that computing and networking were growing at different rates. This led to 40Gbps being selected as the next rate for servers beyond 10Gbps, while 100Gbps was selected as the next networking rate. The industry, however, has a funny way of taking an Ethernet solution and applying it as it sees fit. Rather than use 40GbE as a server solution, the industry applied it in conjunction with 10GbE. This combination of 10GbE and 40GbE served to fuel the growth of hyper scale data centers, and while this has had a dramatic impact on the industry overall, it served to unchain Ethernet and lead to its next evolutionary step – introduction of rates targeted at applications, as opposed to force-fitting given Ethernet rates to given applications. Figure 1- Ethernet Alliance Ethernet 2016 Roadmap So, while we saw 10GbE/40GbE data centers quickly being deployed, the industry recognized a couple of things. First, a higher density solution for 100GbE was necessary, and the easiest way to enable it was to reduce the width of the electrical interface from 10 lanes of 10Gbps to 4 lanes of 25Gbps. The industry also recognized the need for a higher speed of Ethernet beyond 100Gbps, which led to the industry effort to develop 400GbE. The development of this higher speed Ethernet was different than the development of 40GbE and 100GbE, as new technologies were needed to develop a practical 400GbE solution. Figure 2 illustrates the options that can be considered during the development of new higher speed solutions, and how it was applied to the development of the target 400GbE specifications. More fibers running at 25Gbps was selected as the solution for operation over 100m of MMF. In the case of the solutions running over single mode fiber, operation at 50Gbps or greater was selected, and PAM4, a higher order modulation scheme, was chosen. And, while the 500m solution is running PAM4 at 100Gbps over 4 fibers, the 2km and 10km solutions added additional optical lambdas, and are running 8 lambdas at 50Gbps. Figure 2- Technology Choices to 400GbE With the impending completion of this standard, and the rapid pace by which hyper scale data centers are looking to grow, it was recognized that, once again, a higher speed Ethernet was needed for the next generation of servers beyond 25GbE. And with the new 50Gbps signaling technologies being developed to support 400GbE, the choice is clear – 50GbE. It raises another question, though: what would be the right networking solution? Considering the success of 10GbE/40GbE, and the anticipated deployment of 25GbE/100GbE, it has been recognized that the optimal solution for servers is the highest serial signaling rate, while using a networking solution based on 4x this serial speed. Thus, the industry is now in the initial stages of starting the development of 50GbE and 200GbE. Figure 3 illustrates what has emerged for the Ethernet industry. As discussed, Ethernet is no longer developing a single Ethernet rate to be applied everywhere and to everything. Instead, families of Ethernet rates, based on signaling rate technologies, are emerging. The base signaling rate and its quad: First generation is 10GbE and 40GbE; The next generation is 25GbE and 100GbE; And the latest generation of 50GbE and 200GbE. Figure 3- The Generations of Ethernet As one looks at Figure 3, solutions based on 2x and 8x are logical and are emerging. And, as noted, 100Gb/s PAM4 optical signaling is in the development stage, thus a fourth generation data center architecture is clearly on the horizon. Furthermore, if one considers the development of an 8x solution, based on 100 Gbps, the next speed of Ethernet beyond 400Gbps is clearly 800Gbps. Ethernet is continuing to evolve and the days of focusing on the development of a single speed are gone. Now, we see the industry focusing on multiple rates of Ethernet, intent on leveraging the investment in the next generation of signaling technologies to enable these multiple rates. John D’Ambrosia chairs the Ethernet Alliance, a global consortium committed to the success and expansion of Ethernet technologies. He is also senior principal engineer at Huawei.

2016-04-22 14:30 John D’Ambrosia www.itnews.com

31 Rumor: Nvidia Pascal GP104 die shots leak The smoke around Nvidia's next-generation graphics chips keeps getting thicker, and if Tuesday’s purported GeForce GTX 1080 cooler shots didn’t warm things up enough for you maybe this will. A leaker from ChipHell.com has posted a fairly legit-looking shot of GP104-200’s die, and the folks at Videocardz have picked it up: Image: Videocardz.com Videocardz figures the GP104-200 chip is bound for the GeForce GTX 1070, the replacement for the popular GTX 970. The site speculates that those graphics cards will arrive in mid- June. GP104-400, GP104-200's big brother, purportedly powers the GTX 1080. Videocardz thinks this GTX 980 replacement will debut at Computex in early June. That's consistent with Nvidia's thinly veiled hints about its plans for Computex on Twitter. Image: Chiphell.com An older GP104 die shot provided by ChipHell.com conveniently includes some memory chips, and Videocardz has decoded the markings on this RAM. The Samsung chips on the old die shot bear the K4G80325FB-HC label. These chips are standard 8Gb GDDR5 jobs, rather than the faster, newer GDDR5X standard. Videocardz thinks that this leak indicates the GTX 1070 will still use GDDR5. The site further claims the GTX 1080 will feature newer GDDR5X RAM, though. As always, we'll have to see how time bears out these guesses.

2016-04-22 14:21 by Robert techreport.com

32 10 steps to ensure success when implementing chat for customer support Using chat as a support channel can reduce incident handling times and improve customer satisfaction by allowing support technicians to chat with end users throughout a session. Once an organization recognizes the full potential of chat as a support channel, these steps can help it strategize to create chat support that is ideal for its stakeholders.

2016-04-22 13:53 Donald Hasson www.itnews.com

33 Uber wins a major coup for the gig economy The most important tech startup in the world just scored a major victory. A settlement with Uber drivers -- the pay-out will be around $100M total, or a few hundred per driver -- means proponents of the gig economy can breathe easy. Two cases reached a resolution yesterday in California and Massachusetts. The 450,000 drivers who essentially work as freelancers running their own business will not be viewed as employees. Uber will not have to pay expenses or deal with any employment issues, like social security, health insurance, or unemployment compensation. As part of the settlement, Uber has to give drivers multiple warnings before they deactivate them from the service. Uber is valued at $62.5B, which is a far cry from Google and Microsoft but is impressive considering the company is still private. Most of that value is related to the incredible number of drivers that tool around and pick people up and charge a fare. What it really means is that the gig economy is alive and well. Drivers who decide on a whim to start using their personal car to drive people around don’t have to deal with any roadblocks. You could freelance for Uber after signing up, although it takes about a week before you get approved. After that, you pay for your own insurance, maintenance, and gas. Off you go, raking in the cash. Most importantly, it means other tech companies might not have to worry about this issue as much. I wasn’t that impressed with an app in Austin, Texas during the SxSW conference called Favor -- which lets you order a sandwich and other items from a local shop and have someone bring it to you -- but I could see how people could make a living doing that. (Sorry, UPS.) It means apps like this that involve delivery, house cleaning, babysitting, and other services can soldier on. Or, let’s say you want to run a “company” that provides a place for people to live. You sign up for Airbnb or maybe Overnight , of course. You pay for your own insurance and wait for the money to pour in as you live somewhere else or in the room next door. It might all sound a bit ridiculous in some ways, but the reason I’m in favor (excuse the pun) of this arrangement is that I’d rather people have a way to do work and start their own business. The alternative for companies like Uber is that they’d have to hire all of those workers, which would be mind-numbingly complex. The reason the gig economy is so attractive is because of how quickly it scales. Anyone with a car can sign up. Anyone with a house. Anyone with a bike. The potential is amazing. Now, so are the abuses. I’ve written before about a few Uber rides that went south. I held on for dear life. But then, I needed to get across town again and used another one. I wish there was a better certification or driver training program, and I believe that’s inevitable, but I also like the idea of giving so many people an opportunity to run their own business. We put up with the annoyances to the gig economy can survive. Uber is more secure now, mostly due to this settlement. You can argue with the total amount of the payout, which is a small portion of what Uber makes in a year, but it means the arrangement can continue and Uber can keep trucking along.

2016-04-22 13:36 John Brandon www.computerworld.com

34 Using AI to multiply the efforts of human InfoSec analysts Hiring more analysts isn’t the answer because of the costs involved and the difficulty in finding the right talent. The unemployment rate for InfoSec professionals is essentially zero. In fact, Cisco puts the worldwide shortage of InfoSec professionals at 1 million. The trick is to emulate the human analyst, since we know humans are best at judging if something is an attack or not, and emulating a human is fundamentally the domain of Artificial Intelligence. There are a lot of machine learning technologies in InfoSec, but the key questions are: Are they mimicking the analyst? Do they learn from the analyst, and do they predict what an analyst would say when presented with a new behavior? If the answer to these questions is no, then these solutions are part of the problem and not the solution. A system that mimics a human can be thought of as a system that generates an army of virtual analysts. Armies need leaders to direct them and train them. This is the role of human analysts, and it is a crucial role. Working together, the human analyst and army of virtual analysts cover more ground across your entire enterprise and can detect both new and emerging attacks. To achieve artificial intelligence that can mimic an analyst, we have to combine the computer’s ability to find complex patterns on a massive scale with the analyst’s intuition to distinguish between malicious and benign patterns. This symbiotic relationship helps machines learn from humans when the machines make mistakes, and helps humans see complex patterns across extended time periods. The reason InfoSec, unlike computer vision, has failed to capitalize on AI is because of a lack of training data, also know as labeled data. In other words, there is a ton of data lying around that hasn’t been organized into behaviors, and then labeled as either malicious or benign by an infoSec analyst. It’s what data scientists call a thin label space. Absent labeled data, an AI system cannot learn. But come to think about it, analysts, who are continuously judging whether behaviors they monitor and investigate are malicious or benign, are generating labels. The problem is, these labels are not being captured today. We need to create a system that continuously captures those labels and then uses them to train new predictive models that can emulate the judgment of an analyst in real time. The predictions from these models are shown to the analyst and the feedback (label) is captured again. At each iteration of this process, the number of labeled examples available to train the system increases and, as a result, model accuracy improves. This analyst/machine interaction creates a loop where the more attacks the AI system predicts, the more feedback/training it receives, which in turn improves the accuracy of future predictions. The primary benefits of the analyst/machine loop are to reduce the time to detection while working within the limited time the analyst has. Given the limitations of current technology and the chronic drought of InfoSec professionals, there is a need for a new approach. The goals of such a solution are clear: work within the limited time an analyst has; detect both new and emerging attacks; reduce the time to detection; and reduce false positives. AI, achieved through the combination of man and machine, may well be the answer.

2016-04-22 13:13 Uday Veeramachaneni www.itnews.com

35 Hackathon Starter gets newbies up and running on Node.js Serving as a boilerplate project developing Node.js Web applications , Hackathon Starter is being positioned as a template for easy coding. The brainchild of developer Sahat Yalkabov, Hackathon Starter can be used by coding newcomers and serves as a starting point for Web development. "The name has 'Hackathon' in there because that was my initial goal for this project," said Yalkabov. "It also comes with a variety of API examples out of the box, which are extremely helpful when you are trying to use some company's API at a hackathon. " Yalkabov's goal is to get code collaborations started with as little friction as possible, and to keep them free of implementation worries. "While you can use Hackathon Starter in production, out of the box it was designed for ease of use and simplicity first, as such as it is geared toward smaller projects, hackathon apps, fun experiments, or as a learning tool," Yalkabov said. Hackathon Starter leverages an MVC project structure and supports Node clusters. In addition to requiring Node, the MongoDB database is necessary. The application supports local authentication via an email address and password as well as OAuth authentication through prominent Web properties such as Twitter, Facebook, GitHub, and Google. Version 3.5.0 of Hackathon Starter, released in March, added timestamp support for the project's user scheme as well as file upload and Pinterest API examples. Hackathon Starter uses the Express Web framework for Node.

2016-04-22 12:47 Paul Krill www.infoworld.com

36 The Week in iOS Apps: Test your heist skills in Break This Safe The week’s roundup includes an Apple Watch game that lets you learn some useful cat burglar skills. Read on! Break This Safe is a free game for the Apple Watch: Rotate the digital crown to turn the dial of the on-screen safe—when you feel vibrations, you’re getting close; the strongest vibration is the right answer. Soon, you’ll be able to star in a heist movie all your own. The success of the newest Jungle Book movie has opened way for rediscovery of the animated favorite. The Jungle Book: Disney Classics is a $1 iOS storybook featuring images, characters, and voices from the 1960s delight. Don’t worry: It has the bare necessities. By which we mean, it includes the “Bear Necessities.” Imprint is a “curated retailer and lifestyle publication,” which means: If you want to start looking like ZZ Top’s proverbial “Sharp Dressed Man,” this free iOS app is a good place to start. LinkedIn Students is like Tinder—you can swipe right and everything. The difference here is this: When you “get lucky,” you’ll end up with a job. Which, come to think of it, is pretty lucky! The New Yorker was one of the first magazines to create an app for the iPad way back when; since then, its website has become a more robust source of daily news and commentary. The New Yorker Today puts that online info in your iPhone—the articles are free for now, but you’ll soon be asked to subscribe. How to describe the $2 NO THING game? The makers call it “an indie minimalistic surreal action game set in totalitarian regime of future.” This trailer makes it seem like Tron (the original, not the sequel) meets Salvador Dali—set in the “future” of 1994. The $20 Screens VNC has launched Version 4.0 of letting you look at your Mac desktop from your iOS device; the new version includes a “curtain mode” that lets you keep the desktop hidden even as you access it, as well as multitasking support and better 1Password integration. This is a $2 iOS offering that lets you annotate images, turning them into a story, and share them to your social networks. Now a picture can also include a thousand words, give or take a few hundred. Pinterest has updated with faster loading times … Viber has added end-to-end encryption … MLB At Bat’s multitasking support makes it easier to watch a game and work at the same time. … Snapchat has added 3D emoji stickers.

2016-04-22 12:45 Joel Mathis www.itnews.com

37 Marantz and Pioneer usher in spring with new network-ready A/V receivers It spring once again: Time for flowers to bloom and audio manufacturers to update their consumer product lines (A/V products intended for the custom-install market are typically announced in the fall, around CEDIA ). Marantz and Pioneer are keeping that tradition alive with new network receivers. The Marantz Slim Design NR1607 looks more like a Blu-ray player than a full-blown A/V receiver. Meausring less than four inches high, it's designed for space-constrained home-theater enthusiasts who don’t want to give up any performance. One of the ways it achieves its low profile is to keep analog connections to a bare minimum. This 7.2-channel network A/V receiver features high-current discrete power amplifiers on all seven channels. The NR1607 is rated to deliver 50 watts per channel (8-ohm load) from 20Hz to 20kHz with 0.08% THD. We always caution readers to take manufacturer power specs with a grain of salt. They are rarely done with all channels driven, and the press materials don't disclose that information. A rear view of the Marantz NR1607 Slim Design Network A/V Receiver. Dolby Atmos (up to 5.1.2 channels) surround decoding is standard. A future firmware update (expected in September 2016) will allow the NR1607 to also decode DTS:X soundtracks. High- res audio playback and streaming, including support for AIFF, ALAC, DSD, FLAC, and WAV files, is also standard. The NR1607 doesn’t shortchange on the video front: Its video section has HDMI 2.0a and HDCP 2.2 (needed to play 4K Ultra HD copy-protected content) on all eight HDMI inputs (including the one on the front). All HDMI inputs support 4K Ultra HD video at 60Hz, with 4:4:4 Pure Color sub-sampling, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Wide Color Gamut compatibility, 21:9 video, 3D and BT.2020 pass through. The receiver will upscale any analog or digital source to 4K Ultra HD. For it’s $699 MSRP, it’s pleasantly surprising to see that the NR1607 is ISF (Imaging Science Foundation) certified, with a full suite of video calibration controls along with ISF Day/Night video modes. What's not surprising is that the NR1607 can connect to your home dual-band Wi-Fi network. There's an onboard Bluetooth adapter, too. Once connected, you have a host of streaming choices at your fingertips including AirPlay, network-attached storage devices (NAS), Internet Radio, Pandora, SiriusXM, and Spotify Connect. Marantz expects to deliver the NR1607 in May. Pioneer announced a pair of mid-range network A/V receivers: The $600 VSX-1131 and the $450 VSX-831 each have seven HDMI inputs that support 4K video, HDR (high dynamic range), BT.2020 wide color gamut, and HDCP 2.2 copy-protection. Oddly, Pioneer never explicitly states that these are HDMI 2.0a inputs. Pioneer’s VSX 1130 network receiver. Pioneer’s Multi-Channel Acoustic Calibration System (MCACC) room correction is likewise standard on both. Rear view of the Pioneer VSX-831. In contrast to the VSX-1131, connectivity options are bare minimum. The VSX-831 is 5.2-channel receiver delivering 140 watts per channel, while the VSX-1131 is a 7.2-channel receiver rated at 170 watts per channel (here again, no indication as to how many channels are driven to achieve those numers). Rear View of the Pioneer VSX-1131. We're seeing trickle-down economics at work here: Features like network connectivity, immersive audio, and 4K UHD support were once available only in the highest-end A/V receivers. Now they're making their way into budget and mid-priced components. It's a very good trend.

2016-04-22 12:34 Theo Nicolakis www.itnews.com

38 XebiaLabs introduces ChatOps XebiaLabs wants to help DevOps teams communicate better. The company is introducing a new ChatOps feature to XL Deploy, its deployment and application release automation tool. According to the company, while chat tools like HipChat and Slack have been an effective way to communicate among distributed and DevOps teams, they don’t allow developers to chat about the work that they do in the place where the work is actually taking place. ChatOps is a new practice that allows development teams to communicate and get their work done all in one chat room. (Related: If ChatOps hasn’t come to your enterprise yet, it will soon ) “We believe our developers’ ability to stay on top of key trends is a large part of what makes the XebiaLabs community so valuable to our users. So we decided it would be fun to build our own ChatBot for XL Deploy that would give our users the ability to monitor activity, trigger deployments and troubleshoot incidents,” wrote Martin van Vliet, vice president of engineering at XebiaLabs, in a blog post. The company has created Clark, a XL Deploy ChatBot, that allows users to chat to and from XL Deploy, query and execute commands, and see what’s going on and who is doing what. The company plans to release a similar ChatBot for its XL Release solution and provide even more advanced messaging capabilities. “Collaboration and teamwork are two of the cornerstones of how we work at XebiaLabs. Being a distributed team, this means using a chat tool to discuss and keep team members up-to-date,” according to the bot’s GitHub page.

2016-04-22 12:28 Christina Mulligan sdtimes.com

39 Google 'moonshots' increasingly expensive When Google parent company Alphabet Inc. reported yesterday that its first-quarter earnings didn't hit Wall Street's expectations, execs laid the blame directly at the feet of the company's so- called moonshot projects. Yep, those sometimes seemingly out-there projects, like autonomous cars, high-tech medical devices , smart clothes and smart home devices are interesting -- but they're not cheap. And that's dragging down Alphabet's financials. Google reported that its first-quarter revenue came in at $20.26 billion; the company is still making money. However, that was about $120 million less than expected. "Our Q1 results represent a tremendous start to the year with 17% revenue growth year on year and 23% growth on a constant currency basis," said Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Alphabet, in a written statement. "We're thoughtfully pursuing big bets and building exciting new technologies, in Google and our Other Bets, that position us well for long-term growth. " Those Other Bets are better known as Google's moonshots. The company also noted that its moonshots -- which stray far from core money makers like search and Android to things like Google Fiber, Google X, Internet connectivity balloons and wearables -- showed $166 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2016. That's up from $80 million for the last quarter of 2015. However, Google also reported that those longer-term projects, which had an operating loss of $633 million in 2015's fourth quarter, showed an operating loss of $802 million this past quarter. The company did not break out numbers for the individual projects, so it's not clear how much money is going into driverless cars compared to smart home devices. Judith Hurwitz, an analyst with Hurwitz & Associates, said it makes sense for Google to invest heavily in what could be future business ventures but it needs to do a better job of making up for those expenses. "I think that it is great to spend some money on speculative inventions to both drive the brand and prepare for the future," she said. "However, they also have to be pragmatic about coming up with incremental offerings that will drive revenue in the short term. " For Jeff Kagan, an independent industry analyst, Alphabet needs to remind people why Google was split up and put under the Alphabet umbrella in the first place. Just last year, Google went through a significant restructuring and went from being a standalone company to one of Alphabet's business units, focusing on core Internet-related businesses, including search, YouTube and Android. That restructuring also allowed Google's big research projects to get their own executives to oversee the work, as well as have much greater attention and freedom. "The theory was they would keep the faster growing Google core businesses separate from the speculative businesses," said Kagan. "Google is a successful company, but that does not mean everything they touch is successful. They throw ideas against the wall. Whatever sticks they build. " He added that he doubts many of Google's moonshot efforts will end up being profitable and those that are could take years to get there. Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, said Google is fine spending big on its Other Bets right now, but investors could start complaining. "I'm not concerned about Alphabet missing expectations," he said. "They had 23% revenue growth in constant currency, something that most tech companies would die for... Alphabet's moonshots would only become a problem if their core business suffers for an extended period of time. " While Moorhead said he's unsure about the future success of Google's Nest investment into smart home devices, as well as medical devices, the company is smart to take a leadership role in technological advances. "Alphabet isn't a company in crisis and people shouldn't overthink what Wall Street thinks," he added.

2016-04-22 12:23 Sharon Gaudin www.itnews.com

40 In the Software Defined Data Center, application response time trumps infrastructure capacity management The adoption of software-defined data center (SDDC) technologies is driven by tremendous potential for dynamic scalability and business agility, but the transition is fraught with complexities that need to be considered. This ecosystem relies on the abstraction or pooling of physical resources (primarily compute, network and storage) by means of virtualization. With software orchestrating new or updated services, the promise is these resources can be provisioned in real-time, without human intervention. In essence, this is the technology response to the agility demands of the modern digital business. The term SDDC can be applied to today’s public clouds (certainly Amazon and Google and Microsoft clouds qualify), and tomorrow’s private and hybrid clouds as organizations accelerate their transition towards providing data center infrastructure as a service (IaaS). And as in today’s enterprise data centers, tomorrow’s SDDCs will likely support a mix of packaged applications and applications you develop and maintain. One of the tenets of the SDDC is that capacity is dynamically scalable; not unlimited, of course, but that’s not necessarily a bad way to think of it. This means capacity is treated differently than in the past. The ability to spin up new servers to meet spikes in demand, automatically connect these based on pre-defined policies, and then destroy them as demand wanes, will become the new SDDC paradigm. Instead of being used for alert-generating thresholds, resource utilization becomes an input to the scale-out algorithm. The infrastructure may be self-regulating, elastic and automated, but that doesn’t absolve us of the requirement for performance monitoring. Instead, it shifts the emphasis from infrastructure capacity management to application (or service) response time. The applications served can be made up of a medley of components and services relying on different stacks and platforms, requiring at least a few different approaches to performance monitoring. In fact, the adoption of multiple monitoring solutions – while a practical necessity – can lead to some operational challenges, including: And with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of services required to deliver an application, service quality can no longer be defined by the performance or health of individual components. Virtualization can obscure critical performance visibility at the same time complex service dependencies challenge even the best performance analysts and the most effective war rooms. To attempt this is to face avalanches of false positives, of “internal” alerts that are more informational than actionable. Consider for a minute a popular SaaS application – Salesforce. It’s delivered as a service from a cloud, just as your own internally-built applications might someday be delivered as services from your private SDDC cloud. How do you, as a member of an IT team responsible for your organization’s application services, evaluate Salesforce service quality? It’s unlikely you care about the number of VMs used, the utilization of these VMs, or the network congestion in the tunnel between the app and DB server tiers. You don’t want to hear about throughput on Salesforce’s REST API to KiteDesk. Instead, you care about the experience of your end users. How long does it take to login to the application? How responsive is site navigation? Are users encountering errors or availability problems? This example illustrates how the service quality of a SaaS application can be abstracted to end- user experience (EUE). And as your private SDDC increasingly facilitates the delivery of applications as services, it holds a valuable lesson – service quality is in the eye of the consumer. This doesn’t mean that data center monitoring is passé. You will still need to monitor infrastructure and application services, at least as a means of refining automation behavior and policy definitions. But insight into EUE does provide a lens through which to qualify these internal metrics. As another example, let’s say a new app server is dynamically added to help support increasing demand, connected to the DB tier via a new network tunnel. The new location of the app server adds a few hundred microseconds to the tunnel’s latency. Could this be a problem? That depends. For some applications there would be no noticeable difference in EUE. But for others, even a few hundred microseconds of network delay at this tier might degrade the user’s experience to something on the wrong side of tolerable. Clearly, one scenario can be ignored, while the other demands immediate attention – to fix of course, but also to ensure that policies are adjusted to prevent recurrence. Only EUE can put service quality into meaningful perspective. While EUE has become popular over the last few years as a shared business and IT metric – a “nice-to-have” view – the abstractions and complexities of the SDDC will make it a critical metric for applications delivered as services. Just as the applications rely on multiple platforms and stacks, so do your end users. Browsers and mobile apps may dominate the news, but there are many applications that use different client types, ranging from Oracle Forms and SAPGUI to RMI and virtual desktops infrastructures. As such, you’ll need to choose appropriate EUE monitoring approaches to ensure all of your important applications (at least) are represented. Four popular approaches include: As IT continues on the path towards service-oriented IT, IT’s role must shift to become a competitive provider of application services – and EUE will become the overriding quality metric used by successful organizations.

2016-04-22 12:16 Gary Kaiser www.itnews.com

41 Microsoft gives testers first look at the Windows 10 upgrade slated to debut this summer Microsoft today released to testers the first real look at its next major Windows 10 upgrade, dubbed the "Anniversary Update. " Build 14328, which was issued to the Insider "Fast" ring -- or release track -- early Friday, included the biggest feature changes since the original edition of last summer. Microsoft had touted most of the new features at its Build developer conference three weeks ago. "This is a major build, packed with lots of new features and improvements," said Gabriel Aul, engineering general manager for Microsoft's operating systems group, in a long post to a company blog today . As he has for some time, Aul warned testers that build 14328 has some "rough edges" by virtue of the "amount of code change," and urged those uncomfortable with instability to retreat from the Fast ring. Build 14328 includes features Microsoft spent considerable time touting at Build, among them the pen-based platform, Windows Ink; significant functionality additions to Cortana, the OS's digital assistant; and improvements to some of the core user interface (UI) components, like the Start menu and the at-the-side notification center. The return of new features to the Windows 10 beta ended several months of steady updates that introduced a slew of behind-the-scenes tweaks, but surfaced few easily-noticeable changes. Microsoft has not yet revealed a date for the Anniversary Update's release, saying only that it would appear this summer. Windows 10 will turn one on July 29, the date last year it launched. Build 14328's eventual successor may be the only Windows 10 upgrade in 2016. Although Microsoft originally cast Windows 10's schedule as three-upgrades-annually, it's since backpedaled to a two-to-three-times plan, with the emphasis on "two. " But several long-time Microsoft watchers, including ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley and the WinBeta website , have reported, via unnamed sources, that Microsoft will postpone a second 2016 upgrade until sometime in the spring of 2017. According to Foley, Microsoft will do that to sync with refreshed company- branded hardware, specifically the Surface Pro and Surface Book devices. Today's upgrade was available only to Insider participants on the Fast ring. Those who have selected "Slow" may have to wait weeks for a glimpse. In Build 14328, pen-equipped Windows 10 devices -- like Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface Book -- can access the new Ink Workspace for jotting down notes and sketching or writing atop a blank canvas or the current screen. 2016-04-22 12:16 Gregg Keizer www.computerworld.com

42 15 ways to not get fired from your dream job This week a famous pitcher who clearly should have known better, lost his very high paying job at ESPN. It reminded me how many kids fresh out of college undid all of those years in school by getting fired for doing something similar. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen kids bust their hump to get a job at a named company only to lose it a few days later, or even before they officially start. This applies to more than just tech jobs. So if you are a parent and don’t want your kids to boomerang home unemployable or are a manager and don’t want to have to fire one (or explain how it happened on your watch), I’d suggest sitting your soon-to-be-hired kid or recently hired new employee down and giving them some personal perspective. You see we really don’t understand consequences until we are nearly 30-years-old. A 2012 Yale study says , the best way to keep kids from doing really stupid things is get them to understand the consequences of the things they do. Here are the 15 simple things kids should know before starting a new job in order to not get fired. For instance, many companies have don’t date subordinate rules. A third-line manager started dating one of his low-level employees and when it got serious asked another third-line manager he thought was a friend to allow a transfer so he wasn’t breaking this rule, both he and the woman he was dating were fired shortly thereafter. Here is a story of a guy who loved the job but clearly didn’t understand that zero tolerance rules were unbendable, and lost his dream job. You may think the rule is silly, but explain that to your parents when you have to move back home unemployed. We had a call center manager who, after being asked by a female employee, how to get a raise, responded in jest that she’d have to pleasure him (he was a tad more graphic). She didn’t report him, and actually thought it was funny (they were friends), but two woman sales reps who overheard him did report it. He was a well-regarded senior manager and he was demoted out of management and sent to a branch office, his career effectively over. A less well-connected employee would have been terminated. Expense reports are a fountain of bad behavior and catching someone is not only fun, but it makes for great stories at the end of the day. We had one idiot who would buy a ticket for a flight well in advance and another right before the flight. The first ticket was really cheap, the second really expensive. He would use the first ticket but expense and return for refund the second. He was easily caught and fired (systems flag expenses that fall out of cost ranges for review). Let’s expand this to say any theft from the firm will get you fired, and don’t think you won’t get caught. And some thefts will land you in jail.

2016-04-22 12:15 Rob Enderle www.itnews.com

43 Sources blame lens yield for Oculus Rift delays Sources speaking to rumour mill DigiTimes have claimed that the custom-made Fresnel lenses are to blame for the 'component shortages' hitting Oculus VR's Rift launch. The ongoing component shortage issues experienced by Facebook's Oculus VR, and the knock-on effect it is having on pre-order customers for its Oculus Rift headset, may be down to its lense. The Oculus Rift commercial launch has been beset by surprising problems, given the company's previous experience with - admittedly smaller-scale - manufacturing and fulfilment and the not-inconsiderable financial backing of owner Facebook. Its customers have now been warned that shortages of unspecified components mean a two-month delay in shipping of the virtual reality headset, even as rival HTC prepares to put its Vive headset in bricks and mortar retail outlets. With little information coming from Oculus VR itself, customers and pundits have been quick to blame Microsoft for the delay: the company provides the Xbox One controller bundled with every headset, and conspiracy theorists have been quick to suggest it may be nobbling Oculus VR's chances ahead of launching either its augmented reality HoloLens or an Xbox-flavoured equivalent to Sony's upcoming PlayStation VR. Microsoft has publicly denied that it is to blame for the shortages, though, and rumour-mill DigiTimes - whose reports must always be taken with a pinch of salt, it's true - believes it has a more convincing explanation: a shortage of lenses. The Oculus Rift, like all VR headsets, uses a pair of lenses to cleverly distort and magnify the image from the flat display panel in order to have it appear convincingly immersive to the eye. It uses custom-ground Fresnel lenses for this, and the site's sources claim that its manufacturer has been experiencing lower than expected yields - leading to the component shortages of which the company has been complaining. Oculus VR has not publicly commented on the report, but continues to reassure customers that it is working as hard as possible to resolve the issues and speed up fulfilment.

2016-04-22 12:14 Published on feedproxy.google.com

44 Government mulls 10-year sentences for digital pirates The UK government has announced that it is committed to 'tackling those engaged in online criminality,' and has not ruled out 10-year prison sentences for pirates. The UK government has announced it is pushing for a levelling of the penalties for digital piracy to match those of physical theft - meaning prison sentences of up to 10 years for anyone caught swapping those floppies. Following a consultation launched in 2015, the Intellectual Property Office of the UK government received a number of replies surrounding its suggestion that the maximum penalty for digital piracy be raised from its current two years to ten years - matching the penalty for physical theft. The majority of these - 1,011 of 1,032 total responses - were against the proposal, but the government has been quick to point out that of the naysayers some 938 responses, or 91 per cent of the total, came as the result of campaigning from the Open Rights Group. From the mere 28 responses received from businesses and organisations, a total of 20 - just over 70 per cent - were in favour of the proposal. Those supporting the suggestion argued that a two-year maximum sentence does little to deter intellectual property theft and copyright infringement and makes it hard to convince courts of the seriousness of the offence. Others argued that copyright infringement via online services is ' no less serious than that of physical [theft], therefore shouldn't be treated any differently.' The responses in the campaign against the proposal argue differently, with the headlining - and almost certainly cherry-picked - argument being that 10 years is too high a penalty as ' copyright infringement is not a serious crime. ' Other respondents argued that there is a clear difference between online and physical infringement, including that it's entirely plausible that someone could infringe accidentally with no clue as to the legality and potential consequences, and that the proposed wording could be used to inflict harsh penalties on people guilty of only minimal infringement. ' This proposal has clearly struck a chord with many stakeholders, which is reflected in the high number of responses, ' claimed Baroness Neville-Rolfe, minister for intellectual property, in the response summary (PDF warning.) ' As a result, the Government is now carefully considering the best way forward. However, the Government remains committed to tackling those engaged in online criminality, ' warned Neville-Rolfe, suggesting that despite the efforts of the Open Rights Group the proposal has not been entirely ruled out.

2016-04-22 11:56 Published on feedproxy.google.com

45 PC Specialist Launches Liquid Series PC Range PC Specialist's Liquid Series PC range uses the latest water- cooling components and offers custom cable and coolant colours PC Specialist has launched a new range of PCs called the Liquid Series The new premium range of PCs feature water-cooled CPUs and graphics cards and the company is keen to point out that potential buyers can pick their own coolant colour, LED lighting and even the power cable colours too. There's a wide range of other options in a new section of PC Specialists already comprehensive configurator too. You can pick from Z170 and X99 systems and can choose from four basic water-cooling systems across the whole range of options. The Entry Kit includes a slimline 240mm Alphacool radiator along with an Alphacool Pro 15 reservoir, Phobya UC-2 waterclock and Phobya DC2l-260 pump, and PC specialist rightly advises against using this option if you intend to water-cool the graphcis card too. Stepping up to the Mid Kit gets you a slightly thicker radiator, larger reservoir and more powerful Laing D5-based pump - enough grunt to cool a single graphics card too. Here you get the options of either Alphacool NexXxos GPX or EKWB full-cover GPU waterblocks. The High Kit uses two EK PE-series radiators in the form of a PE360 and PE240, which is clearly a very potent cooling setup that could handle a high-end overclocked X99 system plus several graphics cards. Finally, the Extreme Kit lives up to its name sporting two massive EK CoolStream PE360 radiators and includes two separate cooling loops, each with its own reservoir and D5 pump. PC Specialist uses Mayhems coolant, which is available in eight pastel colours or UV blue or green dyes. Moving on to the core hardware, there are 10 case options to choose from, while CPU options include the five current K-series CPU models from both Skylake and Haswell-E ranges. Graphics card options start at the GTX 970 and rise up to the GTX Titan X, while storage includes both hard disks plus SATA and M.2 SSDs. There are six cable colours to choose from as well as five LED colours. The new range starts at £1,299 inc VAT and delivery and you can see the new Liquid Series configurator here .

2016-04-22 11:27 Published on feedproxy.google.com

46 Channel Beat: Microsoft Earnings Disappoint While SAP Soars Microsoft blamed its disappointing third-quarter earnings on sluggish Windows sales and slowing profits in other business units. Microsoft's net income fell 25 percent year over year for the quarter, and revenue fell more than 5 percent. Microsoft's Office 365 sales to businesses did grow 63 percent during the quarter, and Microsoft said it now has more than 22.2 million Office 365 consumer customers. On the other hand, SAP reported accelerated growth in from its first quarter. The company reported 33 percent growth in cloud subscriptions and support revenue. SAP reported total revenue was up 5 percent from the same quarter last year, and after-tax profit was up 38 percent from one year ago. The company is forecasting up to 33 percent growth in cloud subscription and support revenue for all of 2016. Intel will lay off about 11 percent of its workforce -- a move that Intel partners say will benefit the company in the long run. This week, the company said it will cut 12,000 jobs globally in order to focus on high-growth areas like the data center and IoT. The job cuts will occur through the middle of next year, and save the company about $750 million. Through the layoffs and organization shuffle, Intel hopes to reduce its dependence on the slowing PC market.

2016-04-22 10:57 Meghan Ottolini www.crn.com

47 iPhone 7 UK release date, price, specification & new feature rumours | Video: This is what the iPhone 7 will look like The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will likely be unveiled in September 2016, potentially alongside a third iPhone - and the fourth this year. Apple iPhone 7 UK release date, UK price and specification rumours. Also see: iPhone SE UK release date, price, new features and specifications. What: The successor to the iPhone 6S When: September 2016 How much: Starting at £539 for 16GB model What's new: Faster processor, iOS 10, headphone jack removed; new Smart Connector Below we have rounded up rumours from around the web as well as making our own predictions based on what Apple has done in the past. The formula is clearly working for the company so it's unlikely it will deviate from the tried and tested update process this year. Latest rumours: A leaked image of the supposed iPhone 7 shows what looks like a Smart Connector and a larger camera module. See the picture. Also, word has it that the design will be very similar to the iPhone 6 (and 6S) and that Apple will ditch the 'S' model and move staight to an updated design for the iPhone 8 in 2017. With the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus unveiled on 9 September 2015, and the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on the 9 September 2014, one might think the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will come on 9 September 2016. Except that will be a Friday, and it's much more Apple-like to unveil new products on a Tuesday. Our money is on either Tuesday 6 September 2016, or Tuesday 13 September 2016 - probably the latter. But the latest reports say that Apple might struggle to meet demand for the iPhone 7 due to damage caused by an earthquake in Taiwain to Apple supplier TSMC's factories. In early February, reports emerged to suggest that Apple would use TSMC as its sole processor manufacturer, but the earthquake came just days later. Don't be confused by the rumoured Apple iPhone launch event that took place on 21 March. This was for the iPhone SE , the 'mini' iPhone that is thought to be the first of several new iPhones launching this year. The firm also announced the new iPad Pro in a 9.7in size . For its past two iPhone releases Apple has kept the pricing the same. That means we could well see the iPhone 7 costing £539 for a 16GB version, £619 for 64GB, and £699 for the 128GB iPhone 7. Rumour has it, though, that there may well be a 256GB model of iPhone 7, although we think that's unlikely. If there is, however, expect it to be well into the region of £800. We'll update this article as more rumours come to light. The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus looked largely similar to the 6 and 6 Plus, which is usually the case with Apple's 'S' models. We are expecting to see something completely new for the iPhone 7, although it's very likely that it too will come in Silver, Gold, Space Grey and Rose Gold. The latest design rumours to emerge claim that the iPhone 7 could actually have a ceramic back like the One Plus X. This could make wireless charging easier to impliment (read more on this below) but it could also make the iPhone 7 look rather different. The rumour came from Business Korea, but there's no real evidence to support the claim. There is, however, a rendering to give an example of what it could look like: Earlier reports that also emerged in February claim that the iPhone 7's camera will be flush against the back of the phone rather than protruding as it is currently on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. That's according to MacRumors, which claims to have spoken with a reliable source who says a second design change for the iPhone 7 will be the removal of the antenna stripes on the back of the iPhone, as demonstrated in the mockup below. But these design changes could well apply to the same ceramic back rumour, as the rendering from Business Korea also ditches the antenna lines and has a flush camera. More recently, Nowhereelse.fr shared a photo apparently taken at Catcher technologies (a case supplier for Apple) showcasing an iPhone 7 chassis render. While the images are blurry and could be very easily faked, if true, the leak confirms a number of rumoured changes in the next generation Apple smartphone. Most notably, the photo 'confirms' the decision to move the antenna lines from the back of the iPhone to the edges, along with a slight change in the camera setup. While the camera bump still appears to be present, the renders show the chassis bulging out around the camera - but why? One possibility is to protect the protruding lens from becoming damaged, or it could just be to make the camera bump look a little more appealing. However that's only a small change when you realise that the purported iPhone 7 chassis don't include a 3.5mm headphone jack, which if true, will disappoint many Apple fans. Only days after the iPhone 7 chassis render leaked, another photo of the iPhone 7 surfaced online. However unlike with the above photo, the source can't be easily tracked and as such, could be a (very well made) Apple fan edit. If that isn't the case and the photo is genuine, it too confirms Apple's decision to move the antenna lines from the back of the iPhone to its edges. It wasn't the last leaked image either. The very next day, another leaked image appeared online claiming to showcase the unreleased iPhone 7, though this one showcases different features to the above leaks. The image has been circulating around Chinese forums, and is far from confirmed, although if true could confirm a headline feature of the iPhone 7 - a dual lens setup. According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, however, this dual-lens camera will be exclusive to the 5.5in iPhone 7 Plus . The leaked photo appears to show a much wider camera slot that seems to house not one but two camera lenses. Though no one has any idea what Apple is planning with a dual-lens setup, companies in the past have used them for features including 3D photography, and the ability to refocus an image after it has been taken. The three dots at the bottom look like the Smart Connector on the iPad Pro modles so perhaps the iPhone 7 will work with some kind of smart case or it could be used for easier charging via a dock. Update 5/6/16: The below YouTube video is a concept video from ConceptsiPhone that amalgamates all those design rumours - if true, this is what the iPhone 7 will look like: With the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus Apple finally budged on some of the specifications it has refused to change for years, such as the 12Mp iSight camera, up from 8Mp in the 6 and 6 Plus. It's likely that Apple will stick with that 12Mp camera for some time to come, although one thing it still refuses to improve is the screen resolution. With rival smartphones now offering Quad- and Ultra-HD screens, we hope that Apple might bump up its pixel count in the iPhone 7 - perhaps to the 400ppi level of the Plus models. Apple might stick with the 4.7in and 5.5in screen sizes, but with so many phones having a 5in or larger screen it could well move to 5- and 5.7in models and look at ways of increasing the screen-to-body ratio, which is fairly low compared to some phones right now. In early March we heard rumours that there would be not just two iPhones launching in September, but three, with the third dubbed the iPhone Pro. This is expected to be based on the iPhone 7 Plus, but even more premium with a dual-lens camera. Some of the latest rumours we've seen talk of an OLED screen , with Apple having been in talks with LG and Samsung, although this is expected to make an appearance in 2017's iPhone 7s rather than the iPhone 7 that will launch in September 2016. Expect the usual performance upgrades, with the new Apple A10 processor and embedded M10 motion co-processor. The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus were the first iPhones to finally get 2GB of RAM, and expect this to stay the same in the iPhone 7. The iPhone 7 will ship with iOS 10 installed. Expect Apple to unveil iOS 10 (or iOS X?) at WWDC in June 2016. When Apple announced the iPhone 5 with a new style of power connector it angered many fans who would now need to purchase an adaptor to fit their old accessories. We could be about to see Lightning-gate all over again with headphone-gate, as it's rumoured that Apple will shake things up once again with a new style of headphone jack, leaving older accessories incompatible. According to Apple Insider , Apple has patented a new slimmer headphone jack technology called D Jack, which has a diameter of just 2mm. If you thought that was bad news, it gets worse - according to Japanese site Mac Otakara, Apple is thinking about ditching the headphone jack completely, enabling the company to shave 1mm from the device's thickness. The rumours about Apple ditching the headphone jack for the iPhone 7 don't seem to be slowing in 2016, either. Throughout the first week of the year, we've heard numerous rumours and reports backing up the theory. But how will we listen to our music without a headphone jack? It leaves consumers with two choices; you can either use wireless Bluetooth headphones (like many consumers are already doing) or you can use a pair of headphones that connects to your iPhone via the Lightning port - and potentially a new, slimmer Lightning port. The issue with using a Lightning-port enabled pair of headphones is that a) these are quite expensive, with the likes of the Philips Fidelio headphones costing £184.99, b) it limits the use of the headphones to the iPhone 7, and the iPhone 7 only. Of course, there's always a possibility that Apple will include some kind of adaptor that'll allow users to use their standard headphones, but we imagine this will come with a large price tag. But how plausable is this idea? Music is a big part of the history of the iPhone, and we're not too sure Apple would jeopardise that just to shave 1mm off the width of its next iPhone. But with this being said, Apple did replace multiple ports with a single USB-C port on the 12in MacBook all in the name of shaving a a few millimetres off its' latest MacBook. Consumers certainly seem to be convinced that it's possible, but they've been flocking to sign an online petition in the hopes that they can stop Apple from removing the headphone jack. So far there are more than 280,000 signatures in the petition. Plus, on 20 January even more evidence arrived to suggest that the headphone jack port is on its way out. Code spotted in the iOS 9.3 beta 1.1 software release by Twitter user Chase Fromm reads "Headphones.have.%sinput. NO. " which could well be a reference to the future removal of the port. Then, on 10 March, the first purported iPhone 7 case leaked online. At first glance, you'd mistake it for an iPhone 6s case, but a closer look reveals that there is no space for a 3.5mm headphone jack. Instead, it looks like the iPhone 7 will have two speaker grilles along the bottom. The leak comes from @OnLeaks , and could well prove to be inacurate, but it's the first case leak we've seen so far and we expect it'll be the first of many. Of course, if Apple does decide to ditch the headphone jack then it's going to need to supply some new EarPods with the iPhone 7, and the current rumours are suggesting some Lightning EarPods which will probably be similar to the EarPods we already know but will have a Lightning connector instead of the 3.5mm jack. More excitingly, though, rumours say that Apple is working on AirPods that will be so completely wireless that they won't even have a wire connecting the left bud with the right bud. Instead they will both individually connect with the iPhone 7 over Bluetooth. Latest update (21/03/2016): An image has been floating around the internet over the past few days showcasing what is claimed to be a Lightning-enabled pair of Apple EarPods, with many citing Weibo as the source of the 'leak'. The image, if true, shows a pair of fairly standard Apple EarPod earphones with a lightning jack at the bottom in place of the standard 3.5mm jack, seemingly confirming the elimination of the jack on the upcoming iPhone. However, all isn't what it seems. While many publications reported on the above image as being a genuine leak, we have our reservations. This is mainly due to infamous leaker (what a title!) OnLeaks tweeted the exact same image on Friday 18 March 2016 without the Weibo watermark seen elsewhere online while inferring that it's a fake image. The tweet in question was in response to another headphone 'leak', and OnLeaks uses the photo in question as an example of a photo that was "easy to set up". While this is far from confirmation that it's a fake, it suggests to us at least that this is the case. It's possible the new iPhone 7 could be waterproof. In March 2015 a new patent revealed that Apple is investigating ways to make future iPhones waterproof without needing to compromise on the design, a change that never made it into the 6s and 6s Plus. Instead of adding armour to the outside of the iPhone to protect it from water, the method would coat electronic components found inside the iPhone in a protective waterproof material that would prevent them from getting damaged should water find its way in. Clever. If waterproofing the internals of the iPhone 7 doesn't sound impressive enough to you, the next rumour might. A patent was published on 12 November which suggests that the iPhone 7 could be waterproof - but not by creating a watertight body, or even waterproofing the internals. Instead, the patent suggests that the iPhone could dry itself by pumping water (or any other liquid, for that matter) out of the device via its speaker grills. Pretty cool, eh? The concept is centred around modules within the speakers that can be made more or less hydrophobic, depending on the electrical charge applied to them. That way, when liquid is detected in the iPhone, the modules would be activated in such a way that it'd move the liquid across them and eventually out of the speaker grills. We love this idea, but we're not holding our breath that this will be featured in the iPhone 7 - maybe the 8 or 9, though. New reports that emerged at the end of January 2016 suggest Apple is working on wireless charging behind the scenes, but the bad news is this special type of wireless charging that doesn't require users to place the phone on a charging mat isn't expected to arrive until 2017. It's been rumoured that wireless charging is coming to iPhone for a long time now, but the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus arrived in September with no such feature, disappointing many. One of the reasons the iPhone doesn't currently offer wireless inductive charging is because the technology has never previously worked through aluminium, which the iPhone is made with. But in July, Qualcomm revealed that its latest wireless breakthrough now does work through metal, so it's finally a possibility for Apple. But Apple reportedly wants to take wireless charging one step further. Bloomberg says that the company is "exploring cutting-edge technologies that would allow iPhones and iPads to be powered from further away than the charging mats used with current smartphones. " Another touted feature for the latest iPhone that didn't see daylight and may be reserved for the iPhone 7 is that it will have an e-SIM. Recent reports suggest that it could be the end of days for the traditional SIM card, with a possible introduction of a simpler option. An e-SIM is an electronic SIM card which would replace the physical SIMs used today and instead will opt for a virtual embedded equivalent. Rumours suggest that both Apple and Samsung are in talk with the GSMA (organisation that represents the interest of mobile operators) to use a standardised e- SIM in future handsets. What are the benefits of having an e-SIM? First things first, it'll make switching carriers easy and should allow for more flexible roaming. The idea is that with a standardised e-SIM, you'll be able to make a call and switch operators without having to insert a specific SIM card. This idea translates to roaming too, as it'll be much easier to switch to a local network if you're looking to spend a long period of time in a particular country. You can also wave goodbye to SIM adaptors! If you've ever had to go from a nano-SIM device to a micro-SIM device, you'll know exactly what we mean. According to Economic Daily News, the iPhone 7 could feature a 3D display - but not just any 3D display, but one that doesn't require the use of those annoying 3D glasses. The website claims that Apple supply chain partner TPK is working on a project that could produce a glasses-free 3D display, though we're not holding out much hope for this as its been done before (remember the LG Optimus 3D?) and has never done well. There are some rumours to suggest that the iPhone 7 could have some new design features, though we'd take these rumours with a pinch of salt. The speculation about a new design stems from an Apple patent that was published in 2015. It describes what Apple calls "sidewall displays," similar to the display found on the Galaxy Note Edge , S6 Edge and S6 Edge+. Concept by Michael Shanks The patent hints at a future iPhone with a display that extends onto the sides of the device, providing interactive or touch sensitive portions that give access to slide-to-unlock functionality, music player controls, messaging readout, called ID, system controls and more. Perhaps Apple will decide to introduce the sidewall display to the iPhone 7, offering even more screen estate. The latest rumour comes from a concept video by DeepMind of what an iPhone 7 would look like with an edge-to-edge display. And it looks pretty cool. Another concept image of an iPhone 7 with an edge-to-edge display emerged in early 2016 from iPhone-Tricks.com. It's a bit out-there and is unlikely to be quite accurate, but it also shows what iOS 10 might look like including an interesting idea that some of the icons could be bigger in a 'widget' style familiar to Android users. Another rumour that was sparked by an Apple patent is that the iPhone 7's Touch ID fingerprint sensor, which is usually situated beneath the Home button, could be built-in to the entire display, eliminating the need for a Home button and making room for a larger display without enlarging the overall size of the smartphone. These rumours seemed pretty far fetched to begin with, but it might just happen. Sonavation recently announced that its found a way to insert ultrasonic biometric sensors underneath a Gorilla Glass display, with it still being able to read a users fingerprints. The newly developed tech is "well suited for through-the-glass fingerprinting and specifically architected to deliver advanced security and ease-of-integration into mobile and IoT devices” Sonavation’s CTO Rainer Schmitt said. The company claims that it can even do one better than the existing Touch ID (and most other fingerprint scanners on the market) by being able to scan fingerprints on a finger that's wet, dirty or oily. Though it's not clear which devices will be the first to feature this new technology, but we assume it'd either be the iPhone or a flagship Android smartphone. All of the above rumours could be made possible thanks to a new flexible OLED, that reports say Samsung Display is currently working on for the iPhone 7 and is set to invest billions in a new factory to keep up with demand and meet Apple's order of up to 45,000 panels per month. Another rumour circulating the web is that the iPhone 7 will come with a new iPhone charger, with a Lightning connector on one end and a new reversible USB connector on the other end. In August 2014, a video of a reversible USB charger emerged on YouTube, which you can watch below. In January, Taiwanese site Apple Club shared photos of what it claims are iPhone 7 parts that have been leaked from the supply chain. The site has been genuine with some of its leaks in the past so it is possible that this is the real deal, but it really doesn't tell us much about the iPhone 7 just yet. We expect this will be the first of many leaked components as we progress through the year towards the iPhone 7's release, so we'll bring you all of the new images as they emerge right here.

2016-04-22 10:52 Ashleigh Allsopp www.pcadvisor.co.uk

48 48 DevOps and deviance: How bad IT practices become accepted as normal Peter Waterhouse, Senior Strategist, CA Technologies How many times have you witnessed a sub-optimal IT practice that everyone else thinks is ok, then over time accepted the behavior as being just fine and dandy? Regardless of whether you lead a startup or work in an established business, we all have a tendency to accept dodgy behaviors. Even if outsiders see them as wrong, our IT teams are so accustomed to using them (without any adverse consequences) that they’re quickly established as “normal” and accepted. Studies into what’s commonly referred to as the “normalization of deviance” have been conducted in areas such healthcare to aerospace, with evidence showing that many serious errors and disasters occur because established standards have been bypassed and bad practices “normalized”. While examining this phenomena is critical in the context of safety, it’s equally applicable in how we develop, secure and operate software applications. With the boundaries blurred between the digital and physical world, any adverse behavior leading to security and reliability issues could have dire consequences for customers. And when software becomes infused into long lasting products (from light bulbs to limousines) it’s not so easy to exit markets. As businesses look to software innovation for growth, time-to-market and quality become essential differentiators. Unfortunately both can be compromised if pre-existing change aversion or newer “speed at all cost” mandates lead to a normalization of deviance. More critically, if a head-in-the-sand IT culture persists, systemic business failures may eventuate – think massive security breaches or major application outages. The DevOps movement, with its focus on collaboration across development and other IT functions, is now regarded as the best way of establishing the culture and environment needed to support fast and reliable software deliver. So maybe the secret to helping IT identify and eliminate poor practices is to take the benefits of DevOps and then guidance from other fields that are fighting normalization of deviance. In healthcare, for example, studies illustrate seven factors that lead to a normalization of deviance , all of which are IT relevant: Analogous to pathway stepping stones, these are all the value interrupts which, when lifted, reveal all the process and technology issues causing good people to do the wrong things. Immediate candidates are software release and testing processes, but don’t restrict analysis to the development side of the software factory. Every stone, be that enterprise architecture, stakeholder engagement, vendor management, operations or customer support can hide ugly behaviors that over time can become normalized. Of course, identification is just the start. Next comes the hard part, with leaders using evidence to impress how behaviors impact current performance and business outcomes. This might involve using new tools, but this again courts disaster when advanced technologies becomes a vehicle to automate bad processes. As with anything involving people, the organizational and psychological barriers encouraging staff to break rules or for their colleagues to remain silent is where most attention should be focused.

2016-04-22 10:45 Peter Waterhouse www.itnews.com

49 49 Amazon restricts sales of popular movies and games to Prime members only Instead of the “Add to Cart” button, this is what you’ll now see if you’re not a Prime member and you try to buy certain video games or movies: And Amazon’s response to Videogamer isn’t very reassuring: “One of the many benefits of Amazon Prime is access to exclusive selection on a number of great products. Customers who are not Prime members can sign-up for a 30- day free trial of Amazon Prime, or they can purchase those items from a Marketplace seller.”

2016-04-22 10:43 Hayden Dingman www.itnews.com

50 AMD’s noise-curbing Wraith coolers get bundled with more CPUs AMD is bringing its Wraith cooler to more CPUs in hopes that lower temperatures and quieter operations will sweeten the deal. The Wraith cooler is now bundled with AMD FX- 8350 ($180) and FX-6350 ($130) processors. It’s already available on AMD’s FX-8370 CPU ($200) and A10-7890K APU ($170). AMD first introduced the Wraith cooler during the CES trade show in January. Wraith promises to be much quieter than AMD’s typical coolers. Its fan also operates continuously at low speed, which should be less distracting than a fan that keeps switching on and off. Keep in mind that AMD FX-8350 and FX-6350 processors are already on the market without the Wraith cooler, and for now retailers are continuing to sell the old models. The new CPUs that include the Wraith cooler are specifically marked as such on the box.

2016-04-22 10:03 Jared Newman www.itnews.com

51 How to use Snapchat new features: Snapchat adds new face swap feature, Chat 2.0, Emoji stickers for video Following Snapchat's big update in March, the social app has seen another update that adds a brilliant new face swap feature and the ability to replay any snap once for free. Here's how to use the new features, as well as Snapchat Chat 2.0, lenses, filters, stories and more. Also see: How to update Snapchat and Snapchat can do what it likes with your messages, even publicly display them - should you be worried? Lenses are one of the most popular features of Snapchat - after the ability to send videos/photos that expire after 10 seconds, of course. It seems that Snapchat has also noticed this, with the photo-sharing giants offering the ability for its customers to buy (with real life money) lenses to be used at any time. The firm has since scrapped the idea of selling Lenses, and to stop the feature becoming stagnated, has introduced a new system. Instead of offering the same range of lenses on a day-to-day basis, the selection is updated daily, removing the oldest Snapchat lens and replacing it with a brand new one. Don't worry, though - if you did buy any lenses, these will still be permanently available to you. One of the most confusing things to new Snapchat users is how to access these lenses. Turn the camera so your face is on the phone's screen as if you were to take a selfie, then tap and hold on your face until a mesh appears. Now release. Snapchat will load several lenses to the side of the capture button, which you can slide through to access. Many will require you to open your mouth to get the full effect - you'll feel (and probably look) silly doing so in public, but at least you now understand why the kids are pulling such strange faces. One of the most popular filters right now is Face Swap, which, you guessed it, swaps faces. There's also a new face swap feature in Snapchat as of 22 April that introduces the ability to face swap with a photo from your phone's photo library. You can find out exactly how to use Face Swap here . If you're running the latest version of the Snapchat app you can add emoji stickers to your videos. These can be pinned to anything in the video, and will move with that thing. They're resizable, too. To add emoji stickers to a Snapchat video just tap the add sticker icon and choose an emoji, then press and hold to pin on your Snapchat video. For full instructions on how to use Snapchat video emoji stickers click here. First, here's a list of all of the new changes in Chat 2.0: To access Chat 2.0, swipe right on a contact you wish to talk to. This'll open a Chat window with that contact. Tap the image on the left to send multiple images, the phone icon to start an audio call, the circle in the centre to open the camera, the video icon to start a video call or the smiley face to access stickers. You can tap and hold on the phone icon to record and send an audio message, and the same goes for the video icon for a video message. Note that your friend will need to have updated to the new version of Snapchat if you want to use these features with them. An integral part of the Snapchat experience is the Snapchat Story, which displays a collection of videos and photos you've taken over a period of 24 hours, and can be viewed (and replayed) by friends. With the latest update, Stories automatically advance meaning you'll move straight on to the next story in your contacts list once the first is finished. But what if you want to reply to a specific Snapchat amongst the collection of videos and photos in your friends Story? With the latest update, Snapchat has officially added story replies. When watching a friends (no doubt hilarious) Snapchat story, you can reply to a specific photo or video by swiping up from the bottom of the display, opening a new chat window. Simply type your message, hit send, and your friend will recieve the message along with a snapshot of the photo/video you're replying to. Not the most groundbreaking addition ever, but it should make replying to Snapchat Stories a little bit easier in future! You might like: How to use Peach, the new Facebook rival that everyone is talking about After you shoot a video in the latest version of the app, simply swipe left or right until you see three arrows (rewind) or a snail symbol (slo-mo). The rewind filter is useful if you want to make 'magic' effects such as impossible catches (since you're actually throwing something away from you). Force Touch integration is currently pretty basic. You press hard on the Snapchat icon and get options to start a new chat or add a new friend. Back in September, Snapchat added new lenses. The app does warn that this is only available on 'newer Android devices'. See also : Snapchat users get new year hack: 4.6 million phone numbers revealed . Open the app and make sure your front facing-camera is active. Now long press the screen on your face to load the lenses. You can scroll horizontally through them and for most you'll need to follow an instruction for it to work properly such as opening your mouth or raising your eyebrows. Until 22 April, you'd have to pay for replays via an in-app purchase that was 79p for three, but now you'll get one replay for free after which you'll have to pay. Swipe down from the main screen to bring up your personal Snapchat code and you'll see a new trophy icon above it. Tap it and you'll see what trophies you've managed to unlock - they're basically achievements like you get on computer games. At the time of writing there are 16 to unlock and we've only managed the first one (reaching a score of 500) so we better go send some more snaps. Tapping the locked ones simply displays question marks so you'll have to work out how to unlock them. If you've had multiple snaps from the same contact, or what to view someone's story without it taking forever you can skip each photo or video whenever you're ready. When you're holding one finger on the screen to view a snap, simply tap anywhere else with another finger to skip to the next one. If you fancy chatting to a friend, swipe right on their name in your Snapchat inbox to begin. When you leave the chat screen, messages viewed by both you and your friend will be cleared. The app will notify you if your friend is online when chatting, and if you're both chatting at the same time you simple have to press and hold to share live video. In similar fashion to Instagram, Snapchat has filters which you can add to your photos. However, they're not switched on by default so here's how to switch on filters in Snapchat. Once you've taken a photo, simple swipe left or right and you'll see a message which says 'turn on filters'. Click the 'I want filters' button at the bottom of the screen. This will take you to the 'additional services' part of the settings menu where you can tick the filters box. Note that you'll need to enable location to be able to switch them on and for some to work properly. In the same 'additional services' settings (swipe left from main screen, hit cog wheel and select manage under additional services) you can switch on replay. Once you've switched it on, you can replay one snap every 24 hours. Permission for others to replay your snaps is there by default and can't be switched off. You're probably using Snapchat to send selfies to other users but if you're in the dark then it's your rear camera which has a flash. Well you can now switch on front facing flash in the additional services menu. This turns your screen white to provide some extra light for your photo when you take it. You can turn the front flash on and off in the top-left of the screen. if you like adding captions to your snaps then switch on 'special text' in, you've guess it, the additional services menu. Now when you add a caption, there's a 'T' at the top of the screen which you can tap to change the look. While you're in the additional services menu, you can tweak how many friends appear in your best friends menu. Simply select it in the menu and choose how many you want it to be. There's a maximum of seven – we're not sure why. Follow Chris Martin and @PCAdvisor on Twitter.

2016-04-22 10:00 Chris Martin www.pcadvisor.co.uk

52 Nostalrius petition passes 200k signatures, Mark Kern to deliver it The petition to resurrect the private server Nostalrius following Blizzard's cease and desist has surpassed 200,000 signatures. This was the threshold at which former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern pledged to deliver it to Blizzard president Mike Morhaime personally. He's more than making good on that offer. From TwitLonger : "Now its time for me to get to work and put together a package to deliver to Mike Morhaime. Here's what I'm doing: "I want to thank @SodaPoppingTv for being so passionate and doing the WoW stream to publicize this. I want to thank @Nostalbegins for taking the time to Skype with me and show me what a great bunch of devs they are, and thanks for everyone on my feed and following me @Grummz for all the moral support and tweets. "But... Especially, thank you petition signers! Thank you vanilla WoW fans! Thank you for supporting this petition and for playing and loving vanilla and early WoW so damn much! YOU did this! YOU can make it happen. And I'll be there right alongside you. "For the Alliance, for the Horde, for Azeroth! " I spent a few months playing on Nostalrius, and recently delved back into it to find out how the players are reacting to the shutdown. There were a handful simply there because it was free, but on the whole it's populated by passionate fans trying to relive the glory days, or curious as to what all the fuss was about. For my money, it'll be a travesty if nothing comes of the community's efforts.

2016-04-22 09:41 By Angus www.pcgamer.com

53 Facebook bug hunter stumbles on backdoor left by hackers When Orange Tsai set out to participate in Facebook's bug bounty program in February, he successfully managed to gain access to one of Facebook's corporate servers. But once in, he realized that malicious hackers had beaten him to it. Tsai, a consultant with Taiwanese penetration testing outfit Devcore, had started by mapping Facebook's online properties, which extend beyond user-facing services like facebook.com or instagram.com. One server that caught his attention was files.fb.com, which hosted a secure file transfer application made by enterprise software vendor Accellion and was presumably used by Facebook employees for file sharing and collaboration. Tsai analyzed the application and found seven vulnerabilities, including two remote code execution ones, which he reported to Accellion. He used the vulnerabilities to gain access to Facebook's corporate server and started to gather information from its logs in order to prepare a report for the company's security team. That's when he spotted some unusual errors in the server's log that pointed him to what turned out to be a PHP-based backdoor -- also known as a Web shell -- that had previously been installed on the server by malicious hackers. The rogue Web shell allowed the hackers to execute shell commands on the server and to upload files, but more importantly, it hijacked the Accellion application's authentication process and recorded the credentials of Facebook employees accessing it. "At the time I discovered these, there were around 300 logged credentials dated between February 1st to 7th, mostly '@fb.com' and '@facebook.com'," Tsai said in a blog post Thursday. "Upon seeing it I thought it’s a pretty serious security incident. " Since the Accellion application allowed authentication through LDAP and Windows Active Directory, Tsai suspected that the captured Facebook employee credentials might also work for other Facebook corporate servers, such as Outlook Web App or VPN, but he didn't try to use them. Further analysis of the server logs revealed that the hackers who originally installed the Web Shell downloaded the captured credentials and deleted the file containing them every few days. In addition, there was evidence that they tried to map Facebook's internal network, to log into the LDAP and other servers and even searched for SSL private keys. "There were two periods that the system was obviously operated by the hacker, one in the beginning of July and one in mid-September," Tsai said. The July incident happened to take place right around the same time that a remote code execution vulnerability in the Accellion File Transfer Appliance was publicly disclosed . Tsai reported all of his findings to Facebook, which awarded him a $10,000 bug bounty and launched its own forensics investigation that was completed this month, prompting the researcher's blog post. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

2016-04-22 09:33 Lucian Constantin www.infoworld.com

54 Botched WSUS patch KB 3148812 throws errors 80244019, 80244008, 8024401f Be glad you aren't in charge of a Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server. WSUS admins on April 19 received patch KB 3148812, described in the KB article as "an update to a feature that enables Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to natively decrypt Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) in Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Before you install this update, see the Prerequisites section. " Admins were keen to get it working because, per Microsoft, "You must install this update on any WSUS server that is intended to sync and distribute Windows 10 updates (feature updates) that are released after May 1, 2016. " When gathering the information about this week's 24 patches , I noted that problems had already been reported with this update and pointed would-be patchers to this post from Microsoft on TechNet. It says: We've received word of some issues happening (e.g., WSUS admin console is inaccessible, clients can't contact WSUS) in the wild after installing KB3148812. It is critical functionality; however, you don't lose anything by skipping installation until we publish media that leverages this scenario, which will not be happening this month. For now, feel free to remove the patch if it's causing you problems, and we'll get to the bottom of the issues that have been reported. The post was amended the morning of April 20 to say, in the comments: Update: We've identified the root cause, and the good news is that this is not an issue of code quality. The package is good as is, but it requires some additional manual steps to be taken afterward in order to realign the moving parts of the system. More information on that will be available via the KB article and this blog later this week. This update introduces two changes that require additional manual steps in order to complete the installation: those who installed it right away had a bit of a panic because the guidance was not yet published. The post goes on to describe two scenarios, with complex steps for fixing the attendant problems. Big problem: The new fixes don't work. A tirade of complaints on the TechNet forum said the manual fixes that Microsoft offered after the fact don't fix the patch. Win10 PCs attached to the patched WSUS server still couldn't see the server. Clients are reporting errors 80244007, 80244019, 80244008, and 8024401f. One poster noted that the situation could be fixed by appending one final step: Deleting the SoftwareDistribution folder on all of the clients -- a fun trick for a large, managed environment. On Friday morning Microsoft pulled the WSUS Product Team blog post. There's no indication why or when it might reappear, and the original KB article still doesn't mention the problem. It looks like this might be a good time to roll back your server to a couple of days ago and sit this one out through the weekend at least. Yes, even WSUS admins need to wait a while before installing new patches, or risk wasting a few days in the attempt.

2016-04-22 09:31 Woody Leonhard www.infoworld.com

55 GitHub Project of the Week: Wangle An open-source project by Facebook has made it as SD Times’ GitHub project of the week. The project is called Wangle, and it is a client/server application framework to build asynchronous, event-driven modern C++ services. Facebook open-sourced this project last summer, but recently a Facebook software engineer named James Sedgwick wrote some software with Wangle, demonstrating the ways in which it can be used by others. Wangle is influenced by the JVM-based libraries Netty (a Java network application framework) and Finagle (a Scala RPC system built at Twitter and on top of Netty), according to Sedgwick’s post. It builds on top of two Facebook-developed libraries that provide asynchronous interfaces. These interfaces are live in Folly, which is an open-source C++ library. This open-source project allows the development of asynchronous and modular servers and clients in C++. It’s also increased performance for Facebook’s other projects, like fbthrift and Proxygen. Other internal projects at Facebook have used Wangle to increase performance. The fundamental abstraction of Wangle are pipelines. A pipeline is a series of Handlers that intercept inbound or outbound events, giving full control over how events are handled, according to Wangle’s GitHub page. Services, an advanced version of pipelines, are another important abstraction. A pipeline can offer flexibility in customizing how requests and responses and how they are handled by a service. According to Wangle’s GitHub page: “A pipeline is a chain of request/response handlers that handle upstream (handling request) and downstream (handling response). Once you chain handlers together, it provides an agile way to convert a raw data stream into the desired message type (class) and the inverse—desired message type to raw data stream. A handler should do one and only one function—just like the UNIX philosophy. If you have a handler that is doing more than one function than you should split it into individual handlers. This is really important for maintainability and flexibility as it’s common to change your protocol for one reason or the other.” Wangle is production grade and is considered stable, but Wangle is ready for any pull requests on its GitHub page . Top 5 trending projects on GitHub this week #1: FreeCodeCamp : Still…trending… #2. F8 App 2016 : Source code of the official F8 app of 2016, powered by React Native and other Facebook open source projects. #3. Nuklear : A small ANSI C GUI toolkit. #4. Agera : Reactive Programming for Android. #5. BackgroundMusic : An OS X audio utility with some neat features like per-application volume control.

2016-04-22 09:00 Madison Moore sdtimes.com

56 Cherry launches new MX Speed gaming switch Cherry's new MX Speed mechanical switch offers a 0.8mm reduction in actuation point compared to the existing MX Red design. Switch specialist Cherry has announced a rare new entry in its MX keyboard switch family, boasting the company's smallest actuation point yet: the Cherry MX Speed. Also known as the Cherry MX Silver, the MX Speed switch is - as the name suggests - optimised for speed. The switch's actuation point - the distance it has to be depressed in order to register as a keypress - is a mere 1.2mm on an actuation force of 45cN, which is considerably higher than Cherry's previous speed-switch the MX Red at 2mm. The result: a key which responds faster, albeit at the risk of registering accidental keypresses where a longer switch would reject the mistake. The company is, unsurprisingly, positioning the Cherry MX Speed as an alternative to the MX Red, both for gamers and for ' fast and frequent typists .' The switch will be made available in two variants, with an integrated lens for back-lit keyboards and a standard cover without. The company has once again signed an exclusivity deal for the part, picking Corsair as the launch partner and preventing any other company from launching keyboards based on the switch for the first six months. For its part, launch partner Corsair has confirmed it is to offer the Cherry MX Speed in its K65 RGB, K70, and K70 RGB gaming keybords as an alternative to the Cherry MX Red, with no impact on pricing.

2016-04-22 09:00 Published on feedproxy.google.com

57 How contact centers can benefit from SD-WANs Call centers were among the first adopters of VoIP, at least within the call center network, and they have historically used MPLS in the WAN, very often dual MPLS networks. While the latter is expensive, the approach has been needed to maintain reliability and call quality. High quality and cost effective services is also critical to organizations that offer contact center services to enterprises. In fact, most contact center operators also want the ability to deliver tiered service (platinum, gold, silver) to different customers, based on the unique customer satisfaction needs of their customer’s industry and end customers. In both cases – enterprises that host the services themselves and providers that offer contact center services – there is increasing demands on the internal network above and beyond the primary use in supporting high quality voice calls. Whether using private clouds, hybrid clouds, public clouds or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), more and more of the applications used by contact center agents are being centralized, rather than distributed to each individual contact center location. And social media and in some cases video chat support are putting further strain on network capabilities and WAN bandwidth. Meanwhile, the automated call distributors (ACDs) of telephony systems distribute calls among agents based on system capacity, human availability, agent skill sets, etc., but not on how the underlying wide area network is performing. This confluence of needs is straining the WAN, but the right SD-WAN solution can simultaneously deliver better customer experience, greater reliability, and the ability to offer different service levels, all while reducing network costs. The fact that multi-location contact center operators already have multiple WAN links at each location make them particularly fertile ground for SD-WAN deployments. The key is to look for SD-WAN solutions that deliver improved reliability and application performance predictability across a multi-connection WAN fabric. The critical SD-WAN reliability technology here offers continuous unidirectional monitoring of what’s going on across all WAN connections, and sub-second response to network issues, without breaking existing application flows, so calls are maintained even in the face of link failure. Existing dual-MPLS solutions alone will almost certainly face dropped calls when a primary MPLS connection goes down. For real-time applications like VoIP and videoconferencing, such SD-WAN technology delivers this reliability and predictability by choosing network paths with the least packet loss and lowest jitter, and switching sub-second to a better path in the face of high loss or jitter. Note that for VoIP, typical round-trip measurements of network latency and loss are insufficient to make appropriate forwarding decisions; more than for other applications, one-way measurement of network performance is essential here. Where sufficient bandwidth is available, some SD-WAN implementations can provide still greater application reliability by replicating real-time traffic flows along a second path, suppressing duplicates at the receiving end, and so delivering essentially "perfect" sound and voice quality even in the face of failures or congestion on one of the WAN connections. Some SD-WAN solutions are even intelligent enough that they can be set to do such flow replication only when sufficient WAN bandwidth is available. Further, the right SD-WAN technology for contact centers can allow more efficient use of existing WAN links. This is important given the reality that almost all contact center WANs have a mixture of voice and other real-time traffic together with interactive and more bulk traffic. The ability to use all WAN links at a call/contact center, in addition to the ability to safely use each link at higher sustained network utilization, can postpone indefinitely the need to buy expensive bandwidth upgrades. Centralized management makes configuring an SD-WAN solution much simpler than constantly fiddling with router settings, or being at the mercy of separate MPLS providers. And the self- correcting nature of such smart SD-WAN solutions lowers OpEx costs and increases reliability still further, fixing network problems as they occur rather than simply reporting them. Finally, contact center operators in particular need to ensure that they look for an SD-WAN solution that scales to the number of locations, and the thousands of simultaneous calls, they need to support. The ability to provide reliability and application predictability typically requires per-packet forwarding decisions together with the ability to support thousands of flows, and several links per location, and so it is critical to find an SD-WAN vendor that can handle the load while providing this added level of reliability. With an SD-WAN solution, contact center operators can get higher reliability and greater WAN utilization from existing MPLS links. They can replace one of the MPLS connections with an Internet-based link without compromising on quality - indeed, providing higher reliability than existing approaches. And while few call/contact centers are likely to forgo a private WAN alternative entirely, the right SD-WAN solution can allow setting up some remote outposts, where MPLS might not be available at all, or only at prohibitive cost, using only multiple Internet connections. And in all cases, such an SD-WAN solution can allow the contact center operator to cap their spending on those expensive MPLS connections while augmenting them with lower cost, high bandwidth Internet circuits. Given that the cost per bit of MPLS bandwidth is anywhere from 10x to 100x the cost of Internet bandwidth, the ability to have even a portion of a global contact center operation’s WAN needs handled with Internet connections rather than MPLS can result in substantial savings. The overall benefits of an SD-WAN solution for contact center operators can be substantial: uninterrupted, high quality calls, even in the face of circuit failure or degradation due to bursts of network congestion, flexibility to support additional applications and demands on the network, along with lower WAN costs and improved manageability.

2016-04-22 08:50 Andy Gottlieb www.itnews.com

58 Valve considers 'Prime' matchmaking for CS:GO Late last night, Valve dropped a small patch for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. However, the patch notes don't mention a significant addition to the game files that hints at 'Prime Account Matchmaking'. Don't worry, it's not a new premium service. From the SteamDB Github account : "CS:GO is running an experiment to find out whether players will have a better matchmaking experience when they are matched with players who are using a phone-linked CS:GO account. "To join the experiment, you'll need to upgrade your CS:GO account to Prime status. Just click the UPGRADE button below, which will bind your Steam phone number to your CS:GO account (provided it qualifies, see the F. A. Q. below). "If you own multiple CS:GO accounts, be sure to upgrade your favorite one since you can only upgrade one CS:GO account to Prime status with your qualifying phone number. "Once there are enough Prime accounts, we will begin Prime Account Matchmaking and will start prioritizing matching Prime status players with each other. " Players are widely elated: in theory, Prime matchmaking will seal off honest players who play through a single account from the likes of smurfs and cheaters, who commonly switch accounts as old ones get banned or rank up. It's unlikely to be foolproof—someone somewhere will be prepping a crate of SIM cards as I write—but there are precautions such as the exclusion of VoIP numbers to make the system more robust. A screengrab from /u/lolBEEF purports to show the beta up and running, at least for some:

2016-04-22 08:47 By Angus www.pcgamer.com

59 How DCIM tools improve PUE, reduce costs and help mitigate your carbon footprint Make no mistake, many enterprises and data center providers are striving to reduce their carbon footprint. Switch recently announced that, as of the first of this year, all of its SUPERNAP data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy through its new solar facilities operating in Nevada. Across the pond, Apple is developing two new 100% renewable energy data centers in Ireland and Denmark. And Facebook just launched a massive new data center in Lulea, a town located in a remote corner of northern Sweden, that requires 70% less mechanical cooling capacity than the average data center because of the cool climate. But what if your data center is located in Houston or Rio de Janeiro? Fortunately there exists a viable solution to achieve improved Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), and reduce costs associated with cooling and power while mitigating a facility’s carbon footprint. Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) are software and technology products that converge IT and building facilities functions to provide engineers and administrators with a holistic view of a data center's performance to ensure that energy, equipment and floor space are used as efficiently as possible. In large data centers, where electrical energy billing comprises a large portion of the cost of operation, the insight these software platforms provide into power and thermal management accrue directly to an organization’s bottom line. In order to take appropriate actions, data center managers need accurate intel concerning power consumption, thermals, airflow and utilization. One wouldn’t think this is the realm of MS Excel spreadsheets and Stanley tape measures. However, a recent study by Intel DCM and Redshift Research found that four in 10 data center managers in 200 facilities surveyed in the U. S. and the UK still rely on these Dark Age tools to initiate expansion or layout changes. The good news is that DCIM provides increased levels of automated control that empowers data center managers to receive timely information to manage capacity planning and allocations, as well as cooling efficiency. By deploying thermal-management middleware, for example, improvements in airflow management can reduce energy consumption by 40%. Data center managers can also drive a stake through the problem of zombie servers by consolidating servers to reduce energy consumption from 10% to 40%. Modern data centers maintain a stable operating environment for servers by implementing stringent temperature controls, which, paradoxically, also makes it possible to apply various energy-saving and eco-friendly measures in a centralized manner. A DCIM system that offers simulations integrating real-time monitoring information to allow for continuous improvements and validation of cooling strategy and air handling choices can have a direct impact on the bottom line. Somewhat counter-intuitively, raising internal temperatures in data centers can save annually upwards of 100K per temperature degree without degrading service levels or reducing hardware lifespan. And by deploying various other innovative cooling technologies, facilities can expend up to 95% less energy. Utilizing DCIM real-time data analysis tools, along with maintaining an active server refresh schedule, can effectively combat runaway energy consumption. The combination of processor improvement with feature rich intuitive dashboards that recognize imbalances in cooling and identify underutilized servers, can sometimes reveal a profligate energy consumer right under an administrator’s nose. Replacing an older server with today’s advanced technology and using DCIM to identify underutilized systems can reduce energy need by 30%. Considering the four-year life expectancy of a server, this will save up to $480. While that figure might not seem too significant, the numbers get significant if you have thousands of servers.

2016-04-22 08:28 Jeff Klaus www.itworld.com

60 5 things to look for in a partner that can help ease the pain of managing a multi-cloud environment In the early days of cloud computing you could pick a provider by the development environment or application you were implementing and didn’t have to worry much about integration with other systems. But as the number of cloud resources grows, so does the need to simplify management and integration across different implementations, often times across different clouds. Several recent studies show the majority of companies are already running multiple clouds and they are expecting to have even more going forward. Take for example a company that had chosen AWS to collect and store data from a large number of real time data collection devices (think Internet of Things). The information is then selectively sent to a private cloud for business and customer facing services and to a separate public cloud application. One company with three clouds, two sets of data and a need for a common way to manage across them. If this is similar to a challenge you are faced with, here are five things to look for in a partner that may help avoid (or at least simplify) some of the pain in managing your multi-cloud environment. For many of us, multiple and hybrid clouds are a fact of life. While we can’t avoid some of the complexities of living in a multi-cloud world, keeping these five areas in mind as we are planning and implementing our cloud strategies and selecting a partner to help with them should make the process a bit more manageable.

2016-04-22 08:10 David Fowler www.itnews.com

61 Intel refocusing itself, and its revenue stream, on cloud With Intel looking to lock in on the next big thing and cloud continuing to grow in importance, it makes sense for the chip maker to seize on cloud computing as a way to transform itself. That's the word coming from industry analysts after Intel this week announced it will lay off 12,000 employees -- or 11% of its global workforce -- as it shifts focus from its traditional PC business to the Internet of Things (IoT) and the cloud. With PCs seen as yesterday's tech trend, Intel is betting its future on the growth of the cloud, which stores everything from music to corporate records and powers enterprise apps and billions of smart, connected devices. The cloud, Intel wagers, will be the company's primary growth engine. "Intel appears to have decided that it can't wait any longer for a hoped-for revitalization of traditional PC markets," said Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT, Inc. "Intel's restructuring initiative certainly brings to mind the company's recent disappointments, but also highlights its willingness to come to grips with those challenges. " King pointed out that the company's numbers back up Intel's vision. Revenue from Intel's cloud and IoT businesses grew by $2.2 billion in 2015 and made up 40% of its revenue and the majority of its operating profits, offsetting declines in the PC market segment. Without even focusing on them, the cloud and IoT, which is powered by the cloud, have been propping up the rest of Intel's business. "Intel is, by no means, in trouble," said Jeff Kagan, an independent industry analyst. "However, they are going through an enormous transformation. The Intel of tomorrow will not look like the Intel of yesterday. " Kagan noted that while growth in PCs continues to slow, it's still an enormous business for Intel and will be for quite a while. Endpoint Technologies reports that worldwide PC sales are averaging $30 billion per quarter. "Intel will continue to milk this PC chip cow while at the same time reinvent itself for the future," Kagan added. "Intel has a two-part challenge. Part one is continuing to lead in the PC chip business. Part two is more rapidly moving into new areas... with more focus on the cloud. " The question is what Intel's new focus on the cloud will look like, and what changes it needs to make internally to realize the new goals. Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, suggested that the company will simply double down on its current cloud efforts. "Intel has 95% market share in enterprise servers and more in enterprise cloud," Moorhead said. "I believe Intel will accelerate its spend in the private, enterprise cloud. These are in areas like OpenStack, virtualization and containers. " The private cloud is about five years behind the public cloud, he added. King noted that he doesn't expect any shocking changes for Intel, saying this is more of a "course correction" than a major overhaul of the company. "By any measure, Intel is one of the cloud's leading vendors," said King. "The restructuring is partly designed to help the company maintain that position. " 2016-04-22 08:04 Sharon Gaudin www.computerworld.com

62 Event: Rwanda to host the 26th World Economic Forum on Africa World Economic Forum , engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. The Forum brings together the world’s foremost CEOs, Heads of State, Ministers, International Organizations, Youth, Technology innovators and so forth, with the aim of driving positive change. The Forum has been carried out in a number of African countries in the past few years including; Addis Ababa-Ethiopia (9th – 11th May, 2012), Abuja-Nigeria (7th – 9th May, 2014) and Cape Town-South Africa (3rd – 5th June, 2015) and finally comes to Kigali-Rwanda. Rwanda will host the 26th World Economic Forum on Africa from the 11th – 13th May, 2016 at camp Kigali. Under the theme “Connecting Africa’s Resources through Digital Transformation” the Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society in an impartial space to shape global, regional and industry agendas with the aim of driving positive change. Most African economies face weakened growth due to adverse changes in the global economy such as; Low global prices for major commodity exports, currency devaluations and debt sustainability and geosecurity threats. Therefore this forum seeks to discuss new strategies for economic diversification for inclusive sustained growth. The World Economic Forum on Africa will gather Africa’s leaders to discuss the new approaches that need to be pursued to ignite structural transformation, particularly in the face of rapid technological changes that have the potential to create new industries and reduce inequality. Regional and global leaders from business, Government and civil society will discuss digital economy catalysts that drive radical transformation, strengthen public-private collaboration on key global and regional challenges and agree on strategic actions that can deliver shared prosperity across the continent. The forum will be highly interactive and discussions will be outcome oriented. There will be plenary sessions, televised sessions, arena sessions, pop-up stories, and transformation mapping sessions, interactive sessions, work studios and New Solutions sessions. Participants will be highly involved in this event and speeches are highly discouraged. The sub-themes of the world economic forum on Africa are: The event will be Co-chaired by renowned and versatile leaders across the globe including; Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina; President, African Development Bank Tony O. Elumelu; Founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation, Graça Machel; Founder of Foundation for Community Development, Dominic Barton; Global Managing Director, McKinsey & Company, Philippe Le Houérou; Executive Vice-President & Chief Executive Officer, International Finance Corporation, Tarek Sultan Al Essa; Chief Executive Officer & Vice-Chairman of the Board, Agility and so forth.

2016-04-22 08:01 PC Tech pctechmag.com

63 63 The Samsung 750 EVO (120GB & 250GB) SSD Review: A Return To Planar NAND Since the introduction of their first consumer TLC SSD with the SSD 840 , Samsung's consumer/retail SATA SSD lineup has consisted of two product families: the MLC-based Pro drives, and the TLC-based 840 and EVO drives. The strength of Samsung's SSD controllers and the advantages of 3D NAND have allowed the 850 EVO to maintain a solidly mid-range position in the SSD market well above any other drive using TLC NAND. Meanwhile, with the strength of the 850 EVO as a near-midrange product - and with pricing to match - like so many other vendors over the last year, Samsung has also been developing a true low cost TLC drive for the mass market. The end result is the Samsung 750 EVO, which we're revieiwng today. The 750 EVO establishes a new budget-oriented product line that competes in the cutthroat low end of the market where price per GB is the most important aspect of the product. There are several design choices that help minimize the cost of the 750 EVO, aside from the obvious choice of TLC over MLC. The MGX controller it borrows from the lower capacity 850 EVOs is a dual-core version of Samsung's usual triple-core architecture. Similarly, the 750 EVO is only available in 120GB and 250GB sizes, so there is no high-priced high capacity model. Consequently, with only two small capacities, the 750 EVO line is served by a single tiny PCB layout, made even smaller by the fact that Samsung has put the 256MB of DRAM in the same package as the SSD controller. Samsung MGX controller with onboard 256MB DRAM But the most significant aspect of the 750 EVO is that it doesn't use the 3D NAND that has been a key competitive advantage for Samsung's 850 product lines. Samsung has continued development of planar NAND even after transitioning their retail SSDs to 3D NAND, and the 750 EVO in turn uses 16nm planar TLC. It doesn't offer the same performance or endurance of Samsung's 3D NAND, but it does significantly lower the cost of the drive. 128GB of 16nm TLC NAND in a single package The 16nm TLC NAND is the successor to Samsung's 19nm TLC that had a troubled tenure in the 840 EVO. With the 840 EVO, data at rest on the drive degraded over time and eventually required the use of more thorough and thus slower error correction when read back. As a result the 750 EVO inherits the benefits of all the firmware work Samsung did to mitigate the read speed degradation. This, for what it's worth, gives Samsung some degree of a leg-up against other 16/15nm TLC drives that face the same challenges. By and large the performance specifications for the 750 EVO match the lower capacity 850 EVO, though a slightly lower random write speed at a queue depth of one hints that the 750 EVO may require a bit more background wear leveling work. The feature set is identical to the 850 EVO, making the 750 EVO one of the few low-end drives to support TCG Opal encryption. Samsung's marketing strategy for the 750 EVO is a little different from their previous retail SSD products. The 750 EVO is targeted specifically at system integrators and system builders, rather than at users looking to upgrade an existing machine. Consequently, they aren't pushing to make the 750 EVO available from as wide a range of retail outlets. Enough of the major online retailers have it in stock that it is not difficult to obtain. This review will focus on comparing the 750 EVO against Samsung's other SATA SSDs and against other current-generation low-end TLC SSDs of comparable capacity. Our Bench tool can assist in making other comparisons.

2016-04-22 08:00 Billy Tallis www.anandtech.com

64 10 Tools To Bring Virtual Reality To Life Of all the virtual reality technology emerging from labs or on the horizon, Magic Leap appears to be the most mesmerizing. Earlier this week, the secretive company, which has raised over a billion in funding from Google and venture capital firms, released a video purporting to show its augmented reality technology without any special effects or enhancements. The video depicts computer interface menus that display message notifications and charts hovering in the air, a 3D topographical map of Mount Everest resting on a desk, shopping for shoes online while viewing the shoes as they rotate in 3D, and a luminous school of jellyfish passing overhead in an office. It's more or less the vision of computing depicted in recent movies like Iron Man , not to mention many of the science fiction films and television shows that came before. However, it's still science fiction in the sense that Magic Leap hasn't released anything yet. But its AR technology looks more promising than the first wave of VR headsets, which are profoundly anti-social despite what Mark Zuckerberg and others argue. VR presents computer-generated or prerecorded images while shutting out the real world. That's why VR headsets conceal the wearer's eyes. But in so doing, they isolate the wearer. Facebook at its recent F8 conference pushed back against this perception with a demonstration of social VR, in which people occupy the same virtual environment and can see each other's avatars. But it's not the same as being in the same physical space and interacting. It's an entertaining substitute. AR combines computer graphics with real-world scenes. Though Magic Leap has yet to reveal details about its hardware, the company's system appears to involve a see-through lens and light projected into the subject's eyes. AR is superior to VR because it encompasses VR. It allows for fully virtual worlds plus all sort of interesting applications that require contact with the real world, like assisted surgery. VR systems can fake physical movement through 360-degree treadmills and harnesses. But AR allows actual navigation in the world. A recent Wired article refers to Magic Leap's technology as mixed reality, or MR. It suggests this is distinct from augmented reality because the graphics in mixed reality are integrated with the viewer's environment. Thus, a mixed reality ball would be hidden from view if behind a real sofa. This is an unnecessary distinction because 3D occlusion -- when one object hides another -- can be programmed into an AR environment. AR needn't be narrowly defined as a graphics layer placed on top of the real world. Are you prepared for a new world of enterprise mobility? Attend the Wireless & Mobility Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now! In fact, it's the programmatic interaction between synthetic graphics and real objects that will make AR/MR truly shine. If the technology is to avoid the problem with 3D movies -- the fact that seeing films in three dimensions has no meaningful effect on the emotional impact or narrative quality of the story -- it must do more than be eye candy. A virtual ball introduced into the real world will have to exhibit appropriate physics. If thrown against a real cushion, it will have bounce in a way that makes sense and is different than if it had been thrown against a stone wall. It will take a few years before 3D content creation tools and AR/MR devices get this right. During that time, sales of VR/AR devices are expected to skyrocket. On Thursday, IDC predicted that VR/MR devices will rise from 9.6 million units this year, worth an estimated $2.3 billion, to 64.8 million units by 2020. But there's no need to wait. People are already rushing to create virtual, augmented, and mixed reality content. What follows is a glimpse of the spectacle taking shape around us and of the tools that are redefining what we see. Take a look and let us know what you think in the comments section below.

2016-04-22 07:06 Thomas Claburn www.informationweek.com

Total 64 articles. Created at 2016-04-23 06:03